Question 200: About being God
Question 200: If we are one with God, aren’t we all God?
Yes, we are, or, to put it another way, God is us. The Supreme Spirit is the only reality. We are individual identities within the whole identity of Spirit. As self-aware beings we are co-creators within the whole as the endless creativity of the Spirit continues on forever.
As co-creators, we have an ultimate responsibility for manifesting the powers of God. As human beings with so many faults and plenty of ignorance, how can we be expected to take on our full responsibility? We are expected to do that, but not necessarily in one lifetime, or even in thousands of lifetimes. It is the journey of our souls to find our way back to the full realization of our Godhood.
From the testimony of the saints and avatars who have lived on earth, we hear that they have made the realization of being one with God. Jesus is a prime example. He said, “I and the Father are one.” Krishna is so identified with God that he gave the Bhagavad Gita talk to Arjuna while speaking as the Supreme Spirit.
Jesus and Krishna are the most well-known examples. However, there are many other people who have testified about reaching a state of cosmic consciousness wherein they realized they are part of the Eternal Spirit.
Modern-day examples include Paramahansa Yogananda and his line of gurus, Swami Sri Yukteswar, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Babaji. Other examples from India include Swami Vivekananda and his guru Ramakrishna. Ramana Maharishi is another well-known saint from India.
These great people are the ones who made the effort to find their way back to Godhood. I say effort because there are definite ways to proceed on the path to Self-realization. The beginning step is learning how to behave with love and kindness toward all. We all know the importance of learning how to get along with others with honesty, sincerity and all good attitudes of true friendship.
After that, we need to learn how to control our inner life force and to interiorize our minds in order to focus on our true spiritual selves beyond our egos. We need to develop our inner relationship with our higher self and with our spiritual teachers and with the Supreme Spirit. It is an evolutionary journey to realize that we are expressions of God on earth.
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As far as religion goes, I feel like everyone should have their own one-on-one with God.
