Divine Hiddenness and the Mystery of Oneness
“It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” - Joseph Campbell
If I was going to hide something so well that it could never be found, where would I hide it? It would have to be in the one place no one would ever think to look for it.
One of the things that has perplexed philosophers and theologians, as well as skeptics and atheists, is the question of God's "divine hiddenness."
Why hide yourself?
If you want us to know you and accept you, why don't you just show yourself?
Why not just make it clear and unambiguous?
Why this whole, silly game of cat and mouse?
The explanations offered by the religious has been arcane at best and downright absurd at worst. Always some sort of fear mongering, unquestionable, unerring authority or twisted logic arguments that may have convinced a 15th century peasant, but no longer pass muster with anyone educated to the 4th grade level. And, if any of you have had the misfortune of hearing some of the modern preachers of the faith, it is getting so absurd as to rightly be regarded as nuts!
But I digress a bit.
The problem is simply this. Religion has made God into a person. He is regarded as a super being. He is a very human male, living in some very remote location.
I understand he used to live closer but after Galileo started peaking into His windows, he had to move.
He is endowed with quite a tempestuous personality, with narcissistic and pathological tendencies. He is the ultimate other. Resembling more of a crazy ex-boyfriend than a diety.
Anyway, as long as God remains the ultimate other, where is the last place one is going to look for Him? You got it... in yourself. And if you were that God, wanting to play a little game with your own omniscience, hiding right in yourself, would make it doubly clever.
Now, did God set it up that way? Is He trying to hide by telling us that He is out there somewhere? Nope. That notion arises from the assumption of God being some kind of personality. But if God is not a person at all but a presence, then that presence has no form, no boundary, no personality, Which would mean he/she/it is the very sense of your presence. Your very own sense of being IS Him or Her or It. (Sorry only persons get pronouns.)
The thing that makes God elusive is his Infinite Oneness, his non-physical, dimensionless, universal presence. God is not hidden. She is everywhere. But not being a person, not being a thing of any kind, It is imperceptible to the senses. It is like space. You can't see it, feel it, hear it, taste it or touch it, yet it is everywhere simultaneously.
And everywhere means everywhere. Which includes right here, where you are!
For a moment just put your attention on the simply fact of your existence. Feel your own presence. It is very subtle. Indeed, it is so subtle it cannot be perceived by the senses. You just kind of know it. You feel it but not like a sensation or an emotion. It is just... well... present.
"You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence." - Eckhart Tolle
I will do you one better. it isn't just to totality of your presence. It is the totality of all presence. In other words, that presence you feel as your very being, IS GOD. Like space is one and all and everything is in and of space, even so presence is one and all pervasive. It is not confined to a single personality but is the presence of all beings. Every presence is His presence.
So God is not a person. That would limit him/her/it to a pronoun and confine the infinite to a finite form. God is presence itself and is not now, nor has ever been, hiding. This universal presence was hidden only by our ignorance of ourselves.
Again from Balyani, "You are Him and He is you... If you know your existence in this way, then you know God..." You are God playing hide-and-go-seek with herself.
And again from Joseph Campbell,“It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
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