God, Being, Consciousness.

I wanted to ask you... when I first came here the first day, you had said—and you continue to say—that when you use the word 'God,' it is interchangeable with 'Being,' with 'Consciousness.' However, I find you use the word 'God' a lot. In Advaita, when you say that the road is narrow and it can be 'me' or 'God,' sometimes when I hear that, it takes me a little while because I feel that it is true: God is someone else. Then I sat with this and I felt, I said to myself, I think maybe Guruji is choosing the word 'God' because in giving that space and respect to that power, there would be humility. But then I wasn't sure, and I wanted to ask.

Yes, so it's right that we use these terms synonymously in Satsang: Being, Consciousness, God. God said, 'I am that I am.' So this 'I Am,' Being, Consciousness itself, is God. Now, it's worth exploring what that means. The term 'I Am' may seem more comfortable or not push buttons. This is three letters: I-A-M. 'God' is also three letters. So we may say, like, the short answer could be: why don't I just say Consciousness? Because 'God' is not just short and sweet, but there's more to it, I feel.

It is having this sort of impact on the Sangha somewhere, and those who are hearing the word 'God,' you see. Also, those who had an uncomfortable relationship with the word growing up because they were being forced to go to church or forced to go to temples, and they were fed all the wrong ideas about God. So it's pushing some of those buttons. I feel like God is using this mouth to use the word 'God' often to bring a lot of this stuff out so it can be seen through and discarded, you know? Can we let go of any baggage? It is such a privilege to be able to invoke the pure, highest Being through a simple word. If there's anything to be thankful for in human birth, probably this is one of those things: that I can just say 'God' and God's presence is apparent.

I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to communicate the honor in that, the privilege that we have in that, because the word 'God' has been so jaded. There's a lot of skepticism, there's a lot of baggage, there's a lot of conditioning around the word 'God.' Somewhere the mind says it might be easier to just say 'I am a being of consciousness,' but there's something there. I feel like there's something there in that simple three-letter word. If it pushes some buttons, it's now time to see those buttons and to let them go, you know? Instead of saying, 'No, no, it's better for me if I did not hear the word God so much,' we have to ask: are we going to then be stuck in these mental prisons? I feel like it's time to just get them all out, be free of them. These three-letter words are causing a lot of trouble. 'God' is one, and the second three-letter word that's causing even much more trouble is 'sin.' What is this? Of course, that is known trouble. Sin is another.

I haven't found a better word for God than 'God.' I use 'Being' and 'Consciousness' synonymously, of course, but I just feel a certain resonance. I feel also that, in a way, the word 'God' counteracts our mind's trick to make it like a force of nature, like electricity. When we say 'Being' or 'Consciousness,' we just feel like, 'Oh, electricity, magnetism, gravity.' We think, 'When I go inside myself, there's an atmosphere, and if I go deeper into that, there's the stratosphere, and when I go really deep, then there's just space,' you see? We love for it to be like an exploration in that way, almost scientific. But reality is much more amazing and absurd than that. There's a living presence. The living presence of Being, you see, is unnerving to many of us.