How to Know God

The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of the unified field of the conscious universe: “The Spirit who is here in a man and the Spirit who is there in the Sun, it is one Spirit and there is no other.” [Taittiriya Upanishad, Brahmanandavalli, Chapter 8, translated by Sri Aurobindo in The Upanishads]

Many people believe that God is separate and distinct, someone living up in the clouds, so to speak, who directs, creates and manages our existence. They look upon God as some kind of king who imposes and disposes according to His whim. These people look upon themselves as separate beings who rely on God, who nevertheless have free will and can therefore act against the will of God, and who will be penalized by God if they do so. They never consider that they are actually unified in consciousness with God, and the realization of that unity of consciousness does not come to them.

There are also many who have a different view and experience and who recognise that God, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-knowing, having infinite extension and infinite consciousness, must necessarily encompass all space, all created universes and all beings in those universes, as otherwise, there would be limits placed upon God and he would necessarily have to be considered finite, not infinite.

In the first case, it is clearly not possible for the individual to unite with the consciousness of God. The individual is always inferior and subordinate. In the second case however, it becomes possible for a realisation of oneness with God to take place, and it is this aspiration that fuels the seeking and the tapasya, the disciplines of yogic practice. Eventually it is through a tuning, a focusing and an unwavering holding of that tuned aspiration that one can become conscious of and be identified with the Divine, as each individual is indeed an aspect of that One Spirit.

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo describes the various methods of knowledge. Knowledge that separates the knower from the known is derivative knowledge and subject to error and misinterpretation.. Knowledge by identity, where the knower, the known and the process of knowing are one, is true knowledge.

The Taittiriya Upanishad once again, in Chapter 6 of the Brahmanandavalli: “The Spirit desired of old, ‘I would be manifold for the birth of peoples.’ Therefore He concentrated all Himself in thought, and by the force of His brooding He created all this universe, yea, all whatsoever existeth. Now when He had brought it forth, He entered into that He had created, He entering in became the Is here and the May Be there; He became that which is defined and that which hath no feature; He became this housed thing and that houseless; He became Knowledge and He became Ignorance; He became Truth and He became falsehood. Yea, He became all truth, even whatsoever here existeth. Therefore they say of Him that He is Truth.”

A discipline asks: “Can the Divine be attained in this way?”

The Mother observes: “Do you understand, the only way of knowing the Divine is by identifying oneself with Him. There is no other, there is only one, one single way. Hence, once you are master of this method of identification, you can identify yourself. So you choose your object for identification, you want to identify yourself with the Divine. But so long as you do not know how to identify yourself, a hundred and one things will always come across your path, pulling you here, pulling you there, scattering you, and you will not be able to identify yourself with Him. But if you have learnt how to identify yourself, then you have only to orient the identification, place it where you want it, and then hold on there until you get a result. It will come very fast if you are master of your power of identification. Yes, it will come very quickly. Ramakrishna used to say that the time could vary between three days, three hours and three minutes. There days for very slow people, three hours for those who were a little swifter, three minutes for those who are used to it.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIII Power of Identification, pg. 110