Spirit - God Beyond Creation

It all starts and ends here. Spirit, Brahman, the Self, Cosmic Consciousness, God (the Father beyond creation) and many other names.  The Buddha referred to this state of being as Nirvana. Spirit is the first aspect of God – the Sole Reality, formless, beyond time and space, infinite consciousness.  Brahman is the most difficult to understand, as mankind’s normal consciousness has no reference point or language to describe anything that exists beyond creation. However, Spirit can be experienced and directly known. By definition, that is what a mystic is, one who has directly experienced the Supreme Being. This has happened in all lands and all times.

• If it all starts here, then who created Brahman? Where did He come from? How long has He been there? Are there other Supreme Beings? The mystics have given us some information on this. Brahman exists beyond time and space. Time and space are creations of Brahman for use in his universal fantasyland, but do not apply to Him. For normal human minds, Spirit just is. One way to help visualize this is to think of Spirit as a vast, endless blue sky stretching forever in all directions. No motion. Timeless. Occasionally, some small clouds float by. Each of the small clouds is a universe. The clouds each have size, changing shapes and motion, and thereby exhibit the dimensions of time and space. The clouds arise from the mind of Spirit, exist for a while (a long while in normal human time) and then disappear into the sky to be replaced with new clouds as is the wont of Spirit. The universes that exist within Brahman have time and space, but the endless blue sky of Brahman does not. Brahman has no beginning and no cause, which is hard for human minds to grasp. Many of the questions we have in our normal human consciousness are conditioned by our experience of time and space, which do not exist in Spirit. To one who directly experiences Spirit, however, these questions become moot.

• That is the testimony of the mystics. They have all said that once one experiences Spirit, all these questions disappear. As to the question of whether there is more than one Brahman, there is an answer that the normal human mind can understand. There is only one, only One.

• The ancient rishis of ancient India felt the closest they could come to describing Spirit was the Sanskrit expression, “sat, chit, ananda” or "Existence, Consciousness, Bliss" -  the sublime, boundless, eternal state of bliss consciousness.

• Creation is often referred to as lila, a game or play of Brahman, a manifestation of dream consciousness.

“I am that Brahman, one without a second … I am infinite. I am absolute bliss.” ~ Shankara
 
“He is beyond time and space, beyond beginnings and endings, and though He contains all things, He is uncontained, as He is the only One, besides whom there is no other.” ~ Swami Abhayananda

“All attempts at identifying and defining the Supreme Deity, God, Allah, Brahman, are pointless and meaningless since they all hint at some Reality that is beyond time and space, beyond the objective and the subjective, and therefore beyond verbal description - and yet, can be experienced by man.” ~ Amaury De Riencourt, from The Eye of Shiva

“Brahman is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation.” ~ Al-Ghazali

“The Spirit is imperishable, ever existent in the changeless nonvibratory sphere … no cause of Spirit can be traced; It is self-evolved and causeless.” ~ P. Yogananda

“That which is uncreated and divine, the highest good, the greatest Joy; nay, to speak the truth, That which is greater than the greatest, more beautiful than the greatest beauty, more blessed than the most blessed, more joyful than the joyfulest; aye, more perfect than any words such as these.” ~ Philo Judaeus

“The transcendent Source of all ….. is indescribable, as It is prior to all discernible qualities. The soul is keenly aware of the blissful imperturbability, unlimited power, omniscience and eternal existence of its ultimate Source.” ~ Swami Abhayananda

“Just as the eddies below a waterfall cannot disturb the reservoir of water at its source, so the eddies of vibration issuing out of Cosmic Consciousness cannot create commotion within it. Even the finest vibrations of light or movement are not present in the indescribably subtle limitless sphere of … vibrationless omnipresent Bliss.” ~ P. Yogananda  
 
“Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. It is life in its undifferentiated state prior to its fragmentation into multiplicity. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness.”
~ Eckhart Tolle

What else is there to do but dream
Up worlds and populate them
With imaginative forms caught up
In crazy, impossible plots and toils?
What else would You do
When there’s none else but You?
~ Swami Abhayananda, from the poem None Else

"The One Life, the one consciousness pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or a blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy. "
~ Eckhart Tolle
 
“It is natural but erroneous to think that because all finite things are contained in the Infinite, therefore the Infinite must be contained in something else! All finite things are caused by the Infinite, but the Infinite Being – the Supreme Cause, the Thing-in-Itself – is not the effect of any cause. The Infinite Being, the container of all finite objects, is not contained by anything else existing beyond it.” ~ P. Yogananda   

Top of Page

Ishvara - God within Creation