Fascinating Insights
“Om shanti. Greetings of peace to my sisters and my brothers.
I’m not a scientist so there’s not a lot I know about DNA in terms of science but enough just to say that when you mention somebody’s DNA, what you’re talking about is the way they are - who they are, their very being, their personality. They say that DNA is the engine of life and there are situations in which DNA is expressed and there are situations in which DNA can be suppressed and so different times, different situations and environment. So, what does all of this got to do with God?
It seems a lovely idea to think about science as an exploration but also the subject of God as an exploration. And when you explore something you begin with a certain concept, you experiment and see. Does this work or is there something else that’s happening that makes you change your concept? If the result of your research and experimentation shows something different, well, that is the reality. In terms of God, there have been a lot of myths, legends, many different concepts all sorts of ideas that have come up but how do we know whether all this is real, or not?
Maybe two concepts of God that are known across the world, universally, are that God is love, and it seems to be a bit of a paradox but also that God is truth. And somehow these two concepts of God as love and truth have been the defining qualities that we’ve always spoken of in terms of God.
So, I have to ask, have I experienced God’s love? If I haven’t come to that experience of God’s love, maybe I’ve read somebody else’s experience of God, or maybe I have had a good fortune of meeting somebody who’s able to share their personal experience of God. I might begin to feel that maybe there’s something here that I need to explore further, and so I ask myself how can I know what is God’s love. And this is where we often get stuck, because so often different people have shown us different methods and it has been challenging because we don’t always come to that experience.
For me, what is beautiful is that Raja Yoga, the method of meditation that we practice here, gives some very simple concepts that we can try and see how we get on. And within my first few meditation session I was very lucky I was able to have very powerful experiences. And so it’s on the basis of the knowledge that is being shared here, and my own experiment with those concepts and ideas that I share. I hope maybe a door will open that you will want to walk through, explore and experience for yourself, and see where it takes you.
First of all, the way to come to even begin to understand the concept of God, is to first understand the self. When one gives his own introduction, for example, he begins to talk about the things associated with the body - where born, where does one live, age, nationality, religion everything. And everything of that is connected with the physical and while Im locked into the physical identity it’s not possible for me to know God. This is why we have so many conflicting ideas and conflicting images of the Divine. It’s only when I transcend the physical identity and come to the awareness of my inner identity, my spiritual identity as a spiritual being, a being of light, a soul that I can then begin to understand who God is and what is God’s DNA.
So as you read about these ideas, see if you can practice this awareness. Just being here and letting yourself connect deeply with yourself, and that awareness of that inner being of who you truly are. Try it and see how it goes.
God does not have a physical form, any physical form will be very limiting and restricted, and definitely God is one who is beyond all limits. And when we say beyond limits we tend to think in terms of vastness. But there is another dimension to beyond limits. Rather than infinity, the infinitesimal. One of the concepts that people often talk about is God as the source - the source of love, of truth, of wisdom, all the positive attributes you can think about. So the being that is God is actually absolutely no length no width no breath no height just a being of light. And as you connect with that being of light, although the form is infinitesimal, the experiences of God’s love which is infinite - no boundaries, no conditions, no judgement, and the way to experience this is coming back to the awareness of the inner being, the soul, and thinking of God as this Being of light. Within that being of light is God’s DNA - definitely love and truth - absolute love for every human soul, love for the whole of creation. Think about all the different species and how vast and wonderful this planet earth and the universe and the whole of creation. And God’s love and appreciation of every part of every creation!
Quite amazing if you spend just a moment reflecting on it, but also on a personal level. Sometimes we feel we’re not worthy of God’s love, and we know the mistakes we’ve made, the challenges we’ve had, the weaknesses we carry within. We feel it’s not possible for us to receive God’s love. Or that we have to prove something in order to be able to receive God’s love. Not true. God loves me as I am, and yes, God sees me with a very very elevated vision. God wants me to make that elevated vision a reality, but He doesn’t hold back His love until I get there, God’s love is available here, right now, at this very moment as I am, who I am - weaknesses and defects, all the goodness and everything else that makes up me today.
Unlimited love - Unlimited means everything and everyone. But it also means that it’s never ever going to run out. Think about human love and the huge contrast. You expect a lot of love from people who are close to you, but sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get it for a period but at some point in time it changes and it runs dry. We’ve had that experience. So it’s difficult for us to comprehend how it’s possible for God to keep loving. I make mistakes, I fall and I get up again, and yet still it’s God’s love that’s helping me even get up again. The fact that I’ve made a mistake, God says okay never mind. Without judgement, without conditions without any limit God is available for each and every one. It means I don't have to share God’s love, it’s not a piece of cake and if I take a slice it reduces your slice. Each of us can take as much as we choose to absorb within ourselves and it will still not run out. Plenty more for everyone.
Judgement - Parent and child, creator and creation will definitely have conditions and will definitely have judgement. Think about the time when as a child you were told “if you don’t do this…” so the threats, the promises, all of those things are part of the human world but God’s love is beyond all of these limits.
The Truth - Human beings begin to get a glimpse of truth if they really seek the truth. It’s difficult for them to know what is true and what isn’t true even to begin with. Because everyone will say this is what is right and claims will be made. But to actually discern what is truth means an understanding of what’s very pure and clean. The word “intellect”in English is the closest I can come to translate the Hindi world “buddhi”. The word buddhi is the capacity to understand, the capacity to discern. It’s the container in which I can hold knowledge and wisdom, so you can see it is bigger than this word “intellect”. I need to have that container within my own inner being which is so clean and unpolluted in which as I hear knowledge I am able to feel the value and the benefit. And as I begin to practice it in my life and see wisdom being part of my life, I come closer and closer to the truth and I begin to get a glimpse of it. It’s a journey.
Experiencing God’s love can be instant. Experiencing God’s truth can also be instant in the sense that there’s an amazing insight I’ve never had before that’s now opened up for me and I understand. But really, to know God as the Truth and Truth that is contained within that being, to be able to understand, absorb and follow it in my life - that’s a journey that involves a lot of purification of the self. Not hard journey, but you understand gradually. And it’s not linear time. For some the understanding can be very quick and for some it can take a while. It all depends on what I put as my priority. If I feel that it is a priority and I give it attention it can happen very fast.
Yes, God is the one who absolutely knows what is going on. Again you look at the complex situation of the world and each one will share a different version of what’s going on from their own particular perspective which is natural as human beings but only being in the universe who sees everything and knows the story from the beginning through the middle till the end and is able to reveal the secrets of truth.
Truth isn't always what we like it to be. Sometimes it’s inconvenient, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes it’s surprising. So as we begin to hear God sharing the truth some of us become very uncomfortable. Why? Because God tells us it’s a time for transition. It shouldn’t be uncomfortable but it does become uncomfortable because we’re so attached to everything here that we have, both around us and connected with us, and this identity of the physical form. So even though we might not like everything about this body, or the people we are with or the circumstances and the environment we find ourselves in, it’s a comfort nest and we don’t want to leave it. And yet what God is telling us is that it’s a time for change, it’s time for transition and I have to let go of my attachments to all of these things. So it’s very uncomfortable, very inconvenient and I don’t like it. But it’s the truth and if I understand it and I appreciate that I know, then I can prepare my self for the next step in human evolution within the journey of life, so that I’m ready whatever the next step may be. That’s the truth which God understands completely and God is able to share with us.
There are many qualities of God as you can imagine, all the positive attributes that you can think of, they are there within that Being. But one particular quality I want to talk about, which in a way encompasses many others aspects that is essentially the DNA of God, is that of God the Benefactor. We sometimes use the word benefactor in a very simple way. Someone who has given a donation to a hospital or a school, and so we say so-and-so is a benefactor. The one who is able to bring benefit to all, that would be my definition of Benefactor.
Again I think about human beings. To what extent am I giving benefit to others? Maybe I'm giving benefit to my children, maybe in the work that I do and certainly there’s lots of caring professions - whether it’s in education or in health, social work, maybe somebody who looks after the fire engines. Maybe my work involves giving benefit to others, but am I able to give benefit in a way that it is able to take away the pain and all the suffering forever and ever? It’s beyond human capacity to do that for the self, never mind anyone else. But God the Benefactor is one who has the understanding, the power, the capacity and the role. It’s very much connected to God’s role - but the One who has all these ingredients to be able to transform the human spirit, transform the quality of human life and even transform the world. So that God’s existence is purely to be able to give benefit to others. Nothing that God needs for Her/His own existence, but the existence is simply to be able to give benefit to others.
Connected with this word Benefactor is another word Altruistic. Yes, human being will say if I do something good, I feel good and if I do something that’s not so good, I don’t feel so good. The feelings that we have are an incentive to do good. However, the law of action-reaction, cause-effect, is such that whatever I do, finally, ultimately, it’s either adding to my credit or it’s subtracting from my credit. Credit and debit both are connected with everything that we do. We may not be aware of it, but that’s the reality within the universe.
But God? God’s existence is simply for the benefit of all others. So how does God do that? God does not come and give me a Panadol tablet to take away my headache or even intervene when there’s a major accident. That’s not God’s job. Human karma dictates so much of whatever it is that’s going on. Partly it’s human karma that’s going on, partly it’s the law of nature functioning. Nature has looked after us with so much care and abundance for millennia but of course human beings are now so clever they want to manipulate nature. And so we find out that the results are not as we expected. Nature does its own work in terms of creation, sustenance and transformation. So when the seeds fall on fertile ground, it’s not God who has to look after them, nature will do it’s own work. If human beings step away, nature will do a beautiful job. Birth, life, death it’s our conscious choice - how, what, where and why - again no intervention by God in all of that. God’s intervention comes - and the role of Benefactor gets played out - at a time of absolute need such as now, at a time when no one else can do anything about either the human spirit or the state of the world.
You know how we were sharing about DNA, at a time when it is latent it’s suppressed and then at times conditions are such that it expresses itself. Through most of human history God is the Observer and lets the drama of life continue, and then at a time when human beings have created such chaos that human beings no longer have the understanding of what’s going on and definitely not the capacity of sorting it out and putting in right, that is when God intervenes. And what we are seeing now in the human world is a very interesting situation of transformation that’s now possible.
A hundred years ago, people weren’t so aware of spirituality, people were quite caught up within their particular tradition. There now seems to be this growing awareness of spirituality, even 40 years ago we wouldn’t have heard about self-development courses but that’s part of the picture now. This interest of awakening or studies in consciousness, again at the turn of the century, people wouldn’t have been exploring consciousness, and anyway it’s so subtle that they wouldn’t have had the tools with which they would be able to do it but now the exploration of consciousness from so many different directions, it is a special time in Human History. The role of God the Benefactor is expressing itself now through the awakening of consciousness in such a big way all over the world, everywhere.
And within that, knowledge plays a big big role. If you tell someone what to do, maybe they’ll listen, maybe they won’t. But if you explain to somebody - this is how it works, this will be the result if you do this - and you take the time and trouble, humans understand one moment and forget the next. But God’s patience is as infinite as His love. God takes the role of a Teacher to explain, to remind, and remind, and remind again and again, so that at some point you are ready to switch and turn around from physical limited consciousness into the consciousness of the unlimited and the spiritual.
God’s roles as a Benefactor is to share knowledge that we had at some point within our history but we forgot, and so the reminder again and again. Sometimes you understand and even remember, but you don’t have the inner power or will power. We understand what we should do but we don’t have the will power to do it, maybe in terms of changing habit.
God is also knowns as the Almighty Authority. God provides the power - not just the knowledge but the power - with which we can make the changes within ourselves. You’ve got knowledge, the power, and you also need the love to help you along the way. The power of love sometimes goes to a deeper realization than any explanation or understanding. But the whole purpose of God’s existence is to allow us to come back to that state in which we had absolute purity and we were able to be a true reflection of the Creator.
There’s a statement that comes in the scriptures and it comes from all the scriptures I think, in which we have been created in the image of God. What a beautiful statement. We’ve read it, we’ve heard it, but I’m not sure we actually believe it. Why? Because when we look at human beings and we look at ourselves it’s such a different story. When we believe in God and we go to God as Love, Truth, The Benefactor, The Ocean of Forgiveness, The Ocean of Compassion - all of these wonderful titles - then we look at ourselves and see this big gap between the Creator and the creation. But in fact in human terms, the continuity of life is through DNA and so from generation to generation, what is it that links us together? It is the DNA. God is the Creator, and if I accept that, then surely the creation carries the same DNA. It’s the continuity.
So at the moment it feels as if we’re very distant, as distant as the sky and the earth. But the beautiful story of today, and it’s very much the story of today, in a sense that this is that time in that period of transition, we can make that switch and come back to that original state in which, truly, we can once again be a reflection of the Divine. And we couldn’t do it on our own, but it’s God’s DNA as a Benefactor that makes it possible for us. God wants us to become as He is. In human life, a parent will say if I have a good life I would want my child to have not just an equally good life, I would want my child to have an even better life than I have had.
The Supreme Parent definitely wants us to have a beautiful life, a good life, the most elevated life of all. God offers us that opportunity. If I choose to avail myself of it, I can take that knowledge, that love, that power and all the assistance God provides for me to make that transformation work for me. And the foundation of transformation is coming back to the switch of awareness - from the physical identity to the spiritual being that I am. And once I make that switch, what does that mean? It’s not hard work, not having to lift heavy books. It’s just a little switch. How long does it take to press a button? That’s what it is, just to press the button that I am a child of the Divine. When I say those words in the consciousness of the physical identity, i feel nothing. But when I remind myself I am a spirit, or soul and then I say I am the creation of the Creator, Im a child of the Divine, now it begins to feel and work in a very beautiful way. The transformation process is at work and the power of love is able to heal the soul. God’s DNA as a Benefactor is also to heal the pain and suffering that we’ve had for a long time.
I believe in rebirth, you may or may not and it’s a question that can be explored another time, but whether it’s birth and the days of infancy and some of the trauma we may have experienced through that, or whether it’s this understanding of the continuity of the soul through many births and lives, and the trauma we carry with ourselves through that, there’s a lot of suffering that each soul carries at the present time. Externally you might have position, property, even good relationships with people around you. And yet somewhere, somehow, along the line, the soul isn’t able to be completely at ease and be completely happy. There’ll always be some factor that causes tension or pressure in some way or another.
The Benefactor heals the soul with the Power of Love. And as the process of healing begins to happen, I begin to realize what it is I need to do to have purification. Purification of my thoughts, purification of the way in which my conscience is working - conscience had become dysfunctional because I wasn’t understanding right and wrong, and so I ignored the soft voice of conscience again and again and it stopped speaking so it became dysfunctional and I got trapped more and more. The Benefactor, gently with love, touching the soul with Divinity and awakening the conscience. This is purification of my conscience.
The purification of my personality in a sense that there is so much that’s beautiful in every human soul but then there’s also this-and-this-and-this which needs sorting out. The purification process is the process by which God is able to uplift us and bring us back to that stage in which truly we become a reflection of the qualities of the Divine. Can you imagine what will happen to the world if a handful of people are able to go through this transformation? It doesn’t need the whole world to change and it’s unlikely that’s going to happen, but those who are awake and aware, those who are ready to go through this experience of transformation they become the instruments through whom the world can change. God’s vision is a vision of each one as the most elevated pure being of goodness and nothing but goodness, but also God’s vision is of a world where there’s love, peace, harmony and joy. So all of us, as we go through our transformation and become the image of God’s qualities, the reflection of God’s qualities, we create that better world together. And I don’t think it’s very far away, I think many are going through this accelerated process. There’s a process that is accelerating all the time, and within a very short space of time there will be a better world. Definitely within my own lifetime!
Try and experience them in the way that I have shared, and see for yourself. “
God's DNA (Full Article)
by BK Jayanti Kirpalani, Director of Brahma Kumaris Europe and the Middle East, a much sought after speaker and broadcaster on spiritual matters, and a meditator for more than 40 years, speaking of her experience on God from the Global Cooperation House in London in June 2016