# The Nectar of God (Part: 13) The inquiry into the nature of divinity has occupied the human mind since time immemorial. Each age, each culture, each temperament brings its own questions to this eternal mystery. What is God? How shall we know Him? What is His relationship to us, and we to Him? These are not merely intellectual puzzles—they are the deep stirrings of the soul seeking to understand its own origin and destiny. The Hindu tradition, vast and multifarious as it is, offers many answers. The Vedas speak of Brahman—the ultimate reality, beyond name and form, the ground of all existence. The Upanishads meditate upon this truth with profound subtlety. Later, Vedanta philosophy crystallizes these insights into systematic knowledge. Yet alongside this path of knowledge runs the equally ancient current of devotion—bhakti—wherein the divine is approached not through abstraction but through love, through the heart's surrender to a personal God. This coexistence of the impersonal and the personal, the abstract and the intimate, reflects something essential about the Hindu understanding of the divine. God is both far and near, both utterly transcendent and intimately present. The divine is beyond our comprehension, yet it dwells within our own being. This paradox is not a contradiction to be resolved but a truth to be lived. In the West, theology has often insisted upon a choice: either God is personal or God is impersonal, either He is active in history or He stands apart from creation. But the Hindu mind has traditionally held both truths in a dynamic tension. Shiva is both the ascetic withdrawn in meditation and Nataraja, the cosmic dancer who enlivens all existence. Brahman is both nirguna—without qualities—and saguna—possessed of infinite qualities. Krishna is both the Absolute and a playful youth who steals the hearts of the cowherd girls. What does this tell us? It tells us that our conceptions of God are always partial, always shaped by the limitations of our own understanding. We approach the divine through the lens of our experience, our temperament, our deepest longings. The knowledge-seeker comes to God through meditation and philosophy. The devotee comes through love and surrender. The karma yogi comes through selfless action. And all paths, if genuinely pursued, lead toward the same source. Yet we must be careful of a trap that lies here. There is a tendency to believe that all religions are saying the same thing, that all paths lead to the same destination. This is both true and false. True, because the ultimate reality transcends all doctrinal boundaries. False, because the languages, the experiences, the practices, the fruits—these are genuinely different. To say all paths are one is to render each path meaningless. The mountain has many slopes, and the climber who follows one slope will have a different experience than the climber who follows another—yet all may reach the summit. The danger of philosophy is abstraction. When we speak endlessly of the Absolute, of Brahman, of the transcendent, we risk losing touch with the living presence of God. Philosophy can become a kind of intellectual luxury, a game played by the clever while the human heart remains untouched, unfed. This is why the great saints have often warned against mere philosophy. They knew that to know God truly is to be transformed by that knowing, to be remade from within. And yet philosophy too has its place. Not as an end in itself, but as a servant to wisdom. The intellect, rightly used, can clear away obstacles to understanding. It can expose false notions and purify our thinking. The philosophical inquiry into the nature of God is valuable precisely because it humbles us before the magnitude of what we seek to understand. In grappling with the question "What is God?" we are forced to confront the limits of our own minds. And in that confrontation, something shifts. Pride falls away. A space opens within us for grace. The ultimate truth about God cannot be conveyed in words. The Kena Upanishad speaks of "that by which all else is known, but which itself cannot be known." The Taittiriya Upanishad says: "From which all beings are born, by which they live, and into which they return—that is Brahman. One who knows this becomes Brahman itself." Yet how can one know the unknowable? How can one speak of the unspeakable? The paradox itself is the teaching. In the very impossibility of fully knowing God lies the beginning of true knowledge. For as long as we believe we can comprehend the divine through the ordinary operations of the mind, we remain trapped within our own smallness. But when we come to understand that God infinitely exceeds our grasp, something wonderful happens: we begin to let go. We cease our grasping. And in that release, we touch something that was always there—closer than our own breath, more intimate than our own thoughts. This is why the Bhagavad Gita says that God is manifest in infinite forms, yet transcends all forms. This is why Ramakrishna Paramahamsa would speak of God now as Brahman, now as Shakti, now as Krishna, yet remain unmoved by any particular formulation. He had tasted the reality itself. The words were merely pointers, useful perhaps, but ultimately insubstantial. And what of us, who have not yet tasted this reality? We must begin where we are. If we are of an intellectual nature, let us pursue philosophy earnestly, but with awareness that concepts can only carry us so far. If we are of a devotional nature, let us offer our hearts unreservedly to the divine in whatever form calls to us, but let us remain open to the possibility that God may manifest in ways we did not anticipate. If we are of an active nature, let us serve the world selflessly, recognizing in every being the presence of the divine. And let us remember this: the God we seek is not distant. He does not wait for us to become philosophers or saints or renunciates. He is here, now, in this very moment, in the quiet of our hearts. The nectar of divinity is not something to be achieved in some distant future—it is available now, to those who have the eyes to see and the heart to receive.

Various philosophical thinkers have greatly aided the development of religion. Without their labours, it would have been scarcely possible to bring about the present healthy form of humanity's religious inclination. Any work of destruction is always painful and disagreeable. If fire were set to an ancient, crumbling house, one could not say how much of it would burn to ash. Similarly, when human conscience once awakens to destroy the falsity and depravity in some ancient religion, none can tell how much of what is true and essential in that faith will perish along with the unnecessary, nor how much will endure.

It was the prevalence of priestly obstinacy and ignorance that necessitated the introduction of various opposing philosophies. Knowledge cannot be refuted by the priest's ignorance. Disagreeable logic, once allied with stupidity, can never be destroyed. Can a vast universe ever be contained within the eye of a needle? Then how can a generous and universal religious sentiment be contained within the narrowness of intellect? Religion demands boundless knowledge. It is supremely necessary that humanity gain absolute freedom of thought concerning religious scriptures, religious society, religious practice, God and man—all these matters.

The strength and purity of a person's religion depend greatly upon the excellence of their intellectual faculties. A foolish person can never attain devotion enriched by knowledge. All humans, by the impulse and urge of their own nature, hold truth dear. When human intellect is cultivated and refined, people easily perceive truth, come to know it, and honour it. In our present age, it has become absolutely necessary for religious priests and preachers everywhere to achieve intellectual excellence. Many of the world's religious advisors lack this excellence; therefore, thoughtful people disregard the opinions of religious advisors or pious persons on matters beyond the external rituals of faith. Performing external religious ceremonies and knowing about them requires no great intellectual refinement, which is why thoughtful people have never shown much enthusiasm for such things. This state of society has thus far caused no grave harm to the public, yet in the future it may bring about serious calamity. We must attend to this urgently now.

In manifold ways, humanity unites with the infinite Godhead through meditative absorption. Knowledge and refined intellect are also a worthy path to contemplation of God. God does not impart divine instruction to the human heart merely through conscience, heart, or soul; rather, through the faculties of discernment, imagination, and conception—through all these powers of the human mind does one become inspired toward the Divine. God does not inspire someone miraculously or capriciously by bypassing the natural constitution of human consciousness; rather, this process of inspiration is as immutable as the intrinsic forces of the earth or the chemical attraction among the earth's substances, and it is governed by eternal laws that abide by truth.

The Infinite Spirit of Consciousness shall never inspire the man lost in thoughtlessness with his truth. He does not pour forth the power of his love into the hearts of the envious. God inspired the saints of ancient times with knowledge. He filled the expansive hearts of the eminent sages with wisdom. Yet it was not only the holy men of some particular sect who received this grace of God. The perfected beings and saints of all lands—Greece and Rome, Germany and France, England and America, India and every corner of the world, every community, every age—have all been blessed by God. And this is why there is no such thing as "the one true path."

Every child of humanity has lived within the vast bosom of the World-Mother and been inspired by her. The earth shows no partiality toward any particular community, just as God shows no favor to one sect while denying grace to another. Should anyone claim that the God he worships is the only true one and that all others are deluded, he is mad at best—certainly no lover of God. Divine inspiration concerning God flows into human hearts in the form of truth, yet the degree of God-knowledge that awakens in the inspired soul depends upon the measure of his self-knowledge. If a man's capacity for understanding is small, his heart will be filled with God's truth only to that measure; but what of he whose capacity to conceive is vast as the ocean? Will not his heart be filled to a vastly greater degree with God's truth? Certainly. The greater the capacity of one's heart to receive, the greater the extent to which one can hold God's truth. Therefore, to the degree that we expand and elevate our minds, to that very degree shall we be inspired by the truth of the Creator.

Infinite truth, coming into the presence of the human mind and awaiting to be received and savored by mankind, perpetually fills this sweet sky and air. Each person obtains this truth in the measure of his own vessel of mind. He whose mind-vessel is small can attain only meager truth, and should his neighbor with the larger mind receive greater truth, he should not grieve or burn with envy. Rather, he should contemplate how that neighbor has managed to make his heart spacious enough to contain God's abundant grace.

Every true human being loves truth dearly. We cannot in any way turn away from it. Truth is a thing so beloved by the human heart that not a single utterance of Truth-itself has ever been lost forever to this world, enchanted as it is by thoughtless chaos. Each particular truth possesses its own miraculous power. One need only reflect upon truth as power to be astonished. Truth's power reigns in human society with vast magnificence, and yet at first it appears that nothing in the world could be more powerless, more impotent than this. Then one wonders: how could this humble thought, this weak and helpless fragment of truth, ever find acceptance in the minds of common people? It possesses no good, it holds no strength! How then could it wander alone through time and across the earth, spreading everywhere?

Beholding this newborn truth, it seems that anyone, if they wish, could crush it to dust and obliteration with a single flick of the hand. This small and simple child of truth—since it flatters no one, serves no man's private interest—never bows in servitude to anyone. To look upon it is to sense its death drawing near! In the next breath, its play upon earth will cease! A king or priest might cast it to the ground and, with a single stamp of their towering power, grind it to nothing. All would believe that truth, so tiny of frame, has now been killed and erased from the world.

Yet such thoughts never prevail. One might perhaps tread the very lightning of the sky beneath one's feet, might perhaps enslave it, but truth—truth cannot be killed, nor enslaved by any force whatsoever. Among all the beings of this world, truth alone endures the longest. Like God Himself, unconquerable truth is but the eternal, primordial fragment of that infinite, consciousness-embodied Person who has no beginning and no end. One cannot name it by any other appellation save as His attribute or the very essence of His being. Truth is bound to God the Truthful in so indissoluble a relationship that it can never be separated from Him. All monuments that touch the sky may one day crumble to dust by the ravages of time. Statues carved from the hardest stone may shatter into fragments. Boundless plains may vanish from sight. Mountains that pierce the heavens may turn to powder and scatter on the wind. But truth shall live eternal. Come what may, truth shall endure. Transcending death and change, truth shall reign in this world unto infinity. Earth and heaven, all things may perish, yet truth knows no destruction. Not a single true word shall ever be lost from human society.

The Almighty Himself has sealed and sent forth into the world a truth that shall remain in human society for all eternity. All the warriors of the earth, gathered as one, cannot alter a single mathematical truth. Two plus two shall always make four—never five, never three, never any other number. Just as no one has the power to change a mathematical truth, so too no one can alter or shake a single truth of religion, of politics, or of the ultimate nature of the Self. Falsehood, however pleasing, remains always falsehood. Truth, however displeasing, remains always truth.