The real meaning beyond the concept of God

Before you can decide whether to believe in God or not, you should have a clear understanding of what God is. Otherwise the belief or disbelief is only in regard to some vague concept of God.

Not what God is!

The definition that you're about to hear today will bring you to the real meaning behind the word 'God'.

So, belief is not required here. Whether there is a God or not is really a matter of fact, and not faith. In fact, as soon as you arrive at a clear understanding of what God actually is, the debate will be over. The facts of the matter will be clear.

The problem is that the ones who have arrived at such clarity are few and far between, and are often rendered silent or incomprehensible by this very understanding. Or worse, what they say and do ends up turning into a religion. And so we end up with endless names and conceptions of God.

Even the atheists have them: The Singularity before the Big Bang. The Ultimate Reality. Or simply, Nature.

These are all ideas; placeholders in the mind made only of thoughts and concepts. All the debates on God never go anywhere because they're just arguments about beliefs that fail to clearly define what God, or Reality, is!

But when you know what the word 'God' actually means, it is really no longer a matter of belief.

After setting the bar this high we must lean on a very special description of God. One that a certain genius conceived of, and then managed to smuggle into the Sistine Chapel right under the Pope's nose! It is by no means the Church's view of God. It would probably be considered heresy.

And yet, there it remains to this day adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, yet to be seen for what it is: A clear pointer to what can really be called God. Not as an unseen imaginary entity, but as the highest aspect of Reality as we know it.

This definition is not verbal, but is in fact an image. A fresco painted by one of the greatest minds and artists of his time — Michelangelo.

You've probably seen it many times. It is called The Creation of Adam.

At first glance, the scene seems to depict God as the fit old bloke on the right, in the act of creating Adam who is on the left.

But consider the focal point of this image. What draws the eye is the center, the gap between the outstretched fingers, almost touching. A contact you expect, but it is not there.

It is in fact this tiny point this Gap that we will use to define what God is; what God meant to Michelangelo.

I should add in my opinion, but really once you see the genius of the art you know the mind of the genius behind it.

You see, when Michelangelo started painting the frescos of the Sistine Chapel he used a very different style. The earlier parts show lots of detail, like in the painting on the great deluge. The details are not really visible from the floor with the naked eye, so perhaps he felt free to express his mind.

The Great Deluge is not painting about the righteous wrath of God and punishment upon the wicked, as you hear in the story of Noah. You can see the children, the anguished faces of people trying to save their loved ones. You cannot paint such a scene and such emotion without feeling it to an extent.

This is a depiction of the problem of misery.

And truly seeing the scale of this problem crushes any naive idea of God being some just and all powerful sentient entity.

Around the time that this part of the fresco was completed, Michelangelo stopped working on the Sistine Chapel for an year. The Creation of Adam was a work done after that year. Perhaps, in that year, Michelangelo questioned the idea of God and arrived upon his own understanding, which is what I see in this great work of art.

So, what is this painting really about?

It is a contemplation on mind and matter, and the inexplicable yet undeniable connection between them.

Adam is a metaphor for the mind; the person. What a theist may call the soul, and an atheist the self, but really what everyone blithely considers as 'me'.

And what at first glance looked like God, is really a metaphor for matter.

It is well known that Michelangelo performed dissections on human corpses. His knowledge of anatomy was ahead of his time. So, when you see the image of God on what bears an uncanny resemblance to the human brain, it is unlikely to be a coincidence.

The character on the right is a red herring.

It is not God!

For the purposes of our definition, that is the human brain. And for the creation of Adam, we need that bit of matter on the right to somehow give rise to this consciousness, to the sentient being on the left.

And so we come to the Gap.

What is really God is in that point of contact between the insentient and the sentient. Where in the likeness of the activity of the brain is created a mind. A person. And the world to go with it.

This link between the body and mind is surely there, but what allows for this link. While we may make fun of a God of the gaps, this Gap is an unfathomable chasm. No explanation seems possible, since the sentient and the insentient; the mind and the matter, are two completely distinct categories.

Especially once you have seen and dissected a corpse. It seems impossible to explain the immaterial in terms of the material, to equate a living mind to dead matter, or the activity of matter.

So there is another factor required to bridge this gap.

That is the actual God A God which cannot be put into the categories of mind or matter. The Noumenon which cannot be described in terms of the phenomenon.

And so, in this painting, God appears only as this little but most significant Gap. Unseen, yet still the focal point. The bridge between mind and matter.

God is what makes perception possible.

Without which Adam cannot be created. And without which the existence or inexistence of the material universe amounts to nothing.

That which makes experience possible, is the true Creator.

Seen this way, it is almost like an equation. But God cannot be found on the left hand side or the right hand side of any equation.

God, and the nature of Reality, are in that equality in the middle. That equals sign.

And not an equality in the sense of two things being equal, but in the sense that they are identical. An Identity. A Unity.

This is the Oneness the sages have been pointing out.

Most minds can only conceive of God as some Supreme Being. But as in the arts and music, in physics and maths, we must defer here to the genius of the most brilliant minds; the wisdom of the sages.

God is not a thing or a sentient entity.

God is what allows for the dance of matter and energy to be perceived as the mind.

God is neither material nor mental.

God is the Awareness in which the material is experienced as the mental.

God is Sentience itself.

And that is why belief is not required in this definition of God.

When you spit out the fruit of all the knowledge you have bitten off, put aside the belief that you are this particular body, or mind, or person, then an amazing realization awaits you.

Then you find that what is sentient is neither this body, nor this mind, but Sentience itself.

God does exist.

God is truly good.

Not in terms of human morality, but as that which is most dear to every mind.

And God is watching; is truly omniscient. But not in the way everyone imagines. God does not watch from somewhere high up in the heavens, passing judgment on these lowly creatures.

God is watching through these very eyes.

Living each and every life.

God is Sentience.

Which, when you put aside all your beliefs and look at Reality as it is, then that is exactly what You are.