Every now and then it appears on the surface,
usually with a divine message given as an answer
to the cry of humanity at a certain period.
The prophets of all ages have given some ideal
to help man to form a conception of God.
It has been said, "If you have no God, make one."
That is the right way and the easiest way of realizing the unlimited truth.
The God-ideal was taught to man gradually.
There was a time when a certain rock was recognized as God.
People at one period considered certain plants as sacred;
at another, certain animals and birds.
For instance, the cow and the eagle were considered as sacred creatures.
Many worshipped the primal elements in nature,
such as earth, water, fire, and air.
People worshipped the spirits
of mountains, hills, trees, plants, birds, and animals,
until the God-ideal was raised to the Absolute.
And thus he perceived that God is a higher ideal than the sun, or moon,
or anything that words can ever express;
a God who is unseen and without form and without name,
altogether beyond man's conception.
That is how the ideal of one God began.
Some have idealized God as the King of earth and heaven,
some have a conception of God as a person.
Others think of God as an abstraction.
Some believe in God, others do not,
some raise the idea of the Deity to the highest heaven.
Others bring it down to the lowest depths of the earth.
Some picture God in paradise,
while others make an idol and worship it.
There are many ideas and many beliefs and different names,
such as pantheism, idolatry, belief in a formless God,
or belief in many gods and goddesses.
But all are striving after something in one way or another.
The God-Ideal is so enormous that man can never comprehend it fully,
therefore the best method which the wise have adopted
is to allow every man to make his own God.
By this he only makes a conception which he is capable of making.
He makes Him the King of the Heavens and of the earth;
he makes Him Judge, greater than all judges; he makes Him Almighty,
Who has all power; he makes Him the Possessor of all grace and glory;
he makes Him the beloved God, merciful and compassionate;
he recognizes in Him the providence, the support, the protection;
and he recognizes in Him all perfection.
This ideal becomes as a steppingstone to the higher knowledge of God.
The man who has no imagination to make a God,
and the one who is not open to the picture of God
that the other man presents to him,
he remains without one,
for he finds no steppingstone to reach that knowledge
which his soul longs for but his doubts deny.
The ideal of God is the perfect ideal, and in order to reach it
there must be a footstool, there must be a ladder,
there must be a steppingstone which leads to it,
be it a principle, be it a belief, be it an action, be it a position, be it a person.
God and the God Ideal may be explained as the sun and the light.
Just as there come times when the sun becomes covered by clouds,
so there come times when the God Ideal becomes covered by materialism.
But if the cloud for a moment covers the sun,
that does not mean that the sun is lost to you.
So if in the reign of materialism the God Ideal seems to have disappeared,
yet God is there all the same.
The condition of the world is just like the ever rising and falling waves.
Sometimes they seem to rise and sometimes to fall,
but with every rising and falling wave the sea is the same;
so with all its changes life is the same.
Man believes in God by making Him an ideal of his worship,
so that he can commune with someone whom he can look up to;
in whom he can lay his absolute trust,
believing Him to be above the unreliable world;
on whose mercy he can depend, seeing selfishness all round him.
It is this ideal when made of a stone, and placed in a shrine,
which is called an idol of God;
and when the same ideal is raised to the higher plane
and placed in the shrine of the heart,
it becomes the ideal of God with whom the believer communes
and in whose vision he lives most happily, as happily as could be,
in the company of the sovereign of the whole universe.
There are three aspects of worship:
the worship of God in heaven
by those who understand him as a separate being;
the worship of God on earth,
as a god or goddess, in the form of an idol,
or of some being who is considered as an incarnation of God
and who is worshipped by the multitudes;
and the worship of the God within,
the innermost self our being.
No one can give to another his own conception of God
because each one must make it real for himself.
And those who wait to see if they will be shown a God before their eyes,
or who want a proof of the Being of God, are mistaken.
That which cannot be compared, which cannot be named, cannot be shown.
In order to attain to God-consciousness
the first condition is to make God a reality,
so that He is no longer an imagination.
The work of the inner life is to make God a reality.
The aim is to find God within ourselves,
to dive deep into ourselves,
so that we may touch the unity of the whole Being.
The secret of God
is hidden in the knowledge of unity.
Before one comes to the real conception of God,
the first thing is to build Him in one's heart.
God is the highest ideal, as high as one can reach.
And one will find the perfect ideal in God.
The God-ideal is in reality a stepping-stone
towards the knowledge of spiritual perfection.
It is through the God-ideal that higher knowledge can be gained.
God is the ideal that raises mankind to the utmost height of perfection.
The ideal of God is a bridge connecting the limited life with the unlimited;
whoever travels over this bridge
passes safely from the limited to the unlimited life.
The bridge may be taken away, it is true,
and one may yet swim across the chasm;
but one may be drowned too.
The ideal of God is a safe bridge which takes you safely to the goal.
The limitless God
cannot be made more intelligible to our limited self
unless He is first made limited.
He is not God, because he is limited man;
and he is not man, because he is God-conscious.
No sooner is the God-ideal brought to life
than the worshipper of God turns into truth.
Then truth is no longer his seeking; truth becomes his being;
and in the light of that absolute truth he finds all knowledge.
By making God great
we ourselves arrive at a certain greatness;
our vision widens, our spirit deepens, out ideal reaches higher.
We create a greater vision, a wider horizon, for own own expansion.
Then man becomes God-man, God-conscious;
outwardly he is in the universe,
inwardly the universe is in him.
Outwardly he is smaller than a drop;
inwardly he is larger than the ocean.
And in this realisation the purpose of belief in God,
of worshipping God, and of loving God is accomplished.
Man is created out of the self of God;
therefore all that is in God is in man.
God is God and man is man,
yet God is man and man is God.
To the question, "What is God?" and "What is man?"
the answer is that the soul, conscious of its limited existence, is "man",
and the soul reflected by the vision of the unlimited, is "God."
In plain words man's self-consciousness is man,
and man's consciousness of his highest ideal is God.
By communion between these two,
in time both become one, as in reality they are already one.
And yet the joy of communion is even greater than the joy of at-one-ment,
for all joy of life lies in the thought of "I" and "you."
