There is One God, Period!
by:
Dr. Shiv Talwar
when:
Saturday, September 26, 2015 - 08:45 to 09:00
held at:
Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work Wilfrid Laurier University 120 Duke Street West Kitchener, Ontario N2H 3W8
This conference is an assembly of august scholars and learners to discuss spiritual values at a prestigious university in a modern, well-developed, primarily monotheistic, and educated country. A young kid in good old days of my childhood routinely learnt the most fundamental spiritual value on the knee of its grand-mother in a so called under-developed, illiterate and polytheistic country, “There is One God, Period”.
Isn’t it ironic?
Isn’t it ironic that the so called monotheistic traditions are notoriously fragmented in strong and conflicting groups of “us” vs “them” within themselves while the so called polytheists and atheists live largely in harmony? Monotheists cannot get along with monotheists, how can they get along with “polytheists” and “atheists”?
Isn't God the creator of the whole universe? Does that not make us all kin of each other? Why can’t then we live in harmony with each other?
Experience shows that something is lacking about our understanding of one God.
While things in the universe, animate as well as inanimate, are visible, God is not. Everything visible is the creation of an invisible God. That is a certainty. Nothing can exist without God; in fact nothing exists but God. But what can we say definitely about God except for God’s invisibility?
“Nothing”. God is a spiritual being. Nothing can be said about the spirit other than its invisible mystery.
It is spiritual ignorance to impose a unique personality on God; it denies God its spirituality. And God stripped of its spirituality denies human beings life in harmony with each other.
How can God from which all forms and persoanlities emerge be itself limited to a specific form of persnailty? How can a limited God with personality of our ideas lead to harmony with others with their own ideas? If we can impose on God a personality of our ideas, can we deny others the same right? Why can't we understand the unique reality of God behind all the forms and personalities that diverse cultures impose on it?
For harmious living in diverse communities, we must not only be certain of One God but also arrive at one of the following two positions:
- There is one essence of all divinity; and
- Be totally free of any definite ideas about God.
There is One God, Period. And words fall back from it.
Human history amply shows that humanity is badly fragmented. Dr. Talwar experienced the tyrannical consequences of human fragmentation during the partition of India in 1947. As a result of this experience, he is possessed with the problem of integrating the human family. After a lifetime of learning and searching, Dr. Talwar discovered the ultimate integrative solution in the core spirituality characteristics of the world wisdom traditions. They seek the truth and attempt to live by it. The summit of their spiritual discoveries is the truth of the metaphysical unity of all existence. Being a professional civil engineer, Dr. Talwar has a problem solving approach. His professional life was spent in the academy teaching the building of bridges across spatial gaps, now his retirement is focused on building bridges across wide chasms across hearts and minds of diverse humanity. For this purpose, he founded an organization called Spiritual Heritage Education Network Inc. (SHEN) in September, 2000. Dr. Shiv Talwar has been the president of SHEN since its inception.