What is the most important thing for us to know? Are there other things also, knowledge of which are must for us? What are they?

In this world, the most important thing to know is God.

Besides God, the other things, which are very important for us to know are soul and nature. Here, we will have basic knowledge of God, soul and nature.

God-Everything is known by its characteristics. Likewise, God has certain characteristics like omniscience, bliss, justice, mercy, all-powerfulness et cetra. God’s works are creation and dissolution of this universe, controlling this universe by His unchanging laws, lighting His knowledge and giving justified fruits of the actions of souls. Works of souls are entirely different from that of God. No soul can do the works of God like creation of universe et cetra. Likewise, God in no condition can do the works of souls like producing offspring et cetra. God and soul can never become one. As compare to characteristics of infinite-ness of God, soul has very less capability to imbibe knowledge, power et cetra and on attaining maximum height of liberation from the cycle of birth and death, its capabilities remain limited. God can be called DOER in respect of His works like creation of universe et cetra, otherwise, for all worldly works, soul and soul only is DOER. God witnesses only the actions of souls. As in the world, it is necessary for us to know, if a particular object exists or not and if it exists, were it is available and when it is available, how it can be recognized? In the same way, these questions need be asked in the matter of God also.

As God’s qualities are numerous, His names, too, are numerous. But, God’s personal name is ओम्, that is, ‘Aum’ in English. It includes all His attributes, works and nature. The matter regarding names of God can be understood by the following example. A person can be known by many names based on his qualities and works like little, fat, corner-man, that is, the one who sits in the corner, Pitamber, that is, the one who wears yellow clothes and the like. But, in his personal name all these names based on his qualities and works get included.

To call a person by a name other than his personal name, if that name is not based on his qualities or works will be called nothing but foolishness. Same is true in relation to God also.

God is very-very subtle and soul is comparatively less subtle. Like soul lives in a body, God is present or lives in souls. In the words of Maharishi Dayanand -‘No yogi has, up to this day, been ever able to change the God-made course of laws of nature, nor shall there be. No yogi can ever change the system designed by the eternal God, for example, the eyes are to see with and ears are to hear with’

God and soul can never become one.

Following sentences which speak of the differences in God and souls are worth remembering:-

God is one but souls are many.
He is all pervading or in other words, God pervades and souls are pervaded.
God is worshiped and souls worship.
God is omniscient but soul’s capacity to have knowledge is very small or very little as compared to God.
God is all-powerful but soul’s capacity to have power is limited.
God is everywhere but souls are in their bodies only.

God is our true and real friend. God is, not only available for our help in our difficult times but also, warns us from falling in pits. He never draws any benefit from our weaknesses and never lets them be known by others. Our belief and sincerity while talking with God decides how deeply we accept God’s friendship. The subjects of our talks with God can be both worldly as well as spiritual.

Because, He is present in our souls, we can talk to Him at any time regarding any matter. The moment we will understand how powerful He is, all the problems, weaknesses et cetra bothering us will start looking very weak. A sense of powerfulness will automatically come in us on realising that such a powerful entity is our friend. Man can forget God but He just cannot forget His children. If, His friendship is only one way, that is, if, we do not consider or believe Him to be our friend, then, flow of His benevolences gets hindered by our own belief-systems. As such, to obviate such conditions, all our actions must be in consonance with His attributes. For example, as He never does injustice towards any soul, we, too, should not do or favour any injustice.

Some important quotes about GOD

There is a common belief that for realization of God (Here, by realization of God is meant enjoying the bliss of God), the path going through logic and rationality is misleading and should be discarded as God is beyond logic and rationality. It is said that reason is helpful in knowing only and not in realizing. Suppose, there is a person, whom we should meet for our business purpose. Then, first of all we must know the place, where we can meet him, which may include the knowledge about his schedule, knowledge about the address of the place where he can be met et cetra, then, we must know his liking or disliking so that we can deal with him accordingly towards fulfilling our business purpose. In obtaining such knowledge, we are required to use our logic. Without logic no such information can be obtained by us. Similarly, if we want to meet God, we must know His address, His liking, His disliking et cetra.
In world more than 70% people accept the existence of God and worship Him in their own way. But, we see around us in our society that no one is happy, children do not care about their elders, people do a lot of wrongful deeds to earn money, we are not faithful to anybody and do everything to get materialistic gains et cetra. Then, why do we not understand the fact that there is a basic flaw in our notion about God and His worshiping? How can it be possible that people know God and do wrongs at the same time? Darkness and light cannot exist at the same place and at the same time. Here, by darkness we mean wrongs and by light we mean virtues.
All will agree that God is one, who exceeds all the desires, likes, dislikes et cetra. He hates none. Likewise, He loves none. We must understand that He is not affected whether we worship Him or not. We need worshiping Him for our own sake only.
If we want to move towards God, we must follow Yam, which are, Non-violence, Truth, Non-stealing, Continence and Non-piling and Niyam, which are, Cleanliness, Contentment, austerity, Study and Surrendering to God. There is no other way of moving towards God. While Yam addresses our behavior with other-beings, Niyam addresses our behavior with ourselves. Most of the people today, who think they are moving towards God by developing a habit in themselves of not thinking ill of any other-being are actually not following first Yam, that is, Non-violence. They are unknowingly doing Violence to the society in which they live. How? If we fail to know the spiritual laws in theory and practice those laws while behaving with others, then we subtly are doing Violence to the others by not knowing and by not doing, what we should know and practice. Most of the people, who think that they are moving towards God are not actually moving towards their goal. This can be advocated in a very simple way. The segment of the people who think of moving towards God is not so small. If, they are rightly moving towards God, then there should not be so much ill present in our society. The existence of ills in such a large quantity in our society proves that they are not moving towards God.
What is the binding force, by which we can stick to the good deeds? That binding force is knowledge about God. Knowledge about God gives the reason to behave in a particular way, even if, by so behaving, we lose some worldly things or relations. Without having knowledge about God, we can lessen the miseries of this world to a certain extent only and for the limited period only.
If an unknown person gives us sweets daily, then naturally we will like to know about him. Likewise, to feel love for God, we must constantly think of great manufacturing design, automatic operations, intricacies of manufacturing et cetra of different parts of our body. By doing this, firstly, we will start loving God, who is creator of this wonderful body, secondly, our mind will become stable in thinking of His greatness and thirdly, we won’t feel like complaining to God, even if, we happen not to obtain one or two desired things.
One of major reasons for deterioration of our society is, that for all practical purposes we believe existence of God on a particular place instead of believing the presence of God at every place of the universe. Now, people say that God is present everywhere only through their tongue and not through their actions. If, we believe that God is present everywhere, it will benefit our society in two ways-firstly, we will shirk from doing bad deeds as we know that God is looking at those bad deeds of ours and will punish us accordingly and secondly, we will try to do good deeds in-spite of resistance of some mortals with a belief that God, who is a witness to everything will definitely reward us at the appropriate time.
Every religion except a few (Buddhism, Jainism et cetra) accept God but they are not in agreement regarding qualities of God. Rather, they all differ on this issue. It is true that qualities refer to quality-holder but we, in no way, are concerned with quality-holder. Instead we are concerned with the qualities. For that reason, if we accept the entity of God without any agreement regarding qualities of God, there cannot be any unity among mankind. And without this unity among mankind, we cannot develop or progress in the real sense of the term.
Everyone says that God is one and He is everywhere. Now, think over it-is it possible for a thing, which is one and everywhere to have shape of some kind?
When, it is said that God moves faster than our ‘मन’, then it is meant that wherever ‘मन’ reaches, God is already present there.
God cannot be felt through our senses- All our sense organs have specific subjects regarding which they obtain knowledge, for example, eyes have a subject of ‘रूप’, that is, objects having some shape, ears have a subject of ‘sound’, nose has a subject of ‘smell’, tongue has a subject of ‘taste’, skin has a subject of ‘touch’, our ‘मन’, which is also a sense organ, has internal feelings like that of pain or pleasure. Our body possesses no sense organ which could feel the existence of God. This task can be accomplished by owner of this body, that is, ‘self’ only.

After God, the other things, the knowledge of which is must for our development are Jivatma, that is, Soul and Prakriti, that is, Nature.

Soul– Souls are many. There is a different soul in each and everybody of man, animal or bird. There is no difference in the souls present in human bodies and those present in the bodies of birds and animals. A soul exists forever. One soul travels in the bodies of men, birds and animals in accordance with his actions. Union of a soul and a body is called birth and separation of the soul from the body is called death. Every soul is free to act but, once it has done something, it becomes dependent on the rules of God to bear the fruits of such acts. Owner of the body is only one soul irrespective of the size of the body.

Dependence of soul to accept an ill body or a body which has a deformity and that too against his will proves that there is another more powerful entity. Had there been not such dependence, soul would not come in a body having deformity or illness of any kind.

On death, soul moves out of the body and after that, the body (without soul) fails to feel happiness, pain, duties et cetra. In other words, only soul feels pain et cetra through the body. For this reason, only soul is the DOER and receiver of the fruits of his actions. Like, if a man kills a person through a weapon, then the man (who was independent to do the act) and not the weapon (which was dependent) is penalized. Similarly, a dependent soul does not deserve to be penalized or rewarded. As such, every soul is independent of doing the actions according to his intellect but once the soul has acted, it no more remains independent of receiving the fruits of his actions. On the subject, following words of Maharishi Dayanand are very relevant-

‘As long as, the soul remains in the body, the attributes are discernible in the body, but when the soul leaves the body, they are not found in the body. A quality which exists so long as a thing exists and disappears with the disappearance of that thing, is said to belong to that particular thing, for example, the light, which appears on the appearance of the lamp or the Sun and disappears with its disappearance, is believed to be the light of the Sun or the lamp. In the same way, we have the knowledge of the soul and God’.

Soul is not created by God but it, that is, soul is an independent and endless separate entity. To consider soul as a part of God is in a way to refuse to accept Him as ‘part-less’.

There is misconception that God only is the DOER or whatever happens in this world is because of His will and soul is not independent to act. The fact is – for all worldly acts only soul is the DOER. God views the acts of souls in order to deliver appropriate fruits to souls. Every soul depicts the characteristics different from that of God. As such, however great a person may be, he can never be God.

Nature – In terms of modern science, it can be called ‘matter’ also. Our body, house, air, water, fire, earth et cetra are all made of nature. Nature, too, like God and souls is a separate endless entity with the only difference that it continues to change its shape. Today, what is wood, gets converted or transformed into carbon, water vapors and gases on being burnt. It changes shape only and remains same in quantitative terms. The fact of the modern science which says that ‘matter can neither be created nor be destroyed’ supports our view that matter is endless.

Because of quality of nature to go on changing continuously, we can easily differentiate between nature and soul.

The benefit of knowing the basic qualities of God, soul and nature is- we will not misunderstand anything which is not God for God, anything which is not soul for soul and anything which is not nature for nature. Because of this knowledge, we will be able to understand the things as they are.

What is the most important thing for us to know? Are there other things also, knowledge of which are must for us? What are they?

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