When I speak of faith as a source of inner strength that helps us endure the greatest pain in our lives, I do not mean religious faith. I mean spiritual intelligence, which arises from inner knowing rather than from belief in rules imposed by an external doctrine to be followed.
Perhaps this was best expressed by C. G. Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. In an interview with the BBC, when asked whether he believed in God, he replied:
“No, I do not believe… I know.”
— C. G. Jung
Simone Weil, whose words open Deepak Chopra’s book How to Know God, also writes:
“When it comes to divine matters, faith is useless. Only certainty can be of use. Nothing but certainty is worthy of God.”
— Simone Weil
But what, in fact, is God? Below are the answers of several people who have profoundly influenced large groups of people with their views, and whose faith is not blind belief in religious doctrines and rules.
Einstein: “This deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior intelligent power, revealed in the incomprehensibility of the universe, forms my idea of God.”
Osho: “To me, God is here and now. Everything you see is God. God is not something beyond; God is something within… Everything is connected with everything else; you exist in an interrelated family… Life is togetherness, and this togetherness is God.”
Jung: “God is the name by which I designate all things that cross my life path unexpectedly, violently, and entirely senselessly; all things that change my plans and intentions and redirect my life in a completely opposite direction.”
It becomes clear that God is a psychological concept by which we name the reality we believe stands behind the visible material world. This reality answers the question of the meaning of human life and our place in the universe. It is shaped by different individual beliefs about the invisible laws that govern human life and that serve as our orientation in making important decisions. In this sense, it is especially important for those who are not satisfied with small scales, narrow horizons, and the deceptive appearances of the material world.
From the fact that the concept of God is a sum of personal beliefs, one important consequence follows – it does not coincide with the reality that stands behind this word. This reality exists objectively and independently of what we attribute to it.
There is the god of Christians, of Muslims, of Jews, of the Proto-Bulgarians, of the Scandinavian peoples…
There is God with a capital letter and god with a small letter.
There is a God who incarnated through His Son on Earth, and another who stands high in heaven watching what we do.
There is a God who closely resembles our father and looks at us sternly, and another who resembles our kind grandmother, in whose embrace we have always found comfort.
There is a God who is highly ambitious, in whose honor sacred wars have been waged (and are still being waged), and another, his opposite, who holds that if there is a battle, it is an inner one – with the ego, laziness, greed, hatred, malice, envy…
There is a God without a name, and there is a God with many names.
There is My God, Your God, His God…
Despite the complexity of the concept of God, its worn-out use and repeated abuse, it continues to be the word with which we name our faith in the invisible and in the laws that regulate our relationship with it. In this sense, faith in God is a complex system of “meta-rules” that help us make the most important decisions in life. It is precisely this system of beliefs that psychotherapy addresses, helping a person to critically examine their beliefs and to renew them if they are outdated and no longer help them cope with the challenges they are going through.
Thus, we create God each time we ask ourselves questions such as: “Do I believe there is life after death? If I do, what is the meaning of being born into a human body and then leaving it? What are the invisible laws that give meaning to dwelling in a human body and to the suffering that follows from it?”
The answers to these questions create our god, and since he is our personal creation, there is no need to worship him. The only thing that is required is to live in alignment with them and to embody the beliefs they contain.
For me, this is the true meaning of the expression that “we are all created in God’s image and likeness.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
