Posted on July 21, 2012 by shantanup
On 20th July 2012, I suddenly had sufficient reasons for deciding that a Personal God does in fact exist. This decision was based on several grounds of testing through the principles of satya-advaita as discussed in this blog. This conversion from atheotheism to theism means that I have now accepted that God had entered my life in a personal capacity. All that remains to be done is explain how this entrance became explicitly clear in terms of the evidence that was sufficiently convincing for me.
I did my examination of the existence of God in phases of being in faith of his existence and then since 2010 when I first became an atheist, in no faith, until that did not satisfy me, and I took the position of an atheotheist. The fact that I suddenly had evidence that God was still ‘arranging’ things for me inspite of that mode of search is evidence that the process is a true one and will lead to the answers unless of course, God decided that I am to be an ‘avatar’ of some kind as someone who is chosen for ultimate knowledge. I have no reason to suspect that this might be the case when examining the details of my life in terms of its ups and downs and the pendulum swings that I have gone through between the points of full blown theism to strong atheism, and the hard times that I have been through in my struggle to make ends meet financially in the United Kingdom. I still face an uphill struggle to find a decent job and earn a decent living and have little pension to look forward to working in a non-pensionable job as a labourer/cashier in a petrol station from morning to late in the evening in 7-8 hour shift work. In this background I feel that God only came to me because He knew that all I wanted was satya-advaita: to find out what the truth is in order to be at one with the truth.
From this line of thinking I would advise, as follows:
(a) up to the time that one finds out that He is not there for sure, one is better of thinking that He may be there. If one wishes to give advice to one’s children and young people one should accordingly tell them that it seems that such a Personal God is there, and if the question interests you sufficiently and you wish to find out for certain it is a hard long struggle that comes at the cost of sacrificing other things of material value that people also want in their lives. Are you prepared to do this, would you rather not aim to become something else in your life? etc.
(b) my experience is that it must start with faith only because I do not have the experience of not having started in faith. This is crucial bottom line to what I am blogging. I have no evidence that the testing for the existence of God can be done non-faith even if the principles of satya-advaita are followed, but I will not rule it out.
(c) never assume that you have realised God, because what next? What are you going to do with that knowledge? Be a missionary? Have you asked whether God wishes you to be a missionary? What is the evidence for that? You have to show people evidence that God wants you to be missionary carrying out His wishes. I have no evidence of this for my life nor do I seek that evidence as it does not interest me. This is because if I started becoming a missionary now that I know God exists, that will be wanting to change people’s way of thinking and influence them in ways that are not right. I am a democrat who believes in letting people do their own things in their own lives. It is not my job to make anyone else behave in any particular way with respect to knowing that God exists or with any other kind of knowledge that I have. I do not take any instructions from any God because I do not wish to do so wanting my own independence and freethought to guide me. I also think from what I know of God is that it is highly unlikely that any other person conducting missionary work around the world by serving the poor for example has anything but his personal demented desire to convert people that is guiding them to doing what they say is ‘God’s work’.
(d) the process of satya-advaita does not end with God-realisation and it must continue with honesty, openness, self-exposure and transparency; hence this blog to explain yesterday’s remarkable turn of events that led to my Twitter tweet @ShanPanigrahi last night. People must know the truth of my experiences to draw their own conclusions from.
I will accordingly take questions asked of me in all of these matters.