Questioning the existence of God is questioning the existence of existence. The existence of all other things is obvious, but this is not the case with God. And this is because he is existence himself. The power, the energy that exists in all things may also be apparent, but this is not so with God. He himself is that power.
How can the totality be known in the same way the component parts can? God cannot be something I can know, because I am in him too.
Yet it is possible to be one with God, to sink into him. In fact, we already are one with him; we have already drowned in him. You realize this when you lose your “I”. Knowing this is knowing him.
This is why I say that love itself is knowing God. God can only be known in love because in love the “I” disappears. You will never find love where “I” exists. Love is only there when “I” is not.
There is a parable about a lump of salt who went to visit the sea. It met the sea and it came to know the sea, but it did not return. To know the sea it became the sea itself. The only way it could know the sea was by becoming the sea. The only way a man can know God is by becoming God.
A friend of mine was very unhappy. When I saw him weeping I led him outside and said, ;”Look at the stars!” At first the tears kept welling up in his eyes, sparkling like the stars themselves but his misery soon subsided.
“How is it,’ he asked me, “that my heart threw off its burden when I looked at the stars? How is it my misery vanished when I looked at the sky?”
“It is misery to be removed from God,” I replied. “It is sorrow to be alienated from nature. It is anguish to be separated from the soul.” That same evening someone asked me, “What is the greatest pleasure in the world?”
I answered, “To be in the world and yet not of the world. The only way to guarantee happiness in your life is to have your feet firmly planted on the earth and your heart firmly planted in God.”
