What Is God?

August 19, 2002
By Jim Weller

What is God? We cannot prove that God is – not objectively, because God is not an object. You may say, ergo, there is no God. But I say, God is the subject.

We know God only subjectively. We experience God in our selves. To pray to an objective God is idolatry. God is the soul, in you, and in me.

God is the holy spirit, the spirit of life that we know as our uttermost selves. God is your innermost being. God is being itself, and you are in being – that you know by your own experience. You are in God. You are of God. God is nothing other. There is no other than God.

This you can only know by your own experience. And faith is the state of knowing that comes of this experience, gnosis. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned with knowing being itself. Being itself is divine being, and is known by your own incontrovertible being. In this, you can have faith. In this, you can be truly ultimately concerned.

Now, you may deny God. You may deny the idea of God. You may deny the existence of God. But you cannot deny existence itself. You do exist. And you must believe that all that you can know by your own experience does exist. And you probably believe, as I do, that much, much more – ever so much more than you or I can ever experience, more than any one can ever know, does indeed exist.

So what? So, while you may very well think of all of existence as an incomprehensibly vast, endless collection of objects, that could, in principle, all be objectively known and proven to exist, it may not have occurred to you that all of existence could not be, without you.

All of being – all that ever was, is now, ever shall be – had to be, in order for you to be. Otherwise, you would not be you, just so. And you, certainly, are. You are in being. You are being itself. In order for being itself to be known, you – and I – must be. And, indeed, we jolly well are, aren’t we?

In our knowing, we are the consciousness, and the conscience, of being itself. God is the subject. God is that which experiences in us, and God is the experience. God is that which experiences itself experiencing being.

We are it. It is us. When you come to know the truth of this, you know the ultimate truth. And the truth shall set you free.

I’m not sure whether this is a sermon, or a philosophy lecture. It is a transcription of wee hours musings. In any case, it seems meant to be like a Zen koan - a riddle that, in its non-sense or circularity, breaks a mental block, allowing understanding to flow through.