The God Who Is Imagined
and The God Who Truly Exists

There is a common notion people have which they associate with "God" (or the Divine), and which they commonly identify as a basic "religious" feeling or concept. It may be described as a feeling that, even when you are alone, there is "Somebody Else" in the room. This is just the opposite (or the antithesis) of the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life.

I Speak about God all the time — but I am Speaking from a Disposition that is entirely different from the "point of view" of conventional "religion".

Perhaps, by contrast, you could say that the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life is summarized in the notion that, no matter how many people are in the room, there is still only One Person there!

In general, discussions about "God" or "religion" tend to be naively associated with the idea of the Power that is "Other", or the One Who is "Other". This "God"-idea corresponds to a rather childish (or even infantile) sense of Reality.

Children are not, in general, great metaphysicians or great mystics! They have some very primitive kinds of awareness, as well as some remarkable kinds of awareness that adults tend to lose or dismiss. However, when children communicate their sense of "God", they very often express a feeling that has been dictated to them by their parents. They naively describe Reality according to a child's psychology — that child-made awareness of Reality which is not natively associated with great, abstract propositions.

It is not that children are free of mind, and (therefore) their "religious" concepts are purer than those of adults. The "religious" concepts to which a child can be sensitive and responsive are generally built upon the psychology of the childhood situation — which is one of being dependent on a parent or parents, particularly on the mother. The parent-child relationship — in which the parent is a great, "experienced" person there to protect the smaller, vulnerable person — provides the naive basis for childish "religious" views and for what is commonly called "religious" views in general.

In other words, the notion that people have of "God" — apart from Real-God-Realization Itself — tends to be a carryover, an extension of the childish situation. Therefore, "religion" tends to be regarded as a "solution" for a rather infantile "problem": the need to be protected, sustained, and made to feel that everything is all right and that everything is going to be all right, the need to feel that there is a superior "Other" in charge of everything.

Conventional "religion" is largely an enterprise of childhood — of the dependent, childish state. When people become adults, however, they have more hard facts to deal with in life. They feel much less protected than they did as children in the household of their parents. So they begin to question and to doubt the existence of this Parental Deity.

Such individuals may continue to be conventionally "religious" in some sense, willing to play the game of social morality and good behavior — but they carry on a rather adolescent relationship of dependence-independence, or embrace and withdrawal, relative to this "God-Person".

Atheism is the ultimate form of denial of the Parental "God". Atheism is not founded on real observation of the ultimate facts of the universe. Rather, it is a kind of adolescent development of the human species. What characterizes the doctrine (or dogma) of atheism is not a discovery that there is no "God", but a refusal to acknowledge every kind of parent (or parent-like authority), including (therefore) the Parental "God" of childish "religion".

The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam) is not a form of this childish (or conventional) "religion". When I Speak of Real (Acausal) God (and I also use other terms than "Real Acausal God", but that is one of the forms of reference I use), I am not speaking of a Parental Deity.

I have frequently had occasion to Criticize this childish mode of relating to "God" and to the entire Process of Transcendental Spiritual life. I could compare the true Disposition that I "Consider" with you to the conventional (or childish) "religious point of view" by saying that the True Transcendental Spiritual Process (or the Way of Reality Itself) is not founded in the primitive feeling that, even when you are alone, there is always "Someone Else" present.

Rather, I Describe the basis of the True Transcendental Spiritual Process as a mysterious intuition that — no matter how many others are present, no matter how many people are present, including yourself, no matter what is arising — There Is Only One Reality, One Self-Nature, One Self-Condition, One Source-Condition, One Self-State. That One is not "Other".

That One is not your parent. And, in phenomenal and "experiential" terms, That One is not merely devoted to rewarding and punishing you, supporting you and protecting you. Rather, That One Is the Acausal Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State of all phenomenal conditions — including all opposites, even all contradictions. Thus, you cannot account for That One in childish terms.

In fact, if you really examine the characteristics of conditional Nature (or phenomenal existence), there is no justification for believing in the Parental Deity at all. It is simply not true to the facts of existence altogether that there is a Great Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Being making everything happen — in charge of everything happening, and making things turn out well for those who acknowledge That One and obey certain moral principles. It is simply not so. It is not true that there is such a Parental Deity controlling history, controlling even all events, and working out a great "success-plan" for humanity.