At one point or another, everybody searches for a satisfactory answer to the age old question, "What or Who is God?" All are anxious to know whether God is there or not.

To know the answer, we have to first define God as precisely as we can. The definitions of God given by different religions are not verifiable by standard scientific methods. This has made some people disbelieve in God. The fact is that God defies any definition. It is a word with the most complex meanings and connotations.

The difficulty arises because God is a Spiritual Being whom we have to describe in terminology used in the material world. It is like measuring the value of gold in terms of currency bills, that have no intrinsic value, and the face value of which varies in each country.

The language of God is love, a language understood by the heart, and not expressible in words even of thousands of languages we humans use to communicate with each other. Because of this, we may not be able to "speak" the language of love but all of us can experience it, feel it and enjoy it. This faculty provided to us by the Lord the door to the Lord's court and helps us to communicate with God.

According to the dictionary, God is: "The creator and the ruler of the universe; eternal and infinite; omnipotent and omniscient; Supreme Being Almighty."

The definitions given by different faiths do not disagree with any of the above descriptions of God. Other qualities of God generally accepted are that God is omnipresent, incomprehensible, immanent, and transcendent. Further, God has been described to be gracious, kind and caring for all creation. Some also believe that God created eternal heaven for comfort of the faithful people after their death; they also believe in Hell where all non-believers, who ignore God's commandments, will suffer forever.

How do we realize God and enjoy God's blessings? A very brief historical review of the revelation of God may help us understand the answer.

Revelation

The first need of a human being on this earth is not God but good food for his life and a favorable environment for his physical comfort. This, of course, depends upon the weather that is controlled by parameters such as the sun, rain and winds. People, therefore, believed the weather elements to be gods and started worshiping them. In due course of time, human beings observed that, unlike animals, they have unique faculties. They command a special status among all living beings, large or small. Hence, they believed that their life must have some higher mission other than just completing their biological cycle, that is, to eat, to grow, to reproduce, to get old and to die.

At some stage of this development, persons of supreme intelligence, specially gifted by God, were born at different times and in different regions of the world. Those who made worldly inventions and thus contributed to the physical comfort and knowledge of human kind were known as scientists. While those who revealed God, the Creator and the Lord, were called Prophets, or Saviors. Because of their virtues as well as their competence to perform supernatural acts, the latter were regarded as unique humans. They provided spiritual guidance to humanity and were considered as God-incarnate, God's son, God's messenger, God-blessed seekers gifted with Godly intelligence, guide to God and the like. Each prophet gave a spiritual message and told people the mission of human life, which was to live in the love of the Lord.

These spiritual messages were delivered in different regions of the world and at different periods of history, hence they were in different languages. They all revealed the same one Supreme Authority, the Creator, of course, by choosing their own name for God. We now address God with a popular name - God. Different methods of worship preached for understanding God were given different names, commonly known as religions.

Misunderstanding God

Different names of the same God, however, were considered unfortunately different Gods, who were mutually callous and repulsive. This belief is totally wrong and baseless because of the very definition of God explained above and accepted by all religions. However, the repulsion continued to persist. As a result, people got split into different competing and mutually hating religions even when all believe in the same Lord. To satisfy their ego, people are fighting for putting their own labels on the bottles of water, which have been filled, from the same fountain. Remember! Our need is water and not the label. Why bother about the label, value the water which we need to satisfy our thirst.

In fact religions, instead of dividing people, should have united all tribes, races and nations into one great brotherhood of humanity having faith in God with multiple names. We should have accepted all these names of the Father-Almighty; the way a biological father is addressed as dad, daddy, papa and other innumerable names in thousands of languages of the world.

Believers of one faith consider only "their" God to be "true and genuine" God. Every "other" God, which actually is every "other" Name for God, was declared to be "false and fake". The misplaced urge to prove the genuineness and superiority of their faith, caused the followers of the ruling faith commit (and sadly are inflicting even today) inhuman torture and mass killings of believers of other faiths. No reference to such horrible wars is needed; it is a well-known record of the history, a dark spot on the tradition of religions. Politically strong religions have attempted to subdue or eliminate people of other faiths by labeling them as "non-believers". This is done considering it a service to the faith but which is rated as a heinous crime in the court of God to whom they want to please.

Born in Punjab, Dr. Gurbakhsh Singh attended Khalsa College, Amritsar and obtained his Ph.D. in 1963 at Ohio State University. In 1984 he resigned as Professor and Dean, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. Dr. Gurbakhsh Singh has written several articles and books including 'The Khalsa Generals' and 'Sikh Faith For the Youth - Questions & Answers'.