하나님은 한 분이시라는 말은 옳지 않습니다 - 메허 바바의 성경

하나님은 한 분이시라는 말은 옳지 않습니다.
그분이 하나라는 생각은 그분을 제한합니다.
그분은 무한합니다.
그분에 대해 올바르게 말하는 것은 ‘God is’
'하느님은 계시다'라고 말하는 것입니다.

- 메허 바바

신이 하나라고 말하는 것은 옳지 않습니다.
그가 한 존재라는 생각이 그를 제한합니다.
그는 무한합니다.
그에 대해 정확하게 말하는 것은 ‘God is’
'신은 있다'고 말하는 것입니다.

It is incorrect to say God is one. The idea of his being one limits him. He is infinite.
To speak of him correctly is to say ‘God is.’

God in the Beyond Beyond state is absolutely independent of the world, is the source of infinite power, knowledge, bliss, beauty and wisdom, but is neither conscious of these attributes nor of himself.

God in the Beyond state (Allah, Paramatma) is independent of the world, and yet is conscious of his power, beauty and eternity, but in this state does not express these attributes. He is eternal in the sense that he ever was, is and will be.

We imagine God was. Before that, he was, and still before that he ever was. Imagination cannot grasp and cannot reach the one who has no beginning and no end. So we logically conclude that this state is beyond imagination and understanding.

It is incorrect to say God is one. The idea of his being one limits him. He is infinite. To speak of him correctly is to say ‘God is.’ We can say this only with reference to his Beyond state, where there is no beginning, no end, and nothing exists but God. If God alone is, God is Everything, and in this infinite Everything, Nothing is latent. Thus Nothing also exists. Let us see how this Nothing represents this universe.

The most-first imagining of God, which Vedanta refers to as Lahar and Sufism calls Guman, is the first urge in the beginningless Everything to know itself. As soon as this urge appeared, a beginning began, not of God, but of the urge that produced Nothing, which was latent in God. What was the urge? It was to know ‘Who am I?’ As soon as the urge appeared, Nothing was produced, and God, instead of knowing himself as God, began to experience the nothingness of Nothing.

This process may be likened to a man tickled out of his sleep into a gradual opening of his eyes, a progressively full awakening. When he wakes up he sees the objects, the nothingness of the Nothing (God’s shadow), and not himself. Passing gradually through seven stages of the rise of consciousness, man, figuratively speaking, attains a full opening of the eyes, and simultaneously the consciousness of a fully manifested universe, the shadow of God.

Shadow (Nothing) was latent in God. With the emergence of the urge, God did not know himself as God, but experienced himself as shadow. Impressions (nothingness, germs of imagination and illusion) piled up in profusion, owing to the transition of the shadows through alternations of pain and pleasure, beauty and ugliness, births and deaths, etc. After attaining the human form, for God to know himself as himself, he has to traverse a journey of seven inner stages and yet retain full, open-eyed consciousness. For God to know himself as himself (through the medium of a human form), creation of forms and the consequent experiences were necessary.

(Baba illustrated this with the example of someone standing near a lighted lamp and seeing his own shadow)

Sometimes you suffer, sometimes you are happy. You don’t remember having gone through all the dual states of experience, of being man/woman, strong/weak, rich/poor, healthy/sick, etc. It was all a dream. It will continue to be so until you become free. With God’s urge to know himself a beginning was made, so it has to have an end. Beginning and end, and all the paraphernalia of things and beings – the becomings – that go along with them, are what constitutes the law of opposites.

God has no beginning, no end. The Nothing, which is latent in God, has a beginning and an end. God is not limited. Nothing has three states – Mental, Subtle and Gross. When Nothing manifests, the law of opposites (bindings) manifests. This law is established in all three spheres.

from notes of a talk by Meher Baba, July 1953,
Dehra Dun,
GG4 p89-91.
Another version:
GT p267-268