Question: how does one resolve the seemingly contradictory notions that on one hand, God/consciousness is everywhere in everything equally, and on the other, some places and some people are more sacred and holy than others?
It’s a function of apparentness. To those who are misled and confused by false notions, the divine is variously less or more present. But to a saint or a sage, a jnani or a mystic, God/consciousness is indeed everything and everywhere and the perception is “all this is That”.
Perhaps our confusion isn’t helped by dualistic notions of God or reality. As Bishop Robert Barron has pointed out, it’s easy to mis-categorise God as one being among many, albeit the largest one, rather than understanding God as Being itself. So falling for that category error is falling into dualistic thinking which beclouds true apprehension.
The genius of Vedantic thought and realisation is the uncompromising oneness of it all the way through and at every level.
To apprehend the true nature of reality is to be free of suffering. This is why teachings that point the ultimate reality are superior to those that instruct or prescribe actions on the basis of provisional understandings regarding what is. As Ramesh Balsekar astutely asserted, “the seeing is the only doing necessary”.
“In (God) we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28
It’s the same as Maharishi’s assertion that, “consciousness is the source, course and goal of existence”.
There’s not a whisper of separation or duality in the nature of what is. Contrasts abound in the realm of relative appearances, but all boundaries are merely conventions. The fundamental unity of existence is never breached. It is only faulty conception based on faulty perception that has it appear to be so.
Describing the nature of the “dweller in the body” (consciousness) the Bhagavad Gita (2:24) says:
“Weapons cannot cleave it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it and wind cannot dry it. It cannot be cleft; it cannot be burnt; it cannot be wetted and it cannot be dried. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable, immovable and primeval.”
This isn’t speculative theology, this is the direct experience of life in awakening, Self-realisation.
If I have any message it’s this, know the Self and be free.
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