8 Dec 2011 - QA 7

What is the difference between God and an enlightened master?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: If you say God is love, we all are made up of.
If God is creativity, everybody has creativity. If not everybody has procreativity.
Then God is Satchitananda, which is truth, existence and consciousness. You have consciousness and you have existence.
When the self is there, then God is there. If there is no self, there is no God. So God is the consciousness which is permeating everything.
God is the space and you are a part of that space.

In the ancient Upanishads there is a story: A child asks his father, ’Daddy, what is God?’
The father brings the child outside the home and says, ’Look! Before this house was built what was here?’
The boy said, ‘nothing, empty space.’
’So, where is the house standing today?’
He says, ’in this empty space.’
’Tomorrow if the house is destroyed what will remain?”
He said, ’space!’
Then the father said, ’that is God!’

Space is God. That in which everything ‘is’ today; in which everything has ‘come from’ and into which everything ‘will dissolve’, that is the Divine. That is the centre core of everyone’s existence.
God is in everybody but when you become centred or when you are enlightened, it means there is space but the space is visible like through the window.
Behind the window there is the same space that is behind the wall. But only through the window you can see the sky.