So the secret of existence is to know that God is within me. I don't have to seek Him outside. Don't call Him ‘God'. Call Him your elder brother. Call Him your Self – with a capital ‘S'. Then you will find that you don't need to go out of yourself to look for satisfaction, peace, love, contentment, because it is all right there. Then comes this marvelous transformation, you see, that when it is all there and it is infinite and eternal – because He has been with you even through this life, however sordid it might have been, however noble it might have been, it doesn't make any difference to Him – then you begin to reflect these qualities. We stop judging; we stop criticizing, because That which is in me is within you, too.

“The Universe Inside”, Constant Remembrance, April 1995

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We don't have to look for God. We don't have to search for God. We have to do something to feel his presence. Feeling means silence—all the organs of perception brought to a stillness. Therefore we close our eyes, breathing comes down to normal, silence reigns outside and therefore it reigns inside. As my Master said, “Silence alone can reveal the presence of God to you, because silence is His language.” We feel only gross effect when all our senses are open. The subtlest of the subtle requires utter stillness, utter silence inside.

“What is Love?”, Constant Remembrance, October 1997

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Spirituality takes you back inside, and says, ”When you worship outside you are separate.” You are separate not because God made you separate or pushed you away from Himself, but because you have made Him separate, pushed Him away from yourself. If you wish not to feel this loneliness, not to feel this isolation, which makes you today lonely, heartbroken human beings, put Him back here. [points to heart] Because you removed Him, you have to have to bring Him back here. Now obviously, you cannot put a stone idol in your heart.

Principles Vol 12, p. 295-297

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So, I may even venture to say--as some philosophers have also said before me--that God is a human creation. Because for those of us who have not achieved the Divine state of existence, we do not know what God really is, who God is, whether such a thing exists. It is like a beggar talking of wealth. For him, instead of five paise, if he gets ten paise, it is wealth! What is the meaning of wealth? It is a comparative statement....So, there are no absolute concepts. So, my Master says, "Wait till you reach That State. Then only can you know what Divinity is!" And, what is the way of knowing Divinity? To become Divinised yourself? By knowing yourself at That Level, you will know what He is? Till then God is an abstract entity, it is a mere concept about which we have no knowledge at all which can enable us to speak, whom we have never experienced in our existence, either as a punisher or as a rewarder....So, this is only of the most fundamental concepts of Sahaj Marg, in the teachings of my Master, that God is an abstract thing, a notion, that if He exists, we have to find out whether He exists, by advancing on the path of Divinisation by the help of a Master who comes to us in a human form, and says, "My dear friend, now this is the state of God Himself! This is what we call the Divine State of Existence! Now you know it by personal experience!"

Principles Vol 3, p. 145

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So I was thinking, in fact I gave a small talk in Delhi just before I left, I remembered my old grammar lessons that a noun is the name of a person, a place or a thing. That is the classic definition of a noun. Now, God cannot be a person. If he was a person he should have been born. He will die. He should have a size. He should have a shape. He should have a colour. He should be at some place. Or some place must be God. Then it must be somewhere with a geographical location. Or He must be a thing. But He is not, you see, because people have searched, people have called him by all names. He has not answered. People have looked for Him everywhere. He has not been found. People have tried to see Him in everything. He has not manifested. So the conclusion is very obvious. God is neither a place nor a person nor a thing. Then what is God?

So one evening I was sitting thinking of these things and it came to me that it is a principle. God is a principle, like happiness is a condition. God is a principle. We cannot find happiness in things, though when we are happy we find the things nice, agreeable. We make the mistake of thinking that we are happy because of something. “I am happy I ate an ice cream!” Normally I eat an ice cream because I am happy. In my experience I have found this. When I am sad I cannot eat an ice cream. When I am sad I cannot eat pizza. I use these things only when I am happy. In fact, only one person in this world who has really understood me, that person always says, “Oh, today is ice cream time for you,” because the you in me is there.

So you see, unless we have joy here, we do not find things outside to reflect that joy back to us. It is like an echo. You shout from one mountain top across a valley to the other mountain top, and you hear your echo coming back to you. So essentially what is in us, we see outside us. You are sad, everything looks useless. “Oh pizza!” “Yes, but yesterday you wanted that pizza?” “Yes, but yesterday was yesterday.” We are not able to say that yesterday I was happy, so I liked the pizza. Today I am sad, so I despise the pizza. So, if we think on these lines, we find that what is not in me I cannot find outside at all. Anything, you see.

If I seek courage, I must have courage inside me. It is a quality, it is not a thing. Courage is not in a spear or in a gun, it is a quality. Happiness is a condition, joy is a condition. God is a principle. Therefore he in whom this principle is present is a divinised being. There is no such thing as God, you see, other than this . If there is a God it is only the existence of this pure principle, everywhere. It cannot be somewhere, at some time, at some place. If it is a principle it must be everywhere, at all times – everywhere. Therefore it must be here, therefore it must be now. And being a principle, it must pervade everything too. Therefore we come to this definition of God, you see as omnipotent, omnipresent, omnipervasive.

Love and Death, p. 31-38

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So the secret of existence is to know that God is within me. I don't have to seek Him outside. Don't call Him 'God'. Call Him your elder brother. Call Him your Self - with a capital 'S'. Then you will find that you don't need to go out of yourself to look for satisfaction, peace, love, contentment, because it is all right there. Then comes this marvelous transformation, you see, that when it is all there and it is infinite and eternal - because He has been with you even through this life, however sordid it might have been, however noble it might have been, it doesn't make any difference to Him - then you begin to reflect these qualities. We stop judging; we stop criticizing, because That which is in me is within you, too.

From talk in Sydney, Australia, 1994

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My Master often used to say, “You cannot say God is kind.” Because if he was kind, he could be cruel. If he was nice, he could be un-nice. If he was wise, he could be stupid. We are in the world of opposites where these things prevail. But for Him here can be no wisdom, there can be no un-wisdom. He cannot be tall, he cannot be short. He cannot be big, he cannot be small.

In fact, that is why spiritual science speaks of Him as Nothingness, the zero principle. Essentially, Hinduism and our Sahaj Marg yoga says: God is of the essence of Nothingness. Not that He is nothing, but He has partaken of the total essence of Nothingness. But, like a vacuum from which everything comes, being powerless, all power comes from Him. No wisdom, but all wisdom flows from Him. In fact, everything that you see in manifest form in this universe is out of His infinite, yet nothingness Self.

So, when we seek God and we say, “He is a nice fellow, he is kind-hearted, he is compassionate, he is merciful,” I think it depends on what we are. If I am a criminal and I need mercy, I look upon God as merciful. If I need compassion, I look upon God as compassionate. If I am afraid of punishment, I am afraid of God the punisher. So, we create a God according to our need of the moment.

Heart to Heart Vol 5, p. 69