Faith and the personal-impersonal God
Beginning with the teachings of Friedrich Ruckert (17881866), and up to the American transcendentalists and so many other intellectuals of Western thought, who had been exposed to and had acquired some knowledge of Vedic teachings, we find a common parallel and a paradox, which was created mostly due to the disheartening experiences of those valuable men with centralized religious institutions.
On one hand they were brought up with faith in God-Father, who can forgive our mistakes and who takes care of us and tries to teach us to follow the right path. On the other hand they came in contact with brilliant exposes of the only and final reality, which exists beyond the duality of this world. This reality is totally mystical and beyond the reach of the intellectual ecclesiasts. It is the non-differentiated or impersonal aspect of God, which exists in the transcendental realm and which is far higher than considerations of paradise and enjoyment, as opposed to hell and suffering. Even more fascinating is that this concept descends through smaller and bigger schools, which are non-centralized and have a non-violent tradition. These traditions reach back into antiquity.
One of the famous branches of this school is the Advaitavada, founded by Sripada Sankaracarya. His teachings are similar to Lord Buddha’s precepts, and can also be found in many modern teachings. There are of course always different interpretations of teachings, but in all of these precepts we can commonly see a denial of a personal God, as God was presented or it is better to say misrepresented, by previous teachings of institutionalized religions.
The denial of a personal God as the Creator causes people to feel lost and incomplete due to not having a way to engage their natural devotional sentiments. Thus we find Ruckert (a contemporary of Goethe) and also Aldous Huxley expressing devotional declarations towards God, but then later giving preference to impersonal interpretations.
The perplexity of this topic goes all the way to the root-cause of all the problems of existence, which is envy. We do not want to accept higher authorities and orders; instead we want to control all others as well as material nature. Such a desire can hardly be harmonized with the concept of a personal God, as highest authority and the highest grace giving and saving instance.
Envy towards God, when projected into our daily life, produces as a result a world of competition and hostility, where each individual is trying to assert themself to be better than the others. This is again a fertile ground for many individual problems and disorders.
According to OIDA-therapy and the Vedic conclusions, we have to be broad-minded and see both, the impersonal spiritual aspect of God, as well as the devotional aspect towards a personal God as different aspects of the One- reality.
In OIDA-therapy you will find that both aspects are a balm for our material conditioning, and that the personal aspect of God and devotion to God corresponds in a very unique way to the innermost desire of our heart. On the other hand, to become null and void, or to merge into the ocean of cosmic non-differentiated consciousness, is either a kind of anesthesia or some ecstatic coma feeling.
Divinity is diversified. God or the truth can take different forms: God as nature, as the omni-conscious, the omnipresent, or in His personal form, with whom each and every one of us can establish a relationship, if we so wish.
OIDA-therapy accepts simultaneously the different aspects of Divinity. This makes it easier to understand the different possibilities for recovery and the healing potential of Divine love.
Intelligence is the gift of God to be able to connect the cause and the effect of all situations. Those who have some insight into what brings about a diseased condition avoid the connection with such causes. This is called preventive medicine.