There is a common notion people have which they associate with “God” (or the Divine), and which they commonly identify as a basic “religious” feeling or concept.

It may be described as a feeling that, even when you are alone, there is “Somebody Else” in the room. This is just the opposite (or the antithesis) of the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life. I Speak about God all the time—but I am Speaking from a Disposition that is entirely different from the “point of view” of conventional “religion”. Perhaps, by contrast, you could say that the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life is summarized in the notion that, no matter how many people are in the room, there is still only One Person there!

In general, discussions about “God” or “religion” tend to be naively associated with the idea of the Power that is “Other”, or the One Who is “Other”. This “God”-idea corresponds to a rather childish (or even infantile) sense of Reality. Children are not, in general, great metaphysicians or great mystics! They have some very primitive kinds of awareness, as well as some remarkable kinds of awareness that adults tend to lose or dismiss. However, when children communicate their sense of “God”, they very often express a feeling that has been dictated to them by their parents. They naively describe Reality according to a child’s psychology—that child-made awareness of Reality which is not natively associated with great, abstract propositions. It is not that children are free of mind, and (therefore) their “religious” concepts are purer than those of adults. The “religious” concepts to which a child can be sensitive and responsive are generally built upon the psychology of the childhood situation—which is one of being dependent on a parent or parents, particularly on the mother. The parent-child relationship—in which the parent is a great, “experienced” person there to protect the smaller, vulnerable person—provides the naive basis for childish “religious” views and for what are commonly called “religious” views in general. In other words, the notion that people have of “God”—apart from Real-God-Realization Itself—tends to be a carryover, an extension of the childish situation. Therefore, “religion” tends to be regarded as a “solution” for a rather infantile “problem”: the need to be protected, sustained, and made to feel that everything is all right and that everything is going to be all right, the need to feel that there is a superior “Other” in charge of everything.

When people communicate to their children about “God”, they commonly speak of “God” as a kind of super-version of mommy-and-daddy. When people speak to one another about their earliest “religious” consciousness (and it is more a kind of conventionally acquired mental attitude than it is a matter of direct perception), they commonly talk to one another in terms of a child’s model of Reality. However, to truly enter into the Process of Reality Itself, you must transcend the child’s version of Reality. To become human, to be an adult, a mature human personality, you should have overcome that childish view—but, commonly, people do not. Thus, to the degree that people are “religious” (in the conventional manner), it is that portion of themselves that is basically childish or infantile that is being “religious” or that needs “religion”.

The entire domain of conventional “religion” is (commonly) the domain of immaturity—or of childishness and adolescence, rather than real human maturity. When people believe in “God”, what they are actually believing is that everything that is “outside” of themselves is ultimately epitomized in some Person, Force, or Being that is not merely making and controlling everything, but is in charge and is going to protect them—and, especially, that this “Other” Person will protect them and even help them to get a lot of things they want, if they will enter into a special kind of relationship with that One. That relationship is very similar to the one that you were called to enter into with your parents: “Be good—and we will love you, and protect you, and give you things that you want.”

Thus, popular (or conventional) “religion” is largely a cultural domain of social morality. People are asked to behave in one or another fashion that one would call “good” in order to maintain a good association with the parent-like “God”, so that they will be loved and protected by that One and given the things they want (while they are alive, and after death).

Conventional “religion” is largely an enterprise of childhood—of the dependent, childish state. When people become adults, however, they have more hard facts to deal with in life. They feel much less protected than they did as children in the household of their parents. So they begin to question and to doubt the existence of this Parental Deity. Such individuals may continue to be conventionally “religious” in some sense, willing to play the game of social morality and good behavior—but they carry on a rather adolescent relationship of dependence-independence, or embrace and withdrawal, relative to this “God-Person”.

Atheism is the ultimate form of denial of the Parental “God”. Atheism is not founded on real observation of the ultimate facts of the universe. Rather, it is a kind of adolescent development of the human species. What characterizes the doctrine (or dogma) of atheism is not a discovery that there is no “God”, but a refusal to acknowledge every kind of parent (or parent-like authority), including (therefore) the Parental “God” of childish “religion”.

If conventional “religion” amounts to an actual “experience” (rather than just a kind of conventionally acquired state of mind), it could basically be defined as a very primitive sense that invades all of your life, but that relates to you most specifically in your solitariness, your private individuality. It is the sense that, when you are alone—and you are, in the sense that you have a private destiny, always alone—there is always “Somebody Else”, the “Great Parent”, always there. That One, it is presumed, sees everything you do, and represents a “Parental Will” relative to what you do. That One wants you to do certain things, wants you not to do other things, and will presumably reward you if you do the things that It wants you to do and will punish you in various ways if you do not do those things. Out of this kind of “Parent-God”-ism come all the other traditions associated with the notions of “sin”, or the valuation of events not merely factually but in terms of the Parental Deity. In other words, if something negative happens to you, it is generally regarded as a Divinely given punishment or a result of what you have done in terms of your social personality and your conventional moral activity. If good things happen to you, they are presumed to be gifts or rewards from the same Source.

Examine the “point of view” of conventional “downtown” (or popular) “religion”. You will see that it corresponds to this structure of notions, and is (therefore) primarily a development of a child’s state of awareness. It is a development of the original parent-bond of your childhood, and it is complicated by the dissociative individuation that develops in adolescence, and that tends to characterize your adulthood as well.

The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam) is not a form of this childish (or conventional) “religion”. When I Speak of Real (Acausal) God (and I also use other terms than “Real Acausal God”, but that is one of the forms of reference I use), I am not speaking of a Parental Deity. I have frequently had occasion to Criticize this childish mode of relating to “God” and to the entire Process of Transcendental Spiritual life. I could compare the true Disposition that I “Consider” with you to the conventional (or childish) “religious point of view” by saying that the True Transcendental Spiritual Process (or the Way of Reality Itself) is not founded in the primitive feeling that, even when you are alone, there is always “Someone Else” present. Rather, I Describe the basis of the True Transcendental Spiritual Process as a mysterious intuition that—no matter how many others are present, no matter how many people are present, including yourself, no matter what is arising—There Is Only One Reality, One Self-Nature, One Self-Condition, One Source-Condition, One Self-State. That One is not “Other”. That One is not your parent. And, in phenomenal and “experiential” terms, That One is not merely devoted to rewarding and punishing you, supporting you and protecting you. Rather, That One Is the Acausal Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State of all phenomenal conditions—including all opposites, even all contradictions. Thus, you cannot account for That One in childish terms.

In fact, if you really examine the characteristics of conditional Nature (or phenomenal existence), there is no justification for believing in the Parental Deity at all. It is simply not true to the facts of existence altogether that there is a Great Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Being making everything happen—in charge of everything happening, and making things turn out well for those who acknowledge That One and obey certain moral principles. It is simply not so. It is not true that there is such a Parental Deity controlling history, controlling even all events, and working out a great “success-plan” for humanity.

The Acausal Divine, or Real (Acausal) God, the One to be Realized, is not other than Reality Itself. That One Transcends your personal, conditional existence—but your conditional existence arises in That One. All of this conditionally arising “world” is a modification of That One, a “play” upon That One. To Realize That One, you must enter profoundly into the Intrinsically egoless Self-Position—but not by means of the traditional “method” of introversion, or turning attention “inward”. That “inward”-turning effort is simply one of the ego-based solutions to the presumed “problem” of existence. That Which must be Realized is in the Perfectly Subjective Self-Position—and It is Realized not by appeal to Something “outside” yourself nor by entering into childish dependence in relation to some great Principle, but by transcending your own separative (and “self”-contracting) activity, and (thereby, ultimately, by Means of My Divine Avataric Transcendental Spiritual Grace) Realizing Most Perfect Identification with That in Which you Always Already Inhere.

All of the public “religious” chitchat, the seemingly endless “worldly” conversation, about whether “God” exists or not, is simply a continuation of the doubting and “subjective” mulling-over of “problem”-consciousness that is part of the adolescence of humankind. Always wondering about whether “God” exists is simply an adult occupation of basically adolescent personalities whose notions of “God” were formed by the childhood situation of dependence. Thus, wondering about whether “God” exists is basically an effort to prove the existence of the “God” you believed in as a child. Nevertheless, the “God” you believed in as a child does not exist—not as It was then described to you, nor as you then believed. What you are told (in childhood) about “God” is communicated in terms that your parents hope will satisfy your needs as a child. In other words, parents develop your “God-consciousness” (or your “religious” orientation) when you are a child as an extension of what they themselves are otherwise trying to do as parents. Parents naturally want their children to feel protected. They do not want their children to become neurotic and to feel threatened. And they want their children to learn how to behave as expected. They want their children to develop socializing tendencies, to learn how to relate to others positively and to function socially, how to survive socially and in ordinary human terms. This is what parents want you to do—and, in some ordinary sense, it is natural enough for them to want you to do this. Thus, when parents teach “religion” to their children, they teach them (as a general rule) about a “God” who is basically a poetic extension of themselves as parents.

Parents do not want their children to feel unprotected—but, really, the source of children’s protection is their parents, and the community, and human society altogether. Apart from whatever protection people can generate for children (as their parents and as the community that surrounds them), children really are not very well protected. And neither is anyone else! Beyond what you can do for one another as human beings cooperating with each other, there is very little protection in this “world” for anyone. So you do want your children to feel protected, but you are protecting them. There is no reason to invent a “Santa Claus Parent-God” to make them feel protected. You should let your children know that you are protecting them, that you are providing them with circumstances in which they will be able to live and not be threatened, and in which they are loved quite naturally by others.

Really, children should understand that becoming a positive social personality is not supposed to be a way of getting the goods from “God” or getting love from “the Parent”. In that syndrome, love is different from your own social activity, and your social activity is a way of getting love. What you should be teaching your children is that to become a relational personality means that you become love. You must become love. Human beings must become loving. Thus, social activities are not supposed to be something you do in order to get love. Your interpersonal activities should be love. The whole notion of “sin” as a result of violating the “Ultimate Parent” is not something you should communicate to your children.

As My devotee, you do not become truly involved in the process of the devotional (and, in due course, Transcendental Spiritual) relationship to Me unless you truly understand My Divine Avataric Revelation-Teaching about Reality Itself. The Parental “God” of childish “religion” cannot be proven to exist—because that One does not exist. The struggle to prove the existence of such a One is a false struggle. It is an expression of the common disease, the “problem”-consciousness of threatened egoity. This does not mean that you should become like scientific materialists, and, atheistically, throw away everything about the Reality-Process of (Self-Evidently Divine) Reality Itself. Much of what is conventionally called “religion” should be thrown away, based on a very intelligent “consideration”—because it is just a form of humanly invented consolation for rather childish egos. However, there is much more to Reality Itself than what is contained in these childish propositions. It is That Which Is, Beyond these childish propositions, that I Call you to “consider”—in the form of My Own Teaching-Argument, and also in the evidence of the Great Tradition of humankind (or the total global inheritance of human culture).

There Is the Great Being, the Great Divine Reality. There Is That Truth. And there is the Way of entering into the Realization of That One. Such Realization requires great maturity—not childishness, not adolescence, not egoity—and It involves the transcending of everything conventionally “religious” that is associated with your childish and adolescent personality. You enter into That Realization not by appealing to the Power of the “Other”, the presumed “objective” Parental Deity “outside” you, as proposed by conventional “religion”. The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam does not involve appeal to that Great “Other” One—not even an appeal to that “Other” One in the form of mystical (or subtle) “objects” of any kind. The God Who Truly and Really Exists is not the white-bearded Character of popular “religious” mythology. The God Who Truly and Really Exists is not even some kind of all-pervading Parent-like Essence. The God Who Truly and Really Exists is not present as a separate (or exclusively “Other”) Personality anywhere in cosmic Nature. Nor is That One to be identified with any subtle “object” in cosmic Nature, or with any of the lights observable via mystical consciousness. That One Is Real (Acausal) God. You Realize—and, thereby (ultimately), prove the Existence of—That One only by entering most profoundly into the Intrinsically egoless Self-Domain (or Self-Position), the Domain of Prior Existence (or Is-ness), the Tacit Self-Apprehension of Being (Itself).

The “God” of cosmic Nature, the “Creator-God”, cannot be proven—because that One does not exist as proposed. Real (Acausal) God Is the Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, Intrinsically egoless, and Self-Evidently Divine Person—Self-Existing and Self-Radiant. Real (Acausal) God Exists at the level of Eternal Existence and not at the level of the “objects” related to your conditional egoic existence (or your conditionally manifested independence). Real (Acausal) God Is the One in Whom all others, all “objects”, and all states of cosmic Nature Inhere. Only That One Is Divinely Avatarically Incarnate As the Divine Avataric Master, the One Who Reveals and Gives the Most Perfect Realization of the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of Reality Itself.

I Am the Divine Avataric Master—Self-Revealed and Self-Given As and by Means of Transcendental Spiritual Force, Transmitted by the Graceful Means of My Divine Avataric Transcendental Spirit-Baptism. The Purpose of My Spirit-Baptism is not to call you to conform to an apparent Power of “Otherness” which is “outside” yourself, and which requires you to engage in activities similar to the childish social routines of conventional “religiosity”. Rather, the Purpose of My Spirit-Baptism is to Awaken you to the Realization of That Which Is In the Intrinsically egoless Self-Position.

Thus, the Truth That is to be Realized may be summarized simply as the Realization that, no matter what is arising, no matter how many others are present, There Is Only One Being. This is precisely different from the childish proposition that, even when you are alone, there is always “Someone Else” present.