Does God Hide the Truth? (With Nayaswami Parvati)

Sunday Service at Ananda Village

Sunday Service with Nayaswami Parvati and Nayaswami Pranaba at Ananda Village, recorded August 7th 2022. This week's reading from Swami Kriyananda's book "Rays of the One Light" is: Does God Hide the Truth? Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. In last week’s reading we saw that the great masters themselves counsel discretion in the dissemination of truth. The counter-argument is sometimes made, “But the Lord doesn’t hide! He reveals His beauty in the sunsets, His tender sympathy in the rain, His wrath in the thunder, His restless energy in the brooks, His power in the sunlight.” There are exoteric truths, and there are also esoteric truths. There is that which is revealed impersonally and left up to us to interpret – such as the thunder and our perception of it as divine wrath; the rain and our perception of it as God’s sympathy. But behind even God’s most open expressions there lies impenetrable mystery. “The wind blows where it wills,” said Jesus in Chapter 3 of the Gospel of St. John. “You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And Sri Krishna says in the ninth Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita: By Me the whole vast Universe of things Is spread abroad; – by Me, the Unmanifest! In Me are all existences contained; Not I in them! God’s hidden reality cannot be understood by the reasoning faculty. India’s Shankya philosophy states frankly, “Ishwar ashiddha: God is not provable.” A willingness to seek the underlying reality behind appearances is essential for those who would know God. Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.