Who Is God

PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION

Is there only One God in the universe who has been rightly or wrongly described in different ways by Hindus, Jews, Christians and Muslims? Or, are there many versions of ‘One God' because God keeps changing and evolving to suit the needs of founders and followers of various religions? What are God's real attributes? Is Omnipresent God, a formless entity, a Universal Spirit with no shape or form, or is God an anthropomorphic being or entity (i.e. has human form) who sits on a throne in the heaven? Does God incarnate as a human being as believed by Hindus and Christians or does He not? Is God a loving God or a tyrant? If He is a loving God, why do beliefs in a loving God often divide us, rather than unite us as mankind? Why do differing beliefs in God sometimes even generate hatred rather than foster understanding? Whose beliefs and which beliefs are right? Whose beliefs and which beliefs are wrong? We all have a free will and may believe whatever we choose but are our beliefs and faith in God based upon truth, common sense and reason or upon unsubstantiated dogmas as well as unbelievable miracles and myths? This book tries to address questions such as these based on the description of God in the Vedas.

The questions regarding God and His attributes are important for all of us to answer with an open and thoughtful mind, so that we all can co-exist peacefully in the 21st century instead of fighting with each other based on the claims of superiority of one religion over Others. Therefore, we should all do our best to seek truth wherever we may find it while critically analyzing the divergent opinions of various fundamentalists of all religions who claim that they have all the answers about God. Moreover, our faith and concepts of God must reconcile with reason and modern science to the extent possible, while realizing that God may never be provable by the usual method of physica observation used by science.

In recent years, especially in the fundamentalist Muslims have claimed Islam to be the only way and they want to convert the whole world to Islam. On the othej hand many Christians, especially evangelical Christians consider Christianity to be the only way and would like to conver the entire world to Christianity. After 9/11, Reverend Franklir Graham (son of Reverend Billy Graham) during an interview of ‘NBC Nightly News' called Islam “an evil and wicked religion. In the United States, he and others in this manner have stated tha the God of Christians is different than the God of Muslims. Pop John Paul II in year 2000 proclaimed that Catholicism is superio to all other religions in facilitating the path to God. Such claim

post 9/11/2001 world, many of religious superiority, along with the need to convert others to the same or similar beliefs as one's own religion does not promot brotherly love among people of the world, instead it sows th. seeds of enmity for others. In the context of such claims it is relevant to learn, what the root scriptures of Hindu religion, the Vedas say about God and His attributes.