Why these books about God and the universe? For whom these books are meant?

From childhood two things had played dominant roles in my life: One was the mystery related to God and the other about the questions concerning the origin of the universe.  I was brought up in a family which took distance from the religious culture and tradition, and instead provided an atmosphere of rational scientific thinking. As a child I enjoyed an atmosphere where philosophies, classical literatures of East and West, and avant-garde experiments in music, arts and literature were discussed, debated and appreciated. My parents were atheists.

However, as contradiction to this atheist and scientific upbringing, before I started to learn alphabets I had been receiving messages from an invisible world. The messages confirmed the presence of God. The inner being, who was communicating with me, asked me to take distance from the traditional religions and beliefs. The presence of God in many ways did not contradict the atheist views which my parents implanted in me.

Already at an early age I had  developed a passion for knowing the mystery of the universe. These interests in science combined with the availability of the books of the existential philosophers and writers, which filled our home, made me an existentialist before I entered my youth.

 

As I entered youth the two opposite sides of my life came into conflict: On one side God was trying to reveal its existence through literary words, visual expressions of arts and a power in the mind stirring emotions and thoughts; on the other side, the scientific knowledge and fascination for existentialism planted doubts and disbeliefs in any Divine world. As I crossed the age of twenty God started to rule over my mind. It created tormenting psychological experiences which could not be explained by any rational understanding of the world. I did not talk about these experiences to anyone with the fear that people might think I was insane. So I lived a separate hidden life outside the realm which people called normal.

During this period I pursued an academic career as a nuclear physicist and traveled around the world. While God and scientific reason drove my life in two opposite directions and made my inner life an arena of frustration, despair and terrible conflicts, I faced an unbearable tragedy. We lost our only son in a cable car accident on the Alps in Switzerland. The circumstances around the accident were so weird that I believed that his death was a deliberate act of God.

From then on my life changed dramatically. I was now possessed by the inner cosmic being who became my Guide in a world which appeared chaotic and dark. This resulted in the book ”Tathagata- A Divine Comedy for Our Time”. It was a journey through mythology, philosophy, poetry, religion and cosmos. As a part of the universal being, of whom all human beings are parts, I made a journey through many spheres of consciousness. In the end God appeared to answer the questions I wished to ask. The discussions with God involved the questions related to the nature of the world, human will and the existence of God as well as issues of ethics and moral. Then came a period when the mystery of the cosmos opened up for me. I discovered a universe without beginning and end where time existed in the background of a cosmic design which was timeless.

While writing these books I left academic career as a physicist and followed my wife in her postings as a diplomat. While she served as Ambassador to the  Republic of Korea, I wrote “Dialogues Between Man and God” in Seoul. After that when we lived in Bangkok I wrote “Timelessness in Time in a Cosmos Without Beginning and End”. My last book “Vision of an Enlightened World- a Cosmic Perspective” was written in Dhaka.

These books were published in 2014 under the series “Books of Existence”. They deal with the most fundamental questions of human existence including God, cosmos, consciousness, meaning and moral values of life. The contents of the books revolve around my personal experiences of God and knowledge of science, and understanding of society and culture based on experiences gained from living in different parts of the world.

The essential messages of these books are: We live in a purposeful and designed universe, which is controlled and organized by a cosmic power in such a profound manner that no human intellect would ever be able to conceive it fully. In this meaningful universe the life evolves and transcends from a primitive stage to a higher evolution when mind may be capable of revealing greater dimensions of existence. The way the cosmos is organized and designed can give us the perspective about what is right and wrong, and what should be the universal moral basis of actions when we interact with the fellow human beings and nature. It emphasizes that there exist higher and lower paths. Along the lower path man may regress towards the animal instincts, while by following the higher path mind may reveal the greater mystery of the creation of the cosmos through our existence. The higher path is the path of the cosmic mind - an unfoldment towards greater and greater awareness of truth about the oneness of all existing in the universe.

My spirituality is based on this awareness and experience of God. I do not share beliefs of any particular religion, or practice any ritual from any culture. I consider the evolution of religion and spirituality as expressions of social institutions, which attempt to provide answers to the fundamental questions of existence. It is a way for the people, facing myriads of challenges of survival, to seek psychological security. I see weakness of religious faiths which create conflicts and wars with other faiths, and divide human beings according to religion and culture. My spirituality instead is based on the belief in oneness of all human beings as parts of the cosmic being.

The purpose of my writing is to confront the deepest questions of existence without prejudice to science or spirituality. While accepting the premises of science, which have formed the foundation of modern culture, and recognizing the success of science in explaining things which were once attributed to divine agents, I wish to be faithful to my own life and experience. I keep myself open to the dimensions of existence which may not have any scientific explanation. In spite of the overwhelming progress made by science in closing the gaps in understanding psychological phenomena once perceived as the realm of spirituality, I accept the mental phenomena related to God as something outside the realm of science. It appears to exist above knowledge and cannot be confirmed and explained with intellectual arguments.

In my view human existence cannot be reduced only to phenomena, which can be tested, proved and disproved by using scientific methods. It includes much more than these. Our existence seems to extend to extra dimensions where mind may have a different reality outside the realm of matter. I do believe that although mind may emerge in association with matter it is not synonymous with matter.

The books will throw lights on the nature of the mind and the way the mind may function in revealing the existence of God. In my writing process I have used both aspect of the mind: In one aspect it derives ideas from knowledge, reason and intellect which are in conformity with the scientific and rational understanding of the world. In other aspect it belongs to a process which contradicts reason, logic and knowledge. This non-rational process emerges as consciousness not controlled by the judgment of the rational mind or experiences of the reality. It appears as revelation of God – a sort of babbling from a realm of the mind which cannot be understood. Many may like to interpret such revelatory writing as disease of the mind.  I do not agree with them. For me God exists and speaks to man in this revelatory way.

l believe God has spoken to me and explained the nature of Divinity, cosmos, consciousness, meaning and values of life with a purpose of sending messages to the fellow human beings. I have been told about the possibility of building an enlightened social-political order which would take care of the freedom and rights of all human beings in ways that may bring forth the evolution of higher nature in man. In such an enlightened social system spirituality would receive an important role together with the knowledge of science. In such a world the scientific man would not be seen as antithesis of the spiritual man, but as a synthesis of man and God living together in a will-bound world governed by laws of nature.

I hope that with increasing knowledge of science, and the liberation of human beings from material needs, and growing security of life against survival, larger groups of human beings would receive opportunities for deeper exploration of the self. This will bring the realms of science and spirituality closer together. The readers will discover in these books the vision of the higher man and the way one may walk along an enlightened path to bring forward this evolution.