Commonplace: The Need for a Compelling Conception of God
From the sphere of belief into daily life
Our ordinary conception of God is that He is superhuman, infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, and the like. In this general conception there are many variations. Some call God personal, some see Him as impersonal. The point emphasized in this book is that whatever conception we have of God, if it does not influence our daily conduct, if everyday life does not find an inspiration from it, and if it is not found universally necessary, then that conception is useless.
If God is not conceived in such a way that we cannot do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, in earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is plain that we have not felt any connection between God and life.
God may be infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, personal, and merciful, but these conceptions are not sufficiently compelling to make us try to know Him. We may as well do without Him. He may be infinite, omnipresent, and so forth, but we have no immediate and practical use for those conceptions in our busy, rushing lives.
We fall back on those conceptions only when we seek to justify, in philosophical and poetical writings, in art or in idealistic talks, the finite craving for something beyond; when we, with all our vaunted knowledge, are at a loss to explain some of the most common phenomena of the universe; or when we get stranded in the vicissitudes of the world. “We pray to the Ever-Merciful when we get stuck,” as the Eastern maxim has it. Otherwise, we seem to get along all right in our workaday world without Him.
These stereotyped conceptions appear to be the safety valves of our pent-up human thought. They explain Him, but do not make us seek Him. They lack motive power. We are not necessarily seeking God when we call Him infinite, omnipresent, all-merciful and omniscient. These conceptions satisfy the intellect, but do not soothe the soul. If respected and cherished in our hearts, they may broaden us to a certain extent—may make us moral and resigned toward Him. But they do not make God our own—they are not intimate enough. They place Him aloof from everyday concerns of the world.
These conceptions savor of outlandishness when we are on the street, in a factory, behind a counter, or in an office. Not because we are really dead to God and religion, but because we lack a proper conception of them—a conception that can be interwoven with the fabric of daily life. What we conceive of God should be of daily, nay hourly, guidance to us. The very conception of God should stir us to seek Him in the midst of our daily lives. This is what we mean by a pragmatic and compelling conception of God. We should take religion and God out of the sphere of belief into that of daily life.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, The Science of Religion (Self-Realization Fellowship, 2020)
