Man's march towards God.

God is generally defined as the Supreme, eternal Creator and sustainer of the Universe, often viewed as an omnipotent, omniscient, and personal being who guides humanity.  He is the supreme being who created the Universe and everything within it.  HE is the ultimate origin of all existence, responsible for the creation of heaven and earth. God is a Spirit, described as eternal, invisible, serene as the Absolute, having no beginning or end. 

Man is defined as the mortal creation, characterised by a physical body and soul, designed to reflect divine attributes, worship the Creator and hold a position.

Hindus believe that Liberation(moksha) arises through fn of stewardship on earth. Man is mortal, a created being with a physical body, a soul, and a spirit. our yogic paths: Karma Yoga (selfless action), Bhakti Yoga (devotion through worship and surrender), Jnana Yoga (knowledge and self-inquiry), and Raja Yoga (meditation). Devotees cultivate practices like scripture study, chanting, and service to transcend reincarnation and unite with the divine. 

Advaita Vedanta, as taught by Adi Sankara, asserts non-duality, where the individual self (Atman) is identical to the Ultimate Reality (Brahman), often called God in a non-personal sense. The mahavakya 'Tat Tvam Asi' from the Chandogya Upanishad directly means 'You are that', affirming this oneness. From the empirical level (vyavaharika satya), differences appear due to ignorance (avidya) and illusion (Maya), making humans seem limited and separate from the infinite Brahman.  Maya veils the truth, like waves seeming distinct from the ocean, but both are the same substance. 

Sri Ramanuja's Visistadwaita philosophy distinguishes Man(jiva) from God while emphasising their inseparable unity.  According to his philosophy, individual souls and the world are real, distinct entities that form the 'body' of God, who is the supreme soul.  Ramanuja teaches that man attains liberation through devotion supported by knowledge and right actions, culminating in complete self-surrender to God, which removes karma and grants divine grace, allowing the jiva to reach the abode of God, where the soul enjoys eternal, blissful service to God without losing its individuality. According to him Union is not an identity merger but an inseparable communion, like body and soul, preserving distinctions eternally.

Christianity believes that Salvation begins with justification through faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, a gift of God's grace that declares sinners righteous.  This leads to a lifelong sanctification process of growth via Scripture, prayer, and the Holy Spirit, and culminates in glorification upon entering heaven.

Islam believes that drawing closer to Allah involves daily practices like prayer (salat) on time, remembrance (zikr), seeking forgiveness (istighfar), and sending blessings (salawat) on the Prophet.  Building righteous relationships and consistent good deeds foster spiritual proximity, with prostration in prayer marking moments of greatest nearness to God.

Buddhists believe that the path to Nirvana follows the Noble Eightfold Path, encompassing right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration to end suffering.  Practitioners progress through four stages of enlightenment, starting as a Stream-Enterer by overcoming doubt and self-illusion via ethics, meditation, and wisdom. 

Judaism comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people.  Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which they believe was established between God and the Jewish people. 

Sikhism believes in the oneness of God (IK Onkar), equality of all people, selfless service(seva) and devotion to the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the central religious scripture. Sikhs involves in  community services, and uphold values of honesty and justice in their daily lives. They practice meditation to reach God by chanting His name. 

 Lord Srikrishna in Bhagavath Githa Chapter 6 Verse 17 teaches us:

"uktahara-viharasya yukta-cestasya karmasu

yukta-svapnavabodhasya yogo bhavati duhkha-ha."

He who is regulated in his habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practising Yoga. 

Yoga becomes the destroyer of sorrow for one who is moderate in food, recreation, work, sleep and wakefulness. This moderation prevents the formation of new impressions (coverings around the soul).

The Soul(Atman)  is originally pure, luminous, and identical in essence with the Divine Reality.  It is not impure by nature.  The problem is not the Soul; it is the coverings over it. Coverings form due to Samskaras(impressions). Every thought, desire, emotion and action creates a subtle impression in the heart. Repeated desires strengthen these impressions. Unfulfilled desires become subtle knots. Fulfilled desires often create new ones.  Thus, impressions accumulate.  

When the mind moves away from simplicity and moderation, it generates heaviness.  Ego, attachment, anger, greed--these are not moral labels alone; they are energetic distortions that create opacity around the soul.  Some coverings are inherited-- not genetically alone, but through subtle tendencies carried from past experiences of the Soul's journey.

Lord Sri Krishna in Bhagavath Gita in Chapter2 verse 71 also says that:

"Vihaya kaman yah sarvan pumansh charati nihsprihah

nirmamo nirahankarahsa shantim adhigachchhati."

That person, who gives up all material desires and lives free from a sense of greed, proprietorship, and egoism, attains perfect peace. That state itself is practically merging with the Ultimate.

Merging is not an event after death. It is the gradual disappearance of the ego while living.

Manduka Upanished in Chapter 3, Sec.2, Mantra 1, explains that: 

"Sa vedaitat parmam brahma dhama yatra vishvam nihitam bhati shubhram;

upasate purusham ye hy akamah te shukram etad atiranti dhirah."

He  who realises the Supreme Brahman--the pure, radiant Reality in which the entire Universe rests--and meditates upon it without selfish desire, transcends all impurity, ego and bondage, and attains the highest state. When meditation becomes pure--free from demand, ego and expectation--the soul naturally rises to its Source. 

Sri Eswar Sahay, a Spiritual brother of Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj, founder of Sahaj Marg, says that the difference between God and Man, though so great to our outer view, is, in fact, insignificant when we take into consideration the primaeval state of Man's existence.  The individual soul, though undoubtedly a part of the Great Universal Soul, is in its present state separated from it. 

Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj of Shahjahanpur, who exemplifies non-duality, inspires trust, resolves intellectual doubts, dismantles the projecting power of Maya (vikshepa shakti), which creates apparent duality, and clarifies that the Individual soul, under limitations and bondages, is the Man. In contrast, the Universal Soul, which is Unlimited and Infinite, is God. Except for this little difference, they are both perfectly identical. The idea has been nicely illustrated by HIm in the following way.  

A thick covering of air surrounds the entire globe and it is almost the same everywhere.  But the air near the earth is denser than that at higher altitudes.  The reduction of density goes on increasing as we go higher and higher, till at the highest level, its very presence may be inconceivable to our human perception and for want of capacity to realise it in its absolute state, the Nonentity, one may safely resume its total absence.  Now the difference between God and Man is the same as between the air at the surface level and that at the highest level, the former being compared to Man and the latter to God. Thus, man being originally identical with God differs from Him in respect of density or grossness, which accounts for the bondages of the Soul.

All that is to be done, now, is to remove this density of being which serves as a bar to our approach to Reality.  Our march towards God comprises the continuous elimination of the successive coverings of grossness one after the other to the final limit.  In fact, it means the giving up of all our belongings, which in order to maintain our gross existence, we have gathered so far, in the form of a tiny creation of our own making.   It is this individual creation of ours that we have to dissolve, to acquire the original state of perfect subtleness, free from all limitations.

Living in God thus refers to the final state of absolute subtleness or complete Negation, the Zero point of man's existence, where he is almost one with Nature.  This can be attained after one has dissolved his entire individual creation.  Thus man who lives in God may at that highest stage of perfection be taken to mean as one who lives as God.  But this may carry different meanings according to the different conceptions of God entertained by people.  Taking the view that God is the possessor of all the finest attributes, one may naturally conclude that a man who possesses the noble qualities of righteousness and virtue lives in God, and this may not be unreasonable to some extent.  Noble qualities, no doubt, constitute an important step towards godliness, but still, there remains a lot ahead that must be attained for the purpose.  A simple question, whether God himself knows that He is the possessor of all the finest attributes, will solve the problem.  In fact, the very consciousness of virtue or righteousness is, in itself, a bondage in the true sense, hence far away from the final stage of Subtleness, which is devoid of everything, even virtue, power and consciousness, a state of perfect ignorance and inactivity.  Thus, one who lives as God must be one who is free from all limitations to the last possible degree, abiding permanently in an almost unchanging state of pure Existence. 

The condition at this stage is very peculiar. It is a strange combination of Human and Divine.  One abiding in this state of highest perfection may to a layman's eye be, in no way, above the common level of an ordinary man, busy with his worldly pursuits, for the interests of life, yet at heart, he is quite away from them, doing everything with a sense of duty, in a machine like manner, without any weight or pressure upon the mind.  To him, there may be nothing as virtue or vice, but only Nature's demand for the occasion, for which his limbs automatically act without any previous thought or a sense of responsibility.  He is, in a true sense, an instrument of Nature, meant exclusively for the accomplishment of Nature's work, be it in respect of self, the world or the Universe.  He is simple and unassuming like Nature, innocent like a child and calm and peaceful like a lake without any consciousness of it at all.

Source: Bhagavath Githa, Manduka Upanishad and Ananthdhara of Sri Ramchandra Yogashram, Ballari.