For fifty years I recited the Mool Mantra without understanding until I was presented with two books, “Ik Onkar” (One God Mool Mantra) and “Japji Sahib—Five Pauris” (Guru Nanak’s Five Steps), English commentaries by Swami Swaroopananda, head of the worldwide Chinmaya Mission. The significance and context of each Mool Mantra word opened my eyes with the realization that every person can connect and establish a relationship with a spiritual God, living a life free from the judgmental, controlling, and vindictive ordinances of religious Gods.
The Mool Mantra described the attributes of God as one absolute reality, ever true, only doer, one creator, fearless, all-loving nonjudgmental, transcends time, without birth or beginning, self-existent and self-illuminating reality. These are attributes of our universe and God is another name for the universal reality. This definition does not conflict with the understanding of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and secular scientists. As a spiritual definition of God, it can unify all of humanity independent of religious affiliation and every person can believe in the existence of God without reservation.
Living in the United States, a Christian country with many churches and missionaries trying to convert and target Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants can be stressful. With a personal God, Christianity encourages tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity, and generosity, that violence toward ‘infidels, pagans’ is acceptable. If they knew that there is a spiritual God who is not judgmental, punitive we could save ourselves from indiscriminately killing fellow humans and see we are all children of the same universal God, and forced conversion is meaningless.
My brother Ajit was born with an ear defect that controls our balance and was unable to walk. The son of a first cousin suffered the same fate. My grandfather had fifty grand, great-grandchildren and had acquired a defective gene mutation fighting in World War I, transmitting facial defects to five known progenies. Three had a defect in the ear, one in the mouth and another in the eyes. Clearly, these could not be blamed on the descendants for bad karma in previous lives. Mool Mantra tells us that God is the doer and these are God’s actions, the progenies have to live in peace by accepting God’s will and for all others to treat them with compassion and understanding,
In the United States, fifty percent of the population are enslaved with credit card debt, auto loans, educational loans and denied healthcare and educational opportunities in pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence. Even Thomas Jefferson went bankrupt in pursuit of happiness with debts, slaves and had to sell his mulatto children to satisfy creditors. So, I decided to follow a life of contentment becoming debt-free, avoiding the medical-industrial complex by not getting sick ever, and retired living within my social security benefit.
As a believer in a spiritual God, you’re not blindly accepting a faith passed down from your parents living in fear, guilt, reprisals for sins in heaven, hell, or the next incarnation. You can live a life, promoting broad well-being by advancing compassion, equality, self-determination, and other values that allow individuals to flourish and live in a community with each other. It is not surprising that more and more Americans say they are spiritual but not religious.
My motivation in writing this book was to let humanity know that Guru Nanak’s Mool Mantra provides a spiritual path to a nonjudgmental all-loving universal God, without intervention by popes, pundits, priests, and misdirected religious, exclusive personal God wars.