Discovering God

Foreword God-realization is to have conviction in God’s existence, as if you were seeing Him. How can one achieve this kind of maarifah? The way to achieve maarifah is to first of all discover creation and then, through creation, reach the Creator. For if there is creation, there must be a Creator. In the first quarter of the 20th century, it was discovered that the universe had come into existence as a result of the Big Bang. This was like the discovery of God in the language of science. This means that when the universe has a beginning, then certainly there must be a beginner of the universe, who in religious terminology has been called God. The conscious discovery of this God is known as maarifah. One who attains to this maarifah will experience an intellectual and spiritual explosion. He will believe in God through both reason and intuition, and it will be as if he is seeing God. He comes emotionally close to God. Such a discovery of God as revolutionizes one’s personality is called maarifah. In the language of religion, this discovery is called maarifah, while in secular language it may be termed spirituality. There is another necessary condition for the attainment of realization, and that is prayer (dua). Realization is a bilateral matter, in that a person’s position is one of finding or receiving maarifah, while God is the giver of maarifah. An individual cannot receive realization without the help of God. All of one’s efforts will remain fruitless