A Sunday school teacher asked her class, “Where is God?”

No one seemed to have an answer except Danny. “I know where God is!” he said excitedly.

“And where is that?” the teacher asked.

Danny responded: “In the bathroom at my house.”

“Very interesting, Danny. How are you so sure God is in your bathroom?”

“Becuz …. whenever I am in the bathroom, my daddy pounds on the door and says ‘Oh, My God! Are you still in there?’”
This is no joke! God is in Danny’s bathroom. But God is in every room in Danny’s house. God is in every room of your house. God is everywhere.

In my religious upbringing, I was taught that God is omnipresent. But, I really didn’t understand how God could be everywhere at the same time. Moses saw God in

a burning bush on Mount Sinai. And to receive the Ten Commandments from God, Moses had to climb back up that mountain. If God is omnipresent, why did Moses have to do all that climbing?!

I was taught that God can hear my prayers, no matter where I am. Yet, I usually said my prayers out loud to make sure God could hear them. I didn’t quite grasp that God was omnipotent and omniscient as well as omnipresent. I could have whispered my prayers or even said them silently and God would hear.

And given that God is everywhere, then God must be within me. I didn’t get taught that necessarily, but even if I was taught it, I would still have a hard time accepting it. Why would God want to be in my body? God hangs out on mountaintops or in cathedrals and temples.

So, in my younger years, I believed God was out there. God and I were separate.

Then came yoga.

The spiritual tradition upon which Svaroopa® yoga is based, Kashmir Shaivism, does not consider God as separate. Any separation we perceive is only an illusion. God (known as Shiva or Self) is the One Divine Reality. God is present everywhere and in everything and in everyone. There is nowhere where God is not.

A statement in the yogic text Pratyabhijnahrdayam says:

“The One Reality, which we call Shiva, has manifested itself in all that exists – many forms, including your own.

You are the One, in an individual form.”

(Swami Nirmalananda’s rendering from the Sanskrit)
So each of us is the One Divine Reality in an individual form. This body is the House of God – God’s temple. God’s in there. God manifested in it and as it. God manifested in me and as me, in you and as you. The goal of yoga and meditation is to experience this Truth  – not only to know It intellectually but to actually experience It. Swami Nirmalananda says: “The mystics of all meditative traditions and religions agree that the One Divine Reality can be discovered inside. This One Divine Reality within you is called ‘Self.'”

Experiencing this Truth has profound consequences. When you truly experience your own Divinity, then you recognize the Divinity in others. You experience the presence of the Divine in them and everywhere. So, you treat others with greater respect. You treat the earth with greater respect. You treat animals with greater respect. You are treating God wherever you are, even in the bathroom.

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him,. He walks everywhere incognito.” ~ CS Lewis