Divinity Exists Even After Death

Question: Swami, scriptures declare that God is omnipresent; God is everywhere. Kindly explain this aspect of Divinity? How are we to understand this?

Bhagavan: The Bhagavad Gita says, Bijam mam sarvabhutanam, “God is the seed of this entire creation.” God is the seed of all beings.” For example, you see here a mango seed. You sow it in the ground. The seed, as days pass, germinates. In the process, the seed produces a root, then a stem, a leaf, branches, and gradually flowers. The seed is latent in every part of the plant, as all parts directly or indirectly emerge from it. Finally, in the hard seed of the fruit, too, the initial or the original seed is present. So, God is present in the entire universe. The whole world is a tree, God is the seed, and fruits are the beings or creatures born of the tree of the world.

Question: Swami, when the same divinity is present in everyone, why should differences exist? Divinity being the same, why are we so different from each other?

Bhagavan: Ekamevadvitiyam Brahma, “God is one without a second,” say the scriptures. Then how do we account for the variety, diversity, and differences? A small example to understand this: The power supply being the same, don’t you find the difference in the voltage of the bulbs that illumine? A bulb with a low voltage gives you light of low intensity, and a bulb with a high voltage illumines more brightly. Don’t they? But at the same time, electricity is one and the same. Bulbs are different in their voltage, and this determines the intensity of light. Similarly, our bodies are like those bulbs with the inner current of the same divinity.

Question: Swami, You said that Divinity is in everyone. Then, before we were born where had it been? Does divinity exist even after our death?

Bhagavan: The Divine exists. Divinity is imperishable, pure and unsullied. It has neither birth nor death. It is eternal and stable. It is beyond time and space. Divinity transcends all physical laws.

Now, your question is: Where did Divinity exist prior to your birth and where will it be after your death, while it is in you during this lifetime? You see, there is an electrical wire on the wall, and also holders here and there to which bulbs are fixed. You get light only if a bulb is fixed to a holder and not otherwise. Why? The current passes through the wire that enters the bulb fixed to the holder. If you hold the bulb in your hand, it does not illumine, as there is no power supply. What you have to understand is this: The current has not been newly produced to get into the bulb. It was already there in the wire. If you remove the bulb, what will happen to the current? It will be there in the wire. The only difference is that you will not experience its presence as illumination. Similarly, the bulb is the body, the current of divinity flows into it as the illumination of life. When this bulb of the body is removed, even then the current of divinity persists hidden or latent, so much so that Divinity has all along been there before you were born, during your lifetime, and even will be there after your death like the current of electricity.

Source: Satyopanishad, Vol. I