How do you picture God? I was raised in a Catholic family and attended weekly Catechism classes for years. As a youth and young man, I pictured God as an elderly man with a long beard. He sat on a throne in the clouds, draped in bed sheets, watching over the Earth.
It was not until I was well into adulthood, and my spiritual knowledge expanded, that I began to see God in a new light. In the words of Paul Tillich, I surmised that God is not a being, but being itself, not so much an entity but a force of life. And over the years, other wise men have reinforced this belief.
The late philanthropist and philosopher John Templeton believed we cannot be separated by God, that everything we see, touch and here is a part of God. The man best known as the founder of the Templeton Fund writes that God is like the air we breathe:
The wonderful substance of God flows in and through us and extends from us in every direction. Truly, there is no place we can go where we are not bathed in the infinite sea of the substance of the universe.
Napleon Hill, in his classic bestseller Think and Grow Rich, uses the term Infinite Intelligence in lieu of God. Hill claimed that there was a “larger mind” out there, and that it could lead us to success and happiness. By tapping into this Infinite Intelligence, Hill believed we had a never-ending source of knowledge, power and creativity.
Which brings us to Thomas Edison…
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