What is God according to a Sufi Master...

And now coming to the idea of what religion consists of. The first thing in the religion is the idea of God. What is God? Some say that 'my idea of God is that He is in the highest Heaven, that He is the Creator, that He is the Judge of the Last Day, that He is the Forgiver.' And there is another one who says: 'My idea is that God is all, God is abstract, all is God, and if anyone believes in a personal God, I do not believe it.' Both are right and yet both are wrong. They are right if they see the other point of view and they are wrong if they see their own point of view. Both see the God-ideal with one eye. One sees it with the right eye and the other with the left eye. If they see with both eyes, then the vision is complete. It is indeed an error on the part of man to limit God in the idea of a Personal Being, and it is wrong in the person who believes in the Absolute God, to efface the Being of god from his conception of it. As they say: 'To explain God is to dethrone God.' To say that God is abstract is like saying: 'God is the space, God is the time.' Can you love the space? Can you love time? There is nothing there to love. A beautiful flower would attract you more than the space. And nice music will attract you more than time. Therefore the believer in the abstract God has only his belief, but he is not benefited by it. He may just as well believe in no God as in an abstract God. Yet he is not wrong. He is uselessly right. The most advisable thing for the believer of God is to first make his own conception of God. Naturally man cannot make a conception which he does not know, of something he does not know. For instance, if I told you to imagine a bird that you have never seen, which is unlike any bird you have ever seen, you will first attach the bird to wings, then you will see the head of the cow, and then perhaps you will imagine the feet of the horse, the peacock's tail. But you cannot imagine any form which you have not seen, which you have not known. You have to embody from your mind a form which you already know. You cannot make a conception which you have never seen or known before. Besides, it is the easiest thing and it is the most natural thing for man to conceive of any being in his own form. When man thinks of fairies or angels he sees them in human form, and therefore it a person conceives of the God-ideal, even the highest and best way of conceiving will be in the highest and best human personality. There is nothing wrong about it. That is all that man can do. God is greater than man's conception, but man cannot conceive Him higher than he can. Therefore any man's God is in his own conception. It is useless, therefore, to argue and to discuss and to urge one's own conception upon another. For the best way a person can think of God is in the way he is capable of thinking of God.