Q: It is said that God is everywhere. So God is very much in the human body as well. He is in every cell/atom of a human body. My question is: what is the position /status of God, who is within the body, when  every cell/atom becomes infected? Is infection more powerful than God?

A: God is not ‘in the  human body’. The human body is name and form of Brahman. Similarly, bacteria are name and form of Brahman. There is ONLY Brahman in reality.

At the level of appearance (world etc.), God (Īśvara ) provides an interim explanation of the laws that govern the seeming creation.  One of these laws is that bacteria can infect bodies and affect their working, even to the extent of ‘killing’ them. But God, bodies and bacteria do not exist as separate entities in reality. They are all Brahman.

Q: I understand from the first para that all are Brahman only; the body and world are only appearances. But I am not able to follow the second para, where you have stated that Īśvara provides an interim explanation of the laws that govern the seeming creation. Kindly explain further as I do not follow the killing of bacteria.

A: You asked for an explanation regarding God. Everything regarding humans, world, gods, action, etc. relates to vyavahāra – the empirical world. From the point of view of absolute reality, all those things are mithyā; their ‘existence’ is Brahman alone. Advaita itself is mithyā but it provides interim explanations for those seekers who are still seeking. In case it is my wording that you don’t understand, when I said that ‘Ishvara provides an interim explanation’, perhaps I should have said ‘The concept of Ishvara is something used by Advaita to provide an interim explanation’. Does that make it clearer?