What On Earth Will It Take?
Thou Art God!

I Grok It!



“Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed—to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land


Within the context of the book Stranger in a Strange Land, the statement "Thou Art God" stems from the novel's premise that beings can grok, or become integrated with each other on a fundamental level that includes shared knowledge, senses, neural processing and capabilities. In key passages of the book, the protagonist of the story, Valentine Michael Smith, explains how: "Thou art God, and I am God and all that groks is God," God being that which is in all things (even the "happy blades of grass") and having "no choice" but to experience all things. In order to know and appreciate something fully, the characters of Heinlein's best selling novel became part of that thing. In grokking God, the characters claimed to actually become God. Throughout the book, Smith and his followers say "Thou Art God" as a greeting, in recognition of this claim.


To grok is to intimately and completely share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed.


From the novel: Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.


The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment." Other forms of the word include "groks" (present third person singular), "grokked" (past participle) and "grokking" (present participle).