Theosophical Independence Vol. 8 - 3    May 2009

Does God Exist? (Continued)

  

  An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to his Father which is in secret (read, and try to understand, Matthew vi, 6), not an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God; and that “Father” is in man himself.

  In our sense, the inner man is the only God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be otherwise? Grant us our postulate that God is a universally diffused, infinite principle, and how can man alone escape from being soaked through by, and in, the Deity? We call our “Father in heaven” that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness, and which has nothing to do with the anthropomorphic conception we may form of it in our physical brain or its fancy: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of [the absolute] God dwelleth in you?” Yet, let no man anthropomorphize that essence in us. Let no Theosophist, if he would hold to divine, not human truth, say that this “God in secret” listens to, or is distinct from, either finite man or the infinite essence—for all are one.

  In short, our Deity is the eternal, incessantly evolving, not creating, builder of the universe; that universe itself unfolding out of its own essence, not being made. It is a sphere, without circumference, in its symbolism, which has but one ever-acting attribute embracing all other existing or thinkable attributes -- ITSELF.... When we speak of the Deity and make it identical, hence coeval, with Nature, the eternal and uncreate nature is meant, and not your aggregate of flitting shadows and finite unrealities. We leave it to the hymn-makers to call the visible sky or heaven, God's Throne, and our earth of mud His footstool. Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain: it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality.  THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY

  The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself that he did not make himself, neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal, make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence that carries us on, as it were by necessity, to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different from any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause man calls God.  -Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not  to be? You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  -Marianne Williamson

God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.
-Richard Buckminster Fuller

Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway.      
-Mary C. Crowley
      
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
-Jacques Deval
   
We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
-Charles C. West

God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us.     -Peter Antenberg

I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world...      -Albert Einstein

Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.
-Diana Robinson   

Theosophy ... is wisdom about God for those who believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and that darkness is around his pavilion...It is not a belief or dogma formulated or invented by man, but is a knowledge of the laws which govern the evolution of the physical, astral, psychical, and intellectual constituents of nature and of man.
     THE OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY

        “Theosophical Independence”  is produced monthly by Associates of The United Lodge of Theosophists in Philadelphia.  Comments, questions and contributions for publication may be sent to The United Lodge of Theosophists, 1917 Walnut Street,   Philadelphia, PA  19103.
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