Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00035)

(The Universal Mind) - A few reflections and arguments ought to
support every new idea - for instance we are sure to be taken to
task for the following apparent contradictions.  (1)We deny the
existence of a thinking conscious God, on the grounds that such a
God must either be conditioned, limited, and subject to change,
therefore not infinite, or (2) if he is represented to us as an
eternal unchangeable, and independent being, with not a particle
of matter in him, then we answer that it is no being but an
immutable blind principle, a law.  And yet, they will say, we
believe in Dyans, or Planetaries ("spirits" also) and endow them
with a universal mind, and this must be explained.

Our reasons may be briefly summed up thus:

(1) We deny the absurd propostition that there can be, even in a
boundless and eternal universe - two infinite eternal and
omnipresent existences.

(2) Matter we know to be eternal, ie having had no beginning (a)
because matter is nature herself (b) because that which cannot
annihilate itself and is indestructibe exists necessarily - and
therefore it could not begin to be, not can it cease to be (c)
because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of
exact science show to us matter (not nature) acting by her own
peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute
state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, ie, its
materials ever changing form ;, combinations and properties, but
its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible.

(3) As to God - since no one has ever or at any time seen him or
it - unless he or it is the very essence and nature of this
boundless eternal matter, its energy and motion, we cnnot regard
him as either eternal or infinite or yet self-existing.  We
refuse to admit a being or an excistence of which we know
absolutely nothing; because (a) there is no room for him in the
presence of that matter whose undeniable properties and qualities
we know thoroughly well (b) because if he or it is but a part of
that matter it is ridiculous to maintain that he is the mover and
ruler of that of which he is but a dependent part and (c) because
if they tell us that God is a self existent pure spirit
independent of matter - an extra-cosmic deity, we answer that
admitting even the possibility of such an impossibility, ie his
existence, we yet hold that a purely immaterial spirit cannot be
an intelligent conscious ruler nor can he have any of the
attributes bestowed upon him by theology and thus such a God
becomes again but a blind force.  Intelligence as found in our
Dhyan Chohans, is a faculty that can appertain but to organized
or animated beings however imponderable or rather invisible the
materials of their organizations.  Intelligence requires the
necessity of thinking; to think one must have ideas; ideas
supppose senses which are physical material, and how can anything
material belong to pure spirit? If it be objected that thought
cannot be a property of matter, we will ask the reason why? We
must have an unanswerable proof of this assumption, before we can
accept it.  Of the thelogian we would enquire what was there to
prevent his God, since he is the alleged creator of all - to
endow matter with the facutly of thought; and when answered that
evidently it has not pleased Him to do so, that it is a mystery
as well as an impossibility, we would insist upon being told why
it is more impossible that matter should produce spirit &
thought, than spirit or the thought of Gods should produce &
create matter.

We do not bow our heads in the dust before the mystery of mind -
for we have solved it ages ago.  Rejecting with contempt the
theistic theory we reject as much the automaton theory, teaching
that states of consciousness are produced by the marshalling of
the moelcules of the brain; and we feel as little respect for
that other hypothesis- the production of molecular motion by
consciousness.  Then what do we believe in? Well, we believe in
the much laughed at phlogiston (see article "What is force & what
is matter?" Theosophist September), and in what some natural
philosopherws would call nisus the incesssant though perfectly
imperceptible (to the ordinary senses) motion or efforts one body
is make on another - the pulsations of intert matter - its life.
The bodies of the Planetary spirits are formed of that which
Priestley & others called Phlogiston and for which we have
another name - this essence in its highest seventh state forming
that matter of which the organism of the highest and purest Dyans
are composed, and in its lowest or densest form (so impalpable
yet that science calls it energy and force) serving as a cover to
the Planetaries of the 1st or lowest degree.  In other words we
beleieve in MATTER alone, in matter as visible as nature and
matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent
omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is life, and
which nature draws from herself since she is the great whole
outside of which nothing can exist.  For as Bellinger truly
asserts "Motion is a manner if esxistence that flows necesssailry
out of the esssence of matter; that matter moves by its own
peculiar energies; that its motion is due to the force which is
inherent in itself; that the variety of motion and the phenomena
that result proceed from the diversity of the properties of the
qualities and of the combinations which are originally found in
the primitive matter" of which nature is the assemblage and of
which your science knows less than one of our Tibetan Yak-drivers
of Kant's metaphysics.

The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion
is another fact, their self existence and eternity or
indestructibility is a third fact.  And the idea of pure spirit
as a Being or an Existence - give it whatever name you will - is
a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.