Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00007)

KEY17.TXT
Text supplied by Eldon Tucker
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The Fundamental Teachings of Theosophy

On God and Prayer

Q. Do you believe in God?

A. That depends what you mean by the term.

Q. I mean the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and
the Creator: the Biblical God of Moses, in short.

A. In such a God we do not believe. We reject the idea of a
personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but
the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either.
The God of theology, we say, and prove it, is a bundle of
contradictions and a logical impossibility. Therefore, we will
have nothing to do with him.

Q. State your reasons, if you please.

A. They are many, and cannot all receive attention. But here are
a few. This God is called by his devotees infinite and absolute,
is he not?

Q. I believe he is.

A. Then, if infinite, i.e., limitless, and especially if
absolute, how can he have a form, and be a creator of anything?
Form implies limitation, and a beginning as well as an end; and,
in order to create, a Being must think and plan. How can the
ABSOLUTE be supposed to think, i.e., to have any relation
whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This
is a philosophical, and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew
Cabala rejects such an idea, and therefore, makes of the one and
the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph.*
In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as
this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had
to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an
indirect way, i.e., through the emanation from itself (another
absurdity, due this time to the translators of the Cabala) of
the Sephiroth.

How can the non-active eternal principle emanate or emit? The
Parabrahman of the Vedantins does nothing of the kind; nor does
the Ain-Soph* of the Chaldean Cabala. It is an eternal and
periodical law which causes an active and creative force (the
logos) to emanate from the ever-concealed and incomprehensible
one principle at the beginning of every Maha-Manvantara, or new
cycle of life.

Q. How about those Cabalists, who, while being such, still
believe in Jehovah, or the Tetragrammaton?

A. They are at liberty to believe in what they please, as their
belief or disbelief can hardly affect a self-evident fact. The
Jesuits tell us that two and two are not always four to a
certainty, since it depends on the will of God to make 2 x 2 =
5. Shall we accept their sophistry for all that?

Q. Then you are Atheists?

A. Not that we know of, and not unless the epithet of "Atheist"
is to be applied to those who disbelieve in an anthropomorphic
God. We believe in a Universal Divine Principle, the root of
ALL, from which all proceeds, and within which all shall be
absorbed at the end of the great cycle of Being.

Q. This is the old, old claim of Pantheism. If you are
Pantheists, you cannot be Deists; and if you are not Deists,
then you have to answer to the name of Atheists.

A. Not necessarily so. The term Pantheism is again one of the
many abused terms, whose real and primitive meaning has been
distorted by blind prejudice and a one-sided view of it. If you
accept the Christian etymology of this compound word, and form
it of 'pan', "all," and 'Theos', "god," and then imagine and
teach that this means that every stone and every tree in Nature
is a God or the ONE God, then, of course, you will be right, and
make of Pantheists fetish-worshippers, in addition to their
legitimate name. But you will hardly be as successful if you
etymologize the word Pantheism esoterically, and as we do.

Q. What is, then, your definition of it?

A. Let me ask you a question in my turn. What do you understand
by Pan, or Nature?

Q. Nature is, I suppose, the sum total of things existing around
us; the aggregate of causes and effects in the world of matter,
the creation or universe.

A. Hence the personified sum and order of known causes and
effects; the total of all finite agencies and forces, as utterly
disconnected from an intelligent Creator or Creators, and
perhaps "conceived of as a single and separate force", as in
your encyclopedias?

Q. Yes, I believe so.

A. Well, we neither take into consideration this objective and
material nature, which we call an evanescent illusion, nor do we
mean by X_U Nature, in the sense of its accepted derivation from
the Latin Natura (becoming, from nasci, to be born). 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.

Q. Stop! Omniscience is the prerogative of something that
thinks, and you deny to your Absoluteness the power of thought.

A. We deny it to the ABSOLUTE, since thought is something
limited and conditioned. But you evidently forget that in
philosophy absolute unconsciousness is also absolute
consciousness, as otherwise it would not be absolute.

Q. Then your Absolute thinks?

A. No, IT does not; for the simple reason that it is Absolute
Thought itself. Nor does it exist, for the same reason, as it is
absolute existence, and Be-ness, not a Being. Read the superb
Cabalistic poem by Solomon Ben Jehudah Gabirol, in the
Kether-Malchut, and you will understand:

Thou art one, the root of all numbers, but not as an element of
numeration; for unity admits not of multiplication, change, or
form.

Thou art one, and in the secret of Thy unity the wisest of men
are lost, because they know it not.

Thou art one, and Thy unity is never diminished, never extended,
and cannot be changed.

Thou art one, and no thought of mine can fix for Thee a limit,
or define Thee.

Thou ART, but not as one existent, for the understanding and
vision of mortals cannot attain to Thy existence, nor determine
for Thee the where, the how and the why B

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. It is the one law, giving the
impulse to manifested, eternal, and immutable laws, within that
never-manifesting, because absolute LAW, which in its
manifesting periods is The ever-Becoming.

Q. I once heard one of your members remarking that Universal
Deity, being everywhere, was in vessels of dishonor, as in those
of honor, and, therefore, was present in every atom of my cigar
ash! Is this not rank blasphemy?

A. I do not think so, as simple logic can hardly be regarded as
blasphemy. Were we to exclude the Omnipresent Principle from one
single mathematical point of the universe, or from a particle of
matter occupying any conceivable space, could we still regard it
as infinite?

*  [Ain-Soph = the endless, or boundless, in and with Nature, the
non-existent which IS, but is not a Being.]

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