God

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 Summary: A collection of statements by the Tibetan


     "What the scientist calls energy, the religious man calls God, and yet the two are one, being but the manifested purpose, in physical matter, of a great extra-systemic Identity. Nature is the appearance of the physical body of the Logos, and the laws of nature are the laws governing the natural processes of that body. The Life of God, His energy, and vitality, are found in every manifested atom; His essence indwells all forms. This we call Spirit, yet He Himself is other than those forms, just as man knows himself to be other than his bodies. He knows himself to be a will, and a purpose, and as he progresses in evolution that purpose and will become to him ever more consciously defined. So with the planetary Logos and solar Logos. They dwell within, yet are found without, the planetary scheme or solar system." (A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p. 1136)

     "God, the Universal Mind, Energy, Force, the Absolute, the Unknown -- these terms and many others are forced from the lips of those who, by means of the form side, seek the Dweller within the form, and cannot find Him as yet. This failure to find Him is due to the limitations of the physical brain, and to the lack of development in the mechanism whereby the spiritual may be known, and whereby He may, and eventually will, be contacted." (A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p. 238)

     "Only as a man understands himself can he arrive at an understanding of that which is the sum total that we call God." (A Treatise on White Magic, p. 29)

     "God Transcendent eternally exists, but can only be seen and known and correctly approached, by God Immanent -- immanent in individual man, in groups and nations, in organised forms and in religion, in humanity as a whole, and in the planetary Life Itself." (Glamour: A World Problem, p. 162)

     "In attempting to describe "Pure Being" or God, and in the effort to arrive at some understanding of the nature of divinity, the formula of negation has been evolved. God is not this; God is not that; God is no-thing; God is neither time nor space; God is not feeling or thought; God is not form or substance. God simply IS." (Glamour: A World Problem, p. 244)

     "The Problem of God: The fact of God will be established, and men's questioning in this respect will end. Such a God will not be a figment of man's creative imagination, or an extension of his own consciousness, but a Deity of essential life, who is the sum total of all energies . . .a God most surely trancsendent, but at the same time most assuredly immanent, a God of such immensity that the Heavens proclaim Him, and so intimate that the humblest child can recognise Him.  . . .With the eye of the inner vision can God be seen, even when man is occupying a body of flesh. Not with the physical eye can Deity be seen, though the hallmark of divinity is everywhere. There is an eye which can be developed and used, and which will enable its possessor to see God working on the inner side of Life, within Himself and within all forms, for "when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light". In that light shall we see Light, and so see God." (Esoteric Psychology, Vol. l, p. 82)

     "To portray adequately the wonder and the destiny of the human kingdom, lies beyond my powers or the power of any human pen, no matter how great a man's realisation may be, or his response to the beauty of God's world. Divinity must be lived, expressed and manifested, to be understood. God must be loved, known and revealed within the human heart and brain, in order to be intellectually grasped." (Esoteric Psychology, Vol.1, p. 313)

     "We have spoken here of God in terms Person, and we have used therefore the pronouns, He and His. Must it therefore be inferred that we are dealing with a stupendous Personality which we call God, and do we therefore belong to that school of thought which we call the anthropomorphic? The Buddhist teaching recognises no God or Person. Is it, therefore, wrong from our point of view and approach, or is it right? Only an understanding of man as a divine expression is time and space, can reveal this mystery.
     Both schools of thought are right, and in no way contradict each other. In their synthesis and in their blending, the truth as it really is can begin -- aye, dimly -- to appear. There is a God Transcendent Who "having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of Himself" can still say : "I remain". There is a God Immanent, Whose Life is the source of the activity, intelligence, growth and attractiveness, of every form in all the kingdoms of nature. There is likewise in every human being a transcendent soul which, when the life cycle on earth has come and gone, and when the period of manifestation is over, becomes again the unmanifest and the formless, and which can also say: "I remain". In form, and when in manifestation, the only way in which the human mind and brain can express its recognition of the conditioning divine life, is to speak in terms of Person, of Individuality. Hence we speak of God as a Person, of His Will, His nature, and His form.
     Behind the manifested universe, however, stands the formless One, That which is not an individual, being free from the limitations of individualised existence. Therefore the Buddhist is right when he emphasises the non-individualised nature of Deity, and refuses to personalise Divinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Christian theology, embodying as they do the triplicities of all theologies, disappear also into the One, when the period of manifestation is over. They remain as One, with quality and life untouched and undifferentiated, as they are when in manifestation.
     An analogy to this appears when a man dies. Then his three aspects -- mind or will, emotion or love, and physical appearance -- vanish. There is then no person. Yet, if one accepts the fact of immortality, the conscious being remains! His quality, and purpose, and life are united with his undying soul. The outer form with its differentiations into manifested trinity, has gone -- never again to return in exactly the same form or expression, in time or space.
     The interplay of soul and mind, produces the manifested universe, with all that is therein. When that interplay is persisting, either in God or in man, we use (for how else can we speak with clarity?) terms of human origin, and therefore limiting, such is our present stage of enlightenment -- or should we say, unenlightenment? Thus the idea of individuality, of personality, and of form, is built up. When the interplay ceases, and manifestation ends, such terms are no longer suitable; they have no meaning. Yet the undying one, whether God or man, persists.
     Thus in human thought, preserved for us by the great Teacher of the East, the Buddha, we have the concept of the transcendent Deity, divorced from the triplicities, the dualities, and the multiplicity of manifestation. There is but life, formless, freed from the individuality, unknown. In the teaching of the West, preserved for us and formulated for us by the Christ, the concept of God Immanent is preserved, -- God in us and in all forms. In the synthesis of the Eastern and Western teachings, and in the merging of these two great schools of thought, something of the superlative Whole can be sensed -- sensed merely -- not known." (Esoteric Psychology, Vol. II, p. 229/31)

     "One of the most difficult things for the average thinking man to understand and to interpret, is the destructive process of what he (for lack of a better name) calls "the will of God". This is one of the results (and only one) of a purely materialistic civilisation, which has laid all its emphasis upon the form side of experience, and thus regards physical well-being and physical comfort, plus material possessions, as the true goal of human effort. It is upon this widespread attitude and reaction that the new incoming light will concentrate itself; as the light reveals reality, the world of phenomena and the world of spiritual values will enter into a better, directed relation." (The Rays and the Initiations, p. 649)

     "The Eastern faiths have ever emphasised God Immanent, deep within the human heart, "nearer than hands and feet", the Self, the One, the Atma, smaller than the small, yet all-comprehensive. The Western faiths have presented God Transcendent, outside His universe, an Onlooker. God transcendennt, first of all, conditioned men's concept of Deity, for the action of this transcendent God appeared in the process of nature; later, in the Jewish dispensation, God appeared as the tribal Jehovah, as the soul (the rather unpleasant soul) of a nation. Next, God was seen as a perfected man, and the divine God-man walked the Earth in the Person of the Christ. Today we have a rapidly growing emphasis upon God immanent in every human being, and in every created form. Today, we should have the churches presenting a synthesis of these two ideas, which have been summed up for us in the statement of Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain."  God, greater than the created whole, yet God present also in the part: God Transcendent guarantees the Plan of our world, and is the Purpose conditioning all lives from the minutest atom, up through all the kingdoms of nature, to man." (The Reappearance of The Christ, p. 144/5)

     "Slowly, there is dawning upon the awakening consciousness of humanity the great paralleling truth of God Immanent -- divinely "pervading" all forms, conditioning from within all kingdoms in nature, expressing innate divinity through human beings. . . . There is a growing and developing belief that Christ is in us, as He was in the Master Jesus, and this belief will alter world affairs and mankind's entire attitude to life." (The Externalisation of The Hierarchy, p. 592)

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