The English language lacks a proper term with which to designate deity. The word God is comparatively meaningless, as it gives no hint of the gender or dignity of Divinity other than merely signifying “good.” Since either a masculine or a feminine term is inappropriate and obviously incomplete, and a neuter term entirely too negative, a word is needed which will express the undivided potencies of both positive and negative in equilibrium.The custom of depicting God either as male or female is the outgrowth of man’s oldest form of worship: phallicism. Masculine and feminine properties are presumed to be positive and negative respectively. Hence God, being an active or positive agent, was conceived to be masculine; nature, being a passive or negative body, was regarded as feminine in that it received into itself and nurtured to maturity the germinal essences of Divine Life the essence of divinity is to be discovered in every plant, animal, mineral, and man... and [he] recognizes the oneness of life manifesting through the diversity of form. this diversity of form is one connected Life Principle, or the Spark of God in all living things [There exists] an underlying divinity in all things.. The proponents of a masculine God declare that in the beginning was activity, the positive cause of existence. On the other hand, the proponents of the pre-eminence of the feminine principle declare that activity first issued from a universal matrix; consequently that which comes forth from the matrix is subordinate to its own origin. To a certain degree the Madonna expresses this concept, for the man child is creation born out of the womb of SPACE – the Holy Mother of Ages.Among many ancient peoples God was considered as being androgynous, and referred to as the Great Father-Mother. When the Creator was represented by an image, various subtle devices were employed to indicate its hermaphroditic nature. The Iswara of the Hindus is depicted with one side of his body male and the other female. In Greek and Roman statuary frequent examples are found of a masculine divinity wearing female garments and vice versa, or a heavily-bearded god may have his hair arranged in a distinctly feminine coiffure. Again, the structure of the face of such deities as Bacchus and Dionysus often shows a sensitive, feminine countenance disguised by a beard or some article of masculine adornment. In other cases the feminine counterpart of the deity is considered as a separate individuality. For this reason each of the gods was declared to have had his consort or feminine aspect of his own being. Thus Mithras, the Persian Light-Savior, is considered to be masculine, but a certain portion of himself divided from the rest becomes Mithra, a feminine and maternal potency. As previously noted, in India each god has his shakti, or feminine part.In spite of the repeated emphasis upon our age of enlightenment, the majority of people still continue the age-honored practice of molding God into a likeness of themselves. The reason for this probably lies in the fact that man, possessing a spark of Divinity within himself, feels his kinship with God and believes himself privileged to rush in where angels fear to tread, and give definition to the undefinable. God being, as Ingersoll so well expressed it, “the noblest work of man,” we find in the attributes of the God people worship, a definite key to their own ethical and philosophic status. It is noticeable that people with puerile intelligences and petty concerns conceive God to be localized as a neighborhood sprite who spends most of his time eavesdropping, and who can afford to ignore universal concerns while he heaps maledictions upon some poor, benighted wretch who did not keep his eyes closed during grace! On the other hand, those who have learned to know something of the greater verities of life worship a growing God. This does not presuppose that God is necessarily increasing, but rather that man’ increasing capacity to comprehend ever reveals more of the stupendous nature of Divinity. As a person approaches a physical object, the object apparently increases in size. The same is true of the mind as it approaches the subject of its consideration. Hence, to the philosopher God extends through the infinitude of time, distance, and thought, and to him it is inconceivable that even for a second Deity should descend into a state less dignified than the all-inclusiveness of its intrinsic nature.The modern religious thinker is no longer inclined to venerate a deity who is simply a highly glorified King George III. In that now vanishing picturesque period of absolute monarchies when fretful and senile princes, arrayed in ridiculous periwigs, ruled by “divine right,” God was invested with all the propensities of the “blood royal,” and the celestial hierarchies were metamorphosed into landed gentry.God is best defined as the first manifestation of Infinite Existence, the limitation of Limitlessness.The subject of philosophic polytheism deserves further attention. Polytheism must not be considered synonymous with the blind adoration of an infinitude of imaginary superhuman beings, but rather as the recognition of a concatenated progression of evolving creatures, each influencing and to a certain degree controlling those inferior to itself, and in turn controlled by those superior to itself. The gods should not be considered as personally directing the destiny of individuals. Rather they are vast centers of radiant force consciously or unconsciously influencing anything that exists or subsists upon their sphere of manifestation. For example, a city does not willfully mold the character of its inhabitants; nevertheless it is an active factor in determining the character of each individual unit of its population. This simile, while possibly not apparent at first thought, is particularly apt, for as cells exist in the human body, so man is but a cell in a larger organism which he pleases to term a god. The cells of the human body may feel a similar veneration for man, who in the light of cell intelligence must be a boundless and infinitely powerful deity.To attempt an analysis of the fabric of even the groundwork of SPACE far exceeds the capacity of any human intellect. Never in the history of philosophy has there been evolved a mind capable of grasping all the multitudinous elements of Being. The world is filled with people who foolishly try to teach or seek to be taught the length, breadth, and thickness of ultimates, when but a moment’s true thinking would demonstrate the fallacy and futility of such effort. Since the groundwork of SPACE – the ultimate abstraction – transcends every faculty and every dimension, it can never be comprehended by a reasoning organism that must necessarily arrive at its conclusions on the basis of faculty and dimension. For the human mind to understand that which is greater than itself is as impossible as for a mere man to swallow the ocean. The effort of the human mind to circumscribe the entirety of manifestation is comparable to a mollusk trying to enclose the sea within its shell. Realizing, therefore, how apropos is the ancient statement that to define Deity is to defile it, we are forced to accept the inevitable conclusion: namely, that the ultimates of beginning and end are alike unknowable. These conclusions are in harmony with the deductions of both Socrates and Buddha.In the remote past the gods walked with men and while the instructors from the invisible planes of Nature were still laboring with the infant humanity of this planet, they chose from among the sons of men the wisest and the truest. These they labored with, preparing them to carry on the work of the gods after the spiritual hierarchies themselves had withdrawn into the invisible worlds. With these specially ordained and illumined sons they left the keys of their great wisdom, which was the knowledge of good and evil. They ordained these anointed and appointed ones to be priests or mediators between themselves (the gods) and that humanity which had not yet developed the eyes which permitted them to gaze into the face of Truth and live.Overshadowed by the divine prerogative, these illumined ones, founded what we now know as the Ancient Mysteries..When we came into this world we retained a small part of divinity. We are part of God — that is why we are capable of finding God within.We are the gods of the atoms that make up ourselves but we are also the atoms of the gods that make up the universe. What weve retained is referred to as the divine spark. It emanates from the energy that empowers the universe and all it contains. The divine spark exists naturally within us, but it has been covered over by this material world, and overcome by the powers within it. The inner search of the Gnostic is to rediscover that lost spark; to care for it and redeem it. It is a personal journey, completely set apart from any creed or dogma. But it can be done. The Ultimate Con Instead of seeing a spiritual conflict between God and the Devil, Gnostics believed in a struggle between a true and unknowable God and a lesser god of creation. The Gnostics made a big distinction between the true God and the creator god of this world. The true God is a spiritual force apart from this world. The Creator God broke away from the spiritual realm to create matter and the physical universe. The universe still contains the divine spark in all its elem ents, but it is masked over and hidden. The Creator God has intentionally covered over this divine spark and the world itself is in darkness. Do the Gnostics recognize a devil? Only in the persona of the Creator God. His kingdom is one of ignorance, evil, and darkness We in fact live in this kingdom. It is matter it self that is evil, being the complete opposite of spirit. This is a hard pill to swallow for those adherents of traditional religions, but it makes sense to many such people when they hear it for the first time The True God — Power in Spirit This God beyond God, as theologian Paul Tillich refers to Him, is referred to as the En Sof (the limitless or boundless) by the Jewish Kabbalists, and is also found in Taoism. Christ also mentions the true God in The Secret Book of John: Concerninghim, the Spirit, it is not fitting to think of him as a God, or that he is of a (particular) sort. For he is more excellent than the gods; he is a dominion over which none rules; for there is none before him, nor does he need them (the gods); he does not even need life, for he is eternal... He is light. He is illimitable, since there is none before him to limit him. [He is] not subject to judgment, since there is none before him to judge. He is not corporeal, he is not incorporeal. He is not great, he is not small. He is nothing at all that exists, but something more excellent than that.The true God, to the Gnostics, dwells beyond all physical reality and matter. He can influence us only through the divine spark, but that is difficult in this heavy,burdensome world of matter. The true God is only powerful in the realm of spirit Spirit—but His presence is clear during great acts of heroism, personal sacrifice, and true kindness. Giving unselfishly and treating others as you yourself would like to be treated are also acts inspired by the true God. This is because no material gains are involved. Nothing of this world is expected as a reward. The reward is in doing something special and meaningful for others (or for yourself). Nothing else is involved.Spirit is the positive manifestation of SPACE; Matter is the negative manifestation of SPACE. Spirit and Matter exist together in SPACE. SPACE, Spirit and Matter are the first Trinity, with SPACE the Father, Spirit the Son, and Matter the Holy Ghost..The Gnostics held that human nature mirrors the duality found in the world. In part it was made by the false creator and in part it consists of the light of the True God. Within the human dwells a “divine spark”, a spirit that is older than the created world and all in it. Much of the time we are ignorant of the divine spark resident within us. To awaken to the recognition of this presence involves overcoming powerful obstacles which seem to be built into our own nature and into the environment within which we exist. Gnostic wisdom has often alluded to the possibility that these obstacles may in some ways be connected with the powers that manage certain aspects of the universe, and whose dominion over us might be threatened by our Gnosis. The Apostle Paul the Gnostic Paul”) may have referred to this circumstance when he wrote that we struggle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. Death releases the divine spark from its lowly prison, but such release may be only temporary unless liberating knowledge has come to the human while still on earth. The early Church attacked Gnosticism vigorously and relentlessly, recognizing these mystical philosophers as being the most formidable adversaries to the temporal power of Christian theology.Truth is God as fact. In other words, Deity is the consummation of every condition and extension of energy conceivable by man. Thus, God, in terms of time or extension, is Eternity. God, in terms of emotion, is Divine Love; and God, in terms of fact, is absolute Truth. To know Truth, therefore, one must know God and to know God man must have discovered divinity in all of its manifestations and have become one with that divinity.The search for Truth is life. The realization of Truth is illumination. The practice of Truth is virtue. Truth is the Hermetic medicine, the universal panacea, the balm of Gilead which cures all of the diseases which are caused by ignorance.By philosophy, we come to know that we live, move and have our being in a sea of Divine energy, supported by the Infinite Wisdom, and nourished by the Infinite Life. Energy as capacity or capability is also opportunity. As the infinite opportunity to do, it is by reflex the opportunity to be or to accomplish through action. Energy is that “magical agent” of the old transcendentalists, by the proper use of which, we build character, and through the perversion of which, we destroy ourselves and our world. Virtue and vice are manifestations of our capacity for action. No man thinks, feels or moves of himself but because of God (energy) within him. Every thought, emotion and action is a sacred mystery and not a meaningless accident, as materialists would have us think. Wisdom arises out of the right use of mental energy; virtue out of the right use of emotional energy; and health out of the balance and integrity of physical energy. Life is a spiritual adventure in the use of divine forces and energies. He who uses them well lives well and is himself in a state of well-being.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 08:15:32 +0000
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