Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Spring 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard,  "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 111:2, pg 2

It is said that a sign of the turning of the age is that the old gods are mocked.

We certainly see this happen in classical antiquity. We date this period from roughly 700 BC to AD 500, an era that marked the height of Greco-Roman civilization. But it was also the final flowering of a Mediterranean civilization that stretched back millennia, through the Bronze Age and beyond. In the final period, the old gods were increasingly mocked.

In the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher Xenophanes remarked that if horses had gods, they would make them look like horses—a jibe at the beautiful but anthropomorphic statues of the Olympian deities. Later on, in the first century of the Christian era, someone (probably the younger Seneca) wrote a satire mocking the Roman deification of dead emperors entitled the Apocolocyntosis (or “Pumpkinification”) of Claudius. Seneca jabs at the gods themselves: Janus, with his two faces, is described as “a brilliant fellow, with eyes on the back of his head.” The satirist Lucian continued this tradition of mocking the gods in the second century.

By the fourth century, Christianity was in the ascent, and popular allegiance to the old gods dropped remarkably fast—over only two or three generations. In her brilliant but disturbing book The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey shows that the surviving statues of the Greek and Roman gods are broken—with arms, noses, and heads missing—because they were defaced by the Christians.

Once the idols are smashed, nobody puts them back together again.

We see the same thing in the present. We can trace modern sarcasm toward religion at least as far back as Voltaire in the eighteenth century. The process advanced rapidly in the mid‒twentieth century. Today God, Jesus, Christianity, the Bible, and the churches are ridiculed in a way that recently would have been unthinkable in any quarter.

A person coming to our era from even sixty or seventy years ago would be incredulous to see such things, but we shrug them off, and even laugh ourselves. The old gods are mocked. One century’s sacrilege is another century’s comedy.

These upheavals in the religious sensibilities of humanity are upsetting to conservatives, but they illustrate one supreme truth: all images of God are merely images. This holds as true for theological concepts as it does for paintings and statues. God, the Absolute, does not change, but our concepts of it can and must.

 Xenophanes’ jibe cuts both ways. Yes, we are bound to conceive of the divine in anthropomorphic terms, because we are humans. But precisely because we are humans, we must be authentic to our own experience as humans—and that appears to include viewing the divine in human terms and concepts. We can leave the religion of horses to horses.

“For in heaven they keep changing dynasties,” wrote the American author James Branch Cabell. Since our concept of our own humanity changes and (one hopes) evolves over time, so will our images and concepts of the divine. This process will include breaks and disruptions that are likely to be painful for many.

My British friends Cherry Gilchrist and Gila Zur have produced The Tree of Life Oracle, a fortune-telling game based on the Kabbalah. One of the cards in the deck is “The Veil,” and this is its interpretation:

When the veil descended, men revered what it covered. And as time went on it seemed to hide more and more and was revered still more. Then, when it was heavy with age, young men fresh and arrogant demanded the removal of the veil and demanded to see what was hidden. For they said that whatever is hidden from the people cannot be for the common good. In the thunder and lightning of indignation, the veil was torn down. Nothing lay beyond. At first the young men were startled, but then they laughed jubilantly at the absurd fraud they thought they had uncovered. And the old men grieved, cursing the young men because they had destroyed the veil.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Spring 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Sorkhabi, Rasoul,  "Moses and the Shepherd: Rumi’s Parable on Two Approaches to God" Quest 111:2, pg 36-37

By Rasoul Sorkhabi

During the last decade of his life, “having fully burned” (in his own words) in the ecstasy of life, love and poetry, Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian Sufi poet, composed a seven-volume book of parables in verse. He called it Masnavi Maa’navi: “Rhyming Couplets on Spiritual Matters.” In the second volume of this book, Rumi narrates the story of Moses and the shepherd, consisting of 192 lines. I first read this story in my Persian literature book in the 1970s as a young boy growing up in Iran. The story is simple, but its practical understanding takes on a life of its own as one lives long enough to encounter various cultures, faiths, and peoples. Seven centuries after its composition, in our age of globalization, the parable of Moses and the shepherd illuminates more than before the question of how (or perhaps how-less) to approach God. What makes it more significant is that unlike many of the parables in the Masnavi, which Rumi borrowed from other literary sources before him, this story appears to come from the creative imagination of Rumi himself. This story must have had a special significance in his mind.

One day Moses was walking along a country road when he heard a shepherd singing to God: “O God, where are you? Present yourself to me. I want to devote my entire life to you. I will sew shoes for you, comb your hair, wash your clothes, groom you of lice, give you milk to drink, kiss your hands, massage your feet, and at bedtime make your bed.”  

Moses was stunned to hear these words. He went over to the shepherd and asked, “Whom are you talking to?” The shepherd answered, “I am singing to the one who created this earth and all the stars above.”

Moses said, “What nonsense! What blasphemy! Shut your mouth at once. Do you think God is your old uncle or your sheep? Shoes and clothes are for humans. Even humans will be offended if you address them improperly: if you call a man by a female name or vice versa, he or she will rebuke you. Don’t talk foolishly. God is not born, nor does he give birth to, as humans do. Shut your mouth before the fire of God’s wrath engulfs the world.”

The shepherd became very sad and departed with a cry. Soon after, a revelation came to Moses from God: “O Moses, what have you done? You separated one of my creatures from me. I have sent you to unite, not to divide. I have given different languages to different peoples. What the shepherd was singing was unpleasant to you, but it was pleasant to me. People address and praise me in various tongues. Their words do not really glorify me, but only purify them. I do not size up the appearance or the words; I look inside and see the heart. The fire of the heart burns thoughts and produces fiery words. O Moses, lovers are not the same as those who merely observe rituals. The religion of lovers is separate from all forms of religion. For lovers, God is religion itself.”

Moses was made restless by this revelation, for it poured a new vision into his heart. He ran after the shepherd and found him. “Good news, my friend,” Moses said. “I have brought you a new teaching: when you are addressing God, let your heart sing; do not limit your words by rules and customs. Your apparent blasphemy coming from your heart is very religion itself, for it carries the light of the heart. Sing to God in whatever words that are sweet to your heart.”

The shepherd looked at Moses with gratitude and said, “Moses, that’s past; I have passed it too. Your scolding made the horse of my soul fly higher—above than the earth and the stars. Now I have reached the speechless depths of my heart.”

In interpreting the story of Moses and the shepherd, Sufis say that when we think about God, there are two approaches: One is tash’bih (“likening”): relating to God through analogue, symbol, and imagery. The other is tan’zih (“aloofness and purity”): dissociating God from any image, symbol, or physical resemblance. These two approaches have been articulated as those of a personal versus impersonal, immanent versus transcendental God. The first path is psychological faith of a person who feels an intimate connection to God through symbols and images. The second path is philosophical faith in an abstract and aloof concept of God. There are valid points and truthfulness in both of these approaches. If God is infinite and omnipresent, then he or she can also be approached through a physical symbol dear and near to our heart. If God is almighty and universal, he or she can also be personal. The infinite always contains finite things as well. The higher envelops the ones below, just as the deep ocean supports all the shallow waters.         

Humans need both of these paths to God; personal, through symbols, and transcendent. But as Rumi illustrates, the danger is that the follower of one path may think that other paths are wrong and thus confine God to his or her own lens. Someone whose faith in God is crystallized in a particular symbol or ritual may dismiss other symbols and rituals (or no symbols and no rituals) as invalid.

In Rumi’s story, both Moses, the prophet, and the shepherd, a simple village man, are awakened; they both come to recognize each other’s approach.  This realization, this mutual understanding, is possible only if we are sincere and our heart is open, because both the personal God and the impersonal God reside in our heart.

Rasoul Sorkhabi, PhD, is a professor at the University of Utah and director of the Rumi Poetry Club. He has lived in Iran, India, Japan, and the United States. He has published a translation of Rumi’s quatrains, Rumi: The Art of Loving (2012). This article is his fifth contribution to Quest. One of his previous articles, “Garden of Secrets: The Real Rumi,” appeared in the summer 2010 issue.

Printed in the  Spring 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kinney, Jay,  "Imagining God Imagining the World: When Either-Or Becomes Both-And" Quest 111:2, pg 33-35

By Jay Kinney

Longtime readers with strong memories may recall that I’ve written here before about my on-again, off-again, love affair with Islam, specifically with its mystical branch of Sufism. As I related previously (see “Losing My Religion” in Quest, summer 2009), in the years after the 9/11 terror attack and the hard-to-ignore rise of violent jihadism, I had real trouble continuing to resonate with a set of religious metaphors and practices that could also birth obscenities such as suicide bombers yelling “!Allahu akbar!” (“Allah is great!”) as they blew themselves up while targeting wedding parties and the like.

I knew, deep down, that such sad souls didn’t so much represent Islam as betray it, but that didn’t prevent me from having a strong emotional revulsion that alienated me from a spiritual path that I had been treading for more than a decade. But time heals all wounds (or at least softens reactive states), and over the last few years, roughly coinciding with the pandemic, I’ve found myself heeding an inner call to get back on track and quit letting a bunch of fundamentalist maniacs cut off my nose to spite my face.

To mix scriptural sources, I felt like the proverbial prodigal son welcomed home again after straying far afield. It’s not that I had stopped sensing that there was One God with a multitude of faces, but my sense of connection had gotten stretched almost to the breaking point. Then, as if I had jumped off a bridge wearing Allah’s bungee cord, I came bouncing back, ready for another round.

All these metaphors would seem to imply an externality to God that I don’t really profess. There is a Qur’anic verse (50:16) where Allah says, “It is We who have created man, and We know what his innermost self whispers within him: for We are closer to him than his jugular vein.” Indeed, when I’ve felt most connected to God, I have experienced it as an interior resonance or state. So, in a way, my sense of alienation or distance from God was deep within myself. Allah might indeed be closer than my jugular vein, but if I wasn’t feeling that or wasn’t encouraging myself to reach out to that hidden presence, I couldn’t exactly blame it on terrorists halfway around the globe, much less on Allah Himself.

* * *

For much of the time that I’ve been engaged with Sufism, my main guide has been Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, the great mystical shaikh (master) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose philosophy of the Unity of Being teaches that the Absolute, the indescribable intelligence and creative force that sustains all of creation, expresses itself such that all beings are particularizations of the Divine Being, and that God is within us and we are within God, both at the same time. Ibn ‘Arabi scholars note the similarity of this perspective to that of Advaita Vedanta or of Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart.

However, it is one thing to accept this teaching as a grand abstraction and something else to experience it as our underlying reality. During my period of alienation, I found it beyond my capacity to comprehend that, in some real sense, the violent jihadi terrorist is no less a manifestation of God than anyone or anything else. For many of us, this would seem to be one claim too far. Yet is it really?

If we view the natural world as a core manifestation of divine order, not just a clockwork churning of DNA and survival of the fittest, then we must struggle to accept that the powerful lion taking down the beautiful gazelle to feast upon is not an evil activity, but a manifestation of the chain of being.

Carnivores are acting from their innate instincts, which lead them to kill and eat those further down the food chain. They would seem not to have much of a say in the matter. We humans, however, are said to have free will. While we are answerable to a higher morality, we are quite capable of ignoring God’s presence within ourselves—and within others—and talking ourselves into any number of evil acts under the delusion that we are following God’s will. Sunnis attacking Shi’ites and vice versa would be just one example of this capacity. Allah may be at the core of our own being, but the heart is a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to function properly, and while mercy and compassion are cardinal virtues, they must be consciously practiced.

Of course the Sufi belief in the combined transcendence (tanzih) and immanence (tashbih) of God is not shared by all Muslims, by any means. Many jurists and theologians, as well as common believers, emphasize Allah’s absolute uniqueness and transcendence above all creation. God is thus rendered into an Other who shares no human attributes and is largely unknowable, except through the Qur’an, the hadiths (sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), and various schools of jurisprudence. At its most extreme, this monotheism rejects any knowledge of or belief in God’s immanence as a form of shirk or idolatry.

Paradoxically, such austere conservatism does not preclude many Muslims from praying for divine intercession or favors in the smallest details of their lives. The common phrase In sha’a-llah (“If God wills”) is invoked in speaking of future events, with the assumption that Allah has the final say on whether some hoped-for outcome will come to pass.

I used to think that this notion of God’s involvement in every aspect of one’s life was that of an Orwellian busybody, but I now think that perhaps I was just running into the limits of my own powers of imagination. If, metaphorically speaking, Allah is (at least in part) the outpouring of love and natural order from the heart of Creation, whose infinite Being sustains all that is, we are not talking about anything that can be fully conceived of, much less described. Exit science and enter poetry.

I’m reminded of the scene in a 1930s Our Gang episode where one of the little rascals is about to purloin a freshly baked cookie from the kitchen when he is brought up short by the juxtaposition of two proverbs framed on the wall: “God helps those who help themselves,” and “Thou shalt not steal.”

Religion in general is full of these contradictions and paradoxes.

* * *

In my youth, I was raised in a sincerely Christian home, so the Ten Commandments were drummed into me in Sunday school. “Thou shalt not kill” received considerable emphasis. I was fine with that, as I had no plans to kill anyone—even to the point of initially registering as a conscientious objector when I reached military draft age.

But as I took an interest in history, I discovered that while the Sixth Commandment seemed fairly straightforward, over time  it had acquired a great many loopholes, including that it was OK to kill heretics, witches, heathen, other Christians who disagreed with you (such as Catholics versus Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War).

So it has been with Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and nearly every other expression of faith in the global village. Spiritual precepts or scriptural interpretations often find themselves in conflict, enabling those searching for scapegoats to do their dirty work while posturing as defenders of the faith.

If God is indeed personal, one might be led to think that He is dozing off at the wheel while the car is hurtling over the cliff. Yet another portion of Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings eases us back from such a conclusion.

This is his doctrine that each of us has a unique interface with our Lord (Rabb). This says that Allah has a great number of attributes and that they all come into play as life continually unfolds. These attributes are called the Divine Names, symbolized by the Ninety-nine Names of Allah (though there is nothing ironclad about that number). For each of us, our Rabb displays or manifests as a unique and appropriate combination of Allah’s names. Through familiarizing ourselves with these names, through meditating upon them or chanting them (dhkir), we can begin to sense those which are especially acting upon us or through us.

Similarly, through our relations with others in daily life, we can begin to see their manifestation of the divine names interacting with ours. This can hopefully expand our awareness of Allah as our Rabb relating with theirs. As ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji, a noted student of Ibn ‘Arabi, put it bluntly: “In reality, there is no knowledge of God by another than God; for another than God is not.”

The traditional goal of such shifts in awareness and identity is for the Sufi to be absorbed or “annihilated” in God (fana), a state that is often accompanied by a feeling of great release from one’s ego, and over time being able to reside in a state of subsistence (baqa), where one can function in the daily world in this dual awareness. This is often referred to as “dying before you die.”

Not all of the divine names and attributes are comforting, although some Sufis tend to focus on just the beautiful ones. As a Sufi friend put it recently, “Allah isn’t only a teddy bear.” Allah is both the Expander (Al-Basit) and the Abaser (Al-Khafid); both the Honorer (Al-Mu’izz) and the Dishonorer (Al-Muzill). For every “beautiful” name, it is said, there is a contrasting “majestic” name, —one that exhibits Allah’s power and judgment. The more names we learn and are able to see as operative in our lives or in those of others, the wider our acceptance of What Is.

This is not to say that the blowing up of innocent people is something to be accepted or excused. I still find it horrifying and deeply disturbing. But I no longer wish to grant cruel and ignorant sociopaths the power to drive me away from a spiritual path that has nurtured me for a good portion of my adult life or from an intuition of a God both within and without who is closer to me than my jugular vein.

* * *

Everyone is born with different talents and capacities, and the circumstances and challenges of our lives may enable us to flourish or might cause us to strike out in bitterness and anger. A hadith qudsi (a direct message from Allah through Muhammad) says, “My earth and My heavens cannot encompass Me, but the heart of My believing servant encompasses Me.” That may be true, but of course it is no guarantee that the heart will realize what is hidden within itself.

In describing my renewed connection with Islam and Sufism, I do not intend to imply that the path I am on is the correct or appropriate one for everyone. It does resonate for me, however.     Interestingly, Ibn ‘Arabi, in explicating his philosophy of the Unity of Being, pointed out that every country or culture has its own god and religion, and that if the Absolute is truly the ground of all Being, then all these gods and religions are manifestations of the same Source. As the great mystic described his experience of this reality, he confessed the following: “My heart has become receptive of all forms: it is a pasture for gazelles, and a monastery for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Qurʾan.”

May we all strive for such a realization.

Jay Kinney was the founder and publisher of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. His lifelong studies in mysticism and esotericism were nourished by his contacts with the TSA dating back over fifty years ago.

Printed in the  Spring 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Craig, Carol,  "My Journey to Redefine My Concept of God" Quest 111:2, pg 25-27

By Carol Craig

Man’s conception of divinity rises with his growth.
—Clara Codd

After I became an adult and left behind my staunch Southern Baptist roots, I was unsure who or what God is. Inside myself, I have somehow always known that there must be a higher power, and I have always felt a connection with Jesus. But in what form God exists, I had no clue.

Theosophy says that each of us is on our own individual path, and more and more knowledge is revealed to us as we become increasingly capable of understanding. What we believe is our own personal truth at that given time.

Growing up, I was a devout little Baptist girl. I was told that God is love; God is merciful; God cares about all his children and wants all of us to be happy and healthy. But I was also told stories about God’s anger and judgments and heard that upon my death, he would decide whether or not to let me into heaven or condemn me to hell. I never liked that aspect of God, but never told anyone.

Once I began to think for myself, I left behind my belief that God was sitting on a throne in the sky somewhere, judging me. I didn’t want to worship a vengeful God. I can also remember wondering as an adolescent, if God is loving and merciful, why would he be responsible for the torment that his Son had to experience? And of course the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people consumed my thoughts for years.

Despite these questions, in my early twenties, when I married and had my first child, I remember how important it was to me to raise my children in the Southern Baptist church. Even so, I began to wonder why someone else’s blood had to atone for my sins. Am I not responsible for my own actions? Besides, don’t I sometimes commit the same sin over again, even if it is supposed to be washed away by the blood of Jesus? Why would I continue to commit a sin that my beloved Jesus died for? All those teachings of my youth stopped making sense to me.

Out of loyalty to my upbringing, I remained in the Southern Baptist church, even teaching Sunday School when my children were young. It wasn’t until my midthirties, when I found myself unhappy in my personal life, that I left the Southern Baptists. Wasn’t God supposed to love me and always want what is best for me? He certainly had not made or kept me happy and in a peaceful state of mind. Where was he? I was having a crisis of faith.

Thus began my own personal search to find peace and happiness. That led me to the Disciples of Christ church, which turned out to be a good transition church for me, because the Disciples of Christ talked about the familiar Bible stories, but they seemed to me to be much more liberal thinkers about life in general: they didn’t tell me I would burn in hell for one thing or another, and I immediately felt comfortable about that. I became very good friends with the minister, and we used to have long, in-depth conversations. I discovered that for the first time in my life, I had the courage to admit that I was questioning my faith and even to disagree with him occasionally. He didn’t seem to like it when I did that, but I give him credit for listening and allowing me to express myself. In any event, I found the courage to admit my doubts and share them with other people.

At first, after leaving my fundamental roots, I was afraid that I was becoming an atheist. I never wanted to disbelieve in God, because I knew in my heart that I had an experience with something unexplainable when I was twelve years old. It was a voice inside, speaking to me about my love for Jesus, which had become so strong when I was a child. I believe I was experiencing what scholars of mysticism have called an awakening of my soul.

I’m a practical person and need to understand and relate to what I profess to believe. Coming to a satisfactory understanding of the meaning of God took me well over twenty years. Perhaps you are luckier than me and have resolved this long ago. Perhaps it’s not even important to you. While I assume that most Theosophists have already figured this out for themselves, it has been a quest of mine for most of my adult life.

My search soon led to the “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce. I could relate to Cayce’s story, particularly his struggle with the faith of his youth as new possibilities began to be revealed to him. I was assured then that I was on a quest and there was no turning back. I began reading self-help books. One book would lead me to another book or to a specific group, until one day a friend in Atlanta invited me to a meeting of the Theosophical Society.

“What is that?” I asked.

“You’ll just have to come to a meeting and find out for yourself,” I was told. I did, and that expression, “It was like coming home” finally made sense to me.

Soon after starting to attend regular TS meetings in Atlanta, I heard of the Masters for the first time. While researching the overwhelming amount of information on the Masters, I kept being reminded of the question I had held for years: just who, or what, is God?

The Southern Baptists had told me that God is love, and they also spoke about brotherly love—to love my neighbor as myself and to do unto others as I would do unto myself. But now Theosophy was talking about Brotherhood and Unity with All That Is.

After finding the TS in Atlanta, I learned that Theosophy encourages open-minded inquiry in order to understand the wisdom of the ages, respect the unity of all life, and help people explore individual spiritual self-transformation. I liked that! Furthermore, I was told that studying Theosophy helps us to realize that we live in a purposeful universe, that human existence has deep meaning, and that we are responsible for our own thoughts and actions. This made sense to me!

I began an extensive reading of Theosophical material on the subjects of God, Deity, Divinity, Brotherhood, and Unity. In An Outline of Theosophy, C.W. Leadbeater spoke of God as

the great Guiding Force or Deity of our own solar system, whom philosophers have called the Logos. Of him is true all that we have ever heard predicated of God—all that is good, that is—not the blasphemous conceptions sometimes put forward, ascribing to Him human vices. But all that has ever been said of the love, the wisdom, the power, the patience and compassion, the omniscience, the omnipresence, the omnipotence—all of this, and much more, is true of the Logos of our system. Verily “in Him we live and move and have our being,” not as a poetical expression, but (strange as it may seem) as a definite scientific fact; and so, when we speak of the Deity our first thought is naturally of the Logos.

We do not vaguely hope that He may be; we do not even believe as a matter of faith that He is; we simply know it as we know that the sun shines, for to the trained and developed clairvoyant investigator this Mighty Existence is a definite certainty. Not that any merely human development can enable us directly to see Him, but that unmistakable evidence of His action and His purpose surrounds us on every side as we study the life of the unseen world, which is in reality, only the higher part of this . . . That He is within us as well as without us, or, in other words, the man himself is in essence divine, is another great truth which, though those who are blind to all but the outer and lower world may still argue about it, is an absolute certainty to the student of the higher side of life . . . the inherent divinity is a fact, and that in it resides the assurance of the ultimate return of every human being to the divine level. (Leadbeater, 22‒24)

Leadbeater goes on to tell us that our stress, struggles, and sorrows are part of an ordered progress, that the law of evolution is presenting us with these experiences as a way of developing within ourselves the qualities we most need. This too makes sense to me. This sounds merciful and loving.

Next I turned to The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett. In letter 88, Koot Hoomi says there is no such thing as a personal or impersonal God in our planetary system and that the “idea of God” is an acquired notion (Chin, 270). How true: my early concept of God was certainly acquired!

So we have established what God is not. Even though I understand this concept and profess to believe it, I still am not sure who or what this “inherent divinity” is.

In her book Ancient Wisdom: Modern Insight, Shirley Nicholson states:

The Universal Mind is the first manifested principle. According to The Secret Doctrine, the separation of the poles takes place in a pre-cosmic state which is halfway between the nonbeing of the Absolute and the beginning of the manifested universe. Divine Mind is “the first production of spirit and matter,” and is “projected into the phenomenal world as the first aspect of the changeless Absolute.” It provides the interface between spirit and matter which is necessary for their integration in the world of form . . .

H.P.B. refers to Universal Mind as “the one impersonal Great Architect of the Universe.” However, she stresses that this “architect” is not outside the Cosmos, imposing order on it; it is not a creator apart from creation like a sculptor shaping clay. Rather the Divine Mind is intrinsic in nature, an innate part of natural processes, giving coherence and intelligent inner direction to natural forms. (Nicholson, 108‒09)

In his book Theosophy Simplified, Irving S. Cooper comments:

Each solar system [is] the physical body of a vast Intelligence, each star cluster the form of a still mightier Consciousness, the whole being but cells and organs in the body of God, the Universal Consciousness. Then we know that we must cast aside forever all our childish little ideas of God as a magnified human being and strive to think of Him as the Universal Life, the Limitless Consciousness, the Eternal Love, the very source and heart of all that is. “Everything that is, is God.” (Cooper, 82)

In Clara Codd’s Theosophy as the Masters See It, she quotes G.K. Chesterton as saying, “‘God is the great paradox.’ He cannot really be a person such as you and I, or there would be a universe outside of and apart from him. Yet at the same time he is the essence of personality, as he is the essence of everything else” (Codd, 49).

In The Ancient Wisdom, Annie Besant tells us:

The mental plane is that which reflects the Universal Mind in Nature, the plane which in our little system corresponds with that of the Great Mind in the Kosmos . . . Mahat, the Third LOGOS, or Divine Creative Intelligence, the Brahma of the Hindus, the Manjusri of the Northern Buddhist, the Holy Spirit of the Christians. In its higher regions exist all the archetypal ideas which are now in course of concrete evolution, and in its lower the working out of these into successive forms, to be duly reproduced in the astral and physical worlds. Its materials are capable of combining under the impulse of thought vibrations and can give rise to any combination which thought can construct. As iron can be made into a sword for slaying or a spade for digging, so can mind-stuff be shaped into thought-forms that help or that injure; the vibrating life of the Thinker shapes the materials around him, and according to his volitions so is his work. In that region, thought and action, will and deed, are one and the same thing—spirit-matter here becomes the obedient servant of the life, adapting itself to every creative motion. (Besant, 140‒41)

In her essay “The Unity of Deity,” H.P. Blavatsky writes:

Esotericism, pure and simple, speaks of no personal God; therefore are we considered as Atheists. But, in reality, Occult Philosophy, as a whole, is based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God, the Absolute Deity; and if It itself is not speculated upon, as being too sacred and yet incomprehensible as a Unit to the finite intellect, yet the entire philosophy is based upon Its divine Powers as being the source of all that breathes and lives and has its existence. In ever ancient religion the One was demonstrated by the many . . .

 for in this collection of divine personalities, or rather of symbols personified, dwells the One God, the God One, that God, which, in India, is said to have no Second. (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 569)

 Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy consists of a dialogue between an “Enquirer” and a “Theosophist.” At one point, the Enquirer asks the Theosophist if she believes in God and if so, whether it is the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and the Creator. The Theosophist replies, “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.”

When the Enquirer asks for reasons, the Theosophist states that if the God of Christians is called infinite and absolute, “then 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 . . . This is a philosophical, and a logical absurdity.”

The Theosophist denies that Theosophy entails atheism “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” (Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 61‒63).

When the Enquirer asks the Theosophist if she believes in prayer or prays, the Theosophist replies: “We do not. We act, instead of talking.”

The Enquirer asks if there is any other kind of prayer. The response is “Most decidedly; we call it will-prayer, and it is rather an internal command than a petition . . . directed to ‘Our Father in Heaven’—in its esoteric meaning . . . ‘Father’ is in man himself.”

The Enquirer wants to know if Theosophy makes of man a God. The reply: “In our sense, the inner man is the only God we can have cognizance of . . . We call our ‘Father in Heaven’ that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness.”

Prayer, according to the Theosophist, is not a petition but a mystery, “an occult process by which finite and conditioned thoughts and desires, unable to be assimilated by the absolute spirit which is unconditioned, are translated into spiritual wills and the will; such process being called ‘spiritual transmutation.’ The intensity of our ardent aspirations changes prayer into the ‘philosopher’s stone’, or that which changes lead into pure gold . . . Our ‘will-prayer’ becomes the active or creative force, producing effects according to our desire . . . Will-Power becomes a living power” (Blavatsky, Key, 67‒68).

To this the Enquirer asks: “Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process bringing about physical results?” The Theosophist replies: “I do.”

Clara Codd tells us: “We cannot see the divine life except as it manifests in all around us” (Codd, 51). When I meditate and through my intuition, I hear that still, small voice I first heard at the age of twelve. I now see God in nature when I’m doing yardwork, or in my daily life—even when I’m cleaning the kitchen. I now see God in the smile or touch of someone I love, or even from a stranger. I recognize God in the kind actions of others. And I see God in the faces of my grandchildren.

Now I acknowledge that it is the voice of my Higher Self, the voice of that part of me that is part of the unity of All that is, the voice of the Divinity within me—and I listen. My quest has led me to my current personal truth that God is just a name or label for the Universal Consciousness, Universal Mind, Universal Energy that connects all of humanity with All That Is. Collective consciousness is made up of all of us: our thoughts and desires. We are a Brotherhood of One with All that Is.

Namaste: The Divine within me recognizes and honors the Divine within you.

Sources

Emphasis in all quotations is from the original.

Besant, Annie. The Ancient Wisdom. 2d ed. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 2015.

Blavatsky, H.P. Collected Writings, vol. 12. Edited by Boris de Zirkoff. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980.

———. The Key to Theosophy. Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical University Press, 2002 [1889].

Chin, Vicente Hao Jr., ed. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence. Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 1998.

Codd, Clara M. Theosophy as the Masters See It. Rev. ed. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 2000.

Cooper, Irving S. Theosophy Simplified. Wheaton: Quest, 2000 [1915].

Ellwood, Robert. Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages. Wheaton: Quest, 1986.

Leadbeater, C.W. An Outline of Theosophy. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1902.

Mills, Joy. The One True Adventure: Theosophy and the Quest for Meaning. Wheaton: Quest, 2008.

———. Reflections on an Ageless Wisdom. Wheaton: Quest, 2010.

Nicholson, Shirley. Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight. Wheaton: Quest, 1985.

Carol Craig found Theosophy while living in Atlanta in 1995. She became a charter member of the Phoenix, Arizona, study center in 2000 and sponsored the revival of the Wichita study center in 2018, where she serves as secretary.