What is God
- A View of a Master of the Wisdom Letter No. 10 - (Transcribed from a
copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. Editor ) and which appeared in The Mahatma
Letters to A.P.Sinnett Hume's article appeared in the November "The
Theosophist".
NOTES BY MAHATMA K.H. ON A "PRELIMINARY
CHAPTER" HEADED "GOD" BY HUME, INTENDED TO PREFACE AN EXPOSITION
OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY (ABRIDGED).
Received at Simla, 1881-? '82.
Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe
in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital G. Our
philosophy falls under the definition of Hobbes. It is preeminently the
science of effects by their causes and of causes by their effects, and since it
is also the science of things deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines
it, before we admit any such principle we must know it, and have no right to
admit even its possibility. Your whole explanation is based upon one solitary
admission made simply for argument's sake in October last. You were told that
our knowledge was limited to this our solar system: ergo as philosophers who
desired to remain worthy of the name we could not either deny or affirm the
existence of what you termed a supreme, omnipotent, intelligent being of some
sort beyond the limits of that solar system. But if such an existence is not
absolutely impossible, yet unless the uniformity of nature's
law breaks at those limits we maintain that it is highly improbable.
Nevertheless we deny most emphatically the
position of agnosticism in this direction, and as regards the solar system. Our
doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never
teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as
philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives,
and we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or
impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Ishwar is
the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. The
word "God" was invented to designate the unknown cause of those
effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them, and
since we claim and that we are able to prove what we claim -- i.e. the
knowledge of that cause and causes we are in a position to maintain there is no
God or Gods behind them.
What is God - A View of a Master of the
Wisdom –
The idea of God is not an innate but an
acquired notion, and we have but one thing in common with theologies -- we
reveal the infinite. But while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed from
the infinite and limitless space, duration and motion, material, natural,
sensible and known (to us at least) cause, the theists assign them spiritual,
super-natural and unintelligible an un-known causes. The God of the Theologians
is simply and imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach expressed it -- a
power which has never yet manifested itself. Our chief aim is to deliver
humanity of this nightmare, to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk
in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for
countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery. Pantheistic we
may be called -- agnostic NEVER. If people are willing to accept and to regard
as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so
and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say
with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance
than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his fourteenth
proposition, "practer Deum neque dari neque concepi potest
substantia" -- and thus become Pantheists . . . . who but a Theologian
nursed on mystery and the most absurd super-naturalism can imagine a self
existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent outside the manifested
boundless universe. The word infinite is but a negative which excludes the idea
of bounds. It is evident that a being independent and omnipresent cannot be
limited by anything which is outside of himself; that there can be nothing
exterior to himself -- not even vacuum, then where is there room for matter?
for that manifested universe even though the latter limited. If we ask the
theist is your God vacuum, space or matter, they will reply no. And yet they
hold that their God penetrates matter though he is not himself matter. When we
speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of
every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with
matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. -- hence is material, is
matter itself. How can intelligence proceed or emanate from non-intelligence --
you kept asking last year. How could a highly intelligent humanity, man the
crown of reason, be evolved out of blind unintelligent law or force! But once
we reason on that line, I may ask in my turn, how could congenital idiots,
non-reasoning animals, and the rest of "creation" have been created
by or evoluted from, absolute Wisdom, if the latter is a thinking intelligent
being, the author and ruler of the Universe? How? says Dr. Clarke in his
examination of the proof of the existence of the Divinity. "God who hath
made the eye, shall he not see? God who hath made the ear shall he not
hear?" But according to this mode of reasoning they would have to admit
that in creating an idiot God is an idiot; that he who made so many irrational
beings, so many physical and moral monsters, must be an irrational being. . . .
.
. . . . We are not Adwaitees, but our
teaching respecting the one life is identical with that of the Adwaitee with
regard to Parabrahm. And no true philosophically brained Adwaitee will ever
call himself an agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical in
every respect with the universal life and soul -- the macrocosm is the
microcosm and he knows that there is no God apart from himself, no creator as
no being. Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on it and become
agnostics. . . . . Were we to admit that even the highest Dyan Chohans are
liable to err under a delusion, then there would be no reality for us indeed
and the occult sciences would be as great a chimera as that God. If there is an
absurdity in denying that which we do not know it is still more extravagant to
assign to it unknown laws.
According to logic "nothing" is
that of which everything can truly be denied and nothing can truly be affirmed.
The idea therefore either of a finite or infinite nothing is a contradiction in
terms. And yet according to theologians "God, the self existent being is a
most simple, unchangeable, incorruptible being; without parts, figure, motion,
divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter. For all such
things so plainly and necessarily imply finiteness in their very notion and are
utterly inconsistent with complete infinity." Therefore the God here
offered to the adoration of the XIXth century lacks every quality upon which
man's mind is capable of fixing any judgment. What is this in fact but a being
of whom they can affirm nothing that is not instantly contradicted. Their own
Bible their Revelation destroys all the moral perceptions they heap upon him,
unless indeed they call those qualities perfections that every other man's
reason and common sense call imperfections, odious vices and brutal wickedness.
Nay more he who reads our Buddhist scriptures written for the superstitious
masses will fail to find in them a demon so vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so
stupid as the celestial tyrant upon whom the Christians prodigally lavish their
servile worship and on whom their theologians heap those perfections that are
contradicted on every page of their Bible. Truly and veritably your theology
has created her God but to destroy him piecemeal. Your church is the fabulous
Saturn, who begets children but to devour them.
(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 proposition that there
can be, even in a boundless and eternal universe -- two infinite eternal and
omni-present existences.
(2) Matter we know to be eternal, i.e.,
having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that
which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily -- and
therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the
accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us
matter (or 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,
i.e., 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 cannot regard him
as either eternal or infinite or yet self existing. We refuse to admit a being
or an existence 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, i.e., 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 Dyan Chohans, is
a faculty that can appertain but to organized or animated being -- however
imponderable or rather invisible the materials of their organizations.
Intelligence requires the necessity of thinking; to think one must have ideas;
ideas suppose 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 theologian we would enquire what
was there to prevent his God, since he is the alleged creator of all -- to
endow matter with the faculty 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 and thought, than spirit or the thought of God should produce
and 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 molecules 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 and what is matter?" Theosophist, September), and in what some
natural philosophers would call nisus the incessant though perfectly
imperceptible (to the ordinary senses) motion or efforts one body is making on
another -- the pulsations of inert matter - its life. The bodies of the Planetary
spirits are formed of that which Priestley and others called Phlogiston and for
which we have another name - this essence in its highest seventh state forming
that matter of which the organisms 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 believe in MATTER alone, in matter as visible
nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent omnipotent
Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its 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 of existence that flows
necessarily out of the essence 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.
Our ideas on Evil. Evil has no existence per
se and is but the absence of good and exists but for him who is made its
victim. It proceeds from two causes, and no more than good is it an independent
cause in nature. Nature is destitute of goodness or malice; she follows only
immutable laws when she either gives life and joy, or sends suffering [and]
death, and destroys what she has created. Nature has an antidote for every
poison and her laws a reward for every suffering. The butterfly devoured by a
bird becomes that bird, and the little bird killed by an animal goes into a
higher form. It is the blind law of necessity and the eternal fitness of
things, and hence cannot be called Evil in Nature. The real evil proceeds from
human intelligence and its origin rests entirely with reasoning man who
dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone is the true source of
evil. Evil is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of human selfishness and
greediness. Think profoundly and you will find that save death - which is no
evil but a necessary law, and accidents which will always find their
reward in a future life - the origin of every evil whether small or great is in
human action, in man whose intelligence makes him the one free agent in Nature.
It is not nature that creates diseases, but man. The latter's mission and
destiny in the economy of nature is to die his natural death brought by old
age; save accident, neither a savage nor a wild (free) animal die of disease.
Food, sexual relations, drink, are all natural necessities of life; yet excess
in them brings on disease, misery, suffering, mental and physical, and the
latter are transmitted as the greatest evils to future generations, the progeny
of the culprits.
Ambition, the desire of securing happiness
and comfort for those we love, by obtaining honours and riches, are
praiseworthy natural feelings but when they transform man into an ambitious
cruel tyrant, a miser, a selfish egotist they bring untold misery on those
around him; on nations as well as on individuals. All this then - food, wealth,
ambition, and a thousand other things we have to leave unmentioned, becomes the
source and cause of evil whether in its abundance or through its absence.
Become a glutton, a debauchee, a tyrant, and you become the originator of
diseases, of human suffering and misery. Lack all this and you starve, you are
despised as a nobody and the majority of the herd, your fellow men, make of you
a sufferer your whole life. Therefore it is neither nature nor an imaginary
Deity that has to be blamed, but human nature made vile by selfishness. Think
well over these few words; work out every cause of evil you can think of and
trace it to its origin and you will have solved one-third of the problem of
evil. And now, after making due allowance for evils that are natural and cannot
be avoided, -- and so few are they that I challenge the whole host of Western
metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them directly to an independent
cause -- I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of
the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is
religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal
caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks
upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils
which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind.
Ignorance created Gods and cunning took
advantage of the opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam,
at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so
terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the
fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any
better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds
of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false
pretence of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if
told that his God or Gods demand the crime?; voluntary victim of an illusionary
God, the abject slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and Slavonian
peasant will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and
clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the
weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the
followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other's throats in
the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the
sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better
portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal
charity, the altars of their false gods.
If it is objected that we too have temples,
we too have priests and that our lamas also live on charity . . . let them know
that the objects above named have in common with their Western equivalents, but
the name. Thus in our temples there is neither a god nor gods worshipped, only
the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the holiest man that ever lived. If
our lamas to honour the fraternity of the Bhikkhus established by our blessed
master himself, go out to be fed by the laity, the latter often to the number
of 5 to 25,000 is fed and taken care of by the Samgha (the fraternity of lamaic
monks) the lamasery providing for the wants of the poor, the sick, the
afflicted. Our lamas accept food, never money, and it is in those temples that
the origin of evil is preached and impressed upon the people. There they are taught
the four noble truths - ariya sakka, and the chain of causation, (the 12
nid[ci]anas) gives them a solution of the problem of the origin and destruction
of suffering.
Read the Mahavagga and try to understand not
with the prejudiced Western mind but the spirit of intuition and truth what the
Fully Enlightened one says in the 1st Khandhaka. Allow me to translate it for
you.
"At the time the blessed Buddha was at
Uruvella on the shores of the river Nerovigara as he rested under the Boddhi
tree of wisdom after he had become Sambuddha, at the end of the seventh day
having his mind fixed on the chain of causation he spake thus: 'from Ignorance
spring the samkharas of threefold nature -- productions of body, of speech, of
thought. From the samkharas springs consciousness, from consciousness springs
name and form, from this spring the six regions (of the six senses the seventh
being the property of but the enlightened); from these springs contact from
this sensation; from this springs thirst (or desire, Kama, tanha) from thirst
attachment, existence, birth, old age and death, grief, lamentation, suffering,
dejection and despair. Again by the destruction of ignorance, the Sankharas are
destroyed, and their consciousness name and form, the six regions, contact, sensation,
thirst, attachment (selfishness), existence, birth, old age, death, grief,
lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair are destroyed. Such is the
cessation of this whole mass of suffering."
Knowing this the blessed one uttered this
solemn utterance.
"When the real nature of things becomes
clear to the meditating Bikshu, then all his doubts fade away since he has
learned what is that nature and what its cause. From ignorance spring all the
evils. From knowledge comes the cessation of this mass of misery, and then the
meditating Brahmana stands dispelling the hosts of Mara like the sun that
illuminates the sky."
Meditation here means the superhuman (not
supernatural) qualities, or arhatship in its highest of spiritual
powers. Copied out Simla, Sept. 28, 1882.
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