God
Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world.
The decisive question for man is: Is he
related to something infinite or not? That is the telling
question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which
truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities,
and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard
as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a
man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what
is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels
limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link
with the infinite, desires and
attitudes change. In the final
analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if
we do not embody that, life is wasted. In our relationships
to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness
is expressed in the relationship.
... The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained
only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation
for man is the “self”; it is manifested in the experience: “I am only
that!” Only
consciousness of our narrow confinement in
the
self forms the link to the limitlessness of the
unconscious.
In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal,
as both the one and the other. In
knowing ourselves to be
unique in our personal combination – that is, ultimately limited – we possess
also the capacity for becoming
conscious of the infinite. But
only then!
Cont’d … In an era which has concentrated exclusively upon extension of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all costs, it is a supreme challenge to ask man to become conscious of his uniqueness and his limitation. Uniqueness and limitation are synonymous. Without them, no perception of the unlimited is possible – and, consequently, no coming to consciousness either – merely a delusory identity with it which takes the form of intoxication with large numbers and an avidity for political power.
God’s love and mercy are named his right hand, but his justice and his
administration of it are named his left hand. AION 59
God’s left hand dashes to pieces; his right hand is glorious to save”
AION 59
When we examine the Christian interpretation of images, what strikes us at once is that fact that the opposition, light-dark, is polarized in all these images. The metaphysical split in the god-image of Christianity, which sees God as the summum bonum and excludes evil from the image, ascribing it either to man or to the devil, runs through the whole field of ontology. Just as Christ represents the incarnation of the good God, so the Antichrist represents the power of evil. Hence all images can refer, at one and the same time, either to Christ or the devil. P&R 47
“To God all things are fair and good and right,” declares Heraclitus; “but men hold some things wrong and some right”
If I create the world on the basis of mercy alone, its sins will be great;
but on the basis of justice alone the world cannot exist. Hence I will create it
on the basis of justice and mercy, and may it then stand!” AION 59
Yahweh prefers the repentant sinners even to the righteous, and protects
them from his justice by covering them with his hand or by hiding them under his
throne.” AION 60
Man was created to praise, do reverence to, and serve God our Lord, and
thereby to save his soul. Aion 165
“Man’s
consciousness was
created to the end that it may (1) recognize (laudet) its descent
from a higher unity (Deum); (2) pay due and careful regard to this
source (reverentiam exhibeat); (3) execute its commands
intelligently and responsibly (serviat); and (4) thereby afford the
psyche as a whole the optimum degree of life and development (salvet
animam suam).”
Only the Father, the God “welling” out of the Godhead, “notices himself,”
becomes “beknown to himself,” and “confronts himself as a Person.” Aion 193
Cont’d … So from the Father, comes the Son, as the Father’s thought of his
own being. In his original unity “he knows nothing” except the “suprareal” One
which he is. As the Godhead is essentially unconscious, so too is the man
who lives in God. The man who has this poverty has everything he was when he
lived not in any wise, neither in himself, nor in truth, nor in God. In his
sermon on “The Poor in Spirit” (Matt. 5:3), the Meister says: “The man who has
this poverty has everything he was when he lived not in any wise, neither in
himself, nor in truth, nor in God. He is so quit and empty of all knowing that
no knowledge of God is alive in him; for while he stood in the eternal nature of
God, there lived in him not another: what lived there was himself. And so we say
this man is as empty of his own knowledge as he was when he was not anything; he
lets God work what he will, and he stands empty as when he came from God.
Therefore he should love God in the following way: “Love him as he is: a
not-God, a not-spirit, a not-person, a not-image; as a sheer, pure, clear One,
which he is, sundered from all secondness; and in One let us sink eternally,
from nothing to nothing. So help us God. Amen.” AION 193
We hypothesize that as the human being developed the ability to forecast their own self-disillusion (their own death - there was tremendous anxiety generated), that another concept emerged which allowed that anxiety to be reduced. And whatever that concept was, it has certain parametres, it had to be infinite, and forever and everywhere. Otherwise it would have an end, if you have an end - then you have anxiety. So, there had to be a concept inculcated within the brain itself; that there is something out there, that goes on forever, and if you somehow relate to it, and can be a part of it, the idea of anxiety becomes a non-event. Dr. Persinger - Neuroscientist
From the perspective of the source, the world is a majestic harmony of
forms
pouring into being, exploding, and dissolving. But what the swiftly
passing creatures experience is a terrible cacophony of battle cries and pain.
The myths do not deny this
agony (the crucifixion); they reveal within, behind,
and around it essential peace (the heavenly rose).
1000 faces, 247
Now
comes a point. Here is the gross outer body, and held in the
hands is a representation of the subtle body. If you do that,
you are crazy, and you think you are it. So we must
disengage. This image represents the totality of the energies
of life pouring into the field of time and space; it is what we call God.
God is a personification of the energies, and that’s it.
TMTT 136
We
keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact.
God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of
transcendence and mystery. TMTT 16
We
all say, “I believe in God.” But when you talk to various
people, you find totally different capacities for belief, for conceptions of
God. Although different people use the same word for God,
it’s not the same God. Although different people use the same
word for God, it’s not the same God. This is one of the
ironies of monotheism. It isn’t monotheism at all because
everybody believes in God in a different way. If you’re a
Christian, for example, some Muslims may have beliefs that are more like yours
than your neighboring Christian. RG 63
How do you relate to God? You relate to God by being a member of a certain
community, and there are two kinds of communities. One is the
biological community, these are tribal religions in which you are born into that
god’s community. The other I like to call world religion, in
which you are baptized into the community, and that’s the only community that
relates you to God. G103
In "A Brief History of Time" he (Stephen
Hawking) suggested that the idea of a divine being was
not necessarily incompatible with a scientific understanding of the Universe.
But in his 2010 book "The Grand Design" he said a deity no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the universe in the light of a series of developments in physics.
God particle - Higgs Boson
Buddha
remained silent about God not because there is no God. And those who are very
much vocal about God really show they have no experience. Buddha remained
silent. Whenever he would go to any town, he would declare, “Please, do not ask
anything about God. You can ask anything, but not about God.”
"What
really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world."
-- Albert Einstein