Theos-Talk Archives (May 2008 Message tt00858)

My views are:


I think H. P. Blavatsky most clearly spoke out on the issue of God.
So I see no reason to pray in any Church what so ever.




"The Key to Theosophy by H. P. Blavatsky 
Section 5
THE FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS OF THEOSOPHY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ON GOD AND PRAYER
ENQUIRER. Do you believe in God? 

THEOSOPHIST. That depends what you mean by the term. 

ENQUIRER. I mean the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and the Creator: the Biblical God of Moses, in short. 

THEOSOPHIST. 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. 

ENQUIRER. State your reasons, if you please. 

THEOSOPHIST. They are many, and cannot all receive attention. But here are a few. This God is called by his devotees infinite and absolute, is he not? 

ENQUIRER. I believe he is. 

THEOSOPHIST. Then, if infinite -- i. e., limitless -- and especially if absolute, 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 -- i. e., to have any relation whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a philosophical, and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Kabala rejects such an idea, and therefore, makes of the one and the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph. (1) In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way -- i.e., through the emanation from itself (another absurdity, due this time to the translators of the Kabala) (2) of the Sephiroth. "
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-5.htm







"IS IT NECESSARY TO PRAY?

ENQUIRER. Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray? 

THEOSOPHIST. We do not. We act, instead of talking. 

ENQUIRER. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle? 

THEOSOPHIST. Why should we? Being well-occupied people, we can hardly afford to lose time in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. The Unknowable is capable of relations only in its parts to each other, but is non-existent as regards any finite relations. The visible universe depends for its existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or prayers. 

ENQUIRER. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer? 

THEOSOPHIST. Not in prayer taught in so many words and repeated externally, if by prayer you mean the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee, which was inaugurated by the Jews and popularised by the Pharisees. 

ENQUIRER. Is there any other kind of prayer? 

THEOSOPHIST. Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather an internal command than a petition. 

ENQUIRER. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so? 

THEOSOPHIST. To "our Father in heaven" -- in its esoteric meaning. 

ENQUIRER. Is that different from the one given to it in theology? 

THEOSOPHIST. Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to his Father which is in secret (read, and try to understand, ch. vi. v. 6, Matthew), not to an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God; and that "Father" is in man himself. 

ENQUIRER. Then you make of man a God? 

THEOSOPHIST. Please say "God" and not a God. In our sense, the inner man is the only God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be otherwise? Grant us our postulate that God is a universally diffused, infinite principle, and how can man alone escape from being soaked through by, and in, the Deity? We call our "Father in heaven" that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness, and which has nothing to do with the anthropomorphic conception we may form of it in our physical brain or its fancy: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of (the absolute) God dwelleth in you?" (3) Yet, let no man anthropomorphise that essence in us. Let no Theosophist, if he would hold to divine, not human truth, say that this "God in secret" listens to, or is distinct from, either finite man or the infinite essence -- for all are one. Nor, as just remarked, that a prayer is a petition. It is a mystery rather; 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 transmutes lead into pure gold. The only homogeneous essence, our "will-prayer" becomes the active or creative force, producing effects according to our desire. 

ENQUIRER. Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process bringing about physical results? 

THEOSOPHIST. I do. Will-Power becomes a living power. But woe unto those Occultists and Theosophists, who, instead of crushing out the desires of the lower personal ego or physical man, and saying, addressing their Higher Spiritual EGO immersed in Atma-Buddhic light, "Thy will be done, not mine," etc., send up waves of will-power for selfish or unholy purposes! For this is black magic, abomination, and spiritual sorcery. Unfortunately, all this is the favourite occupation of our Christian statesmen and generals, especially when the latter are sending two armies to murder each other. Both indulge before action in a bit of such sorcery, by offering respectively prayers to the same God of Hosts, each entreating his help to cut its enemies' throats. "
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-5.htm





M. Sufilight


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]