Purucker on God in Theosophy:
QUESTION: I would like to ask where and what is the place of God in the Theosophical scheme of things.
ANSWER: This question has often been asked. In order properly to answer it, let us choose the Socratic method, and ask the questioner a question. How can this querent expect to obtain a clear answer to his question until the question itself has more definiteness to it, and a more perfect outline?
In the first place, what is meant by 'God'? Is it the God of the Christians which is meant, or the God of the Hebrews? Is it the God of the Brahmans? Is it the God of the native American Indian? Is it the God of the Eskimo? Is it the God of the Druid, or is it the Zeus of the Greek, or the Jupiter of the Roman, and so forth? You ask a question, and tacitly suppose that 'God' conveys an idea sufficiently clear and definite to all men, whereas history shows us that there never was a question on which men differ so greatly as upon the answers they might give as regards the nature of the Divine.
We may briefly say first, that for such national or theoretical gods as those above alluded to, be they one or be they many, and which are the offsprings of man's religious imagination, the Theosophical philosophy has absolutely no place. Theosophy deals with realities, and not with men's mere beliefs or imaginings about infinites or supposed infinites.
The very heart of the Theosophical Religion-Philosophy-Science, is the Divine, as we call it, because we must call it by some name in order to let others know what we are talking about. Concerning the thing itself, the Theosophical philosophy is likewise extremely precise, definite, and runs straight to the point. Our conception of the Divine is an absolutely limitless Life - for we must give it some name that our human brains can understand. This Universal Life is the source and origin of everything, of all beings, and of all worlds; the best qualification of it that perhaps could be given to it would be comprised in the one word 'Space.' Space comprises everything, because it is everything. There is nothing outside of it, therefore it is the ALL.
Space, as Theosophists use the word, does not mean mere extension of matter. It means everything that ever was, that is, or that ever will be, visible and invisible, small and great, on all planes, because all these are comprised in the abstract meaning which we give to the word Space. It is not mere limitless extension; nor is the Divine a stock or a stone; but all these are in the Divine, so to say, and partakers of the Universal Life, which it is. Can you think of anything which is outside of Space? Of course not.
But our God is not a personal God, obviously not. It never was not and it never will cease to be. It neither thinks, nor feels, nor acts, because all these actions are predicates of finite entities such as men. The Zeus of the ancient Greeks, or the Jehovah of the ancient Hebrews, who thundered and lightened, are in either case a conception of the Divine which, in our majestical Theosophical philosophy, seems not merely grotesque to us, but downright blasphemous.
May we not say, therefore, that the Divine, Universal Life, Space, is neither conscious nor unconscious, neither active nor inactive? A long string of such hypothetical contraries might be enumerated, all of them expressing human emotional or mental actions; but what good would it do? Assuredly these cannot be ascribed to the Divine, to That which is at once limitless and endlessly enduring. All such contraries are but descriptions of human imaginings, taking their root and rise in our own limited human consciousness.
We are conscious, and in our egoism, we imagine that the stock or the stone is unconscious. Theosophy teaches us better. All entities and things are offsprings of the Universal Life, and each, in its way and manner, and to the fullest extent of its capacity, contains all that we do as enlightened human beings - in other words, each contains all in germ.
These differences among entities arise out of the various stages of evolution which they have respectively attained. Some things are more advanced than others, and manifest thereby the more fully the inner potencies, faculties, powers, call them what you like, which are at the heart or core of every human being, and of every other entity or being or thing.
Hence, answering the question more directly, in view of the foregoing necessary explanation, it may be said with perfect truth, and said emphatically, that the Theosophical philosophy has no 'God,' as that word is commonly understood by people who do not think, and who therefore imagine that ideas which have become popularized by time, and which throw one's intuitions of the Divine into a chaos of contradictions, must contain some essence of reality, some essential truth.
Not so very long ago, men thought that the sun moved around the earth, and that the stars in the splendid, dark-blue vault of midnight were sparkling light-points placed there by a personal God in order to proclaim his own greatness to his erring and sinning children on earth. We know better now. No, such a God, or a God of any such kind, has no place in our Doctrine of Truth.
Nevertheless, no one can equal the Theosophist in the unspeakably profound reverence which fills his heart as he endeavors to raise his spirit in awe in contemplation of the Divine. It is our Source whence we came and whither we are journeying on our re-turn pilgrimage to it; we issued forth from the 'Bosom of the Divine' - if we may use easily understood terms - as unselfconscious God-sparks, and shall return to it as fully self-conscious gods, thereafter to take a god-like part in the great Cosmic Labor. We are even now co-operating instruments, or rather co-operating agencies, in the fulfilment of the great Cosmic Work, to the extent of our capacity.
