ESSAYS ON GOD

By Eugene Halliday

[Paragraph numbers added by Bob Hardy]

1. What God Cannot do

2. The Supreme Spirit

3. God

4. Solid God

5. God-Man; Man-God

6. God’s Body

7. God and Science

8. The God and a god

9. The God

10. What is God?

11. Trinity in Man and God

12. God is Not Dead




1. What God Cannot Do

    1.01.  God cannot cease to be God. Omnipotence cannot cease to be omnipotence.

    1.02…Thus for God there is no escape from His own Self.

    1.03.  This being so, whatever God's qualities are essentially, he cannot escape. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Thus these qualities He cannot escape.

    1.04.  There is, therefore, for God a problem. Shall He use or not use His qualities? Shall He use or not use His omnipotence and omniscience in His omnipresence?

    1.05.  God is omnipresent. Therefore there is no­where where He is not. Therefore He cannot go anywhere, for He is there already.

    1.06.  Of what use, then, is His omniscience and om­nipotence? His omniscience tells Him what He can do. And his omnipotence enables Him to do it. The three are co-extensive.

    1.07.  Before using His omnipotence, God in his omniscience sees all that He may do, as a non­-actualized formal possibility extended throughout His omnipresence.

    1.08.  His All-presence He cannot avoid. His All-seeing He cannot stop. Only in His All-power can He introduce change.

    1.09.  Before His All-power introduces change, Time is not brought into Being, for Time is a product of change. Thus before change, God dwells in Him­self in the changeless. This we call Eternity, or more accurately, He-trinity.

    1.10.  How does God introduce change into Himself, into His essential changelessness? He cannot go anywhere for He is already everywhere. He can­not learn anything new, for He knows all that He may do already in His All-seeingness.

    1.11.  One thing He can do. By His All-power He can introduce stress-accent into His All-seeing. He can make some of the forms in His understanding stronger or weaker. Thus by stress- accent from his All-power He can actualise His omniscience.

    1.12.  This then is the problem He sets Himself: shall He stress the forms of his omniscience or not? If He does not, then all are equal before Him; all stand void of importance within Him. For im­portance is only stress of the will.

    1.13.  God may stress the forms of His omniscience either simultaneously or in series, either wholly or in part. Whichever He does presents Him, by the fact of stress, with the actualising of some or all of His possibilities. This stressing of forms of His omniscience we call creating.




2. The Supreme Spirit

    2.01.  The Supreme Spirit is that which permeates all things and goes beyond them. All things are but modifications of this Supreme Spirit. These modifications constitute for the Supreme Spirit its Body. The Supreme Spirit is in no-wise altered in its essence by the modifications, because these modifications are to It as a man's actions are to a man; the man does not cease to be a man when acting. A walking man is still a man. So also with the Supreme Spirit.

    2.02.  This Supreme Spirit is continuous, partless, seamless, a garment to Itself. If it is said, "How can this be, that It is its own garment?" we reply that its actions cover its essentiality as a garment. In the same way a man may cover his essential man-ness by acting as a beast, so that even his face and posture reflect the nature of a beast.

    2.03.  Because the Supreme Spirit is partless, it is infinite. For that which has parts (as an inside and an outside, a part above and a part below) is necessarily finite.

    2.04.  Being Infinite, the Supreme Spirit is not ex­cluded from any place. Therefore wherever there is a being, there is the Supreme Spirit. It is appar­ent that all finite beings are in space and therefore internal to the Supreme Spirit. Yet being internal to the Supreme Spirit does not justify pantheism nor restrictive Immanentism.

    2.05.  (Pantheism says that all is God and then falls into the error of thinking that all that is manifested is all there is. Restrictive Immanentism says that God is immanent in finite beings and does not transcend them.)

    2.06.  The Supreme Spirit is Consciousness-Will. Its will aspect is Its power, whereby It knows what It produces. What It produces is merely action and nothing else. Apart from the Supreme Spirit and its actions there is nothing. Therefore whatever is known by any being whatsoever is either the Sup­reme Spirit or some action of the Supreme Spirit. Such concepts as ‘matter’, ‘form’, etc., refer en­tirely to some mode of action of the Supreme Spirit. There is no material being other than a be­ing arising out of an action in and of the Supreme Spirit.

    2.07.  Thus the analysis of the whole or part of mani­festation must, to be true, be in terms of action. Matter is a mode of action. It is the mode of action called rotation. Rotation is the cause of the continuity of a finite being. Rotation is the cause of persistence.




3. God

    3.01.  The God of the philosophers is the First Mover, the cause of the movement of things in the world.

    3.02.  For Aristotle, God causes the movement of the things of the world not by thrust, but as the object of their desire. He says the ancient myth may be true that the heavenly beings are gods, and sees them as aspiring to God as their supreme object.

    3.03.  The Greeks saw the world as eternal and there­fore not created at some point of time. As God did not create, so He is not provident of care for the world, not involved in the fortunes of the world and of man; "A monarch who reigns but does not rule."

    3.04.  Aristotle, however, also says that the highest good is in the world, "both as something separate and by itself, and as the order of the parts."

    3.05.  The Greeks saw the divine life as emotionless and self-sufficient. Aristotle saw God as enjoying the (for Aristotle) highest form of activity, that of the intellect. But God has nothing beyond Himself to stand as His object of thought, and He must therefore stand to Himself as His own object. God's activity is "thinking about thinking", an act­ivity blissful to Him, but unknown to the non­intellectual who acts only for material gain.

    3.06.  Christianity derives from Judaism a belief that God is interested in the historical process in which humanity is involved and in which the Incarnation took place.

    3.07.  The mystics see God as needing His creation. "God needs me as much as I need Him."




4. Solid God

    4.01.  The ‘Solid God’ is understood in the following way: Every phenomenon observed in con­sciousness is an act of force, a fact, at its own level. There is nowhere where there is absolutely no force. Thus the infinity of so-called ‘space’ is nowhere ‘empty’; nowhere has it any ‘holes’. Having no holes whatever, it is a solid continuum. Being infinitely extended it is already and etern­ally present and so fills all space absolutely. Being infinitely extended, there is no place where it is not. There being no place where it is not, there is no place to which it can go which it does not al­ready occupy. Thus we must consider it to be in­capable of motion in the sense of change of place of ‘substance’, where ‘substance’ signifies some material composed of irreducible particles.

    4.02.  But this solid continuum of force, energy or power (three perspectives of the continuum) is sentient i.e. feels its own inner tensions or self­-holdings, in all their variations, all self-induced or self-created.

    4.03.  As these self-holdings are self-variable in their intensities in their own localities, which are but the continuum operative at those places, so any pattern may be increased or decreased in intensity by the self-action of the continuum in that pat­tern's place. Also a pattern intensified in one place may be de-tensified in that place and then intens­ified in the next place, and so on. The result of such intensification and de-tensification followed by an intensification of the ‘same’ pattern in the next place is an apparent ‘shift’ of the pattern, though in fact the pattern has not moved, but has merely been reproduced or copied from the place of its first presentation. All apparent "movement" is of this nature, but a reproduction in one or more places in the patterned manner of the initial place.

    4.04.  Thus the whole world of phenomena is to be interpreted, and to interpret it otherwise is to be in illusion. Each phenomenon is an intensification of an eternal function of the solid continuum of sentient power. Each ‘vanishing’ of a phe­nomenon is a de-tensification of that same funct­ion. Each re-appearance of a like phenomenon in that place is a re-intensification. Each apparent motion of a phenomenon from ‘place’ to ‘place’ is simply an intensification of that phenomenon in one place, followed by de-tensification of it and re-intensification in another place, and so on.

    4.05.  All phenomena are eternal noumena every­where present throughout the infinite continuum of solid sentient power. ‘Phenomenalisation’ of an eternal noumenon is simply intensification of it ‘against’ its background of relatively less in­tensification or de-tensification.

    4.06.  The Solid God can do nothing but alter the tension levels throughout Himself, but by this capacity alone He produces all the phenomena of all worlds, and so provides Himself with occas­ions of self-examination. Every philosopher, scientist or artist in any field, is but a pattern of local self-intensification posited as a device for attaining a perspective by which the Solid God can look at some aspect of His own patterning operations, and so continuously live in self-glori­fication. "God made us for Himself."

    4.07.  Every ‘being’ or phenomenal pattern made by the self-intensification of the Solid God is either a pre-condition to, or is itself a self-realisation zone of the Solid God, by which He apparently pluralises Himself to Himself and so increases the number of his Self-perspectives. The Solid God aims to produce an infinite number of Solid God representatives. "Is it not written, ye are gods?" By this self-pluralisation of self-perspectives the Solid God increases infinitely His self-appreci­ation and so His Joy. It is in the nature of the Solid God that He can infinitely increase the infinity of His self-appreciation and self-enjoyment. There are no limitations upon His infinite operation, and no concepts of limitation derived from the gross material level of phenomena are to be applied to Him. Limitations of human intellect derived from its dependency upon conceptual elements, them­selves derived from sense percepts derived from finite action of the gross physical body under gross material stimuli, must never be ascribed to the Solid God. Limitations, wherever they exist, are not to be placed upon the Solid God as from ‘without’, for in relation to Him there is no ‘with­out’, but only ‘with’. Thus all limitations of what­ever nature or order are brought into being simply by the Solid God's local self-intensification, and no limitation, no matter of what nature or magni­tude, has any authority or dominion beyond the zone of its own phenomenal presentation. Thus freedom from any phenomenon rules outside the zone of that phenomenon.

    4.08.  By recognition of the nature of the Solid God and of the significance to Him of the phenomenal pattern of one's own being and its changes, one comes into acceptance of one's phenomenality as a phenomenalisation of one's eternal noumenal nature, and one's existence is seen as one's essence self-intensified and so self-existentiated.




5. God-Man, Man-God

    5.01.  All things are modalities or precipitations of the Infinite Sentient Power which is the God­head. This power intends to reproduce itself. Hence Man is made as a being divinely destined to realise God, to make God existent, incarnate, embodied. This Man is God-as-Man, the Infinite Sentient Power self-precipitated. Man would realise himself as an incarnation of God if he were not talked out of it by parties interested in enslav­ing Man as ‘hewer of wood and drawer of water’. Without such slaves, said Socrates, "We should not have time to think about philosophy."
    5.02.  Actually it is possible to labour and think on the meaning of one's labour as cosmic action. By this one may gain great insights into Reality's functions.
    5.03.  Infinite Sentient Power has precipitated Man as Its own mode of self-presentation. I say "It" for the Sentient Power because it is bipolar. Hence the name  הוהי and Elohim, both male and female compounds. The female component in the Tetragrammaton (הוהי) is ה occurring twice, once for the idea field הי and once for the drive field הו An idea, to become effective (or externally energised) must be pushed (ו) or it will be static within the field.
    5.04.  Man, likewise, must energise the ideas that he discovers within himself and externalise them in action. To do this is to be as God (הוהי).To accept oneself as able to activate oneself in accord with an idea is to accept oneself as a Creator, like God.
    5.05.  The Godhead is Infinite Sentient Power. This power wills itself to be God (=self-determinant creator/preserver/destroyer), and at the material earth-level, this is to be incarnate as reflexive man.
    5.06.  Only disbelief in one's creative power inhibits it. This disbelief usually arises from external pro­paganda. A repeated pattern of disbelief may est­ablish itself as an inertia, which works against the acquisition of belief in creative possibility. Be­cause of degrees of disbelief, healing times vary in different individuals. Even animal and plants may exhibit negative responses based on memory of injuries received. A dog, having had its paw trodden upon, is usually on guard against repetit­ion of the experience. Living organisms, even mono-cells, show tension patterns following in­jury. It is possible for a single cell to be on guard against repetition of injury. This is ‘cellular neurosis’. When injury occurs, tissues contract in self-defence. If they are allowed to stay tense, circulation is impaired, anoxia occurs, and food deprivation with it. Thus cells can be killed by memories of injuries. Practice is needed to gain power to re-posit true tonicity of cells.
    5.07.  A man who gains total self-control, controls also his cellular structures and, barring accidents, is in principle immortal. A man who comes late to this idea may have many inertias of disbelief to overcome, but is in principle able to overcome them because in him is a memory of his origin and original creativity. All beings are self (or cellf) created, and need but to remember this to become re-creative.
    5.08.  Recreation is re-creation, an act of creation by a self (cellf) repositing itself.
   



6. God's Body

    6.01.  God is Spirit = Infinite Sentient Power, the only Being. La 'ilaha illa 'llah. Whatever is, is this Sentient Power. Thus all beings are but modalities of this power. The difference between one being and another is the difference of the aim or object of identification, and this is a difference of inter­est. The Infinite Power is interested in all poss­ibilities of being, and this interest makes beings. A being is simply a centre of interest, created and maintained by interest and dissolved by cessation of interest. Interest may be narrowed or widened or deepened. Thus Sentient Power can posit a minute centre of interest (e.g. electron, proton, etc.) or a larger centre of interest (atom) or larger still (molecule) or compound of these (higher ord­er being, e.g. plant, animal, man, etc.). Nothing ties Sentient Power down or up to any level, but interest. Sentient Power knows its interests, fast­ens itself into them in order to exhaust their poss­ibilities, (Thus it becomes to fulfill all righteous­ness) and will not let go its interests until the full implications of these have been reached (consum­mation of days, or enlightenments).

    6.02.  A being is conditioned by its interests. If these are finite, its being and consciousness of being are finite. To escape finitude, one must become inter­ested in infinity. But the Infinite will not allow return to it until all the implications of one's finite interests have been exhausted.

    6.03.  Thus to return quickly to the Infinite (= God = Spirit = Free Immediacy) one must quickly ex­haust the implications of one's present interests. One must realise that curiosity is Kyriosity, an attempt to become Lord (Kyrios) of the situation. One may desire to be Lord for one's own sake merely(which is sin), or one may will to be Lord for God's service, to act as steward for Him in the world of phenomena. If the first, one becomes fix­ated on finite self-hood; if the second, one sees in all things nothing but modalities of God, posited for examination and delight. The ‘flower in the crannied wall’ is seen (with the crannied wall) to be God in process of divine manifestation. One ‘sees heaven in a grain of sand’. One's interests become universal and infinite. One focuses for God; one measures (is Khalif) for God; one re­members God in all one's doings, physically, mentally, affectively, volitionally, episcopally. One sees oneself as an Eye of God (  ), watch­ing for Him, joying in His wondrous works, work­ing for Him, with Him, by his Sentient Power. One studies His straight statements (I) and His di­plomacies  ( ), His self-evident truths and His parables (which are stories to catch the people's interests and mnemonics for the initiates.)

    6.04.  The quickest way to God is hinted at by the words of Jesus, "Who has seen me has seen the Father." The phenomenal world is the noumenal world, seen bit by bit. The phenomenon is Sent­ient Power phenomenalised by, with and for Itself. To remember this continually is worship. These letters, the pen that writes them, the eye that looks at them, the mind that interprets them, the heart that joys in them, all are God (= Spirit), self modalising. This body, of which the hand is a part, is a body of God in this place. To see this is to see the Father (= Generative Power) in the Son (= the Form) and its activity (= the Holy Ghost, so-called because it is an appearance of Spirit or Geist).

    6.05.  To see one's body as God's body in the place where one is, is to annihilate the distance between God and oneself. One's body is God modalising a vehicle of expression for Himself, a chariot for Him to ride in, a pulpit for Him to preach about Himself to those who have forgotten Him, and who developed enough to wish to remember Him. Also an anchor for His infinite will, a haven for His incessant working Self, a rock for His restless spirit to rest upon a while, as an Infinite Eagle pausing a moment in its flight from the everlasting to the everlasting.

    6.06.  To praise the Lord is to justify one's own being as His representative in the place and time where one is. To praise oneself for one's clever deeds as apart from Him, is sin, the missing of the true Mark.

    6.07.  How to remember God at all times? There is only one way; to be interested in Him and in His works, knowing there is nothing else. Even illus­ions, if they exist, are but phenomenalising of some part of His noumenal power, fallen out of the true context. Therefore, whatever one sees, or hears, or smells or tastes or touches is but God presenting Himself for interest in that place.

    6.08.  Looking for God, remember the Eye of Horus, and note the straight and the curly, the direct state­ment and the veiled indication. Learn to speak straight to yourself as soon as you can bear to do so, and to others also, if they can bear it without loss of intelligent integration. To the rest, speak indirectly of things they cannot yet bear; give hints but sparingly, as one would display priceless pearls to thieves.




7. God and Science

    7.01.  God as supreme Intelligent-Will source of all life is pre-supposed in the transitory nature of all created life-forms. The life-intelligence which appears and disappears in the finite and corruptible forms which appear in the world must constitute the infinite incorruptible ocean of life-­intelligence which is God.

    7.02.  God cannot be viewed as an object for examination in any scientific sense, for science is so only insofar as it is able to apply mathematical analysis to its objects, and that form of analysis requires some finite data upon which to operate.

    7.03.  Empirical science bases itself upon data pro­vided by the sense organs of scientists. These sense organs are physically limited in size and response-capacity to the world in which they ex­ist. Therefore the data these sense organs present to consciousness are finite. From the finite the infinite cannot be known. Thus God as infinite intelligent will cannot be an object of scientific research, nor ever become an object accessible to any procedure of investigation based on data sup­plied by any finite organs of perception.




8. The God and a god.

    8.01.  The Gospel of John, the fourth gospel in the New Testament, starts with the words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So says the English version. But the original Greek version says something slightly different, and this slight dif­ference is of tremendous importance.

    8.02.  The literal translation of the Greek says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and God was the Word." It goes on, "This one was in the beginning with the God. All things through him were generated, and without him was generated not one thing which has been generated".

    8.03.  In the Greek the word for ‘the" is used before God when God is first mentioned. Then ‘God’ is used without the word for ‘the’. Then it says, "This one (that is, this God without the word ‘the’ before it, this Word-God) was in the beginning with the God."

    8.04.  What is the meaning of this? Why is the word for ‘the’ used before ‘God’, then ‘God’ used without ‘the’, then ‘the’ used before ‘God’ again?

    8.05.  In the Greek, to put ‘the’ before the word ‘God’, makes this God more important than ‘God’ without ‘the’. Without ‘the’ before it ‘God’ is merely ‘a’ god. Let us put this down. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and a god was the Word. This one (a god, which was the Word) was in the be­ginning with the God." Now let us simplify it further.

    8.06.  "In the beginning (of Creation) was the Word (the principle of order), and the principle of Order was with the God (the supreme God, or ultimate source of the principle of Order), and the principle of Order was (equivalent to) a god, and was in the beginning of Creation with the supreme Source of Creation. All things were generated by the principle of Order and without this principle no­thing was generated." This begins to sound a little more explicit. Let us re-word it.

    8.07.  "In the beginning of creation was the principle of order, which was with the supreme Source. The principle of order was the generator of all things which came into being."

    8.08.  In the Greek the term the English give as ‘Word’ is ‘Logos’, which means ‘Ratio’, or ‘Reason-Word’. The Greeks had also another term for ‘Word’, that is, ‘Mythos’. But ‘Mythos’ does not mean ‘Rational Word’. It means a word coming from below the level of the rational mind. In French the same distinction is observed in the two terms for word, ‘parole’ and ‘mot’. ‘Parole’ contains the idea of rationality which is not ex­pressed in ‘mot’. The English term ‘word’ im­plies a principle of order, that is, a rational principle.

    8.09.  What is the basic idea behind the concept of order or rationality? To order is to arrange things in such a manner that what is arranged can clearly be seen for what it is. Rationality is the power that places things in such relation that the ratio of one thing to another may be clearly seen. Both order and rationality pre-suppose an arrangement of things such that the relation of each thing to the others is seen. The basic idea behind ‘order’ and ‘rationality’ is ‘arrangement’, that is, the placing of things where their form and nature may clearly be seen.

    8.10.  The Logos or Rational Word or ordering princ­iple is the energy which brings order out of chaos. Creation is a process which puts energy into ord­erly forms. Before creation the forces of the uni­verse must be thought of as moving chaotically, that is in a disorderly manner. This is why John's Gospel says that in the beginning, (that is, in the beginning of creation), the forces which had been running about chaotically were brought into order; all the disorderly forces were subjected to a superior controlling force which imposed order upon them. This superior ordering force is what John calls the Logos or Word, the principle of ord­er. By principle of order we mean the force that first imposed order on all the other forces which were before moving haphazardly throughout space.

    8.11.  In the beginning of the creation the forces which before this were moving chaotically, were constrained into orderly relations by a superior force which circumscribed them, and so imposed upon them the form of motion we call rotation. This rotatory motion in its first all-encompassing action is called, in certain schools of thought, the Great Rota. It acts like a huge centrifuge, separat­ing out into their appropriate zones, band around band, all the various types of motion found in Chaos. Chaos, by this centrifugal action, is flung towards the rim of the Great Rota and, each type of motion moving into a band corresponding to its own frequency and motion-pattern, is appoint­ed to an orbit in which its characteristics may ex­press themselves.

    8.12.  Whatever scientific thinkers may think of this, what is certain is that every existential being in the whole system of universes is primarily de­termined in its location, function and form by the fact of rotation, by the fact of the cyclical nature of manifest motion. To think other than this is to ignore the facts of visible existence and of all phenomena.

    8.13.  Every created thing is a function of rotation, that is, of a rationalising force, a principle of order. And as John says, "Without this principle of order, this Logos-Word, no being which exists could have come into being."

    8.14.  To exist, to be, is to rotate, to be circumscribed, to turn, and in turning to generate a wheel of forces, the rim of which wheel is the outer limit of existential being. The Logos-Word, the Ratio, the Great Pi-function of the original circulating force, is the originator of all existential forms of being whatever. As long as things exist, in any world whatever, the circulatory force, the Great Pi-Ratio function, will remain the basic ground of their being. The Logos functions, therefore, as a God of existential reality. Underneath and beyond all rational forces is the supreme power of the Infinite who is called the God. Underneath the Logos-form is the power that keeps it in being. The Logos-energy is the working process of the infinite power of the God. The God, therefore, incarnates or embodies itself in the form of the Logos-energy, a god for all existential beings, and a fit object of worship for the beings who owe their existence to its eternal function.

    8.15.  To know the Logos-God which is the form­ulating energy of the God, Supreme Source of all things, is to know the incarnation of the God in its self-revelation. Here is the possibility for man, by pure reason, of comprehending the mystery of the Infinite in its manifest self-expression. "Who has seen me", says Christ, "has seen the Father."




9. The God

    9.01.  We do not define things or feelings or events. We define the limits of the application of words. What shall we define as the limits of ap­plication of the word ‘God’?

    9.02.  For many people the word ‘God’ is limited to an object of worship, an object which is assumed to have an existence of some order, such as to make it not meaningless to pray to it, that is, to direct one's words, thoughts, feelings, will or act­ion towards it, in the hope that some effect will be produced which, without such prayer, would not be produced.

    9.03.  Such a God, an object of worship, may be con­ceived as made of wood, or stone or metal, or other material, effective in itself by its intrinsic virtue, or as resident in, or associated with such a material object. Or it may be conceived as a psychic or spiritual being active directly or in­directly, through an idea or a feeling, or other im­pulse, and so guiding or empowering one's action.

    9.04.  Any god thought of as in any way formed may be called an objective god, that is, a god which may stand as an object of worship. Such an ob­jective god may be other than the worshipper, sep­arated from him. Or it may be the worshipper himself self-worshipping, adoring or praying to himself as his own object. The only essential pre­condition of an objective god is that it shall be formed, that is, circumscribed and defined so that it may be held in consciousness as an object.

    9.05.  The essential of an objective god is its form­edness, and most people, whether in fact they believe in the existence of such a god or not, think of the idea of a god as in some way formed or characterised. A god that is formless would appear to the objective god-thinkers as no god at all.

    9.06.  But not every worshipper of God is a wor­shipper of an objective god. Some worshippers worship God as the non-objective ultimate source of all objective existences. What do we mean by non-objective?

    9.07.  We mean not bound, not limited, not circum­scribed, not defined, not formed. Let us consider this further.

    9.08.  We can conceive a sheet of paper like this one only so large that we cannot see its edges. If we cannot see its edges we cannot define its shape. If its edges are unseeable we have no real reason to assume that there are any edges, other than the statistical one that most of our other perceived ob­jects have had edges. We may therefore conceive the paper as a plane extending beyond our vision edgelessly. To be edgeless is to be formless, undefined.

    9.09.  Now, when we think of the paper in this way we notice a peculiar thing about it. Insofar as we have thought of it as edgeless we have removed from it its limitations. We have thought of it as not definable beyond the range of our vision. But in­sofar as we think of it as paper having thickness, we are thinking of it as definable, and therefore formed and objective. We may say that the piece of paper which extends itself outwards beyond our vision is an undefinable in the horizontal plane. But insofar as it has a measurable thickness we may say that it is a definable in the vertical dimension. We may say that it is horizontally undefinable and vertically definable.

    9.10.  As to define is to objectify, we may say that it is vertically objective but horizontally non­objective beyond the range of our vision.

    9.11.  Now let us draw upon the paper a circle (we may use a letter ‘0’ on this page to represent this, mentally rubbing out the other letters.) This circle is an objective, that is, a definable or formed something upon which we may focus our attent­ion. Outside this circle we may draw other circles. Each will be an objective within our field of vision. Yet the plane of the paper will extend beyond all of these circles, beyond our vision, and therefore beyond definition, beyond all objective circles. The paper in the horizontal plane will be a non-objective on which many objective forms are drawn.

    9.12.  The objective God-worshippers are like beings who worship one or more of the circles, perhaps even a big circle surrounding many little circles. But the non-objective God-worshipper is like a being who worships the paper in its edgelessness in the horizontal plane.

    9.13.  We have conceived the paper as an edgeless plane extending itself infinitely beyond the limits of our vision. We may think of it as an infinitely extended horizontal plane. We may now imagine that we place upon this plane another and another horizontal plane until these planes extend upward beyond the limits of our vision. We may do the same downwards. We now have an infinite num­ber of infinitely extended horizontal planes rising above and descending below the original plane. On each plane we may draw any number of circles of every size, some circumscribing others, some standing alone. All conceivable sizes and arrange­ments of circles, mutually exclusive, inclusive and overlapping, may be drawn. If we now fuse together the edges of all these planes we produce an infinitely extended three-dimensional contin­uum of paper throughout which our circles are placed. By a continuum we mean a substance not made of separate parts.

    9.14.  In the material world of things there is no true continuum. Each existent thing is made of molecules, these of atoms, these of sub-atomic particles, electrons, protons, and so on. But below the level of the sub-atomic particles is the true continuum logically necessitated by the fact of the functional relations which are manifested by the particles. The fact that particles in themselves separate are held in relations and functional pat­terns demonstrates a causal link or nexus between them. What is the nature of this link factor?

    9.15.  Today we know that material particles are merely functions of force or energy. Wherever en­ergy spins or rotates, there we may think of this energy as ‘material’. Matter is simply energy spinning or rotating. There is no matter whatever that is not merely energy rotating.

    9.16.  What lies between the zones of spinning en­ergy we call material particles? Between such zones is simply force or energy relatively not ­rotating. The zones of spin we call material part­icles, and the spaces between such zones are all force. Force is not made of material particles. Material particles are behaviour patterns of force. Force in itself is a continuum, that is, a continuous causal field not made of discrete or separable parts.

    9.17.  When we talk of separable parts of a whole we are thinking of zones of spinning energy. When we think of force without spin or rotation we are thinking of it as continuous. All zones of spinning energy are in and of the continuous force field. The force itself is continuous throughout. Where the force spins we may say a material particle exists, but this particle is only force or energy spinning. In between zones of spin the field force is called space. There is no space other than field force. What we call space between particles or bodies is simply field force not spinning.

    9.18.  Spin is relative to an observer. What appears as spin to one observer outside the spin zone as a material body, may appear to another observer situated within the zone of spin as space. Each zone of spin has its own spin-rate or periodicity or frequency. Whether an observer sees a so­-called material body or not in a given place de­pends largely upon the periodicity of the energy spin constituting that body, and the periodicity of the energy spin constituting the observer's organs of vision.

    9.19.  In our analogy of the paper and the circles drawn upon it, each circle represents an energy spin and the whole paper represents the infinite field of force in which these energy spins appear.

    9.20.  Each energy spin is or may be an object to an observer. Each energy spin has its own form, pat­tern and individual functional characteristics, which enable it to act in definite, efficient ways within certain defined contexts or situations.

    9.21.  From its individual functional characteristics each energy spin derives its right to be defined as good for some purpose.

    9.22.  We have said that the objective god-­worshippers are like beings who worship one or more of the circles on the paper. As each of these circles stands for a zone of spinning energy, we may say that the objective god-worshippers are worshippers of zones of energy spin, the charact­eristic functions of these zones constituting the individuality of the worshipped object or god.

    9.23.  The non-objective God-worshipper is like a being who worships the whole paper on which the circles are drawn. The whole paper represents the infinite field of force, the continuum of power, which appears as the infinite space in which the finite zones of energy spin are produced. The non-objective God-worshipper is therefore wor­shipping the ultimate source and cause of all objective gods.

    9.24.  The non-objective God we shall call The God as the Greek Gospel of John does. The greatest objective god, which we represent by a great circle embracing innumerable smaller circles, we shall call the Logos or Word-God, and all the smaller circles we shall call Little Gods. A man is a little god. So is a grain of mustard seed, a particle of sand, an electron, and so on, down to the minut­est existential point of energy spin which may be demonstrated or conceived to exist.

    9.25.  We say that each circle or zone of energy spin may be worshipped as a god because it is good for something. The statement, "God is good," may be understood as an equation, "God equals Good," which may be read also, "Good equals God," pro­viding we may be sure that the Good to which we refer is on the same plane as the God we intend to indicate. On the lowest plane we may say, "A god is a good," or, "A good is a god." On the highest plane, that is, the level of the greatest circle, which contains innumerable smaller circles, we may say, "The greatest (Logos) God equals the greatest (Logos) Good." Beyond this stretches infinitely The God, the infinite continuum force, for which we may make the equation, "The God, the Infinite, equals the Infinite Good."

    9.26.  When a theologian evidences nervousness about allowing the equation ‘God equals Good’, ‘Good equals God’, it is because he is afraid that some careless thinker may believe that this equat­ion is equivalent to saying, ‘Any good is equal to The God’, which would be manifestly untrue; or ‘Any good is equal to the Logos God’, which is also untrue.

    9.27.  The God comprises and transcends all other gods. The Logos God comprises and transcends all other gods other than The God.

    9.28.  It is more intelligent to worship the Logos God than the little gods it circumscribes. It is most in­telligent to worship The God as source of the Logos God and all little gods. Speaking of his miracles, Jesus in his conscious identification of himself with the Logos God, said, "Greater works than these shall you do, if you go to my Father." By ‘My Father’ he meant The God, source of his own and all other power.




10. What is God?

    10.01  What is God? God is Spirit. What is Spirit? Spirit is Power. What is Power? Power is the Cause of all we see, feel and do.

    10.02.  Does that Power know what it is doing? We shall see. The chief property of Power is its essent­ial sameness. Power is everywhere and always the same, namely Power. A man's body differs form­ally in its parts. One part is leg-shape, another part arm-shape, another part trunk-shape. We may say that a man's body is in no two parts exactly the same shape. Or we may say that all parts are form­ally different. The point we are considering is that the differences of the parts of a man are formal differences, differences of shape and size. If we ignore all the different shapes or forms of a man's body, and then try to consider the body as form­less, we find we cannot do this. Try as we will we are force to consider the body as bounded by a line. The line may be sharp or vague, but it is still a line, a limit. Inside this binding line we say there is something we call matter. Outside this binding line we say there is space.

    10.03.  The ‘man in the street’ thinks he knows what matter is. It is what occupies space, it is what offers resistance to his body, it is what he knocks his shins against, it is what he can "get his hands on". And the same ‘man in the street’ knows what space is. It is that in which matter is situated. It is what is inside a box that has no material body in it. It is emptiness, it is nothing. A few years ago even scientists thought like this.

    10.04.  But the modern scientific mind cannot accept these naive definitions with such ease as the man in the street.

    10.04.  As the scientist knows by experiment that matter is not other than power, power behaving in a cert­ain way. He knows further that space is more mys­terious than the simple absence of matter the man in the street assumes it to be.

    10.05.  He knows that in some mysterious way space itself is inextricably related to this power which appears sometimes as matter and sometimes as radiations of certain energies.

    10.06.  He is now forced to think of space as in some sense inseparable from power. Power sometimes condenses, we may say. Such condensed power we call matter. When this power condenses, in the very act of condensing it tends to rotate. From this rotation springs the phenomenon we call Time.

    10.07.  Time is thus a function of power in space. We measure time in terms of rotation of indicators or hands on the faces of clocks. These clocks are made to rotate at a speed related to the rotation of the earth on its axis. One of our clocks rotates its hour hand twenty four times while the earth rotat­es once. Thus we say that there are twenty-four hours in a day.

    10.08.  Because Power is inseparable from space, and time is inseparable from power in space, the scientist is forced to consider these three as some­how inextricably bound together. Whatever the universe is, it is a threefold being of Space, Time and Power.

    10.09.  Now it is important for our purpose that we dis­cover which is the most important of these three. This we can do by mentally eliminating them one at a time and noting what happens.

    10.10.  We see at once that Time is a product of rotation of power in space. This means that if we consider Power in Space without rotation, Time dis­appears. So we can dispense with Time without having to let go of either Power or Space.

    10.11.  Time, then, is dependent upon rotation, and rotation upon Power.

    10.12.  Wherever we see what we call a material body, we see a condensation of power in space. Wher­ever we see a rotating body, as the earth or moon, etc., we see Power condensed and rotating. If we look into the atom we see power condensed and rotating as electrons, etc. A body is a complex system of power rotations in space.

    10.13.  Power and Space are inextricably bound to­gether. That is, if they are two. We must now see if Power and Space are two different realities.

    10.14.  When we know that Time is a product of Power rotating we can eliminate Time as a separate en­tity. Let us see if we can do this with either Power or Space. If we can include one of these in the other we can reduce them to one.

    10.15.  The word ‘Power’ is used whenever we want to consider the cause of something or of some event. When we want to know how things have come to be in Space, we are really wanting to know what put them there. The English word ‘put’ is related to the ‘pot’ in ‘potentiality’. Power is what puts things where they are, and what pushes what is put.

    10.16. Thus, to be strict with ourselves, if we do not consider what is put in the universe we do not consider Power as putter.

    10.17.  But if we consider what else there is to consider we find nothing but Space. When nothing is put in Space only Space remains. When Power con­denses in Space it puts things in Space. When power does not condense it remains diffused throughout Space.

    10.18.  Power puts things in certain places, then in other places. Power condenses itself at one time, and diffuses itself at another. Power is thus a vari­able. But all that Power may do is always internal to Space, and Space is always the same. Space is invariable. Space is the constant behind all variables.

    10.19.  Space is that in which Power operates. Power is that which produces the universe and Time in Space.

    10.20.  We have seen that we can consider Space without considering Power, We cannot consider Power as other than operating in Space. Space is in some sense superior to Power. Power is depend­ent on Space. We may say that Power is a property of Space.

    10.21.  We tend to think of Space as a mere negation of matter, a nothing, void of power. But if we think concretely about what we have already said we shall see that space, whatever it may be, is no merely negative somewhat. Space is that which has Power as one of its properties. If we say Power is the cause of all things in the universe, we must say that Space, of which Power is only a property, infinitely transcends Power.

    10.22.  It is said of God, "In Him we live, move and have our being." So we may say of Space. "In Space we live, move and have our being." It is also said of God that He is all-powerful and everywhere present. We have seen that Power is a property of Space. Space therefore has all Pow­er. And Space is certainly everywhere present. Space is not only outside matter, but inside it. Like God, Space is inside and outside all things. Space, like God, is immanent and transcendent.

    10.23.  Both God and Space are inside and outside everything there is. If we climb to the heavens God and Space are there. If we go down to the deepest pit in the earth, God and Space are there.

    10.24.  God and Space are mysteriously inter-related. That is, if they are two. God is everywhere pres­ent. So is Space.

    10.25.  We shall consider whether it is possible for there to be two beings both possessing the prop­erty of omnipresence.

    10.26.  An omnipresent being is a being present in all places. If it is present in all places, there is no place where it is not. Therefore if there be another omni­present being, both of them must be in all places. Each must be in the place where the other is. Both must be together in all places. The two must there­fore be co-extensive and mutually interpenetrat­ing. But two mutually inter-penetrating and co­extensive beings are indistinguishable from each other. Therefore they must be taken as one.

    10.27.  Further, if two beings inter-act there must be something common to both. What is common to both must possess something of one and something of the other. Call this Alpha Omega. We see at once that the relationship remains unsolved. Alpha is still Alpha. Omega is still Omega. No re­lating factor is possible. Thus we see that the apparent duality of Alpha and Omega, of God and Space, is false. ‘God’ and ‘Space’ are two differ­ent terms for the same reality.

    10.28.  Now, if God and Space are identical, what we can truly assert of the one we can assert of the other. Because there is no ‘other’. There is only One. This One we call by different names accord­ing to our different purposes.

    10.29.  If it is to our purpose to think of the One as an all-knowing One we call it God, because part of the definition of God is the ‘All-knowing One’. If we do not like to think that there is an all­knowing being superior to us and observing us, we call the One ‘Space’. By calling the One ‘Space’ we are able to ignore its possibly active observation of us. And by defining Space as some­thing merely negative we are able to pretend that the One Space has no power to interfere with our private purposes.

    10.30.  But even at the level of the grossest material thinking, Space is something more than a mere negation. Energy is required to conquer space. The journey from London to New York or Mos­cow requires time and energy. Space is not to be lightly thrust aside. Space is very mysterious.

    10.31.  Let us consider Space a little more closely. Space is that in which we live, move and have our being. More than this, Space is that without which we cannot conceive ourselves to live, or move or have our being. To exist is to be in Space. To move is to change position in Space. To live is to operate in certain ways in Space.

    10.32.  Space is that without which we could not exist. We have seen that Time is a function of Power in Space, and that Power is a property of Space. We know that material bodies are condensations of power, that is, condensations of a property of Space. If we call Power the cause of the universe, we may call Space the very origin of that cause, the Cause of causes.

    10.33.  We shall now examine the highest activity of our bodies, that is, consciousness. We find consciousness in ourselves as the primary fact. We know we know.

    10.34.  If we desire to pursue our private purposes, we like to think that our consciousness is limited to ourself. We do not like others to share our con­sciousness, and to become aware of our personal aims and motives.

    10.35.  Because of this we like to think that our con­sciousness is somehow limited to our own phys­ical body. If we push this idea as far as we can we pretend that our consciousness is a sort of product of our bodily activity. We call consciousness a mere by-product of the material of our brain. We conceive our brain to be a sort of electrical machine, the sparks from which constitute our consciousness.

    10.36.  But even if we do this we have not quite suc­ceeded in our purpose of isolating our conscious­ness from that of others. Everyone knows that electrical machines, radios, etc., interfere with each other through the mediums of certain subtle radiations. Without this mutual interference, this inter-penetration, radio communication would not exist.

    10.37.  Further, if we use the analogy of an electrical machine to explain consciousness, we are still faced with the knowledge that our bodies are pro­ducts of Power, a property of Space.

    10.38.  Thus all we show is that Space is able by one of its properties to produce bodies or electrical machines which spark into consciousness.

    10.39.  We may say that the sparks from each body are separate, and that therefore another person's con­sciousness is separate from our own. We know that to some extent this is so. But to exactly what extent, faced with the fact of mutual interference, it would be difficult to say.

    10.40.  Further, if we allow that Space may produce internally to itself machines, the sparks of which make those machines aware of themselves, it is possible that some of those machines may produce bigger sparks than others. Some mach­ines may give forth sparks bright enough to illum­inate many surrounding machines whose sparks may be considerably dimmer.

    10.41.  This may help to remind us that the sparking machines we know are not all the same size. And some are internal to others. The cells in our body are undoubtedly little spark machines. They have their own type of dim consciousness. Their sparks may not individually be as bright as ours. But their collective sparking (if we believe this spark theory) must constitute our total consciousness.

    10.42.  But if it is possible for many spark-machine cells in our body to contribute to a big collective spark, then something of great interest follows.

    10.43.  The solar system is a kind of machine; so is the great system of stars. The universe itself is a big machine, a machine running under the impulse of universal Power. If cells in our body contribute their little sparks to produce that collective spark we call our personal consciousness, there is no reason why our individual consciousness should not also contribute a little spark to the big spark of the solar system and perhaps that of the uni­verse itself.

    10.34.  We should be surprised if we discovered that a single cell inside our body were conscious of the whole of our content of consciousness. We assume that our individual cells are too dim to see what we are doing with their collective energies.

    10.35.  This being so, why should not we be in a sim­ilar position relative to the universal machine, as a simple cell is in our body relative to us?

    10.36.  The single cell knows no more of our total con­sciousness than it contributes. Why, then, should we expect to know more of the universal consci­ousness than the spark we ourselves produce?

    10.37.  It is a fact that the individual sparks from the components of our electrical machine are some­how coordinated and fused into a whole consci­ousness, a greater spark which illuminates all that we, as individuals, do. Therefore there is no reason why there should not be a collective spark, a great consciousness, in the universal machine, a spark which coordinates and fuses every little spark in the universe.

    10.38.  There is another aspect of consciousness to which we now turn our attention. We may define consciousness as "that in which all we know is contained". We say we have such and such an idea "in consciousness". We say our thoughts, our feelings, our deeds, are in consciousness. When we look in our minds, whatever we see there we say is in consciousness. When we look down a microscope, whatever we see is in consciousness. A fly on the end of our nose is in consciousness.

    10.39.  A star millions and millions of miles away is in consciousness.

    10.40.  We know the star is external to our material body. But both the star and our body are in con­sciousness. We talk as if our consciousness were bigger than our body, bigger than the earth, bigger than the universe. But not bigger than Space.

    10.41.  We can in consciousness imagine the end of the universe, the limit of the furthest star. But beyond that star lies Space. As far as consciousness can go there is Space. We may go on and on in con­sciousness and always we are forced to think of Space. Consciousness and Space are mysterious­ly related.

    10.42.  Let us look at a few facts of consciousness. We are able to concentrate it on a point, or spread it over a large area, on one object or several. In this respect consciousness behaves like Power.

    10.43.  Both consciousness and Power may be con­centrated or diffused in Space. When conscious­ness concentrates itself sharply we find an idea. When Power concentrates itself densely we find a material body.

    10.44.  Whatever Power may do in the material world of gross bodies, Consciousness may may do in the mental world of subtle feelings and ideas. The difference between the two is one of degree, not of kind. Somehow Consciousness and Power are mysteriously related.

    10.45.  We have seen that Consciousness is related to Space. We have seen that Power is related to Space.

    10.46.  Space is formless in itself, yet with its property, Power, it produces forms within itself. Con­sciousness is formless in itself, yet it produces forms within itself.

    10.47.  Space, Consciousness and Power are three aspects of an identical somewhat.

    10.48.  Space and Power alone would not be a suf­ficient definition of God. Part of the definition of God is Consciousness. But we have seen how in­timately connected are the three ideas we have been considering.

    10.49.  God is said to be a trinity. Here is a trinity which fulfils the definion we require. Space is God the Father, the supreme origin of all things. Consci­ousness is God the Son, the light which illumin­ates all Space. Power is God the Holy Ghost, the great operator within the universe of things.

    10.50.  In conclusion we may note that the very word Space contains a suggestion of what we have been discussing. For the word ‘Space’ contains the word ‘ace’.

    10.51.  Anyone who plays cards knows that the ace may be high or low. It may be above the King or below the Deuce, who is really the Devil.

    10.52.  ‘Ace high’ is God transcendent. ‘Ace low’ is God immanent.

    10.53.  The word ‘ace’ is simply the form of the word Ache or Aitch, the letter H. And this letter is the aspirate, the breath or spirit letter.

    10.54.  "God is Spirit," says Jesus.




11. Trinity in Man and God.

    11.01.  God is the supreme source of all beings in whom the three (Thinker, thought, object ­of-thought) are one. Matter, Form and Will are one in God, though in man they appear separately. It is questionable whether the three in man are not one. The soul of man is a continuum of sentient power, able to will any number of courses simul­taneously. Each willed course formulates a de­finite amount of energy in a definite way. Thus in each willed course the Will, the willing process, and the object willed, are one. In man there are usually many purposes willed at once, each being a trinity of will, form and process.

    11.02.  Because the multiplicity of purposes in man may contradict each other it often appears that man's will, idea and action are not coincident. But this lack of coincidence is not in each willed ob­ject process, but in the contradictory nature of many such, incompatible in their nature. Thus arises in man the apparent separation of will, idea and action. But if man concentrates all his power and focusses it in one only direction, then his will, idea and action, having nothing other in him to contradict him, must by their consistency be one.

    11.03.  It follows that, as in God Will, Idea and Action are one, God must be willing, thinking and doing only one thing. He must have only one purpose, for only in one purpose may unity be attained. What, then, is God's one purpose?

    11.04.  It is said that God is Love. In what way may we define Love so that it will fulfil the required condition of a unific purpose? Simply we may de­fine Love as the will to work for the optimal de­velopment of the potentialities of being. God wills all ways and everywhere the development of the optimal potentiality of being.

    11.05.  Because optimal development of being-potent­ialities implies the development of optimal relat­ions between beings (for a being cannot show all its potentialities in isolation, part of such potent­ialities being by their nature relational ones) therefore in willing optimal development of being potentialities, God is willing the relations be­tween beings needed for such development. The meaning of a cogwheel is fully seen only when it is meshed with another. Likewise the meaning of any characterised being is fully seen only when brought into relation with one or more other beings.

    11.06.  By willing the optimal development of all beings and all that is implied in this, God maintains the unity of His Will, Idea and Action. By willing the same, man also may maintain such unity.

    11.07.  To will as God wills, to think as He thinks, to act as He acts is simply to work for, think of and will, the optimal development of the potentialities of being, that is, to love.

    11.08.  In practice a man is to see that whatever any being is willing, thinking or doing is so because that being so wills, thinks, or does, according to its own inner processes and its relations with other beings.

    11.09.  As each being is a creature of God, brought into being by God, each being must have functioning within itself the purpose of God, that is, the love of God, the will, idea and action of God, urging it to develop its potentialities to their optimum. As this is so, how is it that not all beings appear to be moving towards their optimal development? How is it that some human beings exhibit actions which may only be interpreted as a will to negate their own potentialities, even to destroy their own being?

    11.10.  There is in this world not only the will to love and live; there is also a will to hate and kill; not only to hate and kill others, but also to hate and kill, sometimes, oneself. How does such a will appear in a creature whose essential source is a God of Love?

    11.11.  To answer this question we will use the story told in the Bible in the book of Genesis about Adam and Eve, and how they came to be expelled from the Garden of Eden.

    11.12.  Adam has been commanded by God, the same God who is the God of Love, not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God has told Adam, "If you eat of this fruit you shall die."

    11.13.  In the Garden is a serpent, and this serpent goes to Eve and tells her that she may eat the fruit and not die.

    11.14.  Eve is thus presented with a problem. God has said the fruit will bring death. The serpent has said it will not bring death.

    11.15.  Now, whenever two beings make statements which contradict each other, either the words used or the things signified by the words have not the same significance for the two beings.

    11.16.   God, ‘to die’ means to be divided from God, that is, Good and Love.

    11.17.  For the serpent, ‘to die’ means to lose one's life, which is not possible in principle, for life is eternal. The serpent, sloughing its skin, symbol­ises the eternal life ever encasing itself in a body and then renewing its case, itself remaining what it eternally is - life itself.

    11.18.  When God said to Adam "You shall die." He meant "You will be divided if you choose to sep­arate good and evil as if they were two substances; you will lose your unity of will and dissipate your energies and so become inefficient and suffer the consequences of your inefficiency."

    11.19.  When the serpent said to Eve "You shall not die; the fruit is good to look at, pleasant to taste, and confers knowledge like God has," he meant "Your life principle is eternal and therefore in it­self immortal, and if you remember this you can go out to enjoy the world, taking from it what is pleasant and avoiding what is unpleasant."

    11.20.  Eve is presented with two statements about knowledge and death, one from within, the other from without, from the serpent. She is thus pre­sented with an occasion of choice, by the free ex­ercise of which she may realise the nature of her own being and of the universe.

    11.21.  Eve, of course, had not yet experienced the meaning of ‘death’, either in God's sense of the word, or in the sense used by the serpent. She was, therefore, not yet equipped to make an intelligent choice. Intelligence is that which sees the way to realisation of a purpose. Eve did not have any pur­pose in eating the fruit until the serpent suggested to her that it would be pleasant to eat, etc. Then she accepted this suggestion without first seeing clearly the results of her action, nor with a full knowledge of its implications. Therefore we can­not say that she acted intelligently. We may act intelligently only where we are able to define a purpose and the means to its realisation. We can­not say that Eve did either with any large degree of efficiency.

    11.22.  God had spoken to Adam from within. The ser­pent spoke to Eve from without. Eve, having accepted the serpent's suggestion, then gave some of the fruit to Adam. Adam was thus placed in the position of choice. God's voice spoke to him from within, now in his memory. The serpent's voice, through Eve, spoke to him from without. Adam could have listened within to God's voice. Instead he acted upon Eve's serpent-insinuated voice. He acted no more intelligently than Eve. Both were cast out of the Garden and condemned to hard labour and death (in God's sense of the word). The serpent's vision of death they did not experience, but outside the Garden the pursuit of pleasure in the light of the knowledge of good and evil proved less profitable than they had anticipated.

    11.23.  When the serpent spoke to Eve, she received a stimulus from outside herself. Acting upon the serpent's suggestion exposed her and her spouse to further external stimuli. It is the accumulation of unhappy and painful experiences and the thwarting of the will to pleasure, that gradually builds up in man the negative states of hate and the will to kill and be killed. Here is the source of all anti-life impulses.

    11.24.  When the recorded experiences of frustrating situations, and unpleasant sensations, and painful wounds, psychical and physical, have accumulat­ed in the organism sufficiently to outweigh the records of the situation of fulfillment and the moments of pleasure and happiness, then the will to live tends to lose its force. It is almost, but not quite, a quantitively determined situation. The be­ing in whom the negative records of experience outweigh the positive records is highly likely to act negatively. If it were not for the fact of God's will to develop man's potentialities of being, there would be a high probability that he would give up his struggle against the anti-life experiences.

    11.25.  But God is a free, intelligent power acting for the ultimate fulfillment of His purpose. God is that supreme infinite sentient power in whom we live, move and have our being. Because we live in Him we are not cut off from Him. Our being is the manifestation of His power. His sentience and power are at the centre of our being, welling up and illuminating and energising us. Only our out­ward-turned serpent-directed will blinds us to this fact. We have but to turn our attention away from the periphery of our being, and turn it inward to the ever-uprising intelligent power springing from within our centre, and we shall re-enter into the Garden we once left.

    11.26.   There is a ‘fiery sword’ guarding the en­trance to the Garden to stop us returning into the Garden before we have thoroughly learned the lesson of Adam's and Eve's error.

    11.27.  Adam and Eve erred in subordinating them­selves to a stimulus coming from beyond the peri­phery of their being. They turned away from the voice of God and His love and the great imperat­ive within, "Develop thyself," and enslaved them­selves to the external serpentine suggestion "Enjoy thyself." They did not see the con­sequences of their choice until their choice had become operative in the physical world, although it was not absolutely beyond their power to have resisted the external stimulus.
 
    11.28.  We may find, if we wish, an excuse for their error. God gave them about this fruit one only command: “Do not eat it." The serpent, however, gave several suggestions. "It is good to eat, pleasant to look upon and confers divine know­ledge." In terms of energy-input it would appear that the serpent was rather tipping the scales in the direction of eating. And God, who, of course, in His omniscience knew this, did not, apparently, throw into the scales anything extra on His side to balance it up. We shall show that God's omni­science contained elements of which Adam's ig­norance was void.

    11.29.  What would have happened if Eve had not responded to the serpent's hissed suggestion, had not persuaded poor Adam to participate in her sin?

    11.30.  The Garden of Eden was a very pleasant place, sheltered by a wall from the threatening violence of nature beyond. In it Adam and Eve might have fulfilled God's will for them, might have spent eternity there, tending the beautiful flowers and eating the pleasant fruits and herbs of the Garden. Their lives would have been pleasant and pro­ductive only of good. Joy would have been theirs forever.

    11.31.  But in such a state of happiness, would they have developed their potentialities to the full? Would they have grown in understanding of all the possibilities of being? No. Of the possibilities of happiness they would have known all. But of the possibilities of unhappiness they would have learned nothing.

    11.32.  Has unhappiness something worthwhile to teach us? It has. It may teach us the full meaning of God by showing us what God is not. It may teach us what God has accomplished for us in swallowing up in His own Goodness the Evil which would otherwise manifest to us. He swallows it as a white cell in our bloodstream swallows up bacteria and other things inimical to our life.

    11.33.  When we have understood fully the message unhappiness has for us, then, and only then, shall we be allowed to pass the flaming sword and re­enter the Garden of supreme joy.

    11.34.  Unhappiness, misery, pain, suffering. These have something to say to us. They have something to tell us about what God has done for us in swallowing them up. God has solved the problem of Good and Evil. He offered Adam the fruits of His solution.

    11.35.  He offered Adam the fruits of the whole Garden, in which grew also the Tree of Life. He told Adam only one thing not to do, not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God in His omniscience knew this Tree's fruits and what it spelt to those who eat it - Death. He knew this both in principle, from the inherent Logos of His own Being, and in act, from His own actualisation of the creative process of the world.

    11.36.  God, in His omniscience and creative actual­isations, experienced the separation of Good and Evil. He knew what it was like to experience these two in separation from each other. He knew they were better with the Evil swallowed up in the Good, and with the Evil swallowed up in the Good He made the world and all things in it, and "saw that it was good".

    11.37.  Food without salt is not so palatable as with it. But if the Food is placed on one plate, and the Salt on another, and we are required to eat them one at a time, our enjoyment will be less than if we are allowed to eat them together. So it is with Good and Evil.




12. GOD IS NOT DEAD
[March-June 1980]

Chapter One

    12.01.  “God is not dead,” are words put into the mouth of Zarathustra by Nietzsche, the famous Ger­man poet-philosopher-prophet of the nineteenth century. These words have caused much perturb­ation amongst religious people, and have played into the hands of the irreligious, who have interpreted them as a licence for every kind of self-indulgence and irresponsible activity.

    12.02.  Why should the words of one man have pro­duced such violent responses? Who was Nietzsche, and what did his oft-quoted words mean?

    12.03.  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on 15th October 1844 at Rocken, near Lützen, in the Prussian province of Saxony. On both sides of the family Nietzsche came from Protestant pastors. When he was born, his father wrote in the church register a quotation from the Gospel of Luke 1.66; "What manner of child shall this be?" When Friedrich died at the age of fifty-six, the world had still failed to answer this question.

    12.04.  At the end of the year 1888, Friedrich broke down, overworked and inwardly deeply disturbed by what his profoundly religious soul felt most strongly that he must say to mankind. For another twelve years he lived, first with his mother, then, after her death, with his widowed sister Elizabeth. On the 28th August 1900, he died and was buried in Rocken churchyard.

    12.05.  To see this poet-philosopher in his true light, and to rescue his name from the numerous mis­understandings which have grown round him, we must examine his thought as revealed in his works and life. He was no merely orthodox thinker. He saw around him the evidence of dangerous wrong directions taken by many who believed them­selves orthodox. He loved mankind and saw that somehow man's evolution had strayed from its true path. He willed passionately to say something to his brother men that would bring them back again into the right orientation. During his illness he had written to his sister, "Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me - and I shall be cured." She was unable to find this small circle.
 
    12.06.  What was Nietzsche's doctrine? He had begun his philosophical thinking with Schopenauer, a pessimistic, gloomy man who finally came to be­lieve that life was not at all worth living. As Nietzsche's own thought developed, he came to view Schopenhauer’s chief writing as the work of youthful melancholy, out of which Schopenhauer failed to grow.

    12.07.  Nietzsche himself saw that one must climb out of one's immature first thinkings. For his motto he chose,"Only he who alters remains unalterably mine". Childish thoughts are to be outgrown. St. Paul had spoken of a special doctrine too strong for children. This doctrine was one of full self­-responsibility for one's life-course. Nietzsche's mind was full of religious teachings, given to him by his parents. But the more he saw the negative effect of these teachings on the people around him, the uneasier he became. He decided to engage in an intense investigation of the basis of religious doctrines.

    12.08.  His research into the Greek philosophers who lived before Socrates changed his view of life. He began to weigh every idea in terms of its tendency to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to life. The pre-Christian world of pagan times had given a decisive ‘Yes’ to the process of living. Nietzsche found that a civilisation's attitude towards life depended upon what it most valued. He found that before Socrates the life values of the great thinkers were those of Power, and Love of life as an expression of Power. And he found that love of power was instinctive; that the joy in life which arose spontaneously from the depths of one's being arose instinctively. It did not come from consideration of fear-based moralities. Nietzsche asked himself how such moralities arose. He gazed into the history of mankind and emerged from his meditations with a strange statement.

    12.09.  The accepted civilised values of his day were those of slaves. These values originated among the Jews during their times of captivity in Egypt and elsewhere. Before their days of slavery, when the Jews were ruled by powerful kings, they had been wealthy, warlike, and victorious. In those days they used the words ‘good’, ‘true’, and ‘beautiful’ to mean anything that was brave, vig­orous, self-reliant, joying in the power to perform great deeds of daring.

    12.10.  But when the Jews were defeated and taken in­to captivity and enslaved, their values changed. Being unable to throw off the yoke of their op­pressors, they invented a new view of the meaning of ‘goodness’, ‘truth’, and ‘beauty’. Under the lash of their taskmasters, their joy in power waned, and their brave, vigorous self-reliance paled. Now it appeared that submission to their overlords was "good". Humility became less painful than open revolt. The old worship of proud power was displaced by a new morality, the mor­ality of slaves afraid to rebel.

    12.11.  Here Nietzsche found what he sought, the ex­planation of the weaknesses, moral and spiritual, of civilised man. They had come from a once vig­orous, healthy people, but a people dispirited by slavery.

    12.12.  Naturally enough, a people oppressed by powerful, alien rulers, seeing no immediate way out of their slavery, had to learn other ways of sur­vival than those of vigorous displays of strength. The Jews had lost by their defeats their old wor­ship of open displays of power, but they had not lost their will to live. A new technique of survival had to be found other than the use of extrovert violence. And here Nietzsche saw that Christian­ity had taken over the Jewish survival method. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew, and in Him the new attitude of life developed by generations of Jews found its consummation.

    12.13.  "Turn the other cheek," became a keyword to the application of the new mode of effective re­sponse to oppressive violence. But Nietzsche saw a terrible danger in this keyword. It was possible that mankind might forget the original, instinctive love of life, the supreme joy that should spring up spontaneously from the very source of the life-­force itself. Mankind might be trapped into seeing life as merely a process of gaining survival at any price, and making virtue out of the paying of this price. He saw that life might degenerate into a merely negative process, a mode of holding down all one's natural, instinctive tendencies to extend one's life, to improve it, to develop it to ever higher levels. Life might become, under the suppressive moralities of pseudo-humility, a mere shadow of its true self.

    12.14.  Looking around him in his own century, Nietzsche saw the evidence of the failure of neg­ative, false attitudes to life. He saw people at all levels of society paying lip-service to virtues they did not actually feel. He saw pretences of humil­ity, of love for one's neighbour, of forgiveness of trespasses committed by one against another. He saw mankind hypnotised by ideas that they could not, or would not, put into practice. He became ill with what he saw.

    12.15.  Nietzsche decided to put before the more in­telligent of mankind his findings. Somehow he had to wake them up to their terrible situation, to force them to realise that if they did not re-assess their position, human evolution would stop, and the whole purpose of the universe would come to nothing. How best to force men to open their eyes and ears to the realities of existence? He must de­vise something that would give a tremendous shock to mankind.

    12.16.  In a century where millions of people gave lip­-service to the idea that God exists, and perhaps, in their own little ways, even believe, Nietzsche decided on the nature of the shock he would give them. To all those millions of professing believers, at every social level from the poorest to the richest, he would cry out, "God is dead!" This exclamation would have two effects, one on those who believed in God, and the other on those who, even if they professed such belief, did not believe. The believers in God would be horrified; the non­believers would be relieved. The gauntlet thrown down to the believers would force them to wake up in order to defend their position. The non­believers would embrace Nietzsche as their Re­deemer. In his words they would find justification for every irresponsible deed they would commit. And Nietzsche foresaw these things. No wonder his health vanished. What he had to say, he knew that he had to say for the sake of evolving man­kind, and he said it.

    12.17.  A Redeemer is one who re-assesses or re-evaluates, or re-judges a matter. Before the Jewish captivity life had been judged by the strong to be their right. Might was right. After the captivity and years of painful, unavoidable slavery, life was re­assessed by the slaves as an occasion for the pract­ice of humility. The Good and the True and the Beautiful became equated with merely negative virtues, with those feelings which mankind acquired under inescapable slavery experiences. Self-pity grew in the heart of man and disguised itself as pity-for-others, as compassion, as love for the underdog. Nietzsche shuddered at the hidden implications, and cried out, "Beware of pity!" But this same man, when he saw a stupid fellow beat a horse in the street, flung his arms round the animal's neck and burst into tears.

    12.18.  Jesus of Nazareth redeemed, re-assessed the values of the ancient world. He saw how strong or cunning men struck at or cheated others less capable, and said, "Not one stone of your temple shall stand on another." The ancient pagan joy in physical strength and capabilities had somehow gone wrong. The strong had fallen into using their strength only for their own ends, They had lost all sense of human community. The powerful had en­slaved the weak, and worse still, they had devised methods of keeping them weak. "If we had not hewers of wood and drawers of water," said one philosopher, "we should not have time to think about philosophy." Slaves were to be the basis of the liberation of the powerful and cunning from repetitive, non-creative activities which were nevertheless needful for the comforts of civilised men. The freedom of Greek citizens rested on the slavery of other men.

    12.19.  Jesus travelled the world and saw its condition, and gave His new commandment. Nietzsche saw how people had reacted to the Jewish Redeemer, saw their increasing negativity to life arising from their slave's interpretation of His teaching and made his decision to redeem the Redeemer. Nietzsche's decision led to his breakdown and death. The weight of the responsibility for this decision was intolerable to Nietzsche's super-sensitive soul. If Nietzsche said "God is dead!", and people believed him, in effect he would have killed their belief in that God, and so metaphorically killed God. To what, then, would mankind look for its salvation? Nietzsche would have to find a substitute for the God he had killed. He found his substitute in the idea of the Superman, that being that man may eventually be­come, which is so far beyond present-day man that this man cannot even conceive his nature. Super-man is not just a superior man of the kind we now know, but a being so far beyond today's man that we cannot have any meaningful idea of his capacities. And this superman is placed by Nietzsche in the position, yes, on the throne of the dead God, for he is to represent to mankind all that previously had been summed up in that word. What then can the idea of Superman do for us that the idea of God cannot?

    12.20.  Nietzsche would reply, "It can make us realise that we ourselves are to take ourselves in hand and to make of ourselves that very worship-able being which previously we had been content to imagine outside ourselves and call ‘God’”.




Chapter Two

    13.01.  Nietzsche did not believe that the generality of mankind would realise his meaning. Only the few, of tremendous will power and great intel­lectual ability, would be able to dedicate them­selves to the hard task of attaining the high aim that he had defined for them, the Superhuman task of taking over the universal ruling function of the God who, Nietzsche declared, was dead. Men feel that they would like to gain the power to rule the world, but few have the self-possession necessary for the justification of holding such power; very, very few. To have power is unavoidably to have also the response-abilities of power, and also the responsibilities of power. Real power implies real ability to make correct responses to every sit­uation. The mere external appearance of power, the cock's comb, the military plume in the brass hat, these things are no proof of adequate capacity to deal with the heavy pressures of real and dangerous events.

    13.02.  Nietzsche distinguished between the few human beings who would be able to understand his doctrine, and the many who would not. The many he called the herd, the mob; but he did not believe that herd or mob mentality was confined to the lower income groups of human society. Mob mentality he saw wherever men were unable to bring themselves into a condition of individual self-response-ability, a state of being in which the individual would assume the full response-ability for all his own decisions and actions, and not try to unload these onto other members of the group with which he put himself in relation. Nietzsche saw that the man who relied on spreading the ef­fects of his actions over the group was a member of a herd, a mob-man, and this whatever his ap­parent position within the human social hierarchy.

    13.03.  What Nietzsche willed was the breeding of a new kind of being, one who did not shirk his world responsibilities, one who could assume the titanic task of creating his own being as if from scratch, a man who would be able to define for himself a Herculean goal and work unflaggingly to attain it, a man not to be deterred by any life-negating suggestions, a life-affirming man.

    13.04.  What then, was the real difference between the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and the teaching of Friedrich Nietzsche? Both taught the affirmation of life. “I am come so that you might have life, and have it more abundantly,” said Jesus, who reassessed, re-deemed the life-attitude of the men of his day. Nietzsche promised no more; only his definition of the means of attaining this ‘more’, this greater abundance of life, differed from that of Jesus.

    13.05.  In the midst of the most unintelligent divisions of human society, Nietzsche saw blindness, ignor­ance, and stupid distortions of Truth. He saw men whose positions in the social hierarchy were con­ferred upon them not by personal capabilities, but by the external trappings of inheritance and gross material wealth, falling upon men from the coffers of their dead parents, or by the chance fall of the dice in the money markets of the world.

    13.06.  Nietzsche, nearly nineteen hundred years after Jesus of Nazareth, like him called for a redemp­tion, a re-assessment of human values. But by the time Nietzsche came to make his impassioned ap­peal to mankind, his mind was no longer the open sensorium of a new baby. "Woe to you who are an inheritor," he cried. For how can one dismiss from one's protoplasm the impulses and tendencies of one's ancestors, and so become a new piece of parchment on which to write a new scripture? To wipe out from our minds what has been written in them by heredity is indeed hard, far too hard for the generality of mankind.

    13.07.  Nietzsche offered his poetic image of the need­ed metamorphoses, the deep changes in the soul of man which would carry him from the state of abject slavery to concepts received from our an­cestors, to a new condition of freedom. "One must first become a camel," he said, "then a lion, and then a child."

    13.08.  By ‘camel’ he meant a conscious bearer of the weight of ancestral heredity. One must make con­scious to oneself precisely what has been imposed upon one's soul by thousands of years of human cultural experiments. One must see that to be­come a ‘camel’ in this sense is to penetrate to the meaning of all previous human history, and to ac­cept this history as a burden not to be thrown off until its very essence has been assimilated. Then, and only then, is the ‘camel-man’ ready for his next metamorphosis, the change into a ‘lion’.

    13.09.  The ‘lion-man’ is the man who, having accept­ed, affirmed and assimilated the full weight of his racial heredity, is thus made ready for the throw­ing off of this burden in the name of freedom, not to pseudo-freedom of the irresponsible man, but the freedom of the ‘lion-man’ who is prepared, in the desert of his own unloaded soul, stripped of all past traditional evaluations, to declare himself free, not from his past burdens, but for the dis­covery of new values, so far utterly unknown to mankind. Then the ‘lion-man’ is ready for the next metamorphosis, the change of ‘lion’ into ‘child’. "Except you become as a little child," said Jesus, "you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The ‘child’ is a metaphorical express­ion for a new beginning, a fresh start, a way of looking at total reality not conditioned by any previous formulations. The ‘lion-man’, having assimilated the full meaning of human traditions, has now become a ‘child’, a new being, untram­melled by the hereditaments of past human at­tempts at civilisation and culture. Of this ‘child­man’ what are we to say?

    13.10.  The Nietzschean ‘child-man’ is a wholly new start, a man, an evaluator, who is in the condition of a new-born baby, naked and exposed to the world-events around him, differing only in one re­spect from any ordinary new-born baby, and this is in the fact that, unlike the ordinary new baby, the ‘child-man’ has a vocabulary wherewith to examine the phenomena of his world-experience, a vocabulary given to him in his ‘camel’ state, and used in his ‘lion’ stage for the attainment of his freedom. The ordinary new-born baby cannot speak, cannot form articulated sounds, cannot ex­press his responses to his environment in gram­matical sentences. The Nietzschean ‘child-man’ has at his command a treasury of ideas, of con­cepts, embodied in well-formed words. He can talk to himself, capture his thoughts, and by so doing know himself reflexively.

    13.11.  A new baby, without words, cannot reflect upon himself. He has no terms wherewith to de­scribe to himself his pleasures and pains, his hopes and fears. He does not yet know he is ‘human’. He is an open sensorium, a living being with all his senses exposed to the events of the world, having yet no adequate defences against the stimuli that strike continually at his organism.

    13.12.  But with the first establishment in the baby of a word, a name of a thing, his openness to reality begins to close. Through his five senses into his being enter the energies of the outer world. By words and indications the baby's awareness becomes trapped in verbal formulations. "Closed by his senses five," His sensorium, his natural sensitivity, is no longer ‘open’. Now he is closed, verbally conditioned to see, taste, smell, touch and hear only what his educators allow.

    13.13.  The process of closure of sensitivity is an un­avoidable pre-condition of the ability to live and interfunction within the confines of a human soc­iety. But this closure is justified only for a time. "We sacrifice, but not forever." When the closure of the sensorium has fulfilled its purpose, which is to stabilise consciousness within the soul, then it becomes needful to be prepared again for change. "Except you are born again," says Jesus, "you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

    13.14.  The birth from one's physical mother, whereby one enters into the time-process and into human community, is called the ‘first birth’, and is viewed as a birth from ‘water’, because ‘water’ was the ancient symbol for plastic material sub­stance. Before birth, while still in its mother's womb, the baby sits within a bag of water, the am­niotic sac. When the baby is born, this sac bursts and releases its water and the child into the external world of material things. This ‘first birth’ is thus said to be a birth from water. At this birth the baby enters the world of time and matter.

    13.15.  But there is another birth. Jesus says, "Except you be born of water and of spirit, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." We know what it means to be ‘born of water’. What does it mean to be ‘born of Spirit’? Just as the ancients used ‘water’ as a representation of material, plastic substance, so they used ‘fire’ as representative of Spirit. The super-intelligent free power which we call ‘God’. To be ‘born of water’ meant to be born physically from a human mother. To be ‘born of spirit’ meant to be born spiritually from the eternal power of Truth.

    13.16.  When Nietzsche wrote his great works, the world received them as a bomb-shell, not because his doctrine was totally new, for he had great pre­decessors whose ideas he had assimilated and in­corporated into his own meditations, men like the philosophers who taught before Socrates, Heraclitus and others.

    13.17.  Heraclitus, the philosopher of ‘fire’, taught that reality is in perpetual change. "No man bathes twice in the same river." The word that Heraclitus used to express this idea was the same word that is used in our Gospel of St. John to ex­press the creative power that has produced the universe and everything in it. It is the Greek word ‘Logos’, which in our English Bible we translate as the ‘Word’. "In the beginning was the Word (the Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

    13.18.  Are the words we speak in our everyday living the same as this Logos-word? No. Because these everyday words that we use are not powerful enough to create what they signify. When we utter the words ‘Rolls Royce’, there does not at once magically appear before us that magnificent car which these words signify. There is an infinite dif­ference between our ordinary words and the Log­os-Word of the fourth Gospel and of Heraclitus. The Logos-Word is Power, creative power, intelligent power, which from itself brought and brings into existence everything in the whole uni­verse. "Without the Word was nothing made that was made."

    13.19.  The Logos-Word of Heraclitus and St. John is no ordinary word, no mere powerless sound uttered via the mouth of mortal mankind. To re­ceive and understand the mystery of this word, we must be ‘born again’, born a second time, and this of spirit, which is itself this Logos-Word.

    13.20.  To understand what meaning we are to attach to the Greek word ‘Logos’, which in the Fourth Gospel is translated as the ‘Word’, we are to re­member that to the philosopher who first used it, and to others who followed his way of thinking, the Logos-Word meant ‘Power’, ‘Energy’, ‘Force’, the First Cause of everything that is, and that this ‘Power’ or ‘Energy’ was a formulating force, an energy that worked in such a manner that it produced all the forms of the things that we see in the universe around us.

    13.21.  We can thus see that we have justification for translating the opening statements in the Gospel of John with the words "In the Beginning of Creat­ion was a formulating or shaping Power, which belonged to God, and was itself God, the Creator and Former of the World, and nothing whatever has been made but by this Creative Power."




Chapter Three

    14.01.  No one today would deny that the universe is the product of the activity of power. We know that all matter is a behaviour of energy, for nuclear weapons have proved it so. What we now have to do is to grasp the fact that this power. The power that makes and sustains the universe, is not unin­telligent. Materialist scientists have tried to keep out of their theories the idea that power in itself might be intelligent, that it might actually know what it is doing, for if power is intelligent it might have purposes within itself which could cross and impede the purposes of the scientists.

    14.02  The scientists seek knowledge in order to gain power over the things of the world. They are not satisfied merely to understand for the sake of un­derstanding. They seek, by means of understand­ing, to control world events, and to direct them in ways satisfactory to the scientists.

    14.03.  But materialist scientists tend to forget one thing: the fact that the intelligence they have is it­self a function of the energy that made the uni­verse they study. That a scientist has intelligence proves at least one thing, that is, that the energy which has produced the world has had from the beginning at least the potential of evolving the life-form which the scientist calls his own body, with all its processes, physical and psychological. Just as water does not spring higher than its source, so the intelligence of man does not rise higher than the Cosmic Power that caused it to arise. The brightest mind of mankind is not brighter than the power which evolved it.

    14.04.  But the moment that we fully grasp this great Truth, we put ourselves in the position of having to say that the vast power which has created, and now sustains the universe, is precisely the power that sensitive men have worshipped as God. Here we must face the plain truth that what mankind has worshipped from the beginning of time is Intelligent Power, the power that knows what is to be done, knows how to do it, and can do it. This power, and this power alone, is all that has ever been worshipped by any beings, anywhere, at any time. The short name for this power is ‘God’.

    14.05.  Nietzsche knew this, and he knew also that this power is eternal. His whole doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence rests on this recognition. Thus when he made the statement, "God is dead,” he was using the word ‘God’ in a special way. He did not believe that the Eternal Intelligent Power was dead. He did believe that the idea of God as ord­inarily understood was a dreadfully misleading notion which imposed on mankind a terrible limitation, an impedance which, if not removed, might totally halt the evolutionary march of the human race, and so cut off the possibility of the universe taking its next forward step.

    14.06.  Just as if the tip of a branch is cut off, the branch cannot grow further at that end, so, if the highest point of evolved intelligence is cut off from the universe, then intelligence cannot grow further at that point. Either it must create for itself another outlet, or remain undeveloped. This fact was the basis of Nietzsche's great fear for the future. This extremely intelligent and super-sensitive man trembled in his soul for the future of mankind, and took upon himself the titanic task of removing the impediments to future higher evolution. But un­fortunately this great task proved too heavy for his organism, and broke down his health.

    14.07.  When Nietzsche attacked what he called the ‘slave morality’ of the defeated Jews, and the in­heritors of their religious ideas, the Christians, he did so because he was afraid that this ‘slave mor­ality’ would lead humanity into the total abandon­ment of all ideas of heroism, of courage, of the will-to-power. His fear was not without found­ation. There is a possibility of a slave mentality becoming established in mankind. It is possible that peoples held too long in bondage to powerful overlords might lose spirit, might suffer a waning of courage and the will-to-freedom. It is possible that a diplomacy based on fear might result in the total loss of the ability to tell a newly discovered truth, in case it should prove unacceptable to the ruling powers of the State, or to the unruly mob.

    14.08.  Because of such possibilities, Nietzsche tried to formulate a concept that would smash the ‘slave morality’ that he believed responsible for the possible future degradation of mankind. He would tell mankind that the God they worshipped was dead. This would throw men back on their own resources. Most of mankind, weakened by the slave-doctrine of Judaeo-Christianity, would be dismayed by the orientation. Few men are happy to have imposed on them the total respons­ibility for their own decisions and activities.

    14.09.  But to those few Nietzsche looked for the salv­ation of future humanity. From these few, he be­lieved, could be bred a new race of courageous, heroic beings whose nature would be so far be­yond that of present day mankind that we cannot think of such beings other than as beyond man as we know him. This ‘beyond-man’ Nietzsche call­ed the Ubermensch, the Superman. To this Super­man would belong the future of the world. He and he alone would be the meaning of cosmic evol­ution and existence. The descendants of the many, weakened by the slave-morality of their ancest­ors, would be the slaves of the few Supermen. The many would have no meaning except in terms defined for them by the few.

    14.10.  Now we are to remember that Nietzsche had studied the Jews in the days of their great strength when under powerful kings they had placed their feet on the necks of their enemies. In those days the Jews had been proud and courageous, and had had a philosophy to match their pride. This philo­sophy Nietzsche saw as positive and life-affirm­ing. He did not too closely examine the causes of the downfall of such a strong and heroic people, but rather concentrated on the virtues they dis­played in the days of their ascendancy. These pos­itive virtues he contrasted with the negative at­titudes of their dispirited souls in the times of their overthrow and captivity, and saw in this negativity only a life-destroying abandonment of all positive and heroic values.

    14.11.  But in the heyday of their worldly greatness the Jewish people had become over-proud, suffered from hutzpah, hubris, tremendous pride. Believ­ing themselves the specially chosen people of God they had begun to think themselves somehow meritorious in their own right, as if their God had chosen them for their own innate virtue. They for­got that God's covenant with them was a unilateral one, made from His side, not theirs. Thus they had placed themselves in the position where they needed a terrible lesson, which was to break their tribal unity and disperse them over the face of the earth and scatter them amongst the non-Jewish nations of the world. Captivity under harsh task­masters taught them what it was really like to be like to be slaves under merciless overlords, show­ed to them how others had suffered at their hands under their dominion. As Nietzsche saw, they learned sadly the condition of slaves, changed their haughty bearing for a more subservient mien, hid their damaged pride under obsequious external behaviour. Under their powerful over­lords they acquired a sense of humility they had never known before. They began to see in their God a quality they had before considered un­worthy of their attention, the quality of mercy, of compassion, a quality that in the days of their supreme over-lordship over others they had never contemplated. But all kinds of lessons have to be learned.

    14.12.  The once-victorious chosen people had to learn not only the ways of pride and intolerant cruelty, they had also to learn what is meant to suffer under such ways. The wholesome human life is possible only after experience of all the results of human activities. This is a terrible fact, which the long history of human atrocities and responses to them demonstrate to us. "Sorrow must come: woe to him by whom." Most members of mankind learn only by experience. Very few yet have the capac­ity to think logically through a hypothetical situat­ion and reach by sheer thought a true conclusion. Very few have the refinement of feeling needed to enter into the emotional experiences of others. Therefore, for most people, only the facts of experience can teach the end results of human activities.

    14.13.  Being what we are at our present stage of evol­ution, we human beings lack the logic and the sensitivity to be able to enter into each other's joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. But we know enough about ourselves to be aware that we need to know more about human nature. Until our sensitivity is considerably increased we know that we shall make mistakes, and that we shall pay for our mistakes in some way, whether we like it or not. We know, therefore, that if we are to become able to get along together in anything like har­mony, we must make allowances for each other's errors. We must learn self-control, and self-con­trol is utterly contrary to the pleasure-drives, which naturally rule our being.

    14.14.  Because Nietzsche saw Joy-in-life as a su­preme value, he saw sadness and misery as mere negations of life, which, if they were viewed in themselves without comprehending their origin, they would be. But sadness and misery arise from activities, which result in reactions that cannot be sufficiently controlled. The strong, proud man may enslave another, weaker man, but this does not mean the weaker man will necessarily stay weaker or will not devise some subtle mode of retaliation.

    14.15.  Instead of seeing all the heroic, brave, cour­ageous, cruel acts of strong men as purely life affirming, as Nietzsche tended to see them, and all the careful, diplomatic, humble, obsequious acts as life-negating, we can view them all in a different way. The heroic acts of men proud of their strength, insofar as they negate or enslave other men, are themselves the very means where­by the enslaved are provoked to refine their perceptions and to develop their understanding of human nature, so that the insensitive strong men are finally forced to take cognizance of the subtle­ties of the weak. "The mountains shall be laid low, and the valleys be exalted."

    14.16.  Gradually the strong are compelled by the weak to consider the results of the injudicious use of their strength, and the weak of body become strong in their minds, until their efficiency in many things finally convinces the strong in body that the physically weak may be a force to be reck­oned with. The well-armoured nobility found the long-bows of the yeomen a serious threat to their supremacy.

    14.17.  Weakness of body, the limitations of merely physical strength, have given rise to many power­ful weapons, the sling, the bow, the gun, the cannon, the nuclear bomb and the international ballistic missile. The superman of the future will have much to contend with from the others he may view as inferior. For the man reduced by slavery to the level of a coward may by the forced use of his intelligence become the inventor of super-weapons, which will give rise to the re-birth of his courage.

    14.18.  Not unfounded was Nietzsche's fear of the cun­ning which may compensate for weakness by inventing new weapons to extend man's power, for with this extension will go also the magnif­ication of his self-image, and with this may come a new and even greater conceit, the colossal pride of the man who, thinking himself equipped with all the nuclear technology he needs, will "strive to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm".

    14.19.  But God has ready His response to this attempt.




Chapter Four

    15.01.  As we have seen, when Nietzsche declared that God is dead, he did not mean that intelligent power was dead, and infinite intelligent power is what we mean by the word ‘God’. Nietzsche knew that the universe is a work of intelligent power, that all greatness in world history is the product of such power, directed by its own intelli­gence. What he was afraid of was that the leaders of mankind might forget this fact, might be overcome by the negative attitudes of the masses of enslaved people suffering terribly from the de­generation brought on by their enslavement. See­ing this mass suffering, he thought, might bring the leaders of mankind to a halt in their evolution­ary march, might cause them to cease to demand even from themselves the super-efforts which are a necessary pre-condition of the forward move­ment itself. "Beware of pity," said Nietzsche.

    15.02.  The example of ants and bees demonstrate to us the actuality of social systems established in a totally repetitive way, a way in which each in­dividual insect has no meaning other than as an entirely obedient unit in a social machine which has continued so for millions of years. It is not so impossible that mankind might fall into such a closed, repetitive system of social activities and forget all the higher possibilities of free activity open to it.

    15.03.  Let us imagine a society of men and women who have accepted as their goal the establishment of social institutions all based n mere politeness and civility, a society in which “nice manners” have become the meaning of existence, a society in which only “pleasant” truths are allowed expression, in case someone’s feelings should be hurt.  In such a society the hard facts of existence would be veiled over.  Death would become an unmentionable; pain and sickness would become only an occasion for polite condolence or pity, and pity itself but a covering-over of one’s fears of a possible painful future for oneself.

    15.04.  But there is something about this imaginary society which we do not like. Something in our souls speaks against it. There is something lacking in it, the element of genuineness.

    15.05.  We all like to think of ourselves as somehow genuine, that is, real, authentic, not false, spurious or fictitious.

    15.06.  We do not like to think of ourselves as of no account. But if we are to be genuine, real, we must become participators in our own creation. We must co-operate with the powers that rule in the universe; we must not be merely passive to their action upon us. We must take up the task of our own development; we must learn to swim in the ocean of life, and not only in calm weather. When the first man and woman decided to forsake their original innocence in order to gain knowledge of the difference between good and evil, they entered on an adventure that committed their children to a long and painful course of instruction. We, who are the children of their children, and so on, down to today, have suffered the consequence of their original decision. We have preferred to know good from evil. We have also preferred to believe that good is the pleasant and the unpleasant the evil. But it has not worked out so simply.

    15.07.  From believing that the good is the pleasant we have been led to pursue the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant, and in so doing we have divided our souls in two. For what is unpleasant we, insofar as we can, have suppressed and driven from our consciousness. In so doing we have created what the depth psychologists have named the ‘uncon­scious’ mind, that zone of our being which in fact is like an internal private hell, a hell in which all our suppressed fears lurk and squirm in continual anxiety.

    15.08.  This fact of the unconscious, anxiety-turbulat­ed mind in us, drives us continuously to avoid investigating our own deepest contents. But we cannot be real, cannot be authentic, unless we thoroughly know ourselves, and for this thorough self-knowledge we must dare to face ourselves in our innermost being.

    15.09.  Knowing this fact of the unconscious mind, Nietzsche prophesied serious conflicts for future mankind, vandalism and wars which the simple­-minded evolutionists thought lay only in the past. Today, with world events as they are, we see Nietzsche's visions confirmed. The whole system of conscious control in the world is breaking down. We see literature advising us ‘What to do when the system breaks down’.

    15.10.  When the system of conscious egotistic control breaks down, mankind will see the final results of its preference for the ‘knowing of good and evil’, and the equating of the good with the pleasant and the evil with the unpleasant.

    15.11.  Mankind might possibly have continued in the innocent way of its original situation, in harmony with nature, but for whatever motive, knowledge was chosen in preference to spontaneous living in the presence of the divine spirit. This spontaneous spiritual living was symbolised in the ‘Tree of Life’ in the centre of the Garden of Eden.

    15.12.  When our first ancestors chose knowledge of good and evil in preference to the spontaneous life of spirit, mankind was expelled from the place of spirit, and sent out into the world of matter to discover the knowledge preferred. But in the symbolism of the Bible Cherubim were placed to stop the return of mankind into the realm of spon­taneous spiritual living until the full lesson of the knowledge of good and evil had been learned. This lesson we are still in the process of learning, and the learning is not all pleasant. ‘God’ is the short name for the infinitely intelligent Supreme Power by whose activity the universe has been allowed to come into being. Any strength or intel­ligence exhibited by any of the great men of world history has been but a local and temporary ex­pression of some of the power of that Infinite Being which the most intelligent men have wor­shipped as the Source of their own existence. Every act of intelligence of any creature is by per­mission of the Supreme Intelligence that rules the universe. This Supreme Intelligent Power could totally inhibit the activities of any of its creatures, but it has willed and still wills that man should be free to decide for himself what he shall do, and how he shall do it. Why has man been allowed this freedom?

    15.13.  ‘God is love’, and love is possible only in free­dom, and it is God's will that mankind shall love God, not that mankind shall obey God merely from fear of the reprisals possible for infinite power. If man is to love God, then man must be left to do so. Here is the source of the lengthening problem of mankind, for man does not like to be constrained. He prefers the freedom, which God allows him, more than he likes to worship the Creator who gave it to him.

    15.14.  We all know this tendency in the human race to prefer to be authentic, to be the author of our own being. We do not feel real to ourselves, faith­ful to our own self, unless we can make our own minds up, in our own ways. This is the conseq­uence of the spiritual freedom God has allowed us. In being free we are aware that we are to make up our own minds, that our freedom pre-supposes that we are in charge of ourselves, that freedom implies self-responsibility.

    15.15.  We love freedom, for it allows us to justify do­ing what we want. But freedom means that we, and we alone, are responsible for what we do. Freedom implies responsibility; but although we love freedom we tend not to like self-respons­ibility. Yet without self-responsibility we cannot be the authentic, real beings we desire to be.

    15.16.  God, the Supreme Infinite Intelligent Power which has created the universe and all creatures in it, is eternal. He is not limited merely to ex­pressions in Time, as physical man is. God, hav­ing eternity in Himself, can afford to be infinitely patient. He can wait without fear for man to go through all the time-experiences, which he needs to complete his investigations of the knowledge of good and evil. And man, because physically he is bound by the laws of time and matter, tends to become tired of learning the same old lesson - that actions have effects, that freedom implies responsibility, that real authenticity demands that one shall accept that the condition of one's soul is the logical outcome of the totality of one's own decisions.

    15.17.  Finally, when a man comes to die, what his soul possesses is nothing but the memory of all his decisions and their effects upon him, and the pres­ent state of his soul at death. The dying man sees himself in the mirror of his own soul as he has become in the act of making the life-decisions that he has made. There is no escape from this. Even the man who disbelieves in a life after death will have to face finally the image of himself as he knows that he made himself. Freedom - that most loved of all attributes of man's soul - is unavoid­ably also self-responsibility. And God can afford to wait for man to realise this great fact.

    15.18.  When the philosophers and poets and scientists and statesmen of the world make their statements about the nature of reality, they do so in the free­dom their Creator has allowed them. Some of their statements approximate to the truth, some are blatantly false, some are ambiguous, and God allows all to gain publication, for what is present­ed to mankind is given to be the occasion of free choice.

    15.19.  When we hear a truth or a falsity we can will to agree or to disagree with it. When Nietzsche says, "God is dead," we can be pleased to hear it, or disagree with it profoundly. Whether we agree or disagree depends upon our motive, our own intention to live in one way or another.

    15.20.  When Nietzsche said, “God is dead," he did so from the freedom God gave him. He was not fight­ing against the Intelligence and Power which he knew moved in the world. He was fighting to put this Intelligence and Power into its rightful place in the soul of man, within the true perspective which centuries of misuse had misplaced. Seeing Nietzsche's terrible dilemma, we cannot hold against him what he said. His motive was right. The weight of ancestral contradictions in him broke him down. "Woe to you who are an inheritor."

    15.21. The impact of Nietzsche's writings on the minds of men is not yet finished. The quick seiz­ure of his words in their most superficial sense by those who were pleased to hear, "God is dead," will not halt the deeper minds who will seek the profounder meaning of his words. Just at the mo­ment when God-haters think they will triumph, they will see the rebirth once more of the ever-­resurrecting God.

    15.22.  We know that our freedom involves our self­-responsibility. We know that the future of the world has been left in our hands. We know that what we shall create in the future shall stand for a time as the kind of beings we have made of our­selves. We know that future generations shall judge us by our works. Add to this that Nietzsche believed in the Eternal Recurrence. All our deeds shall be done again and again, until in our freedom we have the will and the courage to change them in accord with the new view of reality which our long search for knowledge of good and evil shall unveil.

    15.23.  God allowed Nietzsche to speak, as He allows others of mankind to have their say, so that we can decide for ourselves what we prefer to believe. As we choose, so shall we become.