Being finite ourselves, we human beings cannot know God directly, but only through the phenomena, or manifestations of God in our universe. These manifestations range from the distant world of the milky way to the tiniest blade of grass, from the vast oceans to the dew drop, from the grandest mountain to the soft skin of a baby's cheek; they include every act of kindness and generosity and sacrificial devotion of a human being to another human being, the love of a man for his wife, the love of a mother for her child. They include our very search for God—They include all the beauty and the glory and the mystery of the universe around us and within us. The more we grow in wisdom and in the understanding of these things, the more nearly we can approach to a knowledge of God.
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We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
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God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him. Or better yet: God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.
I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it. But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakable faith.
The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him.
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The revelation of God, in which man's fulfilment of the true knowledge of God takes place, is the disposition of God in which He acts towards us as the same triune God that He is in Himself, and in such a way that, although we are men and not God, we receive a share in the truth of His knowledge of Himself. Certainly it is the share which He thinks proper and which is therefore suitable for us. But in this share we have the reality of the true knowledge of Himself.
God, in the esoteric meaning, is the sum total of all the Laws and all the energies governed by these Laws in the manifested and unmanifested universe. So God is impersonal. Nevertheless, that transcendent God is manifest in every aspect of creation, including ourselves. We are not separate from that creation – from God. Every human being has the potential of the knowledge, the awareness, of all in creation that we can think of as meaning God. The Masters are God-realized, which is a very specific state, in that They have brought Their consciousness, in terms of the divine spark, the Absolute, the Self, into complete at-onement with Themselves as men on the physical plane – the personality and the divine aspect are totally integrated. God is also the great Cosmic Being Who ensouls this planet. For all its solidity, its cities and aeroplanes and television studios and the like, this planet is really the body of expression of a Cosmic Being Who gives the planet its life, and Who has a plan of evolution for all the kingdoms in nature, including the human kingdom.
Knowledge of God comprises three kind: Theological, philosophical and mystical. Theological knowledge concerns with tawhid or unification. Philosophical knowledge deals with the concept of Ultimate Truth, reached through reason. Mystical knowledge is the knowledge of the Essence of God. It is attained by the saints after mushahada or the contemplation on God in their illuminated hearts.
Man is a divine manifestation, not in his accidentality and his fallen state, but in his theomorphism and his primordial and principial perfection. He is the "field of manifestation" of the intellect, which reflects the universal Spirit and thereby the divine Intellect; man as such reflects the cosmic totality, the Creation, and thereby the Being of God.
At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works in the determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes faith from unbelief, erroneous faith and superstition is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God.
Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?
When God’s power shines through us, it manifests as truth, auspiciousness and beauty. When God manifests through the intellect, truth shines forth. When God manifests through actions, it does so as goodness and auspiciousness. And when God manifests through the heart, beauty is the result. When truth, auspiciousness and beauty blend in our life, true strength awakens.
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