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5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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GOD, POTENTIAL AND ACTUAL
A symbol of the central principle of being, the
only reality, and the source of the transitory manifestation of the
external universe, and of the human soul.
“The only Life which exists entirely in itself, from itself, and by
itself, is the Life of God, or of the Absolute; - which two words
mean one and the same thing; so that when we say the Life of the
Absolute, we only use a form of expression, since the Absolute is
Life, and Life is the Absolute. This Divine Life lies entirely
hidden in itself; it has its residence within itself, and abides
there completely realised in, and accessible only to itself. It is
all being, and beside it there is no being. It is therefore wholly
without change or variation. Now this Divine Life discloses itself,
appears, becomes visible, manifests itself as such — as the Divine
Life: and this its manifestation, presence, or outward existence, is
the world." - J. G. FICHTE, Nature of the Scholar, p. 134.
"How little do we know of ourselves! How unjust we are to ourselves!
We study everything else but the Divine Principle within our own
persons. The truth may be on our lips; but in how few hearts does it
live! We need a new revelation — not of heaven or of hell, — but of
the SPIRIT within ourselves." - W. E. CHANNING, D.D., The Perfect
Life, p. 57.
“Man can name and can think of God because in his inmost substance
he is of God. All divine things," says Dionysius, "in so far as they
are manifested to us, are known only by participation therein." The
chief names of God allowed by Dionysius are Goodness, Love, Being,
Life, Wisdom, Reason, Faith, Power, Justice, Salvation, Redemption."
- ALICE GARDNER, John the Scot, pp. 33, 35.
"Symbolically or metaphorically speaking, God can be called truth,
goodness, essence, light, justice, sun, star, breath, water, lion,
etc. But in reality he is exalted above all those predicates, since
each of them has an opposite, while in him there is no opposition
(John Scotus (Erigena))." - UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philos., Vol. I. p.
361.
"As to the true God of the human conscience, He cannot be attacked.
He has his raison d'être in an invincible faith, and not in more or
less ingenious arguments. Within the conscience a sacred voice is to
be heard, which speaks to man of quite another world, the world of
the ideal, the world of truth, of kindness, of justice. If there
were nothing but Nature we might wonder whether God were necessary,
but since an honest man existed, God has been proved. . . . I have
no need of miracles for believing in Him, I have only to listen in
silence to the revelations of my heart." - ERNEST RENAN, Letter to
M. Géroult, 1862.
“If you will be blind to sense and see with the mind; if you will
turn from the flesh and waken the eyes of the soul, thus and thus
only shall you see God." - CELSUS, Origen cont. Cels., 7, 36.
God is Love — internal. There is no external God — a supposed
dispenser of rain or fine weather, of miraculous escapes and
shocking fatalities, of mining rescues and dire effects of
explosions, of healings and diseases, of beautiful landscapes and
deadly earthquakes, etc. In God there are no opposites.
"We get no proofs out of nature that go farther than to prove a God
of nature, least of all do we get any that show Him to be acting
supernaturally to restore the disorders of nature. Our God derived
from nature, is a monosyllable only, or at best a mechanical first
cause, and no such being as the soul wants. Resting here, therefore,
or allowing ourselves to be retained by what we call our natural
theology, Christianity dies out on our hands for the want of a
Christian God. And accordingly it is a remarkable fact that we have
lost faith in God just in proportion to the industry we have spent
in proving His existence by the natural evidences. First, because
the God we prove does not meet our living wants, being only a name
for causes, or a God of causes; secondly, because in turning to
Christianity for help, we have rather to turn away from the God we
have proved, than toward Him. There is no relief to this mischief,
but to conceive at the beginning that nature is but fraction of the
complete system of God; that the true living God is a vastly
superior being still, who holds the worlds of nature in His hands,
and acts upon them as the Rectifier, Redeemer, Regenerator, this is
the God that speaks to our true wants." - H. BUSHNELL, Nature and
the Supernatural, pp. 357-8.
"Love strives after the good; it is nothing other than God himself."
- ECKHART.
"It is the divine in man that impels him to love God as He is in
reality, and the aim of that love is to take God into himself, to
become one with God." - GIORDANO BRUNO.
"The very fact that you can love proves that God is love; he must be
capable of it or you could not have had it. He must be wisdom or you
would never have been able to think a thought; he must be goodness
or the very idea of goodness would never have been yours. God is the
limitless reservoir out of which all our idealism arises, and
without which truth, beauty and righteousness could not be; to see
these is to see God." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., Our Solidarity with
God.
"The idea of God as a man is a just idea, for God is divine love and
divine wisdom, with every quality belonging thereto, and the subject
of these is man." - SWEDENBORG, Apocalypse Revealed, n. 224.
“Ere yet time was, God dwelt alone in unrevealed loveliness and
glory. The desire of self-expression is an essential attribute of
the Absolute Beauty whereof these phenomenal forms are so many
partial manifestations. The phenomenal universe then results from
this desire of self-manifestation on the part of Absolute Beauty."
(Sufi doctrine). - GIBB, Hist. of Ottoman Poetry, Vol. I. p. 16.
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