The Complete Works of Yogy Ramacharaka. William Walker Atkinson

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СКАЧАТЬ belief, or training—and with the conceptions of the philosophers who prefer to think of a “principle” rather than of Deity. We ask the student to reread this paragraph, in order that he may clearly understand the reason of the use of the term, in this lesson.

      The Gnani Yoga Philosophy starts with the statement: “The Absolute IS.” It does not pretend to be able to explain to the human intellect, the how, wherefore, and why, of the Absolute. It merely states that it “IS.” In answer to the question, “How can there be a thing without a cause?" it replies that this understanding of cause and effect belongs to the relative plane of causation, and the Absolute is above the relative plane, as a matter of course. We see that everything around us has a cause, and is itself a cause of succeeding effects. Everything that we see, feel, or hear is a part of the cham of cause and effect. That is, it has a chain of preceding causes running back to—where? and it has a chain of succeeding effects that extends away into the future, ending—where? In each case the answer is “The Absolute.” We may trace the causes of a thing so far back that the reason refuses to act, and we may imagine a train of effects from a cause extending so far into the future that even the imagination refuses to carry the matter along further. The secret is that everything begins and ends in The Absolute. The human intellect is utterly unable to form a clear conception of a thing without a cause, because the Intellect is on the relative plane, and in this world of relativity everything has its use, and we cannot imagine a thing entirely transcending our sense experience, and, therefore, can conceive of no thing without a cause. The philosophers who claim that everything must have a cause, are met with two propositions, one of which they must accept, and either of which destroys their own theory. They must accept the proposition (I) that there is a first cause, in which case they simply remove the problem back a few steps, and must admit that the First Cause has no cause; or they must admit (2) that the chain of cause and effect is infinite, in which case they are confronted with the difficulty that a beginningless thing can have no cause—that a thing that has no beginning can have no cause—in which case the law of cause and effect is incomplete. In short, the human intellect is utterly incapable of solving the question, arid the more it attempts it the more does it become muddled. It is the old question of the child, “Who made the Universe?” the answer being “God.” The child then asks, “Then who made God?” You see, it is merely moving the question back another stage. Even the materialist who says he does not believe in God at all, has to assert that Matter has existed forever, and cannot explain why Matter should have no cause, when all manifestations of it show a chain of cause and effect. (The materialist is merely setting up a conception of one of the manifestations of The Absolute and calls it Matter, while he refuses to accept another manifestation of The Absolute, which men usually call Mind, or Intelligence.)

      And, so at the end, the Intellect is forced to admit that there is some thing that has no cause. In other words, it must admit itself beaten, and beaten it must be because it belongs to the relative plane, and cannot conceive of The Absolute.

      The Gnanis call The Absolute “The Causeless Cause,” and merely assert that it IS. The student must grasp this idea of the reality of The Absolute before he proceeds. He need not give it any attributes, or pretend to understand it—he may not even give it a name. But he must admit that there is an absolute Something be it called God, Mind, Matter, Force, Life, or what not. He must admit and conceive of the absolute Thing, from which all the rest proceeds—or which is manifested in all the rest.

      The next step for the student is the assimilation of the fact that all there is, seen or unseen, must be a manifestation or emanation of that Absolute Thing. For there can be nothing outside of The Absolute, or which has not emanated from it. There is no outside. There is nothing outside. Everything must have come from the one source. If The Absolute were to make a thing, it must make it out of itself, at least so far as our Intellect can conceive of the matter. There cannot be two Absolutes—there is room only for One.

      We think it well to insert in this place a little poem, the name of the writer of which is unknown to us. It states a great truth in the simplest language.

      "Thou great eternal Infinite, the great unbounded Whole, Thy body is the Universe—thy spirit is the soul

       If thou dost fill immensity; if thou art all in all;

       If thou wert here before I was, I am not here at aIL How could I live outside of thee? Dost thou fill earth and air? There surely is no place for me outside of everywhere. If thou art God, and thou dost fill immensity of space, Then I’m of God, think as you will, or else I have no place And if I have no place at all or if I am not here,

       ‘Banished’ I surely cannot be, for then I'd be somewhere. Then I must be a part of God, no matter if I’m small; And if I’m not a part of Him; there's no such God at all.”

      The third step for the student is the mastery of the mental conception that The Absolute must be possessed of the three attributes, (1) Omnipotence; (2) Omniscience; (3) Omnipresence. The student is not asked to accept this statement blindly. Let him examine it.

      (1) Omnipotent means all-mighty, all-powerful. Not that The Absolute is mightier than something else, or all the rest put together, but that it is allmighty—all—powerful. That it is possessed of all the power there is, and, consequently, that all the power of which we are conscious is a manifestation of The Absolute. There is no room for any other power, and all the power that is manifested, of all kinds and descriptions, must be manifestations of The Absolute. Do not try to evade this question and answer—it must be met. Many persons speak of God being Omnipotent—of an Almighty, all—powerful God, but they have merely the faintest conception of what the word means. And they will “dodge” the truth inevitably springing from the statement of All—power, namely, that all power must be of God. They would attribute to God all the manifestations of power that are pleasing to them, or which are conducive to their welfare, but when it comes to a manifestation of power that hurts them, or seems cruel, they are afraid to attribute it to God, and eider ignore the question, or else attribute the undesirable thing to some other power, the “Devil,” for instance, failing to see that if God is Alt—powerful, there can be no other power in the Universe, and that all manifestations of power, good or bad (relative terms), as they may seem to be, must be from he same source. The trouble with man is that he calls all the things that inure to his material comfort and welfare, “good,” and all that interfere with it, “bad.” (“Good” weather is weather that is pleasant to man—and “bad” weather is that which is unpleasant to him. If he were out of the body, he would see them both as equally good, for neither would affect him.)

      (2) Oninipresent means all—present—everywhere present at the same time, It means The Absolute is present in all space as we know it, and everywhere else without regard to our relative idea of space. It is Everywhere—space has no existence to it—it is Infinite. Here is another thing tithatnt the unaided Intellect is unable to grasp—Space. The Intellect cannot conceive of endless space any more than it can of a causeless cause. And yet (poor Intellect) it cannot imagine anything beyond space, or of the end of space. It cannot conceive of a space with an end, or without an end—of time with an end, or without an end. But to get back to our subject. If The Absolute is Omnipresent (and we cannot conceive of it not being), it must pe present in all places at all times, in all persons, in all atoms, in matter, mind, and spirit. If it is absent from a single point of space, or without space, then it is not Omnipresent. and the whole statement is false. And if it is present everywhere, there is room for nothing else to be present at any place. And if this be so, everything must be a part of The Absolute, or an emanation of it. Everything must be a part of a Mighty Whole. Many people speak quite glibly of “God being everywhere”—every child is taught this in Christian countries. But how few stop to think of what the words mean—they do not know that they are saying that God is in the low places as well as in the high places—in the “bad” places as well as in the “good” places. They do not know that they are saying that God, being everywhere, everything must contain God—must, indeed, be СКАЧАТЬ