Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems: Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915Besant, Annie
Religion
Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems: Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915
Besant, Annie
Theosophy
be "subject to Him who put all things under Him, and God shall be all
in all"--God in Satan, God in Hell, God in the wicked, evolving them
to righteousness. And so in the very centre of the Christian teaching
you find that "God is all and in all," and is it not also written in
_Al Qurān_, which largely reflects the popular necessary teachings of
the time, is it not written by the great Prophet of Arabia, that "All
shall perish, save His Face"? Everywhere is God; God is everything; in
everything He is the ultimate good, the inevitable fate of man.
But now what does this Polytheism mean? There is a truth in it. For
every Nation has its own Ḍeva, as we should say; its own Angel, as
the Christian and Musalmān would say. These subordinate hosts, these
Angels and Archangels, these Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, they are all superhuman
intelligences, working out the will of God the Supreme. Think for a
moment of Astronomy. There was a time when this little world was the
centre of the Solar System, when fixed, with the Waters below and the
Waters above, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars also, circled around our
Globe. Science gradually found out that the universe was larger than
the Solar System; that the Universe had many Suns and many systems.
It found out that our globe went round the Sun and not the Sun round
our globe. The world was lifted out of this position of superiority
and thrown out into space, one among myriads of worlds; that was the
heresy for which Giordano Bruno died. He proclaimed the multiplicity of
worlds, and that the Sun was the centre of our system, but that there
were other worlds and other Suns. In the old days that was a frightful
horror, for he turned everything upside down. What can you do with
Christian teachings if our globe is one among many? Christ died for
this world. Did God die for a grain of dust in an endless Universe?
The whole dignity of our world was lost. Then they said that Christ
ascended up into Heaven, but Bruno said that there was no "up" and no
"down". Our world with space below it; our world with space above it.
Where then is Heaven? Where is Hell? Where is Heaven? Where is the
Throne of God? Where the right hand of God where Christ is sitting?
Where did He go to on that Ascension day? Where is He to be found
in this unlimited space? And so they said: "Oh! burn him, get rid of
him, send him to find the worlds of which he talks." So they burnt him
and scattered his ashes, and joyed that he was dead. But Bruno lived
still although the body was dead, and Science, Science triumphed,
although its votaries were burnt, were racked, were imprisoned. They
took Galileo and forced him to his knees to confess that he had
been mistaken; "and yet it moves," were the whispered words of the
Scientist, who did not dare to face the horrors of the Inquisition.
And so Science triumphed, and now, what do you find? Not only that our
Sun is, to us, a stationary body and the world goes round it; but that
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