How does God look like?
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God the Father, painting by Cima da Conegliano
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How does God look like? Is He the good old man with white hair and beard one may find in simple drawings or even religious iconography?
I choose to begin a book which includes all kinds of explanations and answers to questions asked on various occasions after publishing the second edition of Theosophy, with this question, which seems childish, in the beginning.
On the
other hand, let us be more generous, this question seems to be one that meets
only the question of a child not so much indoctrinated with everything a man
could read in a lifetime.
Well, I am
so sorry for those who think that being an intellectual means to have as many
books in the library as possible. The bad news is that if you walk into a House
of worship, we might find such a representation. Therefore, we have to talk
about it...
Is this the
way people imagine God, a human like all of us? Sure, it has to be just much
wiser, because He must know everything. Moreover, being wise and older than our
world, the best representation at hand is that of a wise old man.
Let us see
what Carl Sagan has to he say about this image of God, knowing that he
characterize himself not as an atheist, but as an agnostic. Carl Sagan, a
well-known scientist, far from being a naïve, as we may see immediately from
his slightly sarcastic turn of phrase, says about this naive image of God:
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. However, if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.
As quoted in "Scientists & Their Gods" in U.S. News & World Report Vol. 111 (1991).
Now that we
have exposed a major scientist’s opinion, let us see what a theosophist has to
say about God.
For
theosophist, God is the One, the Source of all things, whether good or bad,
beautiful or ugly. He cannot have a certain quality because includes all the
qualities, like all His creations.
The Gospels
give the parable of the Kingdom of God compared to a grain of mustard seed,
which apparently has no connection with God's greatness.
30 And he said, Wherunto shal we liken the kingdome of God? Or with what comparison shall we compare it?
31 It is like a graine of mustard seed: which when it is sowen in the earth, is lesse then all the seedes that be in the earth.
32 But when it is sowen, it groweth vp, and becommeth greater then all herbes, & shooteth out great branches, so that the fowles of the aire may lodge vnder the shadow of it.
(Mark, 4.30-32, Bible, King James Edition, 1611)
Let us see,
what would be the meaning of this wonderful parable?
In the
beginning, there is just a grain of mustard, nothing more. We do not know what
is inside of this grain apparently lifeless. We cannot know it.
Therefore,
we cannot know what will come out of it, how it will be able to evolve.
Only when
the plant develops from the grain sowing in the Earth, with branches and
leaves, only then we will get to know what that little seed of mustard is. Not
before...
This He,
the One without a name, about which nobody could say either that it does or
that it does not exist, nor could an ordinary man understand Him, is Life.
Life is
everywhere in space, has always been and will be, even after the disappearance
of the good and the bad.
Life
remains unchanged and all that we might say is that it is. No more than this
and this is enough.
Life is in
each of us. We choose what we do, whatever this is good or bad, through the
power of Life.
