God – Community of the Inner Light

Pre-God

To understand the historical development of a god or need for a god, it takes cognition of the evolution of human consciousness; the developmental function of self awareness, reason with its embedded duality and the realization and awesomeness of freedom with its accountable choice, and with this choice’s ability to be spontaneous which affirms individuality.

Reason: antecedent to a god

Within the advent and development of reason, in the primitive homogeneous human being, is a revelation that doubt caused the beseeching of questions formed around ideas: what is and why; thus causing the foundation for inductive reason (comparing one to another), the opposite of basic deductive reasoning (the process of reasoning which follows an already established premise of wholeness or oneness). This end result is duality.

So duality comes out of reasoning and both are the result of freedom, to choose, which permits release from the requisite of reality with its quality of oneness and wholeness.

The human, being and living through its nature, finds duality beneficial in identification, discrimination, and selection. These qualities contribute a distinct ingredient to the formation of a tribe, a community, or a society where they are held in a common recognition and agreement for the healthy functioning of its people. These workable, acceptable ideas held as values in the community of the social group, gives duality a false sanctified power of normalcy and of oneness. When in fact, duality can never be a singularity.

Giving power to duality does permit for the specific ability to act, to do or produce and even to influence and control others. At best this use of power is limited and ephemeral. The rationalization of power in duality forces an understanding, which is not in sync with the truth of itself, which is oneness of wholeness. This oneness of wholeness is power’s power.

Living life according to this understanding of duality as selection, identification, etc. is an acceptable indicator of an intelligent human being, good for socialization. However, when going beyond decision of choice and then introducing criticism or censure, a primitive judgment is declared. In general, this judgment begs for a correction to be made and if not agreeing to change then an implied threat of punitive judgment and of possible fear.

Fear is a feeling of anxiety and agitation caused by the perceived presence of danger, pain or uneasiness. This fear is underscored by a greater fear of separation from the accepted ideas of the group, being ostracized, condemned or in extreme events incarcerated or killed. Fear in itself takes on an unrecognized power, a life of its own. So the only thing to fear is fear itself, which is basically the separation from the other person, place, or thing. This fear is often responsible for a depletion of energy and wisdom to turn and go in a new direction or return to the truth of wholeness.

The biblical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the original duality. This knowledge in and of itself is not evil, but a limited understanding of this knowledge can cause a dysfunctional or a mean spirited life of living in duality. A major fear of evil, known or unknown, creates an urgency to protect oneself from that evil through the use of talismans, religious rites, offerings or sacrifices of something good to acquire safety from the threat or to appease.

Realization of the truth that fear has no reality in and of itself is the first step to being set free from the nightmare of ignorance.

God-Type

The word “god” can be used as a common noun: a god is an object of worship or faith and an irreducible center of meaning, power and value. A further example straight from the scriptures is “thou shall not have strange gods before me.” A person who worships and has faith in many gods is a polytheist. Ancient Greece and Rome had many gods and goddesses, each having their own temples. Each idol or spirit was prayed to for different human or nature’s activities: Mars for war, Venus for love, Ceres for agriculture. All of these spirits gave power over and meaning to life.

In this modern world, polytheists do not worship such personified forces, rather they worship impersonal and abstract ideas; such as money, power, and sex. By making these ideations the irreducible center of meaning and value in their lives, they deify them. Modern polytheists give allegiance to none of them, but use them for their own personal edification at various times and places.

A person who worships one god, but recognizes that there are other gods is a Henotheist. In the ancient world, some worship the god of their tribe or family, but also recognized that other families and tribes worshiped other gods and that these gods were also real and powerful. Early Israelites were Henotheists. For instance, in the Old Testament we have the contest between the gods and their prophets, such as in I Kings 18, between Jehovah and Baal.

In this modern society unbridled patriotism is a prime example of Henotheism; when individuals or societies sacrilize national symbols such as inviolable flags, legal acts of forced security, or not permitting anything to be more important than the nation and its symbols.

Jews, Christians and Muslims are Monotheists, people who have faith in and worship only one god as supreme creator. The creation myths: mystical understandings in Genesis underscore this goodness of the creator’s world. Monotheism must be distinguished from Deism and Pantheism. The deist god creates the world and leaves it alone. Pantheism denies God’s transcendence of the world. The pantheist god is equally everywhere and as everything. Panentheism, the belief that the being of God is “in” the whole universe but that God’s being is more than the universe, is unlike the view of Pantheism that God and the universe are the same.

Most Christians differ from other monotheists in that they believe in and worship a God who is eternally one source and first cause and creates as the First Principle of all creation. This First Principle is a triune principle of Father (mind), begetting Its word or voice as Its Son and Its Spirit as uncreated energy who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together creates out of Itself of Wholeness of Good and is worshiped and glorified.

The prohibition of idolatry applies in the contemporary world as in the ancient.

Faith in and worshiping of God requires us to have no strange or other gods before us.

Monotheism

It is now safe to assume that with the development of consciousness and imbedded reasoning and duality, comprehension, anxiety, fear, and retribution that we are cognitive thinkers. The general consensus of early mankind is right in trusting the evidence of our senses. The first cognizance in early man was his comparing life’s movements and actions with what we call death (no activity). He became aware that the planet, the fish, the dog, and a boy are equally alive, but there is a difference in the quality of their living. This difference is in the degree of intelligence. Evolution brings us to say that at first there is the cosmic intelligence working by a law of averages, which allows a wide margin of accident and failure to the individual. Progress toward higher intelligence is always in the direction of narrowing down this margin of accident, and then substituting the law of individual selection, this is called the survival of the fittest.

Early man readily understood that their bodies were of the animal kingdom. They realized that bigger was stronger, smaller was weak and slowness was death. Like all animals, the elements of earth and sky affected their survival.

Since they desired to live, they quickly learned how to live with other animals and copied how the animals lived, hunted to eat, and kill to survive. Copulation had two effects for them, first to release emotions and then to replace the dead. this behavior was even applied to the relationships within their own tribe and those they knew as their enemy. there were other threats too, like rain, fire, temperature, wind, sun, or lack of water or protection. not much has changed has changed in this understanding or awareness of a god as source or first cause. We may say that we have a belief in one god, yet we still hold to various concepts of this supernatural god, immortal and having special powers to bless or punish over the lives and affairs of people and the course of nature.

Hebrew Monotheism

In Hebrew scriptures there is Abram, 200 BC, that hears a voice that tells him it is to be Abram’s god and for his people for all times. This makes it appear to be an ethnic/cultural god an unknown and unseen god, the opposite of the other spirit and idol gods of the culture whom they traded with and depended on for survival. This early Hebrew period connotes them as Henotheist. But factually they are known as believers in one god, yet still today have excess baggage in their belief system that is ethnic, nationalistic, and culturalizations as do many other Monotheistic religions.

Abraham

It is to Abraham, father of the Hebrew Jews, with God’s voice that he heard and agreed to commit himself and his people for all times that we Monotheists owe a great deal for the understanding of the idea of a God who is not seen in any shape or form or heard by privileged men and women. The only evidence of this God’s existence is in Its manifested powers and might (actions), and Its voice. They believed that if one kept allegiance to this unseen God you as well as your nation would be totally guided and supported in acquiring possessions and other lands for your own use. The evidence of this correct belief for the individual tribe member, was his health of mind and body and wealth, large families and land to extend the family and protect them all form their enemies. If one did not experience these blessings he was suspected of not believing and not being blessed by this God and was to be punished and ostracized.

After Abraham, in the book of Genesis of Hebrew scriptures, we can find in the first fifty chapters the story of the origins of how the world began, beliefs about the origins of human race and origin of the Hebrews and their place as the “chosen people.” Abraham in Ur of Persia is considered the first Patriarch and the father of the Jewish nation. Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were to follow his teachings. The first five books are called the law. The following dates are of the history of the Hebrew faith, which in time is called the Jewish religion.

Key Dates

2000 B.C.
ABRAHAM – The First Hebrew. Actual Hebrew History starts at (approx.) Genesis 11:29. All previous Genesis people were not real. They were the heroes of ancient myths and allegories. They are all symbolic of spiritual truths but never real people. Some scholars date Abraham at 1500 B.C. The story of Abraham is the story of a large migration of people to Canaan – not just a family.

1200 B.C.
MOSES – This date is accurate. Factual Hebrew History begins here. He supposedly spent 40 years in Egypt; 4-0 years in exile and 4-0 years in the wilderness. The Exodus Story – beloved by Hebrews and Christians alike. Historians prove the Exodus but in the way the story is told in the Bible. Six of the Ten Commandments were from the Code of Hammurabi,

2100 B.C.
First four Commandments did originate in the time of Moses.

1040 B.C.
KING SAUL – the beginning of the United Kingdom. Saul so poor he could not build a house; lived in a tent all his life. Insane the last half of his reign. Reigned forty years.

1000 B.C.
KING DAVID – the most beloved character of the Old Testament, also one of the cruelest and most immoral. So poor he could not build a house until he had reigned seven years. He did not write any of the Psalms. He reigned forty years.

960 B.C.
KING SOLOMON – King during the greatest days of the Hebrews. He was probably only twelve years old when he came to the throne. The Kingdom under Solomon was the wonder of the ancient world. He did build Solomon’s Temple. He made Jerusalem the greatest city in the world. Maintained a huge harem, exacted huge taxes and used forced labor. Not loved by his people.

932-722 B.C.
THE DIVIDED KINGDOMS after the civil war following Solomon’s death: Israel – The Northern Kingdom – Composed of Ten Tribes Judah – The Southern Kingdom – Composed of two Tribes

722 B.C.
THE FALL OF SAMARIA, the capitol city of the Northern Kingdom of
Israel. All male Hebrews taken in captivity to Assyria. “The Lost Tribes of Israel.” The Northern Kingdom no longer exists. Only the Southern Kingdom of Judah remains.

606-535 B.C.
Period of the HEBREW CAPTIVITY IN BABYLONIA. Here they gradually assimilated many Babylonian customs and religious beliefs. Here they began believing in heaven and hell, angels and devils.

586 B.C.
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. Taken by Nebuchadnezzar. Entire city utterly destroyed and ploughed over. 48,000 people taken as prisoners to Babylonia. The Southern Kingdom completely destroyed. Hebrews never again an independent nation.

536-516 B.C.
RETURN OF THE HEBREWS TO PALESTINE. The Temple rebuilt in twenty years. They are now a part of the Persian Empire.

6 B.C.
BIRTH OF JESUS

70 A.D.
Total destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Again, all
buildings destroyed and the ground ploughed over. Prophesied by Jesus.

1918 A.D.
Jerusalem finally set free.