The Complete Works of Yogy Ramacharaka. William Walker Atkinson
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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 a part of His manifestation. The words which they use so lightly carry an awful meaning. The student is not asked to accept this statement of Omnipresence without examination. We have space here to go into the matter in detail, but modern science is filled with theories of there being but one substance, and that substance pervading all space. Just as science holds that there is but one Force, manifesting in diferent ways, so does it hold that there is but one Substance, appearing in different forms. It is true that science arrives at this conclusion through materialistic reasoning, but the conclusions are practically identical with those of the Gnani Yogis, held by them for many centuries, and obtained by them from teachers still farther back in the world's history. And orthodox religions affirm the same thing with their statements of Omnipotence, and Omnipresence—though they know it not.
(3) Omniscient means all—knowing, all wise. It means that The Absolute is possessed of all knowledge; that it knows everything; that there is nothing that it does not know; that it is the sum total of all the knowledge there is, ever has been or ever will be. If we admit that there is the slightest thing that is not known, or cannot be known, to The Absolute, then we admit that the word is meaningless. And if The Absolute is possessed of all the knowledge there is, then it can make no mistakes; does not find it necessary to change its mind; cannot think or act except wisely, and therefore, justly. And yet people seem to think that God makes mistakes, or does not know ali about things, and they frequently feel called upon to call his attention to matters that He has overlooked, or mistakes he has made, and request him to do better by them in the future, They seem to have an idea that they can flatter God, or fool him. Poor little children! The student may realize the truth of this statement of Omniscience, if he but took' around him and thinks a little. If The Absolute is not possessed of all—knowledge, from whence do we gain knowledge? Surely not from outside of The Absolute. Is it not more likely that the knowledge is always there, and that our acquiring of know)edge is merely the unfolding of our minds sufficiently to absorb it, or to let the Divine Knowledge play upon our minds. At any rate it would seem hopeless to expect knowledge from any other source than from The Absolute, for there is nothing else.
The Gnanis teach that The Absolute is All—powerful, is All—wise; is Everwhere, That it possesses all the power that there is—all the knowledge that there is—and occupies all space, or all that takes the place of space, if such there be, and is in 'everything, everywhere, at the same time, and in all time.
They teach that The Absolute in its sense of pure being is incapable of being understood by the human Intellect, at the present time, but that it manifests in three forms, which forms of manifestation may sensed, studied, and partially understood by the Intellect, even of the man of today.
These three forms of manifestation of The Absolute are known as (1) Substance, or Matter; (2) Energy, or Force; (3) Inteliigence, or Mind. That which occultists know as Spirit is a transcendent manifestation, and is not included in the three manifestations above mentioned. Some writers treat of Spirit as a highly developed state of Mind, but it is more—it is a portion of The Absolute not manifest to our senses. So for the purpose of this lesson we will consider the three manifestations to be as above stated.
The student's attention is called to the correspondence between the three mentioned manifestations of The Absolute, and the three attributes, mentioned a few pages further back. Thus (1) the attribute of Omnipresence is manifested in Substance, or Matter; (2) the attribute of Omnipotence is manifested in Energy, or Force; (3) the attribute of Omniscience is manifested in Mind, or Intelligence. That is, manifestations mentioned are a part of the manifestations of the attributes mentioned—a very small manifestation as compared with others on higher planes, but still manifestations for all that.
Do not understand us as saying that this three-fold manifestation of The Absolute is The Absolute itself—they are merely manifestations,