To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

86 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
gods at times taking human form, and worthy humans attaining
the status of godhood. Due to centuries of imposed
theological dicta, the word God today generally connotes
the Supreme Being or Creator who created the heaven and
the earth, and all creatures thereon, i.e., extracosmic, distinct
and apart from his creation. Without question, a great
many Christians, barring the most rigid of fundamentalist
sects, have abandoned the notion of a personal God in the
likeness of a man with a long beard, sitting on a throne
among the clouds and handing out rewards and punishments
according to whim or caprice.
Assuredly, every human being is a spark of that divine
Intelligence, with his own inner god at the core of his being.
Could any entity, even a dust mote, exist were it not the
outermost expression of its unique god-essence? Indeed,
every atomic particle is a god-spark imbodying itself in material
form. As such it is one in essence with the divinity at
the heart of Being. This means that the monads or inner
gods at the heart of each of the trillions upon trillions of
atoms in all of nature’s kingdoms and throughout the
cosmos are likewise one in essence — truly a universal kinship
of spirit. When we image God as infinite, our perception
of the Divine Will becomes as unrestricted as thought
and aspiration allow. Is God transcendent or immanent,
outside of us or within? The question is redundant if divinity
permeates all. Under the press of daily concerns, we
tend to forget who we are and the destiny that is ahead not
only for us humans but for every monadic life, be it an atom
in the brain of an earthworm or in one of Saturn’s rings.
In the Gospel according to John (10:34), Jesus reminded