Course XXX - Teaching 10: Theistic or Dualistic Philosophy

The concept of a personal God as centre and life of the Universe, creator of all beings, is a conception of the Egyptian thought.
The Ishwara of the Hindu is the only point that unites Infinite with finite; when a Hindu reveres Ishwara he venerates the Eternity from which he is an emanation, but the God of Egypt is He and nothing more than He. And nothing exists outside his infinite amplitude and wisdom. Perhaps the dualistic system of India was even adaptations of Egyptian systems, assimilated to the Indian style.
Ancient Egyptian philosophers admitted an Eternal Entity who possessed all excellent attribute, which emanated from his bosom all souls made to his image and likeness.
These are the fundamental philosophical postulates of ancient Egypt: existence of a Unique God that is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient.
Existence of the most perfect beings like to God or like redeeming and propitiating gods.
This concept easily transformed the idea in religion, and the latter, zealous guardian of its personal interests, assigned to every one of these perfect beings, similar to God, a satanic value, granting to them divine attributes only possessed by God and considering them superior to Him. Moreover, this idea led to deify especially those men who prevailed over others, not in a perfect union with God but exclusively like image of God.
The Egyptian Philosophical Idea is purely monotheistic, but its direct consequences were religious and polytheistic.
This phenomenon occurs continuously; the monotheistic idea becomes polytheistic and later reacts systematically against this deduction.
The controversy between both ideas was named the fight of the Two Suns.
Man, created by God, just has to recognize and worship his God. Any worship to another entity that is not this God is to deny his infinite power and to become an idolater. Moreover, a man who does so loses the gift of adoring God in Spirit and Truth and worships the gross external form. But the refutation of the others was that the worship of God with different forms represented expressions and images of the only divine form, Pure Spirit and Truth.
Periodically there were great idealistic movements trying to abolish idolatry but, since the latter was supported by the Pharaohs and Priests, philosophers had to flee to the wild. This phenomenon took place systematically and periodically throughout the long existence of Pharaonic Dynasties.
These philosophers, followed by some few disciples, would settle among barbarian peoples and among black Ethiopian and Assyrians, and so they disseminated their teachings, trying to come back from there and to conquer again those great cultural centers of Egypt.
Amenophis IV, the King Philosopher, along with his wife Nefertiti, who had brought from the wilderness the concept of the Unique God, tried to transform this Ideal into a religion, in opposition to the Priests of Amon and ancient traditions, and founded a city to worship in it the Unique God; but he failed and, after his death (1280 b.C.) Aton’s worship was erased and former cults were restored.
The Hebrews were nomads from the desert and clearly conceived the idea on only one God, remaining among the Pharaoh’s people like rebels and outside the rigorous law in force.
The Exodus of this people, guided by Moses, is a historic demonstration that philosophers and idealists were pursued and had to take refuge in the Wilderness.
The Greek, heirs of the Egyptians and a nomad pastoral people originally pantheistic, transformed their ideal into a polytheistic religion when they settled and became great.
Philosophy and Religion, like husband and wife, continuously are seeking and rejecting each other. The ideal monotheistic ideal is absorbed by the religious and practical power of polytheism, but the ideal ever emerges again to proclaim, over all things and different forms, that God is One and that here is not other except Him.