Course XXXIV - Teaching 1: Sources of Theology

Generally, in relation to Theology, people think at once about church or religion, and more often than not you hear commentaries that, as the obvious result of ignorance, surround this word or its meaning with certain remote and dark halo, as if it was detached from human life, and an exclusive redoubt of a group of beings –“theologians”– whose activities appear before men as something almost incomprehensible. So, certainly, we should try to cast light on this complicate matter as long as we consider it in depth, a matter that practically all present beings are dealing with now.
And before other considerations, we should remember that theology, a word derived from the Greek, and at a time from “theologian”, is two words in one that mean respectively “God” and “exposition”, “saying”.
When our thought goes back to Sources of Humanity, on certain phase of the life in our planet we find that, wave by wave, more currents of life come down to this planet. These lives, predestined to give rise to the terrestrial evolution of something, are a part of the active God’s manifestation, called Human Monads.
These entities, launched to such an extraordinary mission, obviously acted in the exact limits fixed by the Law of God, the Manifestation.
Devoid of physical, terrestrial forms, necessarily their yearning, their first need, was to fulfill the inexorable need of adaptation to that environment where they had to act and live. A gross example of this situation would be that of a Son of Cafh who went to a foreign and strange country. His first need would be adaptation to climate, ground, food, abode, a new and unknown language, folkways, habits and practices of men in this new surrounding. This man will be a stranger in those lands, but he will keep alive the injunction driving him there and also his instructor’s injunction. His source will be patent and clear in his mind, heart and soul, and over and above his feelings of being an exile, the knowledge of his indestructible union with the thought and life of all those things that he had to forsake, will shine with ineffable comforting light.
Something like that also occurs with those early human monads. Driven to mission assigned by divine predestination, they set out to build human physical forms on Earth, but keep an intact memory of their divine origin, and still they remain reluctant to join those gross forms that, as they foresee, someday will darken the clear consciousness of their true state.
But the time goes by, the Divine Law is inexorably in force over the monad, and as long as physical forms improve, the bond uniting entities and their work becomes more and more steady. The spirit descends and enters entirely the body; the adaptation has finished. Since this moment, the monad becomes Humanity, –Humanity growing and perfecting more and more the necessary physical instrument to fulfill their mission.
What happened during all this time regarding the divine Humanity consciousness, if we can make use of the word “consciousness”?
No doubt, whereas the clear vision of the initial state grew darker and darker in the monad, Humanity went on to live, even in developing an instinctive mind, entirely in agreement with the divine natural law. And also one has to admit that, by doing it, Humanity lived a full Natural Union with God, –a thing that man has lost when he started to develop his present rational mind.
Throughout this long period of time, Humanity could usufruct an early clear vision, so to speak at least with not too much proper words, and although that vision grew dark and dark, men achieved such a union through astral vision even in the times of the Atlantean.
But deep changes had to occur with the emergence of the Aryan Race.
We are told that until then Humanity lived naturally united with God. The development of the rational mind and, as its outcome, of the conscious freewill, destroys the balance, and the harmonization with the Divine Law, the vision and union and the natural and also the direct communication with God come to an end.
The man loses definitively his astral vision and will depend entirely on his senses to know and to get into touch with others, and the latter not only are unable to reveal him God, but even they intervene as an extraordinary rampart between man and Humanity.
So the Aryan man should pay a price for his conquest. His eyes will be blind, his ears deaf, and truly, that one who wishes to recover again the Divine vision, must disconnect and blind his senses through renunciation.
But, of course, this method –renunciation– is uncommon and can be taken as a method of general application for present Humanity. And also we should admit that, whereas this method is known and practiced since millennia from now, it is unlikely that Humanity has known and practiced it since the moment when their troubles began.
On the other hand, the natural substantial union survived indelibly and safely since the descent on monads into Earth, and this inner knowledge, this intimate feeling could not and never can be suffocated by the mind.
On the contrary, that inner intimate certainty about God existing in all men constitutes an element of powerful mind-reason activity, which precisely has caused man to ask a series of transcendental questions.
Man intuits God, but senses contribute nothing concrete to reveal Him.
And the mind wanders alone and goes astray on the rational field, being unable to cast light by itself on the great mystery.
Humanity would remain lost if the Divine Providence had not acted as early as in the beginning of the race by foreseeing future events.
God reveals Himself to men through Great Solar Initiates. The Teachings that these Initiates receive –true Divine Revelation– condense in the Great Fundamental Traditions. First, their transmission is oral. Later, other Initiates gather, consolidate and finally give them by writing.
So, the Divine Message comes, given when the Root Race appears in the form of Orthodox Writings of Great Fundamental Traditions. And the true and unique Revelations become the foundation and beginning in any attempt of divine knowledge.
So, Revelations represent that which in Mathematics are fundamental postulates.
They are truths that cannot be humanly demonstrable. They are the word that God, by discovering Himself according to His Own terms, offers as a mental support so that Humanity can know Him until those limits traced by the Revelation itself.
.If one bears in mind precedent sayings about the meaning of the word “Theologian” and, as the result of it, “Theology”, then we can entirely understand the purpose, object, source and finality of Theology. So, one can state that the source of Theology goes back and begins in Orthodox Writings of Great Fundamental Traditions.
Also, that its purpose and object is to unveil to man the Divine Wisdom underlying revealed texts, and that its finality is to sanctify and dignify the man.
.So, Theology is the one and whole wisdom that God makes emerge in a man through intuition, so that he can develop it rationally and achieve full divine knowledge.
So, its method is mainly rational, deductive and inductive, and essentially based on revealed texts: one fixed point –the word of God–¬ in the turbulent lake of one’s mind.
Ultimately, Theology grows characteristically through its reasoned, coordinated and interconnected discourse, and always on the infuse light of Divine Wisdom transmitted through Revelations.
So, in short, Theology is a form and characteristic mode of the Aryan Race, which needs to make use of reason because they have lost chances of the Atlantean and of even of the older Humanity to remain connected with God.
And as one’s reason is unable by itself to make know the Divine, it must rest on and start from an intuitive feeling of God –which exists in every being– and of Divine Revelations.
So, the man, the student can progress on the path and acquire humanly divine knowledge that, united with an intimate experience obtained through higher intuition, can achieve a high grade of knowledge. .But one’s mind is limited. So, the last verities that a man can obtain will be received only through ecstasy or Divine Union.