Part 8

“Yes,” I answered, “if we take spirit to mean everything. For we know nothing except through our senses, our consciousness, our understanding; so that all we know is knowledge of spirit.”

They all agreed to that.

“Now,” I said, “I believe God to be in each of us, to be the self within us, and within all others, and within the universe; to be the knowledge, the light and the understanding. I can explain to you what I mean by reading a passage from the Indian Vedas, which seems to me so true, and so exactly what I want to say, that I could not explain it so well myself.” Then I read the following:

“In the beginning was Self alone. Atman is the Self in all our selves—the Divine Self concealed by his own qualities. This Self they sometimes call the Undeveloped. . . . The generation of Brahma was before all ages, unfolding himself evermore in a beautiful glory; everything which is highest and everything which is deepest belongs to him. Being and not being are unveiled through Brahma. . . . How can any one teach concerning Brahma? He is neither the known nor the unknown. That which cannot be expressed by words, but through which all expression comes, this I know to be Brahma. That which cannot be thought by the mind, but by which all thinking comes, this I know is Brahma. That which cannot be seen by the eye, but by which the eye sees, is Brahma.”

They liked this so well, and said it expressed their feelings so truly, that I offered to copy it for each one of them. Marian said she did not understand what was meant by “concealed by his own qualities.”

I answered: “We know God only because of the universe which we see and feel.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But just that the universe,” I went on, “conceals God, is a mystery as well as a revelation.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Marian.

“It is like a great light,” I said, “which is so bright that it dazzles you, and you cannot look at it.”

“Like the sun,” said Virginia.

“I think I see what you mean,” Marian answered.

I continued: “Moses spoke of God in that same way, as the vast Self: ‘And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.’

“And so,” I went on, “myself and yourself, the self of every man and the self of the universe, that is God.”

With delightful frankness they said that they liked it better as it was put in “that thing on Brahma.”

“So do I,” I answered. “We know only self. Is it not so?”

“I don’t like the word ‘self,’” said Ruth; “it is too limited. I think only of my little self.”

Marian agreed. Virginia said that to her it seemed the true word, that she felt the whole as a vast self. “But isn’t it more?” she asked. “God is feeling. When I ride in an open trolley, and the wind blows in my face, and the trees blow, and the clouds move in the sky, then the feeling that it gives me I call God.”

“Isn’t it self, within yourself?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” she answered.

“Now,” I said, “we are little, incomplete, limited creatures, but we need the whole universe to be complete. The whole universe is the rest of self, the rest of myself. That is what I mean by God, and in that sense I am a part of God.”

All the children agreed at once, as if this were the thing they had wanted to hear said. This first definite statement that I made seemed to us all unanswerably true.

Immediately they went on to speak of good and bad; but I stopped them, thus:

“There is one other thing I would like to make clear first, a historic question, but one that leads to the question of good and bad. What did the most illumined and inspired polytheists mean by their many gods?”

Marian answered: “They meant many aspects of the one God.”

“Just so, Marian. But now do you know the inner meaning of Trinity?”

None of them knew, and all seemed particularly interested and anxious to understand. “I never understood,” said Marian, “what was meant by the Holy Ghost.”

I said to them: “I will tell you what it has always meant to me, and to some others beside me, and you can see whether it seems true to you. To me the three are as parts of one. They are the contrast, such as man and God, good and bad, even night and day, and the understanding, the unity that makes these two one.”