{Birth of God}[17th February 1971]

[Redbook1:198-199][19710217c][Birth of God][17th February 1971]

17.2.71. [continued]

            Oddly enough, before this happened I was already finding myself, rather to my own surprise, moving round to an acceptance of God as a definitely acceptable possibility rather than what he had been in my mind, an ignored possibility.  I certainly have not got there yet, and may never; but the third book, or rather the second world, helped in an odd way to swing me round.  For there, God is so necessary and so natural that I began to wonder if I was not deceiving myself as to my attitudes to him in this world (or universe or plane or creation).  This is strange indeed; for several years I have argued that I cannot accept the religion of Christianity, only its ethics; now I find myself accepting, or being ready to accept, a modified form of the religion, but not the Christian bit.

            For it is modified.  I still like the idea of God as the universal Mind into which we are absorbed on death, which needs our experiences here to give it strength and structure, and thus wisdom.  For pure mind without experience must be something like pure force:  potentially magnificent, but of no practical value unless channelled in wires etc. and applied to machinery.  Such a mind would not need to be impersonal -- indeed, it could hardly be impersonal, composed as it is entirely of the very essence of personality.

            The great beauty of the theory is that it can embrace practically all religions without losing its own essential identity or compromising them.

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