Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation homepage > Notebooks of Paul Brunton > Category 27: World-Mind
World-Mind
Is it so unimportant to form an idea of God which shall be as near the truth as possible through containing so little error as possible? The Spirit which inspired and instructed Moses did not think so. "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,'' it said. That is, we must not label the wrong thing with the name of God, or hold the wrong idea about him as if it were the correct one. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image'' was the next commandment. But an idol does not necessarily have to be made of stone or metal. It can be made of an idea.§If anyone wishes to call World-Mind the Lord of the Universe, he will not be wrong; but then if someone else wishes to assert that World-Mind cannot be a Personal God, neither will he be wrong. Is there any possible reconciliation of these two views? Yes, for in both cases these are only mental formulations, and it is impossible to describe God positively, accurately in intellectual terms. All mental concepts of God have to be discarded in the end. No dogmatic statement can hold the truth as it is: we merely get from the statement something to satisfy the intellect. For the Real is ineffable, that is, undescribable and untouchable by the ordinary finite capacity of humans. But because there is something godlike, somewhere, in man, intuition may reveal it.