A New Look at the Boundless

By Wim Rinsma

We and all living things form a unified whole in boundless space, learning through continuous effort and experience, life after life, guided by karma. Spiritual evolution is an expansion of consciousness and latent powers along the path inwards, to the wisdom, inspiration, and protective power of our innate, imperishable god-spark. This monad too, on its own elevated plane, is an evolving "pilgrim" progressing through numerous evolving universes. These cosmoi at intervals of tremendous duration issue forth periodically from their spiritual source and imbody in material worlds, entering and leaving through "dissolving points." After a process of transformation they return to the spiritual realms for a period of rest. Human beings exemplify this process on their own scale: we die, enter a state of bliss and perfect peace for a long period of time, and then reincarnate and start a new existence. Universes with (I imagine) their marvelously colored domes of heaven are, in their turn, limited but intrinsic parts of an unimaginable Being, in which, as the Bible puts it, "we live, and move, and have our being." On this subject, G. de Purucker says:

Nevertheless this super-cosmic Entity, in comparison with Boundless Infinitude, shrinks to the dimensions, to use a paradox, of a dimensionless point. The super-cosmic Entity Itself is but a life-atom in the being -- in the body . . . of some ENTITY still more vast. -- The Dialogues of G. de Purucker, 3:114

Everything exists in fields of boundless, uncreated space in duration, ensouled, and guided by an ultimately unknowable intelligence -- an eternal mystery which we call the Divine, and of which our own god-spark forms part. Limitless space is sometimes referred to as That, for it is impossible to define it without limiting it -- it is totally beyond our power of comprehension. This is why it is said that the sages of antiquity were never so foolish as to try to grasp it.

But is not our ability to understand the expanses of outer space equal to our ability each moment to experience a glimpse of the expanses of the inner space of our divine source -- an endless process of development?

(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1994; copyright © 1994 Theosophical University Press)


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It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince