Ali on God

“Religion is the name, surely, which we give to the invocative appeal of humanity which leads to the evocative response of the Spirit of God. This Spirit works in every human heart and in all groups.”

“True religion is again emerging in the hearts of men in every land; this recognition of a divine hope and background may possibly take people back into the church and into the world faiths, but it will most certainly take them back to God.”

“Slowly, there is dawning upon the awakening consciousness of humanity the great paralleling truth of God Immanent – divinely "pervading" all forms, conditioning from within all kingdoms in nature, expressing innate divinity through human beings. . . . There is a growing and developing belief that Christ is in us, as He was in the Master Jesus, and this belief will alter world affairs and mankind's entire attitude to life. (13 – 592).”

“God Transcendent, greater, vaster and more inclusive than His created world, is universally recognised and has been generally emphasised; all faiths can say with Shri Krishna (speaking as God, the Creator) that "having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." This God Transcendent has dominated the religious thinking of millions of simple and spiritually-minded people down the centuries which have elapsed since humanity began to press forward towards divinity.”

“Today we have a rapidly growing emphasis upon God immanent in every human being, and in every created form. Today, we should have the churches presenting a synthesis of these two ideas, which have been summed up for us in the statement of Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." God, greater than the created whole, yet God present also in the part; God Transcendent guarantees the Plan of our world, and is the Purpose conditioning all lives from the minutest atom, up through all the kingdoms of nature, to man.”

“The Eastern faiths have ever emphasised God Immanent, deep within the human heart, "nearer than hands and feet", the Self, the One, the Atma, smaller than the small, yet all-comprehensive. The Western faiths have presented God Transcendent, Outside His universe, an Onlooker. God transcendent, first of all, conditioned men's concept of Deity, for the action of this transcendent God appeared in the process of nature; later, in the Jewish dispensation, God appeared as the tribal Jehovah, as the soul (the rather unpleasant soul) of a nation. Next, God was seen as a perfected man, and the divine God-man walked the Earth in the Person of the Christ.”

“At certain great moments down the ages, God drew nearer to His people and humanity at the same time made great, though oft unconscious efforts to draw near to God. From one angle, it might be regarded as God transcendent recognizing God immanent, and God in man reaching out to God in the Whole and greater than the Whole. On the part of God, working through the Head of the spiritual Hierarchy and its Membership, this effort was intentional, conscious and deliberate; on the part of man, it has been in the past largely unconscious, forced upon humanity by the tragedy of circumstances, by desperate need and by the driving urge of the immanent Christ consciousness.”