A friend who recently attended an open forum meeting in the Temple at Point Loma said to me afterwards: "I noticed that your speakers referred several times to what they called "the gods." It astonished me. What did they refer to? Surely Theophists can't believe in Jupiter and his company of Olympic pagan deities?"
In giving an answer to this question one sees perhaps for the first time just how alien to the average Western mentality may be this idea of the beings who in the Ancient Wisdom are known as gods, or cosmic divinities. To many at first sight the idea may seem decidedly strange.
Yet there is little doubt that of all our teachings this of the existence of inner divine planes, builded of hierarchies or graded hosts of sublime spiritual beings, is one of the most beautiful and consoling. Because we are assured that our own inner spiritual natures are actually offsprings of these cosmic divinities. This is our spiritual heredity, in contrast to a so-called animal descent. Man is himself a god. He enshrines within himself a divine being who overshadows and guides and inspires its own child, the struggling developing human soul. And we, these human souls, when we shall have evolved out those divine powers and attributes now latent within us, shall then ourselves be full-fledged gods. It will become our privilege to shine upon and urge forward our own animal souls, which are our children and dependents.
After saying this, it is perhaps needless to add that these cosmic divinities of the Ancient Wisdom are not in any way to be confused with the popular conception of the Greek and Roman deities. These were originally but the personified forces of Nature, corrupted in time as are all spiritual ideas by the vagaries of mass psychology.
The Cosmic Divinities of the Ancient Wisdom are of varied ranges of being and power. There are the regents or guiding spirits of the stars and planets. Other grades in the divine hierarchy comprise the architects of our universe, and those grand celestial beings whose nature is to imbody and cyclically to set in motion the spiritual potencies and karmic trends which hold our universe in harmonious coherence as it swings endlessly through the illimitable spaces of space.
We are told that our visible sun is the luminous body of a god. And through this thought we can picture what is, from our human viewpoint, the essential nature of a cosmic divinity. It is a being which like the sun gives itself inexhaustibly throughout the cosmic manvantara so that every creature, great and small, within the cosmic body, may be infilled and nourished, protected and urged forever forward on its evolutionary path.
Another characteristic of a cosmic divinity, such as those which are imbodied in the suns, is that it has the power of self-renewal at the inner fount of its own being, where it contacts higher and deeper and more universal sources of life even than its own.
Naturally, as with all our sublime teachings, the aspect that interests us particularly is their relation to ourselves and our daily problems. If a man or woman can feel that in obeying the behest of his own karman, however difficult, he is in his humble way working hand in hand with the cosmic divinities, his daily existence will be lifted at once to a higher and serener plane. How different the morning to one whose day is thus inspired and sanctified. Petty drudgeries or monotonous routines take on gradually the tempo of the universal rhythm. As time goes on the soul moves confidently forward in unconscious harmony with the music of the spheres.
In the midst of change and turmoil let us often recall the shining Presences of the over-leaning gods. Let us lift up our hearts and minds daily to those deep inner spaces from which we may draw the breath of impersonal love, and thus become links between suffering humanity and the divine vitality of supernal order and peace.