Does God exist? Humanity has always been divided into two camps: believers and nonbelievers. Belief in God's existence rests mainly on the anthropic principle, while non-belief rests on unaccountability of so much pain and wickedness. Like the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the atheists argue that if an omnipotent and benevolent God exists, why should there be so much suffering and evil? "Why does God—if He exists—allow earthquakes, floods and typhoons to occur, bringing death and destruction in their wake"? The theists counter this with the free-will argument. The anthropic principle seems to emphasize the existence of intelligence behind the orderliness of the universe. There is evidence of law and order from all branches of science. For instance, if the electromagnetic force were even slightly weaker than the gravitational force, stars would have burnt a million times faster, burying the universe in darkness a long time ago, writes Debashish Mukerji. (The Week, May 2)

Stephen Unwin, a British-born, Ohio-based risk consultant with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, used the probability theory to rationally prove the existence of God. Unwin started with the assumption that there was a 50:50 chance of God existing. He fed in—in mathematical form—all the evidence which supported or opposed the proposition, and concluded that there is 67 per cent likelihood of God's existence. He argues that human beings are endowed with freedom to make both good as well as bad choices. "This does explain away a great number of minor and major calamities which descend on us," Unwin writes. Karen Armstrong in her A History of God concludes: "The idea of a personal God is today fraught with difficulty."

H.P.B. mentions in The Key to Theosophy that the personal-god idea is untenable, and that a god who loves and hates and shows anger falls far below the standard of even an ordinary good man. Theosophy teaches that an extracosmic God is an absurdity while an intracosmic God is a logical necessity, and defines God as an Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible. IT cannot be perceived like we perceive everything else. IT is itself knower and hence cannot be the object of its own knowledge.

In Isis Unveiled H.P.B. explains how the sages of the Orient prove God's existence. Thus:

They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul—God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man's spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit, prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers—you have proved God! (Preface, p. vi)

God is Law. The existence of God in the universe is discerned by the working of the Law, which works incessantly, righteously and unerringly. All the miseries of the world can be explained on the basis of the Law of Karma and Reincarnation. Human beings bring about suffering for themselves and other kingdoms through their thoughts and actions.

Temples as we know them today did not exist in Vedic times, writes K. S. Ram (The Times of India, May 7). As Ananda Coomaraswamy has observed, temples came to be constructed when there was a shift from yagna or sacrifice to puja or worship. Puja or worship can easily degenerate into a time-bound ritual and can be done through a proxy (the priest). Basavanna, the 11th century Kannada poet who began the Veerasaiva movement, regarded the human body to be a shrine. All great thinkers down the ages regarded the temple as a symbol and have not been in favour of "fixing" God in a permanent building. K. S. Ram writes:

A. K. Ramanujan observed that Hindu temples are modelled after the human body: Temples have padas or legs; hasta or side walls; shikhara or head; and garbha griha or womb-house. The "fixed" temple is in opposition to the "mobile" body; the transient building contrasts with the abiding Self; and, most importantly, the making of the temple is opposed to the being of a temple. A constructed temple is only a symbol of the original, the body. Is it wise then to chase a symbol, when you have the original? Is it wise then to make something, if you can be it?...

The end of life, according to Adi Shankaracharya, is in the realization of the God Within....Kabir compares the irony of a man mounting a search for God in temples and other places to the musk-bearing deer. Ignorant of the treasure it bears within, it exhausts itself searching the forests for the source of the alluring fragrance.

The human body is the holy temple wherein the deity resides. "Verily that body, so desecrated by Materialism and man himself, is the temple of the Holy Grail, the Adytum of the grandest, nay, of all, the mysteries of nature in our solar universe," writes H.P.B. (Raja-Yoga or Occultism). In the Gita, Shri Krishna says of the people who torture their bodies that, full of delusion, they "torture the powers and faculties which are in the body, and me also, who am in the recesses of the innermost heart."

In The Secret Doctrine we find Carlyle's words, full of praise for the human body which he compares to a temple.

Mr. Judge explains in Echoes from the Orient that the building of the temple of the Lord refers to the formation of the human form for the use of the Ego. Thus:

[Adepts show] the gradual process of building the temple for the use of the divine Ego, proceeding ceaselessly, and in silence, through ages upon ages, winding in and out among all forms in nature in every kingdom, from the mineral up to the highest. This is the real explanation of the old Jewish, Masonic, and archaic saying that the temple of the Lord is not made with hands and that no sound of building is heard in it. (pp. 28-29)

H.P.B. explains in The Secret Doctrine that the ancients regarded the Sanctum Sanctorum—in its esoteric meaning—"as the symbol of resurrection, cosmic, solar (or diurnal), and human." (II, 459)

H.P.B. mentions in Isis Unveiled that esoterically, Solomon's temple is only an allegory.

The building of the Temple of Solomon is the symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement of the secret wisdom, or magic; the erection and development of the spiritual from the earthly; the manifestation of the power and splendour of the spirit in the physical world, through the wisdom and genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an adept, is a mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or Light himself—the light of the real subjective world, shining in the darkness of the objective universe. This is the "Temple" which can be reared without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being heard in the house while it is "in building." (II, 391)

Are dreams but idle visions? Researchers in India and abroad now recognize the significance of dreams and feel that they can be used for our well-being. Are dreams a built-in early warning system that alerts us to an impending crisis? Could dreams be a mirror of our waking reality? Why do we remember only certain dreams? asks Shefalee Vasudev (India Today, April 19)

Experiments conducted at Harvard and the University of Texas have shown that unfulfilled wishes, complex desires as well as disturbing and harmful thoughts suppressed during waking hours find their expression in dreams. Delhi-based author and dream researcher Madhu Tandon observes that besides being a mirror of our mental states and attitudes, dreams often help us solve problems and warn us of forthcoming events including death. Psychotherapist Rashna Imhasly believes that dreams are the inner voice that guides us. People must be helped to decode their dreams, as these are full of mythic symbols.

Serenity Young, a scholar of Asian culture and Buddhist traditions, found that the more "meditative" the conscious state, the more lucid (aware) will be the dreams, and lucid dreams have a great potential to become prophetic. It is believed that during sleep, the right side of the brain functions unhindered by the rational interference of the left brain. "Indian researchers say that dreams heal people. Without them, they would be plagued by severe disturbances."

In Transactions, H.P.B. mentions three states of consciousness—waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep or Sushupti and describes seven kinds of dreams. There are warning dreams, allegorical dreams, retrospective dreams, prophetic dreams, etc. As we fall asleep we pass from waking to dream state. These dreams are produced by the combined action of Kama-desire and the animal soul. It is instinct and not reason that is active in these dreams. They reflect suppressed thoughts, emotions and desires. Freud's theory covers only these dreams. In dreamless sleep we exist as our real spiritual self, unhindered by personality. Mr. Judge calls it a spiritual reservoir "by means of which the momentum toward evil living is held in check." It has been shown experimentally that a person deprived of this state of sleep gets up all tired. In dreamless sleep our Ego is on its own plane, fully conscious and omniscient. In Sushupti we find solution to our problems. So many artists and inventors have found inspiration in dreams, or the solution of a problem which they were struggling to find while awake. The language of the Ego is symbolic. It communicates through pictures, symbols and images. To be able to interpret the dreams correctly one must know the language of the soul. Are there any means of interpreting dreams? H.P.B. writes:

None but the clairvoyant faculty and the spiritual intuition of the "interpreter." Every dreaming Ego differs from every other, as our physical bodies do. If everything in the universe has seven keys to its symbolism on the physical plane, how many keys may it not have on higher planes? (Transactions, p. 78)

Cerebellum is active during sleep, but during the waking state its functioning is lost in the functions of the cerebrum.

What and how much our brain can remember of these dreams depends upon how porous the brain is; and to make the brain porous, we should lead a virtuous life, have fewer personal desires and give up materialistic pursuits. It is recommended that we practise self-examination every night before going to sleep.

The human spine is Mother Nature's engineering masterpiece. There are 24 vertebrae that encase and protect the spinal cord, and 23 rubbery white discs that cushion the vertebrae. These discs act as shock absorbers to the human being when he moves about and works. When something suddenly goes wrong with the magnificent spinal anatomy, when something snaps, the resulting pain is unbearable, writes Claudia Kalb. (Newsweek, May 10)

Almost every living human being has suffered the agony of back pain. Various kinds of treatments, from massage to surgery, are available and spinal procedures have been rising in recent years, but many often fail. Back-pain can originate anywhere in spinal architecture. However, doctors are puzzled as to why some people have mild pain and some have really excruciating pain? Claudia Kalb writes:

The answer has as much to do with the mind as it does with the body. In the HIZ [high-intensity zones] study, the best predictor of pain was not how bad the defect looked but the patient's psychological distress. Depression and anxiety have long been linked to pain; a recent Canadian study found that people who suffer from severe depression are four times more likely to develop intense or disabling neck or low-back pain....

Dr. John Sarno, a physician at NYU Medical Center's Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, believes that almost all back pain is rooted in bottled-up emotions....Sarno uses a slide show and a pointer to explain how repressed rage—over your parents' divorce, sexual abuse, trouble at work—can stress the body, leading to mild oxygen deprivation, which he says will eventually manifest itself as muscle spasm, nerve dysfunction, numbness and pain. Recovery begins with recognizing the connection between mind and body.

The field of psychosomatic medicine, dealing with the effects of emotional and mental conditions upon the body, is still not far advanced—in spite of extensive research in this field. Physicians should recognize that the ills of the physical body have their causes on moral and psychic planes.

Mr. Judge explains the mind-body relation in his article "Replanting Diseases for Future Use":

Mind is the container of the efficient causes of our circumstances, our inherent character and the seeds that sprout again and again as physical diseases as well as those purely mental....As Patanjali put it ages ago, in mind lie planted all seeds with self-reproductive power inherent in them, only waiting for time and circumstances to sprout again. Here are the causes for our diseases....The inner currents emanate from their own centers and are constantly in motion. They are affected by thoughts and the reflection of the body in its physiological changes. They each act upon the other incessantly....The seeds of disease being located primarily in the mind, they begin to exhaust themselves through the agency of the inner currents that carry the appropriate vibrations down upon the physical plane. (Judge Series No. 22, pp. 17-18)

We are going to have a league of humanity only when the ancient truths of the Wisdom Religion are once more perceived—when there is one purpose and one teaching. Its truths are self-evident, not to be accepted because written in some book, nor because they are the dicta of some particular church. They are the only truth worth considering because in the use of them they prove themselves true. And truth, as we ought to know, always explains. When we have the explanation, we have the truth. Each one has to make his own verification of the truth, but the fact remains that there is truth, and it has always existed. It has come to us from Beings higher than we, because once They turned Their faces in the right direction and pursued the course pointed out to Them.

—Robert Crosbie