So far I have concentrated on the sides of the God-World-I Triangle. It is, I think, a mistake to spend too much time on the apexes. But let us consider them for a moment, to understand why it is a mistake to concentrate on them? If God exists, then the terrifying scale of his creation reduces Man to insignificance, as the writer of the book of Job describes so well. Of course fools can hide from all this by saying, “We have science and evolution, and believe there is no God”. But scientific equations only describe with more or less accuracy our experience of Nature, and who puts life into the equations? Science describes Nature; it did not create Nature, and does not give it life. Who created Nature? Who created atomic particles, and the billions of galaxies? Turning to the living world, who created the complexity of living creatures, whose brains probably have more nerve connections that there are stars in space? Or did it all just happen? And if Nature is evolving, as I believe it is, how did brains evolve? Natural selection by itself would probably have taken millions of times longer than the 4½ billion years that the Earth has existed. And who decreed anyway that Nature should evolve, and who decides nowadays whether evolution is on an endless journey or is heading for a definite goal? Not Man. We can only observe, and if we are capable of thought (and many people are not), we can think and try to observe relationships here and there, and even write equations to give order and system to what we observe; which is called science. Concentrating on the disparity between God and Man is a profitless occupation.
In the West the tradition that God speaks to the human heart, and therefore potentially has a relationship with each one of us, goes back to Moses, as you can find in Deuteronomy Chapter 30, verses 11-14. So this tradition has a long history. And in Chapter 11 of my book Man’s Relationship with God, I suggest as an article of faith that all true relationships preclude analysis, and that if you try to analyse them you destroy them. And if that is right, it is best not to analyse any relationship you believe you have with any real or mythical God in your mind, save insofar as you seek to honour it. This I believe is the message of Job; you need the presence of God within to face the omnipotent might of God without. Or even: you need the belief in the presence of God within, to face the belief in the presence of God without. So if you do not believe there is a God, and never contemplate that He dwells within you, there is a strong temptation to assert that He does not exist, either within or without. And then of course you have to blind yourself to all the outward evidence that He does exist; and numb your inner spiritual life to stifle the instinct that the Spirit of God may dwell within. Equally if you are not prepared to recognise Einstein’s Central Order of Things, nor interest yourself in the relationship of the One to the many, then I suppose you have to lose yourself in Art, or Literature, or magic, or some other activity. You can lose yourself in some physical activity, because even physical activity has a spiritual side to it; rock-climbing demands judgement as to who is a safe companion, and who is not safe. One way or another, everyone has to come to terms either with God, or with Einstein’s Central Order of Things, or its equivalent in the spiritual world. Of course fools can deafen themselves to any voice within just as they can blind themselves to the obvious without; but Jung would say this was cutting yourself off from your unconscious self, which is a dangerous thing to do. Probably it was the cause of the successful rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.
The upshot of all this is that it is more profitable to concentrate on the God-I side of the Triangle, rather than become obsessed with the omnipotence of God or the vanity of Man. It is similar with the other sides; it is better to concentrate on the sides than the apexes.
The advantage of concentrating on the sides of the Triangle is that you are concentrating on relationships. The God-I side concentrates on the relationship of God to Man, and man to God; or the One to the many, and the many to the One. The World-I side concentrates on the relationship of the citizen with the State. And so on.