“The great problem for all religions has been understanding the nature of humanity’s relationship to God. This is the query of the psalmist when he asks, ‘What is a man, that Thou art mindful of him?’ One answer to this question, and my central thesis here, is that humanity may be defined as a unique portion of the process and a record of the expression of the Infinite into the finite.
An illustration of this insight into our nature is found in a Hindu legend, related here by W.H. Danforth from I Dare You (BN Publishing, 2007): At one time all men on earth were gods, but… men so sinned and abused the Divine that Brahma, the god of all gods, decided that the godhead should be taken away from man and hid someplace where he would never again find it and abuse it.
‘We will bury it deep in the earth,’ said the other gods. ‘No,’ said Brahma, ‘because man will dig down in the earth and find it.’ ‘Then we will sink it in the deepest ocean,’ they said, ‘No,’ said Brahma, ‘because man will learn to dive and find it there, too.’ ‘We will hide it on the highest mountain,’ they said. ‘No,’ said Brahma, ‘because man will someday climb every mountain on earth and again capture the godhead.’ ‘Then we do not know where to hide it where he cannot find it,’ said the lesser gods. ‘I will tell you,’ said Brahma, ‘hide it down in man himself. He will never think to look there.’
And that is what they did. Hidden in every human being is some of the Divine. Ever since then, humans have gone over the earth digging, diving, and climbing, looking for that godlike quality, which all the time is hidden within ourselves.
For me, this legend is reminiscent not only of the Biblical stories of the fall of man and the Prodigal Son but also of the peculiar way in which we are ‘lost,’ or separated in consciousness from our awareness of the Divine.”
EdgarCayce.org, Venture Inward, “From The Infinite Into The Finite,” by Herbert Puryear, PhD., Page 19.
