Madame Blavatsky Rebuts Unspiritual Conceptions about God

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 8 pages

Eight pages of genuine philosophical exchange, printed in Lucifer in July 1888. A correspondent, J. Hunter, had written to say that he agreed with her to an extent but not wholly, and wanted to open out his thought further. His objection is a serious one and set out at length: he has no conception of the Infinite and Boundless as positive existence, and holds that if Deity is the same as absolute nothing, and all things came from it, then something has come from nothing — which philosophy declares cannot be.

The form of the reply is what makes the document useful. Rather than answer in a following article, Blavatsky annotates his letter as it runs, so that each step of his argument is met at the point he makes it — her footnotes appearing beneath his paragraphs and signed as editor. The dispute turns on whether the Absolute is properly called nothing at all, or whether that word only registers the failure of positive language, and on his counter-principle that the real alone can produce the real, whatever kind of reality it be. The heading the compiler has given the exchange states her verdict on the position: unspiritual thinkers are materialistic thinkers.

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