At one time or another, humans have worshiped everything found in Nature----stones, hills, lakes, trees, plants, animals (especially the large, ferocious ones), waterfalls, rain, storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, fire, etc. Even today, the inexplicable catastrophes of life are known as "acts of God."

Having worshiped everything else on the earth, under the earth, and in the skies above, humans did not hesitate to honor themselves with the same adoration. Priests, kings and prophets were often deified.

But, like a person who has placed his or her glasses on top of his or her head and cannot find them, most people search for God when they already have (inside them) that for which they seek. The Absolute is not a man on a celestial throne. It does not dwell apart from Its creation, so that the human Soul must journey across time and space to reach It. No, the Absolute is right here, right now, within you as you read these words. And, the same Absolute is with every other person in the entire Universe of Universes, simultaneously, never more and never less.

The Absolute is unchangeable----the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But, the human conception of God is constantly changing, from moment to moment, as the conscious mind learns more and more about itself and its relationship to the Universe. The God of the first savages is far different from the God of the Old Testament, just as the God of biblical times is far different from the God of today. Yet, the Absolute is still the same, unchanged.

As human beings progress, they see higher and higher attributes of God, and they worship always the highest and best in their present conception of the Absolute. Tomorrow, still higher visions of the Godhead will be discovered and worshiped. Human beings have always, and will always, continue to change their conceptions of God, even though the Absolute remains forever unchanged and eternal.

Some people have postulated, and rightly so, that a person’s God is that person at his or her very best. The uneducated savage believed in a God that would seem to us, today, like a devil. But, it was the highest ideal he or she could visualize, something like himself or herself, only more so. His or her God desired the blood of His people’s enemies, fiercely guarded His people’s territory, and needed hideously carved images to remind His people of His wrath if He were not kept satisfied. After a while, though, the descendants of the savage increased their knowledge and understanding, leading them to cast down the God of their fathers and erect a new one. Their God was a little bit more tolerant, a little kinder, more loving, and better than the one that went before. They still clothed their God with human attributes (even after they had evolved from the worship of many gods to the worship of a single God). Yet, the Absolute remained unchanged. Each generation of humans worships the Absolute as best as they know how, visualizing It in this form or that, calling It by one name or another. But, still they cannot change the nature of the Absolute Itself.

Humans have persecuted others of their own kind for holding to a different concept of God than they. The persecuted, in turn, when they at last gained power, attacked others who worshiped another vision of God. And, so on. Yet, they were all worshiping the exact same Deity ---- the Absolute, eternal and unchanged.

Each person worships God as best he or she can. And, the concepts of both the primitive savage in the bush and of the advanced person of the "civilized" world will grow and expand, higher and higher, year by year, generation after generation.

The atheist argues that all religions are false because history has proven that the gods of the past were false, replaced by other gods, equally as false that were replaced by still other figures of deity. But, what the so-called atheist does not realize is that he or she is also worshiping a conception of God, known by the various names of science, art, beauty, nature, or even capitalism. And this, too, is just one step in the evolutionary process of consciousness.

The concept of God grows greater, broader and kinder each generation. We no longer hear about a vengeful and wrath-filled God, and even less about Hell and eternal damnation. People, today, are being taught to love God, instead of fearing the Absolute.

Each church and creed, no matter how crude and primitive their teachings may seem to you, fills a necessary place in the religious evolution of the human race. Each fulfills the spiritual needs of those who follow it, where they are at this point in time, and should be respected accordingly.

The way to know the Absolute is to love the Absolute, instead of seeking some excuse to hate a fellow human.