The Nature of God

About the Book

As the title states, this book is about The Nature of God. The sub-title The Discovery of Self is particularly important as the author finds that mankind is an integral part of God's nature, as is God's immense variety of other manifestations. He traces the changes in Man's concept of God from residing in thunder or lightning, in volcanoes, to a God who is the cause of an eclipse, who is mainly a punishing God, to that of a pure and permanently existing God of love. However, although the evidence points to the fact that this God has no body He does have an associated evolving factor that is very gradually becoming part of His expression of love and he cites both ancient and modern thinkers to support these views.

The author points out that all is God. God is one single vast entity. There is no such thing as 'not-God,' Satan notwithstanding. (The concept of Satan is fully discussed). He discovered that God's permanent factor is pure love, beauty etcetera, the part of God that most people think of as God and worship. However, the author notes that God is also His evolving factor that evolved from the 'Being' part of Him. The Being has no limits to its expression whether this is good or evil in the eyes of human beings. It was clear to the author that any connections between God's permanent and evolving factors must be filtered through a suitable process to ensure that any negative elements of His evolving factor are not allowed to contaminate His pure loving permanent factor. For evolving human beings, though seemingly separated from God, this process consists of voluntarily purifying their internal psychic structure to the point where they are spiritually fit to be an integral part of God's pure love. The author notes here that God's omnipresence, another part of the nature of God, ensures that we are never separated from Him and that any separation comes from Man himself. The nature of the Being from where His manifestations emerge is also discussed in considerable depth. Further, God's evolving factor can be considered as having two states of existence, namely in a material and a spiritual world. These are discussed in some depth as are the connections between these various states.

The path for humans to accomplish the goal of merging with the pure permanent part of God is not easy and only true saints, mystics, advanced yogis, the founders of the major religions and many wise men of the past and present have succeeded. The author points out that it is from such enlightened people that we can know what direction to take in life and it is from such rich sources that he has drawn on, for much of his approach in discussing the nature of God.

It is noteworthy that in recent years science has entered the scene and the findings of these 'spiritual scientists' are fully supportive of the ancient wisdoms. For example they both postulate the existence of a "mirror world" that reflects our feelings back to us. Together, these ancients and moderns make a powerful case in attempting to delineate the nature of God. The scientific findings are detailed at length in the book in Part 3 (Chapters 11 to 15). The impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the nature of God is also discussed at length in chapter 15.

Many mainstream scientists are still skeptical about using science to discuss spiritual matters, but science is science and the spiritual scientists make a good scientific case today using the same criteria as traditional science such as repeatability, double blind studies or both where possible.

In the author's first book "Spreading the Light" he evaluated many areas of life and showed how these all led to God. In this book he discovered that by studying the nature of God he found that this led him back to the 'many' areas of life. It was at this point that he realized that this thinking is in line with the "One and the Many" concept of God in the Eastern religions.

Details of God's evolving factor are examined extensively. For example, the author examines the role of the religions of the world and includes a special chapter on Buddhism as Buddhism denies the existence of God. He shows that this fact is not irreconcilable with the other religions and in fact Buddhism may well be called 'the religion of religions.'

As part of God's evolving factor the author examines six case histories of mystical experiences, eight case histories of psychic phenomena and eight case histories of dream phenomena, all part of the nature of God. He presents his case for the reality of reincarnation and the existence of the spiritual planes. He describes a remarkable physical technology that is a close parallel to the structure of the spiritual planes. He also devotes a complete chapter (chapter 7) to describe what happens to us after death and exactly where we will live. This chapter may surprise you.

An attempt is made to define God and Man. The value of human relationships is discussed and a list of life's basics is given. The future of Man is also discussed and a final chapter (chapter 22), includes a list of God's attributes. Many more items about the nature of God are discussed throughout the book.

About the Author

Archie was born in Glasgow, Scotland on the 22nd April 1922 where he lived for 21 years before being drafted into the British Army in August 1943. In 1944 he was shipped out to India, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Malaysia) and other countries in the Far East. He took part in the invasion of Malaya landing via a landing barge on the Moreb beaches located on the West Coast of that country. He was "Mentioned in a Dispatch for distinguished service" for his actions in setting up ship-to-shore VHF communications during the invasion and for installing and maintaining a technically advanced secret digital radio link from Singapore city to the town of Changi on Singapore island. Digital communications was virtually unknown at that time. He left Singapore for home in August 1946 after the war with Japan was over.

After two more years as a telecommunications technician in Glasgow he was promoted to engineer and went to work in London, England. In 1954 he took a post in Nigeria, West Africa for two years where he single handedly, planned and built VHF radio links in the bush, including constructing one 100 foot and two 150 foot towers. The next two years he spent in Lagos, Nigeria where he was in charge of a major workshop with some 50 Nigerian staff. His main work there was design of telecommunications equipment and development and technical support for all telecommunications equipment in that country. Following this he was hired by Nigerian Railways as a Senior engineer to take charge of its telecommunications network which operated over 2,500 miles of railway track covering all regions of the country. He had 11 expatriate staff and his Nigerian staff numbered over two hundred.

In 1961 Archie was hired by the United Nations and went to Egypt for four years during which time he solved a major problem at Cairo airport where for the two previous years planes were frequently diverted to Beirut. Promotion for this work saw him working on an island on the river Nile just off Cairo called Zamalek where the Egyptian Government, in a consortium with the United Nations, was building a multi-million dollar international training institute. He designed the various laboratories for this school and built them using local Egyptian staff.

From Egypt he was hired in 1965 by the major Canadian telecommunications company presently called Northern Telecom. He was engaged in the company's marketing department and carried out numerous marketing activities. Transferring to RCA Canada in 1972 he continued with defining marketing strategies for that company. In 1978 he moved to Teleglobe, Canada where he went back to engineering. In this company he was deeply involved for nine years in the planning of trans-oceanic submarine cable and global satellite systems.

He retired in 1987 and now lives in Montreal, Canada where he pursues his lifelong interest in spiritual matters resulting in the publication of this, his second book. His first book, Spreading the Light: Meaningful Answers to Spiritual Questions, is also available from Trafford Publishing.