Food for thought about panentheism [View all]

This idea comes naturally out of the search I've been on for the last few years:

I started life as a positivist atheist, but after a while almost blew out psychologically from the lack of any sense of the sacred to anchor my life.

When I went looking for it, I found quite a bit of that sense of the sacred in Deep Ecology (all life has intrinsic value), then more of it in pantheism (God is identical with the natural universe). Both of these are naturalistic ideas that didn't ding my veneer of rationalism too hard.

Next on the menu were non-dualist philosophies like Zen and Taoism. Further along the non-dualist path, Advaita teaches that we are identical with Brahman and Jnana yoga teaches that we "are" consciousness.

Following that path towards the sacred led me to this recent conclusion. I am actually a panentheist for whom Consciousness is the supreme sacred manifestation, identical to what others call "God".

The key for me is that in traditional panentheism, God acts both in the world and outside it; creates reality yet works within it; is both transcendent and immanent at the same time. In David Bohm's terms, God both enfolds the implicate order and unfolds the explicate order.

For me that God-role is entirely and adequately fulfilled by Consciousness. Consciousness is the vessel within which my reality occurs, and yet my consciousness acts within reality at every moment. Consciousness is the manifestation of the divine, in the exact way that God is described in classical panentheism.

This is a very recent thought (just had it today, actually) so it's always open to change. But it's sure fun to chew on.