Life-cycles

There are three things, and as the former are so will be the third:
Water flowing into the sea whence it came;
The line of a circle ending where it began;
And the soul of a living being returning to God whence it emanated...
Barddas

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?" Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is."
Gospel of Thomas Saying 18

The Cosmos is not wasteful: it is full of cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. Nothing new comes into the system. What exists has existed since the dawn of time and will never be destroyed. It would not be surprising, therefore, to discover that the same holds true with our spirit / soul. This thought is expressed in the above extracts.

The je ne sais quoi

When I open my mind, I find that there is something beyond myself;
With myself;
In myself.
I am a community of consciousness;
My spirit is a stream being fed by and returning to the sea of life.
I am from, with and going to the ‘Je ne sais quoi’.

The Eternal Now

One of my favourite authors is Paul Tillich. His book ‘The Eternal Now’ explores the concept of the Nunc Stans: the panentheistic ‘God’ is not only present throughout the Cosmos at any one moment; every moment of the Cosmo’s duration is present within God in one everlasting reality – the eternal NOW. The following short poem is a response to this concept.

The Nunc Stans.
Boundaryless unlimited existence.
Outside of time,
Your unblinking presence overflows the Cosmos.
Past, present and future all exist in your eternal now.

The emergent ‘God’

I believe that ‘God’ is a completely natural phenomenon.

To some this will sound strange and heretical but it is the obvious conclusion of taking a panentheistic position. ‘God’ is one with the cosmos, with the natural world and universe; as such, how could God be anything other than natural? That is not to say that the world that we experience, which we see, taste, smell, hear and observe, is the only natural reality; I believe that there are many aspects to the natural universe which we have yet to experience or discover. Just as scientists are discovering that space may be multi-layered; so the time-space bubble that we inhabit may also be multi-layered. So, any surprise we may experience at the thought that God is a natural phenomenon may say more about how little our experience is of what is natural than it does about God him/her/itself.

Once we see God as a natural phenomenon new possibilities occur: the most exciting to me being that it implies that as the natural universe changes, develops and emerges; so God changes, develops and emerges. As consciousness develops; so God develops. As love expands; so God expands. I believe that when Jesus talked about the expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven, this is what he had in mind. God’s power resides in conscious minds which are focussed on love; when love increases, the Kingdom of Heaven expands.

In ‘The Prophet’ Kahil Gibran addresses the same issue, and sums it up much more clearly, when he writes: “When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’

Truth...

The Beloved:
I am truth.
I stand monolithic and absolute,
Untouched and inviolate.
Since the dawn of time, I am.

The Lover:
I stand in awe; unable to comprehend and hold even one pure truth in all its multi-faceted beauty.

The love paradox

Love;
You can be an awesome and impregnable fortress,
Yet you are as delicate and easy to crush as the smallest flower.

Panentheism and Christianity

Nearly all major religions have a number of adherents who interpret their spirituality from a panentheistic point of view, and Christianity is no exception. I have a background in Christian evangelicalism, and while I have moved away from evangelicalism, I still see myself as some sort of Christian, albeit a heretical one in the view of many!

The Bible cannot be said to be a panentheist’s handbook but it does provide some elements of panentheistic spirituality. One of my favourite examples of this is Psalm 139, which provides a song of praise to the God who hems us in - whose presence fills every corner of existence. It highlights a crucial difference between panentheism and pantheism – that being the potential for some sort of individual experience with God and that God has a self and has exert able power. Not all panentheists see God in this way; but the philosophy allows the possibility; and it is one that rings true for me.

What is God?

One of my favourite books is ‘Barddas’ – a collection of old Welsh documents which contain something of the spirit and theology of the ancient Celtic people and their druid priests. The druids are often portrayed as worshiping multiple gods – in fact this is probably a misunderstanding. It seems that the druids had a much more subtle grasp of spirituality and embraced panentheism; understanding that ‘God’ is in all things. Different names were given to ‘God’ and something of his or her characteristics were thought to be displayed in the Celtic pantheon. However underlying this multiplicity of gods and goddesses was the understanding that these were in fact multiple faces of the unnameable and unknowable One.

In one passage in Barddas, those being initiated into Bardism or Druidism are asked a series of questions; one of which is as follows:

Q: What is God?
A: The life of all lives.

How inspiring a thought. God is nothing without the lives that make up his being; and we are nothing without the life of God which animates us.

In whom I live and breathe and have my being...

Like the purest and most subtle perfume;
Your presence fills my consciousness.

Ineffable, indescribable;
You are as close as my own soul,
Yet as different and alien as the stars themselves.

In your holy embrace I live and breathe and have my being.
I call out to you and you answer in the echo of my words.

You are Incomprehensible Mystery;
Yet my soul dances with knowledge of you.

You are the one who transcends;
Incarnate in all that is;
Beholden to none.

You cannot be held by our words;
Or by the limits of the human mind.

You are within, beyond, between.
An all embracing reality, without shape or substance.
Haunting presence.
Soul of the Cosmos.