As I read all the different posts here, "God" comes up so many times. I am wondering just who and what is this "God" in your opinion? I see it written in a post that if I am not connected directly to him I could be considered as "evil". Who is this God, and whose belief of who and what God is, the most correct? Why? How does it relate to the afterlife?

My understanding of God is a little more technical I suppose.  To me, the Creator is everything...me, you, everyone and everything that exists everywhere; the air we breath, together with every other thing of which we we can conceive.  I see the Creator as a force of love and consciousness throughout everything that exists...the linkage or the source of animation for all that is.  With that, we are all a part of God.

I have difficulty seeing the Creator as anything less than the All, for that would mean there was something greater than the Creator...no pun intended.

Your question is best answered by pondering the classic philosophical question, "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?"  It seems intruitively absurd to simply reply, "Because matter and energy have always existed; that's just an unintelligible brute fact."  But notice what happens when we pose the same question about God: we would then discover that God has in "His" very nature the reason for "His" own existence.  That would mean that God is neither All That Is (the simplistic New Age view) or a being among countless other beings (a naive theistic view not embraced by theologians); rather God is the ground of all being.  That is the standard Christian view. Thus, God is not Pure Consciousness (against MBT), but the ground of Pure Consciousness. 

Only by special revelation can we discover that "God is Love."  But that raises anothe basic question: Is an omnipotent loving God capable of creating beings that are in a fundamental sense Not God?  To deny this is to deny omnipotence.  But how is Not God conceivable if God is the Source and Ground of all that is?

Beings that are Not God are comprehensible only in terms of independence by virtue of free will.  Free will is the capacity to act contrary to both one's own inclinations and the divine will.  As such free will is neither random nor coerced.  Omniscience merely means divine awareness of how our free choices will fulfill or defy God's will. 

If God is Love, the very concept of Pure Unconditional Love is relational and thus requires a free object to receive and return genuine love.  Indeed, the very concept of PUL requires beings that are Not God. But to deny that God is All That Is is not to deny that God is "the One."  "The One" only embraces freely independent beings in the sense that these are created and sustained by and from "the One." But the One is also in process, the process of seeking through love the merging of individual volitions with the divine volition through PUL. 

Don   

Don,

I don't believe MTB would consider God as Pure Consciousness. Instead MBT describes consciousness as the One Consciousness similar what you state here:

"If God is Love, the very concept of Pure Unconditional Love is relational and thus requires a free object to receive and return genuine love.  Indeed, the very concept of PUL requires beings that are Not God. But to deny that God is All That Is is not to deny that God is "the One."  "The One" only embraces freely independent beings in the sense that these are created and sustained by and from "the One." But the One is also in process, the process of seeking through love the merging of individual volitions with the divine volition through PUL."

In my understanding, TC indicates that what is beyond the One Consciousness cannot be known or understood from our earthly viewpoint and is therefore not speculated on in his theory.

Kathy

Don...I read your comments above and re-read them with the intent of responding to each point.  I cannot.

From my standpoint, each of us has a view of God, the Creator, and each of us has our own concept, through our hearts and minds, of what and who we think he/she/it is.  I have spent twenty one years in academia and understand it; in this matter, no amount of academic stricture, scholastic analysis and dogmatic obligation has indicated to me any level of heartfelt and compassionate understanding greater than I can find in myself.

Your level of bibliological study is indeed astounding, and you have amazingly researched responses to whatever may be thrown up on this board.  To me, none of it resonates as anything but written/researched cold-hearted analytical stuff.  I get no feeling from it.  None of it resonates with any vibrational truth. 

I do not say this with any ill intent.  I feel from you a desire to truthfully share what you know to be real, to ensure those of us without your level of expertise are not left out in the cold.  But, for me, your message is interesting from that cold, book-learned place with instruction and direction and does not strike the keys that ring true.  I am not writing to denigrate your point of view, but rather to voice my own feeling.  I feel your intent and it is good...I simply do not feel your message.

With love and light, Scott

Usetawuz/Pat E,

your comments pretty much resonate with me and Usetawuz your conception of God is similar to mine. I would just like to observe that some some of the greatest human minds have been pontificating on the nature of God for centuries and have come up with very different answers... so there is good reason for humility on this ! These are not issues which can be resolved with double-blind studies and go with Usetawuz that 'resonates' and 'feels' are appropriate yard sticks here. I agree with TC that such things may lie outside our zone of 'knowability' but its ok to dialogue and speculate.

One of the key differences between a traditional Christian take on God and a 'New Age' one seems to me to be on Divine Will. In the former a separate Divine Will is posited from ours; while in the latter our will and Divine Will are one of the same. In a sense we are God Godding i.e. expressing God's will when we make up our minds and perform an action- there is no separation between God's will and ours.

I would just like to add that often I find myself disagreeing with Don but I respect his search for veracity and recognise the value of his postings in causing me to query what may be my unquestioned assumptions and thus help refine/define my viewpoint.

Dave

These are such loving replies. What I am seeing here is a diversity of different beliefs of the who and what God is to each of you. What I see mostly is the importance your belief in God makes upon your lives.  I also believe none of you to be wrong, for God is you, your beliefs, your ideals, your truth. We are all a part of God. There is no correct answer to the questions. I believe God to be as close to each of us as to our perceived enemies. The unfortunate thing I see is the use of our desire to have God within our existences, is used as a mean to control people and nations. This is done by both the church and the state.
I hope to hear more replies as this expression of love from you brings me closer to my God.   

I think there are many paths that lead to God and one may not be any more true than another.  However, there are definite "paths" that do not fit for me. I went from hardcore Southern Baptist as a child, to agnostic/atheist to now more of a follower of Eastern Indian mysticism. It took a real unexpected experience for me to experience "God" and from that I migrated to the Eastern Indian mysticism.

Of course, anything now from the Bible if taken full on its face and not for its true esoterical meaning makes me bristle, but that is I trying to overcome my abhorrence for that fundamentalism which to me, borders on fanatical. I truly believe Christ was steeped in Eastern Indian spirituality and that taking the Bible literally without this bent is like reading a book upside down and backwards.

But hey, that's just me.