A Personal God ?

Any thoughts on whether or not this is antithetical to Panendeism....

I don't know that a personal god is antithetical to Panendeism but I prefer to think of god as being transpersonal in nature. Considering everything in the universe is a part of god including mankind, god transcends but includes the personal.

God is everything. What is more personal then that?

I think if God is everything, in the panendeist sense, then God is not a person like us. Our sense of agency and our conscious awareness depends on an environment in which we move. God has no larger environment. So, I while I guess personhood is enabled by God's nature, I can't see that God is a person in anything like the normal sense of the word.

Invigorating responses, all of you Would it be fair to state that in the Panendeist view, the old transcendence vs. immanence feud is nullified by the principle of God's transcendence resting in the fact that he is Immanent?

Mechajutaro wrote:

Would it be fair to state that in the Panendeist view, the old transcendence vs. immanence feud is nullified by the principle of God's transcendence resting in the fact that he is Immanent?

I can't speak for all Panendeists but I don't know that I'd say that God's transcendence rests in its immanence. I think the old transcendence vs. immanence feud is based on a dualistic understanding of reality. The Panendeist view is based more on a non-dual understanding of reality. The god/man relationship is neither a dualistic nor monistic... it's non-dualistic.

By chance were you a psych major, Aron?

No. But I played one on TV.

...Actually I was an Architecture major in college but I've always been interested in psychology and sociology.

Aaron wrote:

...Actually I was an Architecture major

Studying the design of the material world inevitably led to examination of the cosmic design, then Poetic

If God is the universe and more can we communicate with this God?

The way I view the nature of god, he/she/it transcends but includes such things as communication. So I think it's possible to communicate with many of god's various parts (which we are one of) but I'm not sure there's even any-"thing" to communicate with at the holistic level.

Thanks for that answer Aaron. I'm not a theist. I don't believe in God revealing His/Her through the scriptures or the revealed religions, but am still confused about prayer to this Deity. I suppose prayers of gratitude are OK.

I personally like meditation but prayer works well for many too.




BTW... I'm no authority on the subject. I'm just giving you my opinion.

driver wrote:

If God is the universe and more can we communicate with this God?

how could you not?

I believe in heart felt prayer. I don't believe in the variety grocery prayer lists; prayers like give me this give me that etc.. Prayers that are hopeful, wishful, prayers of gratitude are prayers that I am inspired to. I think it is as simple as wishing someone well, or being hopeful that you or someone else will make it through a difficult situation. The power of positive thinking can help you and others. As deists we can be thankful for being able to use our reason, experience, and observation of nature. I communicate with God just as I would talk to a friend. There's a lesson to be learned in all prayer or meditation. Most of the time it will appear that our prayers go unanswered. But we will still learn something from the experience. So I see God as being up front and personal.

I forgot to say on my last post that we are all the living prayers of God. We have the ability to help heal, comfort, embrace, listen, love, forgive, when we meet with others. When we believe that God is the ground of all being, then this energy, if we choose to use it can make all things possible.

I think what you are talking about is having a 2nd person relationship with god- which I have to admit is something that I struggle with. The following is based on Ken Wilber's theory of "the three faces of god".

Quote :

Just as human beings intrinsically possess 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person perspectives of the world, so do we possess those same perspectives in our experience of spirituality. And while these dimensions of the divine can be found in just about any spiritual lineage—Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Islam, etc.—many of these traditions only explicitly emphasize one or two of these perspectives, resulting in one or more important aspects of spirituality often being left out of their conceptions of God.

...God in 2nd-person is traditionally defined as the "I-Thou" relationship with the divine, where Spirit is experienced as a living intelligence that we can actually interact with in our own lives. As Ken often says, borrowing from renowned theologian Martin Buber, in the "I-Thou" relationship, God is the hyphen connecting the I and the Thou. And of course, our conceptions of God in 2nd-person evolve right alongside the rest of humanity, growing from magical animistic immersion, to the mythic "old bearded white man in the sky" interpretation, to rational and pluralistic recognitions of divinity within our families, communities, and humanity itself, to the simple intuition that we all exist within the unimaginable Mind of some Supreme Being, by whatever name.

...God in 1st-person refers to the actual phenomenological experience of God, in the form of satori, kensho, ecstatic reverie, and other sorts of "peak experiences" of the divine. These are most frequently exercised through some form of contemplative practice, such as meditation or prayer, in which we can directly experience consciousness as the "singular to which the plural is unknown"—and the effortless, open awareness behind all of our experiences is recognized as the consciousness of God (or Godhead, as Christian mystics might prefer). In this space, all of our thoughts, emotions, and experiences, as well as the rest of the world around us, are simply and effortlessly witnessed, in much the same way that clouds float effortlessly through the infinite expanse of the sky.

...Strictly speaking, nothing can be said about the true essence of Reality (including that)—but in the finite, manifest domain, the three faces of God appear to be intrinsic to Spirit’s radiant display. And unfortunately, Spirit’s expression as 2nd-person Thou has largely gotten stuck at the mythic fundamentalist level of development. The modern world not only rejected the marginalization and cruelties associated with the mythic god, it threw out God in 2nd-person altogether—and thus a huge baby got thrown out with the bathwater of mythic consciousness: one-third of God's own ever-present Face. Indeed, one of the key dilemmas for humanity is discovering a way to help the great spiritual and religious traditions grow into their modern, postmodern, and integral forms of being-in-the-world, with all three faces of God shining brightly.

http://integrallife.com/editorial/three-faces-god

Hi Aaron. I read the three faces of God. Now there is God, I assume that I am the second face of God, but who is the third face of God? I have to admit that some of this went over my head so I might have mised who was the third person of God. Thanks

Whatever God may or may not be - and that in itself is ultimately unknowable - it is obvious that it is not concerned with human beings, our capricious hopes and wishes, our material welfare, health, happiness, or whether we believe or not in its existence. Prayer and faith are wonderful tools for self-assurance, and for providing one's self with meaning when confronted with an apparently meaningless existence, but they have no power beyond the mental limits of one's sense of Self. In other words, you're not curing your cancer with your faith and prayer, you're not feeding hungry children, you're not putting a roof over your, or anyone else's, head. You can only use faith and prayer to convince yourself that you have some kind of meaning beyond the world you inhabit, and that there is some metaphysical aspect of existence that gives everything mundane, including and especially yourself, a narrative purpose.

driver wrote:

Hi Aaron. I read the three faces of God. Now there is God, I assume that I am the second face of God, but who is the third face of God? I have to admit that some of this went over my head so I might have missed who was the third person of God. Thanks

The three faces of god pertain to the ways that one can relate to or view god (as an I, as a We or You, or as an It). One relates to god in the first person (I) through the phenomenal experience (consciousness), at least in Ken Wilber's Integral Panendeist model anyway.

One relates to or views god in the second person (We or You) through prayer and mediation.

One relates to or views god in the third person (It) through the senses or through measurements.

I don't know if that makes any sense. Integralism can be difficult to understand if you aren't aware of the way that all of the different terminology is used.

Hi Aaron One views God in the third person (it) through the senses or through measurements. Could you expand on this a little. Thanks, Bob

One example would be the sense of owe and wonder one might feel starring up at the Milky Way on a clear night or by appreciating the beauty and intricacies of a leaf. It's about relating to god as a thing... as nature.

Uriah wrote:

Whatever God may or may not be - and that in itself is ultimately unknowable...

That depends on how you define God. Some people define God as "love" or "the question why", in those cases God is knowable. I define god as "the ground of being", so in that case I would have to agree with you.

But that is my point. People can define God as anything they want, but in the end that definition is just a label, and in and of itself does not constitute knowledge. God is universally beyond the scope of human epistemology.

and yet God is a word.

maybe the word.