Another Look at God, Infinity, and Transcendence
There must be gods. I keep talking to them. When I cut my finger, I yell god damn it. When the bus comes on time, I say well, thank god. If I do something stupid, god help me, I cry. Sometimes when I feel the wind in my sails on a beautiful day, it’s even I love you, my God.
Rationally, I do not believe in disembodied ghosts or any supernatural beings, places, or events. Yes, I wonder at many of the mysteries of life and the universe. The encounter of the person who became my soul mate, the making of friends, the close calls I avoided, the chance event from which I learned so much, the birth of my child, the sun arising on the mountain, a revealing line of poetry, the accomplishments of others and even of myself are wondrous and mysterious. While I am not superstitious, I believe in miracles, myths, and mysteries. There are indeed many more things in heaven and earth than those dreamt of in my philosophy.
I’ve learned in reading about the brain that many of my decisions do not exactly come from me. They are made unconsciously before I even considered them due to reasons that I try to understand but cannot entirely. Who is in charge? My mind. Which one — left or right hemisphere, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, or cerebellum? Does the heart have reasons of which Reason knows nothing?
As I age, I am encountering much, much more the death of family members, classmates, and children, so many children. This Wednesday I am supporting a sit-in at the Capitol organized by the cousin and the mother of one of twenty-five children killed by a deranged young man with a military assault rifle at Parkland School five years ago. My good friend just heard that his 34-year-old son, father of his two young grandchildren, died overnight. I cannot but identify with him thinking of our son and wife who just brought forward a new life into our world. I see and feel so much pain that is not necessary.
I want there to be a God who can answer for this. I will denounce him if he takes credit for all this because of some argument with Satan to show he is stronger and has followers who bow to him out of fear or wager. Doesn’t he have the empathy or sensitivity that he created in us? I don’t want a god who allows or promotes cruelty — a strict punishing tyrant picking winners over losers.
I want there to be a God who is a father who teaches and respects all persons. Or a mother who does not play one child against another, but nourishes, loves, and protects all children. Or a consort who makes love generously.
Rationally again, I know that gods come from my imagination — in the culture and community in which I grew up. I also know that my imagination is the gift of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Humanity is the only creature we know of on this planet that, through natural selection (whatever you choose to believe happened before the Big Bang), has the capacity to make images and use them to search and find things in the world and to understand their meaning in relation to other things from atoms and their particles to organisms among the stars.
Metaphorically, the capacity to make images to apprehend and shape realities in the universe, to categorize them and their elements, to unite them in new, higher images, and express them to others to be used for living, surviving, distributing, and organizing is the gift of the gods. Metaphors themselves, symbols that link us to meaning. I see, thank, and worship the gods of images, words, and metaphors without worshiping the images, words, and metaphors that emerge in my capacity to imagine, speak, and act. So, I choose to avoid idolatry that closes my openness to the world, stops my search for the new, distinguishes reality from hallucination, blocks my imagination, and the source of creativity.
There is no doubt in my mind that in achieving and expanding consciousness we are on a trajectory to infinity. Human consciousness is the human organism in action with its environment, open to the world while aware of itself. It is integrated with others in a social network. Human consciousness, aware of things in the world in an interacting with others, is a dynamic thrust between the past and the future. A grasp of the old to discover the new. A drive to infinity.
That does not necessarily mean that humanity will ever reach infinity or even that infinity actually exists. We symbolize infinity in math and science. We converge on it as a point in a painting. We point to it in religion and philosophy. We speak about it in stories as I do now. But is there really a never-ending story? The artist is continually attempting to draw us out of our past through new perspectives. The wise transcend knowing by knowing that they will never know finally. Science’s theory of everything will in turn be questioned and brought into a higher viewpoint. Infinity means no-end, no finality, purpose, fulfillment, culmination. When we reach infinity, we have lost it.
Human consciousness is in the act of transcending. It is the notion of transcendence itself in its infinite openness to the universe, its search for purpose, its desire for ultimate truth, unsurpassable beauty, total goodness, complete love, the divine milieu, political utopia. We have these notions of over the rainbow, everlasting happiness, the city of God, and the beloved community in our very, often prereflective, awareness of ourselves in solidarity with other selves acting together towards infinity here and now. Personally and collectively.
We, as human embodied consciousness, do have a notion of God that we express in so many diverse ways or by silence: the Divine, the Transcendent in our experience of and call to infinity, our desire to live, know, write, and be a never-ending story. We are, together in our personal and collective consciousness, the notion of God. The ending of the never-ending story — as long as we keep that story from ending.
Another Look at God, Infinity, and Transcendence
There must be gods. I keep talking to them. When I cut my finger, I yell god damn it. When the bus comes on time, I say well, thank god. If I do something stupid, god help me, I cry. Sometimes when I feel the wind in my sails on a beautiful day, it’s even I love you, my God.
Rationally, I do not believe in disembodied ghosts or any supernatural beings, places, or events. Yes, I wonder at many of the mysteries of life and the universe. The encounter of the person who became my soul mate, the making of friends, the close calls I avoided, the chance event from which I learned so much, the birth of my child, the sun arising on the mountain, a revealing line of poetry, the accomplishments of others and even of myself are wondrous and mysterious. While I am not superstitious, I believe in miracles, myths, and mysteries. There are indeed many more things in heaven and earth than those dreamt of in my philosophy.
I’ve learned in reading about the brain that many of my decisions do not exactly come from me. They are made unconsciously before I even considered them due to reasons that I try to understand but cannot entirely. Who is in charge? My mind. Which one — left or right hemisphere, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, or cerebellum? Does the heart have reasons of which Reason knows nothing?
As I age, I am encountering much, much more the death of family members, classmates, and children, so many children. This Wednesday I am supporting a sit-in at the Capitol organized by the cousin and the mother of one of twenty-five children killed by a deranged young man with a military assault rifle at Parkland School five years ago. My good friend just heard that his 34-year-old son, father of his two young grandchildren, died overnight. I cannot but identify with him thinking of our son and wife who just brought forward a new life into our world. I see and feel so much pain that is not necessary.
I want there to be a God who can answer for this. I will denounce him if he takes credit for all this because of some argument with Satan to show he is stronger and has followers who bow to him out of fear or wager. Doesn’t he have the empathy or sensitivity that he created in us? I don’t want a god who allows or promotes cruelty — a strict punishing tyrant picking winners over losers.
I want there to be a God who is a father who teaches and respects all persons. Or a mother who does not play one child against another, but nourishes, loves, and protects all children. Or a consort who makes love generously.
Rationally again, I know that gods come from my imagination — in the culture and community in which I grew up. I also know that my imagination is the gift of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Humanity is the only creature we know of on this planet that, through natural selection (whatever you choose to believe happened before the Big Bang), has the capacity to make images and use them to search and find things in the world and to understand their meaning in relation to other things from atoms and their particles to organisms among the stars.
Metaphorically, the capacity to make images to apprehend and shape realities in the universe, to categorize them and their elements, to unite them in new, higher images, and express them to others to be used for living, surviving, distributing, and organizing is the gift of the gods. Metaphors themselves, symbols that link us to meaning. I see, thank, and worship the gods of images, words, and metaphors without worshiping the images, words, and metaphors that emerge in my capacity to imagine, speak, and act. So, I choose to avoid idolatry that closes my openness to the world, stops my search for the new, distinguishes reality from hallucination, blocks my imagination, and the source of creativity.
There is no doubt in my mind that in achieving and expanding consciousness we are on a trajectory to infinity. Human consciousness is the human organism in action with its environment, open to the world while aware of itself. It is integrated with others in a social network. Human consciousness, aware of things in the world in an interacting with others, is a dynamic thrust between the past and the future. A grasp of the old to discover the new. A drive to infinity.
That does not necessarily mean that humanity will ever reach infinity or even that infinity actually exists. We symbolize infinity in math and science. We converge on it as a point in a painting. We point to it in religion and philosophy. We speak about it in stories as I do now. But is there really a never-ending story? The artist is continually attempting to draw us out of our past through new perspectives. The wise transcend knowing by knowing that they will never know finally. Science’s theory of everything will in turn be questioned and brought into a higher viewpoint. Infinity means no-end, no finality, purpose, fulfillment, culmination. When we reach infinity, we have lost it.
Human consciousness is in the act of transcending. It is the notion of transcendence itself in its infinite openness to the universe, its search for purpose, its desire for ultimate truth, unsurpassable beauty, total goodness, complete love, the divine milieu, political utopia. We have these notions of over the rainbow, everlasting happiness, the city of God, and the beloved community in our very, often prereflective, awareness of ourselves in solidarity with other selves acting together towards infinity here and now. Personally and collectively.
We, as human embodied consciousness, do have a notion of God that we express in so many diverse ways or by silence: the Divine, the Transcendent in our experience of and call to infinity, our desire to live, know, write, and be a never-ending story. We are, together in our personal and collective consciousness, the notion of God. The ending of the never-ending story as long as we keep that story from ending.