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Copyright 1996 Noel Frederick McInnis - all rights reserved
Some Implications of Our Interconnectivity with the Divine
Is God dynamic or static? Whether we answer this question "yes" or "no," we face a metaphysical challenge:
To view this challenge from a more down-to-Earth perspective: When we consider that Earth (below/without) was initially as lifeless as the void around it, we acknowledge that the Creation undergoes dynamic change. How, then, can it be otherwise with the Creator (above/within)?
Ernest Holmes set the context for this inquiry with numerous statements about the dynamism of the cosmos. To begin with, he acknowledged that the One Mind is also one-bodied:
The Universe is the manifest body of God.
Holmes also acknowledged that change is an essential aspect of God's manifest body:
Nature will not let us stay in any one place too long. She will let us stay just long enough to gather the experience necessary to the unfolding and advancing of the soul. This is a wise provision, for should we stay here too long, we would become too set, too rigid, too inflexible. Nature demands the change in order that we should advance. When the change comes, we should welcome it with a smile on the lips and a song in the heart.
Holmes further acknowledged that God's essence differs from God's manifest body:
The Spirit of the Universe cannot change; being ALL, there is nothing for It to change into. . . . [However,] THE BODY OF THE UNIVERSE CANNOT HELP CHANGING!
According to Holmes, the causality that governs God's manifest body has its origin in God's essence:
Man never creates. He discovers and uses.
And because God's body is a universe, interdependency prevails over independence:
We cannot beat Nature at its own game for we are some part of the game She is playing.
In these and numerous other assertions, Holmes articulated his own comprehension of a long-standing metaphysical paradox: change emerges from that which is changeless.
The Tao Te Ching articulates this paradox as follows:
The Tao [i.e., the unchanging] creates the One;
the One creates the Two;
the Two create the Three;
and the Three create the Ten Thousand Things.
In the 11th sutra of the Tao Te Ching, the emergence of multiplicity from the unchanging no-thingness of the void, the relationship between that which is always changing and that which never does, is described with such profundity that multiple translations are required to fully appreciate it:
Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel's use;
The use of clay in molding pitchers
Comes from the hollowing of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus are we helped by what is not
To use what is.
Thirty spokes will converge in the hub of a wheel;
But the use of the cart will depend on the part of the hub that is void.
With a wall all around a clay bowl is molded;
But the use of the bowl will depend on the part of the bowl that is void.
Cut out windows and doors in the house as you build;
But the use of the house will depend on the space in the walls that is void.
So advantage is had from whatever is there;
But usefulness arises from whatever is not.
The wheel's hub holds thirty spokes.
Utility depends on the hole through the hub.
The potter's clay forms a vessel.
It is the space within that serves.
A house is built with solid walls.
The nothingness of window and door alone renders it usable.
That which exists may be transformed.
What is non-existent has boundless uses.
Thirty spokes are joined at the hub.
From their non-being arises the function of the wheel.
Lumps of clay are shaped into a vessel.
From their non-being arises the function of the vessel.
Doors and windows are constructed together to make a chamber.
From their non-being arises the function of the chamber.
Therefore, as individual beings, these things are useful materials.
Constructed together in their non-being, they give rise to function.
A modern equivalent of the wheel, bowl and house are the punch-cards by which data was processed in early models of computers. It was the punched out holes in the cards-what was non-existent-that represented the data.
Ernest Holmes honored the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching by twice citing one of its most famous passages in The Science of Mind textbook: "To the man who can practice perfect inaction, all things are possible." A profound understanding of "perfect inaction" is represented in the following (edited) poem of a 14th century Samurai:
I have no parents,
I make the heavens and Earth my parents.
I have no home,
I make awareness my home.
I have no life and death,
I make the tides of my breathing my life and death.
I have no guidance
I offer being myself as my guidance.
I have no miracles,
I make right action my miracles.
I have no tactics,
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no armor,
I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no enemies,
Only carelessness is my enemy.
I have no castle,
I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword,
I make absence of self my sword.
Mahatma Gandhi evoked a similar understanding of the power of "perfect inaction" when he proclaimed, "Be the difference you seek to make."
Something from Nothing?
In Western culture the paradox of change emerging from changelessness is addressed in the contrast between a famous proclamation of Greek philosophy . . .
The only thing permanent is change.
and a French proverb:
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This paradox was also celebrated in a 1960's graffiti that appeared in a University of Chicago restroom:
Aristotle: To do is to be
Kazantzakis: To be is to do.
Sinatra: Doo-be-doo-be-doo.
The paradox of change emerging from changelessness is addressed by every metaphysical teaching that endeavors to be complete. Science of Mind addresses this seeming self-contradiction by asserting that while nothing becomes in essence other than what it always has been, is, and shall be, yet all things are forever unfolding (and thus changing) in form.
We believe in the eternality, the immortality, and the continuity of the individual soul, forever and ever expanding.
It may seem a semantic diversion to assert that rather than becoming what we currently are not, we are instead unfolding more of what we already are. Yet the prospect of unfolding more of our eternal being, rather than becoming other than our present being, is far more than an exercise in semantic antics.
For example, the emergence of the rosebud from the bush is the rose becoming more of what it is, not other than what it is. It is this process of emergence, this "coming out" or "showing forth" of what already exists-the emergence of bush from seed or graft, of bud from bush, of blossom from bud, of seed from blossom, and so on ad infinitum-it is this ever-cycling and recycling unfoldment from within that we commonly call "growth," and which is always evidenced as change.
We are forever, always and only unfolding, thus becoming-if we must use that word-more of what we always have been. "'I am Alpha [that which was potential in the beginning] and Omega [potential fully realized], saith the Lord.'" Our demonstrations can never exhaust our potential because it is God within us that is eternally unfolding as us.
We are right now, as a species, in what could be called the rosebud stage of human consciousness. We are whole, complete and perfect expressions of humankind at its present stage of development, just as the rosebud is a whole, complete and perfect expression of roseness as a bud. We are whole, complete, perfect . . . yet eternally unfinished! And like the unfinished rose that exists just now as a bud, we ourselves are about to blossom into a fuller expression of our being-both collectively as a species, as well as individually.
To restate out metaphysical challenge: If it is true that "as above, so below; as within, so without"-that God is all there is, so that all that is, is God-how can we emerge, unfold and thus grow God in expression if the God thus expressed is not also growing?
Truth Without Consequences?
The question of God's growth is one of many interesting issues raised in C. Alan Anderson's book, The Problem Is God: The Selection and Care of Your Personal God, a lucid and witty application of the "process philosophy" of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.
Anderson contends that all of our problems are ultimately the same problem: our limited perspectives on the nature of God. He is especially concerned with problems that arise from our commonplace assumption that human activities and decisions have no consequence for God.
The assumption that we have no effect on God, and are therefore of no consequence to/for God, greatly limits the potential of our interconnectivity with the Divine. On behalf of our avoiding such limitation, Anderson presents in practical terms the Whiteheadian view that our thought and behavior do impinge upon God.
Process philosophy portrays God's nature as two-fold, yet unitary-what Ernest Holmes called a "dual unity," and which some scientists call a "complementarity." This two-fold unity consists of God's primordial (a.k.a. "causal") nature, which Anderson describes as "constant, perfect love and all the other moral perfections-probably aspects of love-that we traditionally attribute to God"; and God's consequent nature, "in which he is growing, is in process, is developing, is enjoying his relationships with us (and all his other creatures throughout the universe) and is shaped, to some extent, by our free decisions."
The belief that our decisions have consequences for God is the basis for Anderson's thesis that we are to approach God caringly:
Because of his consequent side, God will be made richer or poorer by virtue of what we think and do. He is vulnerable to our actions. Ultimately, everything that we do is done to God.
Declaring that the consequent aspect of God is most clearly seen in our relationships with fellow human beings, Anderson quotes Hartshorne:
To be is to create oneself and thereby to influence the self-creation of those by whom one is known, including God.
The two-fold unity of God's nature is summarized by Anderson:
It should be emphasized that God is still in charge of the universe as a whole, and that he always will be. In this view, he never would cease to be and never could be defeated in his overall undertakings, however free we may be to thwart him in details of development-and perhaps even that is part of the plan.
What we do, it seems, really matters to God:
Whenever you feel insignificant,
remember that you are energy mattering.
And just how much do you matter?
Since energy can neither be created nor destroyed,
without your energy
the universe would be less than complete.
And what choice do you have in this matter?
Should you decide to matter little,
the universe would still be no less whole.
Yet only when you decide to matter much
is the universe you fill
full filled.
What Will God Be Next?
The relationship between God's primordial nature as unformed substance and God's consequent nature as substance in form is also illustrated in a contemporary version of the story of Jonah.
In the belly of the whale, Jonah was transformed. He reversed all his behavior patterns. People who had known Jonah before, and met him after the whale, said: "Jonah, you're a changed man."
It wasn't that his hair had turned white or anything obvious like that. It was simply that everything he had done before, he now did in reverse. He had been a fearful man and he had suddenly changed into an angry man. As precipitately as he'd run away from Nineveh, he now wanted to dash toward it. Just as sharply as he had turned away from God's word, he now wanted to overdo God's word.
"Hey, son!" shouted God.
"I'm off to Nineveh," yelled Jonah. "Don't stop me."
"Wait a minute," said God, trying to keep up with him. "What are you going to do when you get there?"
"Fire a burst!" replied Jonah.
"Now take it easy," said the Lord, and he held Jonah back by his shirttail.
"But they don't listen to YOUR WORD," stormed Jonah. "We're not going to stand for that are we?"
So the Lord made him sit down and cool off under a gourd. As if in a speeded-up, documentary movie, Jonah saw it sprout from a seed, flower, and then, to his consternation, it withered before its time.
"What's the big idea?" he protested.
"Look," said the Lord. "Don't you go getting sentimental over the life and death of a gourd. This happens to be one of the stiffest, prickliest, least organized of all the organisms in my vegetable kingdom. Whereas people, and this includes even the people of Nineveh, are the most highly organized of all my organisms. Where's your sense of proportion, son?"
Then Jonah understood.
His fear and anger fell away from him, like to much unnecessary luggage, jettisoned. And this left room for love of the whole creation to well up in him. And he was no longer angry with Nineveh, which had after all represented nothing to him but his own past. Instead of a turreted town crammed with phantasmagoria, it now appeared before him as a plain, ordinary, workaday city, and the people in it were only people, after all.
Imagine Jonah now, having left behind his luggage of confusion and turmoil. He was free-riding and life-accepting as he walked along the road to Nineveh. Simplicity was in his pocket, and the principle of the gourd was deep-rooted in his heart.
Without knowing the scientific details, he knew he was a man who had come out of the sea. And he knew he was a man who had come out of the sun. The Lord had told him all this when he said: "Consider the gourd. Respect it."
Because Jonah still thought things out best when he was walking, he had a long, calm discussion with the Lord on the way to Nineveh.
"If you created the seed and the life and the sprouting," Jonah asked, "why did you create the negating and rejecting? The fear and the anger and the running away?"
"To tell the truth," said God, "I had no idea it was going to go this far. Of all the roads it might have taken, this is surely the most surprising. When I was in the infinitesimal speck which held the potentiality of creation, how was I to know that it would expand to become the universe? And when I blazed and exploded in the innumerable suns, how could I foresee that out of the near collision of two of them would leap the tide which would cool into planets? This by the way," said God confidentially, "I learned from Sir James Jeans. Most of what I know comes from Albert Einstein. Before that I had only Newton to go on. And before that . . ."
"But before Man?" asked Jonah, shocked out of his wits. "Do you mean you understood nothing at all? Didn't you exist?"
"Certainly," said God patiently. "I have told you how I exploded in the stars. Then I drifted for aeons in clouds of inchoate gas. As matter stabilized, I acquired the knowledge of valency. When matter cooled, I lay sleeping in the insentient rocks. After that I floated fecund in the unconscious seaweed upon the faces of the deep. Later I existed in the stretching paw of the tiger and the blinking eye of the owl. Each form of knowledge led to the more developed next. Organic matter led to sentience which led to consciousness which led inevitably to my divinity."
"And what will you become next?" asked Jonah.
"I don't know," said God reverently. "I am waiting to be told."
"By whom?" asked Jonah, and he looked around the lonely landscape in dismay.
"How I tremble," said God, "in rapture before the next stroke of consciousness. How I yearn to be created further!"
"But I don't like this at all," cried Jonah. "Can't we go back to the way it used to be? You scared me to death most of the time. But how I loved to hear your scolding voice."
"I couldn't go on forever," said God severely, "telling tall stories about whales, and more than I could have remained inert once the first colloidal systems started to form or inchoate once the form of the atom was established."
"But it was cozy," sobbed Jonah. "You and me; I and Thou."
"Now it shall be We are One."
"And shall I never call you father anymore? And will I never hear you call me son again?" asked Jonah.
"You may call me," said God agreeably, "anything you please. Would you like to discuss semantics?"
So Jonah found himself alone on the way to Nineveh. And yet he was not alone. For the gourd was with him, and the lungfish, and the stars. He knew he was a man who had come out of the sea. And he knew that he was a man who had come out of the sun. And in Nineveh he took root, and he flowered in the expression of his consciousness until he died. -Irene Orgel