Patterns of Spirituality

Ideas on God

Whether to believe in god or not?
The historical issue to consider here is the 19th century debate that created agnosticism, especially in England. During the middle ages, Catholicism had deteriorated into an oppressive system of social control. By the 19th century, even Protestantism had deteriorated too. What the 19th century scientists and free thinkers wanted was some means of preventing religions from interfering with the spread and development of scientific knowledge. Darwin's idea of evolution seemed to be the perfect way to dispute the biblical idea of creation. So scientists became agnostics and atheists. Hence the modern convention is that science is taught within a perspective of atheism.

What scientists do not understand is that their conception of god is derived from Catholicism and does not represent reality. So when a scientist says he does not believe in god, what he really means is that he does not believe in the Christian idea of god. Other worldviews - eastern religions, shamanism, wicca and magic - have different ideas about god.

My ideas on God
Within the idea of evolution there are two separate themes : the evolution of matter and the evolution of consciousness. Matter evolves automatically (into planets, stars, galaxies) according to laws of nature, and the whole scheme is an harmonious one. The evolution of consciousness is very different and needs to be guided.

Most of my ideas about spiritual reality are a product of my study of Indian and Buddhist theosophy. For me, god manifests in two forms, one being personal and the other being impersonal.

One form underlies all physical reality : this is pantheism, and hence all forms of matter have a degree of consciousness at their heart. God is greater than its creation. This form of god is impersonal and represents the ultimate reality (perhaps this is Nirvana, the abode of equanimity).

Evolution needs to be controlled, and so this is the province of the other form of god, the personal god. This form controls the evolution of consciousness throughout all reality. There are numerous personal gods, since each one controls a self-contained unit, like a solar system, an individual star, a galaxy, etc. Each self-contained unit has its own form of consciousness and so evolves in its own way.

There are many different levels of consciousness within reality, from archangels down to microbes. And so there is an hierarchy to the way that the personal god manages reality, or we can think of reality as an organisation having many different layers of management.

So I think of it along these lines. Each solar system has its personal god, the god that "resides" in the sun. Each galaxy consists of a number of solar systems and suns, and so has a senior god over these individual gods. A universe consists of several galaxies, and so a universe has its own senior god, above the other gods that make up the galaxies. And so on.

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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