A Cosmology

[poliphilo]

The Universe is One Big Thing.

It breaks itself into lots and lots and lots of little things.

The little things interact with one another. They learn all sorts of interesting stuff.

The Unity persists in spite of the break-up. The little things remain dimly aware of it even as they prey on one another and squabble and fight.

Another word for the Unity is Love.

The little things are of temporary duration. They die and return to the Unity, taking their knowledge with them.

This is how the Universe learns about itself.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

This is beautifully succinct and simple.

Taken from this very long view, everything we do is of interest, neutral, neither good or wicked. Our life experience is nourishment that is digested and used by the Unity.

You're not talking about process theology, wherein God evolves, are you? This is about being cut off, about needing communication.

There is too much here to just fire off a post. I need to think about this.

Perhaps this is what you are meant to write about.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it may be about process theology- at least in part.

I like Jung's idea- elaborated in his book about Job- that human beings are always one step ahead of God in their philosophy and morality.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten about that book, and Jung's view that God was less moral than Job, which at the time I read it felt very uncomfortable. I wanted God to be ahead of us, a Teacher, a Parent.

When I communicate with my inner Self, which I believe is far wiser than I am as Jackie (a most forgettable and unremarkable person on the surface), I feel that the Self I greet is God, Who lives out my life with me, Who finds my single small life valuable.

Jung's God is frightfully "disinterested." I guess I yearn for a loving parent instead. I don't want to be a little experiment, which is what Job was.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think we make the Gods we want.

We make them out of the stuff of the Universe. And more precisely out of our own particular inner needs and quirks and wisdom.

And every God is a true God insofar as the universe contains all possibilities.

God can look like Jesus or like Buddha, or like Aphrodite, or like Inanna.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

We make them, yes. And they are all true, yes.

But isn't there Something behind even all those true gods? Something that can't be made by us?

Is that my own need, for a First Cause that is not made?

It's hard to let go of what I want. I don't want to make a god that will be little and venal, like Job's God. I want God to make me, and I want to love Something.

I can't love Job's god.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Job's god is a mean-spirited old so and so. The horror of much fundamentalism- Christian and Islamic and Jewish- is that it still sees God in this image- as a paranoid, vengeful, tribal warlord.

How does this God of theirs differ from Saddam Hussein?

But yes, I do believe there is a First Cause- "in light inaccessible hid from our eyes"- and so far from our comprehension that is wisest to say nothing about Him/Her/It.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

and so far from our comprehension that is wisest to say nothing about Him/Her/It.

As we sang this morning, "O magnum mysterium."

Thanks for talking about all this.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I dislike the word Unity. I think it's because I believe in an underlying fabric of Love, rather than disparate things being joined. That is, I'm not sure that things being separated matters.

But except for the minor quibble, I REALLY REALLY REALLY like this post A LOT. Thank you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

The word "unity" is, of course a stab in the dark.

And like you I agree that separation is a good thing. Unity is sublime, but not very interesting- which could be why the separation happened in the first place.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Yeah..... I'm trying to figure out how I can believe in an underlying fabric that connects disjoint things.

Maybe it's a neural net!:)

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I like this, and I like the comments that come after. I left my church a few years ago because...I'm not exactly sure why. I was one of the leaders of the childrens' choir, and I was robing my kids when one of them asked me about the picture of the crucified Christ, hanging on the wall. I heard myself say "Well, the story is..." and knowing this was NOT a good thing for anyone in the church to be saying to a child. So I know I doubt.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've realized in the last few days that I do actually believe in God. Having said that, I'd be hard put to define what I mean by that statement, but then one of the salient points about God is that God is unknowable.

Religious stories- like that of the crucifixion- are simply that- stories. They are true in the way any story is true- in the way Anna Karenina or Kill Bill is true. They are objects for meditation, about which we should be allowed to form our own, free-floating ideas. The fundamentalist insistence that a certain story is literally and historically true and subject to only one approved interpretation is the death of true religion.

[hepo.livejournal.com]

I find the universe quite fascinating. Although there's no direct mention of God, or moses, or Buddha, or any other human generated being, you may find the articles at the following link of some interest:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/atheist_philosopher_041210.html

Yours

HePo

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is interesting.

Flew has the right attitude. We should follow where the evidence leads.

[mokie]

Ken Wilber suggests, in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, that the evolution of matter to life, from life to thought, is the evolution of the Universe/Unity toward consciousness. (I couldn't tell you where in the book--it's huge, and that was one trippy semester.) It was my first exposure to the idea, and it hit home for me, but I could never explain it without getting odd looks and a fierce headache.

I think you've hit it right on the head though--that's exactly what I've felt. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've felt this for a long time.

If it's true, it puts a huge responsibility on our shoulders; we're no longer sad little orphans in a meaningless universe, but the advance guard in Nature's grand project to find out about Herself.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

I'd always liked Carl Sagan's take on the same idea, that we are the portion of the matter in the universe that has developed the ability to contemplate itself, the start of a process wherein the universe comes to a sort of auto-understanding.