Panentheism

I noticed pantheism in the pod description, and that is partly what swayed me to join.  I am a member of too many pods already.   8-)

Anyway, I consider myself a panentheist and am interested in process theology as well.  So, I can relate to pantheism to an extent, but it is not quite what I believe.

Anyway, just wanted to throw Panentheism out as another related topic. 

Jim

Re: Pantheism

Thanks for getting this started.  It is of huge interest to me and I am quite happy to sit in a circle to discuss Pantheism with you and any one else who decides to join in. 

I discovered Pantheism when someone told me they thought I was a Pagan.  I thought, can that be true?  I have always found my best, most comfortable self out in nature - since I was a child of 8 or 10 and my parents allowed me to roam all day on an indian reservation that we went camping at in the Ruidosa forests of New Mexico.  Now, I find myself living in a forest, after growing up in the desert, and I do most of my spiritual work out in this natural setting.  So in my search, I found a link to something called Pagan Naturalist which led me to something called the World Pantheist Movement (http://www.pantheism.net/paul/index.htm).
 
I really have not gone that far into this philosophy but for those totally unfamiliar with Pantheism, I would like to share some initial impressions that attracted me -

Do you get a deep sense of peace, belonging and wonder in the midst of nature - in a forest, on an ocean beach or on a mountain top?  Do you love to gaze in awe at the sky on a clear moonless night and see the night sky strewn thick with stars?  Do you sense the spirit or energy behind wind rustling in a tree's leaves and feel uplifted by the energy and creativity of simple existence?

I grew up with a pretty conventional, mainstream concept of God and I grew up with seriously religious grandparents as well as a deeply religious mother.  My concept of what God is has been changing since I became an adult.  I have learned to direct or merge my thoughts/prayers with something larger than myself that is hard to define to other people.  More more and more I have come to realize that all I truly can know as sentient is emanating from within me (or other living beings around me). 

I have without a doubt seen evidence that this energy, beginning in the form of my thoughts, does truly take shape in my physical reality and that has changed my life.  My thoughts seem to impress the plasticity of energy and matter to become the thing I am seeking, whether this is a change in my own behavior or something external in my circumstances that I desire or some area of my life in need of being addressed.  I am finding that keying into my joy in the beauty and balance of nature, realizing the complexity of people and issues presenting themselves for my attention and at the same time realizing the unfanthomable infinite nature and power of the universe encompasses more thinking than I really have time to do and yet I'm drawn to dabble.

No wonder spirituality can seem confusing and overwhelming.  In reading about Pantheism, there are mentioned a variety of spiritual orientations going by names such as - scientific pantheism, religious humanism, religious naturalism, religious atheism, deep ecology, nature-worship and include also philosophy's such as Taoism, modern Stoicism, Gaian religion, and those forms of Wicca and Paganism that see magic and the gods as symbols rather than realities.  It also includes western forms of Buddhism that celebrate nature and everyday life, and to those in Unitarian Universalism who do not believe in supernatural beings (which I grew up believing in, I can no longer define it so simply, when I try to expand outward from that connected center of myself, the immensity overwhelms my ability to discern it).  More and more, I find that my beliefs are a compilation of my own making.  That success comes to me in working from the point of my own center or inner being.  Action is still required, there is “work” to do, work I am glad to be doing and it fits nicely with a pantheistic mind set.

I read that Pantheism takes the real universe and nature as their starting and finishing point, not some idea of an external supernatural God. They place their reverence on the real universe and nature in a way similar to how believers in more conventional gods feel towards their deity, but without anthropomorphic worship or belief that Nature has a mind or personality that can be influenced through prayer or ritual.  I believe that whatever can be called “power” can be accessed within my self.  I sense there is a response to my intention or desire, but it is from something that I can not easily define.  And that, I suppose, is some of what I am here at Zaadz to refine and clarify.

It is my inclination to be interested in environmental considerations, both in my personal way of living and thinking as well as in the business that depends upon my involvement.  Pantheistic ethics seem to resonate with the “green” in me and my concern for humanity in general but not to liberal extremes that is often found in those attempting to “save” the world or other people.  I have long considered myself a metaphysical practitioner but have in recent years colored that practice with aspects coming from nature.  What I also like about pantheism is that it integrates, it allows, science to play a role in developing a deeper understanding of the way things work.  Ernest Holmes interest in science is part of what drew me to the Science of Mind philosophy.

I like the Pantheistic attitude that accepts this life as our only life, because even though I tend to believe in other lives and reincarnation in general, this life is my core consciousness.  This life is my conscious physical vehicle to be the change I want to see in the world.   Pantheism sees this earth as our only paradise (not some future habitation called heaven).  I know that I am not alone in seeing that misplaced religious teachings, which place their emphasis on rewards to come after this life, can cause harm, ie 9/11 and other terrorist episodes, civil wars and religious battles or the attitude that nothing matters more than getting as much of whatever one can out of the planet or the economy or other people.  Pantheism provides a set of beliefs and values that reconciles spirituality with rationality (I do like remaining somewhat grounded, having flown into the borderlands of reality a few times in my life, a simple morally ethical way of living my life, which admittedly I can only define for myself).  

I like the idea of balancing passion, values and environmental concern with science and respect for evidence.  This is what the concept of Pantheism offers.  Our life is our own personal laboratory and we have the great pleasure of choosing the experiments that interest us most.

Re: Pantheism

Thanks for your post.  I will read it in more detail later.

However…  I started a thread on Panentheism.  I would like to talk about that, too, and will post more on my thoughts about it when I get a chance.  It has a lot in common with Pantheism, but is different as well.

Re: Panentheism

I just wanted to add that I am not accusing anyone of highjacking the thread.  8-)

I noticed the change in subject and topic in the reply and wanted to make sure folks knew that Panentheism and Pantheism are not the same, and that I started the thread with the topic of Panentheism.

Thanks,
Jim

Re: Panentheism

Jim,

My error and my fault in replying with a different spelling. 

Please do explain panentheist because I do not know what that is (but you can believe I'm going to look it up next).  Although, I know better than to assume anything, I did think it a typo.

I am interested in what you have to say about this.

I apologize for spending so much time on the other.  Way too many words …

Deb

Re: Panentheism

Jim,

This could get somewhat interesting.  Here is what I find on quick search -

Panentheism - God is immanent within the Unvierse but also transcends it.  It is distinguished from pantheism (which I was describing) as that philosophy holds that God is synonymous with the material universe.  In panentheism, God is viewed as creator and/or animating force behind the universe, and the source of universal morality.

The “transcends it” is important to me, within and more than.  I would think in that regard, panentheism comes closer to my feelings than does pantheism, describing more closely the creative intelligence and energy that gives rise to all forms.

Tribal cultures for the most part have been panentheistic - believing in a deep mystery which creates and sustains all creation.  Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God (The One) of which subsequent realities were emanations.  From the One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous), the Cosmic Soul (Psyche) and the World (Cosmos).

The term panentheism means all in God.  This conception influenced New England transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson (who I know of as an influence on Ernest Holmes).  There seem to be links of the concept of panentheism back into ancient Hinduism.

I find interesting this idea formulated by Charles Hartshorne in the 1940s that God is necessarily able to become “more perfect”, a contention that God had absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible and relative perfection in categories for which perfection can not be precisely determined.

I like that concept - for which perfection can not be precisely determined.  How often does something occur in the course of our lives that does not seem perfect, only to turn out to be so in hindsight? 

I found it interesting that Unity, of which I am familiar, is a Christian church with panentheistic views.

I also noticed a Hindu quote from a stotras - “It is you from whom this universe of forms emerges, and it is you within whom it stays.  It is you in whom it finally disappears.”

I will await whatever you care to add and discuss regarding panentheism.

Re: Panentheism

I look forward to discussing this more.  I have just been busy the last few days, but I will reply soon and add to your thoughts on Panentheism.

Thanks,
Jim

Panentheism, Wisdom and Creative Trinities

Panentheism was one of the first discussions in this pod but at the time, I initially confused it with Pantheism.  Recently, I ran into this concept again, reminding me of this thread - Panentheism mentioned in Sheldrake Rupert's book The Rebirth of Nature.  I summarize and comment as follows from the section on Creative Trinities, which discusses a variety of philosophies -

Implied in an understanding of evolutionary creativity by the interaction of fields and energy is a third, unifying principle, each of the first two as aspects of the whole.  This unity is implied in the sexual metaphor - mother and father and of their unio,n offspring (which unites aspects of both parents).  Expressed in Indian tantric images of Shakti and Shiva in sexual embrace; in a more abstract manner in the yin and yang of Taoism, intertwined and interpenetrating within a circle unifying both.

Often this polarity of gender is replaced by trinities of goddesses and gods - in the Hindu trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer - where Vishnu could represent the organizing fields of nature, Shiva the cosmic flux of energy and Brahma the creative unity that includes both.

In the Christian trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  St Augustine favored the Father as the knower, the Son the known and the Spirit as the relationship between them - the bliss of knowing.  Another model is the identification of the Son with the Word, or Logos.  This Word relates to the spoken rather than the written word, implying a vibratory pattern of physical activity and an unfolding pattern of meaning.  Just as human speech involves imposing an ordered pattern of vibrations on the outward flow of the breath, so the creative Word of God works together with the breath of God, the onward and outward movement of Spirit.  This Spirit is the principle of flow and change.  Traditional images of Spirit include breath, wind, life, flames and the flying dove.  Its movement is free and unpredictable: “The wind blows where it wills, you hear the sound of it; but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.” (John 3:8).

In Orthodox churches, this Holy Trinity has the Spirit playing a richer and fuller role than it does in most Western theology.  It gives a much stronger sense of the immanence of nature in the divine:

                     The creative energies of God did not merely produce the
                     created world from without like a builder or engineer, but
                     are the ever-present, indwelling and spontaneous causes
                     of every manifestation of life within it, whatever form this
                     may take.  [This understanding] depends, in other words,
                     upon the recognition of the continuing, vitalizing activity
                     of the Holy Spirit in the world, animating these energies -
                     luminous uncreated radiations of the divine - in the very
                     heart of every existing thing. (Philip Sherrard, 1987)

In the context of evolutionary cosmology, the Spirit underlies the onward flow of energy and the expansive impulse of the universe; the Word is in the patterns of activity and meaning expressed through fields.  God the Father is the speaker, the conscious source of both Word and Spirit who transcends both.  Thus, the energy and fields of the evolutionary cosmos have a common source, a unity.  Not just a unity but a conscious unity.

If the fields and energy of nature are aspects of the Word and Spirit of God, then God must have an evolutionary aspect, evolving along with the cosmos, with biological life and humanity.  God is not remote and separate from nature, but immanent in it.  Yet at the same time, God is the unity that transcends it.  In other words, God is not just immanent in nature, as in pantheist philosophies, and not just transcendcent, as in deist philosophies, but both immanent and transcendent, a philosophy known as panentheism.  As the 15th century mystic, Nicholas of Cusa put it: “Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.  Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity.”  This brings back in the concepts of implicate and explicate realms, more recently a part of modern physics, and as described by Michael Talbot in The Holographic Universe.

Trying to describe the creative polarity of Spirit and Word in terms of gender gives ambiguous definitions - If the feminine principle is active, like Shakti, then the Spirit is feminine and the Word masculine.  In Hebrew, the word for “spirit” is ruah and is feminine.  In Greek, the corresponding word, pneuma, is neuter; in Latin it is masculine, spiritus.

If the masculine principle is active, then Spirit is masculine and the Word feminine.  This is unfamiliar to an indentification of the Word with the Son.  The biblical concept of the Word of God has much in common with the feminine divine Wisdom, Sophia as shown in the Book of Proverbs -

                    The Lord created me in the beginning of his works
                    before all else that he made, long ago.
                    Alone, I was fashioned in times long past,
                    at the beginning, long before earth itself …
                    When he set the heavens in their place I was there …
                    when he prescribed the limits for the sea
                    and knit together earth's foundations.
                    Then I was at his side each day,
                    his darling and delight,
                    playing in his presence continually,
                    playing on the earth, when he had finished it,
                    while my delight was in mankind.
                                                                   (Proverbs 8:22-3,27,29-31)

In the prologue to St John's Gospel, the Word is very like Wisdom:

                   In the beginning the Word already was.  The Word was in
                   God's presence, and what God was, the Word was.  He
                   was with God at the beginning, and through him all 
                   things came to be; without him no created thing came
                   into being.  In him was life, and that life was the light of
                   mankind.  (John 1:1-5)