Anybody have any thoughts on pantheism?
Pantheism might’ve been swell at some point, back when the static universe theory held sway. In light of Big Bang cosmology, though, and the heat death of the universe? I don’t see the appeal.
Panentheism’s what I go for.
I think this is more agreeable.
https://www.blatner.com/adam/consctransf/processimplicat.html
A lot to like here as well.
However, I think there is still some complication in understanding the ‘mind field’ which pervades all reality. It’s more simple to consider that since all things have the same soul (consciousness, God, etc), the mind is merely the beliefs and assumptions that divide and limit all beings. The impetus to overcome these limitations is what drives the mental evolution of life. The article uses the concept of ‘lure’, which serves a similar purpose.
I like to think of a person’s beliefs like their ‘mental DNA’, in that they’re mostly rubbish surrounding relatively few provisionally useful instructions for operating in a universe full of other beings with rubbish instructions. You could remove most of a person’s actual DNA without adversely affecting their physical body at all, and by intelligently changing the parts that actually work you could do things like eliminate aging and susceptibility to disease.
Removing much of a person’s mental DNA would probably have much the same effect. As the code got more simple, variations between minds would necessarily decrease until there is no mental DNA at all, no beliefs or assumptions to get in the way of unfiltered experience.