Discourse Contd.,

John's reply to my scepticism.

Hi Meera,

Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets: the final important work by Blaise Pascal, mathematician, physicist, religious mystic and just plain genius. I’m not sure I can provide answers to your skepticism, but I can give my “thoughts on religion and other subjects.” To start, I will simply offer to you what I have very, very, very tentatively come to believe.

I think God is both transcendent and immanent, and that makes me a panentheist. About a year or two ago, I read a book by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine that dealt with entropy (he is a thermodynamicist). I don't claim that I could follow his math, but I do have enough math to understand the implications of his conclusions (whether they are sound or not, of course, I cannot tell). One consequence of his theory is that time proceeds space-time (i.e. the Big Bang and the creation of space occurred in time, as opposed to time beginning with creation). When I read this, I had an epiphany.

If this is true, then I'm convinced that Time is an attribute of the Godhead, and concepts such as fate and predestination go right out the window. Creation exists in Time as God, not in Eternity; save that the Godhead and Time are eternal. The Universe is also a cosmos and it is evolving, as is by implication God (Process Theology haunted by the shade of Teilhard de Chardin). It is a cosmos because there is implicate order, Logos, Tao or Dharma, inherent to it. Like Time, the Logos is not a creation of God, it is an attribute of the Godhead, much as DNA is the attribute of life that provides the implicate order for our cells. By analogy, souls are like cells; they are localized, temporal individuations of the Divine Soul. As cells live individual lives imbued by the common Life of the aggregate, so too souls exist individually within God. They are the means by which God experiences itself and evolves. Unlike cells, which must blindly obey their implicate order (save for malfunctions such as cancer or auto-immune disorders), souls have the free will that comes with being part of the divine soul. And they can therefor choose to malfunction. It may seem here that I'm abjuring the principle of anatta, but I'm not so sure - maybe. While I do not believe that a soul is an ex nihilo creation separate from God, I'm just not prepared to concede that it is merely an illusory stream of consciousness. I think we all eventually merge with God - when we've learned to live in harmony with the Way. I think the nature of corporeality obscures our divine nature and that we must work to discover it. This, I think, is the whole point of our existence (or existences).

As I said, this is very tentative and subject to change. In fact, I’m writing my book as a way to coalesce my thoughts. My character’s journey to the East is very much my own. Now, as to how arrived at the above, well, you’ll have to wait for part two. That doesn’t mean you off the hook as far as asking questions and providing criticism. I expect it and welcome it.

John.

--X--

I am still in the process of cracking John's complex vocabulary and sentences to get to the crux of the matter... Reply soon to be composed...