A: Do you believe in God?
B: That depends. Are you talking about the god that was created in man's image, as the cynics put it, or are you talking about something less personal?
A: Either way. It is something that can't be proved. You just have to believe.
B: You can't prove or disprove the unknown but you can reach a rational conclusion. Let's start with the concept of God. Are we agreed that God is the source of creation?
A: Yes.
B: Are we agreed that everything in creation has form can be described has limits and attributes?
A: Yes.
B: This would include matter, energy, space, time and anything else that science might someday discover. But as source of creation as opposed to the creation itself, God can be none of these. Thus without form, this would clearly rule out gender. Furthermore, speech being a complex of sounds or vibrations would also be a part of creation and therefore confined within the creation. If God had ears to hear and eyes to see or any other attributes, he would be a part of the creation and not the source of creation. In other words, he wouldn't be God.
So this rules out vocal or verbal communication between an individual within the creation and the god source of creation. It even rules out the possibility of thought communication or prayer. Why? Because all thoughts are word combinations that help us interact with the discrete content of the creation. The source of creation would therefore not be reachable with a vehicle that was developed to enhance the functioning within the creation.
A: Could God come to earth and interact with men?
B: Any entity that interacted within the creation would necessarily have to be a part of that creation and, by definition, would be non-God. Or to put it another way, it is an illogical premises to state that God has created himself.
The whole idea of God coming to Earth goes back thousands of years to the time when it was commonly believed that the Stars in the Heavens were Gods. This, BTW, is the foundation of Astrology. God or gods could therefore come to earth from the heavens and deified individuals could likewise go from Earth to the heavens. This was a common belief that went beyond Christianity. Another footnote angles. These mythical emissaries between heaven and earth are winged creatures so as to enable them to make the commute.
We now know that stars are not gods and outer space is not habitable yet we have clung to these comforting ideas.
And there is good reason to have held to these outmoded notions. The belief in god and afterlife is virtually ubiquitous throughout the world and throughout history. To understand why, we need to understand ourselves.
At some point in our evolution, self awareness developed. The look in the mirror or, its predecessor -- a reflecting pool of water, produced the thought that "I" exist. Greatly enhancing the ability to conceptualize notions such as "I" was the development of speech. It has been observed that babies, which have not yet developed speech, do not interact with mirrors in the way that the rest of us do.
Also in man's developing consciousness came the awareness of the reality of death.
Now we have two conflicting concepts to deal with -- "I" and death. So the rationale developed that if the "I" is real and death certainly is real, then the "I" must survive death.
Any examination of history will show that this rationale, that in some way, the "I" survives death, is virtually universal
As for the universal belief in God or a hierarchy of gods we need only look to our own biological heritage and that is the social structure of not only man, but the higher primates as well. In both cases the social structure is pyramidical with an "alpha" monkey, king or president at the top. Therefore it is logical to extrapolate that social structure to a personified source of creation.
A: So what does this mean for the soul, belief and salvation?
B: The notion of soul is based on the awareness of self, that moment that the concept of "I" jelled somewhere in late babyhood. The idea that "I" exist is universally taken as self-evident and given little thought. It simply overtakes our awareness that every thing within creation comes into and goes out of existence. While we believe that, we don't want to apply that belief to ourselves.
Once the awareness of self dawns, it becomes an awareness that seems impossible to let go. Thus the afterlife belief has become the necessary vehicle to calm the desperation caused by this rationalization. On the other hand, as we all know, everyone wants to go to heaven; it's such a better place than the place that we now have to deal with. But, then again, no one wants to go now. What this all points to is that believing is really not much different that wishing.
What is clear is that the individual like every other entity within the creation, exists only for a discrete period within the field of space and time both being grosser aspects of the creation itself. Another way of looking at the creation is that it is the manifestation of the underlying transcendent or god source. In other words, there co-exists both an underlying Transcendent Reality and the world of change, the relative world of individuality that awareness has become locked on to.
The story is not over, though. This is because the human being has evolved to the point where it is possible to transcend the limitations of the relative world. This transcendence disconnects the awareness from the world that the senses have lead us to believe is the ultimate reality.
If you still think that world is indeed "real", then reflect on what we have learned from science. We have learned that mater and energy are interchangeable. We have learned that time and space is a "continuum". We have learned that at the quantum level, the reality of our everyday experience is turned on its head. We have learned that, prior to the "Big Bang", time did not exist. From this we can conclude that the model of reality constructed by the brain that is based on information from the senses, while obviously useful, is still illusionary.
When we disconnect consciousness from the everyday world to the world in which there is no object of focus, consciousness becomes independent of any object of focus. It becomes stands alone consciousness so to speak. Here individuality and individual consciousness do not exist. What does exist is Consciousness. This is the true Reality that is beyond time, space, matter and energy. This awareness is the true salvation. Anything less is simply delusionary.
Q: So if transcendence is real and the world of our senses is not, then shouldn't we just transcend and "live in the transcendent"?
A: No. This does not mean that one should strive to "live in the transcendent" as some kind of an escape from life because at the level of the manifestation that is the level of space, time, matter and energy, discrete entities including yourself certainly do exist at least for a while. What the experience of the transcendent provides is a sort of a grounding on which activity within the manifest creation is based. It creates an inner stability which enriches activity so that life loses its desperation.
