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Panentheism and God of the Bible

Orbit

I'm a planet
I see this as the latter being a conceptual framework, and the former being an experiential expression. With mystical experience comes a more 'God is both transcendent and immanent" view, because it speaks to the nature of the experience itself. Whereas a wholly transcendent God seems to reflect a conceptual framework, a mind's eye view of the divine.

I have been thinking about what has been posted here, and upon re-reading, the above (in bold) caught my eye.

Thinking about mystical experiences I have had, I felt one with God but at the same time felt God's love for all creatures. That second part couldn't happen if I was all, or exclusively, "one" with God--it requires separation, where I was experiencing something that didn't originate within myself. I experienced God's love, as opposed to my love, but at the same time felt absolutely one with God. I think you're right, the experience itself is the key to making sense of it. If the experience itself points to a paradox, then it must be accepted, however much the rational mind resists a paradox.

The idea that panentheism parallels the mystical experience is something that I hadn't considered, but viewed in light of my own mystical experience, it makes sense. The question remains, however: what is the nature of this panentheistic God?
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I experienced God's love, as opposed to my love, but at the same time felt absolutely one with God.
What you said above made me think of something. It's this quote from Meister Eckhart I by chance came across 3 years ago (I had never read Eckhart before this), after having sat for 45 minutes at the end of a dock at a lake I go to for personal retreat, meditating as I watched this phenomenal sunset in the photo below (shot with just my old cell phone, and not my new camera). The quote captured the experience perfectly, as I think it does what you are saying. The quote is,

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."

Avon 2011.jpg


I think you're right, the experience itself is the key to making sense of it. If the experience itself points to a paradox, then it must be accepted, however much the rational mind resists a paradox.
It's excepting with the heart. It's irrelevant if it's a logical proposition. ;) It's just a way of expressing experience.

The idea that panentheism parallels the mystical experience is something that I hadn't considered, but viewed in light of my own mystical experience, it makes sense. The question remains, however: what is the nature of this panentheistic God?
Well, the minute you trying to analyze the nature of this God, you've made it an object and it's no longer God's eye and your eye being one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. It the nature of your seeing. You have to look through the eyes, not at them.
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
Well, I wouldn't say the Panentheistic God is directly related to the God of the Bible, but Christianity certainly can be Panentheistic. Especially eastern churches.

As for "transcendent"? To me, that just simply means beyond the boundaries of time and space.

Yes. I'm a panentheist as defined in this article: Panentheism - OrthodoxWiki

I don't understand how some are defining panentheism as necessarily antithetical to "strict theism".
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
My argument for pantheism also stems from the trinities description of the "substance" of god which they say is the thing they share which screams to me to be pantheistic. However that is one of the trinity creed, I don't know that people necessarily hold to that substance thing but it makes sense to me.

Had a thread about it a few months back.;)
The Trinity as Pantheistic | ReligiousForums.com

That has nothing to do with pantheism.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
What I'm saying is Christianity can be panentheistic, which some label as heresy, some don't. But panentheism is not a Christian concept.
At least not a modern Christian concept. In the first 150 years of Christianity, there were hundreds of denominations. Some of them more mystical and less literal in their understanding, but they were mostly rooted out by the winning political version of Christianity. When the first orthodox church came around, it was more a matter of finding the common denominators and eradicate any heretic to the orthodoxy. With that said, I believe that some groups of early Christians might have had more of a pantheistic/panentheistic understanding. We only have hints of it in the Bible and apocrypha, and the rest lost to the orthodoxy "cleansing".
 

idav

Being
Premium Member
That has nothing to do with pantheism.
To be fair panentheism always has a lot to do with pantheism. In pantheism I would say the mind and body are one. Panentheism says one but seperate like the trinity but this one and seperate being is much a mystery even too trinitarians. Similar theologies with different labelings.
 

Orbit

I'm a planet
Well, the minute you trying to analyze the nature of this God, you've made it an object and it's no longer God's eye and your eye being one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. It the nature of your seeing. You have to look through the eyes, not at them.

Granted. When not in a contemplative state, my mind does want to understand what I have experienced, however. But when it comes right down to defining it, everything breaks down. It reminds me of the Tao: "The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao". If we can say it, it isn't right; approximations at most.

But sometimes I need approximations. It's like I want both, at different times. To see through the eyes, and later to look at the eye. Panentheism starts to break down for me when I ask "just what is it that is immanent and transcendent?"
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
I have been thinking about what has been posted here, and upon re-reading, the above (in bold) caught my eye.

Thinking about mystical experiences I have had, I felt one with God but at the same time felt God's love for all creatures. That second part couldn't happen if I was all, or exclusively, "one" with God--it requires separation, where I was experiencing something that didn't originate within myself. I experienced God's love, as opposed to my love, but at the same time felt absolutely one with God. I think you're right, the experience itself is the key to making sense of it. If the experience itself points to a paradox, then it must be accepted, however much the rational mind resists a paradox.

The idea that panentheism parallels the mystical experience is something that I hadn't considered, but viewed in light of my own mystical experience, it makes sense. The question remains, however: what is the nature of this panentheistic God?


Through the forums I have discovered that panentheism comes close to my belief. I only brings this up to preface my next statement. To me that separation you mention is also "God".
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
Granted. When not in a contemplative state, my mind does want to understand what I have experienced, however. But when it comes right down to defining it, everything breaks down. It reminds me of the Tao: "The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao". If we can say it, it isn't right; approximations at most.
I think it was Plato who talked about that you can't look directly into the sun without going blind, but you can look close by, and closer and closer, but never at it, still you know the sun is there. Approximation of what it is.

But sometimes I need approximations. It's like I want both, at different times. To see through the eyes, and later to look at the eye. Panentheism starts to break down for me when I ask "just what is it that is immanent and transcendent?"
Yup. Words and images are pointers. By looking at the pointers and knowing that this is what they are, we can then with our inner eye see move to see towards what they point at. Sometin' like that. :)
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
Does the "God" of Panentheism have anything to do with the God of the Bible? Is that what transcendent god refers to? Curious to hear your thoughts.
It can, but it needn't. Panentheism is just a theological framework applicable to most faith traditions.
 

Starloop

New Member
Does the "God" of Panentheism have anything to do with the God of the Bible? Is that what transcendent god refers to? Curious to hear your thoughts.

The gods of the Bible aren't really very panentheistic. They're very direct and personal.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
The gods of the Bible aren't really very panentheistic. They're very direct and personal.
In pantheism and panentheism, God is very personal. It's you. The world and your neighbor is also God. God is everywhere and everything. And you are a personal extension of God. How more personal can it get? :)
 

Starloop

New Member
In pantheism and panentheism, God is very personal. It's you. The world and your neighbor is also God. God is everywhere and everything. And you are a personal extension of God. How more personal can it get? :)

Oh right. I thought pantheism was there the Universe is god, but in contrast to theism it is not personal because there's no directly personal god agency.
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
Oh right. I thought pantheism was there the Universe is god, but in contrast to theism it is not personal because there's no directly personal god agency.

Also, as I understand panenthieism, "God" is everything that is, and is not. God is the known and the unknown. Also God is the knowing and the not knowing.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
My bad. What's panentheism?
Panentheism is a perspective of God which takes the transcendence of God of theism and combines it with the immanence of God of pantheism. God is both wholly transcendent to the material world, and wholly immanent within it. It's paradoxical in the way nonduality is. It is not something the mind can hold conceptually, but is rather something that is known through experience to be true.

Put another way, can you conceive of infinity? If you could, then it can be held in an idea and is no longer infinite, because ideas have boundaries, defining lines. But you can experience infinity. You can experience infinity that surpasses all boundaries, all borders, all forms. And the experience of that infinity is to be found not only beyond all forms, but fully within all forms, because forms are within the infinite, and the infinite within forms. This is not to say fully within forms as a whole, but fully infinite within each and every individual form. Every molecule is infinity within itself, not separate nor contained in separate infinities, nor a collective whole that defines infinity. To experience this is the nondual, which is "not one, not two", meaning it is not wholly outside the world (theism), nor is equates as the world (pantheism or monism).

So Panentheism is itself not a definition of what God is, as any definition is an idea held by the mind and cannot hold God, but rather it is a 3rd person perspective on 1st person reality. It is a way to talk about God coming from a position of experience or a spiritual realization within the individual. One can likewise with theism legitimately experience God as wholly transcendent, and one can legitimately experience God as wholly immanent. But to say with the mind "this is God, and other ideas are not valid because they stand in contradiction to this", is to attempt to reduce God to an idea of the mind, a concept. It mistakes the sign as the referent, it reduces the experience to a concept, and becomes a self-annihilating referent because it takes Infinity and makes it finite, an object to be seen and understood by ideas. Anytime one approaches the infinite, contradictions will always occur. Paradoxes will reign. It is neither this, nor not this, neither that, nor not that, both this and that, and neither both this and that, and so forth.

As far as the personal nature of God versus the impersonal nature of God, that too is paradoxical as tries to make definitions surrounding that which approaches the Absolute, or Infinity. The personal nature of ones being is felt and experienced in the All. The universe is personal, and can be understood this way by the mind rationally as such because we are personal and are not separate from the universe. When one can experience one's own being with the Infinite, what is encountered is your original Face. The personal God is the infinite Self. The theistic experience is the finite small separate individual self encountering their true Self, Infinite-Personal in nature. It is the ultimate Face of the Absolute at the peak of the dualistic experience. It is the ultimate expression of Truth, but again from a legitimately dualistic perspective. This is seen as wholly transcendent to the world of separate form.

But it is not Absolute as God is the Face of the Infinite to the dualistic mind, but there is reality beyond the dualistic mind. When you stop seeing objects, there is then the Infinite beyond God, God beyond God, Godhead, and this is seen as impersonal. It is the Ground of Being, the Source from which all arises and returns, the Void, Emptiness, the Formless. But to then turn around and say this then is the Ultimate, that Emptiness is "true reality" is itself dualistic. It says form is unreality, and Emptiness is reality. It is still the mind putting a boundary around the Absolute, and that is dualism. It reduces Infinity to an "it". It is monism which defines the 'substance' of reality as "One, and not two". It excludes form as real, perceiving it as illusion. So it is itself not embracing Infinity.

The Infinite within form and the Infinite beyond form is still the same Infinite. It is seen and experienced as both the Infinite Personal and the Infinite Impersonal, while it "in itself" neither personal nor impersonal, nor not personal or impersonal. It is not outside these things, nor is itself these things, nor is "it" and it, nor not "it". These are all dualistic concepts attempting to grasp with the mind nondual Spirit. As long as the mind tries to say what it is, it will never apprehend the nature of the very eye that is doing the perceiving itself, as it cannot see itself. The Observer cannot observe the Observer. You are that Observer. You are the Infinite, in form, observing Itself. In this sense, the spiritual is Self-reflexive. It is nondual Spirit observing Itself through form, through 3rd person, 2nd person, and 1st person perspectives. As it perceives and experiences itself dualistically through forms, with 3rd person "it" perspectives, nature mysticism, and scientific analytic thought; then moves to 2nd person relational perspectives, in theistic deity mysticism and soteriological or mandelic thought; then move into the formless Emptiness in 1st person awareness, the infinite impersonal; it then moves beyond all of these and awakens to itself in all forms in infinite nondual awareness.

So to wrap up tying this back into Panentheism, that 3rd person perspective of God is itself not a definition of God, but is rather a type of deconstructive paradoxical twist on taking a strictly dualistic view of either theism or pantheism, as again both are dualistic. The dualistic mind cannot hold paradoxes, such as what is expressed in panentheism as they are self-contradictory in a this and not that system of conceptual thought. These paradoxes rest comfortably however within nondual awareness. It does not exclude perceptions and experiences, saying this and not that. Reality in form is dualistic, while Infinity is held both beyond dualism, and fully within dualities. God is wholly transcendent and wholly immanent. Panentheism to me is a dualistic expression of a paradoxical Infinity, a nondual realization.
 
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