Panentheism: Is the World in God? | Episode 1211 | Closer To Truth

The search for God leads to strange ideas. Panentheism claims that the world is in God but God is more than the world. Can this new kind of God make sense? Featuring interviews with Philip Clayton, Marcel Sarot, Michael Levine, Yujin Nagasawa, Sarah Coakley, and Alister McGrath.

Season 12, Episode 11 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#Panentheism #God

[williamburts]

Panentheism is explained in the Bhagavid-gita, verse: 9:4 when Krishna says " By me, in my unmanifested form, ( brahmajyoti, his personal effulgence ) this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in me, but I am not in them. And yet everything that is created does not rest in me. Behold my mystic opulence! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities and although I am everywhere, I am not a part of this cosmic manifestation, for my self is the very source of creation."

[brentonbrenton]

Panentheism is as close to correct as you can get. God is consciousness, and consciousness can create universes and take perspectives in them. It is 'fractal' in nature. The stuff we perceive as the physical universe is the contents of 'the dream' of God consciousness.

Dreams are the best analogy to describe the relationship between 'transcendent' and 'immanence'. When you sleep at night, your sleeping consciousness is 'transcendent' to the universe it creates. That is you as transcendent god, creator of the dream world. You are also immanent - you as transcendent god also takes up every perspective in it including the one you identify with in the dream. If you can lucid dream, then you are ontologically 'God incarnate' in your dream. You can even control the dream and do miracles, since the entire dream and all perspectives in it are exactly the same nondual thing - your sleeping consciousness.

This universe that was created in your dream is 'a part of you'. After all, there is no other source for it - purely a construct of your sleeping consciousness. You don't become larger, more perfect, or change in any way by dreaming this universe - you aren't extended in any direction. The creation of this universe follows EXACTLY the same process as you do when you dream at night. God, being infinite, sustains this dream over a millennia. You, being finite fractal and 'less than' God sustain a dream over a single night.

This link to consciousness is also the divine spark in you. What you perceive as a being a separate self from everything else is an illusion - part of the fractal nature of consciousness.

The 'scientific worldview' is also easy to explain in panentheism - it is the study of the contents of 'the dream'. This is not in anyway contradictory with studying 'the dreamer' - which one undertakes by attempting to awaken from the dream via a mystical experience. The scientist tries to understand the contents, the mystic tries to become a lucid dreamer. Religion caries the stories of the methods one might take to become a lucid dreamer.

The classical Christian God is a panetheistic God - the error Christians make is the belief that Jesus Christ is the ONLY form God takes in this creation. Rather, God takes ALL the forms - you, me, every creature and insect. All forms are a part of 'the dream'. Christ is a lucid dreamer who recognizes himself as God incarnate. Normal Christians believe that about Jesus, but do not recognize it in themselves. They view incarnation as a one time event, instead of the very process God uses to take every possible form. Even as they incarnate themselves into their dreams at night, they have no idea about the theological implications.

There is a 'difference' between you lying there sleeping and your dream - in exactly the same way as there is a difference between God's Consciousness and 'the universe'. Your dream is a product of your consciousness, not the same thing as your consciousness. The dream is what your consciousness DOES, not what it IS. Likewise, God's Consciousness dreams universes and all perspectives - that is what it DOES, not what God IS.

If you really want to understand the relationship of God to this universe, understand the relationship of your consciousness to your dreams. It is the same thing on a micro level. It is how "God knows you better than you know yourself". It is the logical solution to the problems of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. The Lucid Dreaming concept explains historical figures like the Buddha, Christ, and even the prophets. It explains the capabilities of consciousness and the unique experiences brought on by psychedelics. Read the document below if you want to see all this in its entirety.

[julieannbantigue]

God is a spirit. You can find god within, because god is love, love is god, its all about love. Just look around how blessed we are to have this wonderful universe. If ther is love, there is life, if there is life there is GOD.

[shanethompson]

"My Father and I are one, but my Father is greater than I".

[jamesruscheinski]

Panentheism could work well with free will and consciousness. Might be a worthwhile direction to look into. The idea that consciousness is part of God and that God's freedom maintains free will in creation might be developed through panentheism

[LowenKM]

Whenever these essentially 'Eastern' ideas like 'pantheism/panentheism' come up, always surprised that we rarely have a chat with Hindus, Buddhists, animists, and other likewise _'Eastern'_ theologians and philosophers?

[pleasebekindandcompassiona]

God is like space which is inside of us, out side of us, and also contains us in it.God is inside and outside of the space.

[uremove]

Pantheism and Panentheism are often used almost interchangeably, yet they are totally different! I wish Theologians would make the distinction. The Pantheist God is finite ie. the physical universe - that can’t be right! If God is defined as omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, there can be nothing in reality that isn’t God, yet God as the Ground or Source of reality is more than the sum of all such realities. That’s Panentheism as I understand it.

I like Yujin Nagasawa’s Modal Panentheism except that in limiting God to all possible realities it is more like Modal Pantheism. Strangely, I agree with Sarah Coakley and Alistair McGraths insistence that Panentheism is not new - that it’s classical Theism reinvented. Yes... that’s not an argument AGAINST Panentheism, but an admission that Panentheism follows logically from the very definition of God! I agree with Marcel Sarot, that Imminent and Transcendent are two sides of the same coin, in the synthesis that is Panentheism.

[frank]

5:02 'God's Holiness' - as I have studied ( from an Eastern view) it aligns to God's Wholeness, fullness of Being, all encompassing. This has made more sense to me as time marches on.

[myscifichannel]

We're all God's imaginary friends.

[ahmadal-jeirudi]

min 19:40 ( god knows us more entimetly than we even know ourselves)
That reminds of some verse in quran which says (  for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein )

[svencaputo]

I found Nagasawa's interpretation particularly interesting!

[socialisolation]

All the finite All within the Infinite All is All we All are. Peace

[rohollahhezareh]

its really similar to shia muslim believes. Ali ibn Abi Talib said: God is in everything but not combined with them, he ist out of evrything but not separated with them. In some prayers God is called: Light of light, light of all lights.

[mortenrobinson]

Existence! The big infinite all! All that is! Surely it is a higher being, ... an omnipotent, omnipresent and even omniscient greater being. Omnipotent because it is all the power, the space, the time, the mass and the energy. Omnipresent because it spreads out and covers every part of existence. Omniscient because it is all the beings within, simultaneously, sensing everything which is being sensed, thinking every thought which is being thought, experiencing everything which is being experienced, knowing everything which is known.

[ferreirap.]

I don't get what is alternative about this view.. it seems pretty traditional theology to me, namingly, that God is what sustains the world in its existence, containing all that exists within itself. I don't get the novelty here. Does someone else sees it this way too?

[johnbrowne]

Pretty good. Sounds a lot like Nondualism. All is one, and One is all. Still waiting for Rupert Spira at Oxford.😊🙏🏽

[johnchristopherlayton]

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS! THANK YOU SO MUCH! 🙏💘

[detodounpoco]

God is not a being
is BEING itself
Richard Rohr


This is a huge mystery that takes time to integrate.

[joestar]

Some of the greatest minds in history have been identified as pantheist. To me, it's the only thing that is remotely reasonably plausible as to the nature of existence.