Ground of Being as the Source of Conscoiusness.



To start with a more cogent question, is it possible for the ground of being to be conscious? The question of God’s consciousness is crucial to the entire theological proposal of this work because there are those (some of my old professors who I shall not name) who are adamantly opposed to Tillich’s “being itself” on the grounds that it reduces God to a impersonal force. Tillich does indeed oppose the “personal God” that was discussed in most of theology in his day. It must be remembered that he died before the advent of the charismatic movement.[1] To my knowledge he never considered the nature of the Pentecostal movement, and I doubt he would have felt at ease in those churches. While we don’t really know what he would have thought about the charismatic emphasis upon “personal relationship with God” he did not appreciate the idea of a big man in the sky. He referred to what he called “the God of theism” as something that modern theology had to transcend. He denied that this left us with a stark choice of an impersonal force. Yet his safety valve on this issue is not comforting. His answer was God is “the personal itself.”  The structures that produce the self are the result of God’s creative activity thus the things that produce self are present in God, God is not a person but is the source of all personhood, thus God is the “personal itself.” He says “God is not a person but he is not less than personal.”[2] That is not comforting because there is no guarantee that “the personal itself” knows your name, gives a rat’s hind quarters if you or I live or die, or has a will of which we must take heed.  “Not less than personal” implies all the attributes we normally think of as personal but then Tillich seems to refute them when it comes to discussing them, as I will soon illustrate.
            I am trapped between the two camps. On the one hand former professors and mentors who I admire and whose opinions I respect do not like this stuff for this very reason; God must be a person or an impersonal force, they can’t worship an impersonal force. On the other hand, Tillich, who I also admire, saw the problems and dangers of the “big guy in the sky.” Of course the former professors don’t think that God is just a big man, but some form of universal mind. Yet the problem is, isn’t a universal mind just a jumped-up big man?  As Tillich said, if God is “a person” then “he” is subject to being itself rather than occupying the central position in ontology as being itself. The proposal made in chapter 4 was to speak of “the ground of being” rather than “being itself.” That may bail Tillich out of the problems of Jean-Luc Marion, God beyond (without) being, but may work for the issue of God beyond being, but it may not work for the problem here because it doesn’t tell us why the ground of being can be personal. We might even ask why should we think God is personal to begin with? Before I answer this, however, I will define my position: I accept Tillich’s notions of the problems with the big guy in the sky. I also add my own litany of problem, centering on the way atheists frame the question of God as “big man in the sky.” I also accept the need to understand God as “someone” a will, a volitional consciousness that knows my name. The reason for this I will deal with latter. To meet these concerns I will elucidate a position that allows one to understand the ground of being as transcending the human understanding of consciousness and person but containing the aspects of consciousness required in meeting those concerns. God is not a big man in the sky, a universal consciousness need not be associated with a biological organism, a brain or what we know as analogous to our own existence; we need not understand humanity as the only possible form of consciousness.
           
Tillich’s Rejection of the God of Theism

            The theistic view of God is usually understood as the idea of a “person” or an aware mind that is surveying reality and creating out of rational wisdom. It is this concept of a mind surveying a world it creates that is part of the problem, it makes God into “the supreme being” or the greatest part of reality. A part is still subject to or limited by the whole.

The God of theological theism is a being beside others and as such part of the whole of reality. He certainly is considered its most important part, but as a part and therefore subject to the structure of the whole. He is supposed to be beyond the ontological elements and categories which constitute reality. But every statement subjects him to them. He is seen as a self which has a world, as an ego which is related to a thou, as a cause which is separated from its effect as having a definite space and an endless time. He is a being not being itself. As such he is bound to the subject/object structure of reality, he is an object for us as subjects and this decisive for the necessity of transcending theological theism. [3]


            At a 1940 conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, Einstein presented a paper arguing against the notion of a personal God. Tillich agreed with Einstein and wrote an answer in which he largely sided with the physicist. Tillich thought it was significant for who presented it. “They [the arguments] are neither new nor powerful in themselves. But in the mouth of Einstein, as an expression of his intellectual and moral character, they are more significant than the highly sophisticated reasoning of somebody else.”[4] Everyone tries to use Einstein, that’s a sure sign of being a crank. Yet this article is significant not because it enlists the great scientific thinker for a particular position but because it shows Tillich’s early pre American thought. Tillich summarizes the arguments:” Einstein attacks the idea of a personal God from four angles:

*The idea is not essential for religion.
*It is the creation of primitive superstition.
*It is self-contradictory.
*It contradicts the scientific world view.”[5]

            He dismisses the first argument immediately on the grounds that the question about God and the personal must be answered before we understand the nature of religion, and moves on to the historical argument. He argues that it’s misuse tells us nothing about it’s genesis. Before it could be abused it had to be used. So what is its proper use? He says:

Looking at the tremendous impact the idea of God always has made on human thought and behavior, the theory that all this was a product of an uneducated arbitrary imagination appears utterly inadequate. Mythological fantasy can create stories about Gods but it cannot create the idea of God itself, because the idea transcends all the elements of experience which constitute mythology. As Descartes argues: the infinite in our mind presupposes the infinity itself.[6]

The concept of a personal God is deemed self contradictory because God is depicted as creating both good and evil. God is also understood as the source of morality and thus should not be able to create evil, but as the omnipotent creator of all things God must create evil in some sense. Tillich counters this argument by denying the classical concept of omnipotence. He retrenches into the concept of the ground of being, and opposes it to the classical notion of omnipotence. On the one had we have a big man in the sky who is supposed to be all good but in some sense allows evil, or creates it directly, as opposed by this notion of the power of being which is in all things and through and beyond all things. So Tililch’s God is not a direct maker of the world, not a first cause at all. In the process of denying omnipotence Tillich also denies God as the first cause. He asserts that God acts in beings to suit their special nature. In humans God acts in a personal way and in plants God acts in an impersonal way. For Tillich God is not a wielder of final cause but is a conduit for cause distributed throughout all of reality. Here he is referring to the panENtheist assumptions of his view. God is in all things and as such is relating to them in the manner of a unifying source rather than a direct manipulator.[7] God for Tillich is the unconditioned boundless undifferentiated unity.


But it is an old and always emphasized theological doctrine that God acts in all beings according to their special nature, in man according to their rational nature, in animals and plants according to their inorganic nature. The symbol of omnipotence expresses the religious experience that no structure of reality and no event in nature and history has the power of preventing us from community with the infinite and unexhaustible ground of meaning and being. What "omnipotence" means should be found in the words Deutero — Isaiah (Is. 40) speaks to the exiled in Babylon when he describes the nothingness of the world-empires in comparison with the divine power to fulfil its historical aim through an infinitely small group of exiled people. Or what "omnipotence" means must be found in the words Paul (Rom. 8) speaks to the few Christians in the slums of the big cities when he pronounces that neither natural nor political powers, neither earthly nor heavenly forces can separate us from the "Love of God." If the idea of omnipotence is taken out of this context and transformed into the description of a special form of causality, it becomes not only self-contradicting — as Einstein rightly states — but also absurd and irreligious.[8]

            In moving on to the fourth objection Tillich agrees with Einstein, and lays down two methodological caveats. The first such caveat is that we should not make God of the gap arguments. That we not make doctrines or predicate our theology in “the dark places” where scientific knowledge has not penetrated. This is because eventually it probably will penetrate and destroy that theology. This he says happened over and over again to ninetieth century thinkers. He argues that theology must leave to science the description of things and leave to philosophy the description of being itself and the logos in which being becomes manifest. Here he means logos in the sense of the Greek Philosophers, reason, not Christ. The second methodological caveat is that he demands of scientific thinking skeptics and critics of theology that they attack the most advanced and modern ideological ideas, not the outmoded versions. He then argues that the idea of God intervening in natural processes makes God into an independent cause of natural events that makes God a thing in nature alongside other things. Here he makes the argument that one is reducing God to the level of “a being.” Even the highest being is still a being among others; God is the basis of all being itself, not a being subject to being itself.  He argues that after Schleieramcher and Hegel have received Spinoza’s doctrine of God as a predication for a doctrine of God, it is impossible to use the primitive concept to challenge the idea of God itself.[9] The primitive elements of the big man in the sky are mythological and their place in modern theology is metaphorical. They provide the necessary metaphor for dealing with the transcendent and unconditioned and the philosophical concepts that point to it on metaphorical terms. In the postmodern era this is all mocked as “onto-theology” because the post moderns don’t’ need metaphor because they don’t believe in anything to point to.. But the function of metaphor is to point beyond the metaphor itself to the thing that inspires it.
            Tillich argues the symbol for the transcendent and transpersonal has to be the personal because it can’t be anything less than personal. One cannot point to a higher reality by going lower in symbol choice. We must use the highest we know point to something transcendent. Tillich interpreits the following statement by Einstein: “He "attains that humble attitude of mind towards the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man,”[10] to mean a common ground shared by the whole of the physical world and of superpersonal values, grounded in the structure of being, and meaning—the good the true the beautiful—one the one hand, and on the other hidden in inexhaustible depth. This is the sense of the numinous and it is accessible in any number of ways, prayer, meditation, experience of presence, art, Literature, music, random musings, but it cannot be objectified, he finds that the rudimentary basis of it exists in all concepts of God. What he’s talking about is basically the mystical. In this disclosure we see ideas yet to be formulated by Tillich, which in his latter life he would find in his study of Buddhism in the guise of “the Buddha mind.” He closes by saying the symbol of the personal God has to be used. We can’t relate to anything else.


For as the philosopher Schelling says: "Only a person can heal a person." This is the reason that the symbol of the Personal God is indispensable for living religion. It is a symbol, not an object, and it never should be interpreted as an object. And it is one symbol besides others indicating that our personal center is grasped by the manifestation of the inaccessible ground and abyss of being.[11]


He is not saying is that God is actually impersonal but we have to imagine that “he’s” personal. Rather he is saying that God is beyond our understanding, perhaps we would not recognize divine consciousness as “personal,” as such could we behold it directly. That does not mean that God is impersonal. When he says it can’t be an object, he would say the same of you or I, and of himself. That approach to personhood which rejects objectifying the person, is just good existentialism.
            Years latter in his most popular work, The Courage to Be, he would write that a self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. He writes that one must participate in a self to know what self is, but participation also change the self. By “participation” he means being aware of selfhood.[12] “In all existential knowledge, but subject and object are transformed in the very act of knowing.” Existential knowledge is encounter that results in knew knowledge. This is present in all forms of knowing, personal, religious, and intellectual.[13] Tillich denies that this excludes the theoretical possibly of objective detachment, but it restricts detachment to one element within cognitive participation. [14] We may know a psychological type that can be applied to people we know, but we do not know the person until we encounter that person existentially. We must participate in the center of that being to say that we actually know that person. “This is the first meaning of ‘existential,’ namely existential as the attitude of participating one’s own existence in some other existence.”[15]  Since the concept of a “personal God” is based upon the analogy to our understanding of humanity, we might actually think that Tillich was willing to apply the same concept to God; in other words, we can’t know the person until we participate in the experience of God as personal. This would preclude thinking of God as a big man in the sky that does things and looks at things as men do, without reducing God to the impersonal. That would certainly be suggested by the fact that he does say (fn above) that religious knowledge is a grounds for existential encounter. Tillich realizes that God transcends the divine-human encounter. God is beyond our understanding; we are not going to understand all of God.
            Mystical experience moves beyond divine-human encounter. The divine-human encounter is analogical and has degrees, culminating in the sense of the numinous, which is a lower level of mystical. The highest level of the mystical is mysticism proper, which is the experience of undifferentiated unity of all things.[16] Tillich argues that there is absolute faith which transcends even the mystical. The mystical uses specific content of the world (differentiation) as an analogical gradation to step on and move above. So Mysticism doesn’t deny the “ten thousand things”(differentiation of the world)[17] as meaningless but sees them as something to transcend into undifferentiated unity.[18] Thus since human consciousness cannot be objectified and is indicative of existential encounter, so God’s consciousness also cannot be objectified and must be experienced in existential encounter for us to even get a glimpse of it as consciousness. Tillich understands his own outlook, as transcending theism. Tillich’s outlook is a combination of Hegel, Heidegger, and the Neo-Platonic concept of the superessential Godhead, as transcending theism. Tillich’s God is the “God beyond God,” the God beyond the God of theism. This may sound like sacrilege but it’s very Christian. The Bible doesn’t say theism is a holy theology, it doesn’t even mention “theism.” Theism is the idea of a human philosopher. As Tillich’s view is, but he is also aware of more.The God beyond God is the reality of God beyond our misunderstandings and limited human ideas; the cultural trappings and constructs that make up our views of the divine.
            Tillich names three forms of theism. The first form he refers to as “unspecified.” This is a form of theism Tillich new well because it got him chased out of Germany. This is the kind of theism in civil religion. This is the God on the belt buckle of the Nazi’s to whom they paid homage when they offered glory.[19] This is the God in whom America trusts on the dollar bill, The God of the Dollar, we could call him. This God is the God in the eye of pyramid. This is the God who is the refuge of patriots and scoundrels. It is not hard to transcend this God because he’s prior to any sort of relationship or personal experience, and most who speak of him have no concept of a relationship with the divine. The second form of theism is opposed to the unspecified that is the “person-to-person encounter.”[20] This is the God with whom the religious believer has a relationship and with whom those who are not born again, or initiated into the faith in some way, do not have a relationship. This is the God constructed from the elements in the Jewish and Christian tradition, often referred to as “the God of the Bible.”

Theism in the is sense emphasizes the personalistic passages in the Bible and the Protestant Creeds, the personalitic image of God, the word as tool of creation and revelation, the ethical and social character of the kingdom of God, the personal nature of human faith and divine forgiveness, the historical vision of the universe and divine purpose, the infinite distance between creator and creature, the absolute separation between God and the world, the conflict between holy God and sinful man, the person-to-person character of prayer and practical devotion. Theism in this sense is the non mystical side of biblical religion and historical Christianity. Atheism from this point of view of this theism is the human attempt to escape the divine-human encounter. It is an existential, not a theoretical problem.[21]

In this passage Tillich indicts almost everything I believe in. Yet he’s not saying these are things that must be done away, he’s saying if we limit ourselves to this one set of points as our understanding, to this type of theism, we begin to think we understand it all and we limit God and we limit our spiritual growth in God by forfeiting the mystical which would understand that we don’t understand, these are merely analogical correspondences which are not only like but also “not like.” That is to say relationship with God is analogical to person-to-person relationship, but being analogical means it is also not like a person-to-person encounter but transcends it into the realm beyond our understanding.[22]
            Theism in the third sense he calls theological theism. This is the God of the arguments for God. Tillich doesn’t say so but it is my observation that theological theism is based upon Aristotle’s prime mover more so than upon the God of the Bible. This is the God who is an effect separated from its cause. Tillich argues for transcending the first sense because it is irrelevant, the second because it’s one sided, but the third because it’s bad theology.[23] I will go into this in greater detail in a subsequent chapter on argument for the existence of God. This notion of God makes God a being beside others.

He is seen as a self which has a world, an ego which is related to a thou, a cause which is separated from its effect, having a definite space and an endless time. He is a being not being itself. As such he is bound to the subject-object structure of reality; he is an object for us as subjects. At the same time we are objects for him as a subject. This is decisive for the necessity of transcending theological theism. For God as a subject makes me into an object. He deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all powerful and all knowing. I revolt and try to make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate, God appears as the invincible tyrant the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom or subjectivity….This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because no one can tolerate being made into an mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism, this is an atheism which is justified as a reaction against the theological theism and its disturbing implications. It is also the deepest root of the Existentialist despair and the widespread anxiety of meaninglessness in our period.[24]

The personal view that sees God a universal all encompassing will or mind is the source of a couple of mistakes, whereby God is seen as either a big man in the sky or a more sophisticated Jumped up version of a big man, the big mind. This sort of view makes conflicts with God more inevitable since it leads us to confuse the super-ego with God, it leads us to confuse conflicts within ourselves with conflicts with the divine. It also leads to magical thinking because our despair and negative self acceptance become conflicts with the divine will, since we feel that some transcendent will is imposing that which we reject upon us. This kind of thinking is probably at the root of a lot of atheism.
           


            Tillich argues that this big man in the sky is behind much atheism. It is an anecdotal observation that now seems to be backed up by some emerging data. It is certainly the case that atheists are embroiled in a struggle against the superego-like God whom they think of as a “big man in the sky.” Nothing is clearer for that than Dawkin’s approach to the reverse design arguments. In answering God arguments Dawkins takes as totally a being alongside other beings and in fact seems to think he is perfectly, 1x1, analogous to a biological organism.[xxv] Dawkins spells it out in no uncertain terms. “why there almost certainly is no God.” Why?  Because, a big man in the sky would have to be more complex than the universe he creates. Of course this is based upon the assumption that whatever reality entails has to reflect accurately and be limited to our little dust mote, from which we have never journeyed far.[xxvi]
            Dawkins is working against what he takes to be the most popular pro God (one of the weakest) the monkey’s-writing-Shakespeare-by-accident argument. He couches it in terms of assembling a a 747 from a scrap yard by means of a hurricane. [xxvii] The creationist, whose argument is revises, couches his argument in terms of finding some living creature who is too improbable to be assumable by accident. Improbability means complexity. The more complex something is the less likely it is to be assembled by accident. The creationist equates improbability with design. Dawkins points out that it’s not the Darwinians who are trying to get “something for nothing,” so to speak, in assuming that complexity could come about undersigned, but the creationists are seeking the “free lunch,” simply because they don’t recognize that “however statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by evoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the ultimate Boeing 747.”[xxviii] Dawkins takes this assumption through the entire book. The view of God that he’s attacking is obviously that of a big man. It may be couched as “big mind” or even “universal mind” but it’s still an entity, a thing, something that has to consciously calculate or deliberate about what it’s doing. Never does he stop to consider that he might have the wrong idea of God. He spends long pages droning on and on about consciousness raising and implying that creationists are stupid and feminists are smarter,[xxix] never does it occur to him that he just might be dealing with the wrong concept of God.

            On the other hand, we can’t understand God as impersonal force like the electro-magnetic or the strong force that would reduce God to being “a thing.” That would place God under the regime of being rather than understanding God as the foundation of being. There are a couple of good reasons not to do that. The depth of being is certainly one such reason. We know that being has depth then the basis of being can’t be just another thing like an impersonal force. The complexity argument is stupid, because it equates complexity with probability. The ground of being can’t be merely probable, either there’s a found of being or there is not. If not then there can’t be any depth of being either. If there is depth there is a ground, and if there is a ground it can’t be just another thing. There has to be alternative to the stark contrast between “personal” in the sense of human consciousness and impersonal in the sense of dead matter. The stark choice between being en soir and por soir[xxx] is really limited. There has to be some other aspect of being that is either both or neither, or perhaps both and neither. To find the solution to the personal problem we probably have to venture away from the confines of Tillich’s theology, since he never considers the need to understand God as personal. Perhaps the major reason, however, to understand God as “personal” is because most mystics experience God in this way. The sense of the numinous is the most profound mystical experience next to the undifferentiated unity and is certainly as prevalent if not more so. This experience, the sense of the numinous is a deep all pervasive sense of love emanating form everything and love for everything, and most especially love for people. Love itself demands the personal.
            Mystical experiences can be divided into two types, the introvertive and the extrovertive. Researchers are divided as to which of these two these two experiences is the most advanced.  Introvertive is impersonal; all sense of differentiation in reality is lost. This is state is supposed to be beyond word, thought or image. The extrovertive experience transfers the unit to nature. One distinguishes between different objects but an underlying sense of unity pervades all. In contrast to these two experiences, which are perhaps different stages of the same thing, there is also another kind of mystical experience called ‘the numinous.” This experience is derived from the work of Rudolph Otto and his sense of the holy.[xxxi] The numinous is an experience of personal dimension in the divine. It is a sense of all pervasive presence, usually a presence of love. In this experience one usually sees God as personal and loving. Both of these experiences are properly mystical. “Although it is possible to separate the numinous and mystical as two poles of religious experience, they are ultimately united, mystical experiences of unity (variously expressed) can be numinous as well.”[xxxii] One could proceed on the assumption that the personal is the illusion and fades away when the mystic gains more advancement. That doesn’t really seem to be what the research shows. It seems more like a matter of which aspect one emphasizes they are actually two poles of the same thing.


Thus we can separate the numinous and the mystical for conceptual purposes, depending upon whether the personal or impersonal aspects of foundational reality are emphasized. Mysticism tends toward the impersonal and numinous tends toward the personal. As we shall shortly note measurement studies can identify both numinous and mystical experiences, based upon whether one experiences a sense of presence (numinous experience) or a sense of unity (mystical experience)…that both components are properly mystical has been briefly noted above and extensively argued by Hood…their importance is that from a social psychological perspective they are part of what religions defend as the experience of the sacred.[xxxiii]

In other words we can’t write off the personal dimension as the illusory any more than we can the other pole of the unity. They are both intrinsic to the foundational nature of religious belief.
            Mystical experience is seen by many as the actual basis of religion and the ground of the mature end of Christian experience. Religion is more than merely “jumped up” ethics, or primitive failed science. There is a core to all religious belief that is rooted in the sense of the numinous, the idea that something special, something “holy” is set apart from the mundane world. That in itself introduces an experiential dimension into the concept of the religious.








Alternative Ideas of Consciousness

           
            “Personal” may not be a good term here because it might imply personality. While God could be conscious or aware in some higher sense or have some feeling/knowing dimension, God can’t actually have a personality, because personalities are aspects of psychology; humans have personalities and personalities have hang-ups. God can’t have personality hang-ups; that would be like saying God is neurotic. We should speak instead of God’s “consciousness” or “awareness.” God must have some ability to relate in a conscious way to us centers of personality. That way of relating does not have to be limited to our understanding of the personal or of the conscious. Often in discussing this topic others will say to me “how could the ground of being be personal?” Or “how could the ground of being have consciousness?” Why wouldn’t it? Because consciousness is the result of chemicals in a brain, God is not a localized entity or a biological organism. I think people who hear the phrase “ground of being” also think it means just the fact of things existing. They think that God is being reduced to just the fact of existence itself. As already discussed at length none of those are the case. Be that as it may the tendency to think of “consciousness” in human terms—biological, brain chemistry—is overwhelming because that’s all we know. Yet there are people who are finding new ways to think about consciousness. Or rather they are rediscovering old ways. It’s old news that for over twenty years a controversy has raged between reductionisms that see consciousness as merely a product of brain function, on the one hand, and various kinds of consciousness seekers, such as property dualists, on the other. The reductionsts are typified or perhaps “led” by Daniel Dennett (Consciousness explained) [xxxiv] the others led by University of Arizona professor David Chalmers, from Australia, (The Conscious Mind: in Search of a Theory).[xxxv]
            I have no intention of trying to recapture the complexity, the extreme voluminous complexity of these issues in this chapter. The reach of the topic just to define the players would take a whole book. I do not claim to even understand the major structures of the dispute. In very crude and simplistic terms, the reductionist side argues that there is nothing “special” or “mysterious” about consciousness. For them consciousness is merely a side effect of the way chemical work in the brain. Consciousness can be reduced to chemicals, which are just a natural outgrowth of biological process, and that’s all there is to it. The description of how the brain works is extremely complex, but for the reductionism view all aspects of consciousness can be reduced to brain chemistry that’s all it is. For the other side, which I shall the “mind side,” not just limited to property dualism but a whole host of different views each one working to offer an alternative, the consciousness is more than just a side effect of the brain. For the Dennett side “mind” is more or less an illusion, the “wonder tissue” (his phrase) that we invent to explain the feel of our private perspective but not scientific and just illusory. For the mind side mind represents, in various ways, something more than mere brain function. For them consciousness is not reducible to brain function, at least not entirely. It’s easy to think of the religious as the mind side, and the atheistic as the brain side, or the reductionsts. That would make things way too simple. In general terms that tends to be the case, but there are exceptions. I will not impose that line up on the sides because I can find mind side people who would accept the idea that consciousness is a side of brain activity, although deny that it’s reducible to that alone. We can find religious people, or those who are at least sympathetic to religions, who do not understand the soul as a ghost-like thing inside the body. Religious thinkers do not reduce to ghost-in-the-machine thinkers.
            As far as my own way of thinking goes, I don’t think of the soul as a ghost-like thing inside the body. I don’t think of it as an entity that lives on after death. I see the soul as a symbol of the life of the believer in relation to the divine. In other words, we do not have souls we are souls. We can be saved souls or lost souls. I do believe in life after death, the part of us that equates to living on, in my view, I the spirit. I understand spirit as mind. Again I do not see it as a ghost-like contrivance that floats around. I see it as the mental aspect or awareness, including the bits of which we are not aware in a waking state, weather produced in whole or merely accessed in part by brain function. Thus, there need not be anything ethereal about mind, or spirit.  If it lives on after death, I think it does, it can be held together by the power of God and need not be anything more than the private mental awareness generated as field by brain function. Yet, it since it is a field of awareness it forms a life of its own. It is emergent as something more than just a side effect of the brain. On the other hand if there is a force or an energy we know not of that is not going to shatter my world. I am prepared for that contingency I don’t see how it really changes my faith one way or the other. We tend to think of consciousness as a ghost-like thing and a mirror of the divine,, so God is a big man in the sky made out of ghost like material. I don’t pretend to have the slightest idea of what God is “made of” (I don’t think that’s even a conceptually proper question to ask of the ground of being).  I think a lot of atheists want to ask such questions, but to me that’s like asking how they find such little horses to fit inside internal combustion engines. It’s like asking “of what material is reality made?”
            For the remainder of this chapter I will focus upon one thing, alternatives to the concept of consciousness as generated by side effect of brain chemistry (emergentism). God is not a biological organism; God has no brain and no brain chemistry. Thus God’s consciousness must be of a wholly different character. Perhaps we would not even recognize it as consciousness could we view it directly and get a clear picture of it. We can’t rob God of will, volition, or awareness. The ground of being is not just the mere fact of things existing; it’s the power of being that means its comparable to a force in some way, although not reducible to a force. Thus I see no reason why the ground of being can’t be conscious, especially if it is the source of consciousness, and if there is a ground of being that we can call “God” then God’s consciousness would be the source of consciousness, that only stands to reason


Panpsychism

            Pan psychism is presented here not because I hold it as my own position, I do not. It is presented merely as an example of alternative thinking on the subject of consciousness.


            The major alternative to reductionism of consciousness to brain chemistry is pan psychism, although this is a catchall term that can designate many different positions. The opposite view is “emergentism” because it sees consciousness as an “emergent property” that grows out of brain function and complexity of neurobiology. That view usually tries to down grade consciousness to epiphenomenal status. Atheists and skeptics use that position to claim that God can’t have consciousness, on the basis of the analogy to human biology. Pan psychism, on the other hand, is not really a new idea. It’s actually the ancient orthodoxy which burned brightly in the ninetieth and early twentieth century and was overshadowed and forgotten under the weight of phyiscalist and reductionist assumptions about neurobiology. There seems to be a resurgence of types of pan psychism led by property dualist and other pro mind thinkers. Pan psychism was first formulated by Epicurus circa 300 BC, who argued that the will could not emerge from non will. The will must reside in the actual atoms that make everything up as it cannot arise from nothing.[xxxvi]
            Pan psychism is the view that all things possess mind or some mind-like quality. This quality is possessed internal to the object or to the aspect of reality, and all aspects, not infused from without. Mind is seen as a unity, the universe is not seen as a collection of millions of opposing minds. Pan psychist theories generally encompass both physical and mental; they are both ontology and a theory of mind, or rather, not a specific theory but meta-theology, a framework for explaining theory of mind.[xxxvii]


Thus panpsychism can apply, in principle, to virtually any conventional theory of mind. There could exist, for example, a panpsychist substance dualism in which some Supreme Being grants a soul/mind to all things. There could be a panpsychist functionalism that interprets the functional role of every object as mind, even if such a role is only “to gravitate,” “to resist pressure,” and so forth. One could argue for a panpsychist identism in which mind is identical to matter; or a panpsychist reductive materialism in which the mind of each thing is reducible to its physical states. The only theories not amenable to panpsychism are those that (a) explicitly argue that only a certain restricted class of beings can possess mind (such as living things or Homo sapiens), or (b) deny the existence of mind altogether (that is, eliminativism). The fact that such restricted conceptions of mind are on shaky theoretical ground suggests that one should not rule out the panpsychist extension of other theories. Rather, the opposite view is perhaps the more reasonable: that one should hold panpsychism as a natural and logical extension of any given theory of mind, until demonstrated otherwise.[xxxviii]

            Ancient thinkers of pan psychism include: Anaximenes put forth air as the ruling principle in all things. The term “air” penuma is the also “spirit” is related to mind. In fact all the pre-socratics with their elements are seen by modern thinkers to be advocating “mind” in the form of these elements. Heraclutus fire is life giving energy and is linked to mind. Anaxagoras saw the world as a complexity of substances but orchestrated by an over arching nous (spirit or mind).[xxxix] Socrates, Plato all the major Greek philosophers are connected with panpsychism in one way or another.[xl] Renaissance thinkers include Cardano, Telesio, Patrizi, and Bruno. Eighteenth century thinkers include vitalisitc materialists such as Diderot, ninetieth century included: Herder, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Fechner, Lotze, Hartmann, Mach, and Haeckel.[xli] Of course in the eightieth century we don’t want to forget Berkeley, although his view might not be pure panpsychism. In the ninetieth we must not forget Bergsen. Late in the nineteenth century we have Herbert Spencer and Josiah Royce.[xlii] Among major philosophers D.S. Clarke lists, after the Greeks, Aquinas, [xliii] Leibniz, [xliv] Locke[xlv] and many others. In Twentieth century the process philosophers and theologians have major contributions to defending panpsychism; Whitehead, Hartshorne, and Grifffin.[xlvi] The arguments for panpsychism represent an extremely complex, diverse, and voluminous body of work stretching back to the Greeks. I could not begin to do it justice, therefore, I will present only a couple of arguments.
            David Skribina has a very cogent and important summary that anyone seeking to study the subject should read. He begins by observing that panpsychism is a “meta theory” of mind, “it’s a statement about theories of mind, not a theory in itself. It only claims that all things (however defined) possess some mind-like quality; it says nothing per se about the nature of that mind nor of the specific relationship between matter and mind.” [xlvii]  This is the basis of much criticism of panpsychism, as Skribnna observes, since there is no companion theory of mind to be presented alogn with it, the lack of a theory leads many critics to feel that panpsychism itself is incomplete or can’t pulled off.[xlviii] Before listing the major arguments he groups arguments into four categories: (1) empirical, observation and experiment (2) rational (process of reason), (3) intuitive (based upon introspection), (4) mystical, through some kind of “divine revelation or meta-rational insight.”[xlix] He then lists nine major arguments:

(1)  Indwelling powers—all objects exhibit certain qualities that are linked to noetic qualities—
(2)  Continuity—a common principle of substance exists that links all things and accounts for soul or mind—
(3)  First principles—mind is posited as the fundamental universal quality—
(4)  Design—the ordered and complex nature of physical things “suggests the presence of an inherent mentality.”
(5)  Argument from non-emergence—“It is inconceivable that mind should emerge from a world in which no mind exists, therefore, mind always existed…”
(6)  Theological argument—“God is mind and spirit, God is omni present, therefore mind and spirit are present in all things…”
(7)  Evolutionary argument—he doesn’t put it this way but I think what he’s getting at here is a set of arguments that seek to show consciousness in some form ground up.
(8)  Dynamic sensitivity—the ability of “living systems” to feel and experience derive from sensitivity to the environment as a whole
(9)  Argument from authority—appeal to the vast tradition of literature going back to the Greeks and stretching up into current debate.[l]
           
There is no magic science bullet that proves the position. The skeptics have been vociferous in denouncing it as weak and “caving in immediately” and so forth. It’s easy to see why this panpsychist position would draw the ire of skeptics. First, it’s getting too close to a concept of God, even thought that concept might be pantheistic. Secondly, it’s very “new age,” one can almost sense some encounter groups and tree hugging panpsychists, although I haven’t heard of any. Panpsychism is a serious philosophical position. That is, unfortunately no guarantee it will always be taken seriously. Thirdly, as stated above it’s easy to confuse the meta-theory with the lack of a companion theory of mind that gets translated into the attack that it’s not fully thought out.
            University of Oregon physicist Amit Goswamai claims to have scientific proof that the universe is self aware, the title of his book.[li]  Goswamai, along with a number of other scientists, is convinced that the only way to explain certain findings in quantum physics is to posit the notion that the universe requires a conscious sentient mind to observe it, otherwise it would be merely an empty possibility.[lii] His argument is basically the argument about collapsing the wave function. This refers to a mathematical measurement in probability and is ensorcelled in the inscrutable world of quantum physics. For others like me who are life long habitual liberal arts users, it’s a math thing. Essentially there is a principle called “the uncertainty principle” that just says we can’t plot with any accuracy the exact location of a particle at any time, and that due to this uncertainty we can’t say that a particale has a given property at any given time. So the extent to which we can say “this particle is x” is based upon the average, which is to say, the probable. There is a formula worked out by Schrödinger, the concrete example of this involves a thought experiment that uses a cat, this is known as “Schrödinger’s cat.” The upshot of it all is in the plotting the probabilities of a given particle the “wave function” is the wave of probability and it’s only plotable as a probability as long as it’s not collapsed by concrete certainty. In other words, until we know for sure about a particle it has no definite knowable being. This why in the thought experiment the cat in the box, threatened with a 50-50 chance of death, is both dead and alive at the same time.[liii] That’s the way those who think about such things talk, in reality of course it’s all just a means of speaking about mathematics. Does that mean the argument applied to the nature of the universe can’t prove anything? Well when it’s confirming the skeptic’s point of view it proves everything. When it confirms a religious point of view it’s just wavy gravy bs and pseudo science.
               The physicist is involved with a movment of scientists form his native India to bridge the gap between science and the spiritual. Toward that end he has helped to start a graduate institute in consciousness studies. [liv] In an interview with Craig Hamilton Gaswamai said:


The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.
Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness.That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.[lv]

He refers to consciousness as “the ground of all being” and says that this notion of consciousness as the ground of being is the basis of all spiritual traditions.[lvi] When he gets down to specifying scientific data to back up his assertions he talks about wave/particle dualism and quantum theory. It seems that two photons admitted by an atom (Aspect’s experiment on phontons) going in opposite directions somehow exert influence upon each other without seeming to be connected. They are not exchanging signals through space in any way. This should be impossible according to Einstein. This is because the influence is instant and yet there is a universal constant speed limit that can’t be violated in the speed of light. [lvii] As Goswamai puts it: “It was my good fortune to recognize it within quantum physics, to recognize that all the paradoxes of quantum physics can be solved if we accept consciousness as the ground of being..”[lviii]
            There are other solutions people take to this problem. Bohm rejects the assumption that there is a problem and thus avoids wave function completely. Others see the wave function as a cross roads between parallel universes made up of all the options that we could have taken. Yet a large number have come back to the idea that “consciousness collapses the wave function and creates reality.”[lix] The question is does this mean we need a big version of our own minds to collapse it, or will a lot of little minds, such those of humans, kitties, dogs and so forth do the trick? If in fact there is a trick needed. This does suggest an interesting possible alternative to the conventional view that consciousness is merely a epiphenomena of the way particles stack up in a chemical reaction in a brain. It’s too early to make definite rulings; there are also other reasons to assume mind is the basis of reality.


            The argument is that mind is the most efficient and purposive organizing principle we know. There are some problems with this idea. First, it’s a kind of design argument; design arguments are a problem because they assume we know what the design we have in mind looks like to begin with. Secondly, the skeptic might charge that we have the process reversed. We can’t argue from the concept of mind to purpose we can only conclude purpose and mind from understanding the purposive nature of the phenomena  and that might require knowing  in advance the true answer, in other words, arguing in a circle. Certainly we can construe the organizing tendency of mind as a possible explanation for certain phenomena, and then argue that the supposing is rationally warranted. I have a good reason to assume that some purposive tendency might be behind some phenomena if I can rightly assume nothing else explains the seeming purposive nature of it. While it’s not a design argument per se, it dose contain some elements of one, we can at least confine our conjecture to areas where we actually know what a purposely organized outcome might look like. For example, the fine tuning argument for the existence of God avoids the pitfalls of the conventional design argument because it has the target levels for fine tuning, it’s possible to know what they are by comparing them to the things that are not the target levels and calculating probability.
            Fine tuning is a good example of phenomena that shows signs of purposive organizing. Just as It is not my purpose to conduct an extended argument to prove panpsychism so it is not my intention to conduct an extended argument proving the fine tuning argument, just to hit the highlights and move on the overall point, the one I’m slowing moving toward about the depth of being and the assumption that God is “conscious” or “personal.” To come to the point about fine tuning, it does imply a purposive nature; it implies the need for mind in the organization of a purposive outcome. For those who are not aware of the fine tuning issue is explained by Yale Philosopher Nick Bostrom:


It turns out that one can run a modern-day version of the old design argument. We can now explain how intelligent creatures could evolve in a universe such as ours. But how come the universe is such as to permit life to exist? Physics and cosmology reveal that the existence of life is dependent on various physical parameters having values within certain very narrow intervals. For example, if the expansion speed of the early universe had been very slightly less than it was, then the universe would have recollapsed within a fraction of a second, and no life could have evolved. If the expansion speed had been very slightly greater than it was, then the density of the universe would have been too low for galaxies, stars and planets to form – again no life would have evolved. There are a number of other parameters that appear in a similar manner to have been "fine-tuned" for the existence of intelligence life. (This is referred to as the so-called "anthropic coincidences".) If one uses any natural probability distribution over the possible values that these physical parameters could have, it turns out that there would only be an astronomically small probability that they would have values that permit the evolution of life.

Why do the parameters have life-permitting values? In other words, why are there these anthropic coincidences? The deist has an answer: Because God created the universe and He chose these values in order that intelligent life would exist. The balance of evidence seems to have shifted back to favor the deist like it did before Darwin. Or can the deist come up with an alternative explanation for the anthropic coincidences?[lx]

Bostrom’s conclusion is that if the parallel universes theory proves to show that there is a large number of universes with differing values of life the argument is beaten. [lxi] Actually, the possibility of a real multiverse does little to change the argument. First, it is not enough just to know that there could theoretically be other universes, you would have to know the “hit rate” or how many actually have life bearing planets. Futhermore, the best mechanism for multiverses that last, actually requires fine-tuning itself. The chaotic inflationary model - which seeks to avoid fine-tuning by positing that the initial conditions vary at random over the superspace of the Higgs fields - also fine-tunes its parameters, as Earman has pointed out: "The inflationary model can succeed only by fine-tuning its parameters, and even then, relative to some natural measures on initial conditions, it may also have to fine-tune its initial conditions for inflation to work."[lxii] The fine tuning coincidences would seem to suggest the work of mind.
            There are other examples of the possible need for the work of a mind in the formation of the cosmos. One such example is the problem of temporal beginning. If one accepts the current state of consensus in cosmology, there would seem to be a beginning to time that starts with the big bang. Since time begins with the big bang there is no “before” the big bang.[lxiii] There is no sequential order without time and thus, no cause and effect, no change, no coming to be. How then did the universe come into being by defying that law? In speaking of the super symmetry grand unified theory Sten Odenwald describes the initial state “before” the inflationary period.
, the dimensionality of space was itself undefined.

Superstrings seem to suggest that just a few moments after Creation, the laws of physics and the content of the world were in a highly symmetric state; one superforce and perhaps one kind of superparticle. The only thing breaking the perfect symmetry of this era was the definite direction and character of the dimension called Time. Before Creation, the primordial symmetry may have been so perfect that, as Vilenkin proposed, the dimensionality of space was itself undefined. ...In such a world, nothing happens because all 'happenings' take place within the reference frame of time and space. The presence of a single particle in this nothingness would have instantaneously broken the perfect symmetry of this era because there would then have been a favored point in space different from all others; the point occupied by the particle. This nothingness didn't evolve either, because evolution is a time-ordered process. The introduction of time as a favored coordinate would have broken the symmetry too. It would seem that the 'Trans-Creation' state is beyond conventional description because any words we may choose to describe it are inherently laced with the conceptual baggage of time and space. Heinz Pagels reflects on this 'earliest' stage by saying, "The nothingness 'before' the creation of the universe is the most complete void we can imagine. No space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity..."[lxiv]

Atheists have argued this point to throw a wrench in the works for creation. How could God create when nothing can happen beyond time? God wouldn’t be able think, move, or act from a vantage point beyond time. What they don’t realize is this is equally a problem for a naturalistic universe. Physical laws don’t work outside of time either, they are time bound principles. In reality the universe should not be here. It should be impossible that anything ever came into being if it began from a timeless state. The problem with the idea that time might run forever is that the universe wont. If time ran forever it would soon burn out all states of energy, total heat death would ensue and nothing would be left but a cold black universe structure with nothing in it. Barring some unforeseen idea we have not discovered yet this should be a problem for both sides. It’s less of a problem for the believer because the one solution that suggests itself is that reality is based upon mind and not energy. Thus “laws” of physics, are merely the rules thought of by a mind that is capable or re-writing the rules if need be. The mind could put rules in place and take them off and the problems of timelessness would not apply they would be no for this mind the problems of time because the mind is just the stage in which the idea of time, and its absence are thought-out as a day dream and has no more effect upon the dreamer than any other day dream.
            Now of course this is not proof of anything. It doesn’t prove reality is based upon mind and I have not even tried to construct real arguments. It does, however, suggest good reason to think that reality might be based upon mind. The organizing aspect of mind suggests itself as the best principle we know for organizing. Certainly natural law and happenstance are organizing principles yet they hardly suggest them selves as purposive principles, the problems of temporal beginning would seem to argue against it. If mind is irreducible to brain chemistry that might suggest that mind is a basic property of nature. The organizing aspect of mind would suggest itself as the most efficient way that rules could be hopped over and contingencies planned for.


Get something on Hawking’s view of “God” the organizing thingie


The “proto” in Proto pan psychism

            My view is not pan psychism, as I stated already. The same phenomena that seem to suggest the validity of pan psychism, the sense of mind and purpose in the cosmos and the irreducibility of consciousness don’t only suggest a mind in nature but a mind behind nature. By this I mean the idea that what we call “God” (the ground of being—being itself) is a universal mind, (as the Rolt statement on the superessential Godhead implied—see chapter four “orthodoxy”). The world of our lives and our doing, the “physical existence” that we take to be so solid, could be a thought in that mind. This is of course, a metaphor. We can’t really know the ultimate nature of reality, yet if we think of it in this way it resolves a great many of the problems encountered by both theology and cosmology. God is a mind and the world is a thought in that mind. That not only solves many problems it also raises many more. First it solves not only the problem of temporal beginning but also any other problem connected with God and time. Time is merely a mental convention that God thinks of to give us as a point of reference. Both the problems of time and of the absence of time are unreal to God as they are merely ideas in a mind. The mind that thinks the idea can unthink the idea. That also resolves the problem creation “before” time, of God being outside of time and so on. The whole issue of God and time has to be re thought. It answers the question about ground of being and consciousness. “How can the ground of being be conscious?” Well, the ground of being is a mind that thinks being. In being mind it is conscious, a prori, since “existence” for us is but a thought in this mind the mind is a prori the ground of our being.
            Certain of the problems raised by this idea are great. The major problem raised by theory is the implication of determinism. With that comes the implication that God must contain evil as well as good. If the world is but a thought in a mind then that mind must have to think all the events of the world and plan and calculate and actually make to be everything we do and think and say. The other problem implied by this theory is pantheism, since as thoughts in God’s mind we are actually extensions of God, our wills and desires are merely scripts in a novel written by God. Yet these are fanciful ideas that make assumption about the theory that ought not be made. First it assumes the theory is literally the case, rather than just a metaphorical relationship. Secondly, it assumes that God is like a big man so that God’s thoughts are like our thoughts. In scripture God tells us “my thoughts are not like your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8-9). We can assume that God can do things with his thought that we can’t. We can actually allow our mental constructs to run independently of us to some extent. Anyone who had tried to write fiction knows that characters can take on a life of their own following a trajectory of the logic set by the power of the image. Surely God could do that to an even greater extent, imagine us as independent beings that think and desire our own thoughts and ideas, allow us to be so, at least within the context of the construct.
            This would also mean that God is not the bearer or originator of evil. If we conceive of evil in the Augustinian sense, as the absence of the good, the God can’t contain any evil because he can’ have an absence of himself. The desires and thoughts that people pursue on their own from within the context of drama of this world can be bereft of good; desires can lack the goodness of good desires, and thoughts can lack reference to the good. This would not have to be because God sat around thinking “what if this guy has a bad thought?” The center of desire within the individual could be essence of the construct of humanity that God imagined. Them mental theater in which imagination becomes a real construct would explain the mode of creation. This would eliminate the fear of pantheism. We are not synonymous with all our thoughts. If I have a bad thought or image suggested by something that image si not me. I see a bloody car wreck I am not that wreck just because the image is in my head. If God can imagine us as autonomous then we are autonomous and thus we are not extensions of God’s will, but have our own free will.  The mental construct can’t be taken as the sum total of all reality because there’s a transcendent reality. That eliminates he sophisticated version of pantheism. The naïve version where nature id deified, nature itself would be a mental construct in the mind of God. Yet the construct is not that of deified nature.




[1] The charismatic movement as such did exist in 1965 when Tillich died. That’s about the time the early roots of it can be identified as “charismatic” as opposed to Penticostal. Yet it was not well known then. Pentecostal movement had been going for most of the century at that time but probably had a negative connotation for highly educated European intellectuals. I myself identify both movements with the idea of personal God because of their emphasis upon personal experience, feeling God’s presence and the sense of God’s love being real to them. I consider the popular image of God to be that of a big man in the sky although I really have no public opinion data to back that up.
[2] Tillich, Systematic, Vol 1, op cit. 245
[3] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana library 1974, ninth impression. First published by Nisbet, 1952, 178.
[4] Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale  Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/tillich-einsteinresponse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) No indication is given of a translator or original publication. The blog contains a photograph of an ealier conference in which Einstein and Tillich appear together with others at this 1928 conference. Davos Switzerland, March 18,1928.
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[0] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Tillich, The Courage to Be, op cit, 124.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, 124-125.
[15 Ibid. 125
[16] find: mysticism undifferentiated unity Is highest form and sense of numinous is lesser form and it is in analogical degrees.
[17] “ten thousand things” no Tillich speak but Lao Tsu, the Tao Te Ching.(dow’da Ching) A phrase I use to mean the differentiation of things in the world and the illusion of separation. Mysticism proper embraces the idea that there is an undifferentiated unity of all things, that all the individual things meld into one great oneness in the final phrase of experiencing reality.
[18] Tillich, Courage to be, 172
[19] Ibid, 176
[20] Ibid, 177
[21] Ibid. 178
[22] This phrase “analogical” and the point about it’s “like” and “not-like” dimensions are not Tillich’s ideas but those of Eugene R. Fairweather from his essay on “Christianity and the Supernatural.”
[23]  Ibid
[24]  Ibid, 178-179
[25]  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, op cit (chapter 1 fn 5) on line page 138. all of these references are on line page numbers.
[26] Ibid, 138
[27]  Ibid. he attributes the scrap yard image to Fred Hoyle.
[28] Ibid, 138
[29] 189-140
[30]  en soir = “being in itself.” Por Soir = being for itself. These are terms used by Jean-Paul Sartre in his Being and Nothingness. The “being in itself” refers to inanimate objects and being for itself refers to conscious being. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, New York:Hazel E Barnes Philosophical Library, 1948m 1943
[31] Ralph Hood, Spilka et al, op cit 292
[32] Ibid.
[33]  Ibid, 293
[34] Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained. Back Bay books, 1st paperback edition, 1992
[35] David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a theory. England, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
[36] Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: a Peer Reviewed Academic  Resource,  website URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/panpsych/#H3 visited 1/22/11
[37] ibid.
[38] ibid.
[39] ibid.
[40] ibid.
[41] ibid.
[42] ibid
[43] D.S. Clarke, Panpsychism: Past and Recent Selected Readings. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ed. D.S. Clarke, 2004, 41.
[44] ibid. 45
[45] ibid, 63
[46] ibid. 93=101
[48] ibid, 249
[49] ibid
[50] ibid, 249-255.
[51] Amit Goswamai, The Self Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates The Material World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
[lii] Ibid, 1. see also: Craig Hamilton, “Scientific Proof of The Existence of God: An Interview with Amit Goswamai.” TWM (The Weather Master) website, 2009. URL: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/goswintro.htm (visited 1/25/11).
[liii] Christopher Southgate, God, Humanity and the Cosmos. London, New York: T and T Clark International, 2005, 133-135.
Southgate teaches at Exeter, he has Ph.D. in biochemical engineering.
[liv] Hamilton, ibid
[lv] ibid, Goswamai in Interview with Hamilton. URL: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/goswam1.htm (visited 1/25/11)
[lvi] ibid
[lvii] ibid.
[lviii] ibid.
[lix] ibid
[lx] Nick Bostrom, “Is there a God, the Evidence for and Against.” Web page URL: http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/god/god.html visited april 1 2011.  Author of the book Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy.  New York and London: Routledge 2010.    Professor Nick Bostrom is Director of the Future of Humanity Institute in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. He has previously held positions at Yale University and as a British Academy postdoctoral fellow.
[lxi] Ibid
[lxii] John Earman, Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Space times. Londom: Oxford University Press, 1995,156.
[lxiii]Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1988,  8
[lxiv] Sten Odenwald, “Beyond the Big Bang,” Astronomy Magazine: Kalmbach Publising, (May 1987) 90.there’s an online copy of the article on Odenwald’s website. Astronomy caafe, URL:
http://www.astronomycafe.net/anthol/beyondbb.html Odenwald is an astronomer for NASA who also publishes technical articles in academic journals. He does educational outreach for NASA.
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