By Steve K.

Living in the UK, I was raised in a country that preached the ideas of Christianity. I attended school during the 1970’s when morning assembly was very similar to a church service where we sang Christian hymns and had to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Christianity is one of the three major monotheistic religions.. the other two being Judaism and Islam. Monotheism teaches that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere at once). Monotheism also teaches the idea that God is separate from this world and can intervene within it supernaturally.

As a teenager and young adult, I had very little engagement with religious ideas and lived a hedonistic lifestyle characterised by alcohol and other drug misuse. In my mid 20’s this lifestyle resulted in me turning to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for help to stop drinking. The 12 Steps of AA suggest belief in a power greater than oneself as a method of recovery from addiction and of spiritual growth. AA literature is significantly influenced by Christian ideas and principles.

Early on in my relationship with the AA fellowship I accepted the concept of God suggested in the literature and found it difficult to think of the God word in any other way than that taught by Christianity. My thinking took on board some new age spirituality during my 30’s, but then difficulties with depression led to me developing atheistic beliefs in my early 40’s. Approaching my late 40’s I adopted what I would describe as a humanistic or natural sense of spirituality. My focus was on the practice of virtue as a positive way of being in the world. The Unitarian (1) aphorism ‘deed not creed’ comes to mind. A spirituality of action rather than one of dogmatic belief.

Around this period, I started to attend my local Unitarian chapel where they held a weekly Taoist meditation and discussion group. The Tao is commonly interpreted as ‘the way’, the fundamental wisdom and balance underlying the natural world. It’s a non-dualistic philosophy suggesting that everything is part of a whole and that separation is illusory. The Taoist Yin-Yang symbol representing that opposites are part of a unified whole and interrelated. This idea of a unified reality that permeates all things (Tao) can be interpreted in a secular, spiritual, or religious sense.

Taoist ideas have helped in my relationship with 12 Step philosophy. The belief in balance, peace, wisdom, and harmony as the essence of things, and to which one aligns oneself through meditation and mindful or effortless action, relates well to a nondual concept of God. It eliminates for me the anthropomorphic idea of God (ascribing human characteristics to God), which many suggest is a projection of the human imagination and promulgated via the monotheistic religions.

This brings me to the belief in a divine cosmos or unity. There are several belief systems that lend themselves to this concept. I would like to briefly outline just three of them – all beginning with the letter P:  Pantheism, Panentheism, and Panpsychism.  Pantheism literally translates as ‘all, or everything, is God.’ It’s an idea that can be traced back to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, as well as the Hindu texts the Upanishads, and early Taoism.

Pantheism is the belief that nature/universe and God are one and the same thing. That nature is sacred and should be thought of and treated as such by human beings. In this sense God is immanent throughout the world and present within everything, including human beings who are inherently part of nature. There are various versions of pantheism along a spectrum ranging from religious versions to purely secular, modern pantheism that aligns strongly with a scientific view of the world. Generally, pantheism views the universe as a creative force, positive in its direction, and that combines both matter and mind. Mind or consciousness in pantheism is not a separate entity but part of the whole. The pantheist view of God/nature is non-personal towards human beings.

Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, an early enlightenment period philosopher, is considered by many to be the “prophet” of Western pantheism in the modern era. He was born in 1632 in the Jewish area of Amsterdam. He was excommunicated for his radical views about the nature of God, and mistakenly accused of being an atheist. To the contrary, he was deeply conscious of God, but not in the anthropomorphic sense preached by the Judaeo-Christian religion. Spinoza thought there was only one substance from which everything manifested and was unified with. God is not transcendent or separate from the world.. God is nature and is the world.

Pantheism as described lends itself to what is called panpsychism. While separate philosophies, the two world views are often associated, and many pantheists are also panpsychists. Panpsychism literally translates ‘all is mind’. It is the radical idea that consciousness is an inherent property of the universe. That all matter is conscious or contains varying degrees of consciousness. This ranges from the smallest sub-atomic particles that contain very simple properties of consciousness, to more complex formations of matter that have more developed consciousness. (e.g., animals and humans)

This idea is contrary to mainstream scientific materialism which suggests that consciousness somehow emerges from complex formations of unconscious matter (i.e. nervous systems/brains). That only matter exists. Science has failed to prove this theory and it is often referred to as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. How is consciousness produced by unconscious matter? Science can only speculate. Panpsychism is also speculative, but many credible philosophers (e.g., Phillip Goff and David Chalmers) and scientists in the modern era increasingly think this theory of mind more plausible than the current mechanistic model offered by materialism.

Belief in panpsychism goes back thousands of years to the start of philosophical thought. Traces of it can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and the philosophy of ancient Greece, as well as many indigenous belief systems around the world. It declined in the 20^th century, but recent developments in neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21^st century. As with pantheism, there are various forms of panpsychism ranging from the atheistic to the more spiritual or religiously minded versions. However, they all take the view that consciousness is the fundamental reality from which the material world emanates.

The term ‘panentheism’ is used to describe a middle way between pantheism and classical theism. The term translates ‘all [is] in God’. Meaning that the world is in God and God is immanent in the world. It doesn’t mean that the two things are the same thing as in pantheism.. rather it suggests that the world is a manifestation of God who is also transcendent of it.. God is more than the cosmos, but intimately related to it. It’s an idea that brings God closer to us.. a power that lies within and beyond us. This removes the anthropomorphism and separateness found within theism – as God is part of the world.

As with pantheism (monistic) and panpsychism (monistic), panentheism (monistic, dualistic, and pluralistic) has different forms and can be found throughout the history of philosophy and religion. As it bridges the space between pantheism and theism it’s commonly found within various religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Christian mysticism.

All three of the ideas I’ve outlined in relation to the nature of God and reality have been personally helpful to me in my search for spiritual meaning and understanding. They’ve helped me to move away from the traditional idea of God as a separate being outside of myself and nature, towards a faith in something greater but also inherently part of me and the world I live in. Pantheism and panpsychism can be interpreted as compatible with a scientific view of the world (according to many eminent scholars) but give more meaning to life than the rather dark view of current materialism that seems to be nihilistic and portrays the cosmos as a large unconscious mechanism. Panentheism may go beyond the current scientific view of the world, but that doesn’t make it implausible. It’s more compatible than traditional theism as God and nature are more intimately related within a panentheistic worldview

Science doesn’t have all the answers (and often speculates) and it’s an arrogant assumption that asserts that it will do at some point in the future.

For me, an open-mindedness towards a sacred, alive, conscious, and ultimately divine world gives more meaning and purpose to life than belief in a purely mechanistic, unconscious world that we can exploit for our own short-term pleasure. Scientific materialism encourages human beings’ self-importance and selfishness and tends to detach us from nature or God which is the very source of our being and happiness.

The philosophies I’ve described offer a picture of a unity between nature, human beings, and something greater, whether that is a sacred world, consciousness that exists beyond ourselves, or a transcendent creative force that is also present within us.

1. Unitarianism: a religious approach that does not tell people what to believe but instead encourages a free search for spiritual meaning and truth. Many Unitarians have a non-dualistic worldview (although not all do) and believe in the interrelatedness and unity of all things. The approach respects independent thought, reason, science, art, humanity, and the natural world, as well as the diversity of religious and spiritual traditions from around the world.

Listen to the Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’ on the subject of Panpsychism.