The Guy Increasing

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Holy Spirit: No God From Somewhere Else":

Hi Dan,

This may seem like a most basic question, but I am wondering if you could unpack "God is your own wonderful human imagination" a la Neville. And I would ask you to please if you can, explain it like you're talking to a ten year old ;) because I find the concepts difficult to grasp.

Neville says my imagination is God. Is that the only part of "me" that is God? He preaches non-duality (no separation), yet there seems to be no way around dualism. He taught "I am God" but also taught that I (the human "I") am the operant power (the one steering God). This is dualistic, unless God is steering God.

I'm wondering what, to your thinking, constitutes "God" in Neville's statement that "God is your own wonderful human imagination." And I realize you use the term Ineffable. Still yet you have a blog delving into the nature of God and Man, so please indulge the question.

In Neville terms, is "God" solely my unconditioned awareness of being? Adding anything to "I Am" is adding to the name of God, he says. So, what about my thoughts, my mental diet, my feelings... are those God too? If I have a negative thought such as "I'm so stupid," is that God having that thought. IS that thought God? Or is that "me"? (separate from God). If God is consciousness then how can any thought not be God?

Or is "God" just pure consciousness, pure unconditioned awareness of being (if so, Neville's calling God "imagination" is a misnomer)? If God is pure unawareness of being then who/what is thinking? Who/what is "adding to the name of God"? Many differentiate it by use of the word "ego." But if God is creator of all, then God is creator of said ego, and is creator of who/what is thinking and of all the thoughts being entertained.

Do you see my confusion?

Anonymous at 1:24 PM
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Dear Anonymous at 1:24,

Yes. You probably foresaw that this would have to be its own post. Thank you for the question. Oneness indeed is a hard thing to grasp. I am sure the ancient contemplatives wondered, too, where is the dividing line between thought and body, between physical and spiritual, between our spirit and God's spirit? The Sanskrit advaita expresses it well: "without division -- not one, but not two." Which sounds like gobbledygook if one cannot conceive of two halves seamlessly being one. There is only the Ineffable. Everything is an expansion of the Ineffable.

The thing is, there is the appearance of there being two, where part of one is acting like something else. Perhaps you have seen someone hypnotized. The person hypnotized is one consciousness, and his or her apparent consciousness comes under the control - to a large degree - of the hypnotist. But the hypnotized person's true consciousness is still back there governing things. It won't jump off a building or knowingly shoot someone -- you cannot make it do something it doesn't want to do. It is there, but hidden, while the apparent consciousness makes a clown of itself. Yet this is one mind: the one person hypnotized is both the supermind and the mind dumb enough to allow itself to be hypnotized.

"This is dualistic, unless God is steering God." Yes, exactly: God IS steering God (thank you; I will use it.) That is a perfect way to look at what is going on. And you are correct, no thought is not God. We are operant power not in that we are steering God, but in that we are God becoming what we believe. He is increasing in us, through us.

Maybe it would help if we ran the clock back a little bit. What helped me was Rabbi David A. Cooper's God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism (1997; New York: Riverhead books). He inspired my concept of the Ineffable, of which I have no concept except that It is way beyond Ein Sof, the Endlessness. Sorry for going off tangent so quickly. Back in time kazillions of years ago, in my philosophic speculation, there was an unconscious something which realized that it was. What was it, and what could it do? It had to find out. No one to guide or teach it. Knowledge of "I am this; I can do that," developed over eons of time. Its thought, consciousness, imagination was Its manifestation of what It was.

Long story short: The Ineffable discovered everything It was and could do, but Its imagination did not. It was stationary. Reflexive, if that's the right word. The Ineffable willed (e.g.) to blink, and in Its imagination It imagined, blink. That's why I stress Neville's lecture "Unless I Go Away." For the Ineffable's imagination to discover all that it is and can do, to be Its perfect and complete manifestation, it had to be cut loose to discover all that it is and can do. Welcome to the looseness. We are free to be individual, but not independent, for we are the Ineffable/Its imagination. To THAT we are locked in.

Back to kazillions of year ago: The something which was, was spirit. It had no physicality. The only action it could take was imagination. So the only thing it could "do" was imagine. It could imagine this dimension, and what it imagined, it could become. When it became something, it was not separate from that thing, but was it. It became this dimension. It became the powers in this dimension. It became the particulate matter. It became the consciousness in things, in the electromagnetic fields, and in every living thing. What the Ineffable "does," It does through Its imagination, which is "God" to us. Every part of us is God. We can know God, who we are, but we cannot know the Imaginer except by what It imagines.

The Big Guy intends, I believe, for everything of Its extension, Its imagination, to be wholly consistent with Its nature. For what It has become to be as mature, capable, and knowing as the Ineffable Itself. This is going to take awhile. The Ineffable already has an imaginary image of what Its full and complete, mature Manifestation is to be. That was the "Beginning" in Genesis 1:1. That "Beginning" is the end we are to be at the end of the Book of Revelation. So we are all It or "Him," the Ineffable, Its manifestation, on the way to becoming that manifestation.

From the incomprehensible Most High "Ineffable" Beyond-being to the quantum-energy units floating in space, all are seamlessly one thing: the Ineffable. It is God imagining in us, allowing whatever happens to get us to turn to and discover this oneness. It is where we have come from and where we are going to. It is us, yet SEEMS different because we have given It a name. Names create the illusion of separation, of difference and otherness. That is an unfortunate effect. Part of our mind, the part we are aware of, has been temporarily stupided, "ignoranced," -- hypnotized -- to discover and develop what we are until we are like the Source, the Ineffable we cannot know outright except by what It does.

It is very interesting: we need to submit to God, take up what It is doing, and in that taking up surrender to it (God). It is a loving cooperation, the putting a submitted hand to the work in agreement, having aligned energies. "I want such-and-such . . . what do You want? THAT I will do, praising you for what I want." I have heard from those who have gone this route, that before long what they wanted, they don't want it anymore. Well, I am getting to preaching now. God bless you.

I hope something in here helps ease your confusion.

Maybe not. For a ten-year-old? How about there is one super-big guy, “God,” who is thinking. He is him, and his thoughts are him, too. Every thought he has is him, and he is thinking the thoughts you think are you. He is thinking every thing, and every one else, too. His thoughts have the power to become the things he thinks. So every thing, and every one, in every way, are him.

Dan Steele