Summary In Source of Reality I argued that the Source must exist as the uncaused cause of all that exists. From Consciousness is All, we know that 'all that exists' is equivalent to 'all the minds that exist' (where mind or consciousness refers to all elements of awareness such as thoughts, feelings and perceptions). So the Source is the uncaused cause of all the minds that exist. I will now argue that the Source has certain properties, which according to our limited faculties we may describe as 'infinite consciousness', 'infinite power', 'infinite bliss', and so on. Hence, I will now refer to this source as the 'Divine Source', where the adjective 'divine' assumes its full richness. Finally, a tentative identification will be made between the supposedly 'created' minds and the infinite consciousness which 'creates' them.
As mentioned before, this notion of creation is not that of one distinct object 'manufacturing' another distinct object at some given time (i.e. the traditional Judaeo-Christian notion of God). Indeed, there are no 'distinct objects' in the sense of self-contained entities, material or otherwise, that are 'external' to mind. Creation here means that the 'presence' of the Source is necessary at all times to sustain the existence of anything (i.e. any mind) other than the Source. This was argued in Source of Reality on the basis of 'self-evident' intuition.
Now it has always seemed 'self-evident' to me that this Divine Source, if it exists, has certain 'qualities', perhaps the most important of which is that of 'consciousness'. (If the philosophical technician doesn't like calling consciousness a 'quality', then we can simply say that the Divine Source is conscious.) Somehow it hardly seems necessary to me to argue this. We have already disposed of materialism, but even if a material world were shown to exist, it takes only a little philosophical insight to realize that the Source could not possibly be a material (and hence unconscious) object. No material object could be the miraculous Source of existence, since matter, were it to exist, would be utterly inert and without the requisite 'miraculous' power. Therefore, if the Source is not unconscious matter, then it must be conscious. (Really, 'matter' is a word to describe whatever might be 'external' to consciousness and hence unconscious.) At a more basic level, it simply seems absurd to me to suppose that the Source, whatever it is, might not be conscious. Surely any 'power' capable of 'creating' both itself and all existence 'out of nothing' has all the attributes of this 'creation', the primary (or rather only) attribute being consciousness itself.
Perhaps it does not follow from 'logic' alone that the Source must necessarily have every attribute of that of which it is the source. The point is simply that it seems inconceivable to me that the power that can create consciousness might itself be unconscious. Anyhow, with matter disposed of, what other 'mode' of being remains?One might always postulate some kind of existence beyond anything we can conceive of (such as mind or matter). Again, I repeat that the arguments that deny matter work for matter in its most general sense, that is, anything 'outside of' or 'other than' consciousness. Hence all of reality must be conscious, including the Divine Source.
Perhaps it is worth dwelling a bit more on this crucial point. Suppose that the Source were postulated to have some 'mode of being' beyond either mind or matter. I maintain that this would be a logical contradiction if by 'mind' we mean anything 'within' awareness and by matter anything 'not within' awareness. These two possibilities are mutually exclusive, from a logical point of view, and so mind and matter in their most general sense would seem to exhaust all possibilities. Furthermore, the arguments against mere 'physical' matter — the matter that we initially postulate for our world — would seem to hold against any such 'generalized' notion of matter. These arguments are, once again, that any such notion of matter is certainly useless and unverifiable, and it is also most probably meaningless as well, in a sense to be nailed down later. (My previous discussion about matter being a 'confused ghost of perception' was a first attempt along these lines. I have discussed this a bit more in some more recent articles on this site.)
Nevertheless, in the case of Divinity or the Ultimate, one should always be receptive to the possibility of some aspect of its being utterly beyond our comprehension. This is not so much a matter of humility or piety as of the immensity of the subject. Even 'immensity' seems like a paltry word, and it seems safer to substitute the word 'transcendence', although once again I have misgivings about an abstract word that might be divorced from any possible experience (i.e. that might refer to something that is not in any consciousness, not even that of the Source).
Also, it should be said that words like 'power', 'creation' and 'out of nothing' are being used somewhat figuratively here, as they must with so esoteric a topic. I will try to clarify some of these terms in the discussion following this summary.
Furthermore, if the Source is conscious, then its consciousness must in some sense be infinite. How could the 'power' capable of so inconceivable (yet undeniable) an act as the 'creation' of all that exists be limited in some arbitrary way? Surely, any notion of a 'finite' amount of consciousness would have to be arbitrary when applied to the Source. Why some given amount rather than another? Our problem is not in worrying whether the words 'infinite consciousness' are true in relation to the Source; rather, our task is to understand (to the best of our ability) just what these words mean. At any rate, it now seems appropriate to refer to the Divine Source as the Supreme Consciousness — supreme in the sense of infinite and unlimited.
A similar argument could be given, with somewhat less conviction, for other divine qualities, such as infinite power and infinite bliss. The power to 'create' both itself and existence is surely 'infinite' in some meaningful sense. (However, the existence of suffering is indeed a major problem, which we will try to address shortly.) The quality of infinite bliss may be a bit more problematic. For one thing, perhaps the Supreme Consciousness sympathizes with our predicament and 'feels our pain' as much as (if not more than) we do. Or perhaps I am grossly personalizing the Supreme Consciousness. At any rate, I attribute bliss to the Supreme Consciousness based on a belief that bliss is an inherent property of 'pure' consciousness. (And I do believe that the Supreme Consciousness must also be pure and perfect in itself, for much the same reason as it is infinite.) The notion that consciousness becomes increasingly blissful as it becomes increasingly pure is derived mostly from my reading of mystics, but it is also to some degree manifest in us.
Note that even the Supreme Consciousness might not be capable of formal inconsistencies, such as squaring a circle.
So the Supreme Consciousness is 'infinite' mind and we are (or seem to be) 'finite' mind. (Are we not limited in what we can think and perceive? Or does this merely seem to be true because we do not fully 'know' ourselves, like the poor man who does not know that gold is buried under his house?) Next I would like to identify our own finite mind with the infinite mind of the Supreme Consciousness. This has been done in various philosophies of the East (such as the Advaita Vedanta and certain Mahayana Buddhist scriptures) as well as in some mystical writings of the West. However, due to the daring nature of this proposition, I am not as sure of my conclusion as I am of, say, the view that only mind exists and matter does not.
The objection that Buddhists do not believe in 'God' does not bother me. The Mahayana 'Buddha-Mind' is Divinity as far as I am concerned. It is not the 'creator' God of Genesis, but as discussed in Source of Reality, my notion of 'creation' is not the usual temporal one either. Notions of a 'Universal Mind' pervade Eastern religious thought, and that is what I mean by 'Divinity'. I will return to a discussion of Buddhism and Vedanta on another page some day when I have the time.
My basic reason for identifying the Supreme Consciousness with our own mind is as follows. If the Supreme Consciousness is infinite mind (somewhat like an infinite ocean), and if our mind is finite mind (like a drop of water), and if the presence of the Supreme Consciousness is necessary everywhere that a mind exists in order to sustain the existence of that mind, then it seems to me that the drop inevitably merges back into the ocean which is 'there' sustaining it and from which it 'came' in the first place. (Of course, notions of location and origination must be treated here with great care and in a figurative sense.)
For example, in Consciousness is All, I argued that space (and time) are within consciousness and that consciousness is not within space or time. For a similar reason, it is erroneous to suppose that the various minds (yours and mine) are located within some kind of enveloping space (and by that I mean some space other than the discredited physical space of materialism), despite the fact that our minds seem (at least superficially) to be distinct. This adds credence to the notion that the Supreme Consciousness is not some kind of super-consciousness 'out there' somewhere sustaining our minds by 'remote control' (or 'action at a distance' as a physicist might say).
Naturally, a problem with this idea is immediately evident. If our mind is essentially the same as that of the Supreme Consciousness, then why are we so imperfect? The answer, I believe, is that the Supreme Consciousness provides the 'substance' (if I might use that dangerous word) of our own mind, but the actual qualities of our mind evolve according to cause and effect (i.e. the development of our personality). In effect, the Supreme Consciousness is allowing its own 'being' to suffer temporary imperfection so that 'beings' other than itself may taste the joy of existence. But first they must develop to the required state of spiritual perfection before they can taste this joy.
This 'substance' of our finite mind, provided by the Supreme Consciousness, is nothing other than awareness itself. This can also be called the 'being' of the Supreme Consciousness, which is totally consistent with our fundamental principle that only consciousness exists. This awareness can assume all the qualities of existence: the colors of the rainbow, every kind of sound, every other kind of sensation, and every thought and feeling of our internal awareness. In every case, there is something both clear and mysterious, which I call 'awareness', which underlies them all, and which I also call 'substance', for lack of a better word. Of course, we will have to examine this key idea much more carefully.If this view is essentially correct, then there must be some deep reason why our mind or spirit must evolve towards perfection. In other words, the Supreme Consciousness cannot 'create' us instantaneously in a state of perfection, or it would surely have done so. This would seem to be a limitation on its power. However, we must remember that it is trying to do something that would seem impossible, namely, to reproduce itself. (According to a later view in which the Supreme Consciousness is also a unity, this should be mathematically impossible!) Perhaps spiritual evolution is the price we must pay for achieving the impossible. This will be discussed in more detail when we get to the purpose of life.
Our view of ourselves as separate from the Supreme Consciousness is then an illusion, perhaps a good illusion, perhaps one intended by the Supreme Consciousness itself. By allowing a 'part' of itself to sustain the illusion of independence, the 'experience of being' is in effect multiplied. We are created so that the joy of the Supreme Consciousness in its own existence can be shared with 'others'. The paradox is that this separate existence is only an illusion, but one that is effective enough to accomplish the desired aim. The illusion of separate existence is equivalent to separate existence itself. This illusion is still a form of consciousness, so that in saying 'the illusion of separate existence' we might as well be saying 'the consciousness of separate existence'. Since existence is consciousness, as we have seen, the consciousness of separate existence is as good as separate existence itself (even though no such thing actually exists!).
The word 'illusion' often has a bad connotation in Eastern religions (i.e. delusion rather than illusion). So my notion of a 'good illusion' may seem objectionable to some. Let us say that it will become good when our goal of perfection is achieved. But then, it may or may not cease to be an illusion. That is, if perfection is a return to the Supreme Consciousness and the realization that our true nature is identical with its essence, then perhaps we can say that the illusion ceases. However, I still have a feeling that perhaps we never totally lose some sense of being a separate being, even if logic indicates our ultimate identity with the Supreme Consciousness. In this sense, I would seem to deviate somewhat from some of the Eastern religions that have inspired me.Indeed, Advaita Vedanta would say that God (Brahman) and our own Self (Atman or awareness) are strictly identical. Likewise, Mahayana generally claims that our true inner nature is the same as Buddha Nature. Furthermore, many Mahayana scriptures emphasize the 'unity' of Buddha Nature, even to the point of seeming to deny any ultimate distinction between conscious beings (i.e. all notions of separate existence are illusory and we all have the 'same' Buddha Nature). My notion of some kind of separation — however illusory — might be considered untenable by both these systems. This subject is permeated with paradox. (Even the Vedanta has various schools of thought, distinguished by the degree to which they equate Atman with Brahman.)
On the one hand I am indeed claiming that our mind is ultimately identical with the Supreme Consciousness, in some essential sense, and this idea was based on a kind of 'logical' argument. However, I also take it as a phenomenological fact that I seem to be a separate mind from other conscious beings (who do not feel my pain and pleasure nor I theirs), not to mention a separate mind from the Supreme Consciousness itself (clearly there is some difference — even for so hyperventilating a philosopher as myself!). Both these claims seem true to me in some sense, and it therefore takes further philosophical reflection to reconcile them.
Undoubtedly the resolution has to do with our own degree of enlightenment and spiritual perfection. The difference that we perceive between ourself and the Supreme Consciousness most likely has to do with our ignorance of the ultimate identity that already exists, as maintained by both Vedanta and Mahayana. And since consciousness is reality, our deluded views are unfortunately very real for us. We have to distinguish between truth as seen by those who know and by those who do not.
I find it harder to understand how my spirit is ultimately the same as that of another person, since our thoughts and feelings seem so obviously distinct. It is easier for me to believe that the Supreme Consciousness is somehow the foundation of each of our minds, each taken separately. Yet if the Supreme Consciousness is ultimately One, in some sense to be discussed later (see Mind is a Unity), then it follows logically that we are all one in some ultimate sense. It is all very mysterious and tantalizing! We will of course have to revisit this.
At any rate, I do believe that the idea of 'illusory separate existence' provides a good rationale for our existence — to (apparently but effectively) multiply the delight of the Supreme Consciousness in its own nature and existence. (Or maybe it just got lonely.)
A further 'paradox' is that as we progress spiritually, we become more like the Supreme Consciousness, so that we eventually 'return' to the Supreme Consciousness. Do we ultimately merge back into it and lose all trace of separate identity (even the illusion of separate identity)? Of course, I cannot know the ultimate truth about this ultimate experience, but I can do my best using (what I am pleased to call) logic. (That quip doesn't mean that I am not serious about this!) It seems to me that if what is being argued is essentially correct, then some trace of the illusion of separate existence should remain, in order that the joy of the Supreme Consciousness in its own being be multiplied. But perhaps this trace is also effectively negligible or infinitesimal.
As already acknowledged, much of what has just been said is highly paradoxical, which is not too surprising given the nature of the topic. (Besides, it's more fun that way.) We need to carefully examine and analyze what has been said, and this will eventually be done in the following. (It may take a long time until I get around to it.) Note however, that these conclusions were reached, based on some kind of 'logic', from ideas that were previously derived and that seem reasonable and certain to me. Some would cite these paradoxical conclusions regarding the Supreme Consciousness as evidence that my whole philosophy is flawed. But who would deny that a discussion of the Divine is extremely difficult to all but the angels? And who wouldn't expect some paradox to arise regarding a topic so vastly beyond ordinary experience?
Well, that's enough for now...