Lorimer

David Lorimer

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees in me; my eye and God's eye, that is one eye and one vision, one knowledge and one love

Meister Eckhart

It is not we who know God, it is God who knows himself in us

Frithjof Schuon

These two mystical quotations introduce a participatory or reflexive definition of God that is elaborated in some detail and with considerable subtlety in the trilogy Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. The book speaks extensively of the 'Divine Dichotomy', the metaphysical root of which is contained in the juxtaposition of two propositions, both of which are said to be true, namely 'We are One' and 'We are Many'. The principal implication of this view is a third proposition: 'Everything in the One Interrelates'. The second main feature of this view is the emphasis on a process understanding of God whereby Being and Becoming are one: 'I am the Supreme, comma, being. I am not the result of a process; I am The Process Itself. I am the Creator and The Process by which I am created.' And 'you are both the Creator and the Created' . Tat Tvam Asi. I and the Father are One. There is only One of Us.

Our current conceptions of God tend to be either predominantly transcendent or immanent. The Isa Upanishad states: Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear. When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?' Further on is the warning: 'Into deep darkness fall those who follow the immanent. Into deeper darkness fall those who follow the transcendent….He who knows both the transcendent and the immanent with the immanent overcomes death and with the transcendent attains immortality'. A participatory view of the relationship between the human and the Divine creates a radical panentheistic perspective whereby we are within the Divine and the Divine within us. Categories implying separation must then be ditched, but this is especially difficult since concepts are intrinsically based on distinction and differentiation! This view also has radical implications for our understanding of good and evil.