Being a Panentheist

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What I mean by panentheism.

It’s more “inner light” theory as in Augustine or maybe more contemporarily, Unitarian Universalism. Without a controlling Light at the top of it all. That is a sense of divinity without a God.

All human conception (I think along with Douglas Hofstadter) is metaphor. In existential phenomenology language (or metaphor), the light is the background experience or consciousness. It is the light present to itself as light searching to be, know, and enjoy the world. It is invisible perception or pre-objective experience of human intentionality to things as objects in the world. It is a contextual perception of one’s own existence in transition, in search for “truth, justice, and the American way” (as Superman would say).

Merleau-Ponty calls this dimension of human existence “transcendence.”Lonergan calls it not the “concept,” but the “notion,” of God in human existence. It is the infinite desire to know all there is to know to itself. It is the Kantian noumena within the phenomena. It is Socrates pursuit of the Platonic transcendents especially the Good. Dewey calls it “religious experience” which he differentiates from religion and its doctrine, ritual, and organization.

I think Stoics and Buddhists might be considered panenthiests. The divine in, though not of, all beings. Heidegger’s “Being” perceived in the human being there and here, now and then, but especially with oneself and others.

Panentheism works for me so I do not have to consider myself either an atheist or a theist but can appreciate art, science, myth, religion, and philosophy as a way of being human. It works for me in the ethics of integrity and the politics of democracy when we bring ourselves together in all our diversity to act to know and build our city and our world towards a flourishing humankind.

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