NOW – CHAPTER 4 SAMPLE

People often say, when they do not know the answer, “Who knows what is in the mind of God?”

People say, “God knows all.”

Take the common conception of God as a divine being that creates and governs the universe. Then take all the people here on Earth–what they all are thinking, what they all have been, and what they all will be.

Imagine that God knows all that. Then add all the other conscious forms of life on Earth, as well as the history of the planet and solar system. Imagine that God knows that as well.

Then realize that the Earth is a speck of dust in a commonplace galaxy. Remember that there are trillions of stars and billions of galaxies, and uncounted billions of planets. Try to imagine a mind that knows all this.

What would it be like? One thing is certain. It would not be like the human mind. 

But would God even have a Self? Is God self-aware?

What need would God have for self-awareness?

Humans have self-awareness. Some animals surely have forms of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a curse and a blessing. It creates loneliness. It creates unhappiness. If God were self-aware, God would be lonely. 

Does God get lonely?

THE SINGULARITY OF THE SELF

The self can only be aware of its own self by knowing that there is another outside that is not the self.

If God is everything, then what would exist outside God for God to be self-aware? If God isn’t everything, then what is this thing outside that is not God?

What is a mind? What are the makings of a mind–– neural synapses, connections, electrical impulses, fields of energy? Some would call it a brain, but what use would a brain be for God? A brain is far too small to hold everything. 

If we use the concept of ‘membrane’ instead of ‘brain’, could God be the membrane that binds the electrical impulses–fused, united, linked, and bound together to create thought?

What is this membrane made of? 

Is it made of electrical fields or atomic and subatomic particles? 

Quarks and electrons seem to only have a definite location––a place in time––when they are observed. Are they only the result of observations? Or is there something there that we cannot perceive?

If objects are the results of observation, then awareness and conceptions would be essential to everything. Observation would be what causes the universe to come into being. Observations would be the history, the present, and the form, the basis of the ideas for the future of all.

SELF-AWARENESS

Who says that what is observed must be self-aware? The observer does not need to be self-aware. The world existed before self-awareness. So, as far as we can tell, the universe has only had self-awareness for a minute fraction of an eternal epoch. The universe has gotten along quite well for billions of years without self-awareness.

So do we live in a fraction of an eon when the mud learned to think, stand up, and become self-aware?

And does that matter at all to the mind of God that has no self and no need for a self?