Metaphor

Have you ever had a genuine spiritual experience?

No, I don't mean speaking in tongues or hearing a deity's voice in your head--that's called being crazy. What I mean is coming face to face with something profound, mysterious, or unimaginably beautiful and experiencing a moment of peace and wordless understanding.

The feeling eludes definition. Trying to grasp it with your mind simply disperses it back into the ether, leaving behind an imperfect memory. If you tried, you might describe it with words like "awe," "reverence," "wonder," or "zen."

People often experience such moments while deeply pondering biblical scripture. The words, chosen and arranged carefully by people who were well-versed in the language of the spirit, allow the reader to slip through the doors of symbolism and into the deeper meaning hidden within.

That's the core of every spiritual experience: cutting through falsehood, illusion, and symbolism to glimpse the guiding principle that governs and underlies all things.

For a brief moment, you break through the barrier and reconnect, if only briefly, to the source.

Religion is not the only door through which one may experience revelation. One may find it by meditating, stumbling upon a scene of natural beauty, reading an eloquent line of poetry, or contemplating ideas related to the guiding principle.

For me, there is no better way to incur a genuine spiritual experience than by studying the vastness, majesty, and complexity of the universe, and realizing how blessed we are to experience it for this brief moment of awareness.

It's no coincidence that our ancestors felt drawn to the night sky, that the dancing lights and their movements became the first human myths, and that those myths turned into religions. Even back then we sensed that we were a part of something greater than ourselves.

Just how great is that "something?"

Forget the universe for a moment and think only of our Milky Way galaxy, which measures 120,000 light years in diameter. It contains between 100 and 400 billions stars held together in a whirling spiral by the immense gravitational pull of the super-massive black hole at its center. Oh, and it's hurtling through space toward the Andromeda galaxy at 110 kilometers per second. Even at this velocity, the collision won't occur for another 4 billion years or so.

Delve down to the subatomic and here too you will find a micro-cosmos filled with mind blowing factoids. Particles pop in and out of existence and all matter is composed almost entirely of empty space. Want a real spiritual experience? Learn about string theory.

It should come as no surprise that many great scientists and philosophers have come to regard the universe itself as a divine being of sorts. By using reason, thinkers throughout history have been able to scratch and peel away reality's thin veneer, revealing the Truth beneath.

Far from being at odds with spirituality, science actually complements it.

If a greater understanding of space, evolution, nature, biology, and the human mind fills you with awe, reverence, and/or wonder, then you may be a pantheist. And you're in very good company, too. Some of the greatest thinkers in human history were also pantheists.

What is Pantheism?

Pantheism is the fusing together of science and spirituality. It is the recognition of something great, mysterious, and holy in the inner-workings of the cosmos. 

Don't let the "theism" at the end of the word fool you: pantheism isn't a religion. There's no doctrine, church, or holy book. Pantheists don't worship Yahweh or take the Bible as literal truth.

The star-studded firmament is the pantheist's Sistine Chapel; the secluded wood is her temple; science is her scripture.

Who is her God? Let's ask our good friend Seneca:

If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of a deity.

Nature--and by extension, the universe--is the pantheistic God.

Which begs the question: what if God was always meant to be a metaphor for the universe? What if our ancestors were trying to verbalize what they saw above and felt within? It may not be apparent at first, but God and the universe have a lot in common.

God is without maker; the universe appears to be the same.

God is everywhere at all times; so is the universe.

God is an intelligent designer; so is the universe. Evolution is the universe's unseen hands: with them, it took three elements--hydrogen, helium, and a pinch of lithium--and made all the marvels you see around you.

In Romans 8:11, the apostle Paul writes: "The Spirit of God lives in you." In 1 Corinthians 3:16, he writes: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" 2 Timothy 1:14: "Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." And so on.

Seneca, who influenced the early Christian movement, wrote the following: "God is near you, he is with you, he is within you."

What about the universe? According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, rock star astrophysicist and host of the TV show Cosmos:

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us. 

God is a stickler for rules. So is the universe! And whereas God's rules are often nonsensical or arbitrary, the universe's rules are measurable, testable, and constant. Gravity, the speed of light, evolution, thermodynamics, and a slew of other laws govern matter at every level, from the subatomic to the cosmological.

God speaks through divine revelation; the universe speaks through mathematics.

God loves to play favorites. Jews, Muslims, and Christians--not to mention the countless sects fragmenting each of these groups--all claim to be the chosen people of God.

The universe plays favorites, too. It has selected humanity to inherit its most valuable gift--a piece of its own ruling faculty, which the ancients called the Logos. How do we know this? Look around you. No other animal on earth has the ability to reason, to theorize, to test, to create, to unravel complex problems, and to transform its environment. No other animal has discovered a way to decipher the universe's secret language.

Make no mistake: we are not special in the universe's eyes. It did not knowingly choose us to receive its gift. Circumstance made us beneficiaries; we are free to use our inheritance for good or for ill, and in doing so we decide our own fate.

***

So when a pantheist refers to God, he isn't talking about the Abrahamic God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims; he refers to the pantheistic God of Lucius Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and many others.

Let's be real: he's a closet pantheist.

The pantheistic God won't intervene in our affairs. It won't bring us salvation or damnation. It gave us a powerful tool and set us loose. It is entirely up to us to learn how to use this tool and put it to good use. If enough people can do this, we may one day bring everlasting peace to earth without the aid of an imaginary sky-father.

/rant over