The Divine Space We Live In

The Bhavagad-Gita, Roland Faber, and Process Theology

Suresh Dhawan avatar link Suresh Dhawan

With his interpretation of Krishna's theophany in Bhagavad Gita below, Roland Faber invites us to imagine God as the divine space within which we live  He points out that this "space" can be understood through various philosophical and theological lenses: panentheism, monism, and various shades of non-dualism and dualism.  What is important, he says, is to know that this space is alive with spirit, with breath. 

What does it come to?  In my view, to know God as divine space is know two things.  It is to know that God is more than us, but not faraway.  It is to know  that we ourselves are always already inside a resplendent space beyond our senses.  Not a three-dimensional space but rather an encompassing space that includes multiple dimensions, real and imagined.  You might imagine it on the analogy of Whitehead's extensive continuum and his notion of the Primordial Nature of God.  A small child on our planet is inside this space, as is a small puff of energy in a distant galaxy, as is an imaginary number in the mind of an mathematician, as is is an eleven-winged angel who may (or may not) dwell in our imaginations.  The gods and goddesses are likewise part of this resplendent space.  Whatever is real in any sense, actual or potential, is inside the divine space.  Krishna's theopany is a display of the resplendence.

To know this space is also to know (2) that this space is itself a breathing, an animating power, that is around us, beyond us, and within us.  It is an amazing space that is also, in its way, an amazing grace.  Divine space is not a vacuum, it is a force, a power, a breathing: ubiquitous and life-giving.  As Faber puts it: "What is important here is that the Spirit (brahman) is everywhere, in everything, the space of everything to be, and, in an important sense, closer to the self of everything than that self is to itself."

The purpose of the remainder of this page is to give you a chance to consider divine space for yourself.  The page is divided into three sections: an excerpt from Roland Faber in his book The Cosmic Spirit on Krishna's theophany; an introduction to process panentheism; and a discussion of Oneness.  I am the author of the second two sections, but to my mind Faber's is by far the most beautiful and evocative.  As will be clear, my own path is to interpret divine space through a panentheist lens, grateful that there are alternative ways alternative to my own.  In the house of theology, too, let there be many forms.

- Jay McDaniel, Sept. 24, 2021

​The Divine Space We Live In
​
Roland Faber on the Bhagavad Gita 

in THE COSMIC SPIRIT: Awakenings at the Heart
of All Religions, the Earth, and the Multiverse
 Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2021

What is important here is that the Spirit (brahman) is everywhere, in everything, the space of everything to be, and, in an important sense, closer to the self of everything than that self is to itself. 
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"Many images have been devised for this space of the Spirit. In the Bhagavad Gita (second century BCE), that most revered synthetic text of the Hindu epic Mahabharata (chs. 23–40), Lord Krishna, in the avataric presence as the charioteer of the prince, Arjuna, at one point in his teachings in the middle of a battlefield reveals himself to The Small Flame in Everything. Arjuna as the very space of spiritual existence, that is, as the Spirit that is brahman, ultimate reality, in its unity with atman, the universal Self of everything. It is one of the famous theophanies of religious world literature, besides the appearance of Yahweh to Moses on and around Mount Sinai (Exodus 3–33) and the transfiguration of Christ in the company of Moses and Elijah in front of his dislocated disciples Peter, John, and Andrew (Mark 9:2–8; Matthew 17:1–8; Luke 9:28–36).

​In this theophanic space, all things, the cosmos, appear(s) transfigured, as Krishna reveals his “cosmic manifestation” (ch. 11), a form that is not only formless but also includes all forms. In this space, the universal Spirit and the Self of all things are uncovered to be one. It is less important whether this is to be understood as unification or sameness, as interpretations in Hindu philosophy range from monistic and pantheistic (Adi Shankara, d. 820 CE) to diverse shades of nondualistic (Ramanuja, d. 1137 CE) and dualistic views (Madhva, d. 1317 CE); rather, what is important here is that the Spirit (brahman) is everywhere, in everything, the space of everything to be, and, in an important sense, closer to the self of everything than that self is to itself. In this form, the interiority of the Spirit appears also in Abrahamic traditions: in the Qur’an, God is said to be closer to our self than our own jugular vein (Qur’an 50:16), and Saint Augustine of Hippo.

​What is so unique in the vision of the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, is that it not only describes the experience, awesome and bewildering, of this naked open space, but also interprets this space for us in a divine voice. This whole theophany is so comprehensive, it warrants a few more details with regard to its presentation of the divine space we live in if we were ready to awaken to it. I will concentrate on three elements of the text: the experience of the spirit-space as infinite unity and multiplicity; the Gita’s interpretation of this space; and the “prophetic” projection of the meaning of this space in the voice of Lord Krishna himself.

This is how the Gita describes and interprets Arjuna’s vision: Arjuna saw in that universal form unlimited mouths and unlimited eyes. It was all wondrous. The form was decorated with divine, dazzling ornaments and arrayed in many garbs. He was garlanded gloriously, and there were many scents smeared over His body. All was magnificent, all-expanding, unlimited. This was seen by Arjuna. (11:11) If hundreds of thousands of suns rose up at once into the sky, they might resemble the effulgence of the Supreme Person in that universal form. (11:12) At that time Arjuna could see in the universal form of the Lord the unlimited expansions of the universe situated in one place although divided into many, many thousands. (11:13)

What a space! A space of infinite forms, imagined as infinitely many eyes, all seeing all from all perspectives, infinitely many perspectives in mutual viewing and perception. But also, infinitely many mouths, breaths in everything—everything breathing in and out everything else in mutual inherence, inhalation, in-taking; and all mouths divulge The Cosmic Spirit 32 the sacred sound (Om), the letters and word (AUM) that—according to the Mandukya Upanishad—is (of) God. One space folded in infinitely many places without losing its oneness. Dazzling ornamentation, not just emptiness. Magnificence, beauty, infinity, expansiveness. The supreme expression of God, a “personality” that is nothing like us. But still, this “personality” being not just less than a Thou, “it” rather indicates a space you can trust amidst all of its strangeness, and of unbearable complexity.

​Arjuna, overwhelmed, begins to pray and interpret what he experiences: O Lord of the universe, I see in Your universal body many, many forms—bellies, mouths, eyes—expanded without limit. There is no end, there is no beginning, and there is no middle to all this (11:16) . . . You are the origin without beginning, middle or end. You have numberless arms, and the sun and moon are among Your great unlimited eyes. By Your own radiance You are heating this entire universe. (11:19) Although You are one, You are spread throughout the sky and the planets and all space between. O great one, as I behold this terrible form, I see that all the planetary systems are perplexed. (11:20) Infinite arms and eyes, suns and moons in everything; everything consisting in its interior of these innumerous lights and perceptions and activations; infinite creativity in the smallest of places. A fire of a thousand suns in every being! The greatest of beings in the universe, as it were, like planetary systems and galaxies, but also the universal substructure of the fine-grained foam of space-time, move and shine from the perplexity of the wonder of being in a space filled with divine fire and light, and activity and breath, and song and beauty.

In Arjuna’s interpretation, the personality of God is the Spirit in everything, the radiance in which everything shines light on everything else, and the spread-out space in which everything is what it is in relation to everything else. Spirit, fire, space. Finally, this is how Krishna portrays and enacts his theophany to Arjuna: The Blessed Lord said: My dear Arjuna, . . . behold now My opulences, hundreds of thousands of varied divine forms, multicolored like the sea (11:5) . . . Behold the many things which no one has ever seen or heard before. (11:6) Whatever you wish to see can be seen all at once in this body. This universal form can show you all that you now desire, as well as whatever you may desire in the future. Everything is here completely. (11:7) But you cannot see Me with your present eyes. Therefore, I give to you divine eyes by which you can behold My mystic opulence. (11:8)

Not only are all things interior to themselves filled with the opulence of a divine manifold of light, heat, activity, breath, perception, and creativity. What is more, Krishna projects this spirit-space outward to include all possibilities, all potential directions of the realization of cosmic differences, and, most importantly here, all desires, all imaginations, all that could be. But to be able to perceive and awaken consciously to this infinite mutual relationality of interiority, Arjuna needs a new view, the eye of The Small Flame in Everything. God, as it were.

This is also a wild spiritual truth. Bahá’u’lláh, for instance, in sync with Sufi mysticism and the tradition of the Persian mystic-poets, relates, as recorded in the Gleanings (1935) of his writings (#127), that we can only spiritually know (irfan) God in everything and our Self if we “see” with the eyes of God. And the second chapter of the important Buddhist Lotus Sutra (between the first century BCE and the first century CE) discloses that only a Buddha knows (can “see”) a Buddha, which, in the Mahayana context, means that we must discover the space that is the Buddha-nature as the space that we are, by which we are surrounded and which is the essence (the heart of the heart) of everything.'

- Roland Faber in The Cosmic Spirit

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​Panentheism: The Universe as God's Body

by Jay McDaniel

​Panentheism is the idea that everything in the universe is part of God but that God is more than everything added together.  This way of thinking can be especially important to people with ecological sensibilities, because they can combine faith in God with a love of people, animals, and the earth.  They can say that living with respect and care for the community of life is one way of contributing to God's own life and also that God is in some way in the community of life itself: on the earth, in the soil, in plants and other animals, and in us.  Here God is not so far away, as if on a throne in the sky.

Two forms of panentheism

There are many forms of panentheism across the world's traditions.  In the West one can be found in the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677).  He sees the universe as a direct emanation of God's activity, such that everything that happens around us and within us is the outcome of a single divine activity.  The hills and rivers, the trees and stars, our innermost feelings and decisions, are all God godding.  We can call this emanationist panentheism.  

​The other can be found in the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.  He sees the universe and God as within each other and thus parts of each other, but also more than each other.  The hills and rivers, trees and stars, and our feelings and decisions have their independence and integrity, even as God is also present in us and we in God.  We can call this relational panentheism.  Whereas emanationist panentheism has one creative power, relational panentheism has multiple creative powers.

A Multi-Religious Option

Both forms of panentheism have their wisdom. Both can help people live with respect and care for the community of life, finding wholeness within themselves and helping to build communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, with no one left behind.  And both can be internalized and enriched by insights and practices from the many world religions.  You can be a Jewish panentheist, a Christian panentheist, a Muslim panentheism, a Hindu panentheist, and so on. Panentheism is a multi-religious option.

In what follows, then, I want to say a word about Whitehead's relational panentheism, often called "process philosophy" or "process theology."  It  has been developed by Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist thinkers in rich ways, some of whom are featured on this website. See, for example, Rabbi Bradley Artson's God Almighty? No Way!, or Bruce Epperly's Where is God in Alzheimer's Disease?, or John Cobb's Where is God in Earthquakes?,  or Monica Coleman's Making a Way of No Way, or Patricia Adams Farmer'sThe Quaking and Breaking of Everything  Many people find Whitehead's perspective particularly plausible because it is influenced by insights from science (early quantum theory, in particular) even as it is shaped by ethics, art, and religion, and because it helps us deal honestly with the question of how belief in God can be reconciled with the realities of tragedy and suffering.

Co-creativity without an absolute beginning

In explicating relational panentheism, I would say that we should start at the beginning, but from a process perspective there is no beginning.  Process theologians believe that the universe unfolds in a beginningless and endless series of cosmic epochs, each lasting billions of years; and they see God as the encompassing life in whom the universe unfolds.  Everything affects God all the time, and God is continuously present in the universe as an active influence; and yet the influence is that of compassion not coercion, of love not one-sided power.  Process theologians speak of God as creator, but by that they mean that God creates the universe through love, and they recognize that the universe creates itself, too, as it responds and does not respond to God. Thus process theologians affirm the co-creativity of God and the universe.

The universe is the body of God

One way to further understand panentheism in process theology is to say the universe is the body of God.  For process theologians the universe is not the body of God in the sense that everything that happens in the universe is a result of divine agency, but rather in the sense that God feels the happenings of the universe much like we feel the happenings in our own bodies: that is, as inside us yet more than us.   
 
How can this be understood?  We can compare the universe to an embryo within a womb of a mother, with God as the mother and the universe as the developing embryo. With this in mind the analogy of embryo within a womb is apt in three ways.

God does not and cannot exercise one-sided power

​First, the embryo has its own life, which means that things can happen in its unfolding that cannot be controlled by the mother.  Similarly, say process theologians, things can and do happen in the universe, by virtue of the creativity of the universe itself, which cannot be controlled by God.  This is how process theologians explain the tragedies of our world, both natural and humanly made.  Cancer and murder, tsunamis and rapes, are not the product of divine agency, but the result of the power and creativity of the world itself.  This creativity, already introduced in the core of this essay, is neither good nor evil in itself, but can unfold in many different ways, some tragic and some beautiful.  God is an instance of this creativity, but not the only instance.  All creatures in the world – including cancer cells and murderers – embody it, too.
 
God is the deep listening of the universe

Nevertheless, and second, what happens in the embryo is felt by the mother and is part of her.  Similarly, say process theologians what happens to each entity in the universe – to every human being – is felt by God and affects God.  This is how process theology begins to talk about prayers in which a person addresses God as a Thou and not an It.  When humans address God, they often sense that their prayers are being received into a deeper listening as the prayer occurs, and that the listener who listens is affected by the prayer.  Process theologians agree.  God is the deep listening of the universe.

For many people, of course, the question is how God answers prayers.  For process theologians God does not and cannot answer prayers by manipulating situations in a unilateral way; but the very act of praying  can alter the situation of the one praying and also the ones prayed for, such that God is better able to act in their lives.  It is important to emphasize, though, that petitionary prayer is but one kind of prayer, and also that prayer as understood in this way is one instance of the more general idea that all the experiences of all living beings – whether happy or sad, constructive or destructive – affect God and become part of God as they occur.  No one suffers alone.
 
God is the spirit of creative transformation at work in the world

Third, the analogy of the universe within the womb of a Mother rightly suggests that God is active in the world in a non-coercive but perpetually influential way.  In the case of a mother in pregnancy, this activity takes the form of amniotic fluid which nourishes the developing embryo and perhaps also the attitude of the mother.  In the case of God, this activity takes the form of creative and energizing possibilities, which represent the way in which God is immanent in the universe, even as the universe is also immanent within God.  
 
Needless to say this image of God as mother and the universe as a womb can be controversial to at least two sets of people:people for whom male imagery of God is the only relevant imagery and those who want to avoid stereotyping women as finding their fulfillment in, and only in, pregnancy.  The good news among process-oriented theologians is that there are many feminists who help critique these stereotypes and who offer alternative images.  But the image of God as mother is indeed challenging to more traditional Christians, and this challenge, on the part of process theologians, is in some ways very intentional. 
 
God is not a policeman in the sky

Process theologians employ such images in order to provide a constructive alternative to an image of God which too often dominates the monotheistic imagination.  We might call it the externalist perspective, because it imagines God as completely external to the world; or the unilateralist perspective, because it sees God’s power as one-sided or unilateral and thus capable of molding the world according to divine will; or simply the patriarchal perspective, because it imagines God on the analogy of a powerful male ruler who wields power but is not empathic.  On this view the relation of God to the world is analogous to that of a Potter and pot that he is molding.  The Potter is external to the pot and the pot’s destiny is largely determined by the will and power of the Potter. 

Process theologians in the Christian tradition reject this image of God the Potter.  They think God is more loving and that the ministry of Jesus is one place where this love can be seen.  For many Christians the image of a parent and child is much more relevant than that of a potter and pot.  This is the beauty of envisioning God as Father or Mother.  Process theologians understand and appreciate this preference for parental imagery but then add that, in an authentic Christian life, there is no need for Christians to always understand themselves as children in God’s presence.   It is all right to be an adult in God’s presence, too, and thus to add one’s own voice to the ongoing life of God.  This is the wisdom of the Psalms, where so often the Psalmist laments or protests, sometimes against God.  For process theologians there is something right about this approach to God.  It allows human beings to share with God the whole of their lives and to own their own feelings.   
 
God is love

Still, it remains the case that, for process theologians, the ultimate nature of God is love.  From a process perspective love has two sides: (1) an empathic side which listens to others and is affected and changed by what is heard and felt and (2) an active side which responds to what is listened to by providing possibilities for well-being.  Jesus showed these two sides of love in countless ways: by listening to others and sharing in their suffering; by taking delight in the faith of others and the innocence of children; by comforting the afflicted, especially those who were despised by others; and by afflicting the comfortable, especially those who thought they were better than others.  At the end of his life he also revealed a non-violent side of love by dying on a cross rather than responding to violence with violence.  In these various activities he showed that a life of love is flexible and improvisational.  It does not follow a perfectly scripted blueprint, because it realizes that each new situation requires a slightly different response.  In seeking to walk in love, Jesus seems to have realized that each moment has its calling.
 
God acts through fresh possibilities

In process theology the callings of the moment are called the “initial aims.”  These initial aims are the callings of the moment to which Jesus was responsive in his way.  They differ from moment to moment, but always they are for the well-being of life relative to the situation at hand.   The phrase “initial aims” is not especially melodious, but it does use a word that is very important to process theologians.  The word “initial” is meant to suggest that God’s callings are present in the beginning of each moment of experience at an unconscious but powerful level.  They consist of possibilities which people can actualize and they also contain within them the felt hope that they will be actualized.
 
For process theologians this felt hope belongs both to God and to the person.  Thus the aims of God within human life are God’s hopes for the person but also the person’s hope for himself or herself.  These aims are for the well-being of life, but the nature of well-being can change from one moment to the next.  There is a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to work and a time to play, a time to be awake and a time to sleep.  In our waking moments, though, these aims are always for wisdom, compassion, harmony, and creativity.  If we seek a single word to describe values such as these, some process theologians use the word “beauty.”  Thus we can say that God’s lure within human life is a lure toward richness of experience, toward beauty.

The multiplicity and diversity of the universe enriches God's life

Even as God is at work in human life luring each person toward richness of experience, God is also present in the rest of the universe doing the same.  On our small planet, the presence of God is found in plants and animals as they seek to survive with satisfaction relative to the situation at hand.  To say that they seek to survive with "satisfaction" is to suggest that there is something like experience, and like an aim to be satisfied, in non-human life as in human life.

Process theologians believe this.  Whitehead believed that there is something like "feeling" or "experience" all the way down into the depths of matter, and that other forms of life seek their own well-being, their own enjoyment.  The lure toward richness of experience is in them as in us, and we rightly live honoring that lure, doing our best to live lightly on the planet and gently with other animals, for their sake and for God's sake.  This very way of living adds beauty to the ongoing life of God, who likewise seeks richness of experience.

God's own experience is depleted by a diminution of diversity on our planet, as is our own.  And God's experience is enriched by its enhancement.  To struggle against global climate change, to protect animals from abuse, to safeguard wilderness areas, to develop green cities and strong rural communities -- all of this is oriented, not only toward the well-being of life on earth, but also the well-being of the Life in whom the world unfolds.  Diversity and multiplicity, love and justice, are God's glory. This glory does not belong to a vain ruler who resides on a throne in the sky.  It belongs to the whole of it, the universe itself, as unfolding within One in whom the world "lives and moves and has its being."  (Acts 17:28).  A One who is also a Many.

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Oneness 
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Photo by Kendall Hoopes from Pexels

​Oneness without Sameness

God as the Inclusive Whole
​

Imagine that you are standing in a field on an autumn night with some freiends: and you sense that you, and everything around you, is small but included in a larger galactic whole.  You, the stargazesr, are within the whole and so are the stars.  Some might say that this whole is an empty space, a vacuum, but you don't quite believe that.  You wonder if it is also a Life or Mind, or a Consciousness of a sort.  You call it God.  God, for you, is the Consciousness within which all things live and move and have their being, like embryos inside the womb. The night sky, deeply felt, is the cosmic womb.

Is the womb One?  Well, yes it it.  That's what Muslims and Christians, Jews and Bahai's say.  But it's Oneness includes the manyness of the universe within its embrace.  It is a One-including-many. 

There are two kinds of Oneness - the One and the ones - both are happenings.

Note, then, that there are two kinds of oneness: the sky-like Oneness (the inclusive whole) that is like the night sky itself, and finite oneness that is the individuality, the singularity, of each finite creature within the cosmic whole: the oneness of this person, this leaf, this star, this stargazer. Neither form of oneness negates the other, and neither is more real than the other.  The One could not be itself without there being many to include. And the many have their identity as many in that they are together in the One.  

Both kinds of oneness are more, much more, than the simple number "1."  The number "1" is but mathematical abstraction that helps guide people through life, and a valuable abstraction.  But the Oneness of the sky-like Mind and the oneness of individual creatures are much more than "1."  Additionally, they are not static or inert.  They are best understood as verbs not nouns or, better, as gerunds: nouns that are also verbs.  The One and the ones are events or happenings.

Finite oneness as a single moment of experience.

What is a happening?  Process philosophers and theologians propose that the happening of the sky-like Mind and the happenings of the entities not simply objects in space but also, more deeply, objects that contain their own inwardness, their own little flame, to use Roland Faber's phrase.  They are alive with their own subjectivity. 

Consider, for example, a moment of listening to another person.  The moment is an actual entity.  Its inner dynamics are described in the videos below, which are part of the What is Process Thought? video series.
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A moment of listening

A single moment of experience 

God: The Sky-like Mind

As the videos suggest a single moment of finite oneness is also a moment of manyness.  It includes the many of the past actual world and possibilities within its own makeup.  They partly compose it.  It is a one including many, like the sky-like Oneness of the inclusive whole: God.  Thus both God and the finite creatures are entities of a sort: they are instances of unity that includes diversity.  The difference between Oneness and one is that, in the divine Oneness happens anywhere and everywhere at the same time.  It is ubiquitous.  And, for process theologians, it is filled with a two-fold love,  It receives all that happens with a tender care and with understanding, and it responds by providing animating lures, for each creature: that is, possibilities for being fully alive in the moment at hand, given what is possible.  In this sense the One is indees the breath of life within each creature.  It is an amazing space that is also an amazing grace.

​- Jay McDaniel, Septs. 24, 2021​