Here goes.
The very structure of the human mind suggests a hidden awareness of God. The fact something exists makes it self-evident that something exists necessarily; something exists that cannot not exist. Human beings in every age and every culture believed there to be a controlling force or cause and that everything that has a beginning has a cause. This along with the order, complexity and wholeness of the cosmos naturally suggests to humans there is intelligence and will behind it all, an uncaused Cause. But none of this says anything about the nature of the force or cause behind it all. Calling it all the product of chance is merely a soft pillow for ignorance. It doesn't tell us whether the uncaused Cause is intelligent, personal or worthy of worship. It only says that we should take seriously the fact that all of us have this innate understanding.
Human concepts of causation have evolved over countless generations: from fetishes and charms, to idols and disembodied spirits, to personal and impersonal forces, to infinity itself. And we wonder: can we, having consciousness, mind, and ideal-values, possess more and therefore be more than All-That-Is? Or is it more reasonable to say that All-That-Is has consciousness, mind and ideal-values that transcend our own, perhaps even absolute consciousness, mind and ideal-values? If by reason we can't be certain, maybe it should ask which perspective has the greatest human appeal and practical value.
Infinity implies immutability but does not imply immobility; it implies unity, but does not exclude diversity. I'm a realist. If reality is differentiated in time, it is self-differentiated in eternity. If I find diversity in time, and I will find it in infinity and eternity precisely because infinity implies immutability. For Creatorship is the aggregate of the Infinite's acting, immutable and eternal nature, not an attribute. If a differentiated reality exists at all, it has always been so. Therefore, I acknowledge the unity of Infinity and the Infinite within without forfeiting my common sense, without denying my finiteness and separation: there is indeed a separate existence in fact and in manifestation, but not essence, not in truth.
To the human mind there simply must be a beginning, and though there never was a beginning to reality, there are certain internal source-relationships which reality must manifest in order for existence (as we know it) to exist. The pre-reality situation may be thought of as something like this: At some hypothetical, infinitely distant, pre-eternity moment, the I AM was undifferentiated—it was both thing and no thing, both cause and effect, both volition and response. At this hypothetical eternity-moment, there was no differentiation throughout all infinity: infinity was filled by the Infinite and the Infinite encompassed infinity. This is the hypothetical static moment of eternity where actuals are still contained within their potentials, and potentials have not yet appeared within the infinity of the I AM. But in this conjectured situation, we must assume an impetus to action, we must assume the existence of the possibility of self-will.
Will manifests as action. In the infinite nature of the monistic I AM, there could not possibly exist a duality of reality, such as physical and spiritual; but the instant we look aside from the infinite and absolute levels of reality we observe diversity, the existence of two realities, and recognize that they are fully responsive to a personal presence, to will. It can be said, then, that God does not have will, but is will. And the moment we depart from the concept of the original monistic Creator-personality, the First Source and Center, we must postulate MIND as the inevitable technique of unifying the ever-widening divergence of these dual universe manifestations within the original I AM.
In that this refers to eternal relationships within the One, we can reasonably surmise at least four manifestations of one reality, three of which are self-determined: The infinite and original I AM as it remains in the background of self-manifestation; I AM divested of all that which is non-personal and non-spiritual--the Word who sanctions the creative adventure; and Mind, who, in the presence of the divested, controls and coordinates the process of self-manifestation.
In God we live, move and have our being; in us, God escapes the experiential limitations of infinity. The notion of "freedom" can arise only in the context of limitations and boundaries; the will of God is without either. Neuroscience studies the thing that conditions the unconditioned Mind while assuming the brain the bottom line. The human mind itself is indeed seated in the physical, but transcends it. Experiments indicate that just thinking about something can reconfigure the brain. Brain scans show that when people are divided into three groups and put into a room with a piano over a period of several days, the brains of the group told to think about practicing hard on the piano changed almost as much as the group that actually practiced, while the group that was instructed to do nothing showed no change at all. (We can argue, then, that if the brain of a homosexual is different than that of a heterosexual, it is the thinking that alters it.) But only the preeminence of will makes such experiments possible.
The brain doesn't decide anything. The human brain generates a bio-electric field which rests gently upon the electrochemical mechanism below and delicately touches energy systems above. We are never completely conscious of either; therefore, all our decisions take place between these two pulls. The power to choose resides therewith. True freedom comes from above, not from below. Man is free to the extent the mind is directed by will to receive the Unconditioned into the conscious mind. Mind choosing to identify with the material becomes increasingly material-bound; mind choosing to identify with “spirit” becomes increasingly spiritual and free. The question, then, is what constitutes spirit.
Mind chooses whether to react to the brain's conditioning or to act from above—or at least aim to act from above. Choices explained in terms of psychology, social-conditioning and whatnot goes to the material. They are reactive and have nothing at all to do will except to describe how the brain conditions it. And let's face it. We're heavily conditioned creatures. All life is more than the sum of its component parts, but only humans have the capacity to be aware of this fact and have the potential to consciously use that knowledge. Sadly, few people choose to exercise that prerogative. People will rationalize anything to avoid being held accountable by their own mind, which is why I distrust rationalism. Is this a reaction to, say, Hitler rationalizing the murder of millions? Yes. Do I rationalize belief in God? Yes. Is that belief largely the result of culture, inheritance and experience? Yes. Why do I let all these things dictate my life? Because my bonds are many and intricate. The most difficult of all is egoism, the delusion that I have an individual existence sufficient in itself and separate from the Unconditioned, who is beyond time, space and causality, the One who is Causation itself.
The mission of theology is merely to facilitate the self-consciousness of personal spiritual experience. It constitutes the religious effort to define, clarify, expound, and justify the experiential claims of religion, which, in the last analysis, can be validated only by it being lived. Theology also produces moral demands and other effects in one's life and are often controversial, but there is no higher purposes than the task of knowing God. (continued)