God is being itself. As such God is eternal. God is not a being. God may be thought of as preceding or as beyond the subject-object dichotomy. God is the power of being for every existent being. As such God is both the creating and sustaining ground of the universe. As existing beings we all participate in God. Most of what we can say about God positively is symbolic not literal.
Existence is being itself. As such existence is eternal. Existence is not a being. Existence may be thought of as preceding or as beyond the subject-object dichotomy. Existence is the power of being for every existent being. As such existence is both the creating and sustaining ground of the universe. As existing beings we all participate in existence. Most of what we can say about existence positively is symbolic not literal.
(Why call it God?)
Individual macroforms are manifestations of many other tiny systems and smaller parts of consciousness.
Organic individual consciousness is a direct result of planetary collective consciousness.
Dieties and gods are egregoric manifestations of dimensions, realms and momentus forces. Example: The god of death is allied with the strongest and most destructive armies on earth during a war, because the things which that one army radiates, results in an egregore. This has to do with mutual ressonance, of the scalar parts of consciousness, naturally creating a very large and strange consciousness field due to the smaller ressonant parts. Am just talking about individual-like gods/dieties.
As regards “the ultimate”, it’s a fallacy to say there is some kind of “one true” anything. The universe is more than that. There’s never an ultimate, because of there being infinite infities and infinite kinds of things forever, everywhere, etc. After the wider brinks of various dimensional space has been searched for it. And in this way, “pantheism” is basically the closest thing to “The Ultimate”, because it is less of a seporate, non-complete concept. It is more, thus more ultimatelish. 
[quote=“JP”]
Existence is being itself. As such existence is eternal. Existence is not a being. Existence may be thought of as preceding or as beyond the subject-object dichotomy. Existence is the power of being for every existent being. As such existence is both the creating and sustaining ground of the universe. As existing beings we all participate in existence. Most of what we can say about existence positively is symbolic not literal.
(Why call it God?)[/quote
The existence of every being is finite, a mixture of being and not being. “Being itself” is infinite. I call 'being itself" God because it is my understanding that “being itself” is symbolized by divine revelation.
The reason why Anselm’s ontological argument doesn’t work is because it relies on existence being a predicate.
Why is being "something", much less God?
No it isn’t. Consciousness is a process and as such it occurs only under specific material conditions. It is bound in scope and location, quite demonstrably, by the material system that produces the process. Saying that “individual consciousness is a direct result of planetary collective consciousness” makes as much sense as saying “individual flames are a direct result of planetary collective fire”: i.e. it makes none at all.
“Mutual ressonance”? “Consciousness field”? 
I’m trying very hard, but I can’t make any sense of what you’re talking about here. Based on conversations I’ve had with other pantheists over the years, though, I’m sure that this befuddled, obfuscatory way of speaking is quite deliberate on your part.
I’m not sure what you mean here. If you are talking Sartre, then the simultaneous state of “being and not being (or nothingness)” concerns human consciousness specifically, not inert objects. Tautologically, “beings” (excepting humans in Sartre’s case) do not possess “non-being”.
What are you basing that assumption on? If the universe had a beginning, then “being itself” - depending on how you want to define that - isn’t infinite at all.
But if you are conflating “being itself” with divine revelation, then what you are left with is not mere “being” and this is my problem with giving “being” or “existence” the label “God”. The word “God” brings with it a certain set of inferences and assumptions that are not implicit in our understanding of “being” or “existence”, and the use of the label “God” for these concepts will therefore warp our understanding of them.
The word “God” is only a useful substitute for the word “being” if we assume, a priori, that there is a divine aspect to being itself. This is something I reject and something you have offered no proof for. Yet again, I see no need to use the ideologically loaded term “God” when the sterile term “existence” will suffice.
“The ultimate” is not found in nature as such. God is not the totality of natural objects but the creative power, unity and absolute substance or essence of everything.
Sounds like gibberish to me.
I feel you and you are right, only if you’re not chosen to see that
prophesized " Son of Man " ( aka being ). In that case you’re going to Die.
And while you’re alive, please tell me how different was " your " life,
compared to " those " never born ?
You’re doctor ? What is the Only cause of Our aging ?
much love from above
Jewpiter
Just like everything else people are not able to understand.
If you understand what Felix’ve said, you could say " this is truth, or this is
Lie "
simple, human, loving
much love from above
Jewpiter
Wikipedia summarizes Anselm’s argument thusly:
- God is, by definition, a being than which nothing greater can be conceived (imagined).
- Existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind.
- God must exist in reality, if God did not then God would not be that which nothing greater can be conceived (imagined).
First, Anselm was arguing for God as “a being.†I am not. I’m saying God is not a being; God is being itself. It seems to me that the problem with Anselm’s argument is that it extrapolates the existence of God from a conception in the mind. Be that as it may, I don’t see “being†as a “something†but as a fact underlying every existent.
I consider being itself to be God because “God†is the answer to the ontological question, “Why is there something and not nothing? The mystery of being is a fact of experience and not something I am making up. The symbol of God the creator is based on this mystery. It is not only a mystery when thought in terms of the original “creation†as in Genesis 1:1. It is also a mystery we participate in during every conscious moment.
The reason why Anselm’s argument involves being (existence) as a predicate is because it supposes that a God that exists is better than a God that doesn’t exist, which requires existence to be one of a list of qualities that can be compared- which it is not.
Now, assuming your ‘being’ can be equated with Anselm’s ‘existence’, I’m still at a loss- you’ve said now that being isn’t something. If you think God is being, and being isn’t something, that makes you a pretty standard atheist, right? You say being is a fact. The closest I can get to understanding you is that you’re saying God is the proposition “something exists”.
But now you say that God is the answer to the question of why something exists- well, as a Christian I suppose I agree with that, but how is your answer different than the one I would give?
My statement that existents are a mixture of being and not being is based on the observation that “all things must pass away.†When the thing passing is oneself it gives rise to existential anxiety. Existence as I understand it means standing out of non-being being while remaining in it. Religiously, it is symbolized by the fall from the pure actuality of God as “being itself“ where existence and essence are unified.
I am suggesting that divine revelation points to “being itself†as does ontology. Unlike some here I don’t think we should throw out the “label God†even though the inferences and assumptions you speak of have to be dealt with. The understanding of God as the Ground of Being has a long and venerable history among profound thinkers and mystics in the major religions. On the other hand, I am open to learning from insights of secular, existential, or atheistic perspectives.
You seem well versed in the subject. I respect your opinion. I have two questions for you: First, how do you deal with the question, “Why is there something and not nothing?†Second, what do you make of the following passage from Aldous Huxley’s book The Perennial Philosophy?:
“The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground…â€
As always, your comments are much appreciated. I have tried to avoid falling into the trap of adding existence as a quality to a being whose existence I am trying to prove. I cannot help but hope that my viewpoint on this may be due to more than a logical mistake and may reflect our actual situation vis a vis God. Would it help if I said that God is not a mere being but is in a unique category of one? That category is immanent as the power of being of every existent and transcendent as the encompassing of all beings. In that way, the concept of God opens out into a symbol which is unbounded and a boundary for every finite being. I wouldn’t persist in this endeavor if I didn’t think that encompassing God in any bounded concept does violence to our experience of God on one side and God’s infinite and eternal glory and majesty on the other. As to the possibility that what I am proposing may be standard atheism, I don’t think it is and for the moment, give my words above as my testamony to the contrary. As to whether the answer I am giving is different from yours as a Christian perhaps you can answer that question.
Well, I have to tell you, the first time I heard someone say something like what you’re saying, I assumed it was nonsense. But this is probably the fourth or fifth time somebody has said something like this to me, so it’s probably me and not them. The whole atheism thing is still what I come back to, and what confuses me. What it is that you propose, that a standard materialist/atheist would disagree with?
Now, I certainly agree with you that God is a unique category of being. But I don’t know what the ‘power of being in every existent’ is. That sounds like it’s drifting back towards Anselm’s mistake, that being is a quality.
Sorry. Hope you didn’t waste too much of your time on it.
Sorry, I don’t understand your questions.
Consciousness is not demonstrable at all, outside of my own experience of it.
Knox
The unconcious is like that too. But isn’t that enough?