creation Archives

“The First Glimmer is Found in the Lowest Molecules.”

December 12, 2024

Consciousness developed very slowly. The first glimmer is found in the lowest molecules, in their ability to interact with, to respond to, their environment. Whitehead and Teilhard are on the right track in this regard. (Leibniz is not.)

I had to look again at these thinkers to see what God was getting at. Rejecting the mind-nature dualism, the twentieth-century philosopher-mathematician Alfred North Whitehead held that, even at the micro level, every event is a pulse of existence, feeling and responding to its environment. These “prehensions” are not so much states as vectors, arrows pointing to connections with the surrounding world. The Jesuit scientist-philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke of the “within” of things, their interiority, which “appears at the heart of beings”: “Co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things.” In every part of the universe, “the exterior world must inevitably be lined at every point with an interior one.” By contrast, the seventeenth century philosopher-mathematician G.W. Leibniz believed that everything in the universe was made of elementary particles that were not matter or energy, but minds, centers of consciousness, each of which internally mirrors all the others. In short, Whitehead and Teilhard believed that physical (or psycho-physical) nature has levels of awareness—and they were on the right track—whereas Leibniz held that there is no physical nature other than points of consciousness.

As God went on, He sounded a lot like Teilhard.

What happens is that reactions have an internal dimension—responding to the environment, the molecule begins rearranging its internal parts and configurations and processes. This is the beginning of interiority. Ultimately, interiority involves the second-order process of monitoring and directing inner processes. But, even at the beginning, prior to the emergence of second-order processes, there is an emerging consciousness. To be conscious is not the same as and does not require self-consciousness. It can be very dim and limited and still be consciousness, because something new and remarkable has arisen—the pre-sentient and then sentient awareness of the environment. Don’t worry at this point about what is meant by “pre-sentient” awareness. Your understanding is necessarily anthropocentric, using human consciousness as the standard by which to understand all forms of consciousness.

“There was a Self, timeless, without reflection, at peace.”

October 3, 2024

“Lord, I don’t understand what existed at the Beginning. It sounds as if you are describing Your own birth as well as the birth of the universe. What were You before the explosion of Creation? A pregnant nothingness?”

A passable description. There was a Self, timeless, without reflection, still and at peace, like calm waters, lucid, not nothing, but not something either. The universe contains many things, not just somethings and nothings.

What kind of Nothingness can explode into Being? Ah, I thought, maybe a Nothingness that is not just nothing, but is the Plenum of Potentiality for All Things. Perhaps the possibility of all things cannot fail to spill over into some actuality.

I could not settle any of these questions in my own mind. All I could do was to continue to ask questions. “Lord, what was there before? What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person. Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces. ‘Who am I? What am I? Am I an I? What is an I?’ A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way? Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense: “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete. The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

“It Leaves Out the Most Interesting Part of the Story.”

September 12, 2024

“Lord, is the theory of evolution correct?”

It is not a bad theory. It is a short-hand that works, but it leaves out the most interesting part of the story. It is like behavioral psychology in this respect.

While Pavlov’s dog salivating tells you something about animal and human behavior, seeing people solely through the lens of stimulus-and-response conditioning leaves out what is really interesting about them. Similarly, the theory of evolution is okay as far as it goes, but leaves out the best part of the story.

“I Am Enacting the Plan.”

June 27, 2024

“Lord, do I understand this correctly: You are emerging, self-creating perhaps, out of Nothing?”

This is correct. It is not quite right to say that I “always” existed. I did come into being, and before Me, there was only Nothing, and there is a sense in which I was present in the Nothing. There was no time, in the usual sense, then. There was no matter, no energy, no events.

As I emerged, I had to figure out Who I Was, and What Was to Happen. You (human beings) talk about God’s plan, but I am enacting the Plan, a Plan binding on Me and not just made up by Me. The Plan is the scheme, as I have figured it out, of how things should be. My role is less (that) of (an) organizer than of (the) goal or telos.

Telos is the Greek word for aim, purpose, or function, as in “teleological.”

I draw things in the right direction, like flowers to the sun.

“They Were Naked and Knew No Shame.”

June 6, 2024

God continued telling me about the truth behind the Garden of Eden story.

I had also underestimated the power of love. First, I created Adam and I could see that he was alone, as I had once been, and this was not good. He did not see it because he did not know anything different. But, as he tried to befriend various animals, he would quickly reach the limit of those relationships and be frustrated and unfulfilled. So I created woman and made her lovely in his eyes. They were naked and knew no shame. And their sexuality was intense and profound.

And, frankly, I felt left out. I had no such consort. And, while obedient, man loved woman more than Me. Though understandable in light of the human nature I had given them, it was not right. And they knew it was not right and began to disobey Me. They hid their nakedness, which is to say, they hid their creativity and sexuality from Me, detached it from My purpose and used it solely for their own pleasure and intimacy—innocently enough, as children might do, but still wrong. And so, with regret, I expelled them to a life of hardship. Detached sexuality, hiding from God, has its own intrinsic price, the loss of the full bounty and blessing of God.

“I Breathe Life Into Matter.”

May 12, 2024

God continued,

I breathe life into matter, and matter starts responding. As one translation of Genesis puts it, I “flutter over the waters” and nurture, incubate life. And I am filled with joy. It is like a child picking up a harp and being surprised to find that strumming it makes beautiful sounds—and delightedly playing with it.

At the beginning, the cosmos was My playpen, My garden of delights. It was beautiful, dazzling. I could play it like a vast organ, but one attached to laser shows and fireworks.

“The Great Apes Are Wonderful Creatures . . . So Close But Yet So Far.”

February 1, 2024

“And so, Lord, You call forth the first human beings?”

Yes, the first inklings, forerunners, of man. The great apes are wonderful creatures, full of intelligence, energy, and drive. But it is frustrating to interact with them. They are so close and yet so far from having full interactive personalities. They have teleological urges but they are only effective, for the most part, at the biological level. Their social life is rudimentary and their spiritual awareness is diffuse and inarticulate. They lack a symbolic order. They can’t project ideals beyond the sensual. They can’t respond to Me either.

“But they evolved?”

The transition to early man is both slow and sudden. Remember what the first two years of a child’s life is like, and (then) imagine each day to be a century. In a sense, nothing is happening. One day looks much like the last, and there is no single great leap forward.

So imagine My excitement when the first protohumans arrived. At first, you couldn’t tell them from animals but I could see their potential. They didn’t have language but their sounds and marks had representative purposes. They could connect one thing to another, one thought to another. They could remember their past and replay it in their minds. They slowly developed a sense of the future.

“Let Me Tell You What the Story Is.”

September 7, 2023

In a few days, I asked again about God’s story.

The story begins with creation, the evolution up to life, animals, early man. Then to the very ancient communications that require language and memory.

They (My communications) occurred rather simultaneously, and each communication was tailored to and by the recipients. So the precise sequence for telling My story is more a question of narrative strategy than of accuracy or significance.

“But I will have to tell a story that makes sense.”

That makes sense to whom? Let Me tell you what the story is. I am burgeoning forth, reaching out to matter, plants, animals, activating their interiority, giving them direction.

As I have explained, I grew as a Self in response to the interiority of others, and I wanted to communicate, interact, more fully and at a higher level. This (communication) is somewhat possible with early man, who recognized My presence in nature, in life, and also heard, if somewhat dimly and inchoately, My other promptings such as conscience, (the sense of) right and wrong, fine sensibility, appreciation of nature and beauty, love amongst creatures, and mystical union.

I Have Given You Some Clues Already

August 31, 2023

I had received visions of the divine energy rushing up through all levels of reality and of the explosive expansion of time and space. Were these intimations of Creation? I was told,

The work I want you to begin involves reading and writing about My nature. Start with the Creation. I have given you some clues already. Follow up on them. Do not wait to read endlessly. Begin writing down key questions and issues—for example: transcendence v. immanence, existence, Being versus (as distinct from) beings, unity and the one, eternity and time, meanings of infinity, the question of perfection, love and eros and sexuality and creativity and procreation and life-urge and energy and expansion, the world-history (not “people” history—literally, the history of the World), personhood, presence, prayer, religious experience, the God of the philosophers (too much Nous [Reason], too much One-ness and Intellection), love for every single person, suffering—the great role and centrality of suffering in the world—healing, fulfillment.

That was certainly scope enough—in fact, far more than I could deal with. And I did not see what point on the horizon could orient all this work.

“Lord, I need to understand where all this is going—the purpose of it all, not just of the project, but of human life, the universe, of God Himself.”

I know you do and it will all become clear, but best to start at the beginning.

“Why, Lord?”

Much about the nature of God and the universe is made clearer by understanding the origin. That is why I push you so deeply into these matters.

“You are both other and same as Me.”

July 6, 2023

“Lord, are we all part of You?”

You are both other and same (as Me). I need you to be other so that I may encounter another self. I am a Person and, like other persons, define Myself by responding to other persons, and being responded to (by them).

But I also need union, not distance—just as other persons do. You and Abigail are both other and same. You need to be different people—love is a bridge between differences. You also merge spirits at certain moments, though not totally. That is also a kind of completion or fulfillment. Life, including My life, is the dialectic, as you might call it, of same and other, confrontation and union.

We are both other than God and yet the same as God? But same and other are opposites. This did not go down easy for a former logic professor, but I went on. “Lord, are those moments of union with God the goal or are they just nice accompaniments?”

Neither. You shouldn’t strive for moments of union per se, for peak experiences. That is self-indulgence, and a mistake of some who seek mystical experience. It is like orgasms—you should not seek them for their own sake. That is an abuse, a kind of idolatry. They happen naturally as the outcome and expression of love. But the experience of union is not just the accidental accompaniment of loving God. It is the essential expression.

Then, late at night, I felt the boundary between me and the world becoming thinner and less distinct. Slowly, subject and object were blending, becoming intimately bound, not standing apart from one another. I was noting this intellectually, but it was not an intellectual experience. It was an ontological experience, an experience of my whole being. Finally, for a few moments, it approached total one-ness, the complete loss of awareness of self. At that point, I pulled back.

“Lord, what is the meaning of this kind of experience?”

There are many levels and kinds of experience with Me—including music. Do not make too much of it. It is good, just let it happen. It does not mean that you are about to become a mystic or anything unworldly. It is not unlike—it is on a continuum with—a wide range of spiritual experiences, in and out of religious practice and sensibility, that people have all the time. But it is definitely good. It will give you energy and peace and insight, so let it in.

Many times one “loses oneself” in an experience, but those moments are less threatening than merging with God. I pulled back, but felt a nagging sense I was not supposed to. “Lord, I feel you want me to do more of the mystical stuff, ‘entering’ You and so forth.”

Yes, and you can remove the scare quotes. There is nothing strange about it. That is how the universe is. The parts can communicate with the whole. It is no more mystical or mysterious than your ability to move your arm.

Actually, since Descartes introduced a sharp mind-body distinction, how the mind moves the body has been a philosophical mystery. But, in actual life, it is not. The parts can communicate with the whole and vice versa. I had never thought of the universe that way.