Home     Table of Contents

Chapter 1

GOD IS A STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

        Human evolution has moved through the stages of a long slow awakening.

        Being and Becoming Gods.  At any point in human history some humans are farther along their path toward their godliness than others, as if toward the front of a long caravan.

        In order to gain some control over our personal evolution, many of us seek out priests, mullahs, gurus and guides. But because we are gods we must only learn from them and not belong to their organisations. We know now that we must develop our ability to compile and synthesize knowledge gained from others. (This subject is taken up in Chapter Three.)

        The Problem of the All-Powerful God.  This is the extreme but widespread belief that one god has caused, now causes, and will cause, every existing thing and event, and every variation thereof for all time. A single god is said to be the cause of every squiggle of every pen, every turn of every leaf in the wind, every cause and effect that ever has or ever will occur.

        The same extreme belief pervades how we think of ourselves: an unconscious deep within each of us is said to cause every thought and every action, and even those in our dreams. Freud assured us that the unconscious is reachable only through psychoanalysis, so psychotherapists and psychologists abound, all claiming to be intermediaries between the all-powerful Unconscious and the rest of us as they interpret the Word of the Unconscious.

        But another psychologist during Freud's time thought quite the opposite.

        A second problem with perfect determinism is that it requires that there can be no random events. Not a single one. This belief in a hidden order governing all events has long been popular among gamblers, and is known among scientists as Chaos Theory. Those taking comfort in this belief might consider, for example, the many cases of newly-weds killed in a car crash on the way to their honeymoon. We want to have some reason for such terrible events. But there was no reason. Their deaths were not caused for a reason. These were random events. A second or two difference in time would have been followed by an entirely different life for the newlyweds.

        This is also true for the events of mental life.

        At the same time there is order in the universe, as is clearly revealed by mathematics and physics, let alone common sense. But whether we like it or not, many events are random and happen for no reason, also revealed by mathematics and physics. Randomness, just as much as order, is inherent in the very nature of our existence. More logically probable would be a belief based on acceptance of the existence of both  randomness and order. This is especially true of our mental life. Perhaps because of fear we want to believe there is some comforting pattern or purpose underneath all the events in our lives and that there is no randomness after all. Not so. We must learn to distinguish between that which is random and that which is not, and accept the fact that many things happen for no reason or purpose.

        Power and Morality.  Most organized religions are hierarchies claiming great power derived from all-powerful god.

        Priest and Mullah teach that they are authoritative intermediaries between humans and the logically-improbable all-powerful god, all willing to interpret the Word of God. Further, they assure us that if we join their religion we can avoid punishment through forgiveness by an almighty with whom they have a direct connection.

        In this new stage we realize that no god with any sense of goodness would exert unwelcome power over other gods. In this new stage we know that the past is the only punishment. Such punishment is powerful because the past can never be changed. What we have done is what we have done. Forever. So we can only devote ourselves to creating a godly future.

        Also in this new stage worship is replaced by reverence. No longer need we kneel in submission, and instead we can stand tall and act with reverence for all others and all things. When reverence of self as god is viewed not as hubris but as necessary, then we will make a great leap.

        Our Own Higher Powers.  Higher powers somehow go beyond the use of reasoning and logic. Somewhere on the continuity between our everyday conscious mind and the god that we are becoming, we find our higher powers. In the realm of poetry, for example, the source of the idea of a poem cannot be explained simply by the poet’s training and talents. The ideas seem to come literally from out of nowhere. Another example is the "already seen" (déjà vu ) experience during which we know that we have already had the experience. And then there are the millions of reports of afterlife or near-death-experience. (More on this in Chapter Three.)

        Our inner guide is the lower part of these higher powers, a reverent intermediary between the god that we are and our present stage in the evolution of consciousness. Within each of us this guide is a bridge between our godhood and our present-day consciousness. This guide "resides" at the meeting-point of our presently reachable higher powers and the still elusive higher powers that we cannot yet reach. The guide is faced both "down" to everyday consciousness and "up" toward the god we are. What, or who, is this inner guide? An inner voice, our conscience? Or is it genetics, or history, or myth? Or is it a synthesis of all of these? This subject is taken up in Chapter Three.

Next Chapter