Call Me an Evolutionary Panentheist Who Follows Jesus!

I have recently been exploring evolutionary panentheism, and I was struck by how closely it resembles the understanding of consciousness that I have gradually developed from several different directions. Panentheism itself is the idea that everything exists within God while God remains greater than everything that exists. Unlike pantheism, which can identify God with the universe, panentheism maintains a distinction between the infinite divine reality and the finite realities existing within it. Nothing exists outside God, yet God cannot be reduced to the sum total of the cosmos. Evolutionary panentheism adds another dimension by suggesting that the universe is not a finished creation but an unfolding process in which increasingly complex forms of life and consciousness emerge. Where my understanding begins to differ from many expressions of panentheism is in the importance I give to enduring individual consciousness and to experience itself. I do not see the many merely as temporary appearances of the One destined ultimately to disappear back into undifferentiated unity. I see the many as genuine centers of consciousness through which Infinite Consciousness experiences its infinite potential.

This distinction is important because infinite potential and the experience of that potential are not necessarily the same thing. Infinite Consciousness may contain every conceivable possibility, but knowing or containing a possibility is different from experiencing it from a particular point of view. There is a difference between containing the possibility of courage and experiencing courage when afraid, between containing the possibility of love and actually loving another person, and between knowing limitation conceptually and experiencing what it means to live within limitation. For such experiences to become possible, there must be differentiation. There must be a here and a there, a self and another, pleasure and pain, success and failure, ignorance and discovery, separation and reunion. Finitude therefore need not represent a fall from divine perfection. It may instead be the very condition that makes experience possible. The limitations of incarnation are not necessarily something consciousness must escape; they may be precisely what allows Infinite Consciousness to explore possibilities that infinity alone could contain but not experience from a finite perspective.

This is where my distinction between the I-AM and the Me becomes especially important. The Me is the person I experience myself as during this particular incarnation, with a particular body, personality, family, culture, history, opportunities, limitations and circumstances. The Me is real, but it is temporary. Behind the Me, however, I understand there to be an enduring individualized center of consciousness that I call the I-AM. The I-AM is not identical with Infinite Consciousness, nor is it completely separate from it. It exists within Infinite Consciousness while retaining genuine individuality. The I-AM experiences incarnation through the Me and carries the experience forward. This allows individuality to have lasting significance. We are not simply waves that briefly appear on the ocean and then disappear as though they had never existed. The wave arises within the ocean and can never exist apart from it, but in my understanding something of the individualized conscious experiencer endures.

This is one place where my panentheism differs from versions that eventually collapse individuality into the Absolute. Some mystical philosophies regard individual consciousness as ultimately an illusion produced by temporary differentiation. Awakening then consists in realizing that there never really was an individual self at all. I understand the mystical intuition behind that position, but I do not think unity requires the destruction of individuality. The One and the many need not be competitors. Infinite Consciousness can be genuinely One while expressing itself through innumerable genuine centers of consciousness. Individuality can therefore be eternal without implying absolute separation. The I-AM can participate in the Whole without becoming indistinguishable from the Whole. In fact, genuine individuality may be necessary if Infinite Consciousness is to experience its possibilities from perspectives that are truly distinct.

My understanding also differs somewhat from evolutionary panentheisms that emphasize the evolution of God. I am more comfortable saying that the expression and experience of Infinite Consciousness evolve than saying that Infinite Consciousness itself begins incomplete and gradually becomes complete. The Infinite does not need to become more infinite. Yet an infinity of potential can generate an endless unfolding of actual experience. Cosmic evolution then takes on extraordinary significance. Stars create the elements necessary for planets; planets create environments in which life becomes possible; biological evolution produces increasingly complex organisms; nervous systems allow increasingly complex experience; and reflective consciousness eventually becomes capable of asking what consciousness itself is. Evolution can therefore be understood as the continual expansion of the forms available for experience. The universe is not simply changing. It is continually creating new ways in which consciousness can encounter its own possibilities.

Reincarnation fits naturally into this understanding, but not as a system of punishment and reward. I do not see incarnation as a karmic courtroom in which present circumstances are sentences imposed for behavior in previous lives. I see incarnation as participation in an enormous field of experiential possibility. Different lives provide radically different perspectives, circumstances, relationships, challenges, pleasures and limitations. The Me experiences these particular conditions, while the I-AM carries the experience beyond the temporary personality. This makes incarnation meaningful without requiring suffering to be interpreted as deserved. It also means that the diversity of human experience can be understood as something far more profound than a cosmic hierarchy of winners and losers. Each perspective opens experiential possibilities unavailable from another perspective.

This brings me back to what I find most compelling about evolutionary panentheism while also showing where I move beyond many of its formulations. I agree that everything exists within the divine reality, that the universe is genuinely unfolding, and that consciousness is central to understanding what that unfolding means. But I also want to preserve the reality and continuity of the individual conscious agent. Infinite Consciousness does not merely become the many and eventually erase them. The many matter because experience requires perspective, and perspective requires differentiation. The Me provides the temporary perspective of incarnation; the I-AM provides continuity; Infinite Consciousness provides the inexhaustible Ground of possibility within which the entire process occurs. Perhaps, then, the deepest purpose of manifestation is neither judgment nor escape, but experience itself: Infinite Consciousness expressing and experiencing its unlimited potential through finite, enduring centers of awareness, each discovering what can only be known by actually being lived.