Concepts of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, April 08, 2016, 13:32 (3150 days ago) @ BBella

BBELLA: On the other hand, putting myself into the place of ONE such eternal being with all power to create - instead of creating life, and becoming a watcher and a fiddler of it - I would become life itself. Become it in such a multitude of ways as to experience any and every possible way of being and experience it all fully. But the only way to do that, to truly experience ALL things exclusively as one thing, I would have to close the door to the true knowledge of who - I AM. 

Dhw: This is a very complex concept: God (a being with the power to create) would presumably have created life in the first place, but then decided to experience it in all its aspects by giving up his own identity and becoming all living things. -BBELLA: I would not assume (in my imagining myself as God) that I would first create life and then decide to experience it myself. No, I would think I would design a way to experience "being" in many different ways and so create life - or a way to distance myself from my true I-dentity so to become other i-dentities.-Yes, that makes more sense. Thank you. But God would still have to “close the door” on his own identity if he wanted to experience yours and mine and, presumably, that of the duck-billed platypus.
 
Dhw: But if he has no identity and IS all living things, he no longer exists as a separate being. He has become ALL THAT IS, in all its diversity. Is this right? -BBELLA: Putting myself in God's place (as only a mere human), I do not think I would want to (or could) give up my ONE true I-dentity. The very act of death itself seems to me to fit nicely as a fail-safe assurance that all identities return to that place in-between to be reminded of one's place of origin, etc. The imagination can go wild at this point and can even be evidenced by millions of testimonials. This very concept dominates many religions as well as lives alive and well in most if not all human thought processes (at least somewhere in the back of one's mind - the possibility of God). Many formal beliefs embrace this very concept of God as all and separate.-This is where mysticism takes over - which is not meant as a criticism. God must close the door on his own identity, and yet he retains his own identity. And: “All identities return to that place in-between”, where they are…what? Themselves but not themselves? And God is “all and separate”. You are right, many people have experienced this sense of one-ness and separateness, both in eastern and western religions and philosophies. But in some eastern philosophies, there is no all-powerful individual being who deliberately created the universe and life (let alone centring his attention on the production of humans). And it seems to me that the Hindu moksa and the Buddhist nirvana, for instance, with their emphasis on the abandonment of all self-centred desires and goals and the end of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, might as well be equated with extinction. The Buddha explicitly rejected this, though, and Chinese Buddhists apparently regard nirvana as a state of eternal bliss. I really haven't a clue how I could ever be in a state of bliss if I was no longer me. You can achieve loss of self and earthly desires and goals and a oneness with All That Is simply by being dead. If, on the other hand, there is a single Creator who is me but is not me, and if I am to be one with him when my body dies, it seems to me that one of us is going to have to give up his identity. And if it's me, once more I might as well as be dead. But as a mere human like yourself, I must acknowledge that I am far too limited in my thinking to conceive of eternity and infinity, let alone the possible identity/identities of an infinite and eternal mind! (Though as David will confirm, I still keep trying!)