Is God an external being [dual] or is God everything including us [non- dual]? Why do you beleive your answer?

-- rusty morgan (emorga@islandnet.com), March 15, 1999

Answers

I tend to believe that there is a higher order that encompasses everything, including us. This Spirit, Godhead, whatever you want to call it, is part of us, and we are part of it. Very much inspired by the ideas that Ken Wilber puts forth I think.

So in that answer I don't think that God is an external entity at all. I tend to be more Buddhist in my ideals and therefore I (try to) think in very non-dual ways.

-- Andrew Schulak (ahs@altruistic.org), March 17, 1999.

The conventional Western concept of "God" is that of an ultimate being which is other than ourselves. This would mean that there is a God on the one hand and there are us, ourselves, on the other. At one level, this may be true; this concept of God as another being, however, tends to be subject to all sorts of human projections and prejudices.

However, at the ultimate level, the *Absolute* can only be one without a second. If there is something other than that Absolute, then it ain't Absolute! Whatever the Absolute is, by definition it's everything. So the idea of God as a big Other is placing God at least one notch down from the Absolute.

If we take a more Eastern approach, we could equate "God" with this all-inclusive Absolute (eg, Brahman), the one without a second. In this case, God/Brahman necessarily includes oneself.

But it isn't simply that your self is one bit of stuff within the totality -- the experience of enlightenment or self-realisation reveals that, at its ultimate level, your self *is* the Absolute. In other words, Atman is Brahman. Behind your subjective self, behind your soul, is the ultimate you, which is indistinguishable from the ultimate everything.

-- Barry McGuinness (mcguin@src.bae.co.uk), March 18, 1999.

This is a very tricky question. To say that God is the impersonal aggregate of all reality seems to me to be another kind of dualism in that it still separates personal/impersonal or personal/nonpersonal. It seems more accurate (or at least more full) to me to say that God is both personal and impersonal or nonpersonal and that God is both other than creation and still encompassing of creation. Dualism is the greatest of all temptations. Eastern thought is just as likely to fall prey to it, just in more subtle form.

-- grant clowers (grantc1@webtv.net), August 20, 1999.

Although the God question is realy a personal thing and everyone has his own respectful opinion on it her is my;

As you can read somewhere in the beginning of the bible, god created human being after himself(I don't know how to translate this) but it's kind of "his similairity". My opinion is that everyone of us a sort of a Creator of our and other Universes.

-- ron (ronsletters@yahoo.com), November 19, 1999.

For my answer, titled "About That Which is Called God", please go to: http://members.xoom.com/Jamie_Kay/God.htm Comments welcome!

-- Jamie Kay King (jamie12540@netzero.net), February 02, 2000.

God IS. What I choose to believe does not alter this Reality, only my perception of it, and thus, my experience of this Reality.

-- Aspen Ward (aspenward@hotmail.com), June 16, 2000.

Perhaps, the Madhyamika Operation? I still believe we are a long way off from a more complete definition of that "God".

Once, some JWs asked me what God's name is. I said, "What? Doesn't 'God' have nine billion names?"

-- Matt Campbell (st.matthew@inetarena.com), February 27, 2001.