Because all of physicality and the mind exist and interact, they must share a common root. Regardless of whether intermediate layers of reality are as complex as ours, like The Matrix, or if their computation is subtler, that which lies at the root of reality must also be capable of taking form as everything, including the ethereal phenomena known as consciousness. This rootedness and ethereal nature make this ultimate reality worthy of the name “God”. This writing does not propose that God is like a person, but rather that it is the substance and basis of everything, including all people. The word “God” is somewhat arbitrary, so you could substitute in “root,” “basis,” or “source” in this text, while understanding it just the same. In this article we’ll reflect upon the details of the cosmos we find ourselves in so we can follow some clues to intuit qualities of what lies beyond.
Before we start, it’s worth pointing to the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching, “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.” Part of what this means is that while we may try pointing with words to the ethereal nature of what is, we cannot really describe it, not even to ourselves, similar to describing the flavor of a piece of fruit, or the color blue. In addition, our attempts to point to source seem to only reference more of the familiar, while not really pointing beyond. Despite all that, it’s worth noting that this cosmos is already made entirely of God, or source, so all pointing cannot point any closer to, or away from that source. It is every pointer, and everything pointed at, already.
To appreciate the transcendent nature that suffuses and lies at the basis of this cosmos, we should consider its physical details. Why do arbitrary, strange entities we call particles or waves behave according to a quantum wave function, and move through space curved according to general relativity? Why do they exist and behave in this particular way, instead of other entities acting according to simpler equations? If the particulars of this cosmos could somehow preexist without some deeper source, then the details of this cosmos would be impossibly arbitrary.
Whether this cosmos is totally unique, or there are countless cosmoses with slight variations, physicality still requires some deeper computational basis to support its complex activity. Without this deeper root, physical rules would be lifeless, and particle motion would not occur.
Due to the mathematical nature of physicality, this transcendent computer must be able to perform arbitrarily complex computations to determine the behavior of an inconceivable amount of matter and energy in this cosmos, including every galaxy and star system. As humans, we don’t have the mathematical knowledge or the computational resources to calculate or or accurately simulate the motion of three interacting particles, let alone the billion billion billion particles our bodies are made up of, living within a vast system of massive galaxies.
Because of the limitless nature of this cosmos, any limits constraining God’s computational power must be beyond the scope of human imagination. It’s also likely that God does not consume any kind of divine energy to run the cosmos, otherwise computing an infinite amount of quantum soup would create infinite cost to God to run just one of them. It’s also unlikely that God is limited by problems like “heavenly warming”, otherwise the cosmos would be unsustainable. We should be careful to not project any limited perspectives originating from our cosmically evolved nature onto our understanding of the transcendent.
Some theories about reality claim that there is no other, let alone no deeper source. Examples include, “There is only this, and nothing else. There is no here nor there, no space nor time,” or, “There is only consciousness dreaming, without physicality, nor a deeper root than consciousness.” If taken literally, these ideas are unlikely descriptions of reality. If there is no other activity or state in the universe, how could there be enough information and a sufficient means of evolution to fabricate this present state of mind? Clearly, there must be more than “this” for “this” to be possible.
With that in mind, we must also wonder why there is something rather than nothing. Why does anything exist, including all of this conscious complexity, sitting on a chair, walking, seeing what appears right here and now? Why do I have a conscious experience rather than there only being a total absence of anything at all? Is it a miracle that anything exists, paradoxically created out of nothing, or would a complete absence of reality itself be a type of reality? How deep does the root of reality go for our world to be possible? You and I are expressions of this ultimate source, whatever that may be.
To begin answering these questions, let’s consider the problem with the idea of the universe beginning in time. In that theory, it’s presumed that a self-sufficient first cause must appear in time, and that in order to be the first, such a cause can have no prior, even though the first event still happened in the context of time. The problem here is that an event in time cannot start without a previous event, and time itself cannot start from timelessness without some prior that fabricates time out of its absence. So time does not lie at the foundation of reality.
Instead, let’s recognize that time is an aspect of our cosmos, and consider that our cosmos is a fabrication by, in and of the deepest basis of reality, or God. Because time is just a part of the cosmos, God also transcends that fabrication, which means that any change or evolution of God need not be restricted by, nor occur within time. Removing this restraint allows for there to be creation and evolution without a first cause, so that God could develop enough complexity and intelligence to create a cosmos with its own time embedded into it. Timeless evolution may sound paradoxical or surprising, but it’s not surprising that we have a hard time imagining it. Our human experiences have evolved through time, an underlying feature of this cosmos.
I would suggest that God not only transcends time, but also space, consciousness, existence, rootedness, dimensionality, and infinity. As humans, we’re familiar with “being” and existence, which have a very embodied and located aspect, where “I” seem to be “here and now”. Similar to how God transcends time: existence or being does not apply to, nor restrict God outside its embodied realms of existence. Therefore God doesn’t exist nor not exist. God transcends, and is the basis of, all existence.
Transcending beingness may be part of what allows for a kind of evolution without the need for the first cause to somehow already fully exist. Furthermore, by transcending being and consciousness, God is able to paradoxically take form as every conscious view, everywhere throughout the cosmos, each in isolation and with no visible boundaries, simultaneously, without any mind state overlapping. Both you and I know of no perceptual bounds to conscious emptiness, and yet each of us know nothing beyond our present state of mind.
This deepest root is ethereal, and beyond the conceptual limitations we’ve evolved to know. Putting those limitations aside offers explanatory power for difficult questions, and points to the the likelihood that there is a very deep and profound root worthy of the name of “God”. Just as physical bodies are entirely made of matter, energy and other features of the cosmos, so too are everything and everyone also suffused and made of the deepest reality. The wave is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the wave. In other words, we are surrounded by God, and God permeates all of us, such that there is already absolutely nothing to us other than God itself.