Ok, I’m really going out on a limb here, in case I wasn’t already out on the leaves! 😉 But why not. Are we “made in God’s image and likeness”? How might this relate to science?

Yes! I think we are “made in God’s image and likeness” because we are manifestations of God, emanations of God. We are God, as God is made manifest in multiplicity, in duality.

I don’t think this is necessarily “archetypal” so much as it is actuality. Many people have witnessed it in deep conscious experience beyond ego, including one of the world’s most renowned scholars of religion, Huston Smith. He has noted explicitly that he saw this emanationism, proceeding down from unified non-duality into lesser and lesser dualities and multiplicities that form our world. Many have seen this in various spiritual traditions, even Indra’s net.

On the science side of things, I think we are beginning to get intimations of this same reality also, for there are many that are now studying entanglement, nonlocality, and this strange unity that seems to permeate and saturate through all of this multiplicity that we witness in the world around us. Particles can be fundamentally One, even though in multiplicity-duality we observe that they are spread out to the opposite corners of the universe. The distance or space that we see between them in our normal state of multiplicity, our temporal egoic split separate intellectual understanding and viewpoint, is an illusion. The space between them is simply not there; they can influence one another instantaneously, as if they were the same particle. Perhaps they are the same particle, we just observe them as separate. Pull back the layers of consciousness, and we can see that it is really One thing manifesting as multiple parts in space and time to our typical conscious perspective.

It seems to me then:

All perceived relativity is fundamentally caused by our conscious psychological self observing from its particular frame of reference in multiplicity-duality. When the psychological egoic self is transcended, and pure consciousness observes from its non-dual frame of reference, it is all One! There is no differentiation, no space, no distance, no time, no objects, no subjects. There is not two. There is only One. One. One!!

Maybe this is a unified field theory (UFT) or theory of everything (ToE). If you change your consciousness, the “frame of reference” of the observer’s consciousness itself, there are not relative things, only ONE. Is there math for this, a framework, an all-encompassing equation? Perhaps. Maybe it is simply this:

 

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Can we devise an equation to explain this unity from our standard perspective within multiplicity-duality? I doubt it is possible to fully describe it from our typical frame of reference consciousness. I perceive that the ego will never know anything with absolute certainty. Uncertainty is built into the universe at the level of duality. We’ve discovered this in science. This is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, what we might call “the Great Doubt.” The ego, the psychological self, demands certainty, it craves it, yearns for it, often believes it has it, but it will never have it, in the absolute. The ego cannot know all things! Only God knows that. The Infinite can only be perceived in non-dual consciousness, all else is symbol and naturally limited to this frame of reference. This may be a symbol for infinity, ∞, but it is not Infinity itself. It only points to it.

William Blake once wrote a well-known poem, perhaps trying to get at what is perceived in non-dual mystical consciousness, which is a state of pure innocence. His poem begins:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour.

Rational consciousness will only move closer to an asymptote of knowledge, it seems to my ego, but it cannot actually get all the way there, in all eternity. We can only perceive ultimate Truth if we move beyond the ego and intellectual knowing (saber) to the level of non-duality, union, At-one-ment consciousness with what is. Then we will “know” (conocer) the Truth, and it will set us Free. This kind of knowing was known by the ancient mystics as “gnosis.”

Since we live at the level of duality most of the time, this is why we have faith. We need faith because we (our ego or self-identity in consciousness) cannot know anything with absolute certainty, or in other words, doubt is unavoidable. The reason for Faith in duality is because of the existence of absolute Doubt in duality! Faith compels our consciousness towards “knowing” in At-one-ment, in non-duality, in oneness, which is the only place where we may experience absolute certainty, being absolutely One in Truth itself. It is only when our consciousness transcends the ego, the psychological self-identity, that faith is needed no more, because then we “know,” “nothing doubting” (Ether 3:19).

I wish we had maintained the two types of “knowing” in English, such as exists in the Romance and Germanic languages. It seems that the closest thing we have in common English to the more personal intuitive type of knowing is “perceive” and maybe “recognize,” being derived from the con/cog roots as were the Spanish “conocer,” French “connaitre,” and German “kennen.” “Gnosis” works, but no one uses it today. This more intimate sense of knowing is maintained in the Bible, but still uses the word “know”: “And Adam knew Eve his wife” (Genesis 4:1). I think it is also maintained in the biblical symbolism of the Bridgegroom, the Wedding Feast, and the Bridal Chamber. Knowing God is a very intimate knowing, indeed, a complete union and at-one-ment our consciousness and God’s consciousness in One, and often involves intuitions and sensations that the mystics often described in erotic and sensual terms. “God is Love,” being fully united in that Love is an intense experience of it!

Scientists may argue, and maybe even theologians too, that this theory is meaningless and useless. And I think they might be right. It may be meaningless; at the level of multiplicity-duality, it means little to nothing. But at the level of non-duality it is the only thing that could be said to even have any meaning and significance, for there are no other concepts, figures, numbers, signs or symbols or anything else to consider in that transcendent conscious frame of reference.

Meaning in our minds is generated only in duality, in multiplicity, in psychological self egoic rational logical intellectual consciousness. Once we grasp the ONE ourselves, at the non-dual level of our  consciousness, we will see that it is ALL that matters. It is everything that is! For we will see that we are the Universe itself, everything that ever was and ever will be, living in Itself, experiencing Life as Itself. As Alan Watts once said, “You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.”

It is the One in the One, in as many ways as the One may manifest, It is manifesting in duality, and It is realizing this manifestation Itself as It manifests Itself. (Say that three times fast). We are the Ones realizing it!

Mirrors reflecting mirrors, Gods in God, for time and all Eternity!

Blake’s poem ends:

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Of course, we dwell both in night and day, for you cannot have one without the other. There must needs be “an opposition in all things,” the yin/yang, light/dark, health/sickness, pleasure/pain, sweet/bitter, righteousness/wickedness, holiness/misery, good/bad, life/death, tree of life/tree of knowledge, the dark night/heaven. These are the polarities of existence, otherwise there is no existence (2 Nephi 2:11, 15), and God is not (2 Nephi 2:13). But there is a God, and God created and continues to create all things within itself, including you and me (2 Nephi 2:14). We are the things acting in God as God, and we are being acted upon too. We can’t avoid being acted upon. But we eventually develop an ego, this separate sense of self in our consciousness, and it thinks it is God because of its great “knowledge” (2 Nephi 2:18). But this egoic “knowledge” will always be limited, it seems to me.

One key to realize is to accept the present reality as it is, to seek perfect equanimity with reality and life as these flow in the present moment. Come what may! We seek At-one-ment with Reality, to perceive things “as they are” (D&C 76:94; D&C 93:24).

And when we are at-one with Reality, we will “know” Reality, beyond all description.

You may now dial the institution. 🙂