God is Everything

Author: Josh Beaston

I am a monist. This means I believe everything is God. Or more properly stated, I believe that God is everything. I believe God is the largest, most all encompassing phenomena in the universe; perhaps is the universe itself.

I believe God is also the smallest and most irreducible bit of matter that exists, be it a boson, energy string, or quantum membrane. God is both the greatest and the smallest simultaneously, as well as everything in between. This is one meaning of the alchemical dictum “As above, so below.” If the Multiverse exists then God is that too, along with whatever container the Multiverse exists within.

Why monism? The simple answer is that in order for the divine to be everywhere, see everything, have all power, and know everything, it must in fact, be everything everywhere at all times. The only thing that can achieve such a feat is everything.

This is not to take away from, nor add to, any particular religious tradition. Rather, it is a truth I believe, implied by all of the faith traditions with which I am familiar. It provides a golden unifying thread that weaves together the experience of the divine across ages and it filters out the disappointing humanness inherent in each; the inescapable ethnocentrism and hubris which too often seeks to use the divine to create an in-group/out-group dichotomy.

Monism resolves the problem of evil in the world by acknowledging the source of that evil; our own unawareness of our true divine nature. It explains the inability or unwillingness of God to prevent catastrophes despite knowing about them ahead of time (time being a mathematically bidirectional phenomena after all) because it locates consciousness in each individual. This localized consciousness precludes interruption of events taking place in real time by virtue of the role which consciousness plays in determining states of matter at the quantum level.

We cannot speak about what we cannot know, and we cannot know everything. This position of humility places me in the center of the universe as well as its periphery simultaneously. This, too, is in keeping with modern mathematical models of the universe, wherein, somehow every human consciousness is the center of the universe simultaneously. Consciousness itself, by implication the divine, creates and effects matter at the quantum level. It is consciousness that makes the universe and holds it together. The divine consciousness, of which I am a part.

If there is one thing deserving of dignity and respect, it is divinity. Because divinity is present in me, I would do well to treat myself with dignity and respect. Because divinity is present in you, I ought to treat you with dignity and respect as well. Most importantly, perhaps most inevitably, because divinity is present in me and in you, it behooves the divine to treat itself well. This idea is the foundation of the word Namaste: the divine in me recognizes the divine in you. Or perhaps more aptly and poetically, stated: the place in me recognizes the place in you that, when I am in that place and you are in that place, we are one.

Namaste.

Josh Beaston