New Mexico Vegan -January February 2022

Some religions find their answers in a creator God, scientists in the Unified Field, or Theory of Everything, with a view to unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity, and many spiritual philosophers in the Universal Consciousness. Carl Jung was obsessed with the notion of the Collective Unconscious. Albert Einstein posited that everything is energy.

Not surprisingly, he was echoing the most ancient of spiritual and philosophical teachings that align with today’s scientific awakening. Others point to Monism, some to Gestalt, some to perennial philosophy, or universalism, and still others to the unity of all forms with emphasis given to the universe of mutually interdependent relationships established by an innate (inner, or organic) order as opposed to the assemblage of separate and distinct/discrete objects by an omnipotent external intelligence to arrive mechanically at something we'd call a universe. Followers of the Tao look to an invisible pattern which exists both within and without the manifested universe of forms that we experience as consensus reality.

Existentialists render a canvas that conveys a sense of disorientation in the face of a meaningless, absurd world. Buddhists, Jains and Hindus, for example, leave us with the notion of karma, in lieu of judgment by an almighty creator God. Let’s consider the notion that there is but one intelligent Universal Consciousness – call it the Universal Mind, or God Principle.

I arrived at the simple notion some time ago that there is but one intelligent Universal Consciousness – the “I am” – a principle that is not only present in each of us but IS us.

The God Principle might also be called the Principle of Reflection. Natural and spiritual phenomena are but reflections of one another. In other words, matter, or the natural world, is a pool of reflection for spirit. Nature reflects all spiritual and scientific truth – i.e., “... on earth as it is in Heaven ...”

Western thinkers would argue that we’re surrounded by evidence of a pitched battle between good and evil in the material world. Yet, good cannot exist but for evil. One cannot choose the head of a coin without the tail.

One cannot know darkness without the contrasting light. Yin and yang. Were it not for hatred and suffering, one could not know love and bliss.

Notwithstanding, the food chain, for example, gives me reason for pause. Why must creatures devour other creatures in order to survive? Why do innocents suffer from starvation in the third world? Why are children abducted into slavery? Why are innocents victimized by greed and war? Why are innocent dogs boiled alive by callous humans with a hankering for an animal protein fix? Why are humans allowed to rape, torture, kill and enslave others? By the design of an all powerful, omniscient, loving God? An object lesson in free will, perhaps? I think not. A bit too western of a notion for me. I lean to the east, to the Tao. I also happen to be vegan.

How can a loving God allow a mudslide to kill a busload of school children or allow a terrified child to be eaten by a lion? Why must hawks kill doves? Einstein had obviously considered this paradox when he said, “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” Is a “personal relationship” with such a God even possible? According to Einstein, the answer is no. While he rejected the self-conscious notion of a personal God, he agreed with Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Alan Watts, Will Tuttle, the Dalai Lama and the Beatles that love, the definition of which is beyond the scope of this writing, is a very powerful spiritual and natural force that pervades the universe. He would agree that we are not distinctly separate “selfs” but, rather, we are One with all “... Heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen ...” In other words, we are not discrete units bounded by our skins, but rather, we are all conjoined in relationship with all other aspects of the "I am”. In contrast to the exacting metrics of western concepts, the haunting beauty of Chinese art rests in its vagueness of boundaries, where surfaces, where object and space meet, are only suggestions, and a sharing of reality across those suggested surfaces and the principle of oneness is quite prominent.

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