Pantheist Vision
VOL. 41 NO. 2
UNIVERSAL PANTHEIST SOCIETY JOURNAL SUMMER 2024
Fractal Pantheistic Universalism
How the fractal reveals the Nature of the Universe and helps us understand its benevolence
The fractal is the best available metaphor we have for both the underlying order of the Universe as understood by modern science as well as the transcendent manifestation of god. As such, it is the perfect candidate to serve as a unifying principle behind a scientific god concept.
This is not to say that the Universe is a fractal in the technical sense of having fractal dimension. A variety of natural phenomena have fractal structures, including galaxies and other big cosmological structures, and these seem to repeat the same dense core with orbital cloud pattern on the subatomic scale as well. While they aren't literally fractals, the concept of simple rules, repeated infinitely, self-organizing into complex patterns that repeat themselves in infinite variations, is incredibly useful when trying to understand the Universe holistically.
Mystic Fractal Traditions
The complex, repeating patterns of the fractal can also be seen in sacred art from most cultures. Mandalas exist in each of the Eastern spiritual traditions, while mosques throughout the Middle East are decorated in beautiful mosaics that absolutely evoke the fractal.
Gramatikoff, Kosi. "Tibetan Mandala, Sera Monastery." World History Encyclopedia. 07 Sep 2013.
Seekers have described mystic visions throughout history, which often resemble the infinite, repeating fractal spirals we are starting to recognize everywhere we look.
In This Issue
Transcendent Pantheism
The Universe is like a fractal. It's based on simple rules that repeat themselves over and over for billions of years, producing infinitely complex selforganizing order with a common spiral thumbprint pattern that can be seen throughout. Pantheists know the Universe as the Immanent aspect of god, but what of the Transcendent?
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Fractal Pantheistic Universalism
The transcendent aspect is the one property of god that the physical Universe cannot manifest since, by definition, “transcendent” means apart from the physical Universe. But there is something that exists in the abstract that governs everything that happens in the Universe--the rules of logic and the mathematical systems that are derived from it. The transcendent is represented by the fractal, a mathematical construct that is infinite, logical, self-organizing, and beautiful. God is the Universe (implying immanence), but the Universe is also the product of the abstract rules of logic and, therefore, transcendent.
The fractal is the ideal representation for those abstract rules and the patterns they create that manifest themselves in the glory of physical creation. God and the Universe may not technically be fractals, but fractals are the closest concept we have to help visualize and understand these infinite concepts with our finite brains.
Forming a God Concept
Your belief system creates a mental model of the world that forms the lens through which your life is viewed. Belief in god or religion creates a self-organizing psychological concept in the mind of the believer. Since god is the creator of all things, a part of all things, or even in control of everything in the Universe, the believer is able to associate god with every aspect of their life. Their understanding of what god is colors their view of how every part of the Universe works and why everything happens in their lives. It becomes a central neural hub that connects to every part of the brain.
Benefits to the Believer
This confers many psychological benefits to the believer. Fundamentally, memory works by association. All memories are encoded through their associations with earlier memories and ideas. The god concept improves all memory and understanding by creating a universal pegboard on which to hang new information. If everything is part of god, there is always something to relate to. If your god concept is also an accurate representation for how natural structures self-organize, then the apt metaphor confers a lot of useful information about the new idea out of the box.
Another benefit is that painful or arbitrary things can be justified as being part of “god's plan,” helping to alleviate questions of “why” that have no answer and can lead the mind into spirals of depression. In a fractal god concept, god’s plan is the unfolding of the infinite fractal pattern of the Universe according to the laws of physics. So that’s why.
Seeing god as the ultimate source of goodness links the god concept to the brain's pleasure centers, releasing pleasurable neurotransmitters each time you think about god. And since god is part of everything, the adept believer can trigger that pleasure response in any situation, even the most dire.
The important thing is to have a concept of universal oneness and goodness, not the particular cultural form it takes. It can also be secular and not religious. Confusion over this fact leads to increasing strife in a global society where we are constantly confronted by dissimilar beliefs. And when science has become the primary source of truth, the traditional
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Fractal Pantheistic Universalism
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god concepts become harder and harder for each new generation to adopt.
The fractal organizational symmetry of the Universe is a perfect scientific metaphor for the god concept. The Universe is self-organizing; it has self-similar patterns that repeat themselves from the subatomic level all the way to supergalaxies; it conforms to the rules of logic; and it's infinitely complex but based on a few simple rules. Seeing the Universe as one big fractal pattern helps make sense of the rational order of the scientific Universe while imbuing it with the beauty and wonder that people have come to expect from their spirituality.
When combined with Pantheism, the Fractal Universe forms a “God Concept” with all of the spiritual properties of immanence, transcendence, creation, order, omniscience, etc., that monotheistic concepts of god have always had. But what of omnibenevolence?
Making Sure God is Good
While universality is universal, positivity requires mindfulness. The believer must tell themselves that god is good over and over like a mantra in order to reinforce the link between the Universe and those happy brain chemicals. This is built into many traditional rituals, prayers, hymns, and mediations. For example, in Arabic culture, Allahu Akbar (“god is the greatest” or “god is greater”) is used throughout everyday conversation.
Understanding the concept of a Universal fractal god intellectually is only the first step. Each time you look at some object in Nature, observe its fractal form, and think about the wonder of the Universe, you build the neural pathway that forms the god concept. After several repetitions, it gets easy. After putting in your “10,000 hours,” it becomes second Nature, a reflex reaction that happens without thinking about it.
What starts as an intellectual pursuit becomes automatic mindfulness, where the reactivity of our habitual response is channeled away from emotions like anger or fear, and towards presence, appreciation, and enjoyment of each moment. When anything you experience reminds you of the wonder of the Universe, negative reactions are minimized, and the mind is free to focus.
Fractal Symbolism
The fractal can provide the universally recognizable, iconographic symbolism that the Christian Cross, the Muslim Crescent Moon, the Hebrew Star of David, and every other religion uses for branding. It embodies all of the values of science, logic, beauty, and infinity intrinsic to Pantheist values and forms the god concept that helps us understand and appreciate the Universe.
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Existing Pantheist symbols like the galaxy and the nautilus are already fractal structures. But the Mandelbrot set expresses the truly infinite beauty of Nature in a way that other symbols cannot.
Universalism
Universalist theology is the belief that all religions are different allegories for the same, universal god. Therefore, all religions offer different perspectives and insights on the nature of god and should be seen as analogous and complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
Pantheist traditions are present in most religions. The notion has significant theological and historical precedents. If god is the Universe, then it is most likely the case that all religions are simply different ways of describing that same god, not made-up beings with no common reference point. This makes more sense than a supernatural universalist god that offers distinct, culturally specific divine interventions to different people at different times. Humans exist in the Universe and need to figure out how to cope with that, so they developed religion.
The fractal helps reinforce this notion. Fractal patterns have infinite variety but always a common theme. Every spiral arm of the Mandelbrot set is different and unique but also wholly based on the same repeating equation and heart-shaped pattern. Cultures and religions are the same. Different spiral arms of the same heartshaped pattern are generated by a Universal Equation encoded in the Laws of Physics.
Conclusion
Using the fractal Pantheist god concept creates a solid mental framework for understanding the Universe and triggering universal positivity while eliminating the cognitive dissonance required to hold supernatural belief systems in an age of science, as well as the dissonance required to deny the inner truths of our traditions.
It generalizes the concepts of science, the Universe, morality, and spirituality into a single working theory, allowing the expansion of the god concept into further reaches of the brain and increasing its effectiveness.
It provides a beautiful and inspiring symbology that can help spread the message of Pantheistic Universalism to new generations of spiritual seekers with secular sentiments.
Reprinted from www.metaculture.net/metawiki, authored by a member of the Universal Pantheist Society who wishes to stay anonymous.
All images courtesy Wikimedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license unless otherwise noted.
Nature’s Church, Synagogue, Mosque, Temple, Classroom
by Chris Highland
Naturalist John Muir spoke of his beloved mountains as a cathedral. After reverently exploring Yosemite Valley in the 1860s, he boldly wrote to his family: “I have not been [to] church a single time since leaving home. Yet, this glorious valley might well be called a church.” On one of his journeys to Alaska, Muir bantered with missionaries on board the steamer, directing their eyes to “Nature’s Bible,” open and readable in the wild beauty of the mountains. To paraphrase Muir’s friend, John Burroughs: “We may not go to church as much as our parents did, but we go to the church of the forests.”
Call it what you will – a synagogue in stone; mosque of the mountains; temple of trees; sanctuary of the sea –what if we began to imagine the whole of the natural world as “holy ground” or “sacred space Indigenous people and pagans have believed this for a very long time.
How have religious creeds, theologies, and scriptures shaped our world to conform to otherworldly thinking? Our “boxes of belief,” symbolized in “God’s Houses,” have caused us to literally frame and contain extraordinary experiences behind walls and under roofs. Why does the divine need so many addresses? What does this way of believing do to a more universal sense of unconfined, indefinable creative power?
John Muir was not primarily an environmentalist; he was an evangelist for a wide-open and wild gospel of Beauty. He recorded this happy heretical thought in his journals: “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.” Raised in a strict Scottish Christian household, he broke free into the freedom of the hills. He couldn’t understand how anyone could resist that free choice, and choose unnatural alternatives. “No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord (from My First Summer in the Sierra). This is why I say he was not merely an environmentalist or even a conservationist but a preservationist: he was a major early voice in preserving the forests, mountains, and lands as wild places, not only for recreation but also for restoration and retreat.
In the same book, Muir exclaims: “In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church ...” For the more secular person, this can sound a bit too religious, yet I think Muir is expressing the kind of “religion” Burroughs experienced in his New York forests: “that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature and religion are but the faint types and symbols (from In the Catskills).” He identifies a sense of wonder, amazement, curiosity, and openness to learn and expand. This natural religion is a new form of religion, as fresh as our next breath, yet perhaps the most ancient form. Not only nature-based and nature-centered, but Nature itself. Nature as religion; Nature as the origin and generator of all feelings that could be called religious (or “spiritual”). Our brains and bodies sense and interpret our experiences, so how we put those feelings into words matters. As Burroughs says, creeds and theologies may be “faint types” of the real thing, the actual experiences.
If Nature is seen and experienced as Religion, it becomes sanctuary (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, classroom) where the central instructors and counselors are much more diverse and expansive than humans. Wild things and natural laws become our fundamental teachers and guides. This radically inclusive vision encompasses science, psychology, philosophy, physics, art, and every human quest for knowledge, meaning, and interrelationship, as we open to a deeper interconnection with the world and the greater cosmos. While we may still seek wisdom from religious teachers, we primarily pay attention to the wise voices of scientists, naturalists, and those who investigate our secular world, the only real home we know (the Dalai Lama seems to agree: “This
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Leaf drops by Chris Highland.
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is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple”).
John Burroughs said it well when he reasoned: “I have never taken shelter in any form of ecclesiasticism ... I have [accustomed] my mind to the open air of the universe, to things as they are... (from Accepting the Universe).” Keep in mind, Burroughs and Muir were both steeped in rigid religion from youth and yet never became anti-religious. They became enthusiastic naturalists devoted to closely studying our naturally secular world. It’s fascinating how they transformed traditional supernatural terms to apply them to a direct experience of nature.
Along with Muir, Burroughs, Thoreau, and many others, I wonder if we can assume our place in the Great Congregation of Nature, in a deep kinship with the beauty-filled wildness of our natural home.
A long-time friend of the Universal Pantheist Society, Chris Highland was a Protestant minister for 14 years and an Interfaith (collaborative, open-minded, inclusive) chaplain for 25 years. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Seattle Pacific University and an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary. He is the author of over twenty-five books and is a freethinking Humanist celebrant today. His website is: https:// chighland.com.
Pantheist and Artist Bob Waldmire
The world-renowned Arizona Highways magazine featured a six-page biopic of artist Bob Waldmire in its April 2024 issue. You may read “Drawing Attention to Bob” by Noah Austin here: https://www.arizonahighways.com/article/ drawing-attention-bob.
Bob Waldmire (1945-2009) remains known today as an artistic visual “cartographer” for his imaginative and detailed artwork and promotion of the historic U.S. Route 66.
Bob joined the Universal Pantheist Society as one of our earliest members in January 1980 and remained a stalwart member for 29 years until his death at age 64 in 2009.
Over the years, Bob sent us postcards, articles, and artwork. He created and donated such things as "ads" for us to place in environmental newsletters in search of new members, and we featured his drawings in Pantheist Vision. When noted author Edward Abbey died in 1989, Bob wrote a fine tribute to Abbey and a portrait for the cover. Download the PDF here: https://bit.ly/3waxUuY.
Bob Waldmire in front of his 1972 Volkswagen van in 2004. Photo courtesy of the Waldmire Family.
The Autumn 2015 Pantheist Vision featured a two-page spread about Bob’s life. Our current blog entry with a link to a PDF excerpt from that issue is here: https://bit.ly/bob-waldmire-blog. See more of Bob’s artwork on the website maintained by his family: https://www.bobwaldmire.com/.
Spring pond by Chris Highland.
What Pantheism Means to Me
by Members of the Society
I know that in communicating with and connecting to the natural world and the cosmos, I find spirituality and perhaps divinity.
- Digby
Kirby
Being a Pantheist means that there isn't heaven and hell and that there is not a "God" with a white beard in the heavens judging us. That “God” is within everyone and the universe. The atoms that make up our world is God itself and all existing things from stars to humans are all bound together by this force unknown to us (and for which we may never know).
- Kyle Delaney
I am free to be and appreciate being one with the Universe. That I am one with the Universe and everything in in and of it. This incredible knowledge, understanding, and source, allows me the freedom and power to live a life of divinity. With joy, peace, and happiness. Appreciating to its fullest potential all things in this life and of it. Being mindful and fully aware at all times the good things this life has to offer. Living life on a natural high. Caring and loving all things in this life.
- Dennis Lain
I just realized there was a label to define how I intuitively felt about the natural world. I would like to connect with others to learn more and to build a community with like minded people
- Michele Martin Disney
I call myself a religious naturalist and not a Pantheist, but regard the two orientations as deeply congruent.
- Ursula Goodenough
Pantheist Vision
(ISSN 0742-5368) is the quarterly journal of the Universal Pantheist Society, P.O. Box 69644, Tucson, AZ 85737
E-mail: ups@pantheist.net
World Wide Web: www.pantheist.net and on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/pantheists/ and www.facebook.com/groups/universalpantheists/
Printed with New Wind Energy on 100% Recycled Paper
Editor: Harold Wood
Designer and Assistant Editor: Margie Gibson
The Universal Pantheist Society is a non-profit religious organization, founded in 1975. The purposes of the Society are: “to unite Pantheists everywhere into a common fellowship; to spread information about Pantheism to the public; to facilitate discussion and communication among Pantheists; to provide for the mutual aid and defense of Pantheists everywhere; to stimulate a revision of social attitudes away from anthropocentrism and toward reverence for the Earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence; and to take appropriate action toward the protection and restoration of the Earth."
Recognizing that freedom of belief is inherent in the Pantheist tradition, Society bylaws prohibit the requirement of any particular interpretation of religion or subscription to any particular religious belief, doctrine, or creed.
Board of Directors
President …………… Margie Gibson
Vice-President ……… Bernie Zaleha
Secretary ………….. Nancy Pearlman
Treasurer ……………. Harold Wood
Emeritus: Bill Cahalan, Sharon Wells, and Gary Suttle (1945-2015).
Co-founder: Derham Giuliani (1931-2010).
Common Sunflower, Helianthus annuuss, courtesy National Park Service.
Artwork by the late Bob Waldmire, a longtime member of the Universal Pantheist Society. Above: cover of Pantheist Vision, Vol. 5, No. 2, May, 1984; Right: advertisement used in Earth First! and other environmental newsletters (we’ve blanked out our old address).
See inside for a feature about him.
We seek renewed reverence for the Earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence...
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy