Shaun P. McGonigal
Process Philosophy
Paper #3
                                                                           
Experiencing God through Self-knowledge


             The concept of direct experience with the Divine is probably older than history.  What type of being we communicate with in moments of religious experience has been subject to speculation, traditional doctrine, and scientific and philosophical scrutiny throughout history.   The traditional supernatural God, popular throughout much of the world, poses problems due to issues with transcendence; if this God is truly transcendent, then how can we ever hope to know God or, for that matter, directly experience the presence of God.  Many theologians have attempted to say that God is somehow both transcendent and immanent, while others, such as the process theists, have attempted to show that God must be a natural being, and not supernatural or transcendent at all.  That is to say, God is within the world and not above it or beyond it.  Thus, when we experience the divine nature, we are focused inward, rather than outward.[1] When we focus inward, we are looking at what is within the self, how we are constituted.  Thus, I will argue, religious experience is knowledge of oneself obtained via introspection.              
         Divinity is immanent.  This idea is not particularly popular among most theologians, but has been forwarded by process theologians and other types of pantheistic thinkers.  People such as David Ray Griffin, mostly in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead, illuminate the issues with the supernatural God.
[2]  That process theologians are leaders in the charge against supernaturalism has been repetitively demonstrated, and an extensive recapitulation of this fact is not necessary.  However, a few remarks concerning the reasons for this are necessary.    Griffin talks about the problem of evil and tensions with the evolutionary theory as issues related to rejecting supernaturalism, and describes God as a persuasive force rather than a coercive one.[3]  Ultimately, it points out the problems with an omnipotent being whom can exert unilateral force at will, without having to answer to nature.  In this view, God is part of the process of nature; perhaps the very basis for this natural process throughout the universe.[4]                 
          Immanence implies being within a person.  When we talk about immanence, it must be remembered that human beings are part of the natural world.  We cannot differentiate between the natural world and ourselves any more than we can the natural world and God.  In much of theology, the separation of humanity from nature has been based upon the assumption of a supernatural creator endowing us with a unique hybrid existence in the universe; that we are part divine and part mortal.  Also, the idea that we are uniquely rational creatures in the world has manifested itself in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, which creates another type of gap between humanity and nature.
[5]  In both cases, there is the assumption of a type of supernature.  And while these ideas that have developed throughout Western civilization might be true per se (that is to say that we are rational beings, and that perhaps we are in part divine), it is not sufficient to say that we are separate from nature.[6] The fact that I am a thinking thing does not mean that I am not also an animal, a mammal, that is made up of organs, tissue, and ultimately quantum forces that all things are made up of.[7]  Thus, when we talk about God as being immanent in nature, we must also mean that God is also within us, as we are natural beings.                
           Through introspection, people can gain self-knowledge of what is immanent within themselves.  Introspection results in self-knowledge, and comes in many forms including everything from basic thought-processes to deep meditation.  Socrates said "know thyself," and the proliferation of self-help books at any bookstore helps support the notion that he might have been onto something.  The better we understand how our mind works, the better we can use it to process information form the world around us.   However, thinkers from Kant to Schopenhauer have pointed out problems with the "unknown knower."
[8]  Colin McGinn, along the same lines, has attempted to point out the opposite of my premise here in saying that our senses are geared towards representing a spatial world, and not a mental one.[9]  Thus, while we can think about the things we experience in the world, there is a gap between the things we experience and the very tool we use to experience them.  This is an important criticism, and is worthy of note because if McGinn is right, then it could easily follow that direct experience with an immanent divinity could be more easily denounced as bogus:

               Although introspection does tell us something about consciousness, it gives us only the tip of the iceberg (PC
               64, 78).  What introspection leaves completely in the dark is the "physical network in which our conscious
               states are embedded"... "You can introspect religiously from dawn till dusk and you will not figure out the
               physical causes of the conscious events you experience"
[10] 

However, Griffin responds to the challenge sufficiently by pointing out that McGinn assumes what Kant did; that mind and body are of a different kind.[11]  But if Griffin's panexperientialism is correct, this problem dissolves into a mistake by assumption.  In essence, if the mind and the brain were ultimately the same things,[12] then the mind understanding how it works would be a simple matter of prehending, physically, itself.  If the divine reality is immanent, that is within the mind, then understanding the mind and how it functions would allow the possibility of illuminating at least some of this divine reality.                
           Persons can communicate with this immanent divinity within.  Whitehead's theory of prehension, discussed at length in
Process and Reality, allows this communication to occur.  Griffin lucidly describes prehension in saying that a physical prehension "is, in fact, a synonym for 'perception in the mode of causal efficacy.'" (RWS, p. 79).   This "physical"[13] prehension occurs within us while prehending everything from events in our brain, other minds, or the Cosmic Mind.[14]   On this point, Mircea Eliade has gone as far as to say that "the sacred" is an element in the structure of consciousness.[15]  Griffin, in agreement with Samuel Preus, is at issue with Eliade on this point in asking how this sacred element might have gotten there, causing Griffin to conclude that there is an implicit supernaturalism in this idea.[16]  Griffin's concern is with keeping a naturalistic interpretation of this sacred, which would imply immanence.   However, an immanent "sacred" within reality would have to be an element of this prehension, thus to consciousness, so the problem become moot.  Neither is the question of how it got there relevant to the fact that it is there (or at least seems to be there), nor does it imply supernaturalism necessarily.  The crux of this point, however, lies in the fact that for Whitehead, prehension is not a form of representative peception.  Instead "the perceiver actually incorporates aspects of the perceived thing into its own constitution" (RWS, p. 79).  Thus, while prehending any part of the "sacred," the divine, "God," or the "Cosmic Mind," you actually incorporate it into the nexus of the mind.  This represents a very intimate form of communication, perhaps even a metaphysical unity with the object prehended.
          Communication with the divine within is the basis for religious experience.  Religious Experience is direct prehension, communication, and/or union with the divine reality itself.  In the supernaturalist's framework, this would include a transcendent communication with God's reality, being "wholly other" somehow reaching out to the human mind.  But this idea of the "wholly other," prevalent throughout much of the many mystical traditions, will not make much sense in terms of process analysis in any transcendent sense.  How can God, which is immanent, seem like it is wholly other, or transcendent?   This can be reconciled by talking about the wholly otherness of this religious experience as not being so much of a difference of the object perceived being ontologically transcendent (in relation to the subject
[17] doing the prehension), but a difference in the type of prehension or perception itself.  Griffin says it best here:

               ...we are encompassed by a loving, holy actuality, we would feel this actuality in every moment, and we
               would do so with conformal subjective form.  If this feeling were to rise to the level of consciousness, we
               would, therefore, naturally describe it as an awareness of a
holy reality, power, or prescence.  RWS, p. 8[18]

And again here:

               Of course, we are, by hypothesis, prehending this cosmic mind all the time.  The only thing special about those
               rare moments in which we have "an experience of the holy" is that this nonsensory prehension rises to the
               level of conscious experience. (UWK, p. 206)

The difference is a difference in our experience, e.g. when the normal prehension becomes somehow conscious for us.  How this happens is not clear, but the occurrence of religious experience seems to be proof that it does.  Thus, in prehending or communicating with the immanent divine, we have what we call religious experience at a conscious level. 
          The conclusion to this analysis leads us to saying that the immanence of divinity easily falls into a naturalistic theology, and allows for the possibility of knowledge of the divine reality through introspection.  The more we introspect, the more we communicate with the divine reality, or essence, of our being.  So, as opposed to the traditional notion of communicating with a transcendent God, which raises problems with interaction with something ontologically and wholly other, religious experience is knowledge of oneself obtained via introspection.  It is a bit of a surprise that the transcendent nature of the divine was not more obvious to the mystics of the world, because it is they that spend most of their time introspecting.  Perhaps there is a bit of a irony that the transcendent reality to which many of us search for in the heavens is always within everything in nature, including ourselves.
Bibliography
  Griffin, David Ray.  Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process philosophy of Religion.  Cornell University Press, Ithica, 2001
     -Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998
Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality. Edited Edition. The Free Press, New York, 1978

[1] If we are focused outward, it is only in the sense of looking for the essence to actual entities beyond ourselves.  This is really looking within things, rather than simply looking for something "up there" in heaven; for a transcendent reality.  The point is that we are looking within nature, and not a supernature. 
[2] It has been pointed out that Whitehead, for much of his life, leaned towards agnosticism and atheism.  However, as Griffin has pointed out, Whitehead began to use the word "God" to refer to the mind of the cosmos.  Whitehead later "reportedly came to regret this usage, evidently having underestimated the extent to which this word inevitably suggests supernaturalism." (UWK, p. 204)
[3] Cf. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, pp. 24-29 for a general discussion of the problems with supernaturalism.  Also, see Plato, Tim. 47e-48a.
[4] See my paper Searching for an adequate place for God in process theism for a discussion of God as the metaphysical basis for reality. 
[5] This assumes the association of the divine with the rational and intellectual that was common for Greek thought. Cf. Plato, Timaeus,.
[6] In fact, I believe process thought would say that whatever inherent divinity we would have, as with much of Christian theology, all of nature would share with us.  Aristotle's claim to our unique rationality would not hold up for all of nature, but of course this rationality is based on prehension, which all things do. 
[7] As it has been said, we are all star-dust. This, of course, is along the same lines as contemporary process thinkers saying that we are all experiencing beings prehending each other, whether tree, rabbit, or president.  
[8] Cf. A New Kant-Friesian System of Metaphysics at http://www.friesian.com/system.htm
[9] Cf. Griffin, Unsnarling the World Knot, p. 99
[10] UWK, p. 100.  The quotes are from McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution, pp. 73-74
[11] The difference is that while body seems to be spatial while the mind seems experiential, or temporal.  Keeping in mind the fact that Whitehead was aware of Einstein's space-time, it is not surprising that a process philosophical account of this mind-body problem would resolve Kant's problem thus. 
[12] At least insofar as the brain is at least part of the mind, and not that that the mind is wholly contained within the confines of the brain.  It might be that the mind extends to some extent to the rest of the body.
[13] The mental, or "conceptual" prehension deals with possibilities or universals.  Again, cf. RWS, p. 79.
[14] Cf. RWS, p. 80.  Remember that Whitehead uses the word "God" for this "Cosmic Mind" (cf. footnote 1, above).
[15] RWS, p. 78.  Also, cf. Eliade, History of Religious Ideas. 2 vols.
[16] ibid.  Also see Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud.  New Haven. Yale University Press. 1987.  p. xix 
[17] I use the term subject cautiously, as Whitehead has been very clear that the theory of prehension repudiates the subject-predicate model.  Perhaps a better term, in keeping close to Whitehead,  would be "actual entity."
[18] Also, cf. RWS, 75