Lent 2026: Day four – is the Universe conscious? Pt II: God in all, or God above all?

You are conscious. I am conscious. My cats are conscious (pet guardians would be the last to deny the consciousness of their cats or dogs!). Rats, mice... conscious. Octopuses and squid? Certainly. I'd posit that all life forms, even the simplest, even those without a brain and sense organs with which to process sensations from the environment, are conscious. Nematodes, tardigrades, rotifers, amoeba – I intuit that they all have some primitive form of consciousness. Plants – entirely possible that they too are conscious in some simple way. It's just that we can't detect it. But why not? Is biological life per se conscious... or does biological life serve as a host to consciousness?

An illustration suggesting that all life is conscious: Google Gemini Nanobanana

Next question: what about non-life? Rocks, water? The sun? Atoms? Are subatomic particles conscious? Aware of their own existence? Even to the teeny-weeniest degree? And, given that electromagnetic and gravitational fields fill the universe, pushing, pulling and rippling particles, connecting matter across space and time, one could argue that the whole Universe is conscious – entangled. (Science – the language with which to explain reality: quantum entanglement).

So we can consider the notion of consciousness everywhere. But is this consciousness agential? Does it have a desire, a direction, a will? Or is proto-consciousness (if atoms, subatomic particles and fields are indeed conscious) just a property of the Universe, along with mass and charge?

If we are to slip back from the language of science to the language of theology: is God part of the scene, or is God behind the scene? Is God present within every atom, or does God transcend spacetime and matter, or both at the same time?

This is the question of panentheism (an extraneous God looking in from the outside, which is what Gemini AI sees, above) vs pantheism – all is God, God in all. This then leads us to the dualism vs monism dichotomy; the Cartesian view that the physical and spiritual realms are entirely separate, as opposed to the far more ancient Eastern (Hindu and Buddhist) conviction that matter and spirit are in essence one. I'd hold to the notion of dual-aspect monism; the spiritual and the material are two sides of the same coin rather than two coins. [Then of course there is physicalist monism, which holds that all is matter, and that nothing exists outside of the physical realm.]

I tend to see 'God' more as a process than a person; a process of spiritual evolution, a work-in-progress; God as the Flow, running ever in one direction – from chaos towards perfection, a tendency and not a state. I see God as syntropy, the opposite of entropy; building ever-higher levels of quality as the Universe unfolds. God as a building block of the Universe, and its ultimate goal. And we should align ourselves with that direction. But along that journey from Zero to One, we are not even halfway there. And along this Lenten journey, there's still so much more to discuss.

Lent 2025: Day four
Where is God? Inside or outside the Universe?

Lent 2024: Day four
Metaphysical powers: woo-woo or fact?

Lent 2023: Day four
The Nature of Reality (Pt III)

Lent 2022: Day four
The Ego: what is it good for?

Lent 2020: Day four
Conscious life after death?