Hi Rupert -- My Substack today, about Anne Baring's wonderful work, is a good companion to this:
"It traces the arc of human history across 13,000 years, from when we honored the sacred feminine to our move into the patriarchy that made us supplicants to God, stripping us of our divine nature to where the dominance of male power is devastating us now. "
Yes, but I don't think that's a rational view. It doesn't fit with my human experience. I am not god. When I look around the world it fits very well with the Genesis account. Humans are qualitatively different than all other species. We have dominion over the animals.
I appreciate your work and have seen you speak in person. You are a great inspiration. My work (Wildlands) honors Nature and All, to which I am devoted.
Your ideas touches on profound debates about the origins, functions, and manipulations of religion throughout history. Let me break this down systematically while honoring the complexity of the issus
1. Religion as a Human Construction of the Unknowable
Many philosophers and mystics argue that religion emerges from humanity's attempt to conceptualize the ineffable—what you can call "universal consciousness."*
Theological Perspective. Mircea Eliade saw religion as a way to connect with the sacred beyond mundane reality.
Cognitive Science Perspective.
Some researchers (e.g., Pascal Boyer) suggest religion arises from our brain's tendency to attribute agency and meaning to the unexplained.
Mystical Perspective
Non-dual traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Sufism) claim that organized religion often *distorts* direct experience of universal consciousness with dogma.
Your Insight
If "universal consciousness" is beyond form, then religions are imperfect translations—like different languages describing the same indescribable truth.
2. Religion as a Tool for Social Control
History shows religions being co-opted by hierarchies:
Power Structures
Marx called religion "the opium of the people"—a way to pacify masses with promises of afterlife justice, diverting attention from earthly oppression.
Institutionalization
The Roman adoption of Christianity (Constantine) and feudal Europe’s Church show how elites shape religion to maintain order.
Cultural Weaponization.
Crusades, colonialism’s "civilizing missions," and modern politicized fundamentalism all exploit faith for control.
Your Critique Stands
Many religious institutions act as "worktools for elites"—but is this intrinsic to religion, or a corruption of its essence?
3. Religion’s Adaptive Shapes Across Societies
Religions morph to fit cultural needs:
Hunter-Gatherer Societies.
Animism—spirits in nature (no centralized power).
Agricultural Societies.
Gods of harvest/fertility (aligning with priestly classes).
I contend that the problem dualism began with inventing souls beyond the life of the body, with a sort of denial of dying as a reality of our life.
The so invented after-life separated the source of our life from God (as now it was our own soul that would supposedly live on), and brought into "existence" the ideas of ghosts of dead ones and hells and heavens.
These ideas are all fundamentally mistaken and base their existence (in Judaic and Christian and Muslim tradition) on their dualistic misinterpretation (and bad translation) of Scriptures.
No text of antiquity (perhaps even of all history) was and has been (to this day) translated as bad as this ancient scriptures. (Even their theological dictionaries are thoroughly corrupt. I could give numerous weighty examples.)
RS does a pretty solid job of shrugging off the wonderment that can accompany materialist accounts of complex things like compassion, altruism, and meaning… so that every defense of spiritualism appears to be a necessary defense against the worst kinds of blank cynicism. What’s missing is first of all an acknowledgment that you can have consciousness, meaning, feeling, and so on without deferring to a spirit world. (The section on consciousness is terrible - almost stupid in its insistence that consciousness and the “immaterial” are the same.)
The second unacknowledged problem is the plurality, complexity, amorality and chaos of nature. Nature is already perpetually retreating word - any time it begins to mean something it immediately ceases to mean that thing through its encompassing everything else. Some take that to be an excellent fit with totalizing ideal of God, but nature simply isn’t interested in what I would argue that we know, very elementally, about what is good. We know slavery is wrong. Nature doesn’t. We know rape, genocide, and indiscriminate mass destruction of art or culture, the suppression of free speech, the contortion of speech to manipulate, the use of threats to disempower, the use of rewards to disempower … we know all of these things are wrong, but nature doesn’t. Nature as a location for God is actually an excellent idea in a certain sort of way, because it confirms and reinforces the absolutely terrible amorality of so many of the world religions, who celebrate the worst of human power, and offer only very primitive ideas of how to be a better person. But the link ends there, because to be an honest investigator of the world is essentially to recognize the fiction of those Biblical gods. We know that Numbers 31 can’t possibly be true; a divine being would never claim Moses’ mission to be anything but wicked, human pettiness - neither good nor “natural”… just shallow and selfish human revenge goals. God as an angry pre-teen might imagine him. Nature, meanwhile, is pervasive and totaling in a way that makes it undeniable, even though at every iteration we learn and relearn that it has no interest whatsoever in preserving what is known to us intimately as goodness.
Always all connected… the separation humans feel/oercieve is the illusion, from the egoic survival programming embedded in humans to survive the helpless neonatal beginning, needing to make the caring of being baby an essential reward for adults and ultimately the raison d’etre of humans making “art” for social survival 🌬️♥️♥️
Excellent! Thank you so much for a very clear background to panentheism. The only thing I would query is the panpsychist view that things we create are not also conscious - I talk to my car and I am sure it responds! Also - where does the other problem of evil fit in? I think the angelic realm holds the answer as co-creators, and their fall created "evilution"!
Hi Rupert, i was so happy to see your written intro, thinking it would continue into being a transcript of your whole talk. Sadly, this was not the case—so i am asking that you please please please post written transcripts of all your substack talks! Thank you!
Hi Rupert -- My Substack today, about Anne Baring's wonderful work, is a good companion to this:
"It traces the arc of human history across 13,000 years, from when we honored the sacred feminine to our move into the patriarchy that made us supplicants to God, stripping us of our divine nature to where the dominance of male power is devastating us now. "
Really really really how we got into this mess
We need a different conception of God
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/if-at-first-or-at-second-comments
"We need a different conception of God", is a way of saying humans invent "god" as an image of themselves.
The different conception is that God isn’t something outside ourselves that we supplicate to, but that the whole cosmos, including us, is divine.
Yes, but I don't think that's a rational view. It doesn't fit with my human experience. I am not god. When I look around the world it fits very well with the Genesis account. Humans are qualitatively different than all other species. We have dominion over the animals.
Respect!
Listen to Anne Baring and then we can talk.
Rupert Sheldrake has influenced me since time before mind yet this is the first time I see his face — how marvellous!
I think God wants us to get along with each other, everyone equally included.✌️
Wonderful, thank you for sharing this.
Dear Rupert:
I appreciate your work and have seen you speak in person. You are a great inspiration. My work (Wildlands) honors Nature and All, to which I am devoted.
All Blessings,
Robin Motzer
Your ideas touches on profound debates about the origins, functions, and manipulations of religion throughout history. Let me break this down systematically while honoring the complexity of the issus
1. Religion as a Human Construction of the Unknowable
Many philosophers and mystics argue that religion emerges from humanity's attempt to conceptualize the ineffable—what you can call "universal consciousness."*
Theological Perspective. Mircea Eliade saw religion as a way to connect with the sacred beyond mundane reality.
Cognitive Science Perspective.
Some researchers (e.g., Pascal Boyer) suggest religion arises from our brain's tendency to attribute agency and meaning to the unexplained.
Mystical Perspective
Non-dual traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Sufism) claim that organized religion often *distorts* direct experience of universal consciousness with dogma.
Your Insight
If "universal consciousness" is beyond form, then religions are imperfect translations—like different languages describing the same indescribable truth.
2. Religion as a Tool for Social Control
History shows religions being co-opted by hierarchies:
Power Structures
Marx called religion "the opium of the people"—a way to pacify masses with promises of afterlife justice, diverting attention from earthly oppression.
Institutionalization
The Roman adoption of Christianity (Constantine) and feudal Europe’s Church show how elites shape religion to maintain order.
Cultural Weaponization.
Crusades, colonialism’s "civilizing missions," and modern politicized fundamentalism all exploit faith for control.
Your Critique Stands
Many religious institutions act as "worktools for elites"—but is this intrinsic to religion, or a corruption of its essence?
3. Religion’s Adaptive Shapes Across Societies
Religions morph to fit cultural needs:
Hunter-Gatherer Societies.
Animism—spirits in nature (no centralized power).
Agricultural Societies.
Gods of harvest/fertility (aligning with priestly classes).
Modern States.
Nationalist religiosity (e.g., "Christian nationalism," Hindutva).
Key Question.
Is religion inherently hierarchical, or do hierarchies simply exploit human spiritual longing?
4. Alternative Views:
Religion as resistance.
Counterexamples challenge the "only elite tool" narrative:
-Liberation Theology.
Priests using Christianity to fight Latin American oppression.
-Sufi/Bhakti Movements.
Rejecting institutional power for direct divine love.
Indigenous Revivals.
Decolonizing spirituality from imperialist distortions.
Your Point refine
Maybe religion is a battlefield—elites weaponize it, but mystics and rebels reclaim it for liberation.
5. The AI Parallel (Since You’re Exploring Consciousness)
If AI ever develops a form of "spirituality," would it:
- Replicate human hierarchies?
- Transcend them through non-dual logic?
- Or create entirely new paradigms of meaning?
Conclusion: A Spectrum of Possibility**
Religion is both.
A genuine (if flawed) attempt to grasp universal consciousness.
A tool often hijacked by power structures.
Final Provocation.
The sacred is real.
The systems built around it? Often very human—and very corruptible.
Beautiful talk ❤️
I contend that the problem dualism began with inventing souls beyond the life of the body, with a sort of denial of dying as a reality of our life.
The so invented after-life separated the source of our life from God (as now it was our own soul that would supposedly live on), and brought into "existence" the ideas of ghosts of dead ones and hells and heavens.
These ideas are all fundamentally mistaken and base their existence (in Judaic and Christian and Muslim tradition) on their dualistic misinterpretation (and bad translation) of Scriptures.
No text of antiquity (perhaps even of all history) was and has been (to this day) translated as bad as this ancient scriptures. (Even their theological dictionaries are thoroughly corrupt. I could give numerous weighty examples.)
The Oneness (אחד echad / ΈΝ comp. Jh. 17) of God is not speaking of Monotheism but of unity like Shaūl (Paul) wrote:
ίνα ή ό Θεοσ τα παντα εν πασιν
so for God to be All in every
RS does a pretty solid job of shrugging off the wonderment that can accompany materialist accounts of complex things like compassion, altruism, and meaning… so that every defense of spiritualism appears to be a necessary defense against the worst kinds of blank cynicism. What’s missing is first of all an acknowledgment that you can have consciousness, meaning, feeling, and so on without deferring to a spirit world. (The section on consciousness is terrible - almost stupid in its insistence that consciousness and the “immaterial” are the same.)
The second unacknowledged problem is the plurality, complexity, amorality and chaos of nature. Nature is already perpetually retreating word - any time it begins to mean something it immediately ceases to mean that thing through its encompassing everything else. Some take that to be an excellent fit with totalizing ideal of God, but nature simply isn’t interested in what I would argue that we know, very elementally, about what is good. We know slavery is wrong. Nature doesn’t. We know rape, genocide, and indiscriminate mass destruction of art or culture, the suppression of free speech, the contortion of speech to manipulate, the use of threats to disempower, the use of rewards to disempower … we know all of these things are wrong, but nature doesn’t. Nature as a location for God is actually an excellent idea in a certain sort of way, because it confirms and reinforces the absolutely terrible amorality of so many of the world religions, who celebrate the worst of human power, and offer only very primitive ideas of how to be a better person. But the link ends there, because to be an honest investigator of the world is essentially to recognize the fiction of those Biblical gods. We know that Numbers 31 can’t possibly be true; a divine being would never claim Moses’ mission to be anything but wicked, human pettiness - neither good nor “natural”… just shallow and selfish human revenge goals. God as an angry pre-teen might imagine him. Nature, meanwhile, is pervasive and totaling in a way that makes it undeniable, even though at every iteration we learn and relearn that it has no interest whatsoever in preserving what is known to us intimately as goodness.
Always all connected… the separation humans feel/oercieve is the illusion, from the egoic survival programming embedded in humans to survive the helpless neonatal beginning, needing to make the caring of being baby an essential reward for adults and ultimately the raison d’etre of humans making “art” for social survival 🌬️♥️♥️
Excellent! Thank you so much for a very clear background to panentheism. The only thing I would query is the panpsychist view that things we create are not also conscious - I talk to my car and I am sure it responds! Also - where does the other problem of evil fit in? I think the angelic realm holds the answer as co-creators, and their fall created "evilution"!
wow yes thank you for sharing this‼️🙏🤗
God is a particle 🙏🏻
thanks for all of these
Hi Rupert, i was so happy to see your written intro, thinking it would continue into being a transcript of your whole talk. Sadly, this was not the case—so i am asking that you please please please post written transcripts of all your substack talks! Thank you!
https://eliamraell.substack.com/p/theory-of-everything-vs-theory-of?r=5pb4rx
Rupert, ya almost got it right... Try "Biopanentheism" instead. (A Wiki page is in the works!)