Brane Space: Moving Beyond The Canned Response Of "Prayers" After Horrible Events, Personal Tragedies & Losses

"Prayers" seem to be the canned response after any tragedy - whether a natural disaster, a mass shooting, or a terrible personal loss. But maybe it is time to change the brain's auto reaction mode here. The classic problem for belief in the effectiveness of any prayer is why it is always inconsistent. Until believers can provide satisfactory answers (other than “it is the Will of God”) then they don’t merit serious consideration or credibility.

Why does prayer work for some and not others? Why does it “work” sometimes for person X- then not at other times? Why does it work for half the people in a given disaster (say like the USAir crash in 1992) but not the other half?

In each of these cases, a myopic and self-referential perspective is at work which translates into an arrogant deity believer. This person believes his or her personal deity only works wonders on behalf of some (maybe she and friends), but not all people. This preferential deity model was especially fascinating in the aftermath of the horrific 2012 Aurora Colorado theater massacre, when 12 were shot dead by an assault weapon wielding murderer, but 58 survived. Among the survivors, all kinds of personal special dispensation stories were narrated afterwards.

One of the surviving victims, Bonnie Kate Pourciau, actually claimed “God was holding us in His hands” as the shooting unfolded, and hence she and her friend Elizabeth managed to walk out of the Century 16 cinema with Bonnie having only one gunshot in her leg[1]. (One wonders, of course, how an infinite deity with presumably infinite power he could have allowed even that stray bullet to hit her.)

A question arises here for Bonnie Kate and other Personal Divine Exceptionalists: How is it that your deity’s power did not extend to the others under fire or running for their lives? How is it that It could have allowed little 6-year old Veronica Moser-Sullivan to die? Didn’t that child deserve life and survival as much as you did? Why didn’t that umbrella of presumably infinite divine power and protection cover all and sundry, instead of just you and your friend?

In the end it really matters not, except again, that The Denver Post gave credence and legitimacy to such shallow views and beliefs by publishing them. The truth is that those like Bonnie Kate and her friend simply lucked out. There was no real personal (and supernatural) divinity clasping her hand except in her mind. It was a case of pure dumb luck that her seat wasn’t more directly in the gunman’s line of fire.

But let us imagine an actual deity exists and propose the dynamic behind the Aurora 12 and other episodes, e.g. like the five little girls who sought refuge in a church in Birmingham AL in 1994 - and were promptly crushed when a tornado leveled the building - even as they prayed.

If one accepts that the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is not supported by evidence that matches the outsized nature of the claims made for it, what is the alternative? This deficiency between real events and expectations (i.e. of an infinite, omnipotent being) could be redeemed if the concept was modified, for example to the Socinian deity. First proposed by Socinus, it is limited by never knowing more than the most advanced consciousness existing in the universe at one time.

If limited in consciousness, this deity will also make errors. Physicist Freeman Dyson in one of his books ('Infinite in All Directions') describes an entity almost like a child[2]:

The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient or omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds.

Dyson adds that the beauty of adopting this construct is that it leaves room at the top for diversity.[3] As this entity grows to fill the universe it becomes as much a diversifier as a unifying force[4]. In a manner of speaking, it would be something like an evolving Holomovement (Physicist David Bohm's term for a hyperdimensional, nonlocal consciousness) . The evolution, by the nature of the role of consciousness with in it (as a kind of integrated creative agent), would then advance as the constituent consciousness advances.

Why then couldn't this Socinian deity save all in its sights, say at the Aurora cinema? Well, because it did not possess the full consciousness or awareness to do so.

However, a number of mystics believe the "rolls of personal dice" can to some extent be controlled by individuals, provided they enhance their own awareness. In this sense, it bears some resemblance to Bernard Haisch's pantheistic- activation deity (in his book The God Theory) wherein he observes that: an Infinite Intelligence turns potential into experience, actualizes the merely possible, lets things happen that otherwise would not, lets novelty arise.

The novelty to which Haisch refers is what differentiates the puppet self (which merely reacts to external events) from the authentic SELF - which uses enhanced consciousness to help control events, outcomes. Once one adopts specialized canned prescriptions he merely reverts to puppet hood and novelty is abandoned. This means one can't run one's life chained to any simple formula or authoritative artifact, whether the latter be a bible, a dogma, a Pope’s Encyclical, a statue, a prayer.

As Andrew Newberg writes in his co-authored(with Eugene D'Aquili) book Why God Won’t Go Away:

At the heart of our theory is a neurological model that provides a link between mystical experience and observable brain function. In simplest terms: the brain seems to have been built with an ability to transcend the perception of an individual self

This last statement is extremely important, because it defines the potential encounter of the individual awareness ‘a’ with the totality of Being: ~ O, e.g. via defined in the esoteric relationship:

ॐ ~ O ® Σ_i[y('past')_i + y ('future')_i]

Or more simply (for our purposes now):

ॐ ~ ® O ~ O

For which the undefined implicate (AUM) ॐ - or totality - acts upon the explicated individual awareness a. The latter is presumptively located in the brain’s OAA or orientation and association area (according to Newberg):

Which does not allow human rationality to limit it to the personal dimension. Once we do that, it ceases to be real. This means that all the personal God concepts used by most religions are only caricatures, since they actually impede attainment of the Unitary state of Being. In other words, one cannot simultaneously have an Absolute Unitary Being and a personal divinity, putatively described as the “One True God”. Haisch, in his own book is clear on the repercussions:

"Much of today’s religious dogma concerning God and the nature and destiny of mankind is flawed and irrational. It fails to resolve basic paradoxes, like why bad things happen to good people – and why some are born into riches and other, starvation and misery”

Again, suggesting people need to become active agents in mastering and directing their own consciousness - and unifying it with the ultimate unified consciousness of the universe - as opposed to remaining passive 'puppets'.

Hopefully, these insights will help make sense of my central thesis: That we are each explicated aspects of a single unified holistic Being but which we can access via the individual self-reference state: ॐ ~ O . Accessing means we have the potential to affect the underlying reality in our favor, e.g. by enhancing its consciousness with our own. In my new book, The Metacosm, I go into detail how this can be achieved in the last two chapters:

The Metacosm: Excursions In Advanced Metaphysics: Stahl, Philip: 9781304259332: Amazon.com: Books

And:

Brane Space: Bernard Haisch’s God Theory (I)

[1] Bartels,, Lynn.: The Denver Post, July 26, 2012, 1A

[2] Dyson: Infinite in All Directions, 119.

[3] Op. cit.,120.

[4] Ibid.