(This post has been endlessly revised to try to get it right.)
Reality is differentiated and dynamic. (Or: The single reality is neither homogeneous nor static but internally differentiated and dynamic.)
Scientific cosmogony replaces creation myths.
A quantum fluctuation in a vacuum released rapidly expanding energy.
Expanding hydrogen and helium gravitationally condensed into stars.
Stars fused heavier elements.
Stellar explosions dispersed heavier elements through space.
Heavier elements entered later stars and planets.
Energized complex molecules changed randomly.
One molecule became self-replicating.
Self-replication, mutation and natural selection generated multi-cellular organisms.
Organisms were selected for sensitivity to environmental alterations.
Quantitatively increasing sensitivity qualitatively changed into conscious sensation.
Complex brains transformed bodily sensations into perceptions of discrete objects.
Cooperative manipulation of environments generated speech.
Speech is internalized as thought.
Linguistic interaction generates individual self-consciousness.
Names individuate children.
The One becomes conscious of Itself by appearing to Itself as other and many.
The single continuous reality perceives Itself as many organisms and their environment.
Self-preservation and species propagation impede realization of oneness.
However, realization requires consciousness which requires organisms.
Human beings can both conceptualize and realize oneness.
The One is present in every particle but conscious only in organisms with central nervous systems.
It knows Itself as animals and human beings but not in any pre-, trans- or post-cosmic state.
Its internal relationships are spatiotemporal and physical or psychophysical.
Levels of consciousness are sensation, perception, thought, self-consciousness and realization.
Gods are personified natural and social forces.
"God" is unified personified external forces.
Science de-personifies reality.
Events are instances of laws which are instances of more general laws.
Scientists cannot explain the most general laws.
They observe consensually objective properties and processes.
Objectivity is abstracted from concrete experience.
Concrete experience is individual and subjective.
Empirically observable phenomena are objective.
We know consciousness by being conscious and by recognizing conscious behaviour.
But we do not observe consciousness.
Scientists detect only neuronic causes of consciousness.
Even a sub-atomic or quantum mechanical cause would not be identical with its effect.
Therefore, consciousness cannot be defined as anything observable.
But definitions of consciousness as synonyms like "awareness," "experience" etc are tautologous.
Therefore, consciousness is indefinable.
Mobile marine organisms became conscious because pleasure and pain have survival value and because the qualitative transformation of unconscious sensitivity into conscious sensation was possible.
Sensation is conscious sensitivity.
Unobservable levels of consciousness are non-empirical properties of organisms, not of "souls."
"Soul" is objectified subjectivity.
Objective organisms generate subjectivity by becoming subjects.
Every subjective experience is unique.
However, aspects of experience can be compared and classified.
Thus, numinous experience is of an awesome presence.
Mystical experience is of inner oneness.
Visionary experience is of projected visions.
Experiences are interpreted either theistically or non-theistically
Theists personify ultimate reality.
Persons are self-conscious individuals.
Self is recognized as such only by contrast with other.
Therefore, the One incorporates all persons but is not Itself a person.
It is "God" as the object of numinous and mystical experience but not as a transcendent person.
The One imagines that It is us.
We imagine the gods.
They are in us.
We are in It.
All is One.
(This much revised version is more succinct. See here.)
