

# Mind of God

# By Ken Levi

# Copyright 2020 Ken Levi

# Smashwords Edition

# Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank-you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# Cover Credit

# Cover Work: Rita Toews. Your eBook Cover Design

## TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE

A. Introduction to Purpose

B. Proving God Exists (B1)

1. B1 Introduction

2. Omnipotent and Omniscient

C. The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil (B2)

1. B2 Introduction

2. Relative or Absolute

3. Symmetry

4. Symmetry and Morality

5. Noether's Theorem

6. Symmetry and the Mind of God

D. Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind (B3)

1. B3 Introduction

2. Qualia

3. Three Schools of Thought

4. A Composite Theory

DEFINITION

A. Introduction to Definition

B. Bottom/Up, Top/Down

C. Embodiment

D. Existential Reality

E. God the Artist vs. God the Engineer

F. Morality and the Mind of God

G. Summary of Definition

EVIDENCE

A. Introduction to the Evidence

B. Circumstantial Evidence

1. Introduction to Circumstantial Evidence

2. The Universe is a Singular Being

3. The Universe is a Singular, Intentional Being

4. The Universe is a Singular, Intentional, Conscious Being

5. Summary of Circumstantial Evidence

C. Direct Evidence

1. Introduction to Direct Evidence

2. The Eye is the Window to the Soul

3. Being Open-Minded

4. Living in the Moment

5. Being Overly Sensitive

6. Falling in Love

7. Summary of Direct Evidence

D. Time

E. Summary of the Evidence

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

## DEDICATION

# To Luis Valdez, the Love of My Life.

## INTRODUCTION

Here is William Blake:

# "Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright,  
In the forests of the night,  
What Immortal hand or eye  
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

What Blake (1794) shows us here is truth. He, the inspired artist, is showing a work of art by the consummate Artist.

Blake is showing us the face of God. Or, almost. Others might just see a big cat, or a predator, or "Panthera tigris." But Blake sees more. It's like what mothers see when they gaze into the eyes of their newborns. It's like what Hamlet meant by "Providence in the fall of a sparrow." Providence is all around us, and if we look closely enough, we can encounter it face-to-face.

This is not spiritualism. It's not panpsychism. It's not "mystical woo." It's reality magnified; reality on steroids; a punch in the gut.

We talk about God, as if He were a master engineer. He is, after all, the Creator. And we can almost picture Him, sitting at His draftsman's table - a flock of _putti_ at His feet - planning out the architecture of the Cosmos. But God is more than an engineer. He is an artist. He is more than a Creator. He is the Creation.

Such talk is anathema to most scientists. Stephen Hawking, for example, maintains that the notion of God is just a fanciful placeholder for when we don't yet have a proper explanation for things. For example, why lightening? God is angry. Why sickness? God is testing us. Why earthquakes? God is ill.

In his book _Grand Design_ (2010), Hawking cites the case of the Klamath Indians who held fast to the belief that Crater Lake was caused by Llao, Chief of the Below World, when he accidentally fell into Mount Mazama.

Throughout history, Hawking instructs us, people have invoked gods to explain things they didn't understand. Eventually, however, science will prevail. "Within a given set of initial conditions, the laws of nature determine how a system will evolve over time," he concludes.

This is the scientific view. And it corresponds to what philosopher Martin Buber describes as the "I-It" relationship. That's when you view others "objectively," with features like shape, size, weight, color. It's how you relate to things and persons as objects which can be noted and described by external observers. The "It," Buber explains, "remains primarily alien both outside and inside you" (185).

The alternative to "I-It," Buber tells us, is "I-Thou." And this is when you relate to others not as a collection of discrete and describable parts, but rather as a comprehensive whole. You incorporate the stark reality of them into your being. Like Blake's tiger, they strike you like a punch in the gut.

Buber concedes that, "Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much" (187). However, he claims, to only see the world in terms of "I-It" relations misses half the story. They miss the better half.

Most Universities tacitly acknowledge this split between two different ways of knowing. They have one set of buildings dedicated to the "Sciences," and another set dedicated to the "Arts." Schools confer B.S. and B.A. degrees based on that distinction. And the difference is that science describes things, while the arts convey the experience of them.

The purpose of this book is to prove the existence of the Mind of God. And I shall do so with evidence from both science and experience. The scientific evidence is circumstantial, like the I-It relation. The experiential evidence is direct, like I-Thou.

Neither is sufficient without the other. Ironically, the problem with the scientific view lurks within Hawking's pronouncement that all can ultimately be explained given the "initial conditions" of the Universe and the "laws of nature." The problem here is that we have no idea where the initial conditions and the laws came from. In fact, the Universe is so finely tuned in terms of its conditions and laws, that even Hawking admits it would be nearly impossible to explain it in terms of random chance.

So, might the Universe have been created on purpose? Might it reflect the workings of a Celestial Mind? To address that question I will focus on the only other area we know of where conscious minds exist. I will focus on us. I will use the mind of man as a portal to the Mind of God.

In doing so, I will be tackling what science writer Michio Kaku calls "the two great mysteries of all nature," namely, "the mind and the universe" (2014). Concerning the Universe, there's the problem of the initial conditions and nature's laws. Concerning the mind, as philosopher David Chalmers queries, "How does something as immaterial as consciousness arise from something as unconscious as matter?" (quoted in Russell, 2015).

So perplexing is the question of human mindfulness that Peter Russell proclaims, "Scientists would be so much happier if there were no such thing as consciousness."

In providing evidence for the Mind of God, therefore, I will rely on science, but also on art. I will focus on I-It, but also on I-Thou. You will hear logical reasons why you should believe in the Mind of God. But beyond that, you will discover how you regularly have direct experience of the Mind of God - the Artist - in your everyday life.

# back to top

## PURPOSE

### Introduction to Purpose

My last three books dealt with some pretty weighty matters: The nature of God, the root of good and evil, and the source of human consciousness. Together, these inquiries constitute basic building blocks for a unified theory of God.

The three books include: _Proving God Exists: Physics, Cosmology, and the Universal Mind; The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil;_ and _Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind_. I shall refer to them as B1, B2, and B3, respectively.

I am writing this current book (B4) in order to complete the work begun by the prior three books. Each of them points to the Universal Mind, as the ultimate question that needs to be resolved in order to realize a unified theory of God. Can we find solid evidence of God's Mind? Is our God merely a force of nature? Or is He a conscious, thinking, intelligent Being? If so, then, that also resolves:

a. the definition of God as a conscious Being (B1);

b. how the standard of good and evil reflects the Mind of God (B2);

c, how human consciousness derives from the Mind of God (B3).

The following three sections provide a brief overview of B1, B2, and B3, and how each of them leads up to the ultimate question of God's Mind.

_Proving God Exists (B1)_

#### B1 Introduction

I argue in B1 that God is the Universe (Levi, 2018). How did I reach that conclusion? It came about in response to a challenge, laid down by the philosopher Kai Nielsen in the book _Does God Exist_ (1993). Nielsen maintains that it's impossible to prove God exists. Why? It's because we have no clear idea what we mean by "God," he says. Yes, we refer to Him all the time. We even talk to Him in our heads. But exactly Whom or What are we talking to?

After all, God supposedly is invisible. We can't see Him, hear Him, touch Him. And we have no hope of ever doing so, because He is said to be "transcendent to the Universe." That is, He exists in a realm inaccessible to us. So, we have no idea what He is like, and, according to mainstream religious dogma, we never can know. Therefore, Nielsen concludes, you can't prove something exists, if you don't know what that something is in the first place.

That's the challenge. So, B1 sets out to define just what exactly do we mean by "God." And can we define Him in such a way that He can be observed? If so - if He can be observed - then He can be proven.
Omnipotence and Omniscience

B1 comes to the conclusion that the primary defining features of God must be omnipotence and omniscience. That's because what we mean by God is the "All Mighty," the "Supreme Being," the ruler of the Universe. Anything less would just be a demi-god, or a superman with special powers. Anything less would not be God.

Secondary features include: ubiquitous, eternal, omnificent, existential, purposeful, conscious, immanent, and good. But the primary features must be omnipotent and omniscient.

So, where do we look to find an omnipotent Being? It turns out, there's only one place: the Universe. The all encompassing Universe, with its all embracing laws, is, by definition, all powerful in our lives. Nothing else can make that claim.

Moreover, the omnipotent Universe can be observed. It's all around us. And evidence for its existence is beyond question.

But God must not only be omnipotent. He must also be omniscient. Remember - knowledge is power. So, if God must be omniscient, and if God is the Universe, am I actually making the audacious claim that the Universe - that thing that we see at night with its multitude of twinkling stars and galaxies swimming in a sea of black - the Universe is omniscient? Am I claiming that the Universe is a thinking, reasoning, conscious Being? Yes. Yes, I am.

B1 advances several pieces of evidence to support that claim. All of the evidence is based on science. It spans the fields of physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, loop quantum gravity, and cosmology. And this scientific evidence, I believe, is pretty compelling. But yet, in the end, something is missing.

What's missing is a direct contact with God's Mind. The scientific evidence is all circumstantial. It's all indirect. But until we can demonstrate how you personally encounter God's Mind, until we can show how you experience it, you will never really believe it exists.

So, that's the unfinished business of B1. I need to prove conclusively that God's Mind exists, in order to prove the Universe is omniscient. I need to prove the Universe is omniscient, in order to prove it's really omnipotent. I need to prove the Universe is both omnipotent and omniscient, in order to prove that the Universe is God. And I need to prove the Universe is God, in order to prove God exists.

_The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil (B2)_

#### B2 Introduction

We are searching for the Mind of God. A big clue in guiding that search is the nature of good and evil. Where exactly do our standards for right and wrong come from? And, in particular, do they come from God?

#### Relative or Absolute?

First, we need to answer this question: is morality relative, or is it absolute? Are there universal standards of good and evil, or do they vary from one religion to another, from one society to another, from one person to another? Is it bad to commit rape in one culture, but perfectly OK in another? Is it a good thing to lynch people in the 1800's, but despicable today?

That's what B2 is about (Levi, 2019). Many scientists and philosophers reject the idea of absolute standards of good and evil. Like beauty, they contend morality is "in the eye of the beholder."

A Facebook post (2018) put it this way, "When I say that murder is evil, the actual meaning of that statement is that the state of my mind is that I very strongly prefer that the world would be a world without murder. It is a description of myself."

In other words, the writer is saying values are subjective. And what one person calls murder, somebody else might label justice.

Moral "relativists" claim there are no universal standards. Precisely because religions and cultures have such differing views about good and evil, we have no right to say any one of them is better than the others.

Conversely, as Geoffrey Widdison observes, "To genuinely believe in that definition, then, they have to believe that torture and murder of innocents, sexual assault, including that of children, and every other form of human cruelty are completely OK if society sanctions them" (2016).

I agree with Widdison. In B2 I argue that those who say morality is all a matter of personal opinion or cultural preference are, I believe, flat out wrong. I contend that the standard for good and evil is universal and absolute.

Consider, for example, the following stories.

The first story is an example of evil:

Recently, in Kenya, a gang of boys in one village raped and beat up a 15 year old girl. "Liz had rejected advances from one of the boys, so he brought his friends to discipline her" ( _The Guardian_ , 2018). The youths were subsequently caught and sentenced – to the indignation of their parents. The sentence was to cut maize in the fields for a period of weeks.

The second story is an example of good:

A 22 year old young man from Mali was visiting Paris to attend a soccer match, when he spotted the child dangling from a 4th story balcony. He climbed up the side of the building, going from balcony to balcony, at considerable risk to himself, until he reached the child and snatched it from danger. When asked why he did it, he replied, "I like kids. And I would hate to see them get hurt" (MSNBC, 5/28, 2018).

Can there be any doubt that the first story shows evil and the second story shows good? Is the issue even ambiguous? Anyone who disagrees, I would say, is simply mistaken. In each case, the question of good and evil is crystal clear.

Symmetry

If there are absolute standards of right and wrong, then where do they come from? Many would say, the Bible. But that opens the question, whose Bible? Different religions have different values. Others would say, logic. Philosophers from Plato to Aristotle to Kant to Nietzsche have each offered their own versions of ethics. But, again, the question arises, whose logic?

Instead of religion, and instead of philosophy, my answer comes from science. It comes from one scientific principle in particular: symmetry.

Symmetry means invariant to transformation. That's the technical definition. However, we use the word symmetry in a variety of different ways: a symmetrical leaf, a symmetrical face, a symmetrical relationship, a symmetrical mechanism. What all these forms have in common is that something stays the same even when it appears in different times, different places, or different conditions.

For example, in a symmetrical leaf the pattern on one side of the leaf is the same as the pattern on the other side. The pattern stays the same, even though the sides differ.

Another example is balance. If you place an ounce of iron on both sides of a scale, that's literal equality. However, an ounce of iron will also balance with an ounce of feathers. That is also equality. The items might be different, but the weight remains the same.

In physics, symmetry dominates the laws of nature. For example, Newton's law of gravity (Gravity = Mass/Distance squared) is just as true on Pluto as it is on Earth. The same goes for Einstein's theory of relativity (e = mc2). These laws are "invariant" regardless of where or under what conditions they are encountered.

For that reason, P.W. Anderson says "physics is the study of symmetry" (1972). And Brian Greene contends "symmetry underlies the laws of the Universe" (2005).

Symmetry dominates not only the laws of the Universe, but also matters here on Earth. We find evidence of it in biology, in aesthetics, and also in human relations. We encounter symmetry in the wings of the butterfly and the growth pattern of the tree. We see it in the design of the Taj Mahal and in the proportions of a beautiful face. We observe it in the mutual courtesy of a handshake and in the balance of the scales of justice.

Symmetry and Morality

The one particular area of human relations that concerns us right now is the question of good and evil. How does symmetry manifest itself here? And the simple answer is: the Golden Rule (GR).

The Golden Rule conveys a moral symmetry. I treat you as I would have you treat me. Just as I would not want you to injure me, or steal from me, or cheat me, or kill me, just so, it would be wrong and evil for me to do that to you.

All societies, to my knowledge, embrace some version of the Golden Rule. Long before it became enshrined in Hammurabi's Code in 1754 B.C., the lex talionis preached "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth..." That same principle reappears across various times and cultures, including: the Laws of Moses in the 1400s B.C., the Twelve Tables of Roman Law in the 450s B.C., in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Icelandic Laws from the first and second centuries AD (Van Drusen, 2008, p. 956).

And where does the GR come from? When we seek out the basis for the Golden Rule, the simple answer, I believe, is empathy (Levi, 2019). We treat others as we would have them treat us because we can put ourselves in their shoes. We know how they feel. Indeed, we feel how they feel. When we hear a baby crying, we feel its distress. When we visit a hospitalized patient, we feel their pain. Our purest motive for helping is to alleviate that suffering and relieve that pain.

Empathy, in turn, comes from intelligence. In a study entitled "Correlation between emotional intelligence and IQ," Aron Barbey, Roberto Colom, and Jordan Grafman (2013) studied 152 Vietnam War veterans. What they found is that the higher the IQ, the higher the EQ. That is, to fully appreciate how others are feeling, you have to be fairly smart.

Our human intelligence, in turn, comes from our very large brains. An elephant's brain represents just 0.10 percent of his body. The ratio of our brain to body, on the other hand, is 2.10 percent. The smarter we are, the more we can empathize. And the more we empathize, the more we practice the Golden Rule.

So, where do our big brains come from? And the answer, in this case, comes from our evolution as a species. Some 560 million years ago the acoela, a tiny, half inch flatworm living in the ocean, developed bi-lateral symmetry. That worm was an invertebrate, but it led to other animals with a spinal column, a brain, and nerves. All vertebrates, including us, evolved from that worm.

The next big step in evolution came when bi-lateralism led to bi-pedalism, and some animals were able to stand upright on two legs. This occurred about 4 million years ago. The most significant outcome of this development was manipulation – the ability to use hands and arms for something other than locomotion. In primates, skillful hands meant a bigger brain. "Our intelligence evolved to exploit the opportunities presented by our hands" (The, 2014). Bi-pedalism, therefore, preceded "encephalization," the growth of brain size in proportion to body size.

Going back hundreds of millions of years, therefore, the principle of symmetry worked its way through the evolutionary chain to produce first bilateralism, then bipedalism, and then intelligent brains.

But there is still one missing link. How did the universal principle of symmetry bring about bilateral symmetry in living organisms? And the answer here is gravity. Anything that moves, whether upward in the case of plants, or forward, in the case of animals, has to be balanced. Otherwise, plants would fall over, and animals would be clumsy. In the age-old drama between predator and prey, the side without balance would always lose.

In sum, the universal principle of symmetry, working through gravity, imposes a prerequisite of balance on the evolution of species. The resulting developments include: bilateralism, bipedalism, intelligence, empathy, and, ultimately, the Golden Rule.

Noether's Theorem

The Universe is lazy. That's what Isaac Newton tells us his his First Law of Motion: "An object at rest stays at rest and in motion stays at the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

Physicist Emmy Noether expressed this essential laziness in her famous Theorem. It has been called, "The most beautiful idea in physics" ( _Looking Glass University_ , 2015). Noether's Theorem expresses universal laziness in the most elegant way. "Every symmetry has a corresponding conservation law," she wrote in 1915. Space symmetry, for example, can be traced back to the First Law of Motion; time symmetry to the First Law of Thermodynamics (Kosmann-Schwartzbach, 2010). That is, "the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed."

The importance of Noether's Theorem is that it explains why symmetry is so dominant in all aspects of the Universe in general, and on Earth in particular. It's a law of the conservation of energy. And in a Universe that prefers the easiest path, symmetry is always the first choice.

In the beginning of this section, I stated that I would demonstrate an absolute standard of good and evil, based not on religion, not on philosophy, but on science. With this final description of Noether's Theorem of symmetry, and how it ultimately engenders the Golden Rule, I believe I have done exactly that.

Symmetry and the Mind of God

Does the concept of symmetry give us insight into the Mind of God? As we have seen, the principle of symmetry dominates on Earth and throughout the Universe. It is a "meta-law." That is, symmetry is a law that all the other laws of physics must obey.

If symmetry is how the Mind of God works, then we have a direct link between God and the Golden Rule. Morality wouldn't just be absolute - versus relative. It would also be Divine.

Plus, as we shall see, the same may be said for human consciousness, in general.

So, the question arises: is the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger just a law of physics, or is it a manifestation of the Mind of God? That is the unresolved question from B2.
_Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind (B3)_

#### B3 Introduction

When we seek evidence for the Mind of God, there's one obvious place to look. It's us. We humans, along with our animal cousins, are conscious beings. No doubt about it. And if we are, that means at least part of the Universe is too.

As physicist Bernard Haisch observes, "Our consciousness is not simply consciousness of the Universe; our consciousness is a part of the Universe; and thus the Universe itself is partially conscious. When you contemplate the Universe, part of the Universe becomes conscious of itself" (2010).

So, B3 (Levi, 2019) begins the search for the Mind of God by investigating how consciousness works in the mind of man.
Qualia

Philosophers define consciousness as "qualia," meaning "the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions . . ." For example, the sight of red; the sound of traffic; the smell of perfume (Levi, 2019).

Qualia is distinguished from "access," which refers to the physical way stimuli are received and processed (Pinker, 1997). For example, the mechanics of hearing a bell consist of sound waves captured by the ears, sent through the auditory canal, impacting the tympanic membrane, setting off the hammer and anvil, vibrating the cochlea and the 1000s of hair cells in the cochlea fluid, and activating the auditory nerve. That's access.

The mechanics of access is something we can observe. They are open to inspection by other people. We can measure sound waves. We can detect electronic impulses traveling along a nerve. These are "objective" events in he sense we can view them as objects, or things, in the material world.

But the actual experience of hearing is something different. The actual sound of he bell - the way it sounds to you - can only be perceived by you, the person experiencing it. By definition, qualia are internal, subjective experiences inaccessible to outside observation.

Such experiences include seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. These are the basics of human consciousness. Together, they constitute what we call "mind."
Three Schools of Thought

How does consciousness work? Since we all possess it, we think we know. We think it's obvious. But those who have studied it most intently have a different view. For example, biologist Thomas Huxley (1866) asks, "How is it possible that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness, comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue? [It] is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."

Philosopher David Chalmers, in fact, calls consciousness, "The hard problem." It's because, as he explains, "How does something as immaterial as consciousness arise from something as unconscious as matter" (in Russell, 2015).

There are three schools of thought about how consciousness works. These include: Dualism, Idealism, and Physicalism.

Dualism, most famously championed by Descartes, divides the world into two substances: body and mind. The body is a purely physical, unthinking object. Mind, on the other hand, does all our thinking for us, and consists of an immaterial, spirit-like substance.

Today, scientists and philosophers have abandoned the dualist approach, and prefer to characterize consciousness as either all physical, or all spirit.

To the Physicalist school, our nervous systems and our brains together explain all you need to know about how consciousness works. In other words, our minds are just mechanical devices, operating like computers.

In fact, our brains are a marvel of creation. They contain 86 billion neuron cells and 100 trillion synapses. Nothing else on Earth is as convoluted or complex.

Yet, the main problem with the Physicalist school is that nowhere in the brain can we actually see consciousness happen. We do see a lot of electrical activity. But what we don't see are feelings.

As philosopher Bernardo Kastrup (2018) observes, "There is nothing in the study of matter that allows us to explain qualities of experience." We cannot describe redness, bitterness, and warmth in terms of quarks, bosons, and leptons.

To Kastrup and others of the Idealist school, the physical world is an illusion. They believe that the basic substance of the Universe is consciousness, per se. In effect, the world is a dream. Nothing is real except imagination. And the source of all consciousness comes from the "Universal ultimate." That is a single, overarching conscious entity, which we each individually tap into.

The main problem with the Idealist school, however, is much the same as the problem with the Physicalists. There's no evidence for it.

_A Composite Theory_

After reviewing all three schools in B3, I draw some conclusions. Keeping what I consider good ideas, discarding what I consider bad ideas, I then add some novel thoughts of my own. The resulting theory is a composite of previous insights and new understandings.

I call it the "Bottom/Up, Top/Down" approach, and here's how it works:

1. I accept the Physicalist position that consciousness is material, rather than immaterial or spiritual.

2. This includes the standard, scientific explanation for how consciousness works. Stimuli from external objects impact our bodies, and activate nerve endings in our skin, which carry those stimuli to our brains. This happens via electric signals, much the way it works in computers. Once in the brain, the signals are dispersed to various, highly specialized areas, which process aspects of those stimuli.

For example, suppose you look at a frog. Light waves from that frog travel to your eyes and impact your retinas. Neurons behind the retina send electric signals to the thalamus, which channels those signals via the optic nerve to the occipital cortex. At that point, the signal is broken up and different parts of it are sent to areas of the brain which interpret distance, dimension, light, darkness, edges, memories, and so forth.

Finally, the results of all this computation are linked together in a process called "binding."

The brain has traffic signals. They're called "inhibitory interneurons." Just as actual traffic signals cause a number of vehicles to bunch up together on red and then proceed in a single batch on green, just so the interneurons bind sensations together in packets. The inhibitory interneurons fire forty times per second and send a wave that sweeps the brain from front to back. All sensations that occur during a fortieth of a second are thereby bound together into a single frame.

Information from auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, motor and other sensory signals are combined. They are bound together and associated with each other within that discrete frame of time.

As Joel Frohlich (2016) observes, binding "allows your mind to experience the perception of a passing car holistically. Without central coordination, a concept known as binding by synchrony, without gamma synchrony, the redness of the car, its motion, and its shape might be experienced independently, without the perception of the car as a whole."

Through binding, our brain takes snapshots of the world. Each snapshot represents everything occurring within a fortieth of a second. Like a reel of film in a movie projector, the succession of individual frames, one after the other, forms our experience of the world (Levi, 2018, p. 49).

Until all information is bound into a single frame, consciousness can not occur. We don't see, hear, taste, touch, and smell separately. We experience them all together.

3. The brain is like the projector in a movie theater. Both brain and projector display images in frames. In the brain, frames appear every 1/40th of a second. In the projector, it's somewhat slower at every 1/12th of a second.

But imagine a movie frame in an empty theater. With no audience, there's no experience. Even though a cast of thousands may have toiled for months over a slew of complex and intricate tasks, still, no audience, no experience.

The same goes for our brain. All the computation that occurs inside our heads results in a set of electronic signals that are bound together into a series of 1/40th of a second still frames. But what about after the binding? What happens then? Where is the viewer for the scene?

As Sandra Blakeslee (1998, p.31) observes in the case of the sensation of touch, "No one knows how the brain interprets signals as feelings of pleasure or pain." The same might be said about taste, sights, sounds, and smells. We may know how sensations are captured, transmitted, and bound. But how are they received? At this point, science has no answer.

4. The great Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle provides a partial solution to the mystery. In Concept of Mind (1949), he debunks what he calls "the ghost in the machine." What he means is there is no such thing as a spectral "mind" performing all of our sense experiences.

Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling are not actions, Ryle explains. They are not the same thing as walking, shopping, and eating. In the phrase, "I see a cat," for example, I am not actually doing anything. I am looking at the cat. That's what I'm doing. But as a result of looking at the cat, I'm seeing her. Or, consider the example of smelling perfume. The action that I perform is sniffing. As a result of that action, I am smelling.

In other words, we perform a particular action. Following that action, we have an experience. But that experience is not something we do. It's something that happens to us as a result of our action.

As an experiment, try looking at something, and while you're looking, then try not seeing it. Or, listen to something, and then while you're listening, try not hearing it. Notice how you can control the first part, but not the second. That's because, I contend, the second part comes from the Mind of God.

Now, you may object that it definitely feels like it's you doing the seeing, hearing, etc. And you are half right. When you focus your eyes on a particular object, or move your focus to another target, or blink your eyelids, that is certainly you doing it. Because you know you're the one looking, it seems like you're also "doing" the seeing, as well. But, Ryle says, you're not. The same goes for the other senses.

5. The American philosopher John Searle (1992) explains further. Mental states, he says, are "about" things. That is, they are intentional states. And the things they're about are intentional objects. Every intentional state has an intentional content. In the sentence, "I see the dog," the dog is the content. In the sentence, "I believe it will rain," the rain is the content.

The content, in turn, determines "the conditions of satisfaction" of the mental state. It is through the content that the state is linked to its object.

In other words, take the example of the dog. Your mind takes aim at the dog, and the dog itself satisfies what the mind is aiming at. Or, more precisely, the reality of the dog defines what the mind needs to know about the dog. It provides, "the conditions of satisfaction."

Consciousness, according to Searle, depends on objects. We do the focusing, but the objects themselves "satisfy" the intent of our focus. In Ryle's terms, it's the objects that are the experience!

6. At this point, then, I turn to the Idealist school of thought. Consciousness, they say, is a property of the Universe itself. Our human consciousness derives from the consciousness of the Universe. This is a little like the Hindu and Buddhist view. To them, the Universal force is the Brahman, which links to each individual via the Atman, or the personal soul. The big difference between that view and Idealism, however, is that for the Idealists, the Universal Mind is not just a force of nature. It's not like the "force" in Star Wars. To the Idealists, The Universal Mind is an intelligent Being.

7. So, now we come to the "Top/Down" part of my theory. External stimuli are captured, processed, and bound inside our brains in an entirely mechanical fashion. In that sense, our brains are like computers. But the actual sensing, I believe, comes from God.

8. It is the Universal Mind inside every one of us that does the actual seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling. As Gilbert Ryle tells us, we do the action part, but the end result - the impression - is something that's done to us. We look, but God sees; we listen, but God hears; we ingest, but God tastes; we sniff, but God smells; we touch, but God feels. That, I believe, is both why consciousness is such a "hard problem," and also how it can be solved.

Now, dear reader, I can feel you looking at me with an deeply skeptical expression on your face. For one thing, you're accusing me of inconsistency. Didn't I say at the outset that I believe consciousness is an entirely physical process? But now, I'm introducing this airy, semi-spiritual notion of God? What's up with that?

Here is my response. I believe that God is physical. I believe that God is, in fact, the entire, physical Universe. And it is through completely physical processes that God's Mind - the Universal Mind - works.

But didn't I say that consciousness can not be explained physically or mechanically? Yes, consciousness can not be explained mechanically in us; in human beings; in sentient life forms. But it can be explained mechanically in the Universe. Here's how.

The Universe - and only the Universe - embodies everything. So, when I am looking at the frog, the Universe embodies me, it embodies the frog, it embodies the lily pad the frog sits on. And, in particular, the Universe embodies how the frog appears. And so, when I look at the frog, the Universe then tells me how it should appear.

I can't know that. You can't know that. But the Universe certainly can know that because the Universe is the frog. In effect, as Searle argues, the object is the experience.

In the following section, I will explain in some detail how this notion of Universal knowing works. Then, I will offer both circumstantial and direct evidence to prove it. But if I am right, the evidence will resolve two pieces of unfinished business from B3. First, it will prove how consciousness works in us. Second, it will prove how consciousness works in the Mind of God.

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## DEFINITION
### Introduction to Definition

How can you prove something exists, if you don't know what that something is in the first place? That's the question I raised in B1. So first, I sought to define what we actually mean by God. Then I looked for evidence to prove that a God, so defined, actually exists.

That will also be my approach when it comes to the matter of God's Mind. The first question needs to be: how can we define it?

### Bottom/Up, Top/Down

B3 offers a "Bottom/Up, Top/Down theory of human consciousness. And by exploring how consciousness works in humans, we gained some insight about how it works in God. A useful metaphor might be what happens when you plug a wire into an electric outlet. The bottom-up part is the wire. And the top-down part is the outlet. Our nervous system is like the circuitry connecting two terminals: the stimuli we receive from the environment, at one end, and the wall socket the wire plugs into, at the other.

Let's extend the analogy a little more. Consider the diversity of appliances in our homes. Some deliver sights, like the TV. Some deliver sounds, like the stereo. Some deliver touches, like the massager. Some deliver smells, like the atomizer. They all convey different sorts of experience. But despite their diversity, they all plug into a single outlet. They all get turned on by a single electric force.

Until they're plugged in, they're all just fairly useless pieces of furniture. Even though some of them contain very complex and ingenious engineering, by themselves, they are inert.

Once plugged in, each appliance becomes part of the current. If they could feel, they would think the current was self-generated. But, in fact, they only have that feeling because they are part of the wider electric system.

The Universe is like a vast power grid. On its own, our body is similar to one of those household appliances. The body's circuitry is simply a set of wiring travelling in all directions. But when it plugs into the socket, then it becomes energized.

Why is it necessary for our consciousness to ultimately come from the Top/Down? As Bernardo Kastrup explains, it doesn't make sense to build consciousness from the ground up, because nothing that it might be constructed from contains any of the properties consciousness requires. Quarks and leptons, atoms and molecules – have none of the attributes of sentience.

Even when those fundamental particles combine to build something as complex and amazing as the human brain, the result is still just a machine.

The distinction between mechanics and feelings is nicely captured in "the analogy of the mill" (Leibnitz, 1714, cited in Strickland, L., 2014). Imagine someone walking through an expanded brain, as if they were walking through a mill and seeing its mechanical operations. Nowhere would you see conscious thoughts (Smith, 2013).

The problem, as philosopher David Chalmers frames it, is how physical things can produce qualitative experiences. We are basically biological machines. If there's no way that we, ourselves, could have qualia - that we ourselves could "feel" - then, something besides us must be doing it.

That something, I believe, is the Mind of God.

The primary attribute of that Universal Mind is sentience. Consciousness is what you get when you plug into that Mind, just like electricity is what you get when you plug your appliance into the outlet. As a result, when we do the looking, it's God who does the seeing.

In coming up with a definition for the Mind of God, that is where we shall begin. It is a sentient force that gives us our conscious experience of the world.
_Embodiment_

How is it possible for the Universe to be sentient? The answer is embodiment. By definition, the Universe incorporates everything in it. And by "incorporate," I don't just mean the Universe "contains" everything, like a glass contains water. I mean the Universe literally "is" everything. It is the whole; everything is a part.

This means God contains knowledge of everything that is. And that knowledge is not only abstract – like the kind of knowledge you and I have – but it's also concrete. The _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ calls it, "embodied cognition" (Wilson, 2015).

For example, consider the rock. God incorporates all the atoms and molecules in the rock. But He also contains all of its "supervening" features. He contains its hardness, its sharpness, its grayness. He incorporates knowledge of all the ways the rock projects. And this includes visceral knowledge of how the rock looks, feels, sounds, tastes, and smells. All of these aspects are knowledge about the rock.

Nothing else has that advantage. I embody myself, but I don't embody you, or my computer, or a mosquito. To me these are all external. They aren't part of me. But for the Universe, and only for the Universe, they are all internal. They are in it, and it is of them.

Being the embodiment of everything, the Universe contains, not only second person and third person, but also first person knowledge of everything. It knows what it's like to be you and me. It knows what its like to be a rock.

And this type of knowledge is non-verbal. It's immediate and visceral. The Universe feels what you feel.

For example, consider the apple. The Universe embodies the apple. It knows everything there is to know about the apple. So, when you look at the apple, the Universe contains knowledge of what you will see. When you eat the apple, the Universe contains knowledge of what you will taste.

Remember how Searle characterizes consciousness as dependent on objects? We do the focusing, he maintains, but the objects themselves "satisfy" the intent of our focus. Well, what I'm saying is that it is through the Universe that the objects are conveyed to us. The Universe embodies them.

This is a special kind of embodied cognition that only the Universe can have. It is the second part of our definition for the Mind of God.
_Existential Reality_

A description of something is not the same as the thing itself. For example, consider the parable of Mary. She grew up in a black and white room, which she never left. She spent all of her time reading books and watching black and white TV. As a diversion, she decided to study the color red. Given all her spare time, she became something of an expert. Ask her pretty much any question about the color red, and she could give you an answer. But one day, they let her out of the room, and she entered a garden bursting with red flowers. She was amazed. Now, for the first time, she was seeing red itself. And she was learning something she never knew (Gulik, 2014).

Because the Universe embodies all things, it knows them not just by their description. It knows them as they actually are. It knows them the way Mary ultimately knew the color red. And this is a wordless, visceral kind of knowing.

In the Bible, when Moses asks God who He is, the answer came back, "I am." In other words, God is saying, no verbal description of Him would be adequate. The only way to know Him is to experience Him. Beyond that, the only way to really know Him is to be Him.

And this holds for all things in the Universe. The only way to really know them is to be them. And this is a kind of knowing that only God can have.

The philosophy of existentialism, as propounded by Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, and Camus, holds that the reality of things does not reside in a verbal description of them, or even in an abstract concept of them. The reality of things resides in their physical "here and now-ness." It resides in the "self-contained and fully realized Being of objects" (Wiki). In that sense, it's not just physical, it's hyper-physical. It's about sheer "Being-in-itself."

Existential knowing is a result of the embodied cognition that only the Universe can have. It is the third part of our definition for the Mind of God.
_God the Artist vs. God the Engineer_

There is a conceit in science that the Universe is fundamentally mathematical; that all entities and all relationships can be described in math, like Einstein's theory of relativity: e = mc2.

In the "Ultimate Truth" project (2017) the commentator talks about how we find meaning in our lives. We do so, he explains, by having a "core." The core is, in effect, our purpose in life. It's what we are about, what we mainly value. He goes on to state that the best type of core we can adopt is logic.

This is because, he believes, logic - mathematical logic - is what the Universe consists of. As he declares, "Logic can free us from emotional attachments and logic is most closely aligned with the mathematical framework of the Universe." Take any star, any galaxy, any tree, or any person, and what you essentially have are a set of mathematical equations.

That's how many us - especially those of the hard-headed scientific variety - view the Cosmos. It's also how some of us view God. After all, in _Genesis_ what we mainly see is God the Engineer. He plans everything out; He builds them up day by day; and when He's finished with the task of construction, He takes a rest.

And this view may be correct, but it's not what God is mainly about. The great American composer Philip Glass explains. "The point was that the world of music - its language, beauty, and mystery - was already urging itself on me. . . . Music was no longer a metaphor for the real world somewhere out there. It was becoming the opposite. The 'out there' stuff was the metaphor, and the real part was, and is to this day, the music" (2015).

William Blake had much the same reaction in his encounter with the tiger. You might conceivably break the tiger down to a set of mathematical proportions and vectors, but that would be entirely missing the point. The intense reality of the tiger is, in effect, the gut punch Blake gives us in his famous poem.

Or, consider the concept of "love." In itself, it is an abstract word that references feelings of joy when the loved one is near; feelings of despair when the loved one leaves; feelings of pleasure at the loved one's countenance. These are all the physical realities of the abstract concept. Perhaps, they can be described by mathematics and logic, but that's not what the reality of love consists of. The reality of love consists of the experience of it.

Logic and math are external descriptors of internal truths. And the internal truths are the "here and now-ness" of things. That's what God embodies. And it's why "God the Artist" is a better description of His Mind than "God the Engineer." It's our fourth definition.
_Morality and the Mind of God_

The review of B2 and B3 reveals an intriguing and unexpected connection between morality and the Mind of God.

In _The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil_ (B2), the Golden Rule (GR) emerges as the universal standard for moral behavior. Why is it the universal standard? It's because the GR is hard wired into the Universe by virtue of the meta-principle of symmetry.

Physicist Emmy Noether explains why symmetry is such a dominant force in the Universe. According to Noether's Theorem, for every symmetry, there is a law of conservation. For that reason, symmetry is the most efficient path for anything or anyone to take.

The symmetry of the GR results from the symmetry of empathy. I treat you as I would have you treat me, because I feel for you as you feel for yourself. For example, if you're having a headache, I have more than just an intellectual understanding of what that means. I can actually feel what that headache must be like. I can put myself in your shoes, and balance your feelings with my own.

It goes without saying the more I can feel what you feel, the more I am likely to treat you as I would have you treat me. The extreme of perfect empathy would only happen if I could actually become you, for a temporary period. Then, the symmetry would be absolute.

In _Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind_ (B3), I propose a "Bottom/Up, Top/Down" theory of human consciousness. The Bottom/Up part comes from our human nervous system. But the Top/Down part comes from God. That is, it comes from the Universe.

And what is the role that the Universe plays in our conscious awareness? It conveys to us the reality of whatever it is we're looking at; or, whatever it is we're seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, or smelling. In other words, it balances the reality of what's out there with the sense we have of it in our minds.

The more the reality of the external object can be reproduced for us in our experience of it, the more we are conscious of it. The extreme of perfect consciousness would only happen if you could actually become the object, for a temporary period. Then, your awareness would be absolute.

The symmetry between you and the object would be absolute. The more you and the object are alike, the more you balance each other off. So, as it turns out, symmetry not only explains morality and the Golden Rule, it also explains consciousness in ourselves and other sentient beings. And the awareness that we achieve through empathy is actually a subset of the awareness we derive from consciousness in general.

Now, what does this imply for the Mind of God? Well, if empathy is a subset of consciousness, and if consciousness comes, in part, from God, then, so must empathy and the Golden Rule.

Back in the 4th Century B.C., the philosopher Epicurus posed the dilemma, "If God is God, then He can't be good. But if God is good, then He can't be God." In other words, why does God allow human suffering? It must be because He is either too weak to stop it, or He's evil.

But I believe there's another answer. God is good. God is giving us truth. But it's up to us to be open to it. The more we open ourselves to what is being revealed to us by God, the more we can be conscious of the world around us, and the more we can empathize with other sentient beings.

Symmetry, therefore, is not just a principle of physics, biology, aesthetics, and ethics. It's not just a meta-law of the Universe. It's an attribute of the Mind of God. That's our fifth and final definition.
_Summary of Definition_

This concludes my definition for what we mean by the "Mind of God." As I said before, we can't prove something exists, until we know what that something is in the first place. For example, if I wanted to prove "gretch," you would be fully within your rights to demand of me, what the heck is "gretch," anyway. Here, then, are the five parts of the definition for the Mind of God that have been outlined in the previous sections.

1. The Mind of God is a sentient force that gives us our conscious experience of the world.

2. That sentient force contains a special kind of embodied cognition that only the Universe can have.

3. That embodied cognition involves existential knowing.

4. Existential knowing renders the "here and now-ness" of things, which is their internal truth. Such knowing is distinct from logic and math, which are only external descriptors. The Mind of God is, therefore, the Mind of an Artist.

5. That Mind of an Artist is reflected in the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger, and all of the other symmetries of the Cosmos.

So, now you have it. The Mind of God is a beautiful thing, and we are all its reflection. It appears in the countenance of the tiger, as well as the fall of the sparrow; in the glare of the sun, and in a grain of sand. And, now that we know what we're dealing with, in the following sections we shall endeavor to prove that it actually exists.

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## EVIDENCE
### Introduction to the Evidence

In making the case that the Universe is intelligent, I will draw upon two different types of evidence: circumstantial and direct. According to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ , circumstantial evidence, in law, is, "evidence not drawn from direct observation of a fact in issue. If a witness testifies that he saw a defendant fire a bullet into the body of a person who then died, this is a direct testimony of material facts in murder, and the only question is whether the witness is telling the truth. If, however, the witness is able to testify only that he heard the shot, and that he arrived at the scene seconds later to see the accused standing over the corpse with a smoking pistol in his hand, the evidence is circumstantial; the accused may have been shooting at the escaping killer or merely have been a bystander who picked up the weapon after the killer had dropped it."

While courts and juries may, therefore, prefer direct evidence, nevertheless, circumstantial evidence can still be persuasive. "The notion that one cannot be convicted on circumstantial evidence is, of course, false. Most criminal convictions are based on circumstantial evidence, although it must be adequate to meet established standards of proof " ( _Encyclopedia Britannica_ ).

In Book 1 (Proving God Exists), I relied heavily on scientific proof. I did so in order to base the question of God on hard, verifiable evidence, rather than on mere faith, intuition, or belief. But scientific proof can only provide one side of the story. It can only offer indirect, circumstantial traces and clues, from the viewpoint of an outside observer. What it cannot provide is direct experience; that is, direct experience with the Mind of God. Circumstantial clues may be valid and persuasive. But direct evidence, if it were truthful, would be even better.

I will present both circumstantial and direct types of evidence in the sections that follow.
_Circumstantial Evidence_

#### Introduction to Circumstantial Evidence

Let's start by looking at the circumstantial evidence. What fingerprints, blood splatter, smoking guns, or shoe prints can we find? What are indirect indicators that the Universe is intelligent? In the following sections, I will give you scientific evidence to support three conclusions: that the Universe is a singular Being, rather than a scattered assortment of objects; that this Being is intentional, rather than accidental; and that this Being has a Mind. See for yourself if these scientific proofs are persuasive.

1) The Universe Is a Singular Being

What do you see when you look up at night? You see a multitude of lights from galaxies and stars twinkling in a sea of black. Although they seem close, those lights are separated from each other by vast distances. For example, the nearest sun to ours is Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light years away. That's over 26 trillion miles. In between is the black void of space.

Let's take a close-up look at that void. From a distance it appears to be empty. But when we peer really close, down to the sub-microscopic level, what we actually see is a seething froth of activity, which Stephen Hawking calls "quantum jitters" (2010, 192), with particles and fields popping in and out of existence.

If we look closer still, we behold something that looks more like a brick wall. We see what Smolin calls, "the atomic nature of space." And why so? It's because of the "Planck length." Named after the physicist Max Planck, the Planck length is the smallest length anything can have. It's so small, that if you were to take the period at the end of this sentence and blow it up to the size of the Milky Way, the Planck length would be the size of a real period within that period.

If you were to try to cut the Planck length in half, what you would wind up with is two separate lengths, each the same size as the original Planck length. In other words, you can't get any smaller.

Further evidence comes from the Heisenberg "Uncertainty Principle."

"If one measures the precise value of the electric field in some region, one must be completely ignorant of the magnetic field, and so on. This means that if we measure both the electric and magnetic fields in a region we cannot find that both are zero" (83).

If they were, then we would know the values of both fields simultaneously, which the Uncertainty Principle says is impossible. So, in any given area of space, there has to be either a magnetic field or an electric field, or both. Space can't be empty.

What this means is pretty mind-blowing. It means that space isn't void. It means that space is made up of a brickwork of infinitesimally tiny volumes of Planck sized cubes. Specifically, according to Smolin's calculation, space is constructed out of 10180 such "bricks."

If space were truly empty, you could take a small area of space, and subdivide it, then subdivide it again, and keep going an infinite number of times. It would mean that space itself were an infinite thing. But, in fact, space is not infinite. It is finite. You can only subdivide it down to the Planck length, but beyond that, you cannot go.

So, space is not a void. It's more like a brick wall, forming a single entity - a single body - from end to end. Also, it is one brick wall, not three separate brick walls; not a hundred. It is one. "Everything," as Smolin says, "Is connected to everything else" (2001, 190).

And that brick wall is animated. It is constantly in motion, with distances and relations forever shifting relative to each other. It is, as Smolin tells us, "a dynamic network of relationships" (177).

Why? According to Smolin, and most quantum theorists today, our Universe is "background independent." For example, imagine a painting on a canvas. The canvas itself doesn't change. It has a fixed size and a fixed area. It forms the immobile background for the painting displayed on it. But suppose the painting could strip itself away from the canvas. And imagine, then, that the newly freed painting could shift and swirl and mix around its colors.

In effect, that's how Smolin and others see the true nature of our Universe. It isn't pinned to an unmoving background. Space is whatever the configuration of relations happens to be at any given time.

So, any change in the relationships among objects, in effect, redefines space. And thus, everything is connected. It's as if space itself were a living organism, a single entity reacting to any and all adjustments occurring within it (18).

So, we'll have to make a correction. The Universe is not a static brick wall. It's animated. It moves. It's more like an organism. And what we thought of as "bricks," are actually more like "cells" within that organism. To sum up: the Universe does not look like a void; but more like a brick wall; and not even a brick wall, but more like an organism, something that moves. For those reasons, thanks to science, we can conclude the Universe is a singular animated Being.

2) The Universe Is a Singular Intentional Being

a. fine-tuned

Science gives us three different answers to the question, why does the Universe look the way it does? The three answers are: accident, evolution, or intent.

Now, our Universe is rather special. It is so special that it managed to produce us. It produced life. In order to do so, however, it had to have an exceptionally specific, and incredibly specialized set of features. Like a Stradivarius violin, it had to be perfectly fine-tuned.

As Columbia physicist Brian Greene explains, ". . . the Universe would be a vastly different place if the properties of the matter and force particles were even moderately changed" (2005, 13).

For example, he writes, if the gravitational force were slightly increased, stars would burn out too soon. But if the gravitational force were slightly weaker, then stars and galaxies could not form (13).

He continues, "the existence of stable nuclei forming the hundred or so elements of the periodic table hinges delicately on the ratio between strengths of the strong and electro-magnetic forces. The protons crammed together in atomic nuclei all repel one another electromagnetically. The strong force acting among their constituent quarks thankfully overcomes the repulsion, and tethers the protons tightly together. But a rather small change in the relative strengths of these two forces would easily disrupt the balance between them, and would cause most atomic nuclei to disintegrate" (13).

"Furthermore," he adds, "were the mass of the electron a few times greater than it is, electrons and protons would tend to combine to form neutrons, gobbling up the nuclei of hydrogen . . . and again, disrupting the production of more complex elements."

P.W. Atkins adds, "If the electric force were slightly stronger than it is, evolution would not reach organisms before the sun went out. If it were only slightly less, stars would not have planets, and life would be unknown" (1981, 123).

Stephen Hawking provides further details. "A change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force would destroy nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it" (2010, 268).

Moreover, he writes, "If the weak force were much weaker, in the early Universe, all the hydrogen in the cosmos would have turned to helium, and hence, there would be no normal stars. In addition, "If protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms" (269).

Hawking goes on, "If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit are necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible. For example in four dimensions, the gravitational force drops to 1/8. The sun would fall apart" (270).

He concludes, "Were it not for a series of startling coincidences in the precise details of physical law, it seems humans and similar life forms would never have come into being" (271).

b. accident, evolution, or intent

How did such a Universe with these exceedingly specific features come about? Scientists are divided. Some say accident. Others say evolution. Hardly any say intent. Stephen Hawking exemplifies the "accident" school of thought. He believes that Universes are being spawned all the time; that there are many, many Big Bangs. If this happens trillions and trillions of times, eventually, a Universe like ours will appear. It would be the result of a purely accidental combination of factors.

Lee Smolin disagrees. "We know," he declares, "that our universe wasn't produced by random choice, because of the many properties it has that would be extraordinarily unlikely to result from such a choice" (2001, 209).

Instead, Smolin exemplifies the "evolution" school of thought. Like Hawking, he believes in the existence of a multitude of Universes. But Smolin believes they mainly existed in the past. One Universe gave birth to one or several others, which, in turn, spawned their own progeny. Those Universes that survived the longest prevailed, while the others died out. In our particular Universe, human life did not emerge until some 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang. And the forces of evolution ultimately made our long-lived Universe the winner in the survival of the fittest competition.

There's a problem with using evolution to explain our Universe. In nature, plants and animals evolve in adaptation to their environment. The horse, for example, became big, in adaptation to a change in his ecology from forest to grassland. In the case of the Universe, however, there is no environment to adapt to. There is nothing. So the whole concept of "adaptation" does not apply. Adaptation to what?

To me, the multiverse theory and the evolution theory both have serious flaws. For one thing, the odds are against them. Smolin himself calculated that the chance of a carbon based, life supporting Universe appearing by accident are one in 10220. That's one in a trillion times a trillion, times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion.

In science, if any outcome could only happen by accident once out of a hundred times, scientists conclude that most likely it occurred on purpose. If it could only happen once in a thousand times, then it would be almost impossible for it to happen by accident. But once in 10220 times? The chances are inconceivable.

Another flaw in both the accident and evolution theories is that they're both unverifiable. There's no way that we, locked in the spacetime of our particular universe could ever confirm or deny the existence of other universes, lying outside our space and our time. All we can ever know is what happens inside our universe. So, neither the accident theory nor the evolution theory can ever be proven or disproven. And in science, if a theory is unverifiable, then it must be rejected.

Finally, a third flaw is this. Scientists adhere to the principle of "parsimony." That is, the simpler the better. But what could possibly be more complex than a theory advocating trillions of trillions of other universes, in order to explain our own?

Multiverse theory violates the law of parsimony. Far from being the simplest explanation for creation, it is the most complicated. It requires an almost infinite amount of time, and an almost infinite number of universes, before finally coming up with exactly the right formula to support life.

The concept of a single Creator for a single Universe may seem far-fetched, but it does have the advantage of simplicity. The theory that the universe was created "on purpose" by an intelligent Being seems remarkably straight-forward. What could be simpler?

So, we have a supreme irony. The "scientific" theories are unscientific. They are much less scientific than the God theory, which they oppose. Therefore, the evidence - the circumstantial evidence - strongly implies that the universe was created on purpose.

c. self created

But who created it? If the Big Bang theory is correct, then both space and time appeared at the moment of creation. Before that, there was no "before." There was nothing. So, how could God create the Universe, if time didn't exist when He did it?

By the same token, Smolin declares, "Nothing outside the Universe can act on something inside the Universe" (2001, 163). Why? It's because there is nothing outside the Universe. All of space and all of time are contained within the Universe. By definition, it's all there is.

The alternative is that the Universe created itself. The Universe was it's own God. This is the view of 17th Century philosopher Benedict Spinoza. He observed that everything is created by something else, with one exception. Whatever came first, could not have been created by something else. It had to have been created by itself. Spinoza called that first substance God.

The circumstantial evidence, therefore, leads us to conclude that not only is the Universe a singular Being, but also this singular Being created itself on purpose.

3) The Universe Is a Singular, Intentional, Conscious Being

a. 3D

As we have seen, the Universe is fine-tuned. It is excruciatingly fine-tuned. In particular, two remarkable features have formed its destiny. These features are space and time. Our Universe is 4D. It has three dimensions (3D) of space, and one dimension (1D) of time. And what a difference that makes!

Evidence comes from a most unlikely source, the renowned Oxford chemist and avowed atheist P.W. Atkins. And it comes in the form of Atkins' intriguing assertion that "space itself is self-conscious" (1981, 71), and later, "In a deep sense, spacetime itself is self-aware" (95).

"In a nutshell," Atkins affirms, "I shall argue that not only is a universe with three dimensions of space and one of time the only kind that can survive its own creation, but also that such a universe is the only one that has the capability of becoming self-aware" (73).

This is because consciousness is essentially born of complexity, Atkins says. And complexity is only possible with three dimensions of space, and one dimension of time.

The dictionary defines complexity as "consisting of interconnected or interwoven parts" The word complexity comes from the Latin "complectere," meaning to entwine or braid. In other words, something complex is like a knot. And thus, complexity cannot occur with a mere one or two dimensions. You simply can't cross one end over the other. And complexity, the knottiness of matter, just comes apart with four spacial dimensions or more. In effect, matter cannot turn in on itself - in its simplest form - or contemplate itself, in its most advanced form without 3D space and 1D time, through which that space inexorably evolves.

Consider three hypothetical universes: lineland, flatland, and cubeland. In terms of space, they are one dimensional, two dimensional, and three dimensional, respectively. In lineland, with only one dimension, there's no room for a brain. Indeed, there's no room for anything, since the line has no width. But even if you could fit a tiny brain inside a single point on the line, all it could ever see is the point in front of it. Consciousness would be impossible.

In flatland, with only two dimensions, you wouldn't survive for very long, because any food you took in at one end, and excreted out the other end, would simply split you in two.

Moreover, you couldn't look up or down, because there is no up or down. And that means you could never see yourself, or any other flat object. All you could ever see would be the line in front of you. And because you could never twist something over or under any of those lines, the connecting tissue in your hypothetical brain would have to be miles long.

"A single fiber may have to thread around great distances before it can reach its destination" (79). A dog's brain would be the size of a city. Under such conditions, consciousness would be impossible.

Of course in neither lineland nor flatland could you have light waves, or sound waves, or electro-magnetic waves for sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

In cubeland, with its three dimensions of space - length, width, and height - everything changes. Now, you have space for a brain. And because you can twist connective tissues over and under each other, that brain can be compact.

But more importantly, you can see everything as it is. In lineland - if you could see - you could only see points. In flatland - if you could see - you could only see lines. But in cubeland, you _can_ see. You can see points, lines, and even other 3 dimensional objects, like yourself. Why can you do this? It's because you can go over, under, and around.

Imagine a typical scene. Say it's a family sitting at the dinner table. Let's enclose this family in an invisible box. In cubeland, you can enclose this box inside a larger box, and from the perspective of the larger box, everything in the smaller box can be observed. Then, you could enclose the larger box inside an even bigger box, from where everything in the larger box could be observed. This is how our Universe is built. The potential for any particular scene or event to be subject to conscious scrutiny is an intrinsic feature of every particular scene and event. We live in an echo chamber of sights, sounds, and senses. Consciousness is hard-wired into our Universe.

For that reason, Atkins can assert, "Space itself is self-conscious."

b. complex organisms

So, 3D space is self-conscious in the sense that it turns in on itself, without unravelling. Given this characteristic, it was inevitable from the start that greater and greater forms of complexity would emerge.

Evolution favors complexity. Survival of the fittest leads single atoms to combine into molecules; simple molecules to combine into complex molecules; complex molecules to combine into organs. For that reason, life appears to have been inevitable from the moment of creation. The unfolding of consciousness was inherent in the original configuration, just as the flower is inherent in the seed.

The highest form of complexity, so far, is the human brain. Our brain attests to the fact that our Universe is conscious. At least some of it is. As Bernard Haisch observes, "Our consciousness is not simply consciousness of the Universe; our consciousness is part of the Universe; and thus, the Universe itself is partially conscious. When you contemplate the Universe, part of the Universe becomes conscious of itself" (2006).

Moreover, our brain attests to the fact that the Universe, as a whole, is built for consciousness. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. How could we possibly ever reach this level of intelligence if the Universe itself did not have the capacity for us to do so to begin with?

c. the laws

Where else do we find evidence for intelligence in the Universe? The answer lies in the laws that govern the Universe. These are expressed with mathematical precision in the equations of thermodynamics, harmonics, electro-magnetism, general and special relativity, and quantum dynamics, to name a few. The fact that the Cosmos obeys an intelligible set of laws, and that these laws apply everywhere, suggests that the Universe is itself intelligent.

Summary of Circumstantial Evidence

We have compelling circumstantial evidence that the Universe has a Mind. Many would find such a notion absurd. To them the Universe is a thing. It's a vast, mainly empty thing, created by accident, and filled with mindless, random and chaotic collisions.

But science tells a different story. Science reveals that, most likely, the Universe is a singular Being, created on purpose, and configured for consciousness. Far from being empty, the Universe is an immense animated organism held together by the connective tissue of Planck sized cells. Far from being accidental, the Universe is so infinitesimally fine-tuned, that it had to be built on purpose. Far from being mindless, the Universe is a vast, complex, 3D echo chamber of sights, sounds, and senses. As such it is perfectly fine-tuned for conscious awareness.

That must be true. It produced us.
_Direct Evidence_

#### Introduction to Direct Evidence

Circumstantial evidence is good. But direct evidence is better. It's one thing to have fingerprints, tire tracks, and blood splatter, but something far superior to have an eyewitness, a live victim, or an actual confession. In the last section, I outlined some of the major circumstantial evidence for the Mind of God. In this section, the evidence will be direct.

But where should we look for such evidence? Do we turn our telescopes to the heavens? Do we focus our microscopes on the Earth? I have another alternative. The best way to look for the Mind of God is to focus on the mind of man.

Our minds are portals to the Mind of God. That's what the "Bottom/Up, Top/Down" theory contends. During the Bottom/Up part, we capture external stimuli, channel those stimuli through our nervous system, process them in our brain, where ultimately, they are bound together into frames. At that point, the Top/Down part happens. The actual awareness of those stimuli comes into play. The actual seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling comes from the Mind of God.

Most scientists adamantly disagree. Steven Pinker, for example, proclaims, "Every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain" (1997, p. 1135). Also, to cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, there really is no such thing as consciousness and no such thing as self. Our brains are just very sophisticated computers.

A major problem with such pronouncements, however, is that they are circumstantial. Seeing parts of the brain light up when you twitch a finger or rub your nose may suggest the presence of consciousness, but it is far from being a direct experience with consciousness itself.

As Sandra Blakeslee (1998, p. 31) reminds us, "No one knows how the brain interprets signals as feelings of pleasure or pain."

No one knows.

We will seek direct evidence for the Mind of God by concentrating on the mind of man. And since we have already defined what we mean by the Mind of God, that will make our investigation easier.

We are looking for:

a. a sentient force,

b. that gives us our conscious experience of the world,

c. by way of embodied cognition,

d. that creates existential knowing,

e. which symmetrically renders the "here and now-ness" of things,

f. with the insight of a supreme Artist.

Truth can be pretty devious sometimes, often hiding right under our noses, in plain sight. So, in the next five sections, we will follow some commonplace sayings - some familiar clichés - to uncover direct evidence for the Mind of God. These include: "The eye is the window to the soul;" "being open-minded;" "living in the moment;" "being overly sensitive;" "falling in love."

Now, let's explore the hidden meanings of these everyday clichés.
The Eye Is the Window to the Soul

The familiar saying, "the eye is the window to the soul," originated as far back as _Proverbs_ : 30:17. As Pastor Travis Smith notes, "The eyes do communicate various emotions. Wide-open eyes communicate fear, while a squint of the eyes communicates anger or disgust. Dreamy eyes are said to communicate love and affection" (2014).

"The best way to get to know someone," Smith observes, "is to look them in the eyes and observe what they reveal about their emotional state."

More than anything else, your eyes communicate your life force. "It's where we see the reality of death - when the light goes out" (Prisman, 2017).

Pastor Smith cites _Proverbs_ that, "a 'look in the eye' can tell you a lot about what is going on in the soul and spirit of a man." And he notes, "Christ taught His disciples that the eye is the light of the soul."

In effect, this is exactly what the "Bottom/Up, Top/Down" theory is saying. The eye takes in stimuli. But the actual seeing comes from "the soul.".

People may try to hide their feelings. They may try to conceal their true emotions. They may smile when they feel sad. They may vigorously shake hands, even if they feel repelled. But rarely can they fake what you see in their eyes.

Pupil size, in particular, is not under your voluntary control. Pupils will dilate or contract not only according to the brightness of the light, but also according to your mood and your intentions."

Psychologist David Ludden gives an example, "Let's say you're trying to fake interest as your coworker recounts every play in his weekend golf game. You can force a smile. You might even remember to crinkle the corners of your eyes, to make that smile look real. But your tiny pupils will reveal your lack of interest" (2015).

In effect, you are projecting two different personas, each at odds with the other. Intellectually, your "self" wants to project one impression. But your eyes are saying something else. They are reflecting a second persona inside you. I shall call this second persona the "other." Through this other, your eyes are telling the truth.

Often, we feel the impact of that truth in eye contact. "It's about the click of recognition that occurs when two people who are self-aware become directly aware of the awareness of another - the possibility for non-verbal soul to soul communication."

It feels like having a mutual encounter with each other's "soul.".
Being Open-Minded

Another commonplace saying is that you should be "open-minded" in your encounters with others, and not pre-judge them on the basis of your assumptions.

a. the portal

I have described the human mind as a "portal" to the Mind of God. Similarly, psychologist Steven Pinker calls it "access." He is referring to the way our nervous systems physically capture and process information (1997).

For example, the mechanics of hearing a bell consist of sound waves captured by the ears, sent through the auditory canal, impacting the tympanic membrane, setting off the hammer and anvil, vibrating the cochlea and the 1000s of hair cells in the cochlea fluid, and activating the auditory nerve. That's access. Access is distinct from qualia - or sensation - which comes once the access is complete.

The access part ends with binding. Every 1/40 of a second, all signals within the brain are bound together into a frame. What's notable is that before that, no sensation occurs. The actual sensation only happens once the brain's job is done.

Binding is the final step in the Bottom/Up stage of consciousness. It completes the portal that connects us, I contend, to the Mind of God.

b. clearing the portal

In order to gain access through the portal of the human mind, however, the pathway must be cleared of obstacles. Debris should be swept away. The guard should step aside. The door must be unlocked and open.

In other words, to obtain access to sensation \- which I argue is from the Mind of God - we need to free our own minds of diversions and preconceptions. We need to open the path.

c. Zen

Such path clearing is a basic precept of Zen. As Shunryu Suzuki puts it, "Zen practice is to open up our small minds" (1973). Typically, he says, we are beset by distractions. Suzuki explains, "When you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion, you may accept it. But if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it."

"Often, we're only half listening to the other person, because we're constantly thinking about our own stories and what we can add to the conversation" (Beard, 2019).

Instead, Suzuki says, we need to adopt a "beginner's mind." That is, "When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, observe what his way is. We put little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other."

So, primarily, Zen teaches us to be open-minded in order to "see things as they are."

Being open-minded, according to psychologist Dan DiPirro in his article "Positively Present" (2010), includes: letting go of control; making yourself vulnerable; admitting that you aren't all-knowing; clearing your thoughts.

As Suzuki advises, "Don't just do something. Sit there."

d. Ryle

Ryle's "philosophy of ordinary language" has some bearing on the question of open-mindedness. He supports the notion that our consciousness consists of two parts.

Seeing, for example, involves both looking and seeing; hearing is listening and hearing; smelling is sniffing and smelling; tasting is eating and tasting; feeling is touching and feeling. In each case, we have both an action verb and a state of being which follows from that action. Not only are there two parts, but the second part involves something that's done to us; not something that we actively do.

In effect, Ryle and Suzuki are saying the same thing. Both are saying there are two parts to consciousness. The first part is something we do, and the second part is something that's done to us. In Ryle's case, the first part is action, and the second part is the result of that action. In Suzuki's case, the first part is opening our minds, and the second part is "seeing things as they are." I have called these two parts the self and the other.

We can control the "self" part. We can control our thoughts and the focus of our attention. But what we see as a result is beyond our control. So, the self needs to step aside - to be open-minded - in order to receive truth from the other.
Living in the Moment

a. being captivated

The third commonplace saying is "living in the moment." It's the flip side of being open-minded. With being open-minded, you put aside distractions. With living in the moment, you focus on one thing in particular.

Here's a little experiment. Go out and listen to Beethoven's _Opus 80, Choral Fantasy for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra_. Then, try to tell me you don't believe in a higher power. It's just anecdotal. It doesn't prove anything. But, it's pretty persuasive all the same.

If you're like me, however, the music captivated you. While you were listening, you weren't thinking of anything else. Your mind didn't wander. The music grabbed you and gripped you. It absorbed you, making you unaware of the passage of time. You were living in the moment.

And isn't that also what Blake gives us in "Tiger, Tiger"? For just the briefest of moments, we are captivated by the image. So, must Blake have been.

Something else both Blake and Beethoven have in common - the poem and the music take you out of yourself. They constitute an immersive experience. You feel like you're part of something bigger than you.

b. I and Thou

Existential philosopher Martin Buber describes what "living in the moment" means for our connections with other people. He outlines two types of relations: I-It and I-Thou. The I-It relationship is one of relating to others as objects. Every It, Buber says, borders on other Its. That is, the It is a useful connection to other objects and objectives. The It is not an end it itself.

The I-Thou relationship, on the other hand, is timeless and spaceless. "It is your present," Buber says. You engage in such a relationship with your whole being. The Thou, as he says, "has no borders." It is not a "thing among things." It also cannot be described as a thing composed of other things. That is, the Thou is not a "loose bundle of named qualities" (1979, 183).

Buber explains, "Even as a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words, nor a statue of lines - one must pull and tear to turn a unity into a multiplicity - so it is with the human being to whom I say 'Thou' " (183).

You form a singular identity with the one you call Thou. As Buber says, "He is you and fills the firmament" (183). Whereas the It, "remains primarily alien both inside and outside you," (183), the Thou is "soul of my soul" (186). Buber tells us, "I require a Thou to become" (184).

The I-Thou relationship is "living in the moment" because it happens outside of time and space - or regardless of time and space. It is Divine. As Buber explains, "Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much" (187). However, he continues, "whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others" (187).

In every Thou, Buber affirms, "we address the eternal Thou" (183).

Buber describes the I-Thou relationship as an encounter with the Divine. Even though his focus is on personal relationships, he acknowledges we can also have an I-Thou relationship with other entities, such as a Beethoven Concerto, or a Blake poem. In every case, it uplifts us and fulfills us, as though it were an experience with the Mind of God.

c. mindfulness

"Mindfulness" is another term psychologists use to describe "living in the moment." It means being absorbed by what's happening, being present in the now. Mindfulness is at the root of Buddhism, Taoism, and several native American traditions. "It's why Thoreau went to Walden Pond" (Dixit, 2008). It includes blurring the lines between self and other, and "being one with everything."

Because mindfulness takes you out of yourself, one surprising result is that it makes you less aggressive. For example, a study was done where subjects sub- divided into two groups. Experimenters told subjects in one of the groups to savor eating a raisin, and focus on the sensation. The second group were not given raisins.

In part two of the experiment, individual members of both experimental groups were told to step outside the room, while the other members voted on whether or not to accept them into the group. Invariably, they would be "rejected."

Finally, in part three, the subjects were engaged in a different experiment in which they were given the choice of delivering a painful blast of noise to another person. As a result, those who did not eat the raisin, and were subsequently rejected by their group "inflicted long and painful sonic blasts without provocation." But those who did eat the raisin, and were subsequently rejected, were "unwilling to inflict pain on others" (2008).

Mindfulness, the experimenters conclude, takes you out of yourself, decreases "ego involvement," and "makes people feel more connected to other people."

The "other" here represents other people. But, as Buber asserts, it's more than that. It's a sense of connecting to somthing outside of you, and greater than you, and, through that connection, to God.
Being Overly Sensitive

a. highly sensitive people

The next commonplace saying I will consider is when someone is accused of "being overly sensitive." Ordinarily, it's not meant as a compliment. But I think it should be.

Psychologists prefer the term "highly sensitive people," or HSP for short. Psychologist Franziska Borries defines HSPs as people who "process information more deeply" (2012). She says they are "an independent group of people who are qualitatively distinct from all the others concerning their way to perceive and process stimuli."

In a study she conducted of 898 German adults, she found that between 15 to 20 percent fall into the HSP category.

Dr. Elaine Aron (1996a) provides more detail. She explains you might be an HSP if:

a. your perceptions are uniquely intense. "Compared to peers your age, you are an unusually deep thinker and feeler. You see the world in depth and complexity."

b. your reactions are similarly intense. "You know the meaning of ecstasy and rapture, though this might not be shared by others around you."

c. you can be wholly captivated by your experiences. "When you feel [ _sic_ ] into music or art, you feel completely absorbed; sometimes you have difficulty pulling yourself out from an immersive art experience."

d. you care deeply for others. "Your empathy is so strong that when others are hurt, you feel as if it is happening to you. You may even feel physical pain when you witness abuse."

e. you feel part of a higher force. "Even if you don't have a religious background, you feel connected to something in nature or something bigger than yourself."

I have described the human mind as the portal to the Mind of God. If that is the case, then the minds of HSPs must be exceptionally good portals. And by studying them, we may have our best evidence yet that the Mind of God exists.

What we see via the minds of HSPs is a deep identity - not just with the external features of others - but also, and especially, with their internal feelings. This identity creates great empathy. But more than that, it replaces a narrow egotism with a sense of being part of something bigger and greater than oneself.

b. intense suffering

Some people are born HSPs. For others, that capability is forged in the fires of intense suffering. Psychiatrist Victor Frankl wrote the book _Man's Search for Meaning_ (1992), about his experience as an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

He writes, "As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before" (61). Beyond that, the prisoner felt a greater bond with his God. "The religious interests of the prisoners, as far and as soon as it developed, was the most sincere imaginable" (34).

What Frankl came to realize in the horror of his situation is a lesson about the meaning of life. He writes, "If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete" (66).

What Frankl learned is how, ". . . man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate" (67). The result, he says, is "the self transcendence of human existence" (109).

That transcendence led Frankl to conclude, ". . . It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us" (76). And what is it life expects from us? Frankl answers, "Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual" (76).

For Frankl and others like him, intensity came from suffering. The effect, as he says, was "the self-transcendence of human existence." He came to appreciate the beauties of art and nature, the "here and now-ness" of things, and the higher power behind them. He realized a strength within himself, to confront and rise above the agony of his situation. And that realization gave him meaning.

As theologian Thomas Merton declares: "If I penetrate into the depths of my own existence, to the indefinable AM that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite I AM, which is the very name of the Almighty."

Because the perception of highly sensitive people is so intense, it gives us the best view for what lies at the end of the portal of the human mind. And what do we see through that portal? We see truth, beauty, and God.
Falling in Love

"Falling in love" may be the most common cliche of all. And notably it's something you "fall" into. It's not something you do on purpose."You can never force yourself to fall in love . . ." It just "happens" ( _Quora_ , 2017).

So, it's not something you do. It's something that's done to you. And because of your passivity, you are especially impacted when love "hits" you. For example: "I loved him at first sight. And the very first time in my life I ever felt passionately was the moment I saw him. It was a feeling so loving, so tender, so wild, so overwhelming, and breath-taking, and all-involving, a feeling I did not know before" (Ben Zeev, 2013).

Another cliche - "love at first sight" - expresses how time collapses into the moment. Ironically, what happens during that sudden, unexpected moment, is an eye-popping sense of absolute truth. " . . . One of the characteristics of being in love is this feeling of rightness and certainty and absence of doubt" (King, 2019).

You form an identity with the other. "Empathy and compassion for your partner rise as you fall in love." That identity gives you an awareness of the intense reality of the one you adore.

Like other I-Thou relationships, being in love with someone fills you with a sense of something greater than yourself. As Buber says, In every Thou, "we address the eternal Thou" (183). When we are in love we feel fulfilled. Our life has meaning.

Can we then say that falling love is direct evidence for the Mind of God? It has all the characteristics. In a blinding moment, we feel yanked outside ourselves, flung smack into an external reality, and through that reality, to a wider sense of beauty and truth. Talk about a gut punch!

Nothing fulfills us, or uplifts us, or takes us closer to the sublime, than the feeling of falling in love.

Summary of Direct Evidence

There's good reason why commonplace comments are common. They contain a grain of truth. In some cases, more than a grain. In the case of the five comments outlined above, they provide us with some direct - "face-to-face" - evidence for the Mind of God.

The direct evidence is based on five common comments. These include: "the eye is the window to the soul," "opening your mind;" "living in the moment;" "being overly sensitive;" and "falling in love."

Now, let's see how good this evidence is. Let's determine whether the direct evidence supports the six elements of the definition for the Mind of God listed below. The Mind of God is:

a. a sentient force;

b. that gives us our conscious experience of the world;

c. by way of embodied cognition;

d. that creates existential knowing;

e. which symmetrically renders the "here and now-ness" of things;

f. with the insight of a supreme Artist.

The direct evidence shows how consciousness is divided into two parts: the self and the other. We've seen how these two parts are often at odds with each other, and how the self needs to step back to let the other come forward. When that happens, we are more apt to "see things as they are." The more absorbed we become, the more we see the truth; and the more we see the truth, the more we see the beauty. In the extreme, we form an identity with the object of our attention to such an extent that we have a sense of being taken out of ourselves, suspended in time, "being one with everything," including "the eternal Thou."

The evidence supports the theory. Some skeptics may object that all this evidence is merely "anecdotal" and "subjective." But these are common experiences. We all have them. And, we all know they're real.

_Time_

We humans are obsessed with time. We have calendars on our walls, clocks in our homes, and watches on our wrists. We have digital chronometers on our TVs, our computers, and our phones. The first thing a doctor asks a patient coming out of coma is, "Do you know what year it is?" If he answers wrong, he's not yet lucid.

We identify the current year within the current decade of the current century of the current millennium. And we can even go back farther to the eras, periods, and epochs of pre-history. All events are located within the context of a time. Whether it's World War II, the passage of the Social Security Act, the discovery of America, the first thing we learn about them is the year in which they happened.

Almost all of the major and minor events of our personal life are time-based. Time determines when we wake and go to sleep; when we start to work and come home; when we play ball, go shopping, eat dinner, or meet our friends; when we watch our favorite TV shows and for how long we must endure the commercials.

Time is the ultimate framework of the Universe. Without time, there could be no beginning and no end; no before and no after; no cause and no effect. To the extent that things "happen," they only happen in a sequence of time.

And within the Universe, time is the only constant. As physicist Lee Smolin informs us, "There's a single rate at which time flows through the Universe" (2013, 169). The speed of light never varies. Everything else does. But not that. And using the speed of light, we can accurately calculate the distance in "light years" between one cosmic body and another. Even space, then, is a function of time.

And time is something that we feel. It hangs on us when we're listening to a boring lecture, or sitting through a mindless commercial. As Einstein observed: our impression of time is distinctly different for when we're making out with a hot date, versus sitting on a hot stove.

To which Lee Smolin adds, "Time is the most real aspect of our perception of the world" (249).

But what is the nature of time? Does it flow like a river? Or does it tick like a watch? Does it fall like sand in an hourglass? Or, does it flicker like the still shots in an animated movie? In other words, is time continuous, or is it discrete?

According to Smolin, the answer is "discrete." Time, Smolin explains, is divided into chunks, much like a movie is divided into frames. These chunks are called "Planck time," after the German physicist Max Planck. Planck time is one second divided by 43 zeroes:

1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 seconds.

This infinitesimally brief period is the shortest amount of time intelligible, meaning we can't subdivide any further. Space and time break down before that, and quantum effects overwhelm everything.

The number of Planck times in one second is greater than the total number of seconds in all of history since the Big Bang. It is an inconceivably tiny expanse. But yet it's not nothing. So, time passes still-frame by still-frame, and is not an unbroken flow.

Within each frame of time, all events throughout the Universe are bound together. For example, imagine a frame in a movie where a couple are arguing, their dog jumps on the coffee table, and a glass of wine spills over. Imagine all those events frozen for a moment, and that's what a frame looks like. Moreover, everything within that frame is inextricably joined together.

Curiously, that's also how our brains work. As we explained earlier, every 1/40 of a second, all the electrical signals in our brains are bound together to form our perception of the world at that instant. That is the final stage in the mechanics of sensory processing. All the stimuli we receive on our bodies, and all the nervous system operations performed on that stimuli wind up being bound to form a cohesive frame.

This coincidence between cerebral binding and Cosmic binding is significant. What it means is that the bound frame in our heads is linked to bound frames in the Universe. The package of signals from our brains is forever linked to a package of universal events.

The binding of time, therefore, is what connects us to the Cosmos. It's what connects our perceptions to the Mind of God.

This holds a special implication for the notion of "living in the moment." That's because, as Smolin says, "All that is real is so in the present moment" (251). And the more we can slow time down in our heads, and focus on the now, the more we can approximate what is essentially real.
_Summary of Evidence_

This concludes my argument for the Mind of God. The evidence is both circumstantial and direct. The circumstantial evidence comes from science and consists of indirect indicators that such a Mind exists. The direct evidence, on the other hand, consists of actual personal experience.

Generally, investigators dismiss such personal experience as "anecdotal." For example, people who claim encounters with Martians, or Big Foot, or life after death, are usually scorned as kooks. But the direct evidence presented here, in this essay, does not come from the random accounts of an obscure handful of malcontents. Rather, they are experiences we all have. They are universal. They are so universal that they've become incorporated into our everyday language.

But first, how is the case for the Mind of God supported by circumstantial evidence? In sum, the evidence supports the concept of the Universe as a Singular, Intentional, Conscious Being. Such a conclusion is based on the mathematics of probabities, on the findings of Quantum Mechanics, and the observations of general Cosmology. The case, I would argue, is very strong. But it's indirect. And to the extent that "seeing is believing," the circumstantial evidence alone might not be entirely persuasive.

So, let's move on to evidence based on direct personal experience. Here is a summary of what we found:

1) The "Other." In our conscious lives, we have the sense of two separate personalities, a self and and an other. We see this in people's eyes, when those eyes tell us a different version of reality than what the people themselves want to project. We see it when we are told to "be open" to something outside of us. We see it in ordinary language, and the distinction between active looking versus passive seeing; active listening versus passive hearing. We know that we ourselves are doing the looking and the listening. But who is doing the seeing and the hearing?

We see it in Zen, telling us to put self aside, in order to let truth enter in.

Conclusion: This direct evidence supports the Mind of God theory by introducing the idea of an "other" as a real component of our consciousness.

2) The Self. There seems to be an inverse relationship between ego and awareness. The less we are aware of our selves, the more we are aware of what's going on around us. We seek something beyond ourselves. Being "open-minded" means setting aside our preconceptions. It means being vulnerable. Similarly, "living in the moment" denotes an immersive experience that takes us "out of" ourselves. "As your attentional focus narrows, self-consciousness evaporates."

We see how "ego involvement" diminishes in the tang of an experience. This is true not only for a grandiose experience, like a Beethoven symphony. But its even the case for momentary pleasure, like savoring a raisin.

Conclusion: This direct evidence supports the Mind of God theory by demonstrating the limited involvement of "self" in consciousness.

3) The Truth. Whatever the "other" is, it stands for truth. For example, we see the truth in a person's eyes, even when they want to deceive us. Also, open-mindedness is supposed to enable us to see things more clearly; that is, more truthfully. The main purpose of Zen, as Suzuki says, "is to see things as they really are."

Conclusion: This direct evidence supports the Mind of God theory by showing how the "other" links us to a more valid version of reality.

4) The Transcendence. Frankl discusses suffering and "the self transcendence of human existence." What he means is a heightened sensitivity to the world around us. For example, someone in the throes of the COVID-19 epidemic submitted the following post:

"When this is over, may we never again take little things for granted - a smile between strangers. Conversations with neighbors. Coffee with a friend. A Friday night out. The rush to school/work each morning. A routine checkup and full shelves at the store. The stadium roaring. Each deep breath. A boring Tuesday. Life itself."

Like the sweet taste of a raisin, appreciation of what we normally take for granted can uplift us.

Conclusion: This direct evidence supports the Mind of God theory by showing how the "other" can make us conscious of the extraordinary in the ordinary.

5) The Greater Power. When we say, "The eye is a window to the soul," of course, we mean it metaphorically. But we say it a lot. For instance, consider the click of recognition when two people lock eyes and experience "soul to soul" communication. An "I-Thou" relationship feels like "soul of my soul." Opening your mind and living in the moment both give you a sense of something "bigger" than you.

Conclusion: This direct evidence supports the Mind of God theory by linking the "other" to as sense of the presence of God.

6) The HSP Experience. With highly sensitive people, we are looking at consciousness through a magnifying glass. Whatever it is we experience in our daily lives, they experience it more. They are the most aware among us. So, what is it they feel?

6a. The Unity. As Buber says, for those perceptive enough for an I-Thou relationship, it is like "being one with everything." This is also the experience of other HSPs. As Aron tells us, when they encounter music or art, they may feel "completely absorbed," and may even have difficulty pulling themselves out from an "immersive art experience." In addition, their "empathy is so strong that when others are hurt," they may feel as if it is happening to them. They may even feel "physical pain" when they witness abuse. The consciousness of HSPs is elevated because of the identity they form with the objects of their attention.

6b. The Beauty. This identity creates a symmetry between viewer and viewed. And for the viewer, this symmetry between them and the other is beautiful. It is like the symmetry between mother and child, lover and beloved, or sculptor and sculpture. There is even a sad beauty between a nurse, who may care too much, and her ailing patient. Intense suffering, as Frankl tells us, increases the sense of "the beauty of art and nature."

6c. The Divine. With HSPs, even though they may not have any religious affiliation, they "feel connected to something in nature or something bigger than" themselves. And Buber observes, "In every Thou we address the Eternal Thou."

Conclusion: This direct evidence from HSPs supports the Mind of God theory by showing how even normal experiences, taken to the extreme, can only intensify a sense of something extra-real, extra-beautiful, and extra-exalted in our perceptions.

So, what have we learned from both the circumstantial and direct evidence? On the circumstantial side, we have learned that the existence of a Universal Mind is likely - highly likely.

On the direct side, we have learned that our consciousness involves a sense of self and other, with the other as a more truthful sort of superego. This feeling is heightened the more the "self" pulls back and yields to the other, leading to the perception of the other as a transcendent force.

All of these experiences are heightened in the consciousness of people who are highly sensitive. For them, the truth of what they see takes the form of an actual identity - or unity - with the object of their experience. And this unity magnifies "living in the moment" to something both captivating and beautiful. Being so captivated raises the sense of a "greater power" - to an experience with the Divine.

Through the portal of their minds, HSPs feel a connection with God, because the intense perception of the existential, "here and now-ness" of things is exactly the kind of perception the Mind of God conveys.

Finally, one common thread, running through all accounts, is the sense of time. And there's a good reason for that. We are obsessed with time. It is, as Smolin informs us, "the ultimate framework of the Universe." Within that framework are discrete frames, or moments, of reality. And those moments of time represent "the most real aspect of our perception of the world."

It is the synchrony between our cerebral frames and the cosmic frames that binds us to the Cosmos. That binding is direct evidence of our connection to a higher power. And it is the reason why "All that is real is so in the present moment."

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## CONCLUSION

Now, dear reader, let's you and I have a little talk. You have just reviewed all my evidence for the Mind of God. But maybe you still are a bit doubtful - a little skeptical.

Perhaps, you just don't feel it. After all, I am asserting that God is in you, and that He accounts for your consciousness.

That's saying a lot. So, no wonder if you feel somewhat unconvinced. And it's likely that in your daily routine - walking to the store, going to the gym, watching TV, etc. \- you don't feel any spark of Divinity.

However, let's see what happens when you heighten your experience. What occurs when you "fall" in love; or listen to a great piece of music (Beethoven, Mozart, Bob Dylan???); or gaze into the face of your newborn; or skydive out of an airplane; or look down from the dizzying height of a mountain top?

At those times, you feel transported. You feel taken out of yourself, and lifted into something much greater than you; you feel dazzled and in awe. At such times it's not so hard to experience the presence of a Universal Mind, or to to sense that you are involved in something bigger than yourself.

My argument is that the same feelings you have at these uplifting moments, you might also be having during life's more ordinary occasions, if you experienced them more deeply and reacted to them more intensely. HSPs show us that such a reaction is possible. Even in the ordinary, there lurks the potential for the extraordinary.

I had a professor of English Literature once, who cried while reading from Milton's _Paradise Lost_. He was so transported by its beauty that it carried him away. And through him, so were we.

What I'm saying is that even though you don't feel encompassed by the Mind of God most of the time, the potential for that feeling exists in all of your encounters. As William Blake writes,

# "To see a World in a Grain of Sand  
And a Heaven in a Wildflower  
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand  
And Eternity in an hour"  
(1863).

Now supposing - maybe out of politeness - you concede that point. Still, you might object that all these feelings I am attributing to God might just as well be the product of your own brains, your own nervous system.

I - out of politeness - might agree with you. But there are some problems with that position. First, no one knows how the brain can do it. No one knows how electrical and chemical signals flowing across neural synapses, in a machine-like fashion, can possibly produce love, rapture, sight or sound. How can "things" produce feelings?

If we did know, we could create conscious robots. We could produce conscious cell phones, computers, automobiles. But we have no idea how to do that, and probably we never will.

Second, consider the following chain of logic: a) if God exists, He must be omnipotent; b) if God is omnipotent, He must be the Universe; c) if God is the Universe, He must be everywhere; d) if God is everywhere, He must be in us.

Third, our consciousness is not a thing separate and apart from the rest of the Universe, of which we are a member. We have consciousness only because our 3D Universe creates an echo chamber of actions and reactions, which we partake in. We are situated within a living network of reverberations.

Fourth, if you look closely at how people achieve intense experiences, everything points to an outside agent. You and I feel things most deeply, when our egos are least involved. As Suzuki admonishes, "Don't just do something. Sit there."

In our passive state, we are opening ourselves up to something that we know we can't accomplish on our own. And by approaching, as much as possible, to the state of "living in the moment," we are building a tie that binds us to the framework of the wider Universe. We are forging a bond to the "here and now-ness" of things. We are creating a link to the truth.

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## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I grew up in Boston, moved to Ann Arbor, where I received my Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Michigan, then moved again to San Antonio, where I taught Sociology at the University of Texas. I am the author of five books:

_Violence and Religious Commitment_ , about the suicide and murder of over 900 members of the People's Temple Church in the Jonestown massacre.

_Proving God Exists: Physics, Cosmology, and the Universal Mind_ , about evidence for God, based - not on faith, or mysticism, or religion - but on hard science.

_The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil_ , about how the science of symmetry not only pervades all of physics, nature, biology, and art, but also determines good and evil in everyday life.

_Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind_ , about the "hard problem" of consciousness, and a composite theory about how to solve it.

_Mind of God_ , the current book about both circumstantial and direct evidence that the Universe is conscious.

In addition, I have published several articles on violence, crime, and delinquency, including "Becoming a Hit Man" (Sage Publications), which has since been cited in over 100 other books and articles.

Find out more at my website: www.kenlevi.weebly.com

