Talking to God: Conversations With the Infinite Intimate The God You Don't Believe in Doesn't Exist: Prayer Is an Inherent Structure of the Conversational Cosmos

Cosmos as Beloved: The Three Primordial Perspectives

The infinite personhood of Cosmos is a core quality of consciousness. It is neither a dogma nor a social construction of reality. The personhood of Cosmos is rather an expression of one the three primordial perspectives that are built into the very source code of Reality: first-, second-, and third-person perspectives. We talk about what might be called Eros in first person in the experience of Eros as awakening to your identity with consciousness, or what is classically referred to as an enlightenment experience. This is the quality of the divine Eros that lives as me. This is the life principle, expressed and incarnate as myself. In Divine Lover Eros, we refer to Eros as second person, meaning the personal face of Reality that speaks to us face to face, loves us madly and knows our name. Eros in third person refers to the energy or force of Evolutionary Eros, what many leading- edge scientists refer to as the life principle that animates or drives Cosmos. How we experience each of the three is however not an eternal but an evolving truth. Each perspective expresses a different life world or quality of existence. The laws of nature, for example, are third person realities, our own sense of identity is a first-person reality, and relationship in all of its forms is a second person reality. This second person of reality is the form in which we encounter Reality in Its personal face, in all of Her personal disguises. We have referred to this in other writings as Divine Lover Eros.

Sometimes these faces of Spirit—and especially this second person quality of Reality’s personhood that knows your name—are referred to as God. We don’t want to dogmatically exclude God language from the conversation. Our conversation has room for the classical atheist and the classical theist; both of their languages have a place at the table. But by “God” we do not refer to the god you don't believe in—because the god you don’t believe in doesn't exist. We do not refer to the cosmic vending machine god who asks you to put in a quarter and get out a divine treat. Nor do we refer to the god who loves only those who accept one version of religion which claims to be the true religion and order the slaughter of everyone else. Not that god.

Now that we have established what we don’t mean by God—what do we mean by invoking God? By God we mean Reality. God is Reality. Reality is Eros. Eros is the interior quality of consciousness. When we refer to the second person of Reality, we point towards the infinitely good, true, beautiful and powerful force that knows your name and cares about your life.

If we introduce the word God, we refer to the God who is common to materialist mystics, agnostics, spiritual-but-not-religious types andto formal religious practitioners in the great traditions. Whatever your understanding of God, you can join the conversation which affirms the transcendent life principle of Eros in its second person expression.

This is so because at least one dimension of Reality is personhood. But the affirmation of personhood, or what might be called interiority as a quality of reality, is not a dogma or claim of religion. It is a simple empirical fact. Indeed, it is the dimension of reality on which we stake our lives, and which motivates all of our decisions in virtually every dimension of our lives.

This dimension of personhood in Reality, which is Reality in the Second Person, is what we mean by Divine Lover Eros. In the language of the traditions this is called Spirit or God. It is about the realization of the personal face of the Mystery. This is not a conceptual realization. It is a direct knowing, empirically verified by interior scientists from the great streams of wisdom across the ages.