Quantum Epiontic GOD: A ‘Mystical’ Metaphysics of Constrained Religious Relativism

Abstract

It is quite clear that the new quantum perspective indicates that all sentient beings carry a small part of the infinite awareness-consciousness which lies within the heart of reality. This also means that, as John Wheeler in the twentieth century and Buddhist philosophers for at least the last two thousand years have suggested, sentient beings are the agents through which the epiontic ground of the process of reality creates the dualistic world of experience. Furthermore human beings, because of their greater sphere of free-will are primarily responsible for the fate and nature of the universe on all levels of manifestation. And, as Stapp, Wheeler, Zurek and others indicate, the intentions and perceptions of sentient beings have a universal impact upon the quantum ground, vanishingly tiny though it may be for any particular individual being. This impact of the intentionality and perceptual activities of sentient beings upon deep levels of the quantum Mindnature universe is such that, as Wheeler and others have clearly indicated, the actual fabric of the appearance of the material world is produced, over vast time scales, by the quantum epiontic mechanism.  In fact it seems as if we live in an Epiontic Universe within which the perceptions and activities of all sentient beings determine how, within the limits of the available potentialities, the universe actually manifests. If this is true of the seemingly material realm it must also be true of the spiritual realm. This is indeed a remarkable upshot; an understanding of the epiontic quantum nature of the process of reality gives us a precise insight to the nature of the ‘constrained relativism’ of mystical religious ‘symbolic forms.’ It must be the case that the manifestation of the qualitative spiritual ground of reality will depend upon the ways in which the spiritual dimension of reality has been epiontically perceived by human beings over long time periods.