God, mind reading, and oneness
Most of us Mormons believe God reads our minds. I pray to God in my thoughts regularly in the belief that God hears and understands my thoughts as clearly as I hear and understand them. Now how God could read the minds of billions of humans all at once is a mystery but since this is God we are talking about such mysteries are par for the course.
The other thing that Mormonism teaches is that God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are “one God”. This is generally believed to mean that the members of the Godhead have completely unified purposes and enjoy what is sometimes called an “indwelling unity”. One would assume that indwelling unity among the members of the Godhead means they read one another’s minds just like we generally assume they read all of our minds.
So the question that is difficult for me to answer is how does a mind retain individuality if it is entirely shared with others? I tend to envision thoughts as being rather like water, and when multiple containers of water are mixed without boundaries they become a single body of water. I can conceive of the “Borg” problem not arising between me and God since I can’t read his mind. But if the mind reading is constant and reciprocal I have trouble understanding how individuality could survive.
One theory I posted on once is that since we have one-track minds here on earth, truly multi-tasking minds are simply not comprehensible to us. (From what I’ve read we have fast minds but we can only think of one thing in a given instant so our “multi-tasking” is really our fast brains flickering back and forth on multiple topics.) I sort of prefer this answer I think. As Milli Vanilli said: “Blame it on the Brain” (or something like that). Maybe without human brain limitations the members of the Godhead can be tuned into billions of feeds at once while still retaining independent personal minds.
If that general approach doesn’t work then I am not sure where we we go next. I have occasionally heard people claim there is a massive delegation project with angels and whatnot but if a single God himself still gets all the info that would just be a less efficient method of him mind reading anyway. Others have hinted that our prayers are really listened to and answered by some form of Team Holy Ghost with each of us having individual angels responsible for reading our minds and responding. I don’t think that really solves my question very well if Celestial minds have this one-track limitation our minds have though. Plus, that approach seems to obliterate our ideas about the Godhead.
We have pretty much no revelation on this subject so I realize that the proper answer is “we don’t know”. But in the absence of knowledge and revelation on the subject I would be interested in your opinions.
[Associated Radio Thang Song: Milli Vanilli – Blame it on the Brain… err… Rain]
Geoff, you said you can’t read God’s mind, but isn’t that what we’re effectively doing when we seek and obtain revelation/inspiration/guidance from the Holy Ghost?
One possibility, in line with your Blame it on the Brain comment, is that our thoughts, like our memory, are biochemical. In this sense, God could read our minds just as he could tell the color of our eyes or whether we’ve got a sunburn; he would merely need to perceive the physical structure of our brain. So observing one another’s thoughts would be no different than observing one another’s bodies and would have no impact on our individuality. When we “read” one another’s thoughts in day-to-day experience, we’re basically reading physical manifestations of those thoughts, anyway. Maybe that’s also what happens when the Spirit reveals other people’s thoughts, as in Hel. 9:41.
The LA Times is running a series on the physical nature of memory, btw: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-memoryfirst19aug19,0,5913608.story?coll=la-default-underdog
It’s interesting that the scriptures speak of the thoughts of our hearts, and that God can put thoughts into our hearts. D&C 100:5.
It’s difficult to conceive of this other than by analogy. The cells in our bodies are physically distinct, yet they’re constantly communicating with each other through millions of chemical and electrical signals. Maybe our hearts and minds are linked in a special way.
Overall, I always imagine God enjoying tremendously the capability to experience all the variety of life vicariously through us.
The problem of perception that you raise seems time-based. I.e., time seems to pass so quickly that it’s difficult to imagine someone comprehending all our thoughts simultaneously. But if God’s time is slower than ours, to the point of not even being time in the sense that we experience it, he could “take his time” and deal with billions of individual thoughts on an individual basis. In this way, he would further expand the enjoyment of knowing each one of us on an individual basis.
Comment by jonathan n — August 19, 2007 @ 7:02 am
Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us: the word of God is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” and “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him”
Jesus knew the thoughts of others – Matthew 9:4; 12:25; Luke 9:47; 11:17
jonathan n wrote:
“…observing one another’s thoughts…”
I believe (personal revelation) that observing thoughts is a common method of spirit to spirit communication.
It is my understanding that the content of the thought cannot be read but the change in your thought pattern can.
Watching your thoughts and your actions gives the observer a great deal of information.
This belief is supported by the near death experiences of others.
Comment by Howard — August 19, 2007 @ 8:22 am
Geoff J wrote:
“…how does a mind retain individuality if it is entirely shared with others?”
To the extent that we “become” Him, we are one with Him and one the others who have “become” Him.
To the extent that we are not Him we are ourselves.
Our “self” is therefore defined by our divergence from the light.
He is the light.
Comment by Howard — August 19, 2007 @ 9:41 am
Jonathan: but isn’t [mind reading] what we’re effectively doing when we seek and obtain revelation/inspiration/guidance from the Holy Ghost?
No, I wouldn’t consider our receiving revelation/inspiration to be the same as mind reading. I think of inspiration more like traditional dialogue wherein a message is sent directly to our minds by God. The main difference is that it bypasses our physical receptors (aka hardware — eyes, ears, etc.) and the knowledge is sent directly to our minds. I suppose this one-track-minds limitation of our makes the true full kind of mind reading I assume God can do impossible for us.
The problem with the biochemical theory is that it is hard to reconcile it with the notion of persistent minds/spirits after our deaths. If our minds are entirely emergent from our physical brains then how did they exist before we were born here and how will they exist after we leave here?
But if God’s time is slower than ours
This is an interesting take on the subject. I think it actually makes some sense. The scriptural problem with it is the idea that God’s time is not slower, but faster than ours. There is that verse in 2nd Peter:
Comment by Geoff J — August 19, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Howard: Our “self†is therefore defined by our divergence from the light.
It sounds like you are saying that exaltation requires the total obliteration of personal identity. Is that right?
Comment by Geoff J — August 19, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Geoff J wrote:
“It sounds like you are saying that exaltation requires the total obliteration of personal identity. Is that right?”
No. Jesus retains his personal identity.
Comment by Howard — August 19, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Howard,
Your comment in #3 has me thoroughly confused then.
The implication is that God is light, and to the extent we do not become light (whatever that means) we are ourselves (or something). Can you explain what you meant in that comment? I can’t make heads or tails of it.
Comment by Geoff J — August 19, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
Geoff,
Like Jesus, we can simultaneously be one with the Father while retaining our personal identity.
We are a mix:
To the extent that we grow to be like the Father, we are one with him.
To the extent that we are different than him, we are distinctly ourselves.
Once this mixture grows sufficiently, we can enjoy exaltation.
Comment by Howard — August 19, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Ok. I buy that general idea Howard. But what of the mind reading issue that the post is about? Do you assume that Celestial minds do not have the one-track limitations we now have (so they can read billions of minds at once while still retaining a personal mind) or do you envision some other sort of mechanism by which the members of the Godhead connect with us and each other?
Comment by Geoff J — August 19, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
Geoff,
Your mind reading question is an interesting one.
My experience is with the Holy Spirit. Through personal revelation (while doing genealogy) I know that he has mind reading access to at least hundreds of minds, so why not billions?
Comment by Howard — August 19, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
Geoff, if I can slip in here for a moment on this Sunday night, I saw your term “oneness” and then the link to “one God”. I must confess that the discourse of Jesus in John 5 is blowing my mind.
The Father and the Son being distinctive of each other and yet one God. Jesus is distinct from the Father and YET the Son has no action, no will, no voice, and no judgment that is separate from the Father.
This is both mysterious and imcomprehensible. One initiates. The Other responds. And yet I find that both Father and Son are operating from one center of operation. What the Father is doing, that is what the Son is doing. And it is impossible for the Son to do any other. John 5 is the window for me to peer into a divine relationship that is utterly unique.
I have never read anywhere in my entire life such a description as what I am in reading in John 5.
Comment by Todd Wood — August 19, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
Geoff,
Hmmm, it seems from your one-trace/many-track comments that when you talk about God reading our minds, you are envisioning that he actually thinks our thoughts at the same time he thinks his own. Am I misreading you? With that vision of mind reading, I can see why there is a question about how one retains individuality. (If God thinks my thought, who’s thought is it then?)
Before I go off into the weeds, tell me if I am understanding your question and the issue at hand.
Comment by Jacob J — August 19, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
Well, yeah Jacob; I guess I am thinking it must be something like that. I assume that when I “think to God” it is the same as if I spoke to God audibly. He is always there, always listening or tuned into my data feed or whatever.
Do you assume something different?
Comment by Geoff J — August 19, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
Geoff,
It is one thing for God to “hear” my thoughts, it is another thing for him to “think” them concurrently with his own thoughts.
The “hearing” of thoughts doesn’t require a multi-track brain; after all, it doesn’t require a multi-track brain for me to hear your voice expressing your thoughts. So, if this is what God is doing, he could have access to our thoughts in a much more direct way than having to get to them through our poor ability to express what we are thinking, but without the need of a multi-track sort of brain. In this scenario, there would not really be a question of identities merging.
However, it seems from the post that you were implying something more than God simply listening to our thoughts. My best guess was that the something more had to do with him actually sharing our thoughts (my thought literally becomes his thought, or something like that) in which case I can see that there is a need for a multi-track brain and that a question of identity arises.
So, if it is just that God “listens” to our thoughts, then I am not sure what the issue is. It will always be clear that his thoughts are his, and the ones he is listening to are ours. I don’t see the crisis of identity in that scenario.
Comment by Jacob J — August 20, 2007 @ 12:08 am
#4 Peter’s description of God’s time suggests that God’s time is both faster and slower than ours, which is consistent with what I think about relativity, anyway.
As to biochemistry, I think activities by our spirits in our minds have physical manifestations, just as our bodies reflect what our spirit bodies look like. That’s not the same as saying our minds emerge from our physical brains.
Comment by jonathan n — August 20, 2007 @ 7:57 am
Todd, to your John 5 points:
Geoff, to your “indwelling unity” point:
“The Latter-day Saints teach, and the New Testament affirms, that the Beloved Son was in fact subordinate to his Father in mortality. Jesus came to carry out the will of the Father (see John 4:34). He explained: “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John 5:30; see also 6:38-40).
In addition, the scriptures attest that Elohim had power, knowledge, glory, and dominion that Jesus did not have at the time. Truly, “the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). Even what the Son spoke was what the Father desired to be spoken. “For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak” (John 12:49-50).
How much more plainly could the Lord speak concerning his subordinate position than when he said, “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28)?
On the other hand, the Father and the Son enjoyed much more than what we might call closeness; theirs was a divine indwelling relationship. Because he kept the law of God, Jesus was in the Father, and the Father was in Jesus (see John 14:10, 20; 17:21; 1 John 3:24). Though they were two separate and distinct beings, they were one—infinitely more one than separate.
Their transcendent unity but epitomizes what ought to exist between God and all of his children. That is to say, we are under commission to seek the Spirit of God, to strive to be one with the Gods, to be, as the Prophet Joseph explained, “agreed as one,” to have, as Paul wrote, “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). We thus gain the mind of Christ as Christ gained the mind of the Father—through the power of the Spirit.”
(Robert L. Millet, Selected Writings of Robert L. Millet: Gospel Scholars Series [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 2000], 193.)
Comment by Howard — August 20, 2007 @ 8:11 am
Jacob: The “hearing†of thoughts doesn’t require a multi-track brain
Why do you say that? How many conversations can you listen to concurrently and still fully understand everything being said? With a one track mind the answer is generally one, or maybe two if there are lots of breaks in the speaking. So “hearing” 6 billion people thinking concurrently would definitely require a multi-track mind that does not have the core limitations human minds have.
But I agree with you that if we assume such a significantly different kind of mind for the members of the Godhead the potential problem is solved. (I this is the position I argued for in that previous post but was surprised to see some resistance to the notion that the members of the Godhead had minds that worked significantly differently than ours…)
Comment by Geoff J — August 20, 2007 @ 8:41 am
Based on the concepts outlined in # 16 such as:
1) “…Jesus was in the Father, and the Father was in Jesus…”
2) as Paul wrote to have “the mind of Christâ€
3) “…we dwell in him, and he in us…”
4) “We thus gain the mind of Christ as Christ gained the mind of the Father…â€
I suspect that as we become more like Him, at least a portion of our mind becomes linked to His and works with His as one mind thus increasing His Glory and His Power while simultaneously increasing our own.
If this is true, Celestial minds may only differ from ours in two ways; they are more like Him and they become directly linked to His.
Comment by Howard — August 20, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Geoff,
If the multi-track discussion only arises in order to help out with the 6 billion people God is dealing with on Earth (and we must assume it is more than that if people can repent in the spirit world), then why is there any question of retaining individuality? It seems obvious that we retain our individuality just fine with God reading our minds. The post seems to point to some sort of mind “sharing” as the problem, but I am still not sure I understand the nature of the mind sharing you are proposing.
As to dealing with lot so of people. If it turns out God has a multi-track brain, that would be fine with me, but he could also solve the problem by time-slicing (a little computer lingo there) more effectively than we do.
Comment by Jacob J — August 20, 2007 @ 9:14 am
Jacob,
Well I suppose I answered my own question about mind sharing in the process of composing that post. If the members of the Godhead have one-track minds like us then I think the mind sharing issue comes into play with them perpetually reading one another’s thoughts. But if they have minds that a very different than ours — multi-track minds that can process and synthesize billions of data streams concurrently — then I suppose the mind sharing issue goes away.
I don’t really know what you mean by “time-slicing”. Is it something like the slowed down time idea Jonathan suggested?
Howard – Interesting quotes. Thanks.
Comment by Geoff J — August 20, 2007 @ 9:40 am
Time-slicing is the computer term for what you described as “really our fast brains flickering back and forth on multiple topics.” I was just suggesting that the same principle could allow God to deal with billions of people if his brain is billions of times faster than ours. Considering that modern transistors switch much faster than neurons, it is not inconceivable to imagine a brain that works a lot faster than our own.
Comment by Jacob J — August 20, 2007 @ 10:00 am
Jacob J: This is interesting to me because of the old Timeless God/Theory of relativity thing. If God’s mind were able to process fast enough, it would be as if time were stopped. Time would not have stopped, but merely slowed to the point that it were as if it had. Can God’s body keep up with his mind?
Todd Wood: John is, in many ways, the most important Gospel in LDS theology. It kind of bursts the Trinitarian Bubble, from my point of view.
Comment by Matt W. — August 20, 2007 @ 10:16 am
Regarding Celestial minds vs our minds:
“The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself.”
“Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age and there is no creation about it. All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement.”
“God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself.”
“He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with Himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits.”
President Joseph Smith
King Follett Sermon
Sunday, April 7, 1844
Comment by Howard — August 20, 2007 @ 11:46 am
Another notion of time slicing is that used by physicists such as Brian Greene in his book, The Fabric of the Cosmos. He compares spacetime to a loaf of bread that you can slice. Two observers in relative motion would slice spacetime at different angles, so they would have different conceptions of what exists throughout the universe at a given moment. This also means they would have different conceptions of reality.
BTW, while most discussions of relativity focus on fast speeds, Greene considers the impact of vast distances and shows how someone at a vast distance from earth could move forward and backward in “earth time” simply by moving closer or further away from earth at a given speed. I’ve discussed this before, but it makes perfect sense to me that God could “slow down” time enough to deal with billions of people individually (as well as know not only what “probably” will happen in the future but what actually “has” happened in the future).
Comment by jonathan n — August 20, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Jonathan: (as well as know not only what “probably†will happen in the future but what actually “has†happened in the future).
As we have discussed at length here in the past, this would be a very bad thing if it were true. It would effectively mean that God is finding out about things after they happen and that would mean he would be too late to change them. That would mean God is basically impotent and that is a bad thing in my book.
Comment by Geoff J — August 20, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
Jacob (and Jonathan),
I suppose this idea of a much faster CPU in God’s brain than in our brains (as in trillions of times faster) combined with mind reading capability could explain the ability to hear billions of minds at once and engage in many, many dialogues through the Holy Spirit at once as well. I am not sure what the advantages of that solution are, but I don’t see why we would have to reject it as a possibility.
Comment by Geoff J — August 20, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
25. I don’t follow, Geoff. In my view, God can move back and forth in our “time” simply by physically moving closer or further from us. At every slice of spacetime, he knows everything happening in the universe. I don’t see where you conclude he can’t find out things until they “happen” as we experience them.
Since our knowledge is limited to what our physical senses can perceive, we can’t know anything that is not in our own slice of space time–which is what makes it seem like time moves in one direction.
That’s why I said he knows what “has” happened in what–to us–is still future.
But I don’t mean to threadjack here. It’s just that this view of time seems directly linked to what you started out with; i.e., how God can communicate and know the thoughts of billions of individuals at what, to us, seems like the same time.
Comment by jonathan n — August 20, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Jonathan,
I was simply responding to what you said: as well as know not only what “probably†will happen in the future but what actually “has†happened in the future.
If an event “has happened” then what could he do about it? It’s the same old problem of foreknowledge we have beaten to death here. Either God is a participant in our futures or just an observer. If he is a participant then how could he see his own completed actions before he accomplishes them? (And I’m not talking about visualization here.)
Comment by Geoff J — August 20, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
#16 – Howard, thanks for the quote by Millet. When I read him, it causes me to have John 5 all figured out. But then I go back to the text, and I am shocked by the Lord’s words as much as the Jews. Where have I been all my life? I have never read anything like this before. And here is the frustrating part intellectually, I can’t wrap my mind all the way around what Jesus is saying here in these phrases.
Why do I have free will and Jesus doesn’t? Why is it an unthinkable impossibility for him? Jesus is more than just a subordinate, less experienced imitation of the Father.
#22 – Matt, I am finding that Matthew 5 blows away evangelical modalism, but I am also having a hard time fitting this text perfectly and seemlessly into the model of evangelical social trinitarianism. Our theories have limitations.
Geoff, as you and Jacob talk about mind reading, it reminds me of what I have been reading in LDS Stephenie Meyer’s first chick book, Twilight. There is a whole description of how Edward the vampire reads the minds of others. Interesting. Understandable. But limited. The mind reading of Jesus in John’s Gospel is incomprehensible to my intellect.
No wonder so many in America reject it as historical.
Comment by Todd Wood — August 20, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
Todd wrote:
“Why do I have free will and Jesus doesn’t? Why is it an unthinkable impossibility for him? Jesus is more than just a subordinate, less experienced imitation of the Father.”
My view:
Yes, he is more than just a subordinate, less experienced imitation of the Father.
Jesus has free will and he is clearly exercising it.
God the Father is “all knowing” but must conform to spiritual and material laws. The closer Jesus comes to being “all knowing” the more His will and the Father’s will overlap eventually becoming one – compelling Jesus to carry out the Father’s plan.
Comment by Howard — August 20, 2007 @ 9:56 pm
28. I think God participates, but differently than the either/or approach of determinism vs. free will. If spacetime is like a loaf of bread, then I think God can and does adjust the ingredients to make a perfect loaf. That’s why he can show people, e.g., Enoch, what happens in the future, even though showing Enoch will affect that future. Another example is warning Mormon to include the small plates because Joseph Smith would lose the manuscript pages.
This is how, as Isaiah put it, God can declare the end from the beginning, and how there is already a sealed book that contains an account of the world from the beginning to the end.
So there’s plenty of “time” for God to know the minds and hearts of billions of people.
Comment by jonathan n — August 21, 2007 @ 7:04 am
Todd,
If the instructions on the side of a box of macaroni and cheese has been canonized in the Bible, I am convinced you would find a way to view them as incomprehensible. It seems to be something that you bring to your reading of all sacred texts. I don’t know why you value incomprehesibility, paradox, and contradiction, can you explain it to me? I view contradiction as a sign of misunderstanding; I gather you view it as a sign of the greatness of God. That is my best guess.
Comment by Jacob J — August 21, 2007 @ 9:40 am
Jacob J: wo there tiger, on a blog where we spend a lot of posts discussing concepts in mormonism which can not ultimately be pinned down to a simple “true” or “false”, that seemed pretty blunt.
Comment by Matt W. — August 21, 2007 @ 10:03 am
Matt,
I think the point Jacob is making has more to do with assuming things can’t be comprehended ever than that we don’t fully comprehend them now. It is one thing to say “hmmm… I wonder how that works” and it is quite another to declare every mystery ultimately incomprehensible to us.
I am not certain Todd is doing the latter but I think Jacob has a point that he seems to be close to it a lot in his comments.
Comment by Geoff J — August 21, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Guys, I am back in for just a moment. I am headed to the Oregon coast for a Wood reunion. The anticipation brings back good memories. Over 16 years ago, I asked Kristie to marry me while kneeling on the sandy beach of Oregon.
Reading #32, Jacob has me chuckling. He is partly right when it comes to how much I superficially delve into answers for problems in other particular fields of study. I am sure in the engineering department, I would be saying, “whoa, wow, that is a mystery” very quickly over something that I don’t understand. And then Jacob would lean over and say, “Todd, that is not going to cut it. The boss says we need to come up with a solution to the engineering problem.”
But in biblical text, whatever I declare as mystery, it is accompanied with an insatiable hunger to understand and experientially know more and more. I could easily spend the next three months hunkered down in John 5:25-29. There is an hour’s worth of lecture or sermon in each phrase . . . that is how much desire I have for understanding these rich words of Christ.
And let me also add, God is teaching me new things in this chapter, that I have never, ever thought of before in all my years of Christian experience. But the more I learn, the more I find myself out in unchartered waters, where the ocean is way, way over my head. Terrifying, but thrilling experience.
Comment by Todd Wood — August 21, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Come west brother Todd. Oregon welcomes you. Even if our coasts are cold and inhospitable, everything is beautiful so it makes up for it.
Comment by Jacob J — August 21, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
How many people live in Oregon? We have a place there on the coast and we attend the Waldport branch when we’re there. We were there about a month ago.
Comment by jonathan n — August 21, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
Jonathan, I don’t know of any other bloggers who live in Oregon.
Comment by Jacob J — August 22, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Jacob, I loved our family Oregon trip, relished it all . . . the Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls and others, Tillamook Bay, the cheese factory, and of course, the ocean.
We chowed down on oysters and clams.
Both my mom and dad grew up in Prineville, Oregon. And I have uncles, aunts, and cousins, and their children spread all over Oregon.
Comment by Todd Wood — September 3, 2007 @ 7:56 pm