God's attention
I think I have ADHD. I start on a task, and then I'm distracted, and have forgotten what I was going to to. In the book, The Bicameral Mind and the Origins of Conciousness, Julian Jaynes pointed out that what we consider conciousness is narrow, like a bright beam of a flashlight in a vast, darkened room. We can take in only one thing at a time. For me that is particularly true. My focus seems incredibly narrow. Of course memory can serve to provide a thread between what is seen here and seen there, but my memory often fails me, just when I need it most. So my 'spotlight' of focus is inconstant and narrow. I think that to a greater or lesser extent, this is true for everyone.
Naturally, we expect this to be true for the God who made us in his image. Oh, not completely, of course. We imagine God to have a far wider beam, perhaps being able to look at a huge big picture, and at the same time, being able to be aware of billions of people at once. I think, though, that we almost inevitably underestimate this "infinite intelligence." An example is when people make fun of the athletes praying at a football game. I've often heard savvy people remark, "I think God has better things to do than get involved in the outcome of a football game!"
There is an implicit assumption that if God gets caught up in the game, that He would have to choose sides, or that He might be distracted from working on global warming or the starving baby in Darfur.
In actuality, if God's intelligence is in fact infinite, He can devote an infinite degree of attention to the players' prayers, to the wave forms evolving and buzzing inside their skulls, to the blade of grass blowing on the field, to each happy and starving person, to each quivering bacterium, and still have an undiminished amount left.
Thus Meher Baba spending a sleepless night, worried about a poor Christian woman in Bandra (Lord Meher P 3772) when he was supposedly doing universal work. How could this be? Is God distractible? Why not? And yet the attention devoted as Parvardigar to sustaining the creation is undiminished.
So in a sense, when I go to gaze into a picture of Baba, I have the full attention of God gazing back: and yet God's attention elsewhere, say on the field mouse living outside in my back yard, also has the same loving kindness.
Jai Baba
Naturally, we expect this to be true for the God who made us in his image. Oh, not completely, of course. We imagine God to have a far wider beam, perhaps being able to look at a huge big picture, and at the same time, being able to be aware of billions of people at once. I think, though, that we almost inevitably underestimate this "infinite intelligence." An example is when people make fun of the athletes praying at a football game. I've often heard savvy people remark, "I think God has better things to do than get involved in the outcome of a football game!"
There is an implicit assumption that if God gets caught up in the game, that He would have to choose sides, or that He might be distracted from working on global warming or the starving baby in Darfur.
In actuality, if God's intelligence is in fact infinite, He can devote an infinite degree of attention to the players' prayers, to the wave forms evolving and buzzing inside their skulls, to the blade of grass blowing on the field, to each happy and starving person, to each quivering bacterium, and still have an undiminished amount left.
Thus Meher Baba spending a sleepless night, worried about a poor Christian woman in Bandra (Lord Meher P 3772) when he was supposedly doing universal work. How could this be? Is God distractible? Why not? And yet the attention devoted as Parvardigar to sustaining the creation is undiminished.
So in a sense, when I go to gaze into a picture of Baba, I have the full attention of God gazing back: and yet God's attention elsewhere, say on the field mouse living outside in my back yard, also has the same loving kindness.
Jai Baba
posted by David | 4:45 PM
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