Can the Divine be a Person? | Episode 1305 | Closer To Truth 

While I greatly enjoy and appreciate Robert Lawrence Kuhn's documentary interviews on the variety of topics he explores, as he is sincere and objective (to the extent that's possible), I can't help thinking that Kuhn will eventually end up in the same place Socrates did i.e. "All that I know is that I know nothing." While it may first appear to be a copout, and def. shouldn't discourage philosophical and scientific exploration, I'm afraid one has to eventually face a brutal truth: we have very little knowledge of the big questions in the universe.

Great production and great persons to interview for these questions.

“Person”ally, at 18:31 I like how Robert Kuhn describes the relationship of Religion to the Ultimate Reality/forces in nature. He knows how to ask questions that differentiates perspectives of all his interviewees from Science to Religion, very enlightening, Thanks!

As Krishna says in the Bhagavid-gita: " one should meditate upon the supreme person as the one who knows everything, as he who is the oldest, who is the controller, who is smaller than the smallest, who is the maintainer of everything, who is beyond all material conception, who is inconceivable, and who is always a person. He is luminous like the sun, and he is transcendental, beyond this material nature. Bhag: 8:9

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️YES YES YES YES YES YES YES. Sorry for all the comments but I just love these conversations! Thank you so much!

As an atheist non physicalist i agree more with Deepak than the Christian philosophist, If Conciousness is fundamental then that thing they call god is not a person, much less a deity

These Theologians talk in circles. None of it makes any sense whatsoever. I'm glad you stand up to them with logic. Thanks for the video content. Itd be awesome to meet you one day!

❤️❤️❤️THANK YOU ROBERT. I COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS WITHOUT YOU. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU ARE MY REASON FOR LIVING. PLEASE KNOW HOW MUCH GOD LOVES YOU.❤️❤️❤️

God is beyond our comprehension, that’s why we still only have just an idea of what god is but not the definitive answer.

intro music is wonderful

Robert's a great host.

God is an all knowing energy that creates

Yes. Jesus

The interpretation of God can feel like a person.

Hope to see the Alternate Concepts of God episode soon...

Have you done a video on the double slit experiment yet?

oh wow good point from deepak

The Orthodox priest gave excellent answers.

Every particle of gold has similar properties as tons of gold. Similarly ever part of infinite is infinite only. But we don't prepare ourselves for infinite identity and happy with limited.

9:25 " Does the sun precedes the light?" Oh boy imagine this prist talking with Lawrence krauss.

It´s all consciousness, that has an infinite potential of vibration to create, and it has created among other things us as persons, we (and other similar creatures) are the divine persons.

God is within,we are all brahma,we are all one.

Ive mentioned this channel at my work since me and a few colleagues at work always end up having deep convos like this before we leave at the end of the day! We've come to the conclusion that we are a simulation because quantum mechanics doesnt go any further........we "believe" that the designer has designed it as such so that we cant go any further at a quantum level hence why pysicists have hit a brick wall.

All is what I believe it to be - belief is not knowledge. Is it what gives me comfort?

God is a family unit in which they relate to each other exactly as that. A family is one.

It is unbelievable you asked such a question.

God is experiencing the world through you , along with you , and for you, for gods own reason

Every atom is devine. Whole world is devine, when I was devine.

Personhood is one of infinite facets of god. We cling to god as a person because that is the part we can relate to. God is a person and also not just a person.

this is like a skin cell on a foot hoping the body to which it belongs is similar to itself (profound egoism)...if there is a god you have just diminished it's standing by a factor of infinity

We presume the presence of intelligence (as a function, not a mass of information content) is a priori. This supposition bears plausibility granted human exploration and experience. For me, the emergent point was, if God exists and is hidden, it would be incumbent upon God to reveal God-self. I experienced this revelation in a way consistent with hundreds of testimonies I have personally examined. Further, the content of the revelation (personally and the historical collective) I found overwhelmingly compelling in scope, coherence, relevance, and correspondence to tested and accepted knowledge.

I am the alpha and the omega.. everything that exist has existed..🙏🏻

"A" person, I dont think so. "ALL" persons as 1 I think yes.

God is however u urself perceive it to be

It would be hard for us to be "persons" without God being one, as the Divine Father is the source of our personality...

Still trying to define and describe the thing to believe in. And no consensus. I'm not surprised

i think once you are aware of a possibility, makes it more possible to be real. God is aware of all and therefore understands everything. If we believe we can be aware of everything that is, we also can understand everything. We just don't believe this or practice it. Everything become easier with practice. JC said we would do greater things than he. there is a message in that.

How a person could be everywhere

If there is a divine then everything must invariably be divine. Even Divine must be divine...even though he was weird and scary. Even I'm divine in my own way...just like Divine

Deepak is so deep I can't swim.

Divine is a person. The Divine is every person. The Divine is every part of creation because the Divine is infinite. That means the Divine is everything. If everything is not Divine then the Divine is not infinite and that means the Divine is not Divine at all. Unity is all of creation. Consciousness is Unity experiencing itself

Yes persona we all were one scource but split into many personalities

Imagine three types of energies with theirs own attributes, the father, masculine attributes protector, kind, strong etc, feminine attributes mother, tenderness carer, and the third, the child...who feels protected, love, care....when you ask if God could be a person, if the conscience of a person could evolve here, on Earth, seeking for superior answers...the connection with those energies will grow exponentially and this "child" will be perceive different...with others qualities than the normal public...we will call him, her the child of God, or a Brahman, or an illuminated or a Messiah. All of us can do it, when we seek answers inside ourself. It's an state, not a title

I feel like there is a guiding hand ... it’s impossible to explain. I believe it comes from what humans have created constructs for. I like the Christian construct with its personification. But for those who are not open to the Christian format, and you are curious ... feel you are connected with ‘something’... I recommend the Tao... I like Wayne dyers translation ... but there are many.translations. It took me a lot of spiritual philosophical study outside Christianity before I fully appreciated Christianity.

Robert you must interview the physicist Tom Campbell. MBT

God the Father, pure Consciousness, and God the Mother, Holy Spirit or Power, God the Son, Divine Incarnate as Human Being. We all are made in the image, power and consciousness of God. God's Realisation is seeing His / Her / Their reflection, infinitely, in every Human and in their Evolutionary Journey of Spiritual Realisation and ultimate Unity with God.

Everything that we have felt , know , or conceive of , the grand intelligence already knows them , if god created this world including everything we can experience, god himself knows those feelings , what we dont know is the amplitude of these things plus more that god must be experiencing

A bit of the music around the middle reminded me of Goblins theme to the 1970s horror film Suspiria .

Every person is the divine experiencing itself in this matrix

God is outside human perception. We base our perceptions on what we see.

I don't think breaking down abstract concepts associated with the idea of "person" necessarily supports the view that this topic has transcended into a spiritual domain that excludes mortal human fallibility. I am finding this whole exploration has assumed that human thinkers bring meritorious concepts to the discussion of religion and it is simply not so. It is like creating a box and saying that the boundaries of the box are beyond those of the human mind and (the worst part) that all those who talk about what is NOT in the box are magically endowed with great insight.

i wonder how many question more you got to ask to when you really meet the entity or person or smthelse ?? Not knowing yourself is greatest pain because we can't clearly know how or why or when we really started. Religion has no straight line it's more like spider web. On other it can greatest happiness not know yourself mean you can take yourself build yourself and accept and keep searching and moving on. Think of ancestor that they interpreted their version "god". What i mean is as we learn and grow image of god also become more complex.

The Pleroma is transpersonal with personal attributes according to this “waking sleep” state of consciousness.

A person can be malicious and petty and fickle.

If you want to create one that is a person; sure you can. It is all created by humans after all.

A human person, is a material body, now if you are out side os your body is a different history, your spirit became part of everything you see, your size has no limit depending of your spirituality, you can see the bodys in the universe, they don't Luke big. In this life and the next one stay in the light.

Sure, divine can be a person. It can be anything you want.

Interview Sadhguru too

Yes! If the Holy Spirit is within him. He is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. ...

Closer to Truth: Humans can only ever experience or hope to understand the Deity as we would another person. It's a limitation of our minds and body's. However the Deity is not like your next door neighbor. According to the law you are to make no images of the Deity that looks like anything on the earth or in the sea. Most believe that this is to discourage idolatry. It isn't. The true purpose is to remind the believer that the Deity is a No Thing. There is nothing anywhere which is truly like the Deity but the Deity. To picture the Deity as a Bull or a Lion is to deny and dilute the true power of the divine being. So... no, The Deity is not a person. The Deity sends his agents to interact with us and we see them as various persons.

God may not be person but supreme conscious ness may be termed as God.

Love CTT but this video, not so much. To me, having discussions like this is good. I think we should have agreement first on the definitions of the words within the question like "divine" and "person". I feel this way because without this agreement up front, those involved in the discussion are way too free to change the meaning of the words and the question.

11:37 "Just nod your head so the exchange will be over..."

Are we short of philosophers?

What if Robert Lawrence Kuhn talked to a fool like me? And I could tell my best hypothesis that God is so powerful that he created us all on accident, and he is only delicately catching up with what we are, but being careful not to destroy us in the process. And all we see as evil or good is our own construct, while he has already figured out a way to being us home, but we cannot know it because to even TOUCH our existence would destroy it all. Time and Space are our trap.

So why would Jesus not know what the father knows if their the same person?🤷🏼‍♀️

we all begin to loose our divinity soon after birth sometimes we delay the inevitable by not losing our virginity ...

Only if that provides greater explanatory value than current models. (It doesn't!)

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” ― Epicurus

The God is ever existing , ever pervading,all knowing super intelligence universal conciseness which can only be experienced by human conciseness.

Why Can't God be both. A Person and an Ultimate Consciousness. We are very constrained by the limitations of our language and therefore we keep going in loops trying to define this ultimate reality.

If 'god' is a 'person' then one thing for sure is that 'he' is going to be incredibly busy...

In his image

Without a an intellect and will nothing can be CAUSED.

Could the divine be Kermit the frog

What is the difference between Consciousness and Intelligence ?

Divine means that which belongs to God or is attributed to God. It means that which is godly or heavenly. A person is a being or an intelligent creature, including angels and humans, that has relationships, behavior patterns, rationale and personality. Therefore the divine can be a person when it is God, with intelligence, has relationships, behavior patterns, reasoning and personality.

The only way for a single being to seem to be three persons is by each one disassociating from the single, original being; and disassociation implies they are not that “person” or “being”from which they disassociate. Hmmm 🤔

The question whether GOD is a PERSON or some other FORM or ENTITY I BELIEVE SHOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE. GOD being OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT and OMNIPRESENT should EXPLAIN IT ALL. If GOD NEEDS to PRESENT HIMSELF as a PERSON, HE CAN DO IT, just like JESUS CHRIST. If HE NEEDS to present HIMSELF as someTHING of a MESSAGE or a RESULT as the SPLITTING of the water ACROSS the SEA so that MOSES and His Jewish Flocks can safely CROSS INTO THE PROMISE LAND, HE CAN DO IT.

Gibberish formed in an isolated cultural bubble. Reinforced by others within the same bubble. Otherwise not arguable or provable theories.

The Eternal Soul - The Spirit of God I mean, no soul has regrets that the current physical form is changing; is about to "die"? The body never "dies," but merely changes form with the soul. Yet I understand your meaning, so for now I use the vocabulary you have established. If you have a clear understanding of what you wish to create with regard to what you have chosen to call the afterlife, or if you have a clear set of beliefs that support an after-death experience of reuniting with God, then, no, the soul never, ever has regrets over what you call death. Death in that instance is a glorious moment; a wonderful experience. Now the soul can return to it's natural form; it's normal state. There is an incredible lightness; a sense of total freedom; a limitlessness. And an awareness of Oneness that is at once blissful and sublime. It is not possible for the soul to regret such a shift. You're saying, then, that death is a happy experience? For the soul that wishes it to be, yes, always. Well, if the soul wants out of the body so bad, why doesn't it just leave it? Why is it hanging around? I did not say the soul "wants out of the body," I said the soul is joyful when it is out. Those are two different things. You can be happy doing one thing, and happy then doing another. The fact that you are joyful doing the second does not mean you were unhappy doing the first. The soul is not unhappy being in the body. Quite to the contrary, the soul is pleased to be you in your present form. That does not preclude the possibility that the soul might be equally pleased to be disconnected from it. Why is there such a delay between thought and creation before we die, and no delay at all after we die? Because you are working within the illusion of time. There is no delay between thought and creation away from the body, because you are also away from the parameter of time. In other words, as You have said so often, time does not exist. Not as you understand it. The phenomenon of "time" is really a function of perspective. Why does it exist while we are in the body? You have caused it to be moving into, by assuming, your present perspective. You use this perspective as a tool with which you can explore and examine your experiences much more fully, by separating them into individual pieces, rather than a single occurrence. Life is a single occurrence, an event in the cosmos that is happening right now. All of it is happening. Everywhere. There is no "time" but now. There is no "place" but here. Here and now is All There Is. Yet you choose to experience the magnificence of here and now in its every detail, and to experience your Divine Self as the here and now Creator of that reality. There were only two ways - two fields of experience - in which you could do that. Time and space. So magnificent was this thought that you literally exploded with delight! In that explosion of delight was created space between the parts of you, and the time it took to move from one part of yourself to another. In this way you literally tore your Self apart to look at the pieces of you. You might say that you were so happy you "fell to pieces." You been picking up the pieces ever since. That's all my life is! I'm just putting together the pieces, trying to see if they make any sense. And it is through the device called time that you have managed to separate the pieces, to divide the indivisible, thus to see it and experience it more fully, as you are creating it. Even as you look at a solid object through a microscope, seeing that it is not solid at all, but actually a conglomeration of a million different effects - different things all happening at once and thus creating the larger effect - so, too, do you use time as the microscope of your soul. Consider the Parable of the Rock. Once there was a Rock, filled with countless atoms, protons, neutrons and subatomic particles of matter. These particles were racing around continually, in a pattern, each particle going from "here" to "there," and taking "time" to do so, yet going so fast that the Rock itself seemed to move not at all. It just was. There it lay, drinking in the sun, soaking up the rain, and moving not at all. "What is this, inside of me, that is moving?" the Rock asked. "It is You," said a Voice from Afar. "Me?" replied the Rock. "Why, that is impossible. I am not moving at all. Anyone can see that." "Yes, from a distance," the Voice agreed. "From way over here you look as if you are solid, still, not moving. But when I come closer - when I look very closely at what is actually happening - I see that everything that comprises What You Are is moving. It is moving at incredible speed through time and space in a particular pattern which creates You as the thing called 'Rock.' "And so, you are like magic! You are moving and not moving at the same time." "But," asked the Rock, "which, then, is the illusion? The Oneness, the stillness, of the Rock, or the separateness and the movement of its parts?" To which the Voice replied, "Which, then, is the illusion? The Oneness, the stillness, of God? Or the separateness and movement of its parts?" And I tell you this: Upon this Rock, I will build My church. For this is the Rock of Ages. This is the eternal truth that leaves no stone unturned. I have explained it all for you here, in this little story. This is The Cosmology. Life is a series of minute, incredibly rapid movements. These movements do not affect at all the immobility and the Beingness of Everything That Is. Yet, just as with the atoms of the rock, it is the movement which is creating the stillness, right before your eyes. From a distance, there is no separateness. There cannot be, for All That Is is All There Is, and there is nothing else. I am the Unmovrd Mover. From the limited perspective with which you view All That Is, you see yourself as separate and apart, not one immovable being, but many, many beings, constantly in motion. Both observations are accurate. Both realities are "real." And when I "die," I don't die at all, but simply shift into awareness of the macrocosm - where there is no "time" or "space," now and then, before and after. Precisely. You've got it.

Thank you for another foundational video asking metaphysical questions about God. Is God a person? By "God", I assume is meant the ultimate source and creative force of the observable universe and beyond, assuming of course that there is a God at all. And by "person", I assume is meant an anthropomorphic human-like physical body presence with "personhood" qualities. Frankly, I have the same type of reaction to this notion that many have: it's absurd, silly and amusing. This strikes me as the ultimate form of anthropic thinking - imposing our human body, qualities and presence on a thing, force or being which, literally by categorical definition, we cannot ever fully understand or know. If we were intelligent, sentient birds, might we think God is a bird? Of if we were intelligent, sentient frogs, might we think God is a . . . well you get the idea. The question of "is God a person" can be dismissed as readily as when Dorothy's dog Toto pulled the curtain on the apparently omnipotent and omniscient Wizard of Oz -- to reveal that is it was just an old man "humbug". Thanks again for the video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YWyCCJ6B2WE.html

Wrong track, Dr. Kuhn. The soul is the personal spiritual continuation of the person whose body has ceased to exist.It is the ultimate definition of that person: The level of awakening to the universal conscience, the quality of the moral actions and freewill decisions, etc. That is what a person is. The rest are but banal qualities that the material body needs to survive and reproduce during the material life-time during which the person has the opportunity to develop the former qualities that bring him back, anew, to the kingdom of Heaven. God is the spiritual person who governs Heaven.

The Ground of all Things is a Spirit All Powerful Being...not a person.

Everything has a cause, why not our personality?

If you alter what a person means then sure

1. I suggest that we (our minds and souls) are the literal embryos of God's mind (the universe), with God (the living Soul of the universe) simply being the fully-matured adult version of what we are each capable of becoming after being delivered from our bodies via death. 2. We are persons. 3. Therefore, God (in whose image we have allegedly been created) is a person.

Message From The Universal Council & God/Source/Creator ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ALxE_G0IO74.html Skip to 7:30 for @21:00 love/light vs. @27 :40 hate/dark message from @13:40 Universal (vs. Galactic) @28:50 Council & @16:45 God/Source/Creator to many @19:15 Midgard/Earth species.

How do you pronounce God

If God knows that he exist then I think that would give him personhood. If he didn't have personhood wouldn't he be lacking the knowledge that knows his constitutional position of being supreme?

This was a key question posed by Dr. Kuhn. Unfortunately, other than that described by Kuhn himself, only Schellenberg provided commentary that seemed influential in any significant respect. That’s my take home from this episode.

Why not ask, instead, "Can the divine be", all people ? There being a Father, and a Son in the Godhead, doesn't diminish the possibility that there are others ~ even ALL others. The issue of the Spirit has me knowingly confused, possibly due to unresolved issues I've had for 34 years, after an escape from an eastern mystic's confusion. But I can play with the idea of Spirit being something like Universal Mind, or Personhood.

Great question! A more “relational” form of the question is: Is thinking of God as like a person, a good metaphor? The answer is - yes! However, that is only one of many ways of understanding what is unavoidably ineffable. The “Ground of our being” is personal to each of us. However, the “God as a person” metaphor is limited and can get nasty. Is God “angry” when bad things happen? Does “He” need appeasing by demanding we purge sinners, heretics, infidels and apostates? Is God a “He” so only men can serve Him? Hence, I much prefer “The Fertile Void” or the “Ground of all being” as metaphors. Seeing Jesus as God is likewise helpful for many as an exemplar, but IMO suffers the same limitations (eg. being male).

What if God is pure Energy?

Divine is impersonal but has the ability to manifest as a person. Like Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and the list goes on....

If the universe can create little creatures that think... the universe itself therefore has to be way smarter to be able to create such things. I dont know why it is so hard for many to comprehend 😂

Maybe it's not worth it to be too literalistic about it. Even in the Christian tradition, we have the theology of the Incarnation. Jesus is an exemplar of what "God" is suppose to be like, in terms that human beings can relate to. It also gives a directionality to certain fundamental values (such as love), as appropriate to the optimal functioning of our species, at this current stage of our evolution. But this would be one step along the way. It would be like parents telling bedtime stories to children.

Oh lord! 😳🤦‍♂️

Short answer, yes. Large answer, yes What's a person? ...

I wonder what will people in 200 years think about us when view this episode and our unswers, what will they say about our language and thought. We are really primitive.