This is a discussion and dialogue on Dallas Willard’s book, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. It was initiated by Nancy, Cynthia, and Kristi. However, it is an open discussion and you are welcome to join in (click on “comments” above). Submitted comments will be approved as quickly as possible. Thank you for engaging with one another in the great discussions of life, and for doing so with gentleness and with respect.
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9 Comments on ““Hearing God” by Dallas Willard”
The fourth chapter of the book titled “Our Communicating Cosmos” has brought me back to the Lewis discussion on the blog because of its reference to how God relates to the Cosmos. Willard is able to develop some of my previous thoughts that I wasn’t able to express very well. I think this is a somewhat difficult book, but this chapter stood out to me because of the previous discussions. I attempted to say this in my blog entry #11, second to the last paragraph.
Let me quote what Willard says: “….in his essay “Remarks on the Mind-Body Question” Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner has pointed to a general recognition among physicists that thought or the mind is primary to physical reality:
‘It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.’ Princeton physicist John A. Wheeler even goes so far as to hold that subjective and objective realities, consciousness and matter, mutually create each other.”
Willard goes on to say that his sole point is “there is, so to speak, an inside–or better, a nonside or an unside–to matter that allows for a nonspatial and yet causal dimension to be in action within the physical world.”
I will never understand physics, and I am not sure it is important to me to do that. So I can’t argue any of those science-God debates, if there is one.
What I do know is that there is a spiritual or metaphysical reality that is important for me to explore more. I am on a quest to know God more deeply. I enjoy the intellectual aspect of spirituality and at times I believe that I have let the constraints of my rational mind limit my ability to experience God in the non-intellectual sense.
Jim states in his last blog entry, “I also see no reason to restirct what exists to a material realm, since I have personally repeatedly experienced reality on spiritual in other domains which I just cannot explain as well under material properties only. Faith is something non-material, of no physical substance, that I have experienced and therefore accept its existence. The materialist might say I’m just deluding myself; but after years of consideration and searching for a resolution, I am not able to ascribe it all to brain chemicals and synapses, psychopathologies and unmet childhood needs, etc. That doesn’t correspond to my direct experience, nor to that of many others.”
I believe that there are many out there who have had encounters with God and experienced reality in a spiritual domain that is unable to be explained under materialism. If Jim or others would be willing to share their experiences with others of us on the journey to know God better, I would love to hear their stories. Please feel free to not identify yourself with a real name if you want to keep it anonymous. I would like to hear about when God has intervened in your lives on a personal basis. How have you “heard”
from God? What means has He used to speak into your life?
Nancy et. al.,
I also am drawn to, and enjoy the intellectual aspects of spirituality. I am reminded of one difference between how we may, today, “know” God, as compared to how the members of the early church “knew” God. For them to say they knew God was, to a large part, a statement of their relationship with God, as e.g. Abraham “knew” Sarah refers to their relationship. Today we want to know things as facts. The concept of a fact is something that emerged from the Enlightenment and is a modern idea. Knowing God entails both and faith seems central to any relationship of this sort. I can know of God or know about God, but that doesn’t satisfy my soul. I vividly remember years ago at an Emmaeus weekend beseeching God repeatedly to reveal himself to me. A pastor friend asked me why I was doing this… that God is faithful, that he knows my prayer, and that I only need to open my heart to receive what he wants me to have. Perhaps I was afraid He actually would and then what? God is faithful; He is not far from each one of us; and he yearns for us to be in relationship with him. I feel God’s presence most often when I am intentional about opening my heart to receive Him – He is already there waiting. When I knock on the door, He is already there waiting. As with the prodigal son, the father doesn’t walk out casually to greet him; He runs to him. I find many ways of being in God’s presence; some simply involve prayer, which is both expressive and receptive. I have found taking one or several days of solitude away from the usual to dwell on God’s word and bask in His presence, or simply focusing on God during a long solitary bike ride in the country, or spending a day or weekend at a Christian retreat center such as Emmaeus or a Catholic “silent” vigil or retreat, or any number of other avenues to be ways of meeting with God. Occasionally, these may occur, for me, impromptu or spontaneously, but intentionality works. I also have found Taize worship to be a form that supports my relationship with God. There are many approaches, some formal and intentional, some simple and spontaneous. But God is faithful and is waiting for us.
I find also that often I realize God’s presence in looking back in time, recognizing that He was there and active, when I was not aware of it. I am fairly tuned in to recognizing and realizing when I am constructing or trying to effect something within myself, as opposed to being outside of that process, or maybe being an accessory to that process, and seeing God working a process within me. As an example, looking backward in time, I can see that God has changed, and continues to change, my heart. I don’t see it at the time, moment by moment, but when I look back and can see the change, I know I didn’t do it, and what a coincidence… this is what God has promised us.
Volumes and libraries have been written about knowing God and what that means. I’m trying to limit my ranting, not with much success; but I believe that God is there already, waiting with open arms, for us. Sometimes I have trouble with the “Be still and know that I am God” part… but all I have to do is receive Him. He is there.
I know that quantum mechanics isn’t what everyone wants to talk about here, so I’ll keep it very brief.
Most physicists that I have worked with (and that is quite a few) do not think that “thought or the mind is primary to physical reality.” Eugene Wigner is wrong about the necessity of consciousness. Quantum mechanics can be formulated without any reference to consciousness, and the people who study the most mind bending aspects of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, never use consciousness in their formulation, instead using decoherence which is well understood and independent of consciousness.
John A. Wheeler’s idea (found in “Law without Law”) about consciousness fall well outside the mainstream. They are his philosophical musings and, while they do not contradict science, they appear to be rather disconnected from science.
When Willard says “there is, so to speak, an inside–or better, a nonside or an unside–to matter that allows for a nonspatial and yet causal dimension to be in action within the physical world,†Most physicists who understand quantum mechaincs, including myself, wonder what he could possibly be talking about. That claim is certainly not one supported (or contradicted) by science.
Gavin wrote “Eugene Wigner is wrong about the necessity of consciousness. Quantum mechanics can be formulated without any reference to consciousness, and the people who study the most mind bending aspects of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, never use consciousness in their formulation, instead using decoherence which is well understood and independent of consciousness.”
What I don’t understand is: how could we even be having this discussion about quantum mechanics without conciousness? How can someone who is studying the most mind bending aspects of quantum mechanics do that without accessing their conciousness? Two atomic particles behaving in a way that can be explained by quantum mechanics principles can not have this discussion. Consciousness is not of the physical realm, but it does interact with the physical realm. And I would say that human conciousness is a characteristic that humans have been given in “God’s image”.
Thank you, Jim, for sharing about your insight into knowing God. I too have done a walk to Emmaus and believe that was a wonderful way to know the presence of God. I also sponsored my brother in law on a walk in California and afterward he got really involved in the Kairos prison movement out there. I went out for one of their closing ceremonies and I have to tell you, when those incarcerated men, many of whom will never again walk outside of the prison walls, lifted their voices to sing “Abba Father” and “Surely the Presence” I knew that there was something different in them and in the room. Isn’t God amazing? It gives me goose bumps just to recall this and write it.
I googled Taize worship and would like to know more about that if you can offer ways to find out. These, in my opinion, are “mountaintop” experiences and I covet these. They help me when I am in the valley as well. I also want to know and hear God in the everyday. Perhaps practicing the spiritual disciplines more could help? I love your suggestion of intentionality and “being still”. For some of us this is a challenge.
Nancy,
Here roughly are the different positions
Nancy: If a tree falls in the forest it can’t be heard unless somebody is there. (I agree.)
Wigner: If there is a tree in the forest, it can’t fall unless somebody hears it. (I don’t agree, and this certainly isn’t the only way to formulate quantum mechanics.)
Wheeler: There can’t be a tree in the forest until somebody hears it fall. (No.)
Obviously, I’m making some simplifications. But in Wheeler’s description the observer actually creates the events and objects that he observes. There is no need for God as a creator, because we create the universe in the past by observing it in the present.
This line of argument is a favorite with the New Age community, as in “The Secret.” It is nonsense, and I’m a bit surprised that a Christian author would want to have anything to do with it. What you say, in contrast, is perfectly reasonable.
Nancy… Plymouth Congregational Church in Ft Collins has, according to their website, a worship service in the style of Taize, on the 3rd Sunday each month at 6PM. I plan on checking it out!
There is also a link on the website to Taize.com (general info. about Taize)
Plymouth is the church I attend, and where my wife and son are members. They aren’t having Taize services over the summer, but I expect they will continue in September. We are finishing a big remodel, which includes the sanctuary, but I think it will be done by the third Sunday in September. I’ll ask when the next Taize service will be, just to be sure
I haven’t been to the Taize services, but I did take a very good class on spiritual disciplines. We used “Saint Benedict on the Freeway: A Rule of Life for the 21st Century” by Corinne Ware. Nancy, this book might be interesting to you. It is about making a connection with God in the everyday by doing little things that maintain the connection all the time. From the back cover:
The approach is both practical and profound. You are welcome to borrow my copy. It’s a pretty small book.
Gavin, I would appreciate that. I can see if it is something I want to buy and keep for future reference.
Here are a couple of final thoughts after reading the epilogue of “Hearing God”.
Willard identifies one great barrier to a life in which one hears God’s voice: the seeming unreality of the spiritual life, or in other words, the overwhelming presence and focus on the visible world. He maintains that the spiritual world whispers at us ever so gently. This allows us an opportunity to explain it away. Our modern world encourages us to doubt and be skeptical about the spiritual world. Willard asserts that because of powerful intellectual propaganda and the emphasis on the visible by the power structures that permeate our world, skeptics continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright and not “easily fooled by coincidence”. In reality could it be that those who deny anything except the visible are actually the “blind” ones who allow themselves to miss out on a very rich and important aspect of life? For those of us trying to grow in our spiritual life with God, we bet our life on the existence of God and our interactions with Him in the spiritual realm. He promises if we seek Him with our entire heart we will find Him and on that promise I will rest.