Posted on 21 April 2025, 7:03

Generally, when Gina and I have friends and/or relatives over for lunch or dinner, I avoid talking about spiritual matters or any subject discussed at this blog.  I know from past visits that our guests are not interested in the subject matter, usually because they have their own belief systems or aren’t ready for one. Nearly all our guests know of my books, at least that I have authored a few, and think the views expressed in those books are either demonic or simply too weird to discuss. There is also a general rule set down by Gina that we don’t discuss politics. That means, topics are pretty much limited to aches and pains, the weather, sports and other mundane matters. 

At our most recent lunch, one guest did bring up a spiritual matter relating to politics. He discussed his concern with another guest, at which point I was impelled to offer my two-cents worth on the matter. After I contributed my ideas, one guest, appearing somewhat shocked, said, “I forget, what exactly are you?” He was asking for the name of my religion or belief system.

It had been some years since being asked to identify my religion. My military dog tag had me as a “Catholic,” but I could never make sense of Catholicism’s humdrum heaven and horrific hell and began parting ways with it during my early 20s. I gave Protestantism a try for a few months, but its afterlife, lacking the middle-ground of purgatory, and its emphasis on the atonement doctrine, made even less sense to me. My “religion” then became Stoicism. Long- distance running became my passion and I subscribed to the ”The Stotan Creed,” (formed from “stoic” and “spartan’) as taught by an eccentric Australian running coach, Percy Cerutty (lead runner in bottom left photo). It involved such mental-toughening exercises as running up and down sand dunes and running barefoot over trails covered with thorny burrs.

In addition to the long-suffering of my Catholic days, the running experience stressed self-control, fortitude, and overcoming adversity. Some runners looked upon it as a religion. However, while I found the running experience to be analogous to life or a microcosm of it – a fresh start, proper pacing, struggles, depletion of energy, “dying” over the final yards, total depletion at the finish line, and then being “reborn” after the finish – the eschatology was an illusory one. Nevertheless, the lessons from running helped me deal with the adversities of life and inspired serious thinking relative to the “finish line” in both a race and life. “Now what?”

Soon after turning 50, I felt a need to explore real eschatology and turned to psychical research. There was a time when I called myself a Swedenborgian, a basically Christian faith named after the great Swedish scientist, Emanuel Swedenborg. I was further impressed with the research carried out by such famous scientists as Robert Hare, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Sir Oliver Lodge (upper left photo), all clearly supporting the idea that consciousness survives death in a greater reality. Lodge’s research and writings impressed me the most. After a few years of study, I became a “spiritualist,” although I resisted being a Spiritualist (with a capital “S”). That is, I was a spiritualist to the extent of believing in a spirit world and not being a materialist. I was all for the study of mediumship for research and evidence purposes but not as a religious practice to summon up the “dead” every week. Moreover, Jesus didn’t have to be God, per se. He remained in the picture as the “Chairman of the Board” in the greater reality.

Naming my religion

About 20 years ago, before a surgical procedure at a hospital, I was asked by the admissions clerk, sitting at a computer, for my religion. I started to say “none,” but that would most likely have been interpreted as being an atheist, or worse yet, a nihilist.  The hospital was owned by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and I didn’t want to be identified as a nihilist by the clerk or by the nursing staff that would tend to me for a few days after the procedure. 

I considered saying I was a “Christian Spiritualist,” but I suspected that would also stymie the clerk. I ended up saying “Christian,” and the clerk then filled in the space on the admissions form.  I figured that if my procedure didn’t go well and I ended up dying in the hospital, I could still have a reasonable conversation with whatever Christian minister they summoned to console me in my final moments in this realm of existence.

Back to my much more recent need for an identity, I started to say “unorthodox Christian,” but then I blurted out “panentheist.” Our guest’s eyes widened and he said, “you mean, ‘pantheist’.” I replied that I meant panentheist, not pantheist.  I expected a question as to the difference, but I was saved when Gina said it was dessert time and asked me to get the ice cream out of the freezer to go with my 88th birthday cake.  By the time I returned with the ice cream, the subject matter had changed and I was spared from attempting to explain the difference between a panentheist and a pantheist.  I was going to say that there was a big overlap between the two and that there are as many schools of panentheism and pantheism as there are of Christianity, and so it requires a somewhat lengthy discussion.  I was thankful that I didn’t have to get into all that. 

Panentheism vs Pantheism

I recall reading something several years ago about a fairly famous historical figure – his name escapes me now – identifying himself as a panentheist.  My worldview was much the same as his and so I concluded that I must be a panentheist.  However, the need for a label was not that high in my chain of needs and I forgot about it.  The one thing that I remembered was that the panentheist did not require a personal God.  He or she could believe that consciousness survives death in a greater reality without having to identify that God or know whether God is a He, She, or It.  On the other hand, I also recalled that the survival aspect was not really discussed in panentheism or pantheism.  It was all about God not having to be humanlike and possibly not more than a bundle of core atoms at the center of a timeless universe.  How could there be an “afterlife” in a world without time?  After our guests departed our home, I pursued a refresher course in in panentheism and pantheism.

The best explanation I could find was at Britannica, which explains it this way:  “Both ‘pantheism’ and ‘panentheism’ are terms of recent origin, coined to describe certain views of the relationship between God and the world that are different from the traditional theism. As reflected in the prefix ‘pan-‘ (Greek pas, ‘all’), both of the terms stress the all-embracing inclusiveness of God, as compared with his separateness as emphasized in many versions of theism. On the other hand, pantheism and panentheism, since they stress the theme of immanence – i.e., of the indwelling presences of God – are themselves versions of theism conceived in its broadest meaning.  Pantheism stresses the identity between God and the world, panentheism (Greek en, ‘in’) that the world is included in God but that God is more than the world.”

Beating around the Bush

So much beating around the bush by Britannica and other references.  Britannica doesn’t define “world,” while other references discuss the universe and the cosmos without stating whether there is a difference between the two.  I couldn’t find one reference that gives a clear-cut explanation as to where the afterlife fits into pantheism or panentheism. I inferred that panentheists accept an afterlife but pantheists don’t, but that point – the most important of all, as I see it – is only indirectly addressed.  I put the question to AI (ChatGPT) and was informed that pantheists typically do not believe in a personal afterlife and see death as a “return to the cosmos.” This idea is more in line with materialism or impersonal mysticism, the “self” dissolving into the greater whole of existence, it stated.  Panentheists, it continued, are more likely to believe in a continued existence of consciousness, either as a soul, a process, or a spiritual reality that is somehow preserved within the divine being.

“Since panentheism allows for God to transcend the physical universe, it creates space for beliefs in an afterlife, reincarnation, or some kind of ongoing relationship between the soul and the divine,” AI further stated, adding that religious panentheism includes certain strands of Christianity, Hinduism, or Sufism. 

According to Britannica, classical theism holds that eternity is in God and time is in the world; however, since God’s eternity includes all of time, the temporal process now going on in the world has already been completed in God.  Pantheists see time as illusory, while panentheism espouses a temporal-eternal God who stands in juxtaposition with a temporal world.  Therefore, in panentheism, time retains its reality.

I don’t know if or when I’ll ever be asked to declare my religion or worldview again, but whatever I choose I don’t think the inquirer or admissions clerk will comprehend any of my choices. I’ll stick with “unorthodox Christian.” Then again, I might declare myself as an “existentialist,” although I might have to qualify that by saying I am an existentialist of the Soren Kierkegaard (right photo) School, not the Sartre School.  I can visualize the hospital admission clerk’s puzzled expression if I were to reply that I am a “Kierkegaardian.”

As Kierkegaard saw it, despair over earthly matters is really despair about the eternal.  “He thinks he is in despair over something earthly and constantly talks about what he is in despair over, and yet he is in despair about the eternal,” Kierkegaard wrote, adding that the condition requisite for healing is always a recognition of the eternal being at the foundation of the despair. It seems clear to me that the chaos and the turmoil in the world today is a result of the failure to connect our despairs to the eternal – an eternal in which consciousness continues in a larger life.

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. and No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. His latest book Consciousness Beyond Death:  New and Old Light on Near-Death Experiences is published by White Crow books.