A recent Pew Research Center report polled Americans about their religion. In addition to fifty-four percent who say they believe in “God as described in the Bible,” thirty-four percent say they believe there is “some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe.” Surprisingly, almost two-thirds of agnostics and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” and even over a fifth of those who describe themselves as atheists, say they believe there is some “higher power or spiritual force.” Maybe it’s not so much that they don’t believe in God but that they don’t believe in the ways religions understand God.

In addition, more than eight in ten believe that people have a soul or spirit and that there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it. About four in ten say they have had a strong feeling that someone who has passed away was trying to communicate with them, and over half said they had been visited by a dead family member in a dream or another form.

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Many who experience a loved one coming to them after they died don’t speak about it for fear of being ridiculed. Similarly, many who have had near-death experiences remain silent about them, especially after they discover that even their nearest and dearest don’t believe them or dismiss what happened as resulting from a bodily defense mechanism. It’s like how people don’t talk about their sexuality if it doesn’t seem to be mainstream, leading others who share those traits to believe that they’re the only ones. There are a lot of closets, including spiritual ones.

It has become increasingly socially unacceptable to ridicule people for things such as their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and gender identification, etc. Unfortunately, it is still open season on anything that smacks of new age and seems at odds with science. I’m a fan of science, but a knee-jerk reaction to shoot down experiences that are not readily explained by current science is hardly scientific. True science is open-minded and curious. Instead, those who are emotionally invested in not believing in anything beyond what their five senses can perceive often rush to come up with convoluted explanations that don’t add up. They don’t consider the possibility that Occam’s razor (“The simplest explanation is usually the best one”) might apply—that someone might actually have had a near-death experience or communicated with a deceased loved one. Or that life might be something more than a series of fortunate, if highly improbable, accidents.

It’s hard to imagine anyone with an open heart experiencing the beauty of nature and not recognizing a “higher power” or overarching majesty. Evolution (or at least adaptation) is part of the picture, but even those who think that the physical world came together wholly accidentally probably often sense that nature has consciousness and even wisdom. It is clearly much more than mechanical, even if it has a mechanical aspect. Although there can be much ugliness in human life, the vast majority of the whole vibrates with love, truth, and beauty. Even my conservative father, who was not a seeker, said that when you look out at the night sky full of stars, you have to know that there is more.

Einstein didn’t think that belief in science necessarily makes one an atheist. He said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. According to Wikipedia, Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity.”

If God is not a separate entity outside of us, it casts prayer in a different light. Many think of it as beseeching God, who is seen as somehow causing everything (even though humans obviously have free will), to cause something different. Some people do find that prayer is more than just comforting, that it can bring results, probably because it focuses one’s intentions and spiritual energies.

My family belonged to a Reform Jewish congregation. Many times, I heard the prayer that began, “Grant us peace, Thy most precious gift, O Thou eternal source of peace.” That’s beautiful, but God doesn’t need his/her/their arm twisted. The onus is on humanity to act peacefully; there are no examples in history of God creating peace against the will of human beings. This prayer could also be interpreted as an affirmation that we’re receiving peace, but a better wording would be along the lines of “Help us open our hearts to the eternal source of peace, and guide us to create peace in our lives.” When we do that, we might inspire others to do so as well; maybe eventually that will spread throughout humanity. Unfortunately, the majority of those hearing and uttering prayers asking for peace are not creating peace, and maybe have little idea as to how they might go about that when after all, it’s those other people causing the problems!

If, say, five billion people worldwide believe in God, there are five billion at least slightly different definitions of God. Maybe the words that might be used to define God don’t necessarily differ a lot, but the chain of thoughts and feelings triggered by the word (or similar-meaning ones) are unique to each person. That’s where a definition finds meaning.

Some people have negative associations with the word “God” (and with others that are more often deemed positive, such as “love” and “truth”—e.g., “Love hurts.”) It’s no wonder: God is often seen as jealous and vengeful. For example, natural disasters are often interpreted as God’s punishment. But God is love.

I like the word “God”; I don’t associate it with stern judgment. I also like many alternate terms, such as “the Universe,” “the All-That-Is,” or “the Source.” The word used doesn’t matter all that much. When it comes to inspiration, we should use the words that feel best to us. If a word or belief system opens us to a greater experience, it’s a good one for us. If it constricts us, it’s not. At a certain point in our lives, a religion or other belief system might move us forward, but after we’ve grown, it might start holding us back. We shouldn’t stick with beliefs that no longer work for us out of loyalty once we’ve outgrown them—it’s wise to keep moving forward.

I think of God as simply being the whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts, just as a body is a whole that is more than just arms, legs, a torso, and a head added together. A gestalt occurs when a whole comes together. Genesis says that God formed Adam from clay, then breathed life into him. In other words, that form became more than the sum of its parts. Metaphysically, we might say that it became ensouled.

The universe is one whole. Nothing can exist outside of that wholeness. That is such a simple, self-evident truth that it’s easy to miss. There is nothing we can see (or can’t see) that is outside of the whole. All the parts of that wholeness contribute to it. One word for the gestalt that the whole forms is “God.”

The fact that nothing can exist outside of the whole means that everything ultimately is the whole. We are all part of God. God is not something outside of us, because nothing is outside of the whole.

Each part of a whole has an individual identity that helps express and expand the whole, but it is also valid for each part to identify as the whole. A finger could identify as a digit, which is quite useful, but it could also rightly identify as the body since it is indivisible from it. Each part of the body has a larger identity as the body itself.

Psalm 46 includes the line, “Be still and know that I am God.” Most people interpret that as coming from a God that is outside of the Psalmist, but again, we are all a part of the same whole; we are the whole. “I am” is what each of us say, and “I am” is the name of God:

And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you. (Exodus 3:14).

If God were outside of us, that verse would have read something like “Jehovah (or Ernie) hath sent me unto you.” When we say “I am,” we are speaking the name of God, even when we are not currently representing it in the highest, most accurate way (and who consistently does?)

Whether people believe in the God of a religion, the God of Spinoza, or the Higher Power invoked at twelve-step programs, almost all view it as something outside of themselves. Sometimes, delusional people proclaim, from their separate, individual identity, that they are God and that the rest of the whole isn’t. They do not grasp the apparent paradox that we are each an individual and the whole, and that obviously, no individual part usurps all the other parts.

Einstein taught that matter and energy are interchangeable and that nothing can be truly destroyed. Every part is important because all parts are indivisible from the whole, are the whole, and always will be, in one form or another. One could argue that a human is greater than a grain of sand. Certainly, it is larger and more complex, with more moving parts. However, since both are indivisible from the whole, it would be hard to argue that a human is more important. And sand is valuable, too, both to humans and to the rest of creation. We wouldn’t want to be without it.

When some people sense the vastness of the universe (for example, when looking at the stars), their depressing interpretation is that they are insignificantly small (like a grain of sand) and meaningless. It’s a cousin to the idea of “I’m just one person out of eight billion people. What can I do?” Of course, no one else is more than one person, either. That is how the ego sees it, but the soul knows our oneness and indivisibility. Every part is important or it would not exist. We matter just as much as everyone else. As we’ve established, even being a grain of sand would not render us insignificant.

Both kind and mean words, for example, matter to those with whom we are in contact. We have the power to uplift or degrade. The key is to matter positively, to the best of our ability. It’s quality that counts. A higher love-based vibration has a healing domino effect.

It’s silly to think that what we do doesn’t matter unless it directly affects the entire world. The value of our acts is not based on their scale—even our sun is tiny within the Milky Way.

There’s no question that people in positions of outward power can effect changes in larger social structures. Rarely, someone with vision and high integrity comes along and moves the dial a little ahead. However, the vast majority of those in such positions don’t do much to better things. Those trying to effect positive changes often meet with severe resistance from those who fear change. If we bring higher consciousness to whatever role we play, even if it seems small, it does change the world because we are an indivisible part of it—we raise the collective vibration. That can make it possible for true leaders to help us make more headway.

The ultimate all-that-is contains many smaller coherent wholes. Our body is a coherent whole that is part of many consecutively larger wholes, like nested Russian dolls. We are part of a family, for instance, which is part of a community, a nation, and humanity as a whole, which is part of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, etc. Businesses and governments can have local, regional, national, and international levels. Every whole has a consciousness, and every consciousness is indivisible from God, the overall consciousness of the universe.

Monotheism is considered to have been a breakthrough. In a sense, it was, in that it recognized the fact of this single whole. Monotheists, however, sought to stamp out polytheism. The truth is that they are both right because there are many within the one. We can align with the whole and also tune in to an individual consciousness within the whole that has a more specific responsibility, such as that of the sun (Ra in Egypt) or the earth (Gaia in Greece).

There was a commercial in the 1960s for Certs, in which twins argued over whether it was breath mint or a candy mint. Then, a disembodied voice (God?) intervened and said, “Stop! You’re both right! New Certs is two! two! two! mints in one!”

It’s too bad that God didn’t intervene and tell the monotheists, “Stop! You’re both right!” before they started murdering the polytheists (in the name of a god of love).

Dogma is inherently false because it is an attempt to freeze something alive, losing nuance and true understanding. It is the big problem with religion (and a lot of other things). The fact that there are so many differences of opinion about which dogmas are correct is a huge clue that dogma is problematic, since obviously, they can’t all be right. Many wars have been foolishly fought over fine points of theology that make no real difference to how people live their lives. Dogmas may be temporarily useful as frameworks, but they should be held lightly. It doesn’t matter whether a person intellectually believes in monotheism or polytheism, for example. It’s not about what is in people’s heads at all. What matters is whether we act from love. Anyone who claims to believe in God but does not endeavor to love their neighbors as themselves has missed the point.

In polytheism, there are various archetypes or beings seen as having a role in human affairs. People often project their foibles onto them, but working with the realities behind them can be useful.

For example, if your father wasn’t a very good role model and you didn’t get some things you needed from him, you can tune in to the archetype of the divine father and ask to download the energy of the highest, most loving version of the masculine available to you. Do your best to put aside your preconceptions. That can be quite healing. Of course, you can also find better human role models, but feeling into this energy in, say, meditation can help guide us to the most accurate (and least toxic) pictures of masculinity.

We are enrolled in a school for creators. Or, you could say, we are on the outer edge of God, pioneering new elaborations and variations on the fundamental themes of love, truth, and beauty. The chaos and drama of life fueled by free will and our hard-wired human aggressiveness allow for particularly interesting new experiences. Unfortunately, that also allows for much evil (violating harm). There is a lot of beauty in humanity, but also a lot of insanity and primitiveness. Or, you could say, we children of God are having a rocky adolescence. Still, we are an indivisible part of the whole. Eventually, we will grow up and look more like our divine parents. In the meantime, forgive the pimples.

The great teachers, some of whom are now the figureheads of religions, taught this indivisibility. It’s hard to teach things so simple and self-evident to those who try to live solely inside their egoic mind and insist on overcomplicating everything, but true spiritual teachers try to bypass it with allegories and poetry (and their energy).

With scriptures, it can be hard to know exactly what was actually said initially. The Gospels, for instance, were written decades after the death of Jesus. Memory is notoriously inaccurate, not to mention the vagaries of translations, especially by those with axes to grind. Many scriptures existed for centuries as oral histories before being written down. The game of telephone, in which stories change a little each time they are retold, applies.

However, assuming the self-evident truth that we live in an indivisible whole, some of what has come down to us can be seen as having taught that. “The kingdom of God is within.” “The works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” Jesus was a great man and teacher. If he taught, though, that he was the son of God, surely he intended to communicate that we are all “children” (or part) of God. He was more self-actualized than most, but I think that he’d be dismayed that people imply that he was somehow inherently different from others. The great spiritual teachers endeavored to wake us up to who we are—our divinity as part of the whole.

The vast majority of humans don’t know who they are and therefore don’t reveal it very much. Everything in the universe is evolving, and all of us are at least a little screwed up—one way we grow is by making mistakes and learning from them. We don’t start fully formed, already knowing everything. A sizeable number of us are still highly screwed up and often do evil things. Although egregious behavior cannot be excused, recognizing that even people who do terrible things are an indivisible part of the whole can help us avoid going down into the pit with them. We can have compassion for them, realizing that they are temporarily in ignorance (and probably in pain) but will eventually become more aware of their eternal nature. (My book Compassion for Evil goes into this.) In the meantime, dealing with the frictions of the human world helps us grow and become more skilled at creating.

Some religious leaders are convinced that they know what God wants. It usually conforms to their deeply imprinted dogma about right and wrong. Some political leaders think that God wants them to start wars. Humility is needed. Being the All-That-Is, God probably doesn’t want anything, but it’s safe to say that a major reason for our existence is to learn to increasingly act with love, truth, and beauty. That doesn’t include coercion. It does include kindness, compassion, honesty, and wisdom. Being aligned with our eternal nature, we have the best shot at creating in alignment with the Creator.

Accessing the gestalt of the whole is powerful. When people open their hearts to what they conceive of as God or a higher power, even within the limitations of their beliefs, they can experience an increased flow of energy, an exaltation. It can be even more effective when we realize that we are opening to our own larger nature.

Definitions can be useful tools, but it’s not possible to truly define what is infinite and eternal, although we can sense it. The goal is to more fully be it.