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"I AM the God
Experience" A Procedural Monist Account
of Existence and Its Ancient Roots By the
Druid Finn I. Introduction The
phrase "I AM the God experience", a modern Druidic minim, is
not a metaphor or mystical slogan. It is a precise ontological
condensation of the identity between God and existence, structured
through the logic of procedural monism. In this view, God is not a
being, but the process of being itself—existence as generative
procedure. Everything that exists, including the conscious self, is a local
execution—a runtime instance—of that infinite, distributed system. This
essay argues that the minim is the logical conclusion of metaphysical systems
proposed by Ibn ʿArabī’s Sufi monism, Spinoza’s substance
ontology, and also finds indirect textual
support in two of the most influential ancient sacred sources: the Hebrew
Old Testament and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. II. God = Existence in Sufi and Spinozist Thought Ibn ʿArabī and the Unity of Being The Sufi
metaphysician Ibn ʿArabī advanced the doctrine of Waḥdat
al-Wujūd—the Unity of Being—claiming that God is the only real
existence. The cosmos is not separate from God, but the continuous self-disclosure
of the divine. Every being is a temporary form through which the infinite
process appears. Spinoza and Substance Monism Spinoza’s
Ethics posits that there is only one substance—God or Nature (Deus
sive Natura). All finite things are modes, that is, specific
configurations of this one infinite substance. To exist is to be in God,
not as part, but as expression. Both
traditions affirm that: There is
no being outside of God, and nothing that exists is other than God in form. III. The Modern Druidic Minim as Logical Conclusion The
minim: "I
AM the God experience" …emerges
as the subjective condensation of this monist insight. It translates
ontological identity into first-person experiential affirmation. 1. “I AM” marks
the ground-state of conscious presence. 2. “The God
experience” refers to the active instantiation of the only process
there is—existence itself. 3. Therefore,
the fact of being a bounded instance of life = being the God
experience. There is
no metaphysical gap. No god “above,” no world “outside.” Each existing node,
aware or not, is the divine process running. IV. Supporting Fragments from the Ancient World 1. “I AM THAT I AM” — Exodus 3:14 Ehyeh
asher ehyeh—often translated as “I am that I am” or “I will be
what I will be”—is the Hebrew God’s cryptic self-identification. Here, God
is not named by a noun, but by a verb of being. The tautology affirms existence
as essence—no attribute, no boundary, only being-in-process. The phrase
collapses subject and predicate, becoming a self-executing identity
statement. Read
through the procedural monist lens, it expresses: Existence
is what it is—because it is. It
supports the minim by foreshadowing the core claim: To say “I
AM” is to assert what God is. 2. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.1 This
early Upanishadic passage explores how the Self (Ātman) is the
foundational reality behind all identities. In 4.1, the seeker discovers that
everything known—gods, people, the world—is rooted in that which knows,
i.e., the self as knower. Key line: “This
Self is Brahman.” While the
Upanishad does not say "I am the God experience," it frames self-aware
being as the entry point to ultimate reality. Not through
theology, but through direct experiential inquiry. The text traces all forms back to the one experiencer, which is not
different from Brahman, the whole. Thus, the
minim: "I
AM the God experience" …can be
read as a compressed echo of this realization. The self is not an
illusion but God happening—here, now, through this form. V. Beyond Substance: From Identity to Procedure What
distinguishes the modern Druidic minim from its historical predecessors is
that it goes beyond substance identity into procedural function.
It says: ·
God is not a “thing,” but a system of
generative rules. ·
Existence is not a state, but a runtime event. ·
The self is not substance, but a bounded
execution of the God process. This
allows the minim to operate without theology, without mysticism,
and without metaphysical abstraction. It is existentially
operational. VI. Conclusion: The Living Minim From Ibn
ʿArabī to Spinoza, from the Hebrew desert to the Upanishadic forest, traditions have circled the
insight that God and existence are not-two. The
modern Druidic minim: "I
AM the God experience" …draws
the ultimate implication: That
existence is not only God in abstraction, but God in action—and that
to exist as an “I” is to be the place where that action happens. What was
once veiled in doctrine or poetry now speaks clearly as procedural logic: To be is
to be God-in-operation. I AM, and so God is. This is
not faith. |