The Nature of a Supreme Being

BEFORE BIDDING YOU adieu, there is one last subject for 

me to touch on. It is a topic which has been lurking 

in the background of this entire book, but one which I 

have successfully avoided thus far. It is the subject of 

a Supreme Being. Does a Supreme Being of some kind 

exist? If it does, what is its relationship to life on Earth 

and to the things we have discussed in this book? I will try 

to tackle these questions, but be forewarned that this chapter 

is the most speculative and philosophical in the book. My 

discussion will be a simplified one and it is not intended to 

be definitive; I advise the reader to consult other sources for 

more information. If this is not to your liking, then please 

feel free to proceed to the next, and final, chapter. 

It is unfortunate that the term "scientific method" has 

become almost synonymous with materialism. The two 

should not be equated. The scientific method is simply 

an attempt to understand and explore an area of knowledge 

in an intelligent and pragmatic fashion. It strives to find 

cause-and-effect relationships and to develop consistent 

axioms and techniques that will lead to predictable results. 

This is the type of methodology which needs to be, and can 

435 

436 William Bramley 

be, applied to the realm of the spirit, but it has not been done 

to any large degree. The great universities and foundations 

are too busy with their "man is brain" studies to do more than 

superficial studies into the mounting evidence of spiritual 

existence. The major religions already have their "word of 

God" writings and so they rarely undertake scientific studies 

into this area either. 

Some people deny the existence of a Supreme Being 

altogether. It is difficult to blame them considering the level 

to which spiritual knowledge has deteriorated. However, the 

overwhelming evidence of individual spiritual existence and 

the many characteristics which all spiritual beings seem to 

share in common would suggest that a "Supreme Being" 

of some kind probably exists as a common source of all 

spiritual existence. 

If a Supreme Being exists, it is likely that most people 

would not recognize it if they encountered it. Many 

individuals expect a Supreme Being to be a giant man 

in a flowing beard who rants, raves, and kills people. 

Others think that a Supreme Being is a bright light that 

exudes love and warmth. Still others perceive it as some 

completely unfathomable mystery that no one can ever 

hope to comprehend except through strained mystical 

contortions. 

A Supreme Being is probably none of those things. 

While researching this book, I encountered many ideas of 

what a Supreme Being might be. Perhaps the best way to 

tackle the issue is to first try to determine what an individual 

spiritual being is. 

A spiritual being appears to be something that is not a part 

of the physical universe, and yet it possesses both external 

awareness and self-awareness. The Samkhya definitions on 

pages 103 and 104 of this book appear to be fairly accurate, 

and I refer the reader to those pages. The mounting scientific 

evidence of spiritual immortality in near-death episodes and 

in documented past-life memories indicates that spiritual 

beings are best defined as timeless and indestructible units 

of awareness.1 

Every spiritual being, or unit of awareness, seems to 

be completely unique and independent. Each appears to 

possess its own distinct viewpoint which cannot be entirely 

THE GODS OF EDEN 437 

duplicated by any other unit of awareness. This uniqueness 

and individuality of viewpoint appear to be the very 

essence and purpose of spiritual existence. We may see 

some evidence of this in the fact that when individuals 

are crushed into a sameness, they become unhappier and 

worse off; their perceptions deteriorate and they are less 

creative. When true uniqueness and individuality are restored 

to people, they regain their vitality and creativity. 

It appears that every unit of awareness is capable of 

infinite creation because creation by a spiritual being is 

accomplished by the act of thought or imagination.* If you 

imagine that there is a white cat on top of this book, you 

have created a white cat, even if it only exists for you. Such 

creations, when shared and agreed to by others, eventually 

give rise to universes that can be shared and experienced 

by all others. This seems to be how spiritual beings create 

universes of their own and in cooperation with others, 

and why there exists evidence in modern physics that our 

universe appears to be ultimately based on thought. 

For any universe or reality to exist, an infinity must first 

exist in which a universe or reality may be placed. All reality, 

including this material universe, arise out of infinity and not 

vice versa; this has been demonstrated by some remarkable 

mathematics being done at various universities. Every unit 

of awareness is the source of its own infinity because thought 

and imagination have no bounds; any amount of space, time 

or matter may be imagined by any spiritual being and 

ultimately agreed to and shared by other spiritual beings. 

Where did all of these countless units of awareness come 

from? Did there exist at one time only a single unit of 

awareness from which all others originated? The many 

similarities between all spiritual beings make it appear so. 

That original unit of awareness would be what is normally 

called a Supreme Being, which we might also call the 

Primary Being. 

*The words "thought" and "imagination" are probably not the 

best to describe the actual process, but they are adequate for our 

purposes. 

438 William Bramley 

It appears that individual spiritual beings are actually the 

units of awareness of a Primary, or Supreme, Being, yet each 

unit is possessed of its own self-awareness, personality, free 

will, independent thought, and infinite creativity. 

This would mean that a Supreme Being had created, or 

had given "birth" to, an uncountable number of unique and 

individual units of awareness through which that Supreme 

Being could experience the uncountable infinities, universes, 

and realities which all of those spiritual beings could freely 

and independently create. A Supreme Being might therefore 

be very crudely likened to a person sitting in a television 

control booth who puts out trillions of video cameras. 

Each camera (spiritual being) feeds a picture into its own 

individual monitor screen in the control booth to be viewed 

by the operator (Supreme Being). Each camera is situated a 

little differently and so each has a different viewpoint and 

perspective. Each camera is also capable of creating its own 

"special effects" (universes). 

If the above theory is accurate, we might ask: how could 

a Supreme Being have been so foolish? Why would it create 

awareness units that were self-aware? After all, it is the 

quality of self-awareness, or the awareness of being aware, 

that allows spiritual beings to be completely independent and 

to engage in the silliness which has caused them to suffer the 

sorry plight that they now appear to be enduring on Earth and 

probably elsewhere. Why did a Supreme Being not simply 

throw out an enormous number of awareness units that were 

only externally aware and had no consciousness of their own 

existences? Better yet, why did a Supreme Being not do the 

sensible thing and simply retain its own single undivided 

viewpoint? 

Self-awareness is apparently the quality which gives 

spiritual beings the capacity for thought and imagination, 

and hence to be a source of infinity and creation. 

Without self-awareness, a spiritual being could not create 

on its own. Self-awareness appears to act as the "mirror" 

against which a spiritual being can be the source of an 

infinity, and within that infinity can create realities and 

universes. 

Theoretically, of course, a Supreme Being was already 

capable of creating an infinity and of creating anything 

THE GODS OF EDEN 439 

within it, hut only from its own single viewpoint. A Supreme 

Being could only be the source of one infinity: its own. If a 

Supreme Being wanted to experience another infinity, it had 

to first create another unique self-aware unit of awareness 

like itself. So it apparently did just that. But it did not satisfy 

itself with just one more unit of awareness: it appears to have 

put out an uncountable number of them so that it could enjoy 

an almost infinite number of infinities and realities. This 

suggests that the potential scope of a Supreme Being extends 

far beyond the boundaries of this one small universe—it 

encompasses trillions of potential infinities and universes. 

"Aha!" you might interject. "By definition, only one 

infinity can exist. It is redundant for something already 

capable of infinite creation to expand itself. Infinity mul- 

tiplied by uncountable trillions is still infinity." 

As noted, infinity appears to be solely the product of 

viewpoint. Only units of awareness are capable of viewpoint. 

There therefore would exist as many infinities as there are 

units of awareness (spiritual beings). Infinity does not arise 

out of the mechanical universe or from any of its laws; 

rather, the mechanical universe and its laws all appear to 

arise out of infinity. 

What went wrong? How did so many spiritual beings, 

each capable of infinite creation, wind up with a dull thud 

on Earth thinking that they are nothing more than meat and 

electricity? 

There are apparently many factors that caused this, 

including those discussed in this book. I will leave it 

to someone else to describe other, perhaps even more 

significant long-range, causes. I will only add that spiritual 

entities can become hopelessly caught up in the labrynths of 

their own intricate creations. Although the universe appears 

to operate on very simple building blocks (please refer to 

the discussion on pages 104 and 105 of this book), once 

those blocks are put into place and other arbitraries are 

introduced, a universe can become extremely complex and 

solid-looking, like the universe we share now. When that 

happens, spiritual beings may become fixated in those 

universes like cameras anchored in a dense rain forest; 

the cameras are unable to perceive beyond the foliage 

immediately in front of them. After staring at the foliage 

440 William Bramley 

for a long enough time, the cameras may begin to believe 

that they, too, are nothing but foliage and they forget that 

they are cameras. Salvation would come by restoring to 

those cameras their true self-identities and by giving them 

the ability to come and go from the rain forest at will. 

If we look at individual spiritual beings on Earth, we see 

that they are very small in relation to the universe. This is 

the situation that apparently occurs when spiritual beings 

become enmeshed in bodies or other physical objects. In 

that state, spiritual beings have lost their power to change 

perspective in relation to the physical universe. Perspective 

is apparently what determines the "size" of a spiritual being. 

Have you ever stood on top of a skyscraper and looked 

down? Your first reaction might be to think, "Gee, those 

people sure are small. They're the size of ants!" Those 

people look so small, and really are so small, because 

of your change in perspective. A spiritual being in an 

untrapped state can apparently change perspective in the 

same way in relation to the entire physical universe. The 

universe can appear no larger than a coffee cup, or an atom 

the size of a mountain. This is apparently how a spiritual 

being becomes "bigger" or "smaller." Changing perspective 

in this fashion is not an act of mere thinking, however. It 

is a matter of actually shifting direct spiritual perception in 

as real and tangible a fashion as the person who hops an 

elevator to the top of a skyscraper. Spiritual beings on Earth 

are largely confined to the single perspective dictated by the 

physical bodies they animate. Mental perspectives can still 

change, but not the direct perspective of the spiritual entity 

in relation to the universe itself. 

The foregoing discussion has some rather clear implica- 

tions in regard to the rest of this book. The act of repressing a 

spiritual being, entrapping it in matter, or otherwise seeking 

to reduce its vision, creativity, or self-awareness as a spiritual 

being is the act of trying to reduce a Supreme Being. If one 

reduces a Supreme Being's unit of awareness (i.e., a spiritual 

being)—even just one unit out of many trillions—one has 

still reduced a Supreme Being by that much. Since only 

other units of awareness can engage in such repression, it 

follows that a bizarre psychosis has arisen. It is as though 

extensions of the same ultimate body are trying to repress 

THE GODS OF EDEN 441 

other extensions, e.g., the left hand is trying to reduce and 

trap the right hand. That appears to be one type of psychosis 

that can arise when beings possessed of free will become 

entrapped. 

Some mystical religions teach that one's ultimate spiritual 

aim should be to permanently "merge with" or "rejoin" a 

Supreme Being. This appears to be a false goal. If spiritual 

beings were created to act as unique and independent 

viewpoints, it would be contrary to the purpose of creation 

to permanently "merge" with other awareness units or with 

a Supreme Being. It may not even be possible to do so. The 

true goal of any salvation program should be to fully recover 

one's unique spiritual self-awareness and perspective. 

The above discussion suggests that many popular ideas 

about "God" may be inaccurate. For example, some people 

with "near-death" experiences report going through a tunnel 

and meeting a "being of light" which instills in the near- 

death victim feelings of love and "all-knowing." I met a 

man who belonged to a Hindu sect which attempts to contact 

and merge with this "being of light" in its meditations. The 

man wrote a paper describing his personal experiences. 

His descriptions of spiritually traveling down a "tunnel" 

and meeting a "being of light" are very similar to the 

statements of near-death victims. While I acknowledge the 

importance and probable reality of many such experiences, 

I question some of the beliefs which have arisen from them. 

The feelings of "love" and "all-knowing" conveyed by that 

"being" can be instilled by drugs, electronic emanations, 

and by other artificial means. Interestingly, some UFO 

abductees have reported such emotions during their alleged 

examinations aboard UFOs. In some of those UFO cases, 

the surrounding evidence strongly suggests that the feelings 

were caused by an electronic device used as a sedative. 

Whatever the near-death "being of light" might be (and I 

will not even try to guess), it is most assuredly not a Supreme 

Being. It may even be an object that contributes to post-death 

spiritual amnesia. People should not be counseled to "merge 

with" or "go to" the "being of light" during meditation or 

at death. They should stay away from it if they can. In 

saying this, I do not mean to deny the otherwise positive 

and profound feelings experienced by some Hindus and 

 

442 William Bramley 

near-death victims as a result of temporarily re-experiencing 

their spiritual immortality. 

What are we then to think of the idea of a Supreme Being 

sitting in "judgment" on the beings of Earth? 

It is hard to imagine that a Supreme Being would 

condemn its own units of awareness, no matter how 

small and entrapped they have become, and no matter 

how insanely and destructively some of them behave as 

a result. 

Would a Supreme Being, seeing how bad everything has 

gotten, perhaps end its experiment and vanish all other 

awareness units except itself? If such a thing were possible, 

I daresay it would not be done. Creating an almost infinite 

number of spiritual beings would actually have been a 

brilliant move on the part of a Supreme Being to expand 

itself immeasurably. The solution to what went wrong would 

be to preserve the awareness units and encourage them to 

achieve their salvation. 

Spiritual salvation would probably not happen through 

the waving of a magical Godly wand, however. Because 

spiritual beings possess free and independent will, salvation 

appears to be something that spiritual beings must take 

responsibility for themselves. It is up to every individual 

to seek out his or her salvation in an intelligent fashion. 

Salvation appears to be something that can be achieved 

as pragmatically as any other goal in life, provided that a 

rational understanding of how to attain it is developed. 

Many theologies teach that a Supreme Being is opposed 

by an enemy. Perhaps there is an element of truth to this, 

even if the truth has been distorted. We do observe that at 

every level of existence there exists a condition or "game" 

in which survival is challenged. At the personal level, an 

individual's survival is constantly opposed by aging, disease, 

and other factors. The survival of a family unit is often 

tested by financial problems, hostile relatives and outside 

sexual temptations. Organizations and nations usually have 

competitors and enemies. In the animal kingdom, the 

survival drama is most vividly played out in hunter- 

prey relationships. All physical objects face inevitable 

deterioration. Spiritual beings themselves appear to face 

survival challenges by being trapped in matter. 

THE GODS OF EDEN 443 

Since this survival game seems to exist at every level 

of existence, it is possible that it also exists in regard to a 

Supreme Being—a game in which a Supreme Being's own 

survival is tested by the diminishment of its awareness units 

and perhaps by the ultimate diminishment of the Supreme 

Being itself. For such a game to exist, a Supreme Being 

would have had to either negotiate with one or more of its 

own awareness units to be the Supreme Being's opponent(s), 

or a Supreme Being would have had to create in one or 

more of its awareness units an apprehension that a Supreme 

Being posed a threat to the continued existence of all other 

spiritual beings. A Supreme Being's opponent would not be 

any different or inherently more evil than any other spiritual 

being, any more than one neighbor who sits down opposite 

another to play a game of Monopoly is innately more evil 

just because he or she plays a different side. An opponent 

would simply be one who became a different marker on 

a game board and played as well as possible. If such a 

game has indeed existed, then we can certainly hope that 

it may end soon by a Supreme Being conveying thanks 

to the opponent(s) for a game well-played, promising the 

indefinite survival of its awareness units, and asking that 

the game be stopped. It seems time to put many old games 

to rest so that everyone may start moving into a new phase 

of fundamentally-improved existence.