One useful way to look at "God" or "consciousness" is to see it as a quantum superposition of all possible things, as well as all possible absences of all things. All their states, properties, and probabilities, etc all at once, forever. Not unlike a quantum version of the infamous "set of all things" set theory God that matheologians have been screeching about for a hundreds years. For those who don't know, quantum superposition is one of the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics. Basically, a particle does not exist in a specific place or time or state until it interacts with or is observed by another part of the universe. Up until that point they are in a "superposition," meaning they are in every possible state they can be in up until the point when interaction with something else forces them to "collapse" into a measurable state in spacetime. Until that point, all we can know about a particle is the probability of the states it will end up in when it collapses. Although superposition is just an abstract mathematical principle, viewing "God" this way makes a lot of paradoxical phenomenological properties a lot more comprehensible. First is that because a quantum superposition would necessarily have to be EVERYWHERE at ALL TIMES in EVERY MANNER the omnipresence of it is cleanly explained in a consistent manner with the immateriality of its omnipresence. This is the source of the first religious thought humans have ever had, animism/panpsychism. The recognition that within me is some fundamental "thing" which is also within everything else. As a living breathing bundle of nerves, as a three dimensional sensate being, looking at this thing within me, I find a sort of "pure awareness," which we call consciousness, and naturally, seeing this property in all other things, I realise animism. This property is aware because by being a superposition of everything that can possibly exist or not exist, it necessarily must in some way connect us to it, all of it, everywhere, and through the god in us we can experience the god of everything else. If you have ever fallen in love, you know that all it takes is a single moment, a single glance, or a single joke, and some part of you already knows everything about them there is to know. Another part of you knows nothing. When I spend time with the people I love, my brain is rediscovering everything about them that my heart is already in love with. This is the nature of knowledge in general. This is why Plato spoke of anamnesis. Either our knowledge descends from above, fully formed before "collapsing" into a spark of insight in our three dimensional reality. Or it comes from below, being reconstructed piece by piece until it stands before god and says "Look, you wended your way back to the truth." And it is that connection between above and below that kens rather than merely knows. Your conscious awareness of something is what separates mere data from genuine knowing. It explains also the "emptiness," of Daoism and Buddhism. Daoists and Buddhists, concerned with upaya as they are, speak of emptiness not because it's a useful abstract idea but rather a description of qualia, this qualia being the experience of consciousness, or god. Because we are three dimensional little meat monsters, when we look back towards this superpositional part of ourselves with our senses we can only possibly experience it as emptiness. How could we not? How could the limited perspective of our brain capture the limitlessness of it? It can't, so it zeroes out into emptiness. Viewed as an abstract on the other hand, it may flicker between everything and nothing, or be described as "infinite." The Daoists called it wuji. Buddhists, seeing in the world what they see in themselves, as we spoke of earlier, realise that the entire world then is emptiness. Daoists realised the same thing, so their taijitus are drawn with wuji in the centre of the circle. In either case, the fundamental qualia of reality is emptiness, and the fundamental principle of reality is potential. It clarifies too the relationship between duality and non duality. We can never escape duality because we are simply dual beings. No matter how much we meditate, no matter how big the ket hole, we are still three dimensional. We are literal animals, born of duality manifested, thinking duality abstracted, living duality phenomenally. And yet no amount of fluoride slurping, soylent, and public school can cut you off from the divine, for it is everywhere at all times birthing and sustaining all things. It is our past, present, and future, and they've all already happened. All roads lead home, and the road itself is home already. All you do is shift your perspective. Realise this fully, and you achieve nirvana. This is what we call "dharma." The full realisation and acceptance of the nature of reality. The acceptance that you are already dead, that everything is already dead, that the end and the beginning are being writ from top to bottom everywhere all at once; and that you are only free because of that, only alive because of that, only you because of that. Free will is the using the presence of this acceptance to approach life how you wilt, how free you are is entirely up to you. There's no limit. This is nonsensical from the perspective of dualist thinking, but when you realise you're a series of non-local vibrations, it starts to feel a little less insane, and reality starts to feel a bit like a beautiful illusion. Great people, not just powerful or accomplished people, but truly great people, know this, in one way or another. They are great because of their ability to reach into that emptiness and pull something out into the world. A prophet can see the future because the future is already within them. A theologian or scientist can speak so deeply of reality for he is nothing but reality. An artist can speak to the entire soul of humankind because the entirety of humankind is already within them. Genghis Khan can unite the tribes because within him, the tribes are already united. Whether this is a result of karma or will is irrelevant. Whether this is magic or physics is irrelevant. The distinction is inapplicable to the reality. We pull the void out from itself, and wield it. That is what it means to be alive.