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In Episode 272 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, Jerry Martin and Scott Langdon ask a deceptively simple question: What is experience?

Is it just a stream of sensations passing through us — or is it the unfolding of meaning across a lifetime? When we look back at our lives, do we merely remember events, or do we discover layers of significance we couldn’t see before?

Drawing from Scott’s recent What’s Your Spiritual Story episode and Jerry’s Radically Personal series, the conversation turns to the radical uniqueness of every human life. No one has ever been duplicated. Every consciousness is singular. What might it mean, then, to say: “You are the experience God is having”?

Through reflections on theater, personal memory, Jane Austen’s Emma, the play Proof, and the philosophical idea of “thisness” (haecceitas), Jerry and Scott explore whether awareness itself is the meeting point between the human and the divine.

Experience changes us. Meaning deepens. And perhaps consciousness is not merely personal — but participatory in something far greater.

As you listen, consider your own experience. Where has meaning deepened for you? And what might it reveal about the divine presence within your life?

Related Episodes:

270. Recovering the Depth of Experience in a Flattened World- Radically Personal

271. What’s Your Spiritual Story: Scott’s Journey from Certainty to Love

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected

• Share: questions@godanautobiography.com
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

In Episode 271 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, host Scott Langdon shares his personal spiritual journey — from Lutheran liturgy and evangelical certainty to faith deconstruction, mental health challenges, and a renewed understanding of God as love.

Raised in the church and later immersed in evangelical Christianity, Scott’s faith was shaped by music, scripture, and sacred ritual. But a pivotal moment — being baptized again and feeling nothing — marked the beginning of a profound spiritual transformation. Through theater, bipolar diagnosis, marriage, loss, and deep questioning, Scott’s understanding of God shifted from external authority to lived experience.

What happens when you “give up God” and begin praying to love instead? Can faith survive doubt, silence, and reinvention?

God: An Autobiography, The Podcast explores spiritual experience through personal stories, philosophical reflection, and dramatic readings from the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Each episode invites listeners to consider their own spiritual story and the possibility that divine encounter is rooted in lived experience.

If you’ve wrestled with belief, deconstruction, or the meaning of love and faith — this episode is for you.

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected

• Share your thoughts or questions at questions@godanautobiography.com
• Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

What do we mean when we speak of human experience?

In this fourth installment of the Radically Personal series, Jerry Martin takes up that question and follows it carefully. Modern philosophy and science often frame experience in terms of sensations, data, or brain activity. Yet the way we actually live and perceive suggests something more expansive.

Drawing on William James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hilary Putnam, Martin Buber, Edith Stein, and others, Jerry reflects on how we encounter the world in practice. He considers perception and embodiment, the depth present in persons and things, the pull of beauty and awe, and the way empathy makes another’s inner life accessible.

The discussion gradually turns toward love and value, tracing how worth emerges within experience itself. As the episode moves from perception to relationship to meaning, a picture comes into view: depth is not added from outside but belongs to experience as lived.

Join Jerry in taking experience seriously; it may open new ways of thinking about meaning, reality, and the possibility of the divine.

Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal: Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You: Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue: Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story: Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind: Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project: Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind: Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected: questions@godanautobiography.com

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Can multiple religions be true at the same time? Married philosophers, Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal, explore one of the most challenging questions about God and ultimate reality.

They reflect on the idea that different cultures are given different spiritual tasks. The Hebrew focus on history and covenant stands alongside India’s inward contemplative traditions, showing that divine truth unfolds in different ways across civilizations.

Jerry explains that Theology Without Walls must take lived spiritual experience seriously. Personal transformation, moments of divine connection, and the individual spiritual journey are essential data for understanding spiritual reality.

Abigail recalls her intense yoga practice of suspended breath and reflects on what that path taught her. She also shares a vivid memory involving Thomas Altizer, the theologian associated with the “God is dead” movement and explores the difference between politeness and real engagement with ultimate questions.

We are living at the beginning of a New Axial Age, a time when the world’s religions now meet directly.

The conversation is candid, thoughtful, and deeply personal, like listening in on two married philosophers as they connect lifelong spiritual experience with some of the biggest questions of our time.

Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal: Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You: Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue: Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story: Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind: Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project: Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind: Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected: questions@godanautobiography.com

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Can God speak through more than one religion?

In this episode of From God to Jerry to You, philosopher Jerry L. Martin explores a central insight from God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher: that divine wisdom may be working through many religious traditions across history, not just one.

Drawing from his recorded conversations with God, Jerry reflects on the idea that different religions may carry distinct spiritual assignments for different cultures and times. Rather than competing versions of truth, these paths may represent a spiritual “division of labor,” each revealing something essential about the divine.

This vision leads to what Jerry calls Theology Without Walls — an approach to faith that remains open to truth wherever it appears, including in other religions, philosophy, literature, science, and lived experience.

He also introduces the idea of a “New Axial Age,” a turning point in spiritual history in which seekers begin drawing wisdom from multiple traditions while deepening their personal relationship with God.

Whether you belong to a particular faith, identify as spiritual but not religious, or are simply curious about how divine guidance might move through different cultures, this episode offers an expansive and hopeful view of humanity’s shared spiritual journey.

Listen, reflect, and experience the world from God’s perspective — as it was told to a philosopher.

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected

• Read the book: God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher at godanautobiography.com or Amazon
• Share your questions and reflections: questions@godanautobiography.com

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon reflect on what it means to live in partnership with God in a world where evil persists and meaning is still unfolding.

Drawing on biblical scholar John D. Levinson, they explore order and chaos, the idea of a developing God, and how discernment shows up in lived experience.

Referencing William James, the conversation turns to faith as embodied wisdom rather than rule-following, and to Jesus as an unfiltered expression of divine presence.

Through reflections on ego, power, tough love, and the teaching “knock and you will find,” the episode contrasts horizontal and vertical ways of seeing reality, suggesting that seeking itself may already place us within the Kingdom of God.

Related Episodes:

263. From God to Jerry to You- The Problem of Evil and the Kingdom of God

264. Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue- Evil, Love, and God

265. Radically Personal – William James on Religious Experience

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected

• Share: questions@godandautobiography.com
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

In this special edition of What’s Your Spiritual Story?, philosopher Abigail Rosenthal sits down with her husband, Jerry L. Martin, for the most extended and personal telling of her spiritual story to date.

Drawing on her memoir, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, Abigail traces the formation of her inner life from an Edenic childhood and early encounters with loss, to adolescent philosophical crisis, homesickness, and the search for a reality that could withstand time, absence, and illusion.

Along the way, she reflects on formative influences, including Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels, Homer’s Odyssey, Gandhi, existentialism, political idealism, and the dangers of moral absolutism and ideological guilt.

This conversation explores themes of time and impermanence, spiritual longing, innocence and disillusionment, femininity and intellectual life, and what it means to test ideas by living them.

Abigail recounts her experiences in Paris, London, and the American academy, examining how philosophy, spirituality, and personal history intersect—and sometimes collide—in a woman’s life.

Rather than offering tidy conclusions, this episode presents a lived spiritual journey: one shaped by curiosity, risk, error, and hard-won clarity. It is a story about becoming—not only a philosopher, but a person capable of resisting illusion while remaining open to meaning.

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

Stay Connected

• Share your thoughts or questions at questions@godandautobiography.com
• 📖 Get the God: Book
• 📖 Get Confessions of a Young Philosopher

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

In this episode of Radically Personal, Jerry L. Martin turns to the work of American philosopher and psychologist William James to explore how divine reality is encountered in lived experience. Drawing from The Varieties of Religious Experience, Jerry reflects on James’s influence on the philosophy of religion and his claim that religion begins not with doctrines or institutions, but with personal experience—with what happens in the depths of a human life.

This conversation examines how experience functions as a window onto reality, why feelings and intuitions matter for discernment, and how religious and spiritual experience may reveal divine presence not as an object we perceive, but as a reality we participate in. Jerry explores prayer as relationship, the limits of abstract theory, and the importance of remaining open to fleeting, partial, and even unsystematic glimpses of meaning.

Radically Personal invites listeners into a seeker-centered approach to spirituality—one that trusts experience, honors personal vocation, and explores how God may still speak within the drama of everyday life.

_______________

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal – Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue.

_______________

Stay Connected

Share your thoughts or questions:

• questions@godandautobiography.com

Get the books:

• Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age
• God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube