In the last two chapters I defended the intelligibility of understanding God as a powerful Creator, present in the cosmos as an incorporeal being with supreme cognitive power. In this chapter I consider in more detail the nature of personal life and explore the philosophical opportunities for understanding what theists describe as God's interior presence. I seek to chart the different respects in which the development of personal life requires a kind of shifting attachment and detachment. Integrative dualism places great emphasis on the holist, unitary nature of embodied life, while it also allows that relations with one's body, oneself, and others can be unduly absorbed or detached. The account of attachment and detachment outlined in the first section of the chapter will serve as a basis upon which to examine Eckhart's claim, a claim that echoes Augustine's prayer, “Thou [God] wert more inward to me than my most inward part; and higher than my highest.” The chapter concludes with articulating integrative theism, which is essentially classical theism, and the thesis that God's love of creation is to be understood in affective, passionate terms.

I submit that the development of our personal lives involves a series of attachments and detachments whereby the boundaries of our lives are constantly having to be drawn and redrawn.