3b) Where is God with respect to His creations?
If God is the Thinker and everything else is His thought, then He is separated from His thoughts by a dimensional gap just as we are from our thoughts. It would indeed be appropriate to conclude that "everything we observe” is in the mind of God.
The First Cause must by definition be in a universe unto Itself. It can have no “outside”. It is all there really is. Everything else is inside that First Cause. If as we believe “energy” cannot be created or destroyed, then some will contend that the First Cause is energy and all we observe is that primordial energy changing form over time. They would say that this is an impersonal First Cause. However, if thought itself is merely one form of energy, then thought has indeed always existed. This makes the First Cause a Personal God, Who can think. It also explains how something He is thinking of (eg all of us) can think. Indeed the Big Picture looks a lot more clear if we accept that the First Cause, God, can think at least as well as we can. Then we can easily understand where God is with respect to His creations. He is the Thinker and everything else is His thought.
3 August 2001, updated 14 September 2002