Wednesday 11 September 2013

Rationalists' Prayer


ό άνεξεταςτος ϐίος ού ϐιωτός άνθρώπω
(The unexamined life is not worth living) - Socrates

Oh me, who art in my brain, [your name] be my name.
Thyself now hear: Thyself now heal.

For what is faith? What is mysticism, religion or belief, but a device with which to map the human mind? A method of surgical extraction, to remove points of turmoil, bones of contention, and transplant them to an external sphere.

There are the Buddhist Bodhisattvas, onto whose statues supplicants transfer their emotions; anger, compassion, serenity and the like, in order to give them external form and meditate upon their qualities. Then can they, with better understanding, be reintegrated back into the internal whole.

The Greeks and Romans built temples to their gods, gave votive offerings and held feast days to each and all. Yet these gods did not demand fealty or fidelity, merely recognition of their existence. They were personifications of elemental forces which dominate human life. Bodhisattvas to base nature.

To be suppliant before Poseidon or Zeus was to be reminded of the awesome power of nature.

For women to pray for fertility before statues of Isis or Artemis was to extract and augment the primal desire to reproduce. Implant in both womb and brow a concentrated vision of fecundity personified. These goddesses were a direct link back to the days when women gathered and sewed seeds and were the mothers of the earliest civilisations, before man came home from the hunt to take credit and recast them as Eve, destroyer of paradise.

Religion was at one time empowering to civilisation and to the individual themself. Before the dark times. Before monotheism. The motives for imposing monotheism on society are political, nothing more. For one god, read one ruler, one president, one king. And one king equals one mindset. One society. One ruling elite, with one true path to salvation, promised only to those who pledge a lifetime of obedient subservience.

Yet a good scientist knows that any force removed to a point of infinity can exert no influence upon the here and now. Just as evil is a form of good, darkness a form of light, silence a form of sound, so the net influence of an omnipotent being upon the real world is zero. Monotheism is the destruction of democracy in favour of monarchy. Monotheism is the destruction of individual power in favour of the state. Monotheism is the destruction of self (as any wicked usurper knows well). Fascism by any other name would smell as vile.

We are pagans once more. We worship before household goods and pop stars. The cult of flickering celebrity has replaced the ancient pantheon of inanimate statues, but we have still to regain the position our ancestors once held. Fame is as much an unattainable delusion as the hereafter and even to gain brief admittance to that fabricated vision of heaven here on Earth, one has to suck a lot of corporate cock. Through spiritual subsidence, paradise has sunk down into purgatory. Nothing is as good as it once was.

Search for answers from within. Here is the place where infinity resides. Call it God, call it Buddha, call it Artemis, Diana or Dave, but know that it is you. Religion is useful, but only a personal religion, transformed for your own means and ends. Preconstructed ideologies will always fail you and you will always fail them just the same. They required no investigation, they required no soul searching, they came to you for free. You get what you pay for. You disrespect that which cost you nothing. Anything worth having takes actual effort to attain.

Only you have lived this life. Only you have seen through these eyes, thought these thoughts, felt these things. You are a unique blend of influence and experience. You are a subjective creature. You interpret the world in your own special way.

Look at dreams. Current scientific thought has it that dreams have no specific purpose. Dreams are simply what happens when consciousness is suspended through restful sleep. With no guiding intelligence, random neurons fire in the brain, giving rise to a miasma of unconnected thoughts and memory.

Yet to adopt this mindset is to fail to take account of the mind's subjective nature. What dreams are is as nothing when compared to how the individual interprets them. After all, a screensaver running random photographs contains no significance, except to the owner of the images. These words have no significance to anyone illiterate or who speaks no English.

Like Bodhisattvas of the Brain, dreams can help transport dilemmas and difficulties to a fresh sphere for re-examination. Indistinct issues are given form: given substance. Chaos theory teaches us that order can spontaneously form out of randomness. Horoscopes have no scientific rationale and yet their very arbitrariness can, on occasion, appear as a dart hitting a bulls-eye.

Mainstream religion has survived this long exactly because it is as vague as a dream or horoscope. We each find a meaning we are looking for and disregard anything that doesn't fit. Yet to cherry pick from one source alone is to become hostile and sterile. Harvest and imbibe of multiple crops. Be fruitful and you will multiply. Take what you need, take what applies to you and throw the rest away.

Be fearless in your distinctiveness. Be not a sheep. Is a sheep happy? Shepherded and shawn, bleating stupidity even as it is led away to slaughter. Be not the wolf either. Preying on the weak. Be unique and you will never fear anyone who seems different to you. You will praise difference, even as it extenuates your individuality. You will be as an example to others. You will be a beacon to illuminate the dark. You will be as a stream in the ocean. Open to mixture and variation, but always following your unique course.

You will be greater than the sum of your parts.

You will swell beyond the confines of self.

You will be boundless.

You will be limitless.

You will be worshipper and worshipped united/combined.

Yes.

You will be god.

Go!

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