Believing and non-believing

[hyphenate]

I am an atheist. At least that's what I call myself. Atheism such as mine is probably not considered as such by some, because I have some things that I do believe in, just not conventional things.

So, I'm odd. That's fine to me--titles are not a put-down unless a person wants them to be. To me, being odd makes some parts of my life more memorable, and if we can't have evocative memories, than our existence on planet Earth is merely survival.

I don't believe in a god with a capital G. If you qualified what I believe in, I consider it as a group consciousness--a meshing of the universe as a whole, where we, as human beings, have a connection with all other human beings. While we are separate beings, this part of our existence is a very loosely threaded Borg hive.

This merely means we are all in this together, right or wrong. We only share this species group think with human beings, and we are as far apart from all the other species on Earth as we are alike as humans.

But that's where my wildly different beliefs begin. Everyone in the world knows Hamlet's famous quote to his friend Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

And that is where I begin my own path of discovery and, if you will, faith.

Eastern religions and philosophies have been around for a longer time than many Western ones. The large emphasis is on personal growth, and an element of personal responsibility. But there is also a very strong belief in spirit and rebirth.

Many atheists look at anything beyond our current world as lacking empirical evidence. Many cite that we have no evidence of something beyond our physical bodies, so it is useless to discuss anything else. But I look at it with a larger eye: what we know and believe in right now is as different to a 19th century existence as a 22nd century existence is to ourselves.

Many will scoff, make rude comments about my mental state, and likely just dismiss me and my philosophy as they would a fly on their hand. But why must it be so? I know, personally, that I have strong antagonism for the religious right and fundamentalism, but I don't try to make those with differing views feel persecuted. Why should I? Most people accept their own feelings on the subject of religion and faith, and perhaps we are all correct in our own corner of the Universe.

The following is an old story that illustrates how we all have our own interpretation of faith, and while we might be right in our own minds, we might not be capable of seeing the larger picture:

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, "Sir, there are living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth. What, Sir, would you say concerning them?"

The Buddha answered, "Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind... and show them an elephant.' 'Very good, sire,' replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, 'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'

"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

"Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.

"Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus."

Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

Are we so different than these blind men, who see only a small portion of the truth, and interpret their own version of the whole? I don't think so.

I believe that we are all myopic in the extreme view--we can only see what we have been taught about. Someone who believes in the spirit world can believe in ghosts, hauntings, other such paranormal phenomena; someone who has had a fringe Christian upbringing can believe in demons, the Devil, Jesus Christ; someone who has had a secular life judges solely on the facts present; someone who has had a Hindu influence has a reverence for the lives of some animals, and a firm belief in reincarnation.

I believe in some such things as a spiritual realm, though not to be interpreted as a heaven, hell or purgatory. It's a lot less defined in that respect. There have been so many wondrous happenings throughout time that can not be explained easily and through scientific observation....yet. It remains that we are not so narrow-minded to dismiss future growth of science, and of the potential outcomes of what might change over time.

Whether it's proven or unproven, some things have happened to me at times that defy explanation. Holding someone's ring and mentioning the color purple and a wooden foot bridge evoked a strong memory in one: the ring had been inherited from an aunt who lived in a house approached across a wooden foot bridge; dreaming one night a strange dream (back in 1980, during the Iran hostage crisis) where a very clear, very lound voice came to me, "she's gone into the Canadian Embassy; we won't be able to get her now" from a person in the dream, where I was able to "escape" from the American embassy--two weeks later, the dream came true; doing a Tarot reading for my sister-in-law where I told them they were going to buy a house when they were struggling to pay rent, nevermind have a nest egg to put down on a house--two months later, they moved into their dream house when a family friend told them it was theirs if they would start paying the mortgage.

Again, we all approach life through different eyes and different beginnings, and the only way we can ever experience something different is not to dismiss what someone else is seeing and believing. While I still cannot empathize with the fanatical nature of the fundamentalists and the religious right, I find talking with someone who has different experiences than my own fascinating, because it extends my own knowledge beyond what I would ordinarily discover on my own.

I may be an atheist in that I don't believe in a god with a capital G, but I believe that the total of our own faith can only be achieved when we open ourselves to the possibilities that lie just beyond our own ken.

[Speck Tater]

1. Well put. I'm right there with you.

I have had enough "impossible" experiences to know (as opposed to merely "believing") that the tangible world of matter and energy is not all there is to reality.

Imagine yourself in a lucid dream, discussing "reality" with a philosopher. You tell this dream character about a kind of existence called "waking life". The philosopher scoffs at the idea of "waking life", and asks you to show it to him. He points up, down, left, right, north, south, asking is this place called "waking life" over here? Up there? Down the road a mile or two? Off beyond the stars somewhere?

The fact is, as long as you are within the dream you cannot find ANY evidence that the place called "waking life" is real. As long as you are within what we call "reality" you cannot find ANY evidence of the existence of the "place" within which that reality is manifesting.

You need to "wake up" from "reality" to know the existence of a "place" that can only be called "other". The Sanskrit term for one who has awakened is "buddha".

Of course someone who has awakened cannot possibly explain "waking life" to someone who is still asleep. All an awakened one can do is show others the method, the practice to use to find awakening for themselves.

[cosmik debris]

2. Some people look for rational explanations

Some people look for emotional explanations.

You are welcome to which ever winds your clock.

Just be sure you don't get them confused.

And don't tell me that yours is better than mine.

[trotsky]

3. Never much cared for the "blind men and an elephant" analogy.

It's pretty lousy, if you think about it. With an elephant, it's possible for each of the blind men to feel ALL parts of it, and get a more accurate picture. If they had done this, they all would have come back with very similar descriptions of the beast and thus it would further illustrate how different real things are from "supernatural" things.

What is restricting each of us from being able to experience different parts of the "supernatural"? And why, when some of us reach out, don't we feel ANYTHING there?

You are of course welcome to believe in whatever you want. Some people will make fun of you. Some people will condemn you to hell. Some people will even claim that by rejecting religion you're somehow embracing neocapitalism/libertarianism. Screw 'em.

[onager]

4. All I see there are simple coincidences.

:shrug:

...the only way we can ever experience something different is not to dismiss what someone else is seeing and believing.

Huh? I believe I can safely dismiss quite a few things that someone else may be seeing and believing. Like the person who insists they were kidnapped and anally probed by space aliens, or the DU poster who bragged about attending "non-corporeal meetups" inside the Great Pyramid.

I hope you don't get many door-to-door salespeople in your neighborhood. Especially the ones selling Mormonism or $cientology.

[Ron Green]

5. Thanks for your thoughtful post.

You'll attract some of the usual cynicism here, but I agree that we exist both as individuals, with our own indoctrination and ways of seeing, and as a unified spirit, into which we must ultimately awaken. I believe this is our job here on earth, and yet the paradox is that only exemplary behavior, and not preaching or cajoling, can connect us together.