– Pratik Sing Thakuri

The human civilization started taking its full pace once the idea of embracing views and opinion mutually had established. However, in some specific area we not only embraced the views but saturated it.  Those saturated views took a form of practices and belief. Normalizing things on saturation are very difficult, if not impossible. The numbers of fundamentalists are not in a small number in any belief system. In other words, culturally brainwashed individuals whose critical thinking nerves have been amputated make a significant population in every society. Any views striking their beliefs could be totally offensive or intolerable to them. It is the same population who is making the whole essence of religion very ugly.

One may think how ungrateful I am being towards religion. Well, I am not. I am not being negatively biased to prove my points and my reservations are not with religion but with the perception of religion.

So where is the problem?

The problem is in the new school of thought which has distorted perceptions toward religion. If it is defined within a silver coating, even then the iron inside has been completely oxidized. The religion now is nothing but a marketing philosophy that creates fears and greed on people to sell its product. It is the same thing which invented the system of beliefs and barricaded the human tendency of seeking the truth.

System of belief

Things that are beyond our level of understanding are hardly accepted by our conscience. Just because our level of experience and understanding are not able to cope with these things, it does not mean they do not exist. For example, a person who has spent his whole life in a valley surrounded by high rocky mountains may either think that the ridges of mountains are the boundary of the earth or believe there is something extraordinary beyond. The first case is the cognitive bias and latter one is the lethargy to explore. But believing or disbelieving doesn’t take us any closer to the truth. The neo-school of thought in the name of neutralizing our bias established the system of belief. The belief that something extraordinary or supernatural is beyond and governs us.

What we believe what’s beyond?

Even after disbelieving the ridges to be the boundary of the earth and believing something to be beyond, our cognitive bias remained with us. We believed the idealized things of our imagination to be beyond. The things we imagined are the manifestation of oneself and our surroundings.  The things we can never achieve here can be achieved there or the persons with superpowers, whom we could not be here, are there.

The story of flying in the sky and telepathy were absurd beliefs. It was a belief, so we related them with divinity and attributed it as impossible. They were the seekers not the believers who broke the ice and made those imaginary impossible a reality.

The theory of consciousness

There has been lot of theories on consciousness. Philosophers, mystics and neuro-scientists have come up with different and contradictory opinion toward the same. “An information integration of theory of consciousness” by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi is one among them.  According to Tononi, consciousness is integration of wide variety of experience but then he also says that no matter how faithfully we try to replicate a human mind in a simulation, it could never become conscious.

“You can simulate weather in a computer, but it will never be ‘wet.” Christof Koch

This theory starts with the argument of whether or not we are mere ordinary programmed flesh and blood. If we are so, then we have lived many lives. We stand nowhere now but in a point of continuity: In – Out = Storage. The mass we have accumulated is nothing other than arithmetic decaying and division of the cells. Similar with the memory, we have started acquiring the data since our senses started functioning. And our memory and thought processes are nothing but a cycling and recycling of the data that we have gathered till the present instance.

So who are we?

Are we a soul like what is portrayed in movies and poems?

No, they are just the exaggerated portrayals.

So then who are we?

This can be explained with an example of boy in quest of understanding a rotor or fan.  Trying to understand a fan, he came to a conclusion that the rotating fan is just not its blades and machines. This conclusion made him more inquisitive toward his quest. He then started playing with the dimmer; he could slow down and speed up the fan with that dimmer. He seemed to get closer to his quest and made his final verification by disconnecting the dimmer with fan. The fan finally stopped working.  With all his observation he finally concluded that dimmer of the fan is the ultimate source of fan which makes it moving. This example can be well suited for the people who say the source of consciousness lies in the mind. The dimmer was just a conduit equipped with regulator for the inflow and outflow of the electrical energy so as the human mind. Human mind is also a regulatory conduit of amalgamation of energies which is termed as consciousness.

Each and everything that exists are conscious beings, the difference being that some have full functioning body and brain while some don’t. Some can express and some can’t.

So, where do these energies come from or where does it go after death?

Relating energies to consciousness does not make it supernatural or extra ordinary. It is the same energy what we have known. The law of conservation of energy (Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can change its form one to another) can be well applied here too.

Religion and metaphysics

Generally metaphysics can be defined as a philosophy to explore the fundamental question of being, existence and reality. Origin of religion started with a person who adopted this philosophy to approach truth. Through the long process of observations and questioning inwards and outward they have come to know something. But the truth was subjective to them. Later, preachers advertised and people adopted it as ultimate truth. Adopting others’ subjective truth as ultimate truth leads us nowhere closer to reality but on the situation of very plight where we now are.

Unlike other religions, the one which originated from civilization of Indus valley had no single philosopher. In this case the civilization itself came up as unit. They not only struggled for their survival but followed their quest to know unknowns. It was their quest which resulted into amazing findings which are even relevant today.  Music in SamaVeda and Ancient medical science such as Ayurveda are few of them. Music is science of resonating sound and Ayurveda is draft which includes findings of thousands of years of the research on plants and herbs. List does not limit here, it is expanded from the technology of building designs to the science of cosmos; the philosophy of art to the techniques of sex.  But lots of the things were beyond their understanding too. They simplified good and evil into god and demons.

Later when the civilization expanded, people’s tendencies to seek truth were gradually slowed down and they started believing the subjective truth of the past. For example: Rivers and waters were objectified as god after knowing it as a lifesaving component but these days’ rivers has become nothing other than a religious dumping site.

It is the system of belief which stops us to explore the truth and approach the reality. It is something this generation should feel ashamed for at least not being able to carry the legacy of the past.

End Note:

If there is god then its greatness need not be boasted and if we seek god then it not necessarily be advertised. The best definition of the god is that it cannot be defined. It can only be felt and these feelings may not be unanimous.

The content in this article are subjective truth for me and it is very possible that it can differ from others. If one differs these views then we are in same boat where it is mentioned only for seekers not for believers.