What Is God? Spirituality Without Religion

I find your blog on religion very informative. If you are interested, maybe we can co-author a book together. I've been reading Acharya S and find her ideas refreshing. See www.truthbeknown.com. She's one cool lady. The more I study the pagan origins of Islam and Christianity, the more I understand how these monotheistic religions came about--if you are going to unite different tribes with different gods to build an empire, you have to invent one powerful deity for everyone to believe in. So Christianity has its "Christ" (meaning the "anointed one") and Islam its "Mohammed" (meaning the "highly praised one" ). The Christian god is really a Sun god, whereas Allah is the Moon god. How basic can you get? The Sun and the Moon. The sky-gods. The Sun god of Christianity was used to unite the Roman Empire, whereas Allah (the Moon god) would unite the Islamic empires. It's all about power and conquest. Patriarchal religions demand unquestioning obedience, while forcing women to accept a lower social status. What I find amazing is that many Muslims argue that Mohammed liberated women. In Muslim cultures they supposedly "choose" to cover themselves up with hijabs and burqas, whereas in Western society they are brainwashed by advertising into watching their weight and wearing makeup and revealing clothing. The only difference is that women in the West can choose between modest or revealing attire without fear of being stoned to death or slashed with a knife. I once had a chance to tutor a Muslim girl wearing a burqa. It's the weirdest thing when you can't see someone's face. Not allowing a woman to show her face in public is the ultimate form of subjugation. As much as Muslims try to argue that their religion is peaceful and doesn't oppress others, the facts contradict their claims. You can read some passages in the Qur'an, saying there is no compulsion in their religion and advocating compassion and kindness. But these passages are contradicted by others that advocate killing non-Muslims and infidels. The same can be said of the Bible, which contains a lot of inconsistencies, advocating love, compassion, brutality and killing at the same time. People who advocate killing homosexuals are only "following the Bible". Some of the things in the Bible are quite disturbing, and most Christians never really read those things or skip over them. Check out this site www.skepticsannotatedbible.com.

The problem with all these monotheistic religions is that their holy texts are full of contradictory and often violent messages. They are also incompatible with one another -- if you accept one of them, you have to reject the others. There are folks who'd like to say that all religions preach love and tolerance, but it's simply not true. The "true believers" seem to be the ones who advocate or practice violence. They call it self-defense. The interesting thing about Islam is that they keep reminding you that Mohammed is just a man. But, at the same time, he is the last true prophet of Allah -- the one true God--and the Qur'an is the last most accurate document available on God's word. Whatever Mohammed is to Muslims, one thing is clear. He is elevated to an almost godlike status -- he is free of human frailties and is not even allowed to be depicted in any way, lest you get violent objections from its followers. But Mohammed, the human being, represents the bridge to Allah. You are redeemed if you accept his teachings. The Christians decided that they didn't want a completely "human" messiah -- so we have this trinity of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit -- where the God takes on a human form and gets crucified. Of course, we have a problem with Virgin Mary -- she gets left out in whole holy deal after conceiving the Son of God without sex. Talk about crazy. The Muslims consider the whole idea of God begetting a son blasphemous, while Christians don't seem to care about how one God is really one in three manifestations. And what about Mary? It's all one big mystery to them. God works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, Elizabeth, religions are pretty crazy and they demand that people accept things without questioning or thinking. It doesn't occur to them that these "holy books" are just stories created by men and modified to suit their needs. Have you heard of the so-called "satanic verses"? Here's what it's all about. This information is taken from a Christian site www.lamblion.com:

Jews and Christians were not the only ones who rejected Muhammad's new revelations. The people of his own tribe, the Quraysh, also rejected him. In response, Muhammad succumbed to the temptation to appease his tribe by announcing that it would be okay for them to worship the three daughters of Allah -- named Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat.

This declaration led to the infamous "Satanic verses" of the Koran which were later deleted when Muhammad reverted back to monotheism. Muslims have tried ever since to cover-up this diversion from the faith. You may remember that in 1989 an Indian writer by the name of Salman Rushdie brought up this taboo topic when he wrote a novel entitled, The Satanic Verses. The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran condemned him and called for his assassination. A three million dollar bounty was placed on his head, and he has been in hiding ever since.

In other words, Mohammed had to revert temporarily to paganism to save his life. A minor detail. So you can see how inconsistent all these religions are.

I've been reading your blog with much interest. When we reject all the religious dogmas, we are forced to either reject all beliefs (atheism) or seek our own spiritual answers. There are two kinds of atheism -- weak atheism (closer to agnosticism) and strong atheism. Weak atheism is lack of belief in God (or gods), without making any assertions, while strong atheism is a belief that no gods (or transcendent reality) exist or can exist. I think of strong atheists as logical positivists when it comes to theology and metaphysics. They deny anything that is not logically consistent or empirically verifiable. These are folks who believe that only reason and science hold all the answers. There is no world beyond the material world, determined by physical laws of nature.

I feel that when people get disillusioned with all of the religions as sources of authority, there is a tendency to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater -- that is, give up on spirituality altogether and accept the materialistic beliefs of the strong atheists. The problem with strong atheists is that they are too busy proving the nonexistence of God of Christianity, God of Judaism, and God of Islam. These are patriarchal, anthropomorphic sky-gods. And they are not hard to refute if we try to define these Gods. This is the basic argument that shows logical inconsistency in monotheistic religions.

1. There is one God, which has the following qualities:
2. He created the universe
3. He is all-powerful
4. He is all-knowing
5. He is all-present
6. He is all-good, all-loving, all-merciful
7. He is all-just

What we find that such a definition leads to contradictions. For example, an all-just God would exact a punishment to fit the crime, whereas an all-merciful God would show mercy towards all human beings, including the worst sinners. Then we also have a problem of evil. How could an all-good and all-loving God allow human suffering? People, who blame it on the Devil, forget that God created the Devil and God could certainly destroy the Devil. The free will argument (evil comes through bad choices by humans) doesn't work either. If God has free will and is incapable of doing evil, He could certainly make humans incapable of doing evil as well. He can make them both free and good. In other words, the inability to do evil does not have to cancel out free will.

It seems to me that this notion of God separate from universe, involved in human affairs, is a naive notion. And once we throw out this notion of some separate being with humanlike qualities, we can discover spirituality that was never apart from the universe. The duality of spirit and matter never existed. The two are inseparable. And that is hard for most atheists to comprehend. We can talk of human beings in terms of their anatomy -- heart, lungs, intestines, brain, muscles, skin, bones -- and how it all fits together. But what is consciousness? It's an awareness of oneself. This is what makes us human. A conscious awareness. And where does that come from? I've been reading Acharya S. Here's what she says. Finally someone is making sense. See www.truthbeknown.com/god.htm:

"God" is the Life Force

One can think of God as the life force or sentience that permeates the cosmos, gravity or levity, it matters not. As an example of such an energy, one can take a plug and stick it into an electrical outlet -- this is what becoming spiritual is all about. One becomes plugged into "God." But think about that electrical life force: It has no form. In other words, it's not a human being. It has no gender; it's not a male. It has no color; it's not white. It has no size and no container. That life force, or "God," is not a giant white man, as we have been told, who can mysteriously incarnate himself through the womb of a virgin of any particular ethnicity. Rather than being historical, these are myths that are merely symbolic for the creation of matter out of spirit.

In the Far East, this life force has been discerned as and termed "the Tao." The Tao is the "thing" that makes birds chirp, cats purr and the sap of the trees run. We can also call it cosmic consciousness. It is simply an energy, sentience or spirit that pervades all things. Far from having gender, as we have been led to believe, it is the magnetic principle between the male and female potencies. It is also the male and female polarities themselves. This Great Spirit, Tao, or God, encompasses all things. If it is not all-encompassing, it is not God. Anything less than the total is not God. The definition of "God" is omnipresence itself. Nothing is outside of "God."

The Cosmic Mind

The creative/destructive mechanism of this all-encompassing life force can be called the "cosmic mind" or the "universal mind." This cosmic mind projects its thoughts into form; hence, reality could be called "God's Dream." But this dream includes the fragmentation of the Divine into seemingly dense objects and entities that have a will and independence of their own. As separate entities, we are nonetheless connected atomically to this life force, but the individual ego separates itself into a deluded state. This delusion, or maya, can become so strong that the creative life force is limited and the entity in which this spark exists no longer knows that it is "God." This delusion, which can be called "Satan" if personified, is how existence creates, by separating itself out of the whole and presenting the illusion of the many. But this delusion/ego/Satan is not anything bad until it is so separate and dense that it no longer sees itself all around but sees "other," which it is then free to harm if need be or desire arises.

True Spirituality

True spirituality is defined not by separation but by union, union with the whole, union with the life force, Great Spirit, Tao, or God, that lies behind creation and binds it together. Of course, the separation itself could also be thought of as a spiritual experience, in that it provides an opportunity for an individual soul to truly develop itself. Yet in that development, we come back to the omnidimensionality of being one with the cosmos. It is a paradox, yet one we like to live with, one that we ourselves created, as directors of our own drama. To be separate yet infinite - now, this is "God." This union is ecstasy, which in Greek means "to stand outside oneself."

Anything that imposes limits on an infinite divinity is not a complete spiritual system or experience. Anything that projects form upon this genderless, raceless, formless and nonhierarchical godliness is not the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth, which is "God," cannot have any form whatsoever, no gender, no race and no hierarchy.

"God" Has No Form or Gender

In the gnostic or esoteric systems of any religion, the Ultimate is always perceived as utterly formless. The realization of such formless Ultimate is considered within these systems to be the flowering of consciousness, the maturation of the soul and psyche. Thus, the definition of "God" as a father-figure in the sky is a lower understanding upon which lies man's puerility and immaturity. Creation has no gender, nor does the creator. "God" is not only father but mother, and grandfather and aunt and grandmother and uncle and cousin and sister and brother, etc. If the "Mother of God" can give birth to "God," She must also be God. Can an imperfect, unholy being give birth to a perfect, divine one? She must also be divine, which makes her God.

In reality, behind the fables, the truth is that the "Mother of God" also has no form but is simply the female aspect of creation, when the neutral Spirit-Atom begins to divide itself. The first elements out of the formless creator/destroyer/balancer are male and female, in equal proportions. The perfect yin/yang balance is the basis of creation. There is no hierarchy in spirit; hence, the female is never in reality lower than the male, as certain "religious" traditions teach. In humans, the density grows so strong, the ego so potent and intoxicating, that the gender aspect becomes all-consuming. One is nearly completely defined by the gender of the material vessel in which the genderless consciousness is carried. While this illusion is remedied spiritually, in this earthly dimension these differences remain between male and female. The remedy is that the consciousness of the individual, through enlightenment or "God-realization," recognizes that it is both male and female and neither. It is an impartial observer or "witness." Yet, we need not be so hasty in maintaining a genderless state for ourselves, as we are rather fond of the play between polarities, which is in large part why we take birth.

The Ego, Consciousness and Enlightenment

The ego will perceive itself as having a gendered experience, but the witness behind the ego is a clean slate of pure sentience. In this dualistic creation, both experiences will happen simultaneously, where one can know the union of existence, the genderlessness and egolessness, and one can enjoy the separation. The difference is one of consciousness. The conscious, awakened individual will know in her/his inner being that she/he is "one with creation," but will also know that as the creator of her/his own drama she/he has chosen to incarnate into the denser, more deluded realms, for the sake of the experience itself. He or she has no other reason for incarnating, just as "God," or the universal mind, has no reason for creating except for its own amusement. Once an illuminated soul knows this, then he or she is free to create his or her own experience and purpose for incarnating. This is liberation. This is enlightenment.

Enlightenment, which seems to many to be so nebulous, awesome and scary, is very easy. It is not miracles or magic tricks, although those can be developed if desired strongly enough. Enlightenment is simply the realization of who is pulling the strings of one's puppet. It is the revelation of autonomy to the individual. It is the bestowal of the ultimate god-authority over one's own being. It is when the cosmic creative mind and the individual consciousness merge, when one's mind becomes united with the Cosmos. This mental merger goes beyond the mind and penetrates the very cells of the being. This penetration is possible because the god-force resides within the soul-cells of every entity.

Perceiving the Divine

There are many practices that can lead to union or reunion with this life force, Great Spirit, Tao, God. We can use yoga or prayer, meditation, chanting or sex. We can play basketball in the Zone. We can eat good food or engage in intelligent, funny or meaningless conversation. We can run up hills, climb mountains and swim seas. Or we can sleep. Ultimately, no practice is needed, when one becomes united with this "godhead," when one has returned to the natural state, from which the human ego has created separation. Reunion with this life force is the mark of true religious experience and system. A true religious system is not one that demands slobbering at the feet of a separate god-ego -- however large and frightening, whatever race or gender -- but one that leads to communion and union with the quality of divinity itself.