Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "god"

I have been asked countless times.

Does God exist?

I'll go straight ahead and tell you I don't know. And you know what! No human being on planet earth knows whether such a Supreme Entity exists. And before the fundamentalist primitives come up with their idiotic argument "have you asked everyone on this planet?" Here the answer would be, the believers believe in an existence of a Supreme Entity. And there is a vast difference between belief and knowledge. Or as most people like to say, It is a matter of faith. Now there is the question, "what is faith?"
"Can we, the modern human beings of the 21st century have faith on an entity, whom we know nothing about!"
And the answer is not so simple as it might seem. The point is, faith, hope, belief all these are born out of a magnificent network of cells, which we call the neurons. And as far as the neurons are concerned, the question "does God exist" is irrational and irrelevant to the existence of an advanced biological creature like the humans.
Science shall never be able to answer this question? Because the very neural basis of the question dwells on the magnificent operation of the human brain from which rises abstract thinking. And the outcome of such abstract thinking is infinite creativity. It is the product of the brain's capacity to imagine things that we cannot comprehend with our logical prefrontal cortex.
After all, being the smartest species on earth has its own existential baggage. Daily struggle of the humans is not as easy. It may seem easy to a financially stable and established atheist. But the reality is different.
To ease the sufferings of the species as a whole, Mother Nature put selective pressure on the neural network of the brain, that eventually led to the arrival of cognitive features of the humankind. And one of those crucial features is spirituality. And this element of Spirituality later led to the development of the formal structure of religions. And these structures further sustained the concept of God in the mind of the masses.
And the concept of God still exists in the human mind, because of its evolutionary advantages. Through various neurochemical processes, the human belief upon God or any kind of divinity, relieves stress and anxiety in daily life. It acts as a natural anti-depressant.
A belief is your brain's self maintenance mechanism. And the most important feature of a human belief is that it is very personal. Each one of you has some kind of belief system. And as for the belief upon the divinity, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity.
Now one might ask, what about all those people or rather saints who experienced God? Were they simply delusional, as the atheists ruthlessly put it?
It is not as simple as saying, they were delusional. What those saints experienced is what we call an altered state of consciousness. People experience these mental states in various circumstances. For example, disturbance in the geomagnetic field often increases the frequency of psychotic episodes in mentally ill patients. And in some cases geomagnetic disturbance can also trigger subtle electrical storm within the temporal lobe of the brain. These storms often lead to ecstatic experiences.
However, till date the most healthy way to experience the divine bliss is through meditation. It is the natural way to trigger an ecstatic sensation in your brain. That's how Buddha experienced Nirvana. While Jesus experienced his blissful state of consciousness through a combination of devotion and meditation.
So, it is not about whether God exists or not. It is all about whether your belief upon him or her makes you a better version of yourself.
Our research in modern Neuroscience has proven that spirituality and divinity possess great health benefits. In order to have a deeper understanding of the biological impact of divinity you may read one of my latest books Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality.
But in short, divinity makes you happier and healthier both mentally and physiologically. It keeps the neurochemical processes of your body in check. It does indeed improve the quality of your life, by improving your biology.
So, your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky. And so can be your religions, but in all your vivid and diverse paths if practicing religion and spirituality, there is one very common and simple element that knows no bounds, it is the eternal bliss of divinity which evolved in the human mind through millions of years, and this very element enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence.

What is Soul? Is it magic? Or is it something pretty much physical but seems to be magical? Is it something Science can explain? Or is it beyond human comprehension?

Here you are going to have your confusions surrounding the term Soul, thrown away, once and forever.

But before you learn about Soul, I must tell you a thing or two about the human brain's affinity towards mysticism. Our species, that is the Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago, and even before that our previous ancestral species existed, millions of years back. During the most of existential period we lived in the wild alongside wild animals. On the contrary Modern Science has only evolved a few centuries ago. So, compared to the civilized scientific mind of modern human, the instinctual primitive mind is way older and more deep rooted into the brain. That primitive mind has been surviving in the wild environment for a long time in the midst of fear and ignorance. By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is very gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of Modern Sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense. Because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity. Scientific understanding of things arrived much later, and in fact, if we compare it with our millions of years long acquaintance with ignorance and fear, Science would look in its infancy. So it is not easy for your brain to embrace the newly discovered scientific explanations of various phenomena which you previously knew as correlated to the domain of the Supernatural or Paranormal.

For example, due to lack of comprehension, primitive humans believed thunderstorms were caused by gods or spirits in the sky, earthquakes were caused by earth spirits and so on. But, now it is common knowledge for you, how various geophysical processes give rise to various weathers, and various natural disasters. Now you know that plate tectonics is responsible for earthquakes. All these things are common sense to the general public. In fact, now you know that the planets including our earth revolve around the sun, but a few thousand years ago, this simple idea was beyond branded as blasphemy. Because it was against the mysticism of those days.

Science has advanced quite a lot since then. Especially with advancement in the field of Brain Science, we finally have started explore the existential questions of human life. We are finally investigating questions revolving around our own entity and identity. We Neuroscientists are constantly exploring the fantastic domain of the human mind to understand what makes each human being tick the way they do. And one of the most fascinating terms correlated with the term Mind, is Soul. The concept of Soul goes way back during our tribal days in the jungle. The only way the tribal primitives could make sense of death, is to incorporate the concept of Soul. They perceived Soul as the breath of Life, without which the body would not function. From this, emerged the ancient mind-body problem. Due to lack of any understanding of human biology whatsoever, the primitive humans perceived Soul and Body to be separate because that's the only way they could make sense of their fellow human one moment walking around and the next moment lying on the ground lifeless. And in order to diminish the uncertainty that goes along with the notion of death they further developed the primeval idea that Soul is immortal which upon leaving the body reaches a peaceful place, which many cultures termed as Heaven. This idea has been celebrated throughout the world for a long time, because of the comfort that it brings. It erases all the devastating anxiety, uncertainty and ignorance surrounding death. Hence till this modern day of fascinating scientific achievements the common human mind deems death as a blissful departure of the soul to another realm - far more beautiful that our planet earth.

And this idea of heaven is so strong in general human mind, that even today, every now and then we scientists come across various individuals who claim to have visited Heaven and come back to planet earth. These people are not lying. They are indeed telling what they experienced during a life and death situation. And here the ancient idea came into action. A person who has heard a lot about the Afterlife during his or her lifetime, once faced with a near death event, that idea would become a reality through his or her neural circuits. During a traumatic event the extremely high level of stress hormones triggers the release of a special neurochemical called DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine. DMT is one of the most profound hallucinogenic compounds on this planet. And upon the influence of DMT the human mind experiences a reality so soothing and surreal that makes the person forget about the trauma almost completely. It enables the person to deal with the situation. And what the person hallucinates about during that times, depends on the predominant ideas, fantasies and wishes rooted into the neural network of the person's brain. So, here the person may not actually go to heaven, but to him or her, the hallucianatory reality of heaven or afterlife seems more real and the actual reality. It's the brain's way of self preservation.

These near death experiences further strengthen the general idea of an Afterlife and the immortality of Soul in the masses.

Now let's answer the billion dollar question. What is Soul?
As I have said in my latest book What is Mind?, Soul is the functional expression of neurons. When billions of neurons start firing, the result is a mesmerizing thing called Soul, or which we more simply refer to as the Mind. Mind and Soul are one and the same thing. Although various cultures till this date perceive Soul to be the driving force behind the Human Mind. Cultural ideas have their own mysticism attached to them, so those ancient concepts cannot be accepted literally. Rather we can attempt to investigate their beliefs, which can prove helpful to our future investigations of the mind.

Human Mind or from an ancient perspective - the Soul, is born from protoplasmic activity within the brain. All regions of the brain's neural network play their distinctive roles to construct distinct features of the Mind, such as Emotions, Memory, Individuality etc. If you turn even a small portion of the neural network off, the correlated mental feature of that region would completely disappear from the person's mental life. And this way, if you keep turning off various regions of the brain one after another, in the end, there would be no sign of mental activity whatsoever. Soul would cease to exist. Because the brain that creates this fascinating phenomenon has been turned off. This is exactly what happens when a person is announced brain-dead.

Hence, we can quite naturally deduce that Soul does not come from any Supernatural Domain outside the body, rather it is born inside the biological domain of the body. And along comes the deduction that soul is born in the brain and dies with it. So, there is no Afterlife, or Heaven or Hell, or Reincarnation. With death you simply cease to exist as your self. However your bodily elements which created your individuality or from a deeper perspective your Soul, gets dispersed into the nature. So, rhetorically speaking you do live on forever, but not as yourself, rather as an eternal part of the Cosmos.

What is Religion?

This question torments a lot of young minds of modern society, especially those who are keen to study science. It is something that makes every single person on earth ponder in amazement.

Religion is simply a natural phenomenon of the human mind. It is something that is deep rooted into the neural network of the human brain. Or in short, it is a neurological phenomenon. And that natural feature of neurobiology manifests in vividly different ways in different people. For example, to me exploring and investigating the fascinating realm of the human mind, is my religion. To an evolutionary biologist, the theory of evolution itself can be his or her religion. However, to the majority of the human population the term religion refers to a specific book. And there lies the most devastating perceptual error of the modern human society.

Religion is not a book. The Bible is not religion, nor are the Vedas. The Torah is not religion, nor is the Quran, or any other scripture on earth. Scriptures are born out of a basic human urge to sustain the sensation of spirituality in an organized structure.
All the religious conflicts in the human society rise from the perception that when we talk about religion, we are actually referring to a specific book. And there's the biggest perceptual mistake of the human civilization.

All human creations including the scriptures are the product of billions of neurons firing together in proper harmony. And anything that a human creates can never be free from flaws. So cannot be the religious books of this planet. And chaos starts to invade the society when people perceive every single word from the scriptures to be literally true. Thus the mistakes of our Bronze Age ancestors become the cause of devastation in our modern society.

Biologically, the true essence of religion, lies within the human mind, not in any book, no matter how old they are. Religion is not a book. It is a natural feature of the human mind that created all the scriptures in the world, not the other way around.

Religion is the mind’s urge to become better in the spiritual domain. All those books only depict that urge. They only show what a handful of individuals in the history of mankind

experienced when their brain made them transcend from an ordinary wakeful state of consciousness into an ultimate state of divinity and bliss. It is what we call an altered state of consciousness. And you don't have to be a prophet or a messiah to experience this. The most natural way to experience a transcendental state of consciousness is through meditation. It has nothing to do with God. But it has a lot to do with exploring one's inner self and getting familiar with one's deepest desires, the inner divinity.
Thus all divinity, spirituality and religiosity exist within your very brain. I take immense pleasure in realizing that our perception of the whole universe emerges from the activity of the little specks of jelly inside our skull. From the complex and fascinating neural activity emerges our very human consciousness, which happens to be the most advanced among all species on planet earth. So, bring that 3 pounds lump of jelly into use. Human brain holds all the answers to you questions. You just need to ask the right question at the right moment. It is not about what the books permit you to do, or not to do. It is about what you as a precious member of mankind permit yourself to do. It is about finding the kingdom of conscience. In that kingdom of conscience you shall discover that all religions are biologically true and equal. They evolved in the human mind to ease the sufferings of daily survival.

And the ancient sensation that binds all religions together is spirituality. It is the basis of all religions on this planet, yet it is not tied to any specific religion. In fact, this neurological element of spirituality led to the birth of modern religions.

At the core of all religions, the rudimentary element of spirituality functions as a cognitive mechanism within the brain to inspire a human being in all walks of life. And all the vivid and varied religious rituals and regulations are manmade paths that lead towards that spiritual awakening. Mother Nature embedded the seeds of spirituality within our genetic blueprint because this fascinating mental quality proved its mettle in easing human anxiety and sufferings throughout our existence as a species.

Humans are the most interesting as well as confusing creature on this planet. We can be tough as iron, and quite amazingly in times of distress we can become real weak and vulnerable. So, Mother Nature thought, “Hey, I cannot let my children suffer like that. I need to do something about it.”

Naturally, she put selective pressure on the human brain and through millions of years in the pursuit of building various mechanisms in our complex neural network. These mechanisms are the pinnacle of biological revolution. They are the reason we can act as
an advanced species. They provide us amazing human qualities of love, passion, compassion, kindness, empathy, curiosity, and spirituality.

And this element of spirituality in our neural network constructs our rich and vivid religious sentiments. As I have said in my book Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality, “your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky, and so can be your religions. But in all your vivid and diverse paths of practicing religion, here is one common element that knows no bounds. That element is the eternal bliss that enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence.”

That divine element constructed all the philosophical teachings of the scriptures. However, some of the verses of those books which inadvertently advocate and promote hatred or violence, are simply the product of the dark side of the human mind. All those scriptures are like philosophical literature. Some parts of them are beneficial to the society and some others are quite harmful. Thus, taking every single word of those books to be literally true, only leads to chaos. This is what we call fundamentalism, and it is dangerous. It not only harms the society, but leads the entire human civilization back to the Stone Age.

Hence, to avoid such catastrophic scenario, every scripture, no matter how ancient, must go through rigorous human scrutiny. A rational mind should not accept a single word from the scriptures without properly examining it. A modern human being must be brave and upright, and embrace the goodness from all the scriptures and throw away the poisonous particles.

Religion itself is not harmful for the society. In fact it is quite the opposite. It is what gives a person hope to keep walking even in the darkest times. And we have proven this with countless neuroscientific studies. We the neuroscientists have proven that religion is healthy for the human species as a whole. It is an incontrovertible fact of science, just like evolution or gravity. In fact, religion is a crucial part of evolution.

But, on the other hand, the greatest threat to mankind is fundamentalism. It is the fuel for terrorism. And the moment, fundamentalism disappears from the face of earth, society would finally get rid of religious terrorism.
The point is, every person on this planet has been endowed with an inexplicable human conscience. Through various neurochemical processes, that conscience can solve quintessential problems of life. That conscience can tell you, whether something is right or wrong. And that very conscience can show you, that all religions serve a single purpose in human life. It serves as an infinite domain of hope. And we live in a society, where hope has become scarce. So, we need more of it. And if a person takes comfort in his or her faith upon divinity in times of utter distress, who the hell am I to say, “that person is delusion”. Only a blind idiot would call the faith upon divinity, a delusion.
My conscience doesn't allow me to be such ruthless. I am a human, who happens to be a scientist. And my scientific exploration of the biological roots of divinity has taught me Universal Tolerance.

Whatever may be the position of science, whatever may be the position of philosophy, as long as there is such a thing as death in the world, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity. And the beauty of Mother Nature is that, every time a person tries to inflict harm to that graceful element of faith, it reinforces itself in the human mind.

My goal is simple. It is to take the human civilization with me on the path of sweet general harmony. The beauty is in assimilating the appealing elements from all religions. The world has ample place for everybody. And once all the humans of this planet learn to embrace the goodness of each other, this tiny blue world of ours, shall become the happiest planet in the universe.

The point is, based upon one's needs, his or her brain develops various fascinating beliefs - religious, non-religious or purely spiritual. When a seed is put in the ground, and soil, air and water are placed around it, does the seed become the soil, or the air or the water? No, it becomes a plant. It develops according to its own law of growth, assimilates the air, the water and the soil, converts them into plant substance and grows into a plant.

Similar is a human mind. And similar is a belief system. The Christian is not to become a Muslim or a Hindu, nor a Muslim or a Jew is to become a Christian or a Hindu. In the name of general harmony, each must assimilate the spirit of the others, yet preserve his or her individuality and grow according to his or her own law of growth.

Any idea of separation is a bondage. True liberation of the mind is in non-differentiation. And that liberation can only be attained though love and compassion. So, in the name of general harmony, let's break the barriers down and embrace each other. Let's build a world beyond chaos and religious conflicts. Let's construct a world better than this one, where ones individuality finds new meaning in accepting the goodness of others. Where love and compassion shall run in the veins of every single human being.

Mankind (not womankind) has slaughtered more humans in the name of God and Religion than for any other reason. Every time, their beliefs are offended, they lash out as pathological psychopaths. And that's exactly what the so-called holy warriors are. But does this so-called holy war really occur due to some kind of divine intervention? Is it the will of what humanity so glorious reverers as God? If so, then what does such ruthless instruction tell us about the nature of that God? What if those instructions are not actually from God?

Here is my question for you, regardless of your religious orientation. All religions, some way or another talk about Lord Almighty being merciful and compassionate. But before you jump into a conclusion that perhaps my argument is leading towards an atheistic climax, I must clarify that I am neither a believer nor an atheist. In all my works till now, I have made evidence based efforts to build a bridge between the ever separated banks of Science and Religion. So, if you must, you can call me an Agnostic.

Now let's get back to the matter in hand. All scriptures, have elements that advocate compassion, generosity and peace. However, they also possess elements of violence and monstrosity. That's an unfortunate and unavoidable fact of most of the religious scriptures, especially Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. Now the question is, if God is merciful then how can it be so ruthless at times?

Despite the complexity of the question, the answer is quite simple. Here we must take not one but two Gods into consideration. One of them is the God of Humanity, which all humans proudly venerate, experience and often perceive as an Omnipresent, either abstract or humanlike Entity. Human mind in general perceives this God as the driving force behind everything in the universe. This God is perceived as the controller of causality in the universe.

The other God is the actual controller of causality, if there is any such Entity. Humanity only thinks that it knows, feels and experiences this Actual Supreme Entity, while in reality, the God of humanity is a fascinating part of the human consciousness. This God is what I have clinically termed as Absolute Unitary Qualia in my book What is Mind? In most cases, without even knowing, humanity actually worships not an Entity, rather a mental state. This is the state what all the religious founders experienced. And those who actually experience this mental state of Absolute Unitary Qualia, become radically transformed as humans. Their brain circuits get rewired as if some Supreme Divinity Entity has touched their soul. And that's exactly what they feel. That feeling has nothing to do with Reality, rather it is all about the exclusively private subjective experience of the individual.

I am not going to talk about the other God, that is the actual driver of causality, for we know nothing of it. The only Science that can answer whether there is an Entity controlling causality is Modern Physics. We Biologists are not the right people to investigate that domain. Our purpose is to investigate Life. And as Neuroscientists, our purpose is to investigate the God of Human Life, i.e. Absolute Unitary Qualia.

The God that is venerated in different cultures in different ways, is actually an inexplicable state of the human mind. In fact, it is the Event horizon of Human Consciousness. It is not entity, but the person experiencing it may experience it as an entity, because AUQ manifests in different individuals in different ways. The storyline of that manifestation is constructed by the mind, based on one's urges, intuitions and conjectures. And the end product of such complicated mental process is a true personal transcendental meeting with God or the Universe, within one's inner cosmos. Such an experience transforms a person radically. It makes him or her, in most cases, the best version of himself or herself. In AUQ a person's true personality gets amplified to an unimaginable extent. So, a compassionate person becomes even more compassionate, while a narcissistic misogynist becomes the specimen of extreme primeval human urges.

However, you must remember that there is no such thing as a God Spot or God Module in the brain. Just like Consciousness is the product of collective activity of various regions of the brain, the God part of the Consciousness, which is the most blissful and inexplicable of all conscious states of the human mind, is also a product of complex electrical activity in various neural regions. It also involves inactivation of a few parts of the brain. In various cases, during Absolute Unitary Qualia or simply during God experience, the frontal lobes, parts of the limbic system and to some extent the temporal lobes become highly active. This complex neural functioning of the brain leads to an amazing sensation of supreme divinity and euphoria. Along comes the loss of sense of the self, which occurs due to the inactivation of the parietal lobes, which are principle brain region for navigation of the self in three dimensional space.

This whole collective mental process leads to the glorious experience of Absolute Divinity. It is the ultimate form of bliss. Once you attain that bliss through prayer or meditation, the ordinary everyday happiness and sorrow seem pointless. And that's the beauty of such God experience. And this magnificent experience of transcendental bliss is the God of the Human Species. All religious founders attained this very God. And due to their unique neural circuitries each of them experienced it in vividly different ways. Their human minds constructed the experience of their desired divinity that heralded the advent of modern religions. Thus at the fountain-head of all religions there were the complicated neural processes of Absolute Divinity. And today, that Absolute Divinity is venerated throughout the world as the God/Yahweh/Allah/Brahman and so on.

Now the biggest question of all is, how can this experience of Absolute Divinity lead to violence? And is it actually true that religion causes violence?

Religion doesn't cause violence, but the negative elements of the religious books do. While experiencing Absolute Unitary Qualia, a person's own urges, beliefs, intuitions and imaginations bubble to the surface of Consciousness and manifest themselves as the storyline of the intense spiritual experience. Thus, all the messages recorded in the scriptures were constructed by the human mind in the transcendental state. The thing which we call "revelations" of the religious books, were merely an amplification of the human mind's inner desires, instincts and fantasies.

Hence, almost all the scriptures in the world contain teachings that are philosophically beneficial to the humanity, alongside some primitive instructions that are downright harmful to the entire species. A healthy human mind is neurologically incapable of carrying out the ruthless instructions of the negative elements of the scriptures. The only way the negative elements of the scriptures can harm the society, is through blind followers of the books. These are whom we, not at all proudly, call fundamentalists. These fundamentalists are the real cause of all the violence in the name of religion. They drive angry young men in the path of vengeance and presents the ideology of Jihad to them in such a way that it appears to them as the last resort for absolution. Their rage against the society, for whatever reason, turns into the tool of religious terrorism in the hands of the Fundamentalists.

Religious faith as a whole induces various health benefits in the general population through complex biological processes, while on the other hand, Fundamentalism not only acts the biggest threat to humanity, but also, it consistently tends to drag the entire planet back to the Stone Age. We the Neuroscientists have already proven through rigorous experiments and studies that Religion is Healthy for the Human society, both physiologically and psychologically. But we must act now to get rid of fundamentalism from the society once and forever. Because, if we don't, the monstrosity of the fundamentalists will soon turn this beautiful planet which we call home, into a barren wasteland.

Perfection is not a feature of our world. On this planet nothing is perfect. Yet we crave for perfection. Especially biological life on this planet is definitely far from perfect. We are not perfect. That's where the process of evolution comes in. Biological life including us the sapiens, keeps evolving from an imperfect species to a less imperfect species. So, we keep going in the path of getting less and less imperfect. The process of evolution is a relentless journey from imperfection towards perfection. This perfection is defined by its survival value. And those who can't keep up with the process, get extinct. That's how natural selection works. Either you are a winner, or you lose your license to survive on this planet. It is the very basis of biology. And biology is the bedrock of life.

And when a biological species evolves, in order to adapt to its environment, it adopts some new biological features and gets rid of the unnecessary ones. And this process of adoption and exclusion of biological features is a crucial element in the path of survival. And it has been going on since the birth of the very first life form on this planet, and shall go on in the future.

Human life is a hodge-podge of various biological features. However, the features that distinguish humanity from the rest of the species on this planet are those of our uniquely advanced neurobiology. Our very pride on being the smartest species on earth is predicated on a highly complex and magnificent neurobiology. Our fascinating neurobiology puts us apart from the entire animal kingdom. Without our advanced neural network of a hundred billion nerve cells, we are nothing compared to the brawn of the wild animals.

And this very neurobiology has endowed us with a beautiful psychological system, called the human consciousness. It has endowed us with uniquely majestic cognitive features. The 3 pound lump of jelly, which we call the human brain, is the birthplace of all our extraordinary achievements. Human Brain is the most complex organized structure in this entire universe. It is made up of a hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. The relentless activity of these neurons gives rise to all the richness of our conscious experience. All our feelings, emotions, thoughts, ambitions, love lives, our sense of self, and even our religious sentiments are simply born from the activity of these little specks of jelly in our head.

All our sentiments, whether they are religious, romantic or any other, are born in the neurons. In fact, religion itself is a natural biological feature of the human brain. And as I said earlier, any biological life-form must evolve in order to survive, while modifying its basic biological features. And one of the most significant features of human life, is its religious sentiments. Hence, when Mother Nature decides that some of those religious sentiments are not working properly, she puts selective pressure on the human brain in order to modify those sentiments, and if needed, terminate some and develop new ones. And in this process of religious evolution, two of the most glaring specimens, are Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama, whom you know as Buddha.

In the process of biological evolution, change in a biological feature takes a long time to become noticeable. However, the first step towards that change, leads to a big leap for the whole species.
For example, around 1.89 million years ago something extraordinary happened, that changed the course of mankind history forever. At that point of time your ancestral lineage reached the crossroads of evolution. Henceforth, evolved one of the most advanced early humans. They were the Homo erectus. You really owe a lot of your brilliance to them, because they did something that was and still is beyond the wildest dreams of the entire animal kingdom on planet earth. They solved one of the most important pieces of your evolutionary puzzle -the mystery of fire.

There was not a single species on your entire planet, that could thwart its instinctual fear of fire, until the arrival of Homo erectus. These early members of your evolutionary tree achieved the unthinkable. They conquered their primeval fear of fire and reached into the fascinating blaze like a true brave-heart. But for this to actually happen, there had to be one or a couple of brave Homo erectus, filled with vigor, who took the first step toward achieving their own fear of fire. And as soon as they conquered their own fear, following them came all the fellow erectus. As a result, for the first time in the history of life, a biological species harnessed fire. Naturally, they became superior to all other contemporary species, including the wildest ones. Suddenly everything changed. It was absolutely mesmerizing. As if your evolutionary timeline witnessed the captivating dawn of human excellence.

Similar extraordinary events of evolution in the human religious sentiments occurred when two brave men, took the first step outside their circle of orthodox system of beliefs. They took the first step towards shaking off the unnecessary and quite harmful elements of religious dogma, that were bestowed upon them by the environment. Their minds wanted to evolve into better versions of themselves, with new and refreshed religious sentiments.

Those two were Christ and Buddha. They were ordinary humans who, upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia (transcendence/nirvana/god – see What is Mind? to learn in detail) wanted to adorn humanity with better and less wild religious sentiments. They wanted to adorn humanity with true humanism. And above all they wanted to adorn humanity with plain ordinary everyday kindness and empathy.

Their attempt to reform the contemporary system of religious sentiments was hailed as blasphemy by the orthodox believers, however, as it always happens in nature, if a change is beneficial to a species, then that change eventually sinks into the psychology of that species. Naturally, two new systems of religious sentiments were born upon the foundation of the teachings of Christ and Buddha. These were Christianity and Buddhism. But, like all of their predecessors these systems are also man-made, hence are prone to orthodoxy and authoritarianism. And when such orthodoxy gets intense, an urge for a new system appears in the mind of thinking humanity.

As long as the teachings of great minds remain as a kind of philosophical literature, which you can read and analyze, and then embrace the parts that appeal to you while discarding the rest, they shall flow pure and strong in the hearts of many, but the moment, representatives of those teachings start making the peculiar claim of their exclusive textual possession of divinity while defying all other philosophies, the world will imminently plunge into chaos.

Thus, whenever fundamentalism, be it religious, political or educational becomes an impediment in the progress of thinking humanity, it becomes a sociological responsibility of the children of Mother Earth to break free from the bonds of textual orthodoxy, and if necessary build a new system aligned with rational thinking and universal acceptance.

Belief is indeed psychologically important for the human mind of general population, but that belief should be nicely compatible with scientific reasoning, otherwise that belief turns into prejudice, which is never beneficial to the human life.

Above all, it is the quality of life that matters. While, Science plays the most influential role in improving the quality of life as a whole, Religion on the other hand, plays the major role in strengthening life from within. In some occasions, both science and religion become expendable. But in no circumstances, the quality of life can be compromised. Religion and Science both must help a person wherever he or she stands, or else, they are of no use.

God – Allah – Jehovah – Brahman – all these mere man-made verbal expressions become bleak and dismal upon the attainment of the actual experience. Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. Awakening into that state makes all the perceptual limitations of the mind disappear, just like a bucket of muddy water turns crystal-clear once poured into the ocean.
To put it simply, the transcendental state sets the human mind free. In this extraordinary state of mind, the usual finite domain of consciousness transforms into a subjective, infinite, universal, all-pervading consciousness. This mental state is what we can quite literally call the Kingdom of God . Clinically I have termed this state of mind in What is Mind? as Absolute Unitary Qualia .
The experience itself is encoded in the neurological circuits of the human brain. However, this specific functional expression of the neurons does not occur in the usual state of mind. It requires specific internal and external stimuli to trigger the manifestation of the God state in the human mind.
Various neural activities collectively construct the vividly divine internal environment of the Kingdom of God. It involves various internal biological factors. However, the most important question of this century that rises from the study of the psychology of religion, is that whether the God state is a delusional state of the mind.
Despite the fact that a few radical atheist psychologists have put forward the suggestion that religious faith or simply any kind of faith upon God may turn out to be mere delusion, we neuroscientists who actually investigate the molecular underpinnings of all things religious and spiritual, have empirically proven otherwise.
The argument against faith is all based upon the rigorous analysis of the scriptures, and not upon the objective observation of the actual individual sensation of faith. Historical experiences of the Kingdom of God gave rise to all the scriptures in the world, but the scriptures themselves don’t account for the actual globally prevalent psychological element of faith or divinity in the human mind.
Faith is a natural evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping-mechanism.
Now let’s first distinguish what is the difference between faith and the mental state of God. Faith is simply a natural sensation of the mind, quite like love, which is seen in most of the human population. On the other hand, the God state is the actual subjective experience of encountering God, quite literally. Hence, this subjective experience occurs only in the fraction of the human population, due to various stimuli.
Moreover, the manifestation of the God Dimension in the human mind requires specific internal and external environment. In short, there are a few kinds of stimuli that evoke such transcendental state where a person simply has an inexplicable encounter with God, unlike the everyday personal sense of faith. This encounter manifests at different intensities based on the kind of the stimulus, and more importantly, majority of the modern day God state experiences tend to be lethal, due to their pathological origin.
This means, pathology can indeed cause experiences of the Kingdom of God, but not all God state experiences are caused by pathology. They can also occur due to disturbance in the geomagnetic field of our planet, consumption of psychedelics, excruciatingly extreme level of stress during a near-death situation, or ultimately through a natural and healthy procedure of meditation.
Now let’s shed some light on the shady domain of the Kingdom of God or to speak clinically, the Absolute Unitary Qualia. So, the very first question that may rise in the mind of a rational human being, is - what is this God state? Is it some kind of extraterrestrial dimension?
To answer these questions, we need to resort to two different perspectives. From a subjective point of view, i.e. from the point of view of a person who’s actually experiencing the God state, it is indeed an extraterrestrial dimension which the ancient cultures termed as the Kingdom of God. Now from an objective point of view, i.e. from the point of view of a scientist who analyzes subject’s experience of the God state, it is an exceptional state of the human mind, attained in specific internal and external conditions.
Basically, it is an earthly experience, which manifests in an unearthly manner. It appears to be devoid of the mortal limitations of the human life. And especially due to its unearthly and quite heavenly characteristics, it is deemed in many early human civilizations as the Abode of the Lord Almighty.
Unlike the usual sensation of divinity in the general population, the God state is an actual experiential encounter with the pre-dominant mental picture of an Almighty Being. I termed it as Absolute Unitary Qualia because of its unifying nature, that puts forward a sensation of oneness between human and the God or the Universe.
Here is a common expression of experiencing the Absolute Unitary Qualia or the God state:
“The experience took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go through my whole soul, so it seemed as if God was praying in, with, and for me.”
Now in order to understand the underlying biology of the Kingdom of God, let’s start with a basic understanding of the anatomy of the soul.
Until the advancement in the field of Neuroscience, there have been a lot of mystical confusions surrounding the ancient notions of mind, body, and soul, in both the philosophical and scientific societies. Unfortunately, the confusion still prevails to a great extent in the general population. And to clear this air of mystery, a lot of scientific literatures have been published. So, I’ll not go into the detail analysis of these ideas.
All these confusions are based on ignorance. However, far from the confusions, let’s have a basic scientific perception on the idea of mind, body and soul. For ages, due to lack of insight into the biological basis of life, the ancient notion of soul being the driving force behind mind and body, has remained dominant in the general human psyche.
There has always been an irresistible desire in humans to see ourselves somehow above nature and our biological body. And this primordially innate desire has given rise to varied doctrines and philosophies of dualism, which inadvertently implied a mystical distinction between our biological body and the supernatural realm. Thus, the mystical idea of a soul has survived through ages.
The primitive human notion about the soul has been that, the soul bestows a person with his or her unique personality. This is more or less the universal perception of the soul. And if that so, then soul and mind are basically one and the same thing, because the modern understanding of the human psychology reveals that the mind is the collective expression of various mental elements such as emotions, ambitions, ideologies, sentiments etc. All these mental elements define a person’s personality traits. Therefore, soul is only the primordial equivalent of the mind.
Having diminished the confusing primeval separation between mind and soul, let’s move on and get acquainted with the fundamental building blocks of the mind/soul.
It all begins in the tiny cells of the brain which we call neurons. Neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the mind/soul. Bring a bunch of live neurons together and from them would rise a rudimentary mental feature. Bring enough of such different features together, by interconnecting their individual networks of neurons and collectively they’ll form the mind/soul.
Now imagine a hundred billion of such neurons creating a magnificent network, which gives rise to your lavishly colored mental life. Neuron is to mind, what DNA is to life. Now, let’s look at the connection between mind and life. While being an essential part of life, mind is what enables life to maneuver in this world. And consciousness is a quintessential part of mind which makes life aware of its environment. Now, given the context of the article, one might wonder, where does God fit into all this?
There is nothing mystical about it actually. It is pretty simple - mind is a part of life – consciousness is a part of mind – God is a part of consciousness. And as mentioned earlier, the God part of the consciousness is attainable only through certain stimuli. It may seem demeaning to the vanity of some individuals, but like all elements of the mind, God and all its correlated sensations of divinity are the majestic creations of the neurobiology.

Further Reading
1. Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality
2. Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
3. What is Mind?
4. In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience

The mystics of modern world who thrive on humanity's primitive knack for mysticism often proclaim with utter glory that spirituality is what distinguishes us humans from the animals. But the biological reality of life is, the element of spirituality does not distinguish us from the animal kingdom. Rather it is the extraordinarily unique blend of emotions, creativity and intellect, that sets us apart from the rest of the animal society. This fusion of vivid and varied elements of mental features makes us humans. It makes us a species unlike any other.

There is nothing extraordinary about the mental trait of spirituality. It evolved as a counter-mechanism for the fear of the unknown while we were living in the wild. If we look closely, we can discover the existence of this apparently supernatural element in various species other than humans, such as dogs. Dogs are spiritual in their own instinctive knack for sensing life in even inanimate objects. And in this aspect, the humans are not much different.

However, due to the extraordinary advancement of our brain circuits, unlike any other species, the humans quite unconsciously learnt to incorporate spirituality in their daily lives beyond the wildest instincts of all the lifeforms in the world.

Now let's go back in time. Think about the distant past, when our primitive ancestors were surrounded by the permeating darkness of absolute ignorance. In every walk of life, they encountered something incomprehensible. But irony of Mother Nature was that they had no modern means to satisfy their curious yet childishly immature mind in the face of those enigmatic natural phenomena. Thunderstorm, Earthquake, Volcanoes - all these events sparked nothing but fear in their instinctively driven mind. They were the slaves of Mother Nature, and as such they were tormented in every walk of life by the surrounding harsh environment.

Unlike now, instinct used to get the best of them, back in those days of incessant hardship for survival. Instincts drove their scared mind to forge explanations of paranormal nature our of their fear, anxiety and ignorance. Their mind was immersed in the sea of ignorance, where there was neither a single shred of data available to them, nor they had the brain capacity to comprehend such data. All they could sense with their instinctive mind was the overwhelming abundance of power-play by some sort of force, stronger than them.

Hence, they felt the growing urge to appease that supposed supernatural force with rituals of worship. And they began worshiping all the natural elements of nature, such as stones, hills, trees, lakes, animals and many more, driven by their craving for a sense of security. As such practice grew more prevalent, the brain circuits for such mental trait, began evolving. And slowly their worship of natural elements acquired stronger roots of spirit origin in their mind. Thus they learnt to impose the primordially concocted idea of spirits on various elements of nature. Thus in the mind of early humans, a whole new world of nature spirits was born. In this world, the lakes were home for lake spirits, the trees were home for tree spirits, the rivers were home for river spirits and so on.

Thus evolved the early neurological ground for spirituality, which would later pave the way for the arrival of the modern structure of religion in the human mind. Since then the human brain has evolved a lot, especially in the intellectual domain. However, despite the intellectual development, the early instinctively spiritual sense of a Supernatural Force driving the universe, still prevails in the psyche of the general population. This primitive idea got even more reinforced when a few individuals in the history of humanity proclaimed their mental union with their preconceived notion of that Almighty Force or Entity. Thus, through misinterpretation of individual experiences of the mental state of transcendence, the primitive sense of spirituality got psychologically molded into the modern humanized conception of God and Gods.

Science and Religion – why are there so many conflicts between these two? Why do these two distinct feats of the human mind has not yet been able to join hands in the name of harmony? The answer is simple. The conflicts between science and religion still remain in this day and age, because though most people understand what science means, they do not have a clue what religion means – and they do not even have a clue that they do not have a clue.

I do not expect anything from those in the side of religion, or to be specific, from those who hail themselves as “fundamentalists”, because they are incapable of bringing the faculty of reasoning into action when it comes to the authenticity of their doctrines. In simple terms, the fundamentalists are mentally ill people. So when you encounter such individual, wear a smile on your face and simply say to them – “get well soon.” This would probably not turn them instantly into some sort of sentient humans, but at least you would know that you did your part in the name of sweet harmony.

Now let’s turn to the other side – the side that I think you are on. Those on the side of science, i.e. on the side of rational thinking, are the ones I have the most expectations from. They can think for themselves, unlike the fundamentalist patients on the other side. You do not even know my friend, even you are on the side of true religion. Rational thinkers simply are not aware of this fact, because of the definition of religion that has been imposed on all of us by our deluded society. Even the atheists would start to see religion as a positive element of the human society once they recognize what true religion really means. So, let me give you the simplest definition of religion which I proposed in my treatise on religious fundamentalism entitled “Illusion of Religion”.

“Religion is the process of internal growth, not a lifeless bag of foolish words.”

So, far from what we all have been taught by our ancestors, that when you follow your cultural scripture, you are being religious, real religion has never really been attempted to understand by most of the human population. You are religious when you care about your fellow humans influenced by your own conscience, not due to obedience to your scripture. That’s why, the atheists and agnostics are the greatest religious people on earth. Remember this my friend, true religion has to do with humans, not with books. And that’s the religion I advocate, and indeed that’s the religion which most of the prophets of human history tried to spread. But due to the human craving for a messiah and secure doctrines, those prophets became divine figures and their teachings combined with later incorporation, ended up being divine irrefutable gospel.

So, you see, religion has nothing to do with scriptures. Religion is what your conscience constructs as your baseline behavior in your society. As I have said in “Illusion of Religion” –

“Whether you call yourself a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu or an Atheist, if you have kindness in your heart and compassion in your act, you are on the right path of religion.”

So my dear humans, the true reformation of religion lies in your hands. You are the most capable people to do so, because the fundamentalists on the other side, are too deluded to think anything productive and healthy, that concerns all humanity. Their illness makes them concerned only of the exclusive survival of their dearest scripture. Hence, the fate of humanity lies in the hands of civilized, conscientious and compassionate humans.


Further Reading

Illusion of Religion: A Treatise on Religious Fundamentalism

[book; Principia Humanitas]

This piece is meant for all conscientious humans, except for those who call themselves fundamentalists. No scientist in the world has the capacity to turn a fundamentalist into a conscientious human, because they possess the worst form of broken minds. And we scientists do have the power to fix a little bit of brokenness of the mind, but not the brokenness of the fundamentalist. We do though have the ability to play God and make that brokenness go worse, and make that fundamentalism ineffective, without killing the host, but that would also mean killing the soul of an individual, which if we commit, would make us the same kind of sectarian barbarians as the fundamentalists and their loyal slaves – the holy warriors.

The point is, even if a handful of scientists come together, we would easily outsmart and eliminate the so-called terrorism from the face of earth. But the scientific community has lost its original sense of responsibility. Innovators with resources and smartness, are more busy with pompous dreams of colonizing mars, while their own kind suffers on earth. If we really wanted, we could end terrorism once and forever, right at this very moment, but in reality, no one really cares – they only pretend to care! Those who have the sense of responsibility, do not have the resources, and the ones who have the resources are chasing their self-centered dreams. Seeing all this, what appears to me is the irony of being the smartest species on earth. We may be the smartest species on earth, which we undoubtedly are, yet at the same time, possessing all that smartness, we are also the most irresponsible species on earth, desperately chasing after instant gratifications. We are always running, from one gratification to another, never to really fathom the true beauty, value and gravitas of human existence.

And as for scientists, who are somewhat interested in religious issues harming the world, they are more obsessed with criticizing religion as a whole, than to go deeper into those issues and construct a solution. They are just plain old intellectuals discussing plans in a room, and going to the grave with those plans with them, with almost no practical impact upon the society. Religions, i.e. organized religions do indeed inflict harm to the world, not because fundamentalists bring out the worst of religion, rather because we the conscientious humans on the other side, don’t do anything of real significance above and beyond the petty old acts of criticisms. Criticisms are pure wastage of time and resources. Actions bring change, that change could be either good or bad. The holy warriors act on their dogmas, hence they are effective in bringing destruction upon the world – that destruction is nevertheless a substantial change, however, negative that may be. If only we the genuine humans had the real guts, and sense of real responsibility to act as the holy warriors on our own beliefs and ideals, then you wouldn’t see any trace of terrorism in the world whatsoever, religious or otherwise. The so-called holy warriors are driven by a cause, no matter how disgustingly barbarian that cause be. If only we the conscientious humans were as driven as them, by our urge for real peace and real harmony, then we could, for real, not in theory, live in a world of pure compassion and hatelessness.

Now here is the real question, that matters. Are you driven? You, the person in front of the screen. Are you driven enough to do something really original, really novel, and not just walk on the paths paved by your ancestors who were as narrow-minded and conditioned as you are. Can you break free from that condition? Or rather you should ask – why haven’t you broken free from those conditions? What prevents you to do so? Why do man-made labels matter and not human life? Why is it that, labels have gained more importance than the core values of a human being?

As a child, I truly believed that there was some blue alien-like god named vishnu looking after humanity, and when the time comes, another angry god, named shiva, would destroy everything, and then the god of creation with four heads, named brahma would create the world all over again. That’s what my environment conditioned me to believe. It wanted me to conform to its delusional thoughts and beliefs. But as I grew up, I discovered something rather remarkable. It was that, all those stories were mere means for an uncivilized and ignorant people to be content with their lack of real understanding of the world. These stories are mere delusions imposed upon the mind to stay cooped up in a ship-shape structure of illusive security. The whole world is filled with such stories. And once you conform to these stories, you start to live second-hands lives like your ancestors did, and my ancestors did. Fortunately, some are crazy and driven enough to tear apart all that conformity, and begin to live as original humans. Are you an original human? I am not judging you, neither should you. Simply ask without any prejudice.

To be an original human, you must die to all labels. This death brings the real vitality in life. Now one may ask, how can one achieve it? And there is the problem of the so-called modern humans. They all want somebody to tell them, how to achieve something. Here is a fact, calculus can be taught, quantum physics can be taught, molecular biology can be taught, but not freedom of mind. And why do you need a path in the first place? If there is a bottle labeled poison, on the shelf, you don’t just bring it down and drink the poison to know whether it will kill you. Likewise, once you really see the poisonous implications of the socio-culturally passed on labels, you simply tear them apart – throw them away as far as possible. Does one need to deceive oneself, to understand self-deception! If not, then why do you deceive yourself, by conforming to the social labels, be it a religious label, a non-religious label, a nationalist label, an intellectual label, or a gender label. You are a human – that’s it. And once you recognize the simple fact that labels only destroy the world and disrupt peace, you simply are no longer bothered with those labels and terms. And that’s the time that you are really born as an original human. An original human would never consciously hurt or kill another person, in the name of any book, institution, messiah or god. And this original living is real religion – it is not instructed by any book, by any institution, by any priest, prophet or messiah.

Why should any book have any authority over human life? Books are supposed to give a helping hand to humanity’s progress, not to instruct humanity how to progress. Plato wrote his books to help humanity understand knowledge and wisdom. Tolstoy wrote his books to help humanity understand morality. Einstein wrote his papers to help humanity understand the universe. Darwin wrote his books to help humanity understand the biological history of lifeforms. I write my books to unify humanity beyond all labels. But the point is, none of us ever said that our works are the ultimate measure for humanity to behave properly. None of us ever said that our books are the authority of human life and that only through us humanity can find salvation. Your life is a vehicle that is driven by you, and books can be the helper in the journey, but never the driver themselves. And the moment you let books to drive your existence, you inadvertently set yourself out on a course for imminent collision with other creatures whose lives are driven by their own books.

I must make it clear, I am not a teacher or a preacher or a messiah. I cannot teach you anything, for I know nothing. I have nothing to preach you either. I have only this one ultimate sense of responsibility to make you think, seeing all the disastrous incidents that are taking place in this world. Even before I was a scientist, I could not sit still and accept things as they were, so I thought being a monk would somehow solve the situation, since most prophets walked that path. Then as a monk, I experienced what the prophets experienced – I met God, I became one with God, I became God. But that’s the time when I really began to question the authenticity of such experience, and the significance of it in elevating conflicts and misery from this earth – an experience which apparently has been hailed throughout the world as the ultimate state of spiritual enlightenment. As I have stated in my book “The Film Testament”
“After I attained the Absolute Divine state of Unification with the Universe, I realized that the purpose of life is not renunciation of anything, but the realization of the purpose itself.”

These are all experiences that can happen to anyone, given either enough perseverance or enough hallucinogenics. But this experience does not in any world make a person an authority of humankind. Attaining god or nirvana or the so-called ultimate truth has nothing to do with everyday, ordinary, worldly problems. These worldly problems are to be solved by every single human being. These problems can only be really solved when you have freedom in your mind – freedom from all labels. And, you do not need to follow me or any other, in order to understand freedom or make it manifest yourself, because freedom does not come through me, or any other thinker, teacher or messiah. A human mind is born free, it is only the society that ties it up with the chains of bigotry, prejudices, biases and self-centrism.

Why do we need to hate anyone on earth, for whatever reason. What makes others lesser human than us! Nothing. To quote from my treatise on parenting
“No other being is lesser human than the one who thinks of others as such.”
So, if one thinks of others as lesser human, because one’s own so-called holy book says so, then that one is the real lesser human. And unfortunately this whole world is filled with these lesser humans. So, one wonders, how could we ever change this disastrous situation?

It begins with you, because from you a new generation of humans is to be born.You the human – the one being courageous enough to ask questions and not give in to conformities. If only you become free, then you, my dear sister or brother, will give a truly liberated family environment to your child, and that child will give the same free environment to his or her child – and it will go on, and eventually make the world filled with enough conscientious free original human souls to outweigh all the negativity of the remaining tiny portion of second-hand humans – the real lesser humans. Raise your kids and grand-kids not as strong men or strong women, not as good Christians, Jews, or Muslims, not as responsible Americans, Europeans or anything else, not as efficient professionals or smart academics, but as strong, good, responsible, efficient and wise human beings.


Further Reading
Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
The Film Testament

Belief in God – that is what we will naively discuss in this piece. And the focus is of course on being naive, because it is the first criterion to understand a phenomenon truly with its real fundamentals. One cannot understand something, if one is already filled with predominant conditioned beliefs, opinions and ideas. So, let’s look at the belief in an Almighty Concerned Entity or Force, with literally, not theoretically, naive eyes. If you have read my works, you’d know that one statement is pretty prevalent in most of them. It is “belief is a self-preservation mechanism of the mind.” Here, the belief I mentioned is not necessarily of religious type. The belief in this statement refers to all sorts of belief, not just religious. However, in this piece, we are interested specifically, in the belief in a supernatural entity.

But why? Why am I talking about it exactly now? Because, I was scrolling through my youtube feed, and came across a video of some actor, shouting out “put God first”. The very first casual response that mind spat out was – even the stupidest and barbarian opinions of celebrities can appear to the masses as greatly inspirational and glorious statements – what a shame! As I said, this was the first response that my mind produced upon watching the thumbnail. So, now, let’s get over this casual response and dissect the situation – to be specific, the statement – “put God first”. It basically says, never lose faith in God, and you’ll achieve everything. I won’t say whether it is civilized or not. But I would say this. Belief in a supernatural entity having control of and concern for, your life, is basically, not a sign of glory, rather a sign of weakness.

Weakness is a fact – not bad or good. Like it or not, we all feel weak at times – I accept, that I do. And specifically in these times of excruciating agony, the mind kicks into a defense mode – where it naturally tends to put its faith and control upon a higher illusory entity. It’s not good – it’s not bad – it is what it is. And we cannot change this situation, just yet, because though we have developed extraordinary brain capacities, inside, we still remain cave-people, with a highly sensitive amygdala, that reacts quite effectively to every single fear and stress stimulus. And to quote from my book The Krishna Cancer – “Mother Nature created God as a neurological anti-depressant sentiment.”

Belief in an imaginary entity or force, is a sign of weakness. And, weakness is a part of biological existence. So, glorifying that weakness, does not make a person any more religious, spiritual or wise, than beating one’s wife does for not sleeping with him. Yes, we have developed through the process of natural selection, the capacity for limitless good and glory, but that does not mean, our innate brutal nature has vanished from our psyche for good. We have the capacity for courage and conscience, but you must remember, we also bear the seeds of weakness and brutality within us. These seeds served us well for millions of years. They have been the most crucial elements in our survival in the wild. Let me give you an example.

Imagine a man is sitting with his wife on the couch, while watching TV. Suddenly, a woman on TV starts stripping. What kind of changes do you think, would take place in the man’s pants! Now here is the real question, the man gets erect by watching the stripping lady on TV, say it’s my good friend and popular pornstar Olivia Austin – does this mean, he actually wants to do her? Does this mean, he does not love his wife? These questions are all non-sense. Of course he loves his wife. And consciously, he does not desire to mate with Olivia, but his subconscious mind does – and that’s not a theory, but a fact. Because that’s how the man’s brain has been surviving in the wild. His penis had to be prepare within seconds, the moment he had an opportunity to spread his genes – there was no consent involved. Because the competition was high. And that libidinal programming still remains active within the man’s neurobiology. That’s why erection upon the sight of a hot lady, is quite normal and in fact, healthy, but that does not necessarily mean, it is a sign of intentional desire for intercourse with that lady. A man may be married happily, and still his penis would get erect, the moment his mind visualizes a glimmer of opportunity for spreading his genes. Similar is the process of belief in an imaginary entity, named God.

The mind has various mechanisms to maintain its internal order and well being. And belief in something higher than the petty little human existence, is one of those self-preservation mechanisms. A person may be the most rational being on earth when everything is almost fine in his or her life. But the moment, clouds of excruciating agonies begin to cover the sky of his or her psyche, all rationality will go out of the window, and what will remain, is pure, savage, survival instinct. During these moments of utter disaster, a healthy human mind is more likely to give in to supernaturalism, than to bring out a notebook and do logical analysis. Eventually when those clouds start to disperse, the mind would slowly gain its natural rational capacities. Then he or she would again start talking most boastfully about reasoning and free thinking. This is not hypocrisy – this is human life – or to be more accurate, this is biological life.

Another such mechanism comes to my mind in this context. This mechanism kicks in when somebody faces a life-threatening trauma, and gives rise to the mesmerizing experience of afterlife, in which apparently the trauma-struck individual has an encounter with supernatural entities, prophets, or diseased relatives. And this experience manifests as more real than actual reality. The purpose of it is to put your mind in a preconceived domain of comfort, while your body is under tremendous stress. And before when medical science was not developed, people died with this last conscious experience of entering into a higher dimension. We did not have the means to save a dying person. Now we do. So, even though they go close to the doorstep of death and start experiencing the conscious hallucinatory domain of afterlife, we are capable of bringing the person back to life. And when they finally wake up, they can excite all others around them with their supposed experience of the afterlife, unlike our ancestors who did not have the means to come back from the doorstep of death.

The mind is who you are. You are your mind. And as such, you are not even aware of most of its features – because you are not supposed to, biologically speaking. Underneath the surface of conscious awareness, lies a whole territory of subconscious traits and processes. Some of these processes become active on a daily basis, others, when truly necessary. But they are there, nevertheless. They are there for a reason – the reason of survival – the reason of maintaining well being when every other modern means fails. They don’t follow modern norms of rationality. They only follow Mother Nature’s law of survival. And they are definitely not glorious in nature, rather, they are simply the mind’s way of preserving itself. It is not something to be proud of, or critical of. It just is, what it is – an unavoidable part of human mental existence.



Recommended Reading

Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality