Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "neurotheology"
Does God Exist?
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.
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.
Biology of Religion
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.
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.
What is God?
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.
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.
Reformation of Religion and Natural Selection
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.
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.
Neural Kingdom of God
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
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
Religions, Prophets and Politics
"The Church has carried out some of the most inhuman and above all un-Christian acts of human history, yet, it is still gloriously hailed by the majority of human population as to be synonymous with Jesus Christ." - Neurons of Jesus
You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.
The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.
Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.
When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.
In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.
However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.
"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus
This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.
A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.
To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."
The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.
In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.
You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.
The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.
Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.
When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.
In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.
However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.
"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus
This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.
A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.
To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."
The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.
In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.
Man's Invention of God
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.
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.
Islam - Religion of Peace or Violence
Islam - is it a religion of peace or of violence? This is a question that torments the entire human society. But just because it is correlated with over-exaggerated discussions and debates, does not mean that the question itself is a genuine one. Let me put it this way - Islam is a religion of course, but neither of peace nor of violence. It is a religion like any other religion, that provides a psychological bedrock of baseline cultural identity and individuality to its people. But it is the actions of these people that should be accounted for to define whether the religion "Islam" is a religion of peace or of violence, instead of judging it based on the scripture Quran. Books are no measure for judgement in the society of thinking humanity. It is the actions of the people that counts, nothing else.
Here you must remember, the so-called Jihadis who are in reality, mentally unstable individuals run by Quranic fundamentalists, do not represent the whole Muslim population of the world. Muslims are just as peace-loving as the Christians, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists. Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
Peace and Violence are both biological traits of humans as well as the entire animal kingdom. And since humans are the only species capable of creating literatures, it should not be surprising that these literatures would have the same blend of peace and violence, or simply, good and evil, that the human character possesses. And these literatures include all the scriptures in the world. As such, they are not immune to the innate evil of the human psyche. In fact, since these scriptures are the product of a time when ignorance and barbarianism ran rampant in the human society, it is more reason, for evil traits to appear on their pages alongside the goodness that they teach.
Like all human literatures the Islamic literature, the Quran and the Hadith, were also human creation. No Allah or God had anything to with them. They arose from the minds of the humans. The Quranic messages were born from the mind of supposedly the man named Mohammed in a state of transcendence. This state of mind is an extraordinary one, with such unique elements that often leave the smartest individuals baffled. And Mohammed was no smart man, like say, Albert Einstein or James Watson. He was an ordinary man of his time, who attained the state of transcendence during his daily prayers in a mountain cave. And in that state of transcendence his mind gave rise to all the revelations, both good and bad, that later collectively became known as the Holy Quran. Hence, it is the reader who must distinguish the good from the bad, if he or she is to remain a genuine part of the civilized society.
Let me bring up an excerpt from my book The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance" to shed further light on this matter.
"Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of some of the Quranic doctrines that literally command to kill the infidels if they do not become Muslims! Think of the textual creeds that teach, a man who does not believe all the teachings of Quran should be killed and it is a mercy to kill him! The one ultimate rule of the Quranic fundamentalists is “there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith. At moment’s notice, every man or woman, who does not exactly believe in that, must be killed. Everything that does not belong to this set of ideals must be killed."
And because of such barbarian actions of the Quranic fundamentalists, many atheists, including my dear friends and colleagues Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris quite naively want to turn every single religious person on earth into an atheist, which by the way, is a great and progressive notion, but I am afraid, it biologically, or to be more specific neurologically, is an impractical idea. Religion itself is a neurological phenomenon which evolved in the human mind to act as an aid in daily life. Which means, Mother Nature selected it as a neuropsychological feature for the humans in the path of survival. Hence, no individual has the power to take such natural trait away from the human mind, unless Natural Selection gives consent. Therefore, it is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.
All we need to do, is to turn human actions into a measure of judgement for religions, instead of some old books. Once we successfully do this, eventually we will be able to build a world where the human self shall be the Alpha and the Omega of the society, not a God self of some old books. In fact, the God self depicted in those books, was nothing but the transcendental manifestation of the human self. Which means, the God of humanity is, in actuality, human, or to be more accurate, man himself. Men in different times went into transcendence and quite unintentionally, due to neurological reasons (refer to Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality), mistook the messages rising from their own mind as revelations coming from an external divine realm. Thus, all revelations of all scriptures are the creations of the human mind, not of God.
Now tell me, do you still hail those texts as irrefutable? Do you still think that you are ought to follow every single word of those scriptures with a blind eye? Don't you think that it is the existential responsibility of a civilized human being to measure those texts, as they have such a blinding impact upon the society, with your own rational mind?
Progress of the human society is predicated upon the proper functioning of a key element of the human mind, that is reasoning. Without this mental element we would no longer be a civilized species. And when reasoning runs pure in the heart of the humans, no book has the power to compel them to fight among each other in the name of religion or paradise. Remember, reasoning is the cure for superstitions and bigotry. Once reasoning reigns, love and acceptance become the religion, and hatred and dogmatism become a matter of ancient history.
Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
Abhijit Naskar, 2017, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
Here you must remember, the so-called Jihadis who are in reality, mentally unstable individuals run by Quranic fundamentalists, do not represent the whole Muslim population of the world. Muslims are just as peace-loving as the Christians, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists. Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
Peace and Violence are both biological traits of humans as well as the entire animal kingdom. And since humans are the only species capable of creating literatures, it should not be surprising that these literatures would have the same blend of peace and violence, or simply, good and evil, that the human character possesses. And these literatures include all the scriptures in the world. As such, they are not immune to the innate evil of the human psyche. In fact, since these scriptures are the product of a time when ignorance and barbarianism ran rampant in the human society, it is more reason, for evil traits to appear on their pages alongside the goodness that they teach.
Like all human literatures the Islamic literature, the Quran and the Hadith, were also human creation. No Allah or God had anything to with them. They arose from the minds of the humans. The Quranic messages were born from the mind of supposedly the man named Mohammed in a state of transcendence. This state of mind is an extraordinary one, with such unique elements that often leave the smartest individuals baffled. And Mohammed was no smart man, like say, Albert Einstein or James Watson. He was an ordinary man of his time, who attained the state of transcendence during his daily prayers in a mountain cave. And in that state of transcendence his mind gave rise to all the revelations, both good and bad, that later collectively became known as the Holy Quran. Hence, it is the reader who must distinguish the good from the bad, if he or she is to remain a genuine part of the civilized society.
Let me bring up an excerpt from my book The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance" to shed further light on this matter.
"Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of some of the Quranic doctrines that literally command to kill the infidels if they do not become Muslims! Think of the textual creeds that teach, a man who does not believe all the teachings of Quran should be killed and it is a mercy to kill him! The one ultimate rule of the Quranic fundamentalists is “there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith. At moment’s notice, every man or woman, who does not exactly believe in that, must be killed. Everything that does not belong to this set of ideals must be killed."
And because of such barbarian actions of the Quranic fundamentalists, many atheists, including my dear friends and colleagues Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris quite naively want to turn every single religious person on earth into an atheist, which by the way, is a great and progressive notion, but I am afraid, it biologically, or to be more specific neurologically, is an impractical idea. Religion itself is a neurological phenomenon which evolved in the human mind to act as an aid in daily life. Which means, Mother Nature selected it as a neuropsychological feature for the humans in the path of survival. Hence, no individual has the power to take such natural trait away from the human mind, unless Natural Selection gives consent. Therefore, it is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.
All we need to do, is to turn human actions into a measure of judgement for religions, instead of some old books. Once we successfully do this, eventually we will be able to build a world where the human self shall be the Alpha and the Omega of the society, not a God self of some old books. In fact, the God self depicted in those books, was nothing but the transcendental manifestation of the human self. Which means, the God of humanity is, in actuality, human, or to be more accurate, man himself. Men in different times went into transcendence and quite unintentionally, due to neurological reasons (refer to Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality), mistook the messages rising from their own mind as revelations coming from an external divine realm. Thus, all revelations of all scriptures are the creations of the human mind, not of God.
Now tell me, do you still hail those texts as irrefutable? Do you still think that you are ought to follow every single word of those scriptures with a blind eye? Don't you think that it is the existential responsibility of a civilized human being to measure those texts, as they have such a blinding impact upon the society, with your own rational mind?
Progress of the human society is predicated upon the proper functioning of a key element of the human mind, that is reasoning. Without this mental element we would no longer be a civilized species. And when reasoning runs pure in the heart of the humans, no book has the power to compel them to fight among each other in the name of religion or paradise. Remember, reasoning is the cure for superstitions and bigotry. Once reasoning reigns, love and acceptance become the religion, and hatred and dogmatism become a matter of ancient history.
Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
Abhijit Naskar, 2017, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
I am Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu & Atheist
People often ask me, what my religion is. My answer to them is, I am a Christian to the Christian, a Jew to the Jew, a Muslim to the Muslim, a Hindu to the Hindu and an Atheist to the Atheist. There is nothing wrong or unscientific or primitive about being a religious person. In fact, we neuroscientists have shown with countless experiments that in daily life, religious rituals such as engaging prayers, aid in sustaining mental as well as physical health. But the problem with religion, in the way it is perceived in today's world, is that, it is more of a matter of theoretical indoctrination than actual realization of divinity within the self. And that's where religion becomes dangerous.
A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society. That is why, I am a relative of both the religious and the atheist portions of the society, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with modern civilization. And indeed, it has nothing to do with religion. And if it does fester in any corner of the world, it is the responsibility of the conscientious people of that society to rise against such barbarianism and uproot it before it grabs onto the psyche of a broader audience.
Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil. In a society, where people most progressively practice rational thinking, no fundamentalist pest can infect their psyche. But if the people are already boiling with rage, then such minds are more vulnerable to fundamentalist contagion. Thus emerge Jihadis or Holy Warriors. Here let me quote from my book "The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance", to show you, what goes on inside the brain of a holy warrior.
“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”
To get rid of religious terrorism, it is not enough to kill a bunch of Jihadis, even though it may be morally justified to do so, for saving humanity from their wrath. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.
The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation. Some people like baseball, some soccer and some others like no sports at all. Their psychological orientation with sports doesn't make them any less or more human. The same is with religious orientation. The true Kingdom of God is within you, and it is defined by your behavior with other people, regardless of their religious affiliation. You are the God of your life, and your divinity lies in your actions. And once you realize this, it will dawn on you that, all religions are mere external echoes of humankind's internal divinity. Remember, divinity is goodness, and goodness is godliness. There is nothing higher than this. There is no greater religion than this.
Further Reading
In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society. That is why, I am a relative of both the religious and the atheist portions of the society, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with modern civilization. And indeed, it has nothing to do with religion. And if it does fester in any corner of the world, it is the responsibility of the conscientious people of that society to rise against such barbarianism and uproot it before it grabs onto the psyche of a broader audience.
Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil. In a society, where people most progressively practice rational thinking, no fundamentalist pest can infect their psyche. But if the people are already boiling with rage, then such minds are more vulnerable to fundamentalist contagion. Thus emerge Jihadis or Holy Warriors. Here let me quote from my book "The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance", to show you, what goes on inside the brain of a holy warrior.
“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”
To get rid of religious terrorism, it is not enough to kill a bunch of Jihadis, even though it may be morally justified to do so, for saving humanity from their wrath. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.
The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation. Some people like baseball, some soccer and some others like no sports at all. Their psychological orientation with sports doesn't make them any less or more human. The same is with religious orientation. The true Kingdom of God is within you, and it is defined by your behavior with other people, regardless of their religious affiliation. You are the God of your life, and your divinity lies in your actions. And once you realize this, it will dawn on you that, all religions are mere external echoes of humankind's internal divinity. Remember, divinity is goodness, and goodness is godliness. There is nothing higher than this. There is no greater religion than this.
Further Reading
In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
I am Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu & Atheist
People often ask me, what my religion is. My answer to them is, I am a Christian to the Christian, a Jew to the Jew, a Muslim to the Muslim, a Hindu to the Hindu and an Atheist to the Atheist. There is nothing wrong or unscientific or primitive about being a religious person. In fact, we neuroscientists have shown with countless experiments that in daily life, religious rituals such as engaging prayers, aid in sustaining mental as well as physical health. But the problem with religion, in the way it is perceived in today's world, is that, it is more of a matter of theoretical indoctrination than actual realization of divinity within the self. And that's where religion becomes dangerous.
A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society. That is why, I am a relative of both the religious and the atheist portions of the society, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with modern civilization. And indeed, it has nothing to do with religion. And if it does fester in any corner of the world, it is the responsibility of the conscientious people of that society to rise against such barbarianism and uproot it before it grabs onto the psyche of a broader audience.
Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil. In a society, where people most progressively practice rational thinking, no fundamentalist pest can infect their psyche. But if the people are already boiling with rage, then such minds are more vulnerable to fundamentalist contagion. Thus emerge Jihadis or Holy Warriors. Here let me quote from my book "The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance", to show you, what goes on inside the brain of a holy warrior.
“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”
To get rid of religious terrorism, it is not enough to kill a bunch of Jihadis, even though it may be morally justified to do so, for saving humanity from their wrath. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.
The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation. Some people like baseball, some soccer and some others like no sports at all. Their psychological orientation with sports doesn't make them any less or more human. The same is with religious orientation. The true Kingdom of God is within you, and it is defined by your behavior with other people, regardless of their religious affiliation. You are the God of your life, and your divinity lies in your actions. And once you realize this, it will dawn on you that, all religions are mere external echoes of humankind's internal divinity. Remember, divinity is goodness, and goodness is godliness. There is nothing higher than this. There is no greater religion than this.
Further Reading
In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society. That is why, I am a relative of both the religious and the atheist portions of the society, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with modern civilization. And indeed, it has nothing to do with religion. And if it does fester in any corner of the world, it is the responsibility of the conscientious people of that society to rise against such barbarianism and uproot it before it grabs onto the psyche of a broader audience.
Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil. In a society, where people most progressively practice rational thinking, no fundamentalist pest can infect their psyche. But if the people are already boiling with rage, then such minds are more vulnerable to fundamentalist contagion. Thus emerge Jihadis or Holy Warriors. Here let me quote from my book "The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance", to show you, what goes on inside the brain of a holy warrior.
“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”
To get rid of religious terrorism, it is not enough to kill a bunch of Jihadis, even though it may be morally justified to do so, for saving humanity from their wrath. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.
The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation. Some people like baseball, some soccer and some others like no sports at all. Their psychological orientation with sports doesn't make them any less or more human. The same is with religious orientation. The true Kingdom of God is within you, and it is defined by your behavior with other people, regardless of their religious affiliation. You are the God of your life, and your divinity lies in your actions. And once you realize this, it will dawn on you that, all religions are mere external echoes of humankind's internal divinity. Remember, divinity is goodness, and goodness is godliness. There is nothing higher than this. There is no greater religion than this.
Further Reading
In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
