My dad died in my arms when I was 15
years old; he died suddenly from a heart attack, gasping for air, sprawled on
the bathroom floor. We were alone and I tried to revive him without knowing
how.
I began a long journey of blame and
self-analysis, searching for answers to all the ancient questions like, “who am
I?” “Why am I here?” “Where do we go when we die?” I dabbled in everything and rejected everything.
I considered becoming a Trappist nun after reading Seven Storey Mountain
by Thomas Merton when I was seventeen. I didn’t. But I did join the Roman
Catholic Church and for a time became devout. I observed no meat Fridays, Holy
Days of Obligation; I had my babies baptized before they were six months
old.
But I continued to explore. I ran
the gamut, studying every off-beat version of philosophy, science and religion.
I thought of myself alternately as a mystic, a Pantheist, a half-hearted
Buddhist, and ultimately, an agnostic.
I studied the big bang
theory and in my mind became a bit of stardust, believing for a time that is
where we all came from as a result of this cataclysmic event – an explosion 13.7
billion years ago that created massive energy allowing us to drift around until
we began to form into atoms and molecules.
And all that blustery energy stirred the primordial stew until there was
our earth and the seas and sea creatures who gradually migrated to land and trees and...
When
I was a child, my WASP-ish parents dutifully sent me to Sunday school and then
my grandmother had me dunked at her Southern Baptist Tabernacle by Dr. Huston
when I was somewhere around ten. When I embraced Catholicism, I grappled with a
God who was cool and distant, who would have condemned me to an eternity of
hell, fire and brimstone had I sinned mortally and not had the good sense to go
to confession before getting hit by a bus. (That god led me into a miserable
marriage – yes, miserable, but it produced four wonderful children whom I love
with all my heart.)
The idea that I was a jot
of mystical stardust from heaven was warmly comforting for a while and I basked
in the knowledge that I was a creation of light and energy, exuding that life
force into the world.
The “God is Dead” period in
my life was difficult and demeaning. I was lonely without a God – believing
that if in fact He wasn’t really dead, He certainly no longer gave a damn. He
became to me the so-called “clock maker God” who created the multi-verse and
then turned his back on all that he created and sold us to a pawn shop.
But I hung on to a belief
in miracles. Because in hard times they came to me at the precise moment I
needed them – to help me find a job, a buyer for my piano in order to pay the
rent, to keep the house my kids and I were living in; to avoid an on-coming out
of control semi as it roared down the mountain in my lane. My life was full of
them. Still I searched. I wondered. I doubted.
Then I learned about the
Quantum Theory.
Oh, but Quantum Theory
(Mechanics, Physics, etc.) excludes the big bang, doesn’t it? So I asked myself: how did
we come to be if there was no beginning? We created ourselves is Quantum’s
answer. In the quantum system, reality is in the eye of the perceiver and
therefore nothing is really real unless
someone observes it.
Not too long ago,
scientists began looking for the God particle or gene or VMAT2 which they said
would explain everything to everyone and bring back the God of my childhood,
He, who crammed all his creating into seven days and nights, the God of Genesis.
After the end of my marriage, Religion began to lose all meaning to me
and I stopped going to church. I soured on it all -- that is, all traditional
religions including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam -- believing they do
more harm than good. The Bible, a revered piece of God’s Word became no more to
me than a fanciful piece of literature, an ancient text filled with stories of
ancient people, compiled and edited by those attending the Council at Nicea in 325,
to include only those events and characters that supported the doctrine of
Christianity (sold, in my opinion, hundreds of years earlier by Paul, a
talented mythmaker who never even knew Jesus).
I don’t mean to offend the reader, here. But really, how much of the
Bible is myth, especially the New Testament? I know that Jesus walked the earth because of Josephus,
who was his contemporary and a major historian of the time. I know that Jesus lived, but was he God?
History of the Crusades, the boiling in oil of non-believers, antics of
Catholic priests, terrorism by the Jihadists, distortion of the Koran, all
added to my disenchantment with religion. Think about how our Evangelical
Pastors manipulate their congregations and make money off of their flocks (yes
they do – especially through “televangelism” with Television pastors who fly
around in their “Jesus Jets” and live in tax free mansions they call parsonages paid for by their
supporters).
Religion became a joke to
me. Belief, on
the other hand, was still an important part of my life.
From the time I was a child
chasing a lost spider or ant around the bathtub to keep from washing him down
the drain, I’ve always loved and protected animals and nature. I remember
sitting for hours watching my goldfish twist from side to side, then float upside
down in his fish bowl; I prayed that he would live. He didn’t. I had a turtle named Ike who was eaten by my
dog, Tony. My dad told me he had wandered out of the house to find his mother
in the pond down the street. I was heartbroken, but still I prayed that he
would somehow amble his way back to me. But, I prayed -- to someone or something.
My love of nature led me to Biocentrism, the belief that we and our
animals, all sentient beings have worth and that we humans do not necessarily
have dominion over the animal world. It fit perfectly with what was then becoming
my belief system.
The term biocentrism
encompasses all environmental ethics that “extend the status of moral object from human beings to all
living things in nature.” [5] Biocentric ethics calls for a rethinking of the relationship
between humans and nature. It states that nature does not exist simply to
be used or consumed by humans, but that humans are simply one species amongst many,[6] and that because we are part of an ecosystem, any actions which
negatively affect the living systems of which we are a part adversely affect us
as well,[6][7] whether or
not we maintain a biocentric worldview.” [6] Biocentrists believe that
all species have inherent value, and that humans are not
"superior" to other species in a moral or ethical sense.
(From good ol’ Wikipedia)
Of Course! The
statement above implicitly includes our environment.
But, back to my
dilemma. How then did our world come to be? And, who’s in charge? Are the earth
and its creatures created by God or did we just randomly appear and assume our
roles as a result of an incredibly long evolution from stardust to sea creature
to land beings? How does one make sense of it all?
And, really, do I want
to put God back in my belief system?
Better Yet, can I have my God without Religion?
Western science has always
maintained dualism, back in the days of the Greeks followed by the Romans. Our western gods were separate and apart and
living a life of luxury and war in their pantheons, but still experiencing
similar emotions as we, such as love, hate, jealousy and wars. Still, we looked
up to them. They were above
us. Western
physicists, including Newton, managed to keep the maker in their theories of Physics. Newton defined creation as a grand happening, but it was always
understood that there was a higher intelligence behind it.
In most, certainly many, eastern
religions, we are one -- the divine is within us – we are God. And since I
started practicing Yoga and studying the ancients, I realize that may be where
I’ve landed and will end my life-long search for answers. Maybe we are God or at least, we are partly God.
We
are the Source. So everything we say, do or think affects not just our family
and friends, but our community and the world beyond. Perhaps the new Biocentrists (who do embrace some of Quantum Theory) are correct – that our consciousness is
the real creator.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I
regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind
consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as
existing, postulates consciousness.” – Max Planck, the originator of quantum
theory (source)
In the last ten years,
two young scientists (Dr. Robert Lanza and Bob Berman) seem to express what
I’ve been grappling with all these years – a theory that allows me to believe
in something that is more than just randomness, although still with an
abundance of questions – which will probably never be answered.
Did the Big Bang happen according to Biocentrism? Yes. How? This is what they say:
The laws of physics
seem to be exactly balanced for life to exist. For example, if the Big Bang had
been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the cosmos would have rushed out too
fast for the galaxies and stars to have developed. There are over 200 physical parameters like this that
could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here.
These fundamental constants of the universe aren’t predicted by any theory —
all seem to be carefully chosen to allow for the existence of life and
consciousness. (Yes, consciousness raises its annoying paradoxical head yet a
third time.) Although biocentrism supplies answers, the current model has
absolutely no reasonable explanation for this. Robert Lanza and Bob Berman from Biocentrism
The universe is over 95% energy – dark energy and
dark matter -- and we are all a part of it.
We are all connected – to one another, to animal life, to plant life, to
the entire planet. We do not die,
because our consciousness, (no, not the brain) lives on.
So then, what is
consciousness? We don’t know. What is
dark matter? Still unanswered. What is
infinity? We don’t know that
either. What happens to us when we
die? No one knows.
Thank you Dr. Lanza
for satisfying my need to feel relevant.
But no thanks that your perfectly perfect “theory of everything” does not answer much of anything. There are still questions whopping around my
head. More than ever.
Was God involved?
Yes. According to Lanza, etal. There was some
knowing Power that made the conditions simply perfect for our world to become. Remember, “There are over 200 physical parameters like this that could
have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here.” If so, isn’t that a
good thing?
Knowing there is a
superior power out there should compel us to be good. And suggests we might
live on after death. If there were no
motivation that leads us to “do unto others,” why should we? If not heaven, hell, the fear of retribution,
then why should we try so hard to do the right
thing? Is this religion talking? Or does it matter? Will my moral behavior
propel me into a higher and richer existence, or a lower, more demeaning life
than the one I am now living?
And what
brought me to this life? Was it my
immoral and unforgiving behavior in a prior incarnation? Or a bargain I made at
some celestial bus stop before being born?
Since I’ve had a pretty challenging yet fulfilling life this time
around, perhaps it was because I lived a decent, moral life before. Do we live
in a system of rewards, then?
And. I know I am
happier when I live morally -- when I am generous and giving and grateful for
what I have. I am unhappy when I allow
myself to sink into resentment, anger, revenge or retribution.
Perhaps that
means we are naturally imbued with a sense of morality, goodness and love. And
when we reject those things, we are out of balance. And so is our world. Perhaps this is our moral imperative. To be
good. Not because of fear or a possibility of reward, but because it behooves
us to be good – to our family, our community, our world. We can make it better just by being good. How powerful that is!
Oh, my God.
Just think about it! I have.
But I don’t have the
answers.
Do you?