SPEAKING OF GOD

It has become increasingly difficult to speak about "God" in our contemporary culture because there are too many concepts and biases associated with that word. But suppose we use a very open definition of the concept such as that used by AA, "a Higher Power" which at the least seems to mean something beyond, more powerful than one's ego-consciousness or will. Using that concept then, paraphrasing the words of Psalm 8 "What is man that thou art mindful of him", instead to ask "What is God that one is mindful of him?" That is, if there be a higher power what is it that one should be mindful of it. Even prior to that one might well ask "what evidence is there that there is any higher power" as well as what that might mean.

We live in a culture highly configured by scientific thought. That means that when we speak of evidence we usually mean intersubjectively and verifiably observable through one or more of the human senses and/or extensions of them. Contemporary physics has, of course, stretched this as far as possible, until many "firm facts" of physics really are end points of a long series of equations (Cf. Quarks, etc.). But more importantly is the fact that subjective, or inner observations of states of consciousness cannot be included validly by any stretching of the definition of empirical. Thus states such as love and hate, depression or elation, although well known to humans and considered valid in the realms of psychiatry and counseling, not to mention ordinary human relations, have no solid empirical evidence, hence all such experiences are ignored by the field of physics. Further, it is assumed that they can have no effect in the everyday, so-called physical world.

Now we may well ask why this situation is the case. It has arisen because of the virtually universal dominance of the views of reality advanced by Descartes and Hobbs some three hundred years ago. Speaking simplistically, Descartes said there are two aspects to reality, one is mental and the other is physical (he also termed the latter extended matter, meaning that it took up space and was measurable). Hobbes said there was only the physical realm, i.e. bits of matter floating about in otherwise empty space, and that the mental realm had to be explained on the basis of the physical. Thus Descartes advanced a theory of dualism, two aspects to reality, and the issue is how they are related. Hobbes idea was a monism, but one allowing only the physical to have real existence. Slowly but surely Hobbes idea came to dominate the realm of scientific studies and from that penetrated cultural modes of thought, so that by the nineteenth century, one philosopher, when asked about God, said "I have no need of that hypothesis". So, scientifically speaking, is there any need for the concept God", need we be mindful of him? Apparently not if the Hobbsian definition of reality as purely physical is accepted.

However, there is a kind of human experience that is very powerful and very wonderful; it has been seriously investigated for centuries by some of the greatest minds of the world, but cannot be studied by science according to its accepted rules. In simple terms it is often called the experience of ecstasy, or better the unitive experience. One recent article has termed this the experience of Absolute Unitary Being. It notes that AUB is the supreme of a band of aesthetic experiences, "a rare state in which there is a complete loss of the sense of self, loss of the sense of space and time, and everything becomes an infinite, undifferentiated oneness." It also notes that usually this only occurs after many years of meditation. Further, the authors state, "In comparing AUB to baseline reality [i.e. ordinary everyday life experience] there is no question that AUB wins out as being experienced as 'more real'. People who have experienced AUB, and this includes some very learned and previously materialistically oriented scientists, regard AUB as being more fundamentally real than baseline reality. Even the memory of it is for them, more fundamentally real."

I have indicated above that this kind of experience is the extreme of a band of experiences that are primarily aesthetic and emotional in tone, but may include some or all of our physical perceptions as well. But these are dominantly "inner" experiences and thus cannot be studied empirically and intersubjectively. However there is "High cross-subjective validation for core perceptions. . ."Furthermore, they cannot be produced intentionally with any degree of assurance even as a result of meditation. In fact, one might say the more the mediator seeks such experience, the less likely it is to occur. On this band of experiences one should mention the experience of a profoundly colorful sunset (or sunrise), a sense of peace and rightness that may occur in a natural setting, a sense of wonder, or awe, that may spring up as the result of something as simple as watching your cat stretch, or enjoying its purr. These often produce a sense of well-being, of assurance that life is characterized by goodness more than ill, of sheer elation, of bliss.

Because religion is often believed to have previous revelation as its foundation, is it this kind of experience which is involved in revelation? Image if you can, a stone-age person such as Moses must have been. He had no knowledge of the physical nature of the cosmos, the sun, moon, planets and stars. Looking out on a crystal clear starry night, alone in the desert, ruminating about the meaning of life, is it not likely that some AUB experience may have occurred.? How could it be processed with the tools available? Certainly Moses knew that the Egyptians spoke of deities, powers higher that the human who ruled over life and death. But his AUB gave him a different sense both of assurance and of expectation. If we are all one what is our responsibility to one another? From awe comes ethics for Moses. If you and your brothers/sisters are truly one, they and their plight cannot simply be forgotten. Can the name that Moses realized as the heart of his experience, which came to be known as "I AM" (Yahweh), be reasonably understood as "I am all that is", or the Buddhist "Thou art that"?

Krishnamurti has given a more modern experience of AUB:

This experience went on for over an hour and the man was virtually stunned by it for a week, in fact was telling Krishnamurti about it two years later, asking what he might do to get it back. He had been filled with ecstasy beyond measure, with incredible joy and now wanted it again, or even as a perpetual state. Krishnamurti’s reply to his request is of major importance to our thought. The experience "came to you uninvited. You never sought it. As long as you are seeking it, you will never have it. The very desire to live again in that ecstatic state is preventing the new, the fresh experience of bliss. . . Greed even for the sublime, breeds sorrow . . . It is not a reward, a result. It comes when it will; do not seek it."

It is this unitary experience accompanied by the profound feeling of bliss, ecstasy, joy, elation whether it be before an incredibly beautiful sunset, hearing sublime music, simply standing in the presence of great beauty that carries the conviction of the Transcendent. Unitary experience is the keystone of all religion and the root of a profound meaning which cannot be ignored. The difficulty for those of us reared in the modern scientistic culture is that we find it hard to accept the evidence of our own experience as valid because it seems so unscientific. When we have visions of the more than ordinary, experiences of extra sensory perception, intimations of the divine, we are careful about sharing them lest we be thought a bit strange, or even neurotic. Our culture carefully suppresses the more profound human experiences because they threaten the dominant conviction that science really knows the truth. What is God that we should be mindful of him? God is the heart of the most profound of all human experiences! Neglect of this kind of experience makes us to be less than we are and life to be less than it is. In Buddhism, the Ultimate has the qualities Sat, Chit and Ananda, Being, Consciousness, Bliss. To realize experientially that Thou art That, is the conscious experience of being bliss. In Christian tradition saying that God is Love means something like this.