Oh god(s).

Here we go.

This has been a long time coming- and I don’t mean to give the impression anything here is final. This is a process, one with a vague beginning and a hazy future- but one I know will continue each moment I happen to be on this earth.

My beloved parents, who certainly do not deserve the torment that will likely come from reading this piece, marked me at birth for a religious disposition. They christened me “Joshua”, from the Hebrew word “Yehosh’ua”. It means the Lord is my salvation….and was also an alternate spelling for Jesus. Not much pressure or expectation in this label.

They did as they knew from their own experience and gave me a loving, supportive home that was also utterly dedicated to the deity of a tribe of middle eastern people from 3,000 years ago. It’s normal.
I don’t wish to sound ungrateful through any of this- my upbringing was safe, good-natured, full of family and friends and adventures large and small. It was the only upbringing I could and should have had. Church was an important, even essential part of my childhood; I cherished the sense of community, the feeling that our tribe was a part of something vitally important, the chills that would formulate on the back of my neck during a special moment in music worship, and all the small handshakes, pastries, events, summer camps and messages along the way. It was intoxicating to feel that we alone among the world had the answer, that our religion was the one and only light in the world; this meant our bonds were stronger than anybody else’s. I was quick to adopt this vestige and look upon ‘secular’ things and people with disdain as we set ourselves apart from the rest of the heathen world. I went so far as to only listen to Christian music until I was a junior in high school; the 90s music that everyone my age adores simply passed me by. (What was my original sin? I bought a Beatles cd…)

In many ways, I was and am a late bloomer. It was music- and art in general- that finally did me in. See, the special feelings I attached to church and Christianity weren’t specifically connected to ancient Hebrew law or the tenets of Roman Catholic society; these special, even transcendent moments came from real human interaction, from that mysterious power in all music, and the sense of sacredness with which we could color the world. And while I loved church and obeyed my parents (sometimes), on some level I was already aware that what I felt was not beholden to only one sect of one religion in this vast and wondrous world. I was not smart enough to clearly articulate this then (or now). But the internal cognitive dissonance began to drive me away, bit by bit. I visited other churches in town, even (gasp) those with a different interpretation of ‘baptist’. Before too long I was actively arguing with every sermon as I silently stewed in the pews. Unfortunately, the natural reaction to a break from your family tradition and re-programming of your ‘self’ tends to be a wild swing in the opposite direction. It’s far too easy to only see the parts that drive you crazy and not appreciate the goodness also present.

College was -stop me if you’ve heard this before- a time of great transformation. Parties, freedom, responsibility, assumptions challenged and new perspectives brewed together…I went into the experience committed to the experience alone, regardless of what certified piece of paper happened to come out of it. (My parents torment continues). As always, inspiration and revolution came from where I least expected it- but at every different emanation I was aware that the epiphanies that rang most true always seemed to simply put into more succinct words that which I had already felt, wordlessly. The seminal events were a book by Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), initiation into a music fraternity with roots in the ancient Greek philosophy, and numerous experiences in art, culture and community that each imparted wisdom amidst ecstasy and tragedy. I saw the college experience as a microcosm of the world, and it was…at least as much as a large, majority white public university in Oklahoma can be.

I tried out a couple of churches, and still treated some of the Christian holidays with a sense of reverence…but various smaller groups of friends, as well as the University as a whole took the place of church in my life. After I graduated, and after a year spent in limbo between wanderlust and grounded careerism, I took a hard plunge towards wanderlust. I rid myself of most of my stuff and went to live in my car in the Colorado mountains for a summer. This was the beginning of a 6 year period of different homes, different jobs and constant searching. I was a census worker in Arizona, a whitewater raft guide in Colorado, a pizza delivery driver in Indiana, a substitute teacher in Illinois, a dog walker in New York, a marching band person everywhere; I enjoyed it all, thoroughly, but the search never stopped…a search for my ‘tribe’, for the love of my life, for purpose and meaning in what I had to offer the world. My spiritual journey was amorphous, and despite the wonders I experienced on the road my psyche or soul was mostly dormant.

Ironically enough, it was a family vacation/religious pilgrimage to Israel with my parents that lit a hidden fuse inside. Alas, it wasn’t to ignite my flame for my family’s version of Christianity but something beyond…while they visited the holy sites of their faith, I was on a parallel journey where I experienced the world not as a microcosm but as a real, living, breathing place with thousands of years of history and people who contributed their own history and spirit into it; I went to a wedding on the Sea of Galilee, heard the Muslim call to prayer for the first time, experienced a ‘rave’ of every type of world music possible in Jerusalem, and interacted with people just as firmly set in their beliefs as my family was- only from the ‘other’ side of the aisle. It was something I knew existed in theory and in print, but the energy of it all was overwhelming. As we flew back, I glanced out the window to the distinctive outline of Italy below and knew that something had been awakened inside me.

Thus began a new phase of my life. Within 2 years I had abandoned any permanent home, sold my car for scrap metal, packed my daily life into a backpack and set out on a continuing series of journeys back and forth around the world. A vision in Thailand, my first destination, elevated the small awakening inside to a wholehearted embrace of my Path. I studied, I prayed, I opened myself to everything the world and its religions or systems of thought had to teach me. I became far more adept at recognizing the parts of me that had been conditioned to automatically reject anything at odds with the programming of my childhood, and slowly began to assuage deep-seated fears built up over time. I found the process of shedding such fears and exclusionary certainties to be incredibly liberating- mimicked by my continual process of emptying my backpack of unnecessary weight. I was guided at first by whatever it is inside that makes me want to climb every peak I see, and then more gently by curiosity at just how the world came to be the way it was. I found something in every religion that resonated with me on a profound level- and also something violent or willfully blind that belied the mortality of every system. I was drawn to set foot in all of the great religious monuments I could, for no other reason than I wanted to feel the energy of that place and glimpse whatever it was that produced such undying fealty or devotion in the believers.

What follows now is probably the most dangerous section of this entire piece. It’s truthful title should be “Privileged white boy gives unfairly derivative accounts of what he learned from tiny glimpses of religions foreign to him.”

(This really can’t go well…).

Judaism

“What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man.”
Rabbi Hill-El, 80 BCE- 30 CE

Based on a series of oral traditions from a population in Canaan in the Bronze Age, finally put into writing in the 7th Century BCE after hundreds of years of development. The first books or laws were put together by a series of different authors who injected their own present conditions into the foundational stories they told of their own tribe of people and it’s place in the world. God was alternately referred to as El or as Yahweh; one name was inherited from the Canaanite myths, and another was a sky/warrior god from the south that gradually came to assume the mantle of being the one true god over time. This tribe of people- the Israelites- viewed themselves as outsiders in their land, engaged in a constant struggle and in need of a warrior god to deliver them. The foundational myths took on a violence that reflected much of their world; when Joshua leads his people into Canaan they are commanded to kill the current inhabitants; when the prophet Elijah proves Yahweh is the new storm/fertility god instead of the native Ba’al, he proceeds to slaughter all the holy people of the ‘old’ religions.

But along with the inherent violence of the times, there was compassion and egalitarianism that was preached by prophets and priests- my favorites are Amos and Hosea, among others. When the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were destroyed and portions of the population exiled to Babylon their religion developed the idea that God was not only found in a certain temple or in certain ceremonies or rites but was everywhere- and nowhere- and was beyond human attempts to contain. This carried beyond the repeated invasions of foreign empires and destructions of Jerusalem temples, and in the 1st century BCE groups known as the Essenes, Qumrans and Pharisees were teaching that God was experienced differently by everyone- and this experience could be in any location, on any scale. What they needed the Priests and sacred rites for in ancient times was actually available to all- with the understanding that the reality we experience is still not the True ‘Shekhinah’, or Divine Presence; no previous laws or texts contained anything as powerful as individual insight in approaching this presence. Most importantly, the Pharisees taught that violence against one another- physical or emotional- was the worst sin, the greatest act of sacrilege. If we all reflected God in some way, then the greatest commandment could only be to love one another as we would have them love us; kindness, respect and compassion for each other were the true Temples now. One of the great Jewish teachers in this tradition was a faith healer named Jesus.

Christianity

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you”
Jesus Christ, 4 BCE-30 CE

Begun by a former Pharisee named Paul, who saw in the teachings of Jesus a message for the entire world and not just Jews. He christened Jesus the ‘Messiah’ (there were many hopeful messiahs around at the time, as the Jewish people longed for deliverance from foreign powers) and a ‘son of God’, someone who had an intimacy with God. Paul encouraged others to look at the story of Jesus as an example for their own lives: to empty themselves of ego and selfishness in order to live for others. The death of the self and resurrection of the divine. The greatest commandment was always to love others, to humble yourself in respect to your neighbor or your enemy. This was the only way to become a ‘son of God’- to unite in love. The Jesus of Paul’s letters and the numerous gospels written decades later did not preach orthodoxy or original sin or doctrines of the Trinity; he taught and embodied pure love and compassion for even the least among us. Most radically, what he preached was available to everyone, Jew and gentile alike.

This new religion flowered throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean over the next couple centuries and inspired many different interpretations and traditions; but in the 4th Century the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to adopt the religion and make it the official religion of the empire, which led to a series of councils that standardized their version of the religion and ostracized all other texts and ideas. This is how Jesus came to be considered God himself, along with the official idea of the ‘trinity’, the official ‘creed’ of belief, and all the formalities of ceremony that had never existed in this mostly informal, localized religion. Christianity became inextricably linked with politics and nationhood; “love one another” eventually transformed into “we must destroy them in Jesus’ name”, being made in “God’s image” became an idea of exclusion rather than inclusion, and conquest became the shared goal of both religion and state. Christians were more often soldiers for the faith now, locked into spiritual warfare. The way to salvation was standardized, rules and heirarchy were imposed and people in positions of power told those without power that only they knew the Way to a mythical fantasy-land named Heaven. Other traditions and branches of the faith developed over time, but the idea that this religion had a monopoly on who exactly god was unfortunately remains in much of the modern church.

Islam

"Pay, Oh Children of Adam, as you would love to be paid, and be just as you would love to have justice!"
Muhammed, 570 CE-632 CE

In the 7th Century CE, as Christian Europe was in its ‘dark age’ after the fall of the Roman Empire, a merchant had a religious experience in Arabia. What emerged was one of the great transformations in the history of the world- but the religion of Islam was not begun as a revolution that cast aside previous traditions; what Muhammed taught was that the God of Adam and Abraham and Jesus was the same God of Arabs, Jews, Africans, Europeans- of every human on earth. Islam was just another tradition among many that aimed to re-center human action and spirituality on the practical application of universal love and compassion for even the least among us. Al-lah, the Arab name for God, was beyond human reason or understanding; even to put this concept into form as an image was to taint the Eternal Truth. Instead of fighting about whose term for God was better, the greatest command was to transcend our sense of ‘self’ and surrender to God. This is why you see followers prostrated on the ground during prayers- it is a personal reminder to humble the ego, suppress dangerous pride and submit to the Eternal.

Followers of Islam were also required to give to the poor, to reflect the compassion and generosity of Al-lah in their daily lives. They were to cultivate that sense of inner peace- sakinah- that comes from living a life of love and serenity even in the face of our enemies. Of course, this period of the world was also full of violence, and fighting was treated as a necessary part of life no matter how much they tried to avoid it. And as the religion grew rapidly from central Arabia across much of the known world, the politics of empire also entered its lexicon; previous teachings were distorted to fit the desires of the State. It was still a religion of great tolerance- much of the texts and philosophies of Greece and Rome that inspired the West’s eventual Renaissance and Scientific Revolutions were preserved and even enhanced by Muslim society through the centuries- but inevitably it devolved into the very same type of warring factions that Muhammed preached against in his initial revelations.

Hinduism

”Those acts that you consider good when done to you, do those to others, none else.”
-Taittiriya Upanishad, 500 BCE

To begin with, this isn’t necessarily a religion in the same manner of the Abrahamic faiths. It encompasses thousands of different cultures, interpretations, symbols and texts. Much of what is written is narrative action-adventures that purport to show history, but philosophical texts presented through oblique methods. Yet there is still a connective thread, and thematic resonance across the spectrum.

The earliest texts we have from the subcontinent are the ‘Vedas’, which are concerned first and foremost with ritual sacrifice and the meaning therein. Sacrifice was important- just like in ancient Judaism and all other traditions of the age- as a signifier of man’s relationship to nature and to the gods. It put humans in a proper frame of mind in relation to the vast Mystery of all that remained unexplainable in life. The other important idea to come from these texts was the concept of Purusha, a cosmic human sacrificed by the gods to provide earthly human life, in a sense, and whose body provided symbolic hierarchy to society: the head represented the Priestly class, the upper torso/arms the warrior/ruler class, the legs the merchant/agricultural class, and the feet the lowest class of laborers, the ‘untouchables’. This became what we know as the caste system.

As technological advances re-shaped society after the Bronze Age, another series of texts evolved to expound and transform these original belief systems for the new age: the Upanishads. There are many ideas and questions at play here, but a central concept emerged that would underly all future thought: Brahman. The ground of all Being, the Universal Principle behind everything: what many have come to call God. That, of course, is just a human word, and as with many religious texts the Upanishads go to great lengths to remind us that human terms are impossibly inferior to Ultimate Essence: that contradiction and metaphor is often the only way to begin to approach it. The best parable is that of an son who asks his father to explain Brahman, who responds by having him put a lump of salt into a glass of water. The next day he asks him to go retrieve the lump- which has, by now, dissolved completely into the liquid. The father then asks him to drink some of the water and describe it; salty, replies the son. From surface to utmost depth, the water is now imbued with that lump of salt, though it is invisible. This is Brahman: invisible to the human eye, but present in all things. The ultimate goal in life is to identify with the universal Brahman through the true, inner self: Atman. We are to journey inwards to realize that we are actually one with everything.

The original form of yoga- before it became workouts in spandex- was to sit in a particular position (asana) and meditate, abolishing all sense of outward self to journey into the void inside and realize this truth. Ascetics would sit all night by a fire, sometimes aided by a hallucinogenic drink called soma, and attempt to “yoke the mind” (yoga). Along with personal pursuit another important concept developed: ahimsa, or nonviolence towards all living things. If we are ultimately connected to all living things, how could we then commit violence towards another living organism- to ourselves? This was the beginning of a way of life dedicated to plant-based diets, as well as two off-shoots, a more radical form called Jainism and a compassionate form, Buddhism.

Eventually, the general population struggled with the rigorous, complicated path to this particular enlightenment and sought a more personable form of faith. This is how the popular deities took their form, influenced by the blending of many pre-existing myths from across the land. Brahman became personified by the four-faced Brahma; a creator destroyer god named Shiva came to the fore as the first yogi, along with consort Parvati and their half-elephant son, Ganesh; and the supreme being Vishnu, who would follow the long tradition seen around the world of gods becoming man (among other animals) in the two most popular epics of Hindu literature- the Ramayana, where he becomes prince Rama, and the Mahabharata, where he becomes the mischievous cowherd Krishna. These two epics became the action-adventure narratives a general populace could wrap their heads around, and they are recited/performed to this very day in many parts of the world- though, admittedly, the meaning may be lost.

Buddhism

One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter.
-Siddharta Gautama, 563-483 BCE (roughly)

The “Middle Way”. As with Christianity, this did not start out as a ‘religion’ but as a series of teachings from the world of what we now call ‘Hinduism’, which were later put together and formed into a human structure of faith. Both Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama -“the Buddha”- were human teachers who would be deified by followers much later on. Gautama was one of many “Buddhas” who wandered northern India in this time, enlightened ones who taught their own ways to a populace that craved meaning in a rapidly changing world. According to the legends we have- transcribed into what we call the Pali canon a century or two after his life- Gautama tried a variety of the popular approaches of the time. He left his family to become a wandering ascetic, begging for food; he took up the practice of yoga, the seated meditation mentioned above; he starved himself and punished his body in search of enlightenment. What he found, in the end, was that there was a “middle way”, based on compassion for others and not stringent trials and tribulations. Life was indeed full of suffering, but that did not mean we shouldn’t exist fully in this life. Our goal was to seek liberation -moksha- from this suffering by transcending our selfish desires and living truly for others. It was not a retreat from the world, but a loving embrace.

Gautama was a radical figure to his world in a similar way to Jesus because he taught that this liberation, this enlightenment was available to anyone, regardless of what caste or society they were born into. Perhaps even more radically for his day, he also taught that he- or any other teacher- was not to be the source of devotion. That his teachings were only meant to be used to cross a river, so to speak, and the abandoned as one pursued their own path to enlightenment. He absolutely, positively did not see himself as a divine figure- which, of course, meant that within a few hundred years he was being worshipped as a divine figure. The general population had trouble accepting the self-reliance he taught and the mysterious Nirvana he spoke of but refused to define, so they began to build statues in his image and rules based on what they knew of his life. Before long Buddhism had been hijacked by political movements and a hierarchy was introduced that was alien to his original teaching. Fantastical tales began to be told of his story, the action-adventure narrative people tended to crave, and within a few hundred years a religion had been established with golden images and political doctrine that would probably not have been recognizable to Gautama.

But the original ideas spread as well and continue to have influence in every corner of the globe.

Taoism

The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own.
He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind.
He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful.
-Laozi, 601-531 BCE (roughly)

The Way. Unlike the abrahamic religions and Buddhism, there is not a single prophet we can point to for Taoism (when you read the word, imagine the T being pronounced as a D). There is no personified god to worship or god-man whose example we are meant to symbolically follow. What Taoism teaches is that there is an almost indescribable Way of nature, a divine/eternal pattern or course of energy that is not created or destroyed but flows through many different states and planes of existence. We can either open ourselves up to the Way, live in the Way and channel this energy- or we can say or think that we have complete control of it and thereby lose it. The texts we think of as foundational to this ‘religion’ are a series of short passages full of wit and intentional contradiction collectively called the ‘Tao Te Ching’ and written by Laozi, though they were probably not written by him and he may not have existed. It is much more likely that they represent the wisdom of many different philosophers, put together at a later date for ease of study. Just like the Upanishads and the writings of many early Christians, Jews and Muslims, the purpose of these texts is to convey the essential Mystery of Spiritual truth to limited human minds- that any human attempt to define, grasp and label it is, by it’s nature, an imperfect attempt at perfection.

Two important passages reflect this:

“True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present. True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless.”

“The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name.The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.The named is the mother of ten thousand things.Ever desireless, one can see the Mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.These two spring from the source but differ in name; This appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all Mystery.”

The name itself is almost a distraction. The most powerful imagery associated with the Tao is that of water: water that flows according to certain principles, that embodies a softness and flexibility yet also the strength to carve canyons from rock, that exists in many states without losing its essence. The original Daoists developed exercises and remedies we still see today- Qi Gong, Taiji, and much traditional Chinese medicine- by looking to nature for guidance, and by practicing a way of Being that paradoxically centered on letting go. True strength came from flexibility, not rigidity. Unlike many western religion and schools of thought, good and evil were not seen as two eternally opposed sides locked in battle: the symbol of the Yin Yang doesn’t represent warfare but a holistic system, where the two opposites are separate poles of the same circle inextricably linked together. The globe exists in balance between the norther and southern poles; if one dominated or conquered the other, nothing we experience would be possible. Of course, just as with the other religions, when civilization grew so did the desire for the general populace to have something more personable and less mystic to grab on to. Taoism came to entail legends and deities and increasingly human characteristics, such as an obsession with material immortality. The official Taoist religion of today bears little resemblance to the original teachings.

But there was one further development in east Asia that continued taoist principles: when Buddhism arrived from India, a new branch grew as a fusion between the two great religions- Cha’an Buddhism, what we know from Japanese as Zen. This practice de-emphasized the myriad writings and legends that accompanied the formation of the official doctrine of Buddhism and focused instead (as the Buddha once did) on the self and the individual way we all approach the Ultimate Reality. By adhering to Taoist principles it was able to re-discover the vitality of Buddha’s “Middle Way”.

What I hope to convey in these derivative and limited explanations is not any sense of completeness but the idea that history repeats itself. I could have included many more examples- Zoroastrianism or Manichaesm or Animism or any other set of beliefs derisively labeled as ‘pagan’ by Christians hundreds of years after their creation, but they would all follow the same pattern set forth above: ancient sacred rites which helped our ancestors try to make sense of the world, followed by a transformation that focused on practical love and compassion, followed by an eventual injection of politics and human structure that hijacked the original meaning. If you noticed, most of the transformative prophets and teachers of these religions came during a certain period (600-0 BCE) now referred as the ‘Axial Age’. Their teachings were largely free from each other’s influence yet remarkably similar in message:

What we consider divine is, by its very nature, unattainable by human reasoning. The term ‘Eternal’ was used not as a signifier of a very long time but literally outside of time, beyond the way we experience the world.
As such, no single person or group has a monopoly on what we call ‘God’; indeed this is just a name we came up with to attempt to communicate more easily. It is Mystery, and we are all inferior to its Ultimate Reality. (So stop fighting over a name!)
The ‘golden rule’ exists in every religion because this is the most practical application of the ultimate truth: that we are connected, that the journey inward to the true Inner Self is a journey to the source of all things. The Way, then, is paved with compassion for all that we are connected to, every living thing. Loving your neighbor is loving yourself.

This is the most beautiful realization in life. All the labels we have- God, Al-Lah, Brahman, Nirvana, Tao- are different names for the same Eternal. There are billions of different people in the world and just as many paths- yet all lead to the same Ultimate Reality. Love.

Unfortunately, every one of these teachings became subsumed by human politics, by the desire to belong to a victorious tribe. There is nothing wrong with the formation of personable gods and legends, with a layer of accessible action-adventure narrative on top of difficult-to-grasp Truth. I think we all must go through the same process of penetrating through symbol and illusion; the problem comes when we become stuck in the metaphorical layer and use these symbols to artificially divide ourselves. Different cultures need their own characteristic path, but in reality the differences are cosmetic.

I’ve been fortunate enough in my travels to have had primal experiences with all of the religions above, and more. I was able to hear the Pope speak in the Vatican on how our compassion mustn’t exist only for other human beings, but for the environment we all share. I sat with an old man before the wailing wall in Jerusalem and talked for an hour; he explained that no one really knows if the holy of holies lies beyond that wall or if it’s just another stone...it didn’t really matter to him in the end, what mattered was that he was a good man every day and did what he could to care for his wife and children. I also had a long conversation with a cleric at the national mosque in Kuala Lumpur who explained to me the ways in which Islam was deeply connected to previous religions, how it was simply a further revelation of the same Truth preached throughout the ages. I studied yoga in India and felt intense joy and love singing Kirtans at the edge of the Ganga river with hundreds, maybe thousands of other devotees. I also felt great clarity and peace in silent meditation during a Buddhist vipassana in Thailand, and an almost indescribable sense of vibratory energy doing tai chi at a Taoist temple in Guatemala. I once had a visionary experience of intense, biblical power in a plant ceremony deep in the Amazon jungle. Through it all, in every single instance, I never felt like I was in the presence of the one True Religion. They each had a different perspective on something, well, beyond my vocabulary. And they were each tainted, in a way, by their human-ness. The same day I was at the wailing wall a group of women showed up in an effort to pray and express their devotion; men literally attacked them with stones and drove them away because of some arcane cultural tradition. I wondered to the Muslim cleric why they considered Muhammad’s revelation as the last one, the end of all revelation- even though it came over a thousand years ago. I sat with a barefoot Brahmin at a holy site in India for a while before I realized he just wanted me to next to him because random devotees would give me money, too, in their effort to seek ‘merit’. I left that Buddhist vipassana before my time was up because I couldn’t understand why they still insisted on forcing women to sit at the back of the hall and refrain from touching the monks- acting like women’s sexuality was a powerful sin to fear just gave it more power, in my estimation. My breakthrough in meditation didn’t come in that hall but off by myself, seated by a small stream in the middle of the night.

Which was, in reality, what the Buddha taught. That each person has his or her own path to enlightenment, and to hold on to others teaching past their usefulness was an unnecessary burden. He referred to his own teachings in a parable: it was as if he had come to a river with no bridge or obvious crossing, so he had built a boat to cross to the other side. After crossing, though, it made no sense to continue to carry that boat overland. Likewise should we leave that boat- his teachings- behind once we crossed to the other side. The most pernicious development in religion over the past few hundred years, as it has responded to the spread of Western rational thought, has been the rise of fundamentalism. This is not a return to old teachings but an entirely new interpretation that applies certainty and literalism where once existed metaphor and Mystery. It is a retreat into tribal identity and an outright rejection of that most essential teaching: compassion. I’ll turn to the words of an author who has had a great impact on me in recent years, Karen Armstrong, from her book ‘A History of God’:

We have seen that compassion was a characteristic of most of the ideologies that were created during the Axial Age. The prophets insisted that cult and worship were useless unless society as a whole adopted a more just and compassionate ethos. These insights were developed by Jesus, Paul, and the Rabbis, who all shared the same Jewish ideals and suggested major changes in Judaism in order to implement them. The Koran made the creation of a compassionate and just society the essence of the reformed religion of Al-Lah. Compassion is a particularly difficult virtue. It demands that we go beyond the limitations of our egotism, insecurity and inherited prejudice. Not surprisingly, there have been times when all three of the God-religions have failed to achieve these high standards. During the eighteenth century, deists rejected traditional western Christianity largely because it had become so conspicuously cruel and intolerant. The same will hold true today. All too often, conventional believers, who are not fundamentalists, share the same aggressive righteousness. They use “God” to prop up their own loves and hates, which they attribute to God himself. But Jews, Christians and Muslims who punctiliously attend divine services yet denigrate people who belong to different ethnic and ideological camps deny one of the basic truths of their religion. It is equally inappropriate for people who call themselves Jews, Christians and Muslims to condone an inequitable social system. The God of historical monotheism demands mercy not sacrifice, compassion rather than decorous liturgy.

So why am I writing all of this?

Fair question.

I feel for whatever reason to try to articulate what I have discovered, not because I feel like you should do exactly as I’ve done. You probably don’t need to get rid of your home and car and stuff and walk around the world for a couple years to discover “That” for yourself. I probably didn’t ‘need’ to, except I also did. What’s more important to me right now is that I think that too many of us have been told for far too long that only certain people have the answer, and that we must obey every one of their programs to live a meaningful life. I feel compelled to tell you that there is no power any of them have that matches the power and Truth inside of you. Any person or organization that tells you their way is the ONLY way has put their ego above the Eternal. Don’t just take my word for it; before millions across the world started worshipping his image, chanting his name and following strict religious sacraments he never set up, the Buddha preached that we should NOT look to another teacher for Nirvana. In fact, he would never actually describe this Nirvana, because he knew that any description was purely his- and incomplete at that.

In the end, your Way is yours. You can share the label with others- ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Athiest’- but your Path is unique to you. There will be teachers throughout your life, essential to your development. They will come in all shapes and sizes, at moments most unexpected; but all they can do is relate to you what they’ve learned, and how they flow. You have to take that example, take that knowledge and let it inform you- then let go. Because the harder you to try to grasp the Truth, the more elusive it will become.

More than anything, I want us to be able to say- “You know, I identify a lot with what Jesus Christ taught, but those ancient tribal rules and feverish visions of a future apocalypse with magical rapture are a little whack.” Or “I think the story of Purusha/Prajapati is a powerful metaphor for our process of division and reunification with the Eternal- but we probably shouldn’t treat a class of human beings as unworthy or unclean just because we associate them with his feet.” Or “I feel something in yoga or meditation or sound baths but I don’t need to know what planet is in what house and how to say that all in an ancient sanskrit that we don’t really know.” Or “I believe we should all submit before Al-Lah, but I don’t need anyone to submit before me.”

I want us to all find a system or spiritual family that works for us, to believe that we were created in “God’s own image”- and delight in the fact that this means we are all connected by something beyond mere appearance, and not use insignificant, illusory variance as a method to divide the righteous from the non-righteous. The in-group from the out-group. Tribe from tribe. The divine spark is in each of us, and so is the ability to realize that spark as both individual and as One.

This is why, out of all the sacred structures in the history of mankind, my favorite will forever be the Pantheon in Rome. It’s very architecture is the message: a perfect circle, with one small opening at the top to let light in. One source of light. The decorations inside have undergone multiple transformations, and included multiple religions; it’s very name indicates ‘home of many gods’. But it is a building that understands no matter what label you use to decorate, there is only one source of light that we each reflect in our own way.

And now, follow along in your bibles as I try to combine science with religion and explain why

Quantum Theory is the Modern World’s Greatest Religion

(…)

Okay don’t go just yet.

I’m not going to bombard you with leptons and antiquarks and quantum entanglement (or did I already do that). I have read many books, listened to podcasts and watched youtube videos on this subject, so naturally I can boast that I don’t really know anything at all about quantum theory. Nothing. I can barely comprehend or remember what I’ve read.

Which, I would also argue, is equal to what any of us can grasp of God.

Quantum Theory

Let’s start with your immediate surroundings. Take a moment and look around. Feel the chair or bed underneath you; it probably feels pretty solid, a firm substance that you can press against or rest upon. When you lift your arm into the air, however, it moves pretty freely. There’s empty space in every other direction; some light hits you from an organic or artificial source around. You may hear sounds outside your room, somewhere far away from you in your spot. As you sit in this moment of time and space, you are ‘yourself’, surrounded by a lot of foreign objects or other people but ultimately alone. This is the world you know, one that’s basically been the same since the moment you were born.

Except Quantum Theory tells us that’s all a lie…an illusion, if you will.

The ‘mass’ you feel underneath you, that comfortably rigid solid that holds you up, is mostly located in the nucleus of atoms. Protons and Neutrons are drawn together by something called the Strong Force, and they are orbited by Electrons in a pretty orderly manner kinda like that of our own planet’s orbit around the Sun. But for all the ‘area’ we consider an atom to take up, most of it is actually…space. The Protons and Neutrons that provide all of the mass for the atom take up some infinitesimal piece of this space; the only way to convey this is with an analogy- imagine a basketball, or any inflated ball of the same approximate size, and then imagine a ‘boundary’ that is found about 33 kilometers (20 miles) away. This is the magnitude we’re talking.

Of course, the ball itself is solid right? At least there’s that?

Well…see the protons and neutrons are themselves made of much, much smaller components, called Quarks. Like Electrons, they are constantly in motion but are confined by something called Gluons (which ‘glue’ them together in groups of 3). We know the Quarks exist, and we know they come in different flavors so to speak…but we’ve never actually isolated one. We know that just 3 of them make a Proton or Neutron, again surrounded by what seems to be space. How then does anything have ‘mass’? It doesn’t….at least in the way we thought before Quantum Theory. But since the discovery that mass and energy are interchangeable- and in fact constantly seem to be in flux- we can refer to something as having ‘mass energy’. As Quarks are constantly in motion and interacting with ‘gluons’, we measure their kinetic energy along with the field energy around them to come up with what you instinctively feel to be ‘mass’. Your interaction with the ground, or chair, or bed is not a collision of solid substances but an energetic interaction. And the very fundamental ‘layer’ of what we experience is actually in constant flux…starting to sound familiar?

Ok, so everything is empty space. Great. We’re all alone.

Except…you may have seen that I referred to an energy field before. And surely the Electrons and Quarks and such aren’t just flying around in tiny spaceships, right? No, but to understand what is happening here we have to adjust our concept of this empty space. We are surrounded- and permeated- by elemental ‘Fluids’ that are able to perfectly overlap and coexist. When we refer to certain Quanta, we are actually describing a disturbance in this fluid that happens to come in discrete units. Some of these you’ll recognize:

Photon = A disturbance in the Electro-Magnetic Fluid, or what we consider light.
Graviton = A disturbance in the Gravitational Fluid…we think.
Gluon = A disturbance in the Gluon Fluid, which leads to the aforementioned ‘Strong Force’.
W Boson = A disturbance in the Weak Fluid, which is how all of what we see has happened.
Higgs Particle = A disturbance in the Higgs Fluid, which interacts in some way with…well, everything, to give things the appearance of ‘mass’. (That’s as good as I can do)

A disturbance in a universal, elemental fluid. That is what we are- what everything we see around us is.

And perhaps most directly evident to you in this moment, Electron = A disturbance in the Electron Fluid. It is how you are reading this very page right now, somewhere across the world simultaneously with another poor soul who got stuck in this post. We identified electrons more than a century ago, and now we can manipulate them with remarkable power and precision. But if you think we can simply point somewhere and say “There’s an electron!”, well, I’ve got some more unfortunate news for you. Everything certain is also uncertain. We know that Electrons like to take up certain orbits, so that there is a discernible pattern. But as with all elementary particles, it has aspects of both a ‘particle’ and a ‘wave’, a paradox that points to the inadequacy of our own developed terms and labels to describe the world (ahem). Our measurement then relies on probability fields that also must use complex numbers to even attempt to convey the full of possibility of each particle/wave. But the very act of measurement, or observation, itself has an effect on what we measure. To study, we have to essentially choose one pathway and limit the ‘perspective’ even more. Even at the most fundamental layer, uncertainty reigns.

Feel a little overwhelmed by the Mystery of it all, yet? You probably are starting to feel something exactly like the students in ancient Greece, India and China felt as their Masters used deliberately obfuscating arguments to invoke this sense of helplessness before the Eternal. But let’s go just a tad further, and talk about our senses. We live in a world of rich color: subtle shades and vibrant wavelengths are readily available and mixed into wondrous works of art, both man-made and naturally occurring. We use highly specialized tissues and proteins and nerves throughout our entire ocular system to make minute distinctions and translate a wealth of information rapidly enough to make sense of the world around us and act accordingly. It is a beautiful system, one that delights and overwhelms us.

What we see, however, is only a fraction of what is out there. The spectrum of ‘visible’ light is a human-sized, graspable quantity of something far beyond us. To function in the world, we distill continuous and boundary-less spectra into easy-to-understand symbols. This is also how we discovered that we can ‘trick’ our eyes into seeing practically any color by combining three different colors in certain proportions, and thereby create facsimiles. This screen itself is simply a combination of Red-Blue-Green with a different number at each point in space. Our ocular systems essentially create movies for us- we take in a series of ‘snapshots’ in every second to create the illusion of form through time and space. Everything we sense is a symbol of something greater than our senses.

Everything about our understanding of the world is local, particular to us. Not only that, but when you consider that the size of the universe is bound by the time it takes light to reach us, we must then state that the center of the universe is right where we stand at any particular moment. We experience a Relative Universe. When Quantum Theory developed, it had to come to terms with that. We can try to ascribe fundamental laws to the Universe, to an infinitesimal degree- but we will be forever bound by relativity and perspective. There is a tacit acknowledgement of this in the mere fact that the furthest extent of our extravagant experiments are to attempt to see extremely brief glimpses of the after-effects of conditions present in the early Universe; whatever came before is so far beyond any science that we have simply, fantastically labeled it the ‘big bang’. Uncertainty and Mystery is at the heart of Quantum Theory, from the behavior of quanta to the size we imagine the universe to be. After centuries of ‘battles’ between science and faith in the western world, it turns out the furthest reaches of science now require…an element of faith. There are inconsistencies still present in the accepted Standard Model currently in use, and just this year a thought-experiment has essentially made the entire field confront large paradoxes that have always been there; the only answers are that we are very wrong about something, or we are simply unable to measure or comprehend the ultimate reality (we are the 2 dimensional drawing on a surface attempting to ascertain the volume of a 3-dimensional sphere we happen to be stuck to).

But herein also lies my affinity for how we approach ‘Theory’ versus ‘Religion’. A Theory is meant to be tested, doubted, criticized, and ultimately either dis-proven or subsumed by a greater understanding. It can be chaotic, emotional; it can upend everything we thought we knew. But the Theory in the end is greater than any individual, than any tradition. It is alive, as alive as we are. It helps us function and make sense of our world, and even gives us a supportive group of fellow believers. Nearly all of us use Quantum Theory every single day, without needing to consider the deep uncertainty inherent: we simply act.

Now I’ll ask you; if I told you there was a large group of people who believed in a Higher Reality, something that is beyond the physical world we interact with on a daily basis, and who have the support of each other in this belief despite an inherent level of uncertainty in describing what goes beyond our senses…am I describing a Religion or a Theory? Sure, we can say that most religions also tend to give instructions or at least guidelines on how to live the most meaningful life here on this Earth. But if we believe that, as has been proven consistently, all that we sense can be expressed as energy- and that we are all made of the same basic material as everything else around us- does this not self-suggest an ethos? You don’t need to use New Age-y science to admit that the more we surround and intake energy that is ‘good’ for us, within moderation, the better our lives will be. We know that certain foods- and amounts- are more detrimental than beneficial; we know that constant stress and tension reduce life expectancy; we know that exercise, and increased respiration, lead to healthier bodies and minds. And if we are made of the same stuff as each other and all other living and nonliving things, should it not be our duty to then take care of our environment and fellow beings? To take care of…ourselves? We may need a Superhuman character to tell us a lot of these things, but I also tend to think they are self-evident.

I hope you feel some sense of awe or wonder at what happens around us on a regular basis, and not anxiety or paranoia at the unfathomable-ness of it all. I don’t know why, but every step along this process of un-knowing has actually put me at peace and made me feel more connected with every particle I encounter, seen or unseen. I’m lucky this way, or maybe blissfully ignorant. I wish I could convey what it feels like, inside of me. I spent my childhood in a thread of religion that preached the world was full of sin, that I was full of sin, and that I needed to follow their doctrine to get to a destination called heaven; it took me years to even begin to articulate what felt so wrong about that message, though I ‘knew’ inside. We are not born into sin- we are born into Heaven. Every single day is another chance to experience this, this ultimate reality our senses can’t grasp and our mind can’t reason.

”To bear and not to own; to act and not lay claim; to do the work and let it go; for just letting it go is what makes it stay.”

The ancient Chinese had a name for the most elemental life force, or energy of the world- ‘Qi’. It animated all life and collected into the substances and fluids we experience, but while It was permanent the forms would eventually fall apart and the Qi would disperse, ready to take on a new form. Knowing what we know of the physical world now- mass energy, field energy, elemental fluids, change as constant…

Permit me one last little foray, to convey this feeling. We’re going to talk about music, that most ancient magic. Many religions treat music with sacredness, and see the beginning of All to be a sound or even the act of sound. The sacred syllable ‘Om’ or AUM that you have probably heard eagerly intoned by an aspiring yogi somewhere was originally never supposed to be written- it was a sound that the ancients believed encompassed all of consciousness and un-consciousness. The entire Universe in a single sound. Whichever religion or community ensconced you as an adolescent probably used music as something sacred, something that brought every human together in a certain space. Something that at times could overwhelm you- a kind of intimate experience with the sounds that caused your heart-rate to elevate, skin tingle and tears swim. Joyful or sorrowful, or maybe actually both. A moment out of time, away from anything else outside.

God.

Nirvana. Ekstasis. Brahman.

Sound, similar to some of the quanta we discussed before, is a disturbance in the air. When a musical instrument -or voice- intones a pitch, it vibrates and pushes the air around it. The excess white noise dissipates, but a pattern of disturbance remains that compresses and decompresses repeatedly with a particular frequency. If you could imagine the space between you and the instrument/performer as an infinite series of etch-a-sketch panels, it would be as if that initial vibration was a hand-print that was then rapidly copied by every etch-a-sketch panel until it reached you with negligible change. Sound is not a missile that shoots at your head (though some songs may appear that way….) but a pattern that surrounds you for a moment and then dissipates. It does not get poured into your ear like a substantive gift; its pattern is met by your eardum, where a couple of highly specialized body parts- a bone, a fluid-filled container, a membrane, tiny hairs- all work to translate that frequency into the firings of neurons on to the brain. Internally, then, we vibrate sympathetically with the pattern from the original source. The act of listening to music is an act of connection, not just with that one source but with all the elements involved in the process. If you come into this experience mindfully- without other thoughts or desires or constraints in the way- you experience a moment of pure being. It may be dissonant- where the frequencies are harder to predict for our system of neurons- or harmonious, made of small whole numbers that seem to resonate preternaturally. It may be just beyond the grasp of our mind, but when you experience music this way I am convinced that you forget your ‘self’ for a moment and experience the Divine.

It is at least what I call the Divine. Brahman. Tao. I sense this in music, in nature, in the smile of a stranger and in a passage of literature. I felt it at dusk the day I saw a million bats pour out of the largest cave passage in the world, formed in swirling, twisting columns to evade the pursuit of giant daredevil hawks from above. I felt it recently in a darkened movie theater as the images and sounds of a black and white film from Mexico City combined to convey something of the true awe and power of life which imbues even the seemingly mundane. I felt it when I walked around the largest Buddhist structure on earth, when I witnessed the resounding sunset Aarti ceremony on the river Ganga in India’s holiest city, when I experienced a mass in a French Cathedral drenched in mystic organ vibrations. But I also feel it in some small way in ‘normal’ everyday occurrences, interwoven with the sounds of carefree children at play or in the way light scatters during the magic hour before nightfall. It is there when people come together harmoniously, when nature arises of itself and All flows unimpeded. It is everywhere around us, and permeates every part of us. When we are able to let go of trying to define what it is and where to find it, worried by what was done before and what will come to be- only away from all these concerns of the self can we begin to accept this Truth. The ancients fundamentally understood that our perception of the world and our idea of self was flawed, and that when you withdraw from this flawed perspective either via meditation, deprivation, or devotion you could get in touch with the unity or oneness underlying all that we sense as ‘separate’.

But does this mean that the only answer is for us all to retreat into monasticism, spend all of our days in silent meditation on the underlying Void? I don’t know, maybe that would make the world a better place. But it seems a fantasy to me; there is too much desire in the world, too many gripped by concerns and fears of the self. Too much suffering, in a way. The answer can not be that we all simply disengage and follow our own Tao or Tantra…this is why the developments of Jesus and Gautama and Muhammed among many others were so important: they taught us that we can take this Eternal Truth and make it applicable to our own mundane lives. That going beyond our ‘self’ to experience the divine was a personal experience, but one that brought us all together- and one that could only lead to love and compassion for every thing and person in our lives. To withdraw is to ignore and deny an essential part of this experience of life. It will never be a perfect existence, a carefree existence. A life without struggle. We will make mistakes, and when we plan our plans will fall apart. Our best intentions will go awry and our greatest accomplishments will seem to come when we least expect it. Decisions will lead to more decisions and decisions to follow after that, endlessly. Good or bad won’t fully describe any of them in hindsight or foresight.

Our only way forward has to be to do the best we can in the moment and then let go of our expectations for what should happen next. To learn what we can from the past, from others in our lives, to set goals or guiding principles for our lives and then accept that all of these inputs will only point our compass needle in a certain direction; the needle tells us nothing of the obstacles, diversions, and turnabouts along the way. The teachings of all the axial age greats are important, but inherently incomplete. As the Buddha said in his parable, the boat is only meant to get us across the river; what happens next is up to us.

But that’s just, like, my way, dude. You can find your own.