Religion and Theology

I am born into a non-practicing Catholic family, since my father was and continues to be a border-case atheist. However, I learnt many things about Christianity from my mother, most of which I found intriguing and the Bible stories engaged me at a certain level at that tender age. My father did not like us to go to the church, and perhaps because of this I was particularly drawn to the church. I only occasionally visited our church with my mother and other family members, particularly during festivals, marriages and so on. However, over the years of my childhood and early teens I had plenty of occasions to go to our church by myself, with my sister, and with some of my friends. I also had the opportunity to visit quite a few other Catholic as well as Protestant churches in the vicinity. I was a church-tourist a child, funny as it may sound.

As I try to recall those years, I think I was never really keen on the theology and philosophy of religion before the age of 16. My spiritual transformation occurred during my late teens, initially owing to the writings of certain Christian mystics and saints. However, my not-so-deep involvement with religion during my pre-adolescent years certainly made me curious and sympathetic toward religion, despite never being a believer in any real sense. It put me in some kind of right frame of mind, sensitive and vulnerable to higher influences.

I look back at my many childhood love affair with the Church with some nostalgia. The rarefied atmosphere and ambience of our church, particularly when it was deserted, the otherworldly majesty of the crucified Jesus at the altar, the solemnity of the Mass, the large imposing image of Mary and infant Jesus, statues and icons of saints, the aroma of the place, Father Peters, and my half-funny stints with confessing, I remember all of these only in faint glimpses  strange that so much of my childhood is lost to my memory  but that is enough to make me sick in a beautiful way I think children usually have some special vitality and perceptivity, one can even see it as being a kind of creativity, which makes them experience the world and connect with it in a visceral way. It is something that is lost after the age of ten or twelve. Ironically, I do not identify myself with the child that I was, because most of the traits and character that I have were not developed then, but at the same time I had some of the profoundly thrilling experiences (semi-religious and otherwise) of my life when I was a child. I think I began as myself  a continuity of a thinking, evolving being  only from my 8th grade. Prior to that I was an ordinary ignorant bum. But sadly with the loss of ignorance comes the loss of innocence too. Innocence can have a magical quality to it, and simple-mindedness can be very comforting indeed.  
Notwithstanding my curiosity and fascination about churches, I was not really preoccupied with religious matters in any noticeable way. I took God, Mary, Jesus, and the Bible for granted, and did not think much about them in theological terms. Blessed be innocence They were stories and myths and I adored them as such. Sometimes I think I too must have got all those usual questions, whether God exists, whether Jesus was really born, and even if he did is he really all that important, to what extent can we believe the Bible and so on  but my questions must have been vague and fleeting as I dont recall wrestling with any of them. I simply tried to believe, and in fact believed, whatever they said without any skepticism  all of that would come later. I sometimes prayed and worshipped sincerely, and petitioned God, Mary, Jesus and the Saints for many petty things I was bothered with.

When I was 12, it is again strange and I dont remember what prompted it, but I recall being depressed for several days over the question of whether we are all alone in the vast emptiness of the universe. During the high-school years, I used to get depressed not infrequently, but most often it was due to the Monday morning syndrome (experienced usually on Sunday late evenings), or some other school or family matter. There were only a very few occasions when my depression was owing to some existential reason. The emptiness and the vastness of the universe one lasted for a few days, but later it completely disappeared, I can trace no continuity but I think it left me unconsciously in some kind of existential angst ever since. Apparently everything with me and around me was the same, but maybe something inside me started changing unconsciously. Incidentally, another major bout of depression I went through was when I learnt that trees could feel and experience, which prompted in me the question how bored would they be feeling standing all alone all their long long lives unable to move I wondered, why would God or whatever supernatural force there is create such a universe where there is such infinite suffering I tried to imagine myself standing like a tree one day when I was walking on the road flanked by trees, and it really shook me from the roots (pun not intended).

Even at that time, I was 15 by then, I did not believe in such a simplistic notion as the Biblical God who created the earth and the heavens. Though I cant trace it, I think my father has had considerable influence on me. He is not actually not an atheist, he rebelled against the Catholic religion but he does have some personal philosophy which is more complex and less nave than that of a materialist. I too liked to believe there was some kind of order and meaning in the universe, but then the consideration of possibly endless suffering in our world was shaking even that faith I had. Even if there is a God, he has no meaning in a world which can allow for infinite and indefinite suffering for so many of the beings populating it. I was very much confused and depressed, though fortunately this did not last either. Outside though, I was getting on with my life and school as usual.

This was the time when my thinking was awakening, and I started casually pondering on some deeper things of life. I considered myself as a philosopher, and I started collecting many books though I didnt read most of them. I used to spend a lot of time in the libraries too, though there was no focus in my reading. I felt gloomy sometimes when I thought about my personal future, because I wanted to achieve a lot but did not know how to go about it. But it was also an exciting period of my life with many budding interests, for I was getting interested in so many things such as the evolution of human beings, the big bang, environment, civilization, society and religion.

My best friend was my long-time classmate Steven, and it turned out that he had an uncle who occasionally visited him. I too had met him (we used to call him just Uncle) a couple of times and had brief talks. I was impressed with him a lot. And then luckily for us, Stevens uncle shifted into our neighborhood. At that time we were doing a science project for the school, he offered to give us guidance and spend some time with us, and that was how we got closer to him and were soon spending whole evenings discussing with him everything under the sky (actually mostly listening and dropping questions now and then). This was a turning point in my life. My search for truth and understanding, my basic orientation to life, everything started from this period. I can only wonder how would I have turned out without this encounter with Uncle, it would have been a completely different me I suppose, and I dread the thought. Actually I did not agree with many of Uncles views, he had his prejudices, limitations he was rather eccentric in some matters besides being a chain smoker (and I normally detest people who smoke in front of others), but despite all this I became me because of his influence. In the subsequent years I had many other crucial influences too, and I am very grateful to all of them, as well as to my life and circumstances in general for having steered my course in the direction they did.

At some point, I made a conscious choice that I had to give up all the fondness I had for Catholic Christianity. Simply because I was born into a family with a certain religious affiliation, there was no need that I had to identify myself with that religion and that only. I never thought of Christianity as a true religion. It is a theological doctrine supported by certain myths, like the creation myth of Adam and Eve, and the redemption myth of Jesus Christ. Gods and monsters, heaven and hell, they can have a certain appeal to the childish fairy-tale loving part of us, but they do not correspond to the real world in any way. I was never much taken by the doctrinaire aspects of the Christianity, I am particularly averse to Protestant fundamentalism that is currently sweeping across the world. And yet I liked the Church as an institution, as a tradition, as a stabilizing force, as a symbol of holiness in our mundane world (looking at it in a positive way). Therefore I could go with Christianity to some extent, the myth, the ritual, the sense of silence and sanctity the Church has the whole aura but really no core, no essence. When I became mature enough to embark upon a serious quest for myself, it was very easy to dissociate myself from whatever religious background I had.

Uncle was keenly into Zen and introduced us to the whole dimension of mysticism including Christian mysticism. Our mentor was a big fan of the 13th century Germany mystic Meister Eckhart, and when I first came across Eckharts writings, I was shocked to realize that someone existed right in the midst of the Catholic tradition who could talk so boldly, so deeply.  I couldnt understand much of what Eckhart spoke, yet I could sense the sheer power of the words. I had access to a chockfull of books on mysticism, and some cutting edge physics like those of Paul Davies, in Uncles library. I was 18-years old by this time, and those were heady times. I read many books on Zen by D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts and others. I read certain books by Idries Shah on Sufism (Islamic Mysticism), and Eli Wiesel on Hasidism (Jewish Mysticism). I tried to mediate a lot, but it was difficult at that time, my mind was very turbulent.

Thus began my exploration of the path of mysticism so many years ago, and I am still on that path though I had to take many detours in the middle and found myself lost in the jungle of the world many times in my struggle for survival.

Today I am at a state where I have a good foundation in theory, but am still grappling with simple things when it comes to practice. Therefore my focus nowadays in matters of spirituality is on practice, to be more specific, on practicing awareness. The concept of awareness (which means self-awareness) is at the core of mystic Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. Basically it involves cultivating a thoughtless, but fully aware, state of mind for sustained periods of time. I consider myself as making satisfactory progress in this direction, even as my clarity of vision is improving.

Thoughts come in a dreamlike semi-stuporous state of mind when the inner eye is closed. So the technique here is that the same energy that normally goes into thinking has to be diverted into seeing. As we close our eyes and sit and watch the traffic of thoughts and memories moving to and fro inside our mind, staying aloof, just standing by and watching without going along with them, the thought processes subside. As thoughts become less, awareness expands. To me spirituality means accumulation of this awareness. Once the mind becomes full of awareness, with thoughts completely nullified, the transcendence of self is achieved. There would be nothing that separates one from the universe. In fact, one is no more then, one becomes the universe. To me this is the goal of spirituality and religion.

Organized exoteric religions, Christianity, Islam, and so on as well as Hinduism and Buddhism as they are practiced by the masses, are only good in cultivating a conscience in us, the sense of good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice. As such, they belong to the realm of ethics, and cannot be depended upon in the spiritual quest. True spirituality consists in cultivating consciousness, as opposed to conscience. Only esoteric religion, or mysticism, can guide us on this path. The truth of existence, as discovered independently by many esoteric religions of the world, lies hidden in the nature of our consciousness. Consciousness is the ultimate reality. We can discover that reality within ourselves, we can become that reality, in fact we are that reality, because we are the consciousness within ourselves, beyond body and mind. Only, this consciousness needs to become conscious of itself, it has to become purified. This is exactly what constitutes spiritual practice. I still have so many unanswered questions, but instead of tackling them with my ignorant, unaware mind in the darkness, I intend to become fully aware first, move into broad daylight and then explore the nature of reality.