Tat Tvam Asi: Responding to the Infidel About The Limits of Atheism

Posted by Josh in August 6th, 2008

Posted in: Joshua Minton's Fiction, Religion, Art & Spirituality Tags: death, eternity, God, philosphy, spirituality, transcendentalism, truth

I have been kicking around how to respond to Infidel’s comments the other day in my post about how atheists are just as brain dead about God as theists are.

This is a really hard distinction to make–pointing out where the atheist is wrong because they are right about so much that it really seems like splitting hairs but at the same time is so important that I solely credit my spiritual fulfillment and happiness to its understanding.

I don’t believe in the literal word of the Bible or any religious text. This doesn’t mean I don’t see value both ethically and culturally in these texts, just that I don’t hold them up as a point of worship to justify the hatred (however subtle) of other people over ideation. See, I live in America which is supposed to be founded upon the precept that what someone believes shouldn’t be held against them in their pursuit of happiness.

America, the country, seems to have become yet another collectivized turd floating in the socialist bowl of history but the philosophy of what America was founded upon is as solid and inspiring as ever. The people of America have always had more heart than brains–we were founded by peasants and artisans and have had very good luck with fostering the occasional individual of great genius whose contribution to science and reason have dragged the rest of us in this country along quite nicely. But most of us in America are as stupid as a stump when it comes to true freedom.

True freedom, like Krishnamurti said in 1929, “is a pathless land.” Nobody can lead you to freedom which genuinely breeds the happiness we officially claimed we were guaranteed the pursuit of in 1776. Truth lies beyond all thought and reason and has nothing to do with the metaphoric rituals of whatever church one could possibly give patronage to in the service of what they deem to be holy in life.

So atheists and I both agree that religion has caused more pain and misery in this world than any plague, war, or assigned act of god. We agree that it’s probably time that humanity put down this mind virus which causes so much pain. Just as we wouldn’t touch a hot stove again after realizing that it burns our hands, we can put these ideas down and never pick them up again. Playing with fire is playing fire even if the flame takes thousands of years to finally burn out.

And like the atheist, I believe that science and reason can (and I hope optimistically will) help us to map out our existence from the deepest depths of the inner spaces of our psyches to the farthest reaches of outer space (see my post about my philosphy of living Between the Points). But there is a point where human knowledge as an organ and function of consciousness comes to an end. We do not truly know from where we each (meaning our individual ego consciousness) came from and where we each go to when the brain ceases functioning (which is the scientific definition of death). We live between those points and this is also the domain of science, reason, and religion. Beyond these two points (which are ultimately the same point of ego singularity where the individual and collective consciousness of our species breaks down utterly and completely). So there is no omniscient uberbody we can point our fingers at and blame for our illnesses and laude for our lucky days.

But the atheist says this is all. This is the mind state Nietzsche referred to as, “Groveling before sheer fact.” Some are okay with understanding it all ends as an intellectual notion. But let’s say that this understanding of our own mortality and about how our senses and science will never be able to pierce the veil of mystery that surrounds our existence was understood to be a law of nature like gravity?

What goes up must come down and they who believe that an intelligent designer is out there meting out punishment and passing out eternity have been sadly mislead.

What do you do with a fact besides accept it? Gravity doesn’t give a shit if you think it’s untrue.

And here comes the killer. What is a mind that has truly accepted the fact of its own ceasing to exist in the moment? Not the mind which states death is certain as an intellectual abstract but one that truly understands what its talking about and acts accordingly by ceasing to act. I’m talking about the mind that, through accepting the sheer fact of its own demise, begins to drain itself of the filter of stored consciousness through which it acts in the moment. All the experience, the moving motion of analysis and cataloging of sensory stimuli evaporates like milk left on a burner turned up on high for an hour.

And then what is there? What if there is no longer an observer in the moment? What happens to that which is being observed?

Obviously if there is no observer because a mind has been emptied of the content of its consciousness in the moment after accepting a sheer fact–there would be no separation between the entity of the observer and the subject of its observation.

Thou would be that.

Observation is a movement of thought and this is also what we call time which is as relative to each observer as grains of sand differ from each other on a molecular level.

But the mind which has taken an ego dump isn’t dead because it still functions even when voided of pouring its attention into the mental bank account of memory of experience which makes up our entire individual egos.

Our minds are as delicate as the skin of an overfilled balloon. And like the air in a pierced balloon, the content of our minds can be expelled with any breach. Groveling before this sheer fact is puncturing the skin of our mental balloons and even when the content has been expelled completely, the structure is still intact and functioning on a biological level in the moment. The analysis of sensory information in the moment along with its categorization and storage as experience has ceased to function yet the mind is still working. What has happened? Can you see it? The secret of death.

Eternity in the moment. It’s right here.

As a purely literary reference which has a valid analogy to the subject matter at hand–in the Gospel According to Thomas (the saint who went to India), one of the Nag Hammadi lost books of the Bible, the disciples ask Jesus when heaven will come. He said something heretical to those who value literary dogma over spiritual truth. He said, “The Kindgom will not come by expectation. They will not say, ’see here.’ ’see there.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it.”

Tat Tvam Asi.

Thou are that, Śvetaketu. Thou art that.
photo credit: uzi978

Infidel753 responds and closes out the argument here. It’s a must read as he is one smart dude–you could do far worse for yourself than subscribe to his RSS feed. While you’re at it, subscribe to JD’s writing (see comments)

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jdallen Said in August 7th, 2008 @6:32 am

I guess my comment about the innate stupidity of some varieties of atheist was taken as an invitation to discussion by the old Infidel.

Sorry. It takes more than one person for a discussion, unless there are serious psychological problems, and I am just not into it. I had enough of those discussions long ago and I’m not going to participate any longer than this comment.

I guess there are different types of atheists. There are those who make a religion of atheism. I’ve known a few. The most knowledgeable was a guy who was forced into Jehovah’s Witnesses his whole childhood by his clinically insane mother. Rather than work up some sort of asinine description, I’ll just draw from the movies – think Carrie’s mom, in that flick with Sissy Spacek. This guy, like most Witnesses, knew the bible forward and backward, chapter and verse, and was almost as happy as he ever got when he could use the contradictions in it to trap surface Christians in paradoxes. I guess he thought he was demonstrating his massive intelligence in that way, proving to someone that their beliefs were stupid. Turned out in the end (for him, anyhow: suicide by OD), that his adamant atheism was mainly just a reaction against his mother’s excess in more things than her adamant Christianity.

Other types of atheist, and to my mind, the more “true” atheist – are those who just don’t care what you believe and will allow you to believe whatever you like without complaint or discussion.

That is a religion, too, of course. Everyone’s belief system is a religion. I don’t care how much you argue against it and talk and think endlessly about it – the more you discuss it the more obvious it is that your own belief system is your religion. It is not just similar to, it IS philosophy. Fine. If you love discussion, that’s a field that will grow cotton forever without needing to lie fallow. Go for it. I’ll drop in once in a while and see how it’s going, but that will be the extent of my participation.

Josh Said in August 7th, 2008 @2:58 pm

JD-first of all, if you don’t take the last three paragraphs of your comment and turn them into the beginning of a short story, I will never forgive you. Having been reading your stuff for over three years now, I realize that’s your online voice but starting off with that and building a character and a situation from it would be a very interesting piece to read. Make sure to send it to me when you get it done.

You said, “Every belief system is a religion.” Every piece of fiction and article in the Wall Street Journal is also a belief system and just like a library with a thousands of books, our heads are filled with memories which form a belief system: the “Belief in Myself as a Concrete Entity” system of thought and worship.

I predict that two more centuries of social evolution will yield that the cult of individualism was the final religious obstacle that had to be overcome in order for our species to prosper.

I could be wrong though. Just in case, I’m going to file for a tax shelter credit, start my own religious special interest group (who couldn’t do better than the American Right Wing Evangelists who gave us the current representative of his people’s will) which I’ll name in honor of the Bill Hicks bit–”The People Who Hate People Party!” The joke was that he was having trouble getting them together.

“People who hate people–get together!”

“No! Fuck you”

We’re having a little trouble getting the first meeting off the ground.

Fantastic Bastard Said in August 8th, 2008 @7:59 am

Man, I’m gonna have to kind of back JD here… If this is what you want to debate, fine. I hope it tickles your pickle. I’ve had my fill of this topic in the past, but I still feel the need to interject. I guess I’m representing the agnostics. I like sitting high on the fence and watching both sides struggle…

Agnostics: We (people) don’t know, can’t know and won’t know. Once we find out for sure its moot anyway, regardless of the outcome of the argument. Thus, why worry about it?

J, remember the night we made tea and PB sandwiches then went to visit the tree in BG? I went to bed content with the fact that I may, or may not be, someone else’s dream and when they woke up I would cease to be. I had rattled my brain so much over this topic (in about 2 hours) that I actually was OK with it. I realized there was nothing I could do about it. It sounds like Tyler Durden but, once you let yourself go to that point, you’re free, either way.

Josh Said in August 8th, 2008 @5:11 pm

FB–nuttin’ but love for you homie–you know we’re down like downtown Mayor Brown. That mindstate of being free you mention in the last sentence of your comment is the same exact one referred to in the initial argument.

Total acceptance of the fact yields enormous energy of attention to apply to the ever present moment. This is attention we could be using to support family and friends, to building bridges with our neighbors and to finding political leadership that represents the greatest angels of our natures instead of the lowest bowels of our refuse.

I’ve said all I have to say on the subject. I’ll close with a quote from page5 of Krishnamurti’s book “Think on These Things” where he discusses the true meaning of education and I promise the next thing I write is going to have a big purple vein dick joke in it.

“Is it the function of education merely to help you to conform to the pattern of this rotten social order, or is it to give you freedom–complete freedom to grow and create a different society, a new world? We want to have this freedom, not in the future; but now, otherwise we may all be destroyed. We must create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you become intelligent, so that you are able to face the world and understand it, not just conform to it, so that inwardly, deeply, psychologically you are in constant revolt; because it is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God or love; and you cannot inquire, observe, learn, you cannot be deeply aware, if you are afraid. So the function of education, surely, is to eradicate, inwardly as well as outwardly, this fear that destroys human thought, human relationship and love.