I have personally undergone an intellectual transformation in the past years

suchandra · June 22, 2007

"I have personally undergone an intellectual transformation in the past years", writes Harikes last week. Looks like he will be back soon to complete his path of bhakti and not to go a long way round.....

From his forum, discussion with Harsi:

Harikes: Am I correct in assuming that your question indicates your discomfort with feeling you must believe something you do not really believe? If so, I think such discomfort is good. Regardless of the right or wrong of any point of view, human beings feel most natural when then are allowed to believe what they want. Therefore, governments, businesses, and even religions, work hard to present data and ideas in a form that is consciously or sub-consciously digestible to encourage people to think these things are good for them or, optimally, it is their own idea developed by their own free will. When you think it is for your benefit to believe something, you will do so, and when you think you created the idea or you embraced another’s idea as your own, you truly will own it. Sometimes people find themselves in a state where they desire to have someone tell them what to do to attain liberation from the unhappy existence within which they live. In such cases, even if they were to follow a philosophy that demands faith and acceptance of ideas that are normally difficult to believe, it is ultimately their free will which allows them to believe anything. Although we can be forced to act in ways against our will by greater powers, no one can force you to believe what you do not wish to believe unless they convince you to believe it.

Considering that we all have the power to believe or not believe whatever we want, when such belief no longer fits within the scope of our intelligence we can change our belief to one more compatible with our present understanding or experience. Although this is a right we can exercise anytime, it is often not so easy to do or it is an unthinkable option! Some feel that once they have accepted something on faith, it would be blasphemy to think otherwise; contrary ideas would ultimately lead them to some kind of darker region and punishment. This fear of reprisal hinders transformation. Others do not wish to change, for although they know as well as anyone that some eccentric ideas come with the package of their belief system, there is enough good there to justify any strange position. For example, very few firmly believe that a King had hundreds of millions of wives who were all barren, or that the universe really is a bunch of flat concentric masses surrounded by tasty oceans, so they just let these topics flow by them, do not discuss them much, and rarely try to justify them. Some speak about the universe when they must, but the discussion is often either a fanatical demand that the statements are accepted as they are, or the scriptural descriptions are allegorically similar to modern observations. Difficult passages are generally read by most people in a neutral manner to avoid dealing with the subject.

There are statements by authorities within the Hindu tradition that demonstrate the complexity of the belief system and the lengths scholars go through to deal with them. Bhaktivinode, one of the most respected scholars, stated that the hells described in the 5th Canto of the Bhagavat are allegorical. If you believe him, you now have the problem of maintaining the opposing ideas that the scripture is absolute and literal, yet allegorical and obtuse at the same time. Faced with such a choice, how does one decide which model to apply when one is within the confines of a belief system? If one were to follow previous authorities and accept whatever they said, one would also have to believe they had some superior connection to the absolute source of knowledge which gave them the right to declare what was literal and what was allegorical. Troubles arise when these authorities disagree with each other on meaningful details, as one saw in the discussion on namabhasa where authorities had different opinions, or even in the major disagreements between sects within the tradition.

I bring up these points as an attempt to assist you in your struggle to decide what you believe or could/should believe considering your present intellectual development. The question then becomes: “Do I want to move down this path of doubtful questioning and expose myself to the potential of perhaps having to disagree with scriptural ideals?”

You have the right to do this, obviously, but do you have the will? It depends entirely on how you feel about it. If you do not feel the gain you might make by stepping out into the wide world of making up your own mind is worth the risk you have to take, then do not do it. But if you feel it makes sense to you, or that you really have no other choice since you know too much, then when and if you find the courage to do what you know is right, go for it. No one but yourself can make that decision for you for no one can change your mind but you.

The article quoted in your text refers to a mechanism whereby random events could selectively create chemical reactions that build molecules that could potentially build bodies. This is Darwinism from the molecular point of view and is nothing new. If you have dealt with Darwinism before, you can deal with this now.

Although I have personally undergone an intellectual transformation in the past years and I have no qualms whatsoever to accept any idea if it is what I feel is correct, I cannot accept the idea that life is founded on chemical combination. I have personal experience of my life being beyond the chemical body and I have experience of others’ lives beyond their physical bodies. Considering my experience and my understanding of life, I am unimpressed by the attempts of scientists to ‘prove’ that life arose from matter. I am also not interested in their speculative ideas or their speculative experiments that are extremely primitive, even if on the molecular level. The idea that random chemical reactions can create within a physical body the alchemical capacity to create non-physical reality might be plausible from the science fiction point of view (as in robots gaining life symptoms and taking over the world a.s.o.) but it contradicts Occom’s razor for it adds layer upon layer of assumption to explain something that is easily is understood once one accepts the ‘spiritual’ nature of life force and living energy.

When a plausible mechanism appears that demonstrates how living bodies came to populate this earth, we will feel better about the origin of human life on earth. Until that time, a religionist can either believe Brahma created our forefathers and put them on earth, or that our human ancestors arrived here from the stars, or our original parents were placed here in the garden of eden. And a scientist will believe life developed through a random chemical event that created something useful and the process of evolution took over from there. It is all a process of belief and we each decide how we answer our questions.