You don't need religion or superstition

for a powerful spiritual experience.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this hub is twofold:

First, I hope that by analyzing and removing layer after layer from whatever superstition in which you may be currently stuck, you will achieve true mental freedom and be able to finally experience your full potential by eliminating FEAR from your mind once and for all. Eliminating fear of deity is probably one of the highest evolutionary steps we can achieve at this stage in our development, and apparently not as easy for most as some luminated minds believed; actually we see a backlash reversal to religious fundamentalism. Listen to what other free thinkers have to say and see which makes more sense to your intellect: blind faith in some invisible and never proven deity, mystery, destiny, oracle, coffee stain, Tarot spread, Zodiac sign or the dozens and hundreds of wonderful scientific facts exposed clearly by brilliant minds? We have mapped the human genome, and are on the brink of exponential true-life miracles. Superstition belongs to the times when people were afraid of thunder in their caves. But because genetically we are the same people as those in the caves, we must actually make an effort to shed illogical beliefs.

Second objective: we will study together here what a mind is, because it appears that even many of the bright "minds" of our century are having trouble explaining it. I do not intend to raise an argument with anyone who argues for a living. I am merely stating that if you review 20 viewpoints you will end up with many diverse definitions for a mind. When the LEFT and RIGHT brain were proposed, it was not for their physical location, but rather to better describe distinct and opposite qualities of the same brain. Likewise, any definition we come up with in this work is simply to mold and to shape how we think of the vast treasure that exists between our ears. Furthermore, if we think about it in certain ways, we gain the ability to manipulate our own mind not only into doing things for us, but training it to become infinitely more powerful, and that is the highest power you can have on this "plane of existence"; it is ALMOST supernatural, or let's say as close to it as you can ever get. We all have incredible mental powers to unleash, and you don't need to be either a religious fanatic or on "the dark side" to control these powers, as religious people and mystics would have you believe when they mention "black" and "white" magic, and they tell you you have to fast, dress funny and wait 7 years before you can learn about their secrets. These are all feeble attempts by people who mastered a few mind tricks to do what we humans do worst: hold themselves high behind a veil of unproven sanctity so they could build a flock of "lesser" students to control. Many of these people never experienced the powers they are preaching, they are just followers who learned some nonsense by heart. True mystics and geniuses are solitary by definition. Even sadder, most of these (let's call them cult leaders) have just inherited a list of "what to do", so they never really used their minds to ask a single critical question about their own path. They only ask comfortable questions, to which their dogma claims to know the answer, perpetuating their state as unplugged from reality.

CHAPTER ONE

What is a mind?

It is interesting how my deepest spiritual insight was forged mainly from books on science and physics; there may be a Buddha quote here and there, or a mental exercise borrowed from western esoteric mysticism. You find truth all around you, but it seems when truth hit Earth, it shattered into a thousand pieces, and you need to escavate deep into many different dogmas, ideas, and mental paths to find the pieces and put them back together. In a nutshell, truth is what makes sense to you. Do not believe what I say simply because it's written (said The Buddha). Think, study and determine if it makes sense to you!

The chief difficulty in finding a definition of a mind is that most people who try begin by tackling a complex unknown, their entire persona. They begin by asking "what is a ME" and soon enough they tumble down the rabbit hole into academic debates on semiotics, and ending up with exponentially more questions than they had when they started, and still no answer in sight. No wonder religion seems to be such a cozy place; it gives straight answers to circular questions, even if those answers are just lies and fabulations.

I believe true maturity for a human being comes in the realization that some questions simply have no answers, and the sooner you are truly at peace with this fact, the better you will function. If you can sleep at night and make it through disease, suffering, emotional and financial hardships without longing for a supernatural escape, you are well on your way. Congratulations. If you need to pray, and try to invent some supernatural justification or escape, then you have a little bit of work ahead of you, and you may relapse into religion a few times. Don't be afraid or ashamed, we are all at different points along the same wonderful journey towards mental maturity, we are all babies that sooner or later won't need to suckle on anything for comfort. Some sooner, some later - but it has begun and it cannot be stopped or reversed!

We all have hope and longing and desire and emotion, it is human to have them, I do too. I worry sick when my kid is not feeling well, and I curse at the gas pump same as you do. If I feel really, really ill I also contemplate on "what happens if I die now". Our feelings simply have to be understood for what they are, and channeled properly. Be mature and accept that sometimes the answer is "I don't know" and you will no longer need to hang on to silly beliefs through the mechanism of religious faith, which you will come to see as rather retarded, when really analyzing it. Belief in your abilities, in the future and so on, is a good belief to have - extroverts with an internal locus of control (optimists) function much better, these are people with strong belief (not to be confused with FAITH in fairy tales). However, you need to know when to stop, when belief changes to "faith" because that is when you jumped way over the horse. Let's see why:

If I believe I can lift 200 pounds, the strength of my conviction may carry me through. If I believe I can lift 400, the strength of my conviction may leave me with a herniated muscle or tissue, and at 1000 pounds my belief could maim or kill me. It is the same problem that drives religions to slaughter each other, the fact that you need to keep beliefs in check with reality and say - this is far enough for me, whatever my leaders are saying stopped making sense quite a while ago, I think I have to go home and watch the Science channel a bit. Saying nothing while your peers rejoice in stupidity, just encourages the ones running the show to continue to impose their retarded fantasies on you.

Believe in yourself, believe in the outcome if you put work behind your efforts, believe in whatever you want, as long as you don't start sounding like a lunatic and it doesn't hurt you or the people around you. Always ask: if I share this belief with my intelligent and rational friends, will they think I lost it? And speak up. Lose a few church going friends, if they feel like picking up their toys and going home because you are not fun anymore.

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. "

[Carl Sagan, 1996: In the Valley of the Shadow Parade Magazine Also, Billions and Billions p. 215]

We are going to explore together a fascinating world, which exists right between your ears. It is not magical or supernatural in any way, but it has such complexity that it will keep you fascinated, fulfilled and will let you tinker with powers beyond your wildest dreams, for it has an infinite complexity to take you as far as you dare to go. Can it be used for both good and evil? Of course, I am not here to tell you what to do or judge your desires and motives. No person is totally good or bad. We all have times when we are good, times when we are bad, sometimes we act selfish and other times we make incredible sacrifices. We are liberal about some things and conservative about others. It is called being human, and that is what we are.

I would highly recommend you read "The Society of Mind" by Marvin Minsky, a scientist who probably will remain in history as the man who shook the foundations of all previously postulated "mind mechanics" theorems, by simply approaching it from a different angle (it was about time someone did). Our work here is to a great extent based on his, at the very least the part where we begin thinking of the mind as a complex Universe (or kingdom) made of countless highly specialized "agents", each interacting flawlessly with many others, which together make the very building blocks of the complex and amazing unit that is YOU, giving your entire persona the appearance of intelligence.

In this paper we will rather advocate a secular and scientific explanation of how the mind works, and bring a fresh perspective into how you can have lots of fun training your mind and analyzing its' infinite pathways, without the least need for religion or mysterious explanations. To communicate with your mind, you will use a language your mind readily understands, the language of symbols.

It is much easier to think of the various forces at play in your mind as intelligent entities. By giving each mind power a personality, you can invoke or evoke them, and give them the control which is rightfully theirs, to do their job. Imagine how much easier it would be to quit smoking or to save money, if you would delegate it to "someone else" who's job it is to do only that task, a respectable and powerful general in your kingdom (your mind is the kingdom, and a kingdom is easier to manage when you delegate responsibilities, just like a large corporation). That mental force inside you, that entity you entrust will do his or her job faithfully. You can use this simple mental construct to accomplish anything you want in life.

Cabala does that: they propose a mental construct with entities that have powers. Their Achille's heel? They borrow these entities from Judeo-Christian folklore, keeping the mind strictly anchored in fear, practically cannibalizing any mental progress made possible by the mental exercises themselves.

Lastly, when you shake off the monkeys of "divine vengeance", "astrology", and all other mental stigmas or unfounded superstition we get from parents or acquire along the way, it is the most liberating feeling. It is one thing to avoid undesirable behavior due to "fear of God" and another to do it because you truly are a free human being who chooses for him / herself unhindered.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

[Albert Einstein]

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

[Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World]

You see, some scholars at the beginning of the 20^th century argued that religion is necessary for morality, because only someone who "believes in god" can truly be a good person, and lack of such faith is the root of all evil. Even the founder of Scientology, whose core mechanics betray an education in the western esoteric, held that thought dear. So do many other groups that claim "progress". I studied some of these from the inside. To associate "lack of religious faith" with evil was common thinking for 120 years ago; after all, they were just barely out of the Middle Ages. They would not dare speak otherwise, bcause that was the accepted "gentleman's" thinking of their day. They also believed white males are superior, but we frown on that now, don't we? Let us be very careful where we get our wisdom from, and always ask questions!

I beg to differ and say that it takes infinitely more courage and determination to act morally in society without any fear of "divine" repercussions or some silly expectation to "gain eternity" in exchange for compliance with "the 10 rules" or any other unproven "divine" predicate.

Indulge me and pretend you are God for a moment. Are you afraid? Were you just flooded by thoughts of heresy as the Church so diligently pumped into your mind, that you are nothing, born in sin and with such a heretical thought you may even become unforgivable? Throw all that nonsense they fed to you in the mental toilet and flush. Now again, pretend you are God. You are sitting somewhere in the center of the Universe and all is happening according to your plan. That Universe you command is your mind, and inside of it you are indeed your own divinity. It is not make-believe, it is a very real and useful way of thinking about your own mind. It satisfies human need for myth, legend, mystery, and story-telling (which we have lost in the last century) by creating a real world of adventure inside your mind. And you have armies at your command, too. Every mental process is an intelligent agent you can control.

And the object of the adventure is running your kingdom (your mind). Any improvement you make will make your mind better. Your subjects know you are their God because they are one with you, you are the king and the kingdom and every power in it at the same time, you are everything. If you end, they end! Interesting to be a God, isn't it?

Back in the 1980s I was looking forward to the third millenium as a time of secular enlightenment, yet as a society we have reverted back to superstition, at least in the theocracy where I live, known as the United States. However, that is a good sign, because throughout history, people have reverted back to their core beliefs just before an expansion of insight and progress. It is as though the masses feel that huge change is right around the corner, and they draw near whatever gives them comfort, because what comes is new and new brings with it fear and uncertainty. So most people latch on to the most illogical things, like religion, because at least in that environment they know some of the rules, they are on "home turf".

When in a modern society you still have certain groups that treat you as "less than worthy" if you don't believe in "one God", and as a criminal if you are an Atheist, then something is truly retarded at the very root of that society, and history teaches us that suppressing free thought in favor of dogma is always a precursor to disaster. In many countries you cannot hold political office, or join certain groups unless you mindlessly swear your devotion to ONE GOD. At the same time many such groups claim their doctrine contains nothing against your moral beliefs.

Well, my moral beliefs say that:

• electing an arbitrary deity and mindlessly giving this invented entity my faith, adoration, fear, decision making, etc
• claiming I know enough about the "unknown" to postulate there is "one god", and stand by that choice with conviction
• and claiming I am nothing and worthless without divine meddling and divine indulgence

is simply self-deprecating, ignorant, and dangerous. If an intelligent threat from outer space were to arrive to our planet, they would like nothing better than a population of morons who take their clues from imagined deities above, and swear their allegiance together to the same in meaningless ceremonies, with one mantra: that without this belief in imaginary beings they would all be nothing more than a completely worthless, immoral, bestial and criminal crowd. Even Ronald Reagan, a conservative person, could see the danger in such an attitude.

My friends, what if next week we find out there is no God, or that there are actually 12 of them with a 13^th Super God? Obviously if you are part of the crowd that claimed there is ONLY ONE, you will need some Zoloft, and a few weeks to recover. "One" is as arbitrary a number as any other; what makes that alternative more viable than "Five"? My hand has five fingers therefore I think 5 gods is more appropriate.

If you take a perfect sphere and place other spheres of the same size around it, you will get 12, with one in the middle 13. That is why I believe in 12 gods. All great prophets had 12 apostles. Makes more sense than one, doesn't it?

I was born on July (7) / 13. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old. Maybe that makes me a prophet. I think it is plain stupid, but that is exactly the depth the justification of Astrology and other divination systems. Coincidences.

Maybe we find out that our whole Universe is nothing but an infection under the finger nail of God, supposedly a very, very large being, and no matter how good we are, he will still cut his nails one day and flush them down the celestial toilet. Time perception being our illusion of infinity: one of his seconds is a billion years to us, so 13.7 billion years (the age of our Universe) is enough time for him to barely take a few steps. In this scenario he is infinitely bigger, we owe our existence to him, we are part of him, but let's be serious - he has no clue we exist, just like you have no clue what tiny beings may live in your bloodstream, and whether at some level they may have become "intelligent" enough to adore you, the source of everything for them! But each of us likes to think they're a little more important than a bacterium in the "grand scheme" (another fantasy concept). I can name hundreds of other scenarios and they would all be just as valid as any of the Bible stories, some of these scenarios would probably make a little more sense.

All people who grew up with a religion feel deep down that our relationship with God is not one of love, but rather one of fear. But you are afraid to say it, sometimes afraid to even think it, because the "consequences" have been buried deep into your mind by repetition. So as a religious people, we proclaim our "faith", "devotion" and "adoration" simply because we fear worse consequences. My friend, that is not love, there is another name for "do what I say or else", and it is called blackmail.

If you are tired of this blackmail relationship with a make-believe fairy tale divinity, this hub is for you. Besides this working method for making sense of your own mind, and taking control over its' powers, I am sharing with you the amazing pleasures of thinking for yourself, without being influenced by arbitrary religious beliefs. Also the infinite bliss of exploring any mental path you choose without fear of divine repercursions. Your mind is an infinite resource - all you have to do is reach out and start using it.

There are many books out there written by free thinkers, and I suppose you can start by listening on YouTube to people unshackled by religion such as Sam Harris, Bill Maher, George Carlin, Pat Condell, Dennett, and others, because you will have lots of fun in the company of these collosal minds while at the same time ridding yourself of superstition, the most dangerous habit for a human. And yes, you can learn wisdom from comedians ;-)

I have no time to read lately, but if you do, read The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky. Also The God Effect by Brian Clegg, a nuclear physics book for laymen which goes into the "irrational" behavior of the subatomic world.