The Unnecessary Theology or is Religion Obsolete? A Short Reflection

Ritual behavior is as old as human societies. It is intrinsic to the primal human psyche and served as a social basis of tribal communities. Early shamanism and tribal spirituality gradually evolved through the ages into religion, as every other generation expanded and built upon the spiritual beliefs of their ancestors. It is uncertain as to when religious influence was utilized as a tool for social control, but probably that has been done ever since shamanic times, since the shaman had a very special role in tribal societies and he or she was considered an important authority. And with authority comes influence and power. And with power too often comes abuse, especially later on and into the Medieval of Europe (and even more so today, though the sources are shifting from religious authorities to corporative and political, but that's another subject to discuss). 

Religion is quite a peculiar phenomenon of human mind and in particular of this domain of it, that we know as Psyche. Symbolism is one of the earliest representations of spiritual believes, along with rituals. For some unclear reasons as of yet, psychologically humans need ritualistic assertion and reconciliation of their whatever deeds. Evolution of symbolism and religious thought are vast topics, hard to cover in brief. Actually, in brief one can give only the conclusions. That is, religion in all of its forms, had, historically, a major role in social governance and pharaohs, emperors and kings alike were attributed divine rights given to them from the God entity itself, so that to ensure public acceptance and so on pragmatic reasons. On the other hand, religion has a very important psychological function in giving hope and meaning to those unfortunate masses that weren't born with kingship rights, because those downthrotten masses needed all the hope for justice they could get, even though illusionary, since priests and popes alike always have been on the side of the ruling parties with the function of public speakers to tame the peasant crowds. Leaving satire aside, religion and religious esoterism are very interesting to study all in respect to psychology and the workings of  the unconsciousness. For the serious explorer a few major points are established and these are as follows: 

• If we consider the Universe as a representation of a God entity, then it would be inconsistent to ascribe particular religious preferences to it. That is, put archaically, God does not have a religion. 
• All the evil in this world comes from the irresponsible, selfish and primitive actions of humans. Natural disasters, for instance, cannot be described as evil, because they are part of Earth's climatic and geologic life, thus they are as necessary as good weather. If humans ascribe their own evilness to outside forces, this is only their own inability to take responsibility and self-control, unless they have mental disabilities in the psychiatric sense. 
• There is no need for special places of worship in order to attain personal insight nor does continuous, entranced pray bring deeper awareness. These are achieved by mental effort of thinking, not by memorizing and repeating old verses. 
• Ignorance is not a bliss, it is a concept for control over the masses still very much in use today.

In short, religion has served its role and can no longer positively serve as a unifying agent, but on the contrary, religion is a major segregator in our contemporary globalized society. And humanity better realize this sooner and take the next step in our mental advancement. So, yes, religion is obsolete and theology is a thing of our more primitive past and understanding. 

Religion must be interpreted through the aspects of psychology. This is the only way to realize its meaning and understand its essense. Nevertheless the seriousness of this pressing topic, let's conclude this article with a sense of humor:

• God

The Outer Journey of a Wandering Soul

In this twisted world with so much delusion, propaganda and adjusted information a person ends up wondering in confusion what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is not. Science and the philosophies are so much simpler in this regard, so much purer and easier to comprehend than politics, for instance.

Never before have I paid attention to the so called conspiracy theories, nor economics, nor politics. Those things didn’t really interested me, I saw them as trivial, banal and so much lacking of inspiration. I was interested in science, philosophy, psychology, religion and the esoteric. I remember about ten years ago reading in a book on Kabbalah by Papius about a magic head, just head without a body, that was able to speak and that gave answers to any question that its owner asked. A talking head with infinite wisdom that held the answers to everything. Wow. I remember I was so impressed by this supposedly existent magical source of knowledge, that I dreamed of owning such a head, I thought I would do nothing else but ask it questions until there are no questions left without an answer. On another occasion later on, doing a sacred incantation guided by another book, The Keys of Solomon, I made a wish to an all powerful dark angel demanding that “I want to know everything. I want wisdom and knowledge of it all.” I was 17 or so, alone in my room, sitting in a circle of salt surrounded by hand-drawn magic squares and symbols in front of the mirror. I saw nothing in it but my own image that almost shapeshifted the longer I starred at it. No eternal wisdom struck me at that time and I finished the ritual rather disappointed.

Back then I still didn’t knew that knowledge and wisdom are the result of much effort and persistence in learning and that those weren’t something that just come out of nowhere as a divine revelation neither are something that necessarily come with age. One doesn’t necessarily get wiser the older one gets if one doesn’t puts conscious effort in thinking. Even learning alone is not enough, one has to think, to contemplate and comprehend, to analyze and synthesize.

I began reading a lot, books and in the almighty Internet, watching documentaries was also something I used to do a lot, I’ve had periods doing just that all days long. Yes, you can call me a retard in a way I guess. I mean, I was 17 when I just discovered the riches of learning. But it was rather a rediscovery. I’ve been an inquisitive child ever since I learned to speak and an excellent student up until the fifth grade. But then in my early teenagehood I fell under the influence of bad company in bad social times. Between the ages of about 10 and 16 I used to drink, a few beers were all that I needed and then later the bad company I hooked up with introduced me to hard drugs, so I got addicted. Crazy huh, all this at such a tender age. A child. I was escaping family turbulences and I guess I needed some sort of everyday meaning that the drugs just provided. Anyway, the dark ages of my youth were ended for good at the age of 16, when my father finally took some parental responsibilities, beat me up seriously and locked me up at home for over a month. That was his way of dealing with family issues. We changed neighborhoods too and this was the beginning of my personal Renaissance. He left us after a few years and this was the end of the beginning of my new life without oppression and domestic tension.

And so my conscious quest for knowledge and wisdom began. I was mesmerized by the profound mysteries of the esoteric teachings and religions. Back on track in search of God after I got disillusioned about Her, never answering my prayers when I was 10 about peace and love between mother and father. By that time (after my dark ages) I already had come to the conclusion that there was something else guiding human behavior and relationships, so I got interested in psychology. I read two thick books of Pier Dako and a high school book on psychology before stumbling upon a book of Carl G. Jung’s. Not sure which of his works was the first I read, I think it was EON, in line with my esoteric interests as well. I also marveled at the amazingness of the Universe and began reading cosmology articles in astronomy websites. Then biology, the mysteries of life and evolution. Little by little, piece by piece the big picture of everything assembled in my mind. Sufi poetry filled my heart with bliss and inspiration. Zen sayings brought food for contemplation, though that was further later on. I read the entire bible and the quran too, along with some idiotic literature like the bible of the mormon. Lastly came quantum physics to the reaches of my horizons, connecting the big pieces with the little ones, the vastness within with the vastness without. Gradually I began realizing things, some of those were so profound to me that I was stunned for days. By then I realized another thing, that I didn’t needed a talking head, I had a head of my own and that no answers come to you until you are ready for them and also that wisdom takes time, apart from effort.

The big picture assembled from the beginning to the end, from the composition of atoms to the fusion of galaxies, from carbon to single celled organisms and following the logical branching and workings of evolution up to Homo Sapiens. Everything was getting clearer and clearer the more I learned and the more I contemplated. The old wisdom was finding its peculiar correlations with modern scientific ideas and observations on the cosmos. Then one day I thought, that the nature of black holes or Singularity was closest to that supreme God entity that esoteric teachings envisioned. Then I noticed the patterns in evolution and that there was no beauty in nature, but only pragmatic behavior, every element in it had a purpose and was directly related to another element with which it interacts. Every single design detail has a purpose that is directly influenced by the environment to which the organism is adapted. The different levels of evolution, some are really fast paced and other take tens of hundreds of years.

One of the most altering realizations I’ve had was about religion and that it is a product of human mind and the collective need of social order. Religion is quite a complex phenomenon of human society indeed and it is composed of many different levels. The most superficial are those related to framing society in order to create social order, which was essential in the development of civilizations and the most profound levels spring deep from the hidden layers of the human psyche. Human psychology is a very intricate and complex mental structure too with its most basic frame rooted in our mammalian instincts. That is why the God figures throughout the Evolution of Religious Thought always bear strong parental qualities. I realized that the religious concept of God is a projected construct that served a major balancing role for the human psyche and that without it humans may have as well gone mad. Not that they are not behaving quite insanely with it, fighting and killing each other off because “Your god is not my god”. So ridiculous, if only people could realize it and go through this realization without going mad, since the psyche is such a fragile structure, so easily destabilized and illusions can prove so hard to let go of. There are so many humans in this world whose sole meaning in their lives are their religious beliefs. So sad, who knows how long this will go on. Of course, the lack of a religious God-figure in this Universe does not by any means make it a cold and pointless space. Not at all. There are levels of truth and levels of reality. The Universe, it seems, is an amazing quantum structure of energy that behaves as a system, an organism even that we are all part of.

It was tough to realize that the grown ups aren’t really grown up in their minds. The realization that mostly just the bodies of people aged, but their minds remained on more or less basic levels of knowledge and understanding without ever going beyond the dogma and paradigm discouraged me greatly. Such a tough coming to awareness. The more I realized the more lonely I began to feel, seeing that this uncommon knowledge was not in the possession of many, none of my peers. I’ve always wanted to have a teacher, as described in the esoteric books, I never met one anyway. But then I realized that the Universe itself has become my teacher and this became my personal “religion” if you will. The Universe is always around and one is always in her embrace, like a womb that cares for you, even if at times somewhat indifferently. But that again, most of the times things do flow in ways that correlate, fit in my attitude, my mindset, my path, Synchronicity is something I experience a lot, not to mention the strange telepathic-providence instances that I’ve been through on many occasions that still remain rather inexplicable and beyond willful control. Though quantum physics does shed some light on these, still a lot to learn, a lot of expanses beyond the horizon to be revealed. Not long ago I understood what they meant by “Wisdom is a heavy burden”. It is. Though, I can bear it and much, way much more.

So there, the short story of my life. Not as short as I intended it I must say. Blog posts are meant to be somewhat shorter, well, it is not Twitter either, lol. But just those words, they are like a river, pouring on and on and on into an ocean. At some point you find yourself completely surrounded by its waters, lost sight of the land. The land is here, though, very close, just beyond the next sentence. I think humanity is on the verge of something, a great potential that can bring something that has never been before.

How It All Began. The Story of Earth, Life and Human Society. We Are 1 Big Family [part 3]

As powerful as the perception of beauty can be, in reality there are no ugly things. For evolution everything is practical, evolution does nothing without purpose. It does not create beautiful or ugly forms, evolution shapes every form so that it be optimally practical and useful to itself.
Indeed, if you observe nature and analyze the causes and consequences of animal behavior you will inevitable notice that every little detail has its purpose. Every skill and every colorful shade has a purpose and practical use in a world of tough competition and fight for survival.

Only the fittest survive and this law holds true even in our contemporary human societies in terms of peer and financial competition. Shaving off the unsuccessful and unfit lies at the core of every advancement. And advancement, as a process, signifies the transition to a better state. Advancement is what the process of evolution is involved with.
All living things adapt to the environment they inhabit and develop their skills based on their needs for survival. For instance, pray birds have adapted to life high above the surface, so that is why they developed excellent vision and long, sharp claws to enable them to hunt successfully land animals. The anteater is an excellent example for biological design optimally suited for the feeding habits of the animal – they have long, trunk-like mouth with long and thin tongue that can stick into termite holes and exceptionally long claws which makes them ideal tool for burrowing in the tough termite towers of dry mud.

Evolution is invariably practical, but there is one principle a part of her mechanism that is involved with the variations between individuals of the same group. That is the almighty natural selection instinct. Natural selection is a tool of the fundamental reproduction instinct, but it also triggers the self-preservation instinct in the form of fear and aggression. For this reason it is the males that are more brightly colored in nature, because they have to compete in order to reproduce. The more colorful, the stronger and more successful male will have the chance to pass on his genes.

Instincts are the basic form of behavior established through collective experience and imprinted in our DNA so to ensure that life will go on. It is simply amazing how collective experience is established throughout millions and billions of years and information is preserved and encrypted in molecules that basically serve as behavioral programs that guide the living being in its life.
Evolution, furthermore, shapes the design of the body as well. As we mentioned, the biological design adapts to its environment so that it increases its chances for survival. Biological design always changes and fits in the surrounding habitat, because self-preservation is the other basic and fundamental instinct of life. And that is why when Homo Sapiens left its birth place continent for the first time and began to take over the Earth, those groups that all took off as the same looking ancient African people in time developed so differently to form all the ethnic varieties we know today.
People who settled in the north hemisphere began to change over the millennia, because they needed to fit their new habitat. Their nose bases became thin, so that it could warm the cold air breathed. Their skin paled, because with very few months of intense sunshine the body did not needed to produce so much melanin anymore to protect the skin from UV rays, because clouds were doing this instead. Also, the blue and green eyes and light color hair is considered to be the result of milk-products consumption. People in Europe from tens of thousands of years have goats and cows and their main nutrition for many millennia has been milk and its products. Whereas the people in other parts of the world consumed very little to no diary products at all and that is why there are no light eyes and hairs in ethnic groups that do not derive from European settlers.
Every little detail of the body design is there for a purpose and this purpose is shaped by the geo-climatic specifics of the environment the organism has adapted to.
People in the hot and moist regions naturally have dark skin, because the body produces melanin, which builds up in the outer layers of the skin so that it protects the organism from harmful UV rays and bad burns. Also their noses are wider, so that it cools the hot air breathed. The hair has remained on our heads because its purpose is to cool or warm the brain. The eyebrows are designed to protect the eyes from sweat drops coming down the forehead. Make an experiment – shave your eyebrows and go into the shower, notice how water flows from your forehead directly into your eyes, whereas if eyebrows were present they would diverge the water away from the eye! This is the practical side of body design.

You know about this pesky useless appendix that people have that causes problems to kids eating nuts without peeling them. This is an evolutionary remain of a second stomach where primitive people some a hundred thousand years ago used to store plant products they ate for further digestion. After some couple of dozens of millennia the appendix will complete disappear from the human body, as well as the “wisdom” teeth at the back of your jaw.

For you see, environment is not a static constant and it is constantly in motion and a subject of change. So evolution is constantly at work as well, adapting the organism to its forever changing environment so that it always survives. Because if the organism is unable to adapt to its environment it simply dies out. And the job of evolution is to preserve and maintain life, also to make it better.

Our human life is so short that our environment seems to us as if it has always been there in the way we see it. But our whole human civilization has developed in just one frame of the whole lifespan of this Earth. Too often, unfortunately, our perceptions and minds are also as narrow. When we mindlessly segregate each other on “superior and inferior races” without being able to comprehend that we all are descendants of one race and one tribe – the Homo Sapiens. There are no other human races presently alive. How ridiculous racism is and a prominent trait of our primitive consciousness and narrow minds.

Thankfully and finally we have the solid facts that we are all one big family, descendants of one tribe located in Africa some 60 thousand years ago. Namely the Genographic Project that gathers up genetic data from tens of thousands of men, because the “Y” chromosome in the male genes passes with very little to no changes throughout the generations, so it is easy to follow. And our common ancestry does not finish there, it can be traced down the evolutionary ladder and back to the very first life forms on this planet. Because we are all born here and we are all part of this great journey of life that began 4 billion years ago. Even more, we are in a symbiotic relationship with this planet and this ecosystem, even though we have supermarkets and pharmaceutics today. We all share a common beginning and a common future and it is about time to take the next step in our evolution, the step that has to be made in our minds!

It is so naïve and ignorant when people think they are not animals. The truth is, that not only we are mammals, but sometimes people act more mindlessly than all other animals.
Our common instincts and physiological needs aren`t the only things all living beings share. We furthermore have such a close behavior, habits and social structure with other higher mammalians. But the human ego blinded by its illusions of immortality and perfectness treats other animals like inanimate things. When animals also have minds on their own, of course much down on the evolutionary tree than our complex human consciousness. But animals also have some early form of psyche, because higher mammals dream in their sleep and this means that their brains store memories which turn randomly into dream patterns when asleep. And this fact is truly amazing. If you have a dog or a cat pet, you know what I speak of. However, it is all down to our primitiveness that we behave the way most people do in the world today – driven by their primal instincts, blindly following their spontaneous urges for sexual satisfaction and aggressive reactions.
Unaware of the reasons for their behavior and totally unaware of the psychological mechanisms and factors that shape their personality and social behavior. Slaves to their random moods and impulses, pushed by the collective flow of the mass.
There is no unity, no lasting cooperation and understanding between countries and between individuals. Even members of one small family so often fail to achieve harmony and understanding with one another. We have so many words in our languages, yet we cannot find words to communicate with each other. The fact is, that if one has not achieved harmony with oneself, one cannot achieve harmony with others.

Modern man and woman are not very different in their behavior than their ancient predecessors. Still acting in the darkness of their unconscious insctinctivity without ever questioning their behavior, without ever looking for the deeper reason and cause.

If we are to change our world for the better, we must change ourselves. We must advance in our minds and our understanding of ourselves and this world.
Human behavior is much too primitive for the 21th Century technological advancement. And such a set of primitive consciousness and technological weaponry leads to self-destruction.
An uplift of human consciousness is urgently needed. And you can make a change, by improving yourself! The more people take part, the more difference we will make globally.
When you seed the idea of self-observation, that is heightened state of self-awareness, this is the first step into the process of realization. Gradually, in time you will notice more and more about yourself and the hidden mechanisms that shape your character will become more and more apparent for you to realize and modify.
At some point, the initial effort you had put into keeping your mind into an “open” self-observational state a.k.a when you are aware of your own behavior as well as the behavior of others around, so that you are able to control yourself; The initial effort you needed will turn into a state of your mind, so you will no longer need to make an effort in order to achieve it. In other words, you will have learned your mind to operate in a higher level of awareness.
Because, your talk may be very wise and impressive. But after all, a person is recognized for his or hers deeds. You are the way you act and behave. You are what you do. Empty talk is nothing. You must be an example for others, so that they feel the need to advance too.

It is time to expand the limits of our consciousness. To advance our minds so to match our technological civilization.
As we can see by the state of humanity today, there has been very little advancement of our minds, on the whole. Still waging wars and evergoing conflicts, unable to think in a wide and objective manner, still needing religion to give a meaning to our lives, a meaning that turns into senseless fanatism that takes the life of millions and turns brother against brother. Religion that being so poorly understood in its very nature turns the human being into a mentally passive unit that behaves mindlessly when his or hers simple beliefs are questioned. Thinking and questioning is banned in religion, because it was implemented in primitive societies as a political tool to unite the masses and engage them in community activities like going to collective pray. God has no religion and the Universe is not a human being.
We are all one big family! Let`s put an end to this madness and lay the beginning of a new humanity with a brighter future.

Open your eyes and see,
look for the hidden bondages
that connect all things. Follow
them back and forth and see
where they lead. Travel with
your thoughts beyond the speed
of light and touch with your mind
every hidden place in the cosmos
and your soul alike. Observe, explore,
think, analyze, synthesize, ponder, tackle,
learn, understand, realize! Know no
limits to your mind! Just as there are no
boundaries in space alike. Question and seek.
Seek and you shall find. The Universe
unveils her secrets only to persistent
minds and the soul does too alike.
Excel forward and upward. Be better,
advance and know no limits to your
imagination and your mind.

Sept.2008

* * *

These are texts that I have written an year ago. I will expand them, analyze and
discuss on the previous and the forecoming topics yet in the future! The photo is a
gorgeous late afternoon at the 7Lakes region in Mt. Rila , Bulgaria. Dense clouds were
gathering over and shape-shifted constantly. I just sat there at the mid of an oval meadow, surrounded by the cloudy myst and the Silence. On the other day we took off from the hut
there to a trek down the Rila monastery. A crazy thunder storm caught us on the way, a very muddy and steepy trail-way down a huge green ridge! 7+ hours trek on the whole, last week.
A very rainy summer this was.. and still is! :) And there is so much more to come!