Growing up as a kid, I held a lot of reservations towards those who were spiritually inclined. In my defence, what else did I know?
The only time I had ever been to church was to mourn the loss of family. These sombre events were my first experience with the idea of God and spirituality, which is probably why I started with such a grim outlook on those topics.
In my day-to-day life, my only experience of spiritual matters was when my mother would tuck me in and say a Christian prayer to me as I fell asleep. I still remember it quite fondly, with the prayer going as
Now I lay thee down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my Soul to keep;
God’s love stay with me through the night
And wake with me in the morning light
My family is tacitly Christian, but other than my childhood bedtime ritual, the talk of God never came up when I was a kid until the day it suddenly did.
My First Talk About God
It’s certainly a peculiar core memory of mine. I was 8 years old on a drive in my hometown with my dad when we passed by a church. My dad must’ve noticed this church as he suddenly asked me if I believed in God. I told him plainly that I didn’t believe in God, as I’d never yet seen or witnessed anything that couldn’t be explained in terms I then understood. I’d expected a mellow acknowledgement and nothing more from my father; nothing from my previous experiences told me it would be otherwise, but my father, turns out, thought differently.
My father is generally a light-hearted man; if he takes something seriously, there is a good reason for it. In a stern and serious tone, I still remember to this day, he told me that,
“I was too young to be thinking like that”
and dropped the conversation. He never did elaborate on what he meant.
I remember my thoughts turning sour. Too young to think like that? What does that even mean? I remember the feeling of confusion and anger at his response. Few 8-year-olds want to be told what they say is wrong or incorrect.
I’ve mentally returned to that brief interaction quite a few times over the years, and interestingly enough, my initial bitterness has evolved into a general feeling of awe. In a truly laconic style, my father challenged my thinking to go beyond what I can merely see and explain in material terms, challenging me to question the hidden workings of our world that can’t always be deduced by the senses alone.
In many ways, I’m grateful for my parents general ambivalence towards the concept of God. My parents never ingrained in me their dogmatic idea of what God is. I’ve never asked them if this was intentional on their part. Regardless, it gave me an amazing chance to explore the ideas surrounding spirituality and God without any childhood baggage influencing my thinking. Should I believe in the bible-thumping fundamentalist Christian take on God? Should I believe in some esoteric Buddhist school of thought? Maybe devote myself to the flying spaghetti monster? (which has a real following known as pastafarianism) Maybe do away with any of that stuff and be an atheist? My parents gave me the chance to decide for myself.
Explanations for the Religious Experience
My journey through spiritual matters has led me to understand that there can be real-world answers for people who claim to have spiritual or religious experiences, one example being the religious bliss many claim to feel when partaking in the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious event on the planet.
The Kumbh Mela, for those of the Hindu faith, is a big deal. Ritually, tens of millions of people pilgrimage to the Ganges River to bathe in its waters and cleanse themselves spiritually and physically. After finishing the ceremony, the people who partake in this ritual nearly unanimously declare that they feel refreshed and recharged after performing this ritual.
When I first heard about this ritual and the feelings reported by those who partook, I figured it must be a placebo. Intuition told me that doing such a ceremony, often with family and friends, must’ve been akin to taking a vacation, time off from the drudgery of work and a chance to relax. What I didn’t guess was that there was a clear scientific explanation for the reported feeling of bliss.
It turns out that portions of the Ganges River contain remarkably high levels of viruses called bacteriophages, essentially microorganisms that kill bacteria. This cleansing of bacteria, along with certain other characteristics of the Ganges River, creates a remarkably sanitary river.
So when many of these pilgrims submerge themselves in what is essentially self-purifying water, there’s a strong chance they’ve cleaned themselves in water far cleaner than what their respective region typically provides.
Explanations like the Ganges River bliss phenomenon have made me consider that there could be a logical explanation for concepts like Heaven. Mind you, the thought experiment I’m about to espouse isn’t perfect, but I think it’s interesting to ponder.
If you went back 500 years ago and told people that we could communicate with someone halfway around the world through invisible waves in the air, what we now call radio waves, those people of the past would probably call you nuts. I think the same situation could apply to our current understanding of Heaven or Nirvana or whatever your naming preference is for such a place. Modern-day science tells us that what we see with our own eyes is often a flimsy form of evidence. The fundamental workings of our universe exist at a level that no human being can picture without advanced machinery and the requisite calculations and know-how to understand. Even then, our current understanding of subjects like quantum physics is still a lot of conjecture, with there yet to be a concrete answer for how reality, the universe we’re fortunate enough to inhabit, came to be. Perhaps to our modern understanding, Heaven is the equivalent to those radio waves to those people born 500 years ago. Heaven might exist on a realm or dimension or plane of existence that we don’t yet have the proper understanding or technology to identify this area with.
Conclusion
At my current point in life, I’m more interested in understanding the worldly religions and their beliefs around life and the afterlife rather than fully committing myself to any specific school of religious or spiritual thought. Perhaps as I grow, I’ll find a “spiritual school of thought” that wholly agrees with me, but I doubt it. Right now, my beliefs around the spiritual are eclectic, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Still, as I grow older, I reckon questions regarding this domain will become more pressing as more of those I love and look up to begin to pass away. Thankfully, I’m still pretty far away from that point now, and as such, I will keep to spiritual philosophizing to a healthy proportion.
Thank you for reading.
Till next time,
Rhys B.
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