Have you tried to go from being an ATHEIST to being an AGNOSTIC? How did it go?

I did. And from an atheist, and then an agnostic, turned Gnostic.

By the term Gnostic is not meant the cult-like way of the Judaeo-Christian kind. And especially not anyhow akin the simplistic Islamic streak. But ‘having knowledge’, as is meant in the original Greek.

In India, Gnosis is culturally self explanatory. It means Self-Realization.

But before we come to ‘how did it go’ for me, let us first take a seemingly perfunctory but actually a piercing look at the basic or fundamental grounds on which atheists form their didactic ism and dictatorial belief — namely, the Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory.

“I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God … The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man’s intellect; but man can do his duty.” ~ CHARLES DARWIN

Ironically this confession comes from that very person whom the atheists believe in, as boorishly and blindly as do the theists in their this-that racial messianic entity and their cultural or regional deity.

Sorrily and sadly, this same lot of anti-theists with a stiff upper lip and a chip on their shoulders advocate the rather simplistic story, theory and hypothesis advanced by Darwin about evolution — to postulate, state and promulgate their ‘scientifically solid’ case against God.

“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” ~ FRED HOYLE, Astrophysicist, Fellow of the Royal Society (On Evolution)

In 1927 a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaître, an astronomer and Professor of Physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, first proposed the theoretical grounds of an expanding universe. However, it was only in 1949 that Fred Boyle first coined and brought into use the phrase ‘Big Bang’, while giving an interview on BBC but at the same time vehemently debunking it.

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” ~ FRED HOYLE

So much for the big bang theory!

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” ~ ROBERT JASTROW, Astronomer, Planetary Physicist, NASA scientist (self-proclaimed AGNOSTIC)

“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” — Charles Darwin,

“The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ — cannot hear the music of the spheres.” ~ Albert EINSTEIN

So ……

HOW DID IT GO FOR ME: (After turning agnostic as opposed to being atheist)

It started in 1988.

This was the very year in which ‘A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes’, a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking was published.

I bought it.

It was about the same time that I had started developing an abnormal interest in matters beyond the normal. In other words, in astrology etc. And in the paranormal. But it was only to find an alternative means to get worldly gain. Not God.

As time rolled by I got a bit too much into getting to know the latter (paranormal) than to find the time or the inclination to read the former (Hawking’s book).

To date it lies on my table. I still have not read it.

One may wonder as to why I have not got down to it. I have not done so because I got ‘It’, the metaphysical truth and reality, sooner than and before getting down to reading it.

Now, I do not have much use for it. It is obsolete.

However, in short, its synopsis I am in the know, having read it. I may yet read the whole of it. Out of sheer curiosity, if for no other reason. I have little patience for it though. For, theories do not interest me as much as does reality.

And Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist, not a meta-physicist. He may have been a genius in his chosen field. Yet, akin others like him of the same inclination and ilk, he by his very own self, as an edible and credible self-experience, did not know or ‘get’ IT: the Absolute Truth and the ‘That’ of Which Is.

Lest my interest in science is doubted, I may well mention that I have a college degree with science subjects. I take an avid interest in science. I also make use of it in every day life, as and when I think it wise.

In India, science is not shirked in favour of spirituality.

All my mystical and transcendental experiences in the ongoing years — especially from 1990 to 1994, whilst getting ‘There’ — for me, were scientifically observed empirical phenomenon. But in the laboratory of the Inner Self: unto the Within.

NOTE: I have penned down these metaphysical self-experiences elsewhere — perhaps in more detail than I initially wished to — in my answers to specific queries herein somewhere. Anyone interested in getting to know or understand metaphysically the Absolute or the First Cause may read the aforesaid answers on this podium.

In a nutshell though I can say that what I sought and found, has been self-discovered by the ancient sages, yogis, sufis, seers of the East, especially of India, before the prehistoric times, perhaps since the beginning of time.

I’ve neither found nor discovered anything different or newer than did the ancients.

So what is that which all self-realized people in the world eventually find?

It is NOT THIS that an imbecilic human-like twit and tyrant is sitting up there somewhere as ‘GOD’- as imagined and assumed by simple people and their equally simplistic silly isms.

Such a SIMPLE SIMON is NOT the INTELLIGENT DESIGN MAKER and CREATOR of this universe and of our earthly abode and dorm. Or even that of a puny ant, and of a single earthworm.

In SELF-REALIZATION or GOD-REALIZATION it is found that whatsoever is, an all pervading, inseparable ever-alive infinite consciousness and ‘is-ness’ is the ‘am-ness’ of the whole cosmic-ness. And that each and everything, all existence, is an Indivisible Immanent Cosmic Whole.

Thus, factually and eventually it is found that primordially and principally, all is an unbreakable forever-ness of oneness, as the wholeness of the universe.

This self-realization of free mystics is backed up by many an eminent scientist.

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from Consciousness. We cannot get behind Consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates Consciousness.” ~ MAX PLANCK (Theoretical Physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918)

“There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.” ~ HANNES ALFVEN (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1970)

Therefore, nothing unscientific is found as the End Reality, by the mystics.

It, the Whole, is self-experienced and self-discovered in a similar if not an identical manner over ‘There’, as one would confirm an empirical fact over ‘here’.

The only difference is that while in the worldly science the answer is sought on the ‘outside’, in the ‘other worldly’ metaphysical ambience the Sought is found ‘Within’. In the Universal Cosmic Consciousness. As IT.

This is how it went for me.

“Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.” ~ MAX PLANCK (Originator of QUANTUM THEORY)

“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.” ~ Albert EINSTEIN

“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.” ~ ISSAC NEWTON

Thus is how it went for these luminaries of science, and scientific thinking.

How goes it for you? ~_~