The Spirituality of Change
©2005, Raja Choudhury
If there is one constant in the Universe, it is change. At every level of existence we find birth, life, death and rebirth, from the quantum vibrations of strings and subatomic particles to houseflies that live for just one day, to the collapse of entire galaxies into dense, unimaginable black holes. Even ideas are born, live out as memes and fade away over time. It is a wonderful dance and we are all a part of it. But change can be frightening as well. Seen in another way, the universe is equally terrifying as it is beautiful. It is no wonder that as change is a constant throughout the universe so too is the fear of change a constant throughout human history.
The universe can be a frightening place full of violent transformations and innumerable ways of experiencing destruction. But change is inevitable. It is the fear of change that is the nature of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism isn’t only about religion. It is about fear and it is about power. In this time of accelerated information, decline of organized religions, increased understanding about how the universe works, media and the Internet, it is not surprising that we are also witnessing an equally virulent growth of fundamentalism around the world.
It seems that everything in the universe is on the move towards some indefinable, intangible, unknowable truth that we can only describe through inspired metaphors, sometimes-even God. Science has given us many great ideas, discoveries and even better images for our imaginations. Mystics have given us ways of experiencing the mysteries of the universe through other dimensions in our minds. We all share a sense of awe at nature, at the cosmos and at the infinite, and we are all spiritualized by the possibility of being a part of a much greater mystery. But, we should not underestimate the power of faith and fundamentalism to ruin our admiration of the universe and its true nature.
"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight."
~ Mark Twain
It seems we take our “olden” Gods too seriously. It is high time to let our idea of God evolve. God should not be left stuck in some distant revelation of history. Faith in God can be a wonderful and a terrifying thing. Men die for their faith and more often, kill for their faith. What we forget, is that most faith-based religions have their origins in the thoughts and questioning minds of men and women living through times of great change. Buddha emerged in India as a solution to suffering and a stagnant priestly orthodoxy. Moses led his people to change out of Egypt. Jesus gave his followers revolutionary comfort from Roman imperialism and a nihilistic Jewish tradition. Mohammed brought unity to a divided and religiously fragmented Arabia. Martin Luther struggled against a corrupt Catholic church. Sometimes, change can produce revolutionary and beautiful ideas.
To understand change we must first look at our understanding of the universe through history. Man once thought that the stars were campfires that lit up the night sky. The stars then became Gods and in their timely, regulated journeys could bring great changes on earth. Mankind started obsessively mapping the stars and tracking their apparent movements in the heavens. Civilizations from Mexico to Egypt and India were built on the mapping and understanding of stars - as above, so below. Later, in early Christian cosmology, the Earth became the center of the Universe and the sun, moon and stars all moved around God’s most wonderful creation.
Today, science tells us that the Universe was born some 15 billion years ago in a big bang. For the first half a billion years it remained in a dark primordial ooze of hydrogen and helium and from this ooze arose the first star, about a hundred times the size of our Sun. and after a few hundred million years that first star exploded in a supernova and the stuff of the universe, the molecules that slowly became stars and galaxies and human beings and little microorganisms were born at that instant. Amazingly it is possible to imagine that a part of each of us here today was present in some form when that first star was formed.
We are standing on a spaceship called earth that is spinning around at a speed of 1000 miles per hour and cascading around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Our Sun is a small star on the outer tail of a spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way and that is spinning around and moving through the universe at over 100 miles per second. In a few billion years our Sun will explode and then collapse into the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Our Galaxy too will collapse one day as it makes its journey towards Andromeda. And our Galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies in an ever expanding Universe. But, what is most amazing of all is that we are conscious of this. This makes us unique.
Our bodies are changing all of the time. We shed over 45 pounds of dead skin in one lifetime. Our cells are regenerating all the time. New neurons are created everyday and eventually every part of us will transform to dust. You and I are not the same people we were just 3 days ago.
Our understanding changes too. Once we thought we were molded by gods with divine plans. Now we know that we evolved out of apelike ancestors some 5 million years ago and walked out of Africa in our current form just 150,000 years ago. Once we thought that Europeans and Asians and Africans had little in common but now we know that we are only separated by about 100 generations of traveling DNA. Knowledge about ourselves, our universe, our history and our origins all evolve and change with time. What was gospel once becomes quaint mythology in time. Nothing stays set in stone and I am sure that our discoveries and definitions of today will amuse future scientists and philosophers in a thousand years time.
Is there a god or are we living in an infinitely expanding universe as a river of DNA flowing towards an unknown future? Is there a mind behind the universe? If we believe that God created the universe and molded us in his image then the entire cosmos and its expansion is one great design and we are just here to observe it and submit to God’s majesty. If on the other hand we believe that there is consciousness behind everything and every part of the universe is suffused with that consciousness, then we begin to see the universe in ourselves and see our mind as a microcosm of that universal mind. This is the idea of the soul or Buddha nature. If we don’t believe in either hypothesis, then the Universe tends to be a creation of our consciousness and everything we see is a relative projection of our minds. The science fiction author Philip K Dick wrote that "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away."
But can such diverse universal ideas co-exist in today’s world. It has happened before. Buddhism spread rapidly throughout Asia precisely because it allowed people to worship their own gods while realizing that they and their Gods were all living in a psychological Buddha nature. Today, the popularity of Buddhism and Yoga in the west is another clear example of universal philosophies co-existing in the world with other teachings and beliefs.
So, how do we encourage people to think for themselves, to overcome ignorance, to open their eyes to other realities, to question the dogmatic authority they struggle under, to not fear the changes that seem so threatening. It is hard in a world of political and economic inequities, of poverty and illiteracy and lack of freedom, of globalization and increasing fundamentalism. But it is possible.
I remember listening to a Muslim teacher in a Bombay ghetto who smilingly complained that his students had started watching Discovery Channel in Hindi and as a result they knew more about dinosaurs, the earth and the solar system than he did. He had two choices. Either stop them by force from learning about the universe or become a student himself and act as a guide to the wonders out there. He chose to learn and today he is a happier and more respected man. He still teaches the Quaran, but now he teaches about the universe and has also learned to use the Web. Such is the nature of all great teachers for they know that learning is a life long pursuit and wisdom or enlightenment can only come through openness to new ideas and change.
Humanity needs to celebrate this spirituality of change. Science can help explain away doubts and ignorance and a more universal mystical consciousness can help explain the mysteries. A child should be able to understand his universe, appreciate the ideas of others and appreciate his own culture and religion without seeing either as a threat or a burden. Seeing an interconnected, rich, diverse Universe that is eternally in a state of change is perhaps the first step in that direction.
If there is one constant in the Universe, it is change. At every level of existence we find birth, life, death and rebirth, from the quantum vibrations of strings and subatomic particles to houseflies that live for just one day, to the collapse of entire galaxies into dense, unimaginable black holes. Even ideas are born, live out as memes and fade away over time. It is a wonderful dance and we are all a part of it. But change can be frightening as well. Seen in another way, the universe is equally terrifying as it is beautiful. It is no wonder that as change is a constant throughout the universe so too is the fear of change a constant throughout human history.
The universe can be a frightening place full of violent transformations and innumerable ways of experiencing destruction. But change is inevitable. It is the fear of change that is the nature of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism isn’t only about religion. It is about fear and it is about power. In this time of accelerated information, decline of organized religions, increased understanding about how the universe works, media and the Internet, it is not surprising that we are also witnessing an equally virulent growth of fundamentalism around the world.
It seems that everything in the universe is on the move towards some indefinable, intangible, unknowable truth that we can only describe through inspired metaphors, sometimes-even God. Science has given us many great ideas, discoveries and even better images for our imaginations. Mystics have given us ways of experiencing the mysteries of the universe through other dimensions in our minds. We all share a sense of awe at nature, at the cosmos and at the infinite, and we are all spiritualized by the possibility of being a part of a much greater mystery. But, we should not underestimate the power of faith and fundamentalism to ruin our admiration of the universe and its true nature.
"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight."
~ Mark Twain
It seems we take our “olden” Gods too seriously. It is high time to let our idea of God evolve. God should not be left stuck in some distant revelation of history. Faith in God can be a wonderful and a terrifying thing. Men die for their faith and more often, kill for their faith. What we forget, is that most faith-based religions have their origins in the thoughts and questioning minds of men and women living through times of great change. Buddha emerged in India as a solution to suffering and a stagnant priestly orthodoxy. Moses led his people to change out of Egypt. Jesus gave his followers revolutionary comfort from Roman imperialism and a nihilistic Jewish tradition. Mohammed brought unity to a divided and religiously fragmented Arabia. Martin Luther struggled against a corrupt Catholic church. Sometimes, change can produce revolutionary and beautiful ideas.
To understand change we must first look at our understanding of the universe through history. Man once thought that the stars were campfires that lit up the night sky. The stars then became Gods and in their timely, regulated journeys could bring great changes on earth. Mankind started obsessively mapping the stars and tracking their apparent movements in the heavens. Civilizations from Mexico to Egypt and India were built on the mapping and understanding of stars - as above, so below. Later, in early Christian cosmology, the Earth became the center of the Universe and the sun, moon and stars all moved around God’s most wonderful creation.
Today, science tells us that the Universe was born some 15 billion years ago in a big bang. For the first half a billion years it remained in a dark primordial ooze of hydrogen and helium and from this ooze arose the first star, about a hundred times the size of our Sun. and after a few hundred million years that first star exploded in a supernova and the stuff of the universe, the molecules that slowly became stars and galaxies and human beings and little microorganisms were born at that instant. Amazingly it is possible to imagine that a part of each of us here today was present in some form when that first star was formed.
We are standing on a spaceship called earth that is spinning around at a speed of 1000 miles per hour and cascading around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Our Sun is a small star on the outer tail of a spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way and that is spinning around and moving through the universe at over 100 miles per second. In a few billion years our Sun will explode and then collapse into the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Our Galaxy too will collapse one day as it makes its journey towards Andromeda. And our Galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies in an ever expanding Universe. But, what is most amazing of all is that we are conscious of this. This makes us unique.
Our bodies are changing all of the time. We shed over 45 pounds of dead skin in one lifetime. Our cells are regenerating all the time. New neurons are created everyday and eventually every part of us will transform to dust. You and I are not the same people we were just 3 days ago.
Our understanding changes too. Once we thought we were molded by gods with divine plans. Now we know that we evolved out of apelike ancestors some 5 million years ago and walked out of Africa in our current form just 150,000 years ago. Once we thought that Europeans and Asians and Africans had little in common but now we know that we are only separated by about 100 generations of traveling DNA. Knowledge about ourselves, our universe, our history and our origins all evolve and change with time. What was gospel once becomes quaint mythology in time. Nothing stays set in stone and I am sure that our discoveries and definitions of today will amuse future scientists and philosophers in a thousand years time.
Is there a god or are we living in an infinitely expanding universe as a river of DNA flowing towards an unknown future? Is there a mind behind the universe? If we believe that God created the universe and molded us in his image then the entire cosmos and its expansion is one great design and we are just here to observe it and submit to God’s majesty. If on the other hand we believe that there is consciousness behind everything and every part of the universe is suffused with that consciousness, then we begin to see the universe in ourselves and see our mind as a microcosm of that universal mind. This is the idea of the soul or Buddha nature. If we don’t believe in either hypothesis, then the Universe tends to be a creation of our consciousness and everything we see is a relative projection of our minds. The science fiction author Philip K Dick wrote that "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away."
But can such diverse universal ideas co-exist in today’s world. It has happened before. Buddhism spread rapidly throughout Asia precisely because it allowed people to worship their own gods while realizing that they and their Gods were all living in a psychological Buddha nature. Today, the popularity of Buddhism and Yoga in the west is another clear example of universal philosophies co-existing in the world with other teachings and beliefs.
So, how do we encourage people to think for themselves, to overcome ignorance, to open their eyes to other realities, to question the dogmatic authority they struggle under, to not fear the changes that seem so threatening. It is hard in a world of political and economic inequities, of poverty and illiteracy and lack of freedom, of globalization and increasing fundamentalism. But it is possible.
I remember listening to a Muslim teacher in a Bombay ghetto who smilingly complained that his students had started watching Discovery Channel in Hindi and as a result they knew more about dinosaurs, the earth and the solar system than he did. He had two choices. Either stop them by force from learning about the universe or become a student himself and act as a guide to the wonders out there. He chose to learn and today he is a happier and more respected man. He still teaches the Quaran, but now he teaches about the universe and has also learned to use the Web. Such is the nature of all great teachers for they know that learning is a life long pursuit and wisdom or enlightenment can only come through openness to new ideas and change.
Humanity needs to celebrate this spirituality of change. Science can help explain away doubts and ignorance and a more universal mystical consciousness can help explain the mysteries. A child should be able to understand his universe, appreciate the ideas of others and appreciate his own culture and religion without seeing either as a threat or a burden. Seeing an interconnected, rich, diverse Universe that is eternally in a state of change is perhaps the first step in that direction.
posted by RajaC at 8:32 PM
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