PART 2: Why I am not a Christian, a Buddhist, a Moslem ... whatever

When I was very young I had an innate "feel" for the nature of the universe, which was free of concepts about God or whatever.  I simply "knew" that we were all disconnected from the greater reality and that the only valid purpose in life was to become re-connected.

Later in childhood, I was introduced to the Christian concept of a father God, a superior being who watched over us and who would eventually judge us as worthy of heaven or not.  I accepted this belief for several years and felt that the reconnection with the universe would happen by receiving the holy spirit.

To my mind, the holy spirit coming into one's life would be real and an unmistakeable transformation would take place.  This was the only way to become a Christian and one certainly could not be "saved" merely by believing Jesus' teaching and trying to be a good person.

The holy spirit never did touch me, so, in the absence of  personal conversion, I drifted away from the Christian church during my late teens.  A religious crisis and spiritual experiences during my late 20s took me back in briefly, and then out again after having seen clearly into the shortcomings of belief and faith as a basis for life.  Also, I realised that I had interpreted my spiritual experiences in accordance with my Christian background - Buddhists interpret their experiences in the light of Buddhist theory; Christians in the light of Christian teaching; and so on.  We all carry a lot of cultural/religious baggage and it is important to be aware of this.

I could no longer believe in a so-called God of Love who could condemn even an ant to hell.  I didn't know much, but I sure knew this was not how love behaved.  This creates a fear relationship from which love can never grow.  I am constantly astounded when I hear people talk about their "love of God".  I wonder what they really mean.

My rejection of Christianity led to the rejection of all belief systems that are based on the premise:  "Believe this and you will receive something in return.  Don't believe this and you will suffer for it."

I could see that the world's religions seemed to be putting the cart before the horse, i.e. starting off with a concept of "God", an idea, and then attempting to get close to that concept.  Clearly, concepts only get in the way of the real thing.

J. Krishnamurti puts it into words much better than me:

"I am not denying God - it would be foolish to do so ....  Belief is a denial of truth, belief hinders truth; to believe in God is not to find God.  Neither the believer nor the non-believer will find God because reality is the unknown, and your belief or non-belief in the unknown is merely a self projection and therefore not real ....

First of all, why do you believe?  You believe because it gives you satisfaction, consolation, hope, and you say it gives significance to life ....  Only when the mind is completely silent, not only on the upper level but fundamentally right through, on both the superficial and the deeper levels of consciousness - only then can the unknown come into being.

Now, what is reality?  What is God?  God is not the word, the word is not the thing.  To know that which is immeasurable which is not of time, the mind must be free of time, which means the mind must be free from all thought, from all ideas about God ...."

My journey has been a rocky one, but every time I've fallen into a pile of manure, I've come up smelling of roses.  This process may not have been obvious to the casual observer, but it is certainly what I have experienced on the inside.  My ability to see into the nature of things, an incapacity for self-deception and a desire for the authentic have led to most of the markers that people use to quantify the success of a person's life - marriage, children, career, and so on - being absent from my life.  But, for me, success is not to be found in these things but in certain intangibles which I find hard to describe.

This is how I see things, and often I see them in the same way as that little boy who proclaimed that the king was indeed not wearing fine new clothes, but was parading himself in the nude.

At odd and unexpected moments, the otherness has come, suddenly and unexpectedly and went its way, without invitation and without need.  All need and demand must wholly cease for it to be.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, that otherness came with such intense tenderness and beauty that one's body and brain became motionless .... thought and speech were gone and there was peculiar joy and clarity ....  It was a benediction that was beyond all image and thoughts.

J. Krishnamurti

"Krishnamurti's Notebook"

 (continued in PART 3)