I am writing this on the sixty-fifth death anniversary (maha samadhi) of Sri Ramana Maharshi, 1879-1950, perhaps the greatest Hindu sage of the past century. It is my hope that his wisdom will infuse this essay and inspire me to convey a very important message. Ramana Maharshi, in my opinion, settled the question about the existence of God and hence about the meaning of life once and for all. He answers the unanswered question without recourse to magical thinking, which is especially good news for those rationalists who, sensing that a large piece of the puzzle of life is missing in their lives, refuse to fill it with cardboard quotes from fairy tales masquerading as facts. It is a truism that there is nothing new under the sun; the wisdom that Sri Ramana espoused is indeed the perennial wisdom that has been formulated in various ways throughout the centuries. The mud of ignorance, however, has buried it and thus prevented it from being widely acknowledged. This is more true today than ever, hence the reason for this essay.
I want to state from the outset that the legitimacy of scientific assertions that continue to be overwhelmingly supported by data--such as those regarding evolution and the expansion of space--is incontrovertible. If you think the stories of your particular religious tradition are factual as well, this essay is not for you. It is written for those who have a desire--nearly everyone has it--to transcend thought, yet refuse to flout rationality in order to satisfy that desire. My only request is that you read this article with an open mind.
The discussion is divided into four parts: 1. Is Belief Jewish?; 2. Ramana Maharshi's formulation of a great truth; 3. Consciousness, Self and God, and 4: Conclusion: three problems solved.
1. Is Belief Jewish?
On March 30, 2014, there appeared in the New York Times an article with that title. It consisted of an interview of Howard Wettstein, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, conducted by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the university of Notre Dame. (Wettstein is Jewish, but not a rabbi; the rabbi in the title of this article refers to Rabbi Hillel, whose principle teaching we will discuss later.)
It is rare these days that a practicing member of one of the three Abrahamic faiths has a non-dogmatic approach to religion to the degree professed by Professor Wettstein. The majority of those who have abandoned religious dogmas have also abandoned God; Wettstein, however, remains a fervent believer. As we shall see, he comes very close to the truth, at least in my opinion
At the beginning of the New York Times article, the interviewer is flummoxed by the professor's assertions:
You say you're a naturalist and deny that there are any supernatural beings, yet you're a practicing Jew and deny that you're an atheist. What's going on here?
Everything! Wettstein makes a clear distinction between rationality and inner experience. He is perhaps an "outer" atheist, but very definitely not an inner one. He would surely deny the Catholic assertion that reason can access a natural philosophy that points in the direction of God. He does not seek to prove God's existence, yet he experiences what can be called God in prayer, in contemplation, in community and in action. (The combination of disbelief and devotion, a stance that has no conflict at all with science, seems to be an oxymoron. In this article, we hope to satisfactorily demonstrate that this is not the case.)
Wettstein was friends with a late rabbi named Mickey Rosen, who once told him, "Belief is not a Jewish notion." Although Judaism is arguably the least dogmatic of the three Abrahamic faiths, Rosen is perhaps guilty of some hyperbole here. I do assert, however, that for a contemporary mind familiar with science and the scientific method, dogmatic belief no longer can be a valid religious notion at all. (I once wryly wrote that any literal statement about God should be classified as S.C.F.A.--that is, Santy Claus for Adults.) Rosen's "Bible School" was very unorthodox; he apparently believed that it was more important for his congregation to sing with him, rather than to engage in biblical exegesis, song being "somewhat closer to the soul than assent"--a very wise perspective.
Since traditional Judaism asserts that God intervenes in history, a devout Jew who is an outer atheist would seem to have a lot of explaining to do. Wettstein, however, doesn't explain; he experiences.
Out of respect for tradition, he doesn't baldly state that the Torah is mostly historical fiction, but he implies it. It is the transcendence behind the Torah, the wordless Story behind the stories, that has become "the pillar of his existence." It is this experience which has transformed his life. Although Wettstein isn't explicit regarding his view regarding God and history, he indicates--correctly, I believe--that while God might not intervene from without, he does indeed intervene from within.
It is inner experience that counts. Science can describe what, say, ice cream is made of, but the experience of tasting it is another "matter"--it is inexplicable. Bits don't have tongues!
Professor Wettstein is not threatened by God's apparent non-existence. He seems to concur with the view that God is absent in the outer world, yet he continues to be an observant Jew. Yes, all the talk talk talk about God is nonsense; yet, as Ramana Maharshi once said, "Silence is also conversation." Conversation with whom? Where is God? We will now answer that question. In summary, Professor Weinstein's experiential stance comes very close to the truth. It is time to arrive.
2. Ramana Maharshi's Answer
There are two, and only two, interrelated aspects of life that really matter: love and wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge that everything is connected in a basic unity; love is wisdom in action, working to assure that everyone attains the peace and joy that accompany wisdom as surely as spring follows winter. You don't have to write volumes about these two aspects, they can be summed up very tersely. Before we get to Ramana Maharshi's perspective, I would like now to present a brilliant formulation of the essence of love, which is very well known, followed by Sri Ramana's equally brilliant formulation of the essence of wisdom, which is almost entirely unknown. Let us start with the first.
Hillel the Elder was the most outstanding representative of pre-Rabbinical Judaism He was roughly a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth. He was teaching in Jerusalem when approached by a Gentile who asked him to define the essence of the Torah. At that time, Roman paganism was in decline among many seekers--it was quite often debased to the level of emperor worship. Judaism was known to be an ancient tradition and was much respected. The idea of one God was attractive. However, many Gentiles were troubled by all the rules, (mitzvot), some of which seemed to have little to do with wisdom. (As one can imagine, the idea of adult circumcision, a necessity if one wished to convert, was not very popular.) We can assume that the Gentile who approached Hillel viewed Judaism as containing diamonds buried under tons of coal. He wanted to get to the diamonds, to the very essence of Judaism. So he set a condition: Hillel was to tell him the essence of Judaism while standing on one foot--in other words, Hillel was asked to sum up Judaism in one sentence. Hillel replied:
"That which is hateful to you, do not do it to anyone else. That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn."
This is, of course, a variation of Leviticus 19:18: love your neighbor as yourself. It is a form of what is known as the Golden Rule. In one sentence, we have a wonderful summing up of the moral imperative, a goal that defines a good life to the degree that it is approached.
That is the well know statement regarding love. What about wisdom, the seeking and discovery of God?
The answer is found in the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. It is located within a large collection of responses of Sri Ramana to questions posed by various visitors to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai, where the sage remained from the age of sixteen until his death. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, V.S Ramanam, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 2000). In Talk number 244, a woman with a troubled mind asks the following question: "How is God to be seen?"
Sri Ramana's response: "Within. If the mind is turned inward, God manifests as inner consciousness."
Just as Hillel's assertion is the whole truth regarding ethical behavior, this one is the whole truth of the sages regarding God; all the rest is commentary. Ramana Maharshi goes on to say, "He (that is, God) cannot be found outside. He should be felt within," and, "Self and God are only mental conceptions."
In contrast to Western religion, revelation according to Eastern tradition does not come from an external source, but from an internal one. Science has rightly challenged the literal belief in external revelation; it is likely that inner revelation will remain forever beyond the scope of science.
What more does one need to know about the eternal question? God manifests as inner consciousness, yet God is merely a mental conception. What does that mean? It means that the experience of inner consciousness is ineffable, beyond all forms of conceptualization; when the mind attempts to describe it, the mind often uses the highest term it has: God. That is, however, merely a word. If one feels that that term has been so debased that it ceases to have meaning, one can use other terms, such as The Inner Voice, Truth or The Diamond Inside, etc.--or remain silent, and let one's actions do the "talking". (In my opinion, although the term has indeed been abused, there is no other word that comes closer to the ineffability of inner experience. Once it has been understood in Ramana Maharshi's sense of that word, all confusion regarding God is transcended.)
Now we have a clear understanding of what Professor Wettstein implied: the experience of the "God" present in inner consciousness is what is essential. It cannot be put into words. For many, God is a useful word to indicate this experience, provided that one acknowledges that there is no evidence that the supreme being has any reality beyond consciousness.
In conclusion: As Ramana Maharshi would say, there are not two things but only one. Hillel's view and Sri Ramana's view are two ways of looking at the same phenomenon. The God of wisdom inside is also the God of love to be made manifest outside.
3. Consciousness, God and Self
A: I anticipate the following criticism: "Belief in a God that only exists within consciousness is merely "poetic" atheism. The soul finds cold comfort in solipsism. If there is no God beyond us to help and direct us, there is no God at all." Such objections stem from an unawareness of the majesty of consciousness. Consciousness is an integral participant in the creation and maintenance of the universe. The knowledge that observation somehow determines whether a photon behaves as a particle or a wave is now common knowledge. Seminal theoretical physicists such as Wheeler wonder whether consciousness creates everything or whether the so-called objective world arises as a confrontation of the mind with things independent of it, the latter being Kant's unknowable "things in themselves." Many physicists assert that the famous dead/alive cat paradox is resolved by the theory that both events occur as observation causes the universe to split in two, one universe containing a dead cat and one containing a live one. (If you are unfamiliar with Schrödinger's dead/live cat paradox, please look it up online.) The power of conscious observation is, in my opinion, weirder and much stranger than any religious myth--and, in contrast, true! I will now briefly discuss one of the strangest and most amazing theories, the so-called Top Down Approach theory of Hawking. He asserts that before the big bang everything existed simultaneously in a quantum state of possibilities. It is consciousness that chose the universe we live in--in other words, it is the consciousness of humankind that created humankind's past! Religious fundamentalists falsely assert that dinosaurs and humans at one time cohabited the planet. Hawking's theory, and it is viewed by some experts as plausible, goes further and states that it is our consciousness that has created the dinosaurs! (The temporal order of the epochs is, of course, inviolate, since the effect of consciousness on the universe has nothing to do with will. The color yellow exists only in consciousness, but the sensation of yellow is not chosen by the will.)
Ramana Maharshi asserts that consciousness does indeed create everything, a view that the wisdom school of Hindus has taught for centuries. But even if we take Wheeler's view--there is likely no other valid one--that consciousness is either everything or just about everything--the assertion that God exists "only" in consciousness takes on a whole new dimension. If the Hindus are right, and more than a few physicists agree, consciousness, the creator of everything, is also the creator of "what's out there." It follows, therefore, that if creation is like a MÖbius strip, there is also here and, therefore, God exists everywhere. The difference between this and religious fundamentalism is essential: the former has nothing to do with wishful thinking. To sum up: the belief that God "only" exists inside is not in any way merely a "poetic" consolation for those seekers who do not permit atavistic beliefs to trump science.
B: How does the individual self fit into this? In one word: essentially. I will explain.
I have listened on YouTube, from time to time, to a group called the New Atheists--Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens and others--debate with believers, usually fundamentalists of one sort or another, about whether God exists or not. It is shocking to listen to--so many deny the truth of evolution--and boring. Boring because people who do not appreciate science and have made a decision with their entire being that belief in God and dogma go together are not going to be influenced by facts. I doubt if anyone changed her opinion about evolution during these debates. Their logic is deficient; however, I find the arguments of the New Atheists to be deficient as well.
The latter assert that God doesn't exist. We have asserted that as well; we also deny the existence of supernatural beings. They don't go farther, as we do, however, and ask, "Who am I?" or "What is the nature of the self?" The nature of subjective truth is much more important than debates about external fictions.
We will now address this issue with an example from the evolutionary past. In the Carboniferous Period, over 300 million years ago, some animals for the first time in evolutionary history began to exit the sea, becoming amphibians, some of which eventually became exclusively land dwellers, some of which eventually became us. Where was the problem of God during the Carboniferous Period? We would all agree that it didn't exist at that time. But we rarely assert what is just as obvious, the answer to the question, "Where was the self, that is, the sense of individuality, during that epoch?" It, too, of course, didn't exist. As deniers of all forms of supernatural intervention, we reject that the "soul" or self was injected into matter at some time by an immaterial source. This is indeed nonsense. If we assert that life arose from matter, and that there is no life-force apart from matter, what is the self but matter? When neural systems become complex enough so as to imagine the body to be separate from nature, a sense of individuality arises. This conferred a great biological advantage when it first happened; our unconscious genes "realized" that a sense of individuality helped bodies to be more fit, and thus better able to adapt to the environment and survive. This sense of self permits humans to manipulate and change the environment. Look around you; the change in the world since humans arrived on the scene is truly astounding. Without this sense of self, as I have written many times, Mozart and Shakespeare and Plato, etc, etc, would have been impossible, and, alas! Hitler and Stalin, etc, etc, would not have been possible either. Dawkins has a wonderful term for human creations, examples of which he calls the "extended phenotype"--an apt phrase which indicates that all things, even skyscrapers, are natural phenomena. Self, the subjective sense of separation, is according to science an illusion, yet no one can deny the "reality" of the self and remain human. We might be composed of matter only, but a father who treats a daughter like a piece of meat is obviously a monster. This duality remains in our daily lives and is only resolved--without words, of course--in silent contemplation.
My point is this: both the belief in God and in the self arise simultaneously. They are illusions, albeit essential ones. As a human being becomes enlightened, that is, when one's sense of individuality is subsumed into the unity of all things, belief in self and belief in God decline. Very few have transcended duality completely, but some are closer to this truth than others. Until one achieves full wisdom, however, the duality of self and God will remain. Until a then which may well never occur, it is important, if we are to live well, to have the highest possible concepts regarding the self and God. Thus I reply to Professor Dawkins. "God doesn't exist? Neither do you! So Who cares?" Since God and the self are illusions that arise simultaneously, the New Atheists would do a much better job in their search for truth if they argued against the existence of the self as vociferously as they do against the existence of God. Their basic assumption that science is primary is also false. Science is contained within consciousness, which is what is truly primary. A group of four stones have no idea that they add up to the number four! There is no science without consciousness; it never can replace the ineffable inner experience that can be called God.
4. Conclusion: Three fundamental problems solved
The ability of what we might call "the inner solution" to provide answers and guidance to the perplexed is obviously the subject of a book-length manuscript. I will therefore limit my final comments to a brief discussion of how the inner solution answers three fundamental questions that have been thought by many to be insoluble.
A: The Conflict Between Religion and Science
It is obvious that the view described in this article is not in any way in conflict with science. The inner solution denies any form of supernatural intervention. It asserts that there is absolutely no evidence for a God completely external to consciousness. It also has no purchase for "Fundamentalism Lite," as it were, that is, the assertion that creationism is a valid alternative to the theory of evolution.
There is not the slightest conflict between religion and science according to the Hillel/Maharshi view of reality.
B: Are passion for science and passion for religion mutually exclusive or mutually compatible?
Scientists and rationalists make the mistake of letting fundamentalists define religion. The former come to the mistaken conclusion that religion is a deleterious atavism. This article has undermined that notion. Music is undoubtedly one of the greatest aesthetic experiences consciousness affords. Ptolemy was wrong; there is no evidence that music exists outside consciousness--at best, only vibrations that the brain interprets as music exist. Can one sensibly assert that one cannot be simultaneously passionate about music and science? Similarly, can one claim that a passion for the ineffability of inner experience is incompatible with a passion for science? Of course not! Humankind will only prosper if there is a passion for both.
C: The Holocaust Problem
In physics, there was something that was called "the horizon problem." It was resolved by the theory that the universe expanded at an incredibly fast rate shortly after the big bang, smoothing things out and resolving the horizon problem, that is, the hitherto unanswered question as to how the universe came to be uniform in all directions at an early stage, when there wasn't enough time to accomplish this uniformity. (No information can travel faster than the speed of light.) By analogy, I call the problem of suffering and the existence of God, which has vexed human beings from time immemorial, the Holocaust problem. How can a loving God permit suffering? The inner solution also solves this problem with the assertion that there is no external God who intervenes in history. However, the inner God can indeed intervene, if we listen to and obey our inner voice. Evil happens when power and madness combine. We are responsible for listening to the inner voice in ourselves and to act in ways that help assure that society obeys the voice of "God" within, common to all. If we abrogate our responsibilities, horrible things will continue to happen. If we listen to the Self within ourselves, peace and joy will increase. It's that simple, it's that complex.
What more does one need to know?
In summary: Wisdom asserts, as another rabbi of the past famously stated, "The Kingdom of God is within you." Ethics asserts that this wisdom must be made manifest in society through acts of love. The combination of these two notions compose the truth; all the rest is, indeed, commentary.
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