When I was an active member of an India-based religious/mystical group, a word that inspired me was sat. It means "truth," and was used in many ways: satsangi (follower of truth), satguru (conveyor of truth), satsang (speaking of truth), and so on.
Eventually I realized that my allegiance really was to truth, not to a particular dogma, philosophy, or practice. If my involvement with the group wasn't leading me closer to truth, the goal I'd set for myself wasn't being realized.
So I set off on a churchless path. I decided to genuinely commit myself to the tenets of the scientific method, rather than merely giving lip service to a "science of the soul" that really wasn't.
Via a tweet by someone I follow on Twitter, yesterday I came across an inspiring You Tube video that combines Carl Sagan's words and a variety of images. Sagan talks about how the universe -- reality -- isn't designed to meet our needs, nor our subjective conceptions.
Here's a transcript of the ending message of "Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made for Us." I like it a lot.
The significance of our lives, and our fragile planet, has been determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for our parents to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes.
But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring faith. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.
We humans make our own meanings. Yet many people on Earth wrongly believe that the meaning of their lives is to be found in some supposedly holy scripture or spiritual teaching.
Rather than seek truth that can be tested, verified, and confirmed through rigorous methods in tune with the scientific method, these religious fundamentalists take the easy way out by assuming that some prophet, savior, guru, or other messenger of the divine/God knows what ultimate reality is like, so there's no need to seek out the hard truth Sagan speaks of.
Which may not be pleasant, comforting, ego-gratifying, or capable of producing a warm feeling of "I am a special beloved of God."
Many people who didn't know my mother very well considered her to be an intellectual. That was only partly true. Yes, she was highly intelligent. But her goal wasn't simply to exercise her mind. She was out for truth.
My mother loved science. Though she didn't have much money when I was growing up, I was given subscriptions to a monthly "Things of Science" (if I remember the name correctly). Every month a small box would arrive in the mail with a new experiment that would reveal something hitherto unknown to my child brain.
Carl Sagan's video reminded me of those days, when I sat in my room learning about how the natural world really was -- not how people wanted it to be (that I got from my brief foray into Catholicism, which my mother blessedly let me give up after I physically choked on my first communion and mentally choked on the religious dogma I was expected to learn in order to be "confirmed").
Yes, hard truth is better than reassuring faith. We need to embrace real "sat," not the fake variety.
Thanks for explaining the word "Sat", Brian, I will probably use it myself. (Reading on Wikipedia suggests it's a broader word than "truth", but lets not split hairs.)
This following the hard truth is something I find a real challenge (I past and future blog posts about this).
If I may ask an unrelated question, I read this in one of your posts of 5 years go:
"I don’t know if God is real, but I am confident that reality is real. For me, the essence of reality is what I call “God.” What it is, I don’t know. That it is, I’m persuaded by logic and science. How to realize it clearly is the mystery of all mysteries, the task of all tasks. If God can be known, and the testimony of mystics points to this conclusion, then opening oneself to a realization of the divine nature is the job of a lifetime."
Do you still hold this point of view, that a mystical path will lead us to "God" (however defined) ?
Warmly
Jonathan
Posted by: Jonathan Elliot | July 19, 2010 at 11:37 PM
With Carl Sagan's death, after some months I wrote the following little poem, entitled
PALE BLUE DOT (from A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
"I pluck a bloom of lavender
Someone else's garden
For you, Carl Sagan
Anyone on this strange world
Thinking of you?
Smelling the subtle fragrance
Knowing well you don't exist
Knowing well your stems of reality
Refusal to accept myths
Fearless in the hunter's face
but deep within the core of me
Resides the slimmest of hopes
Hanging as a cobweb thread
That somewhere in some spatial realm
Traces of you linger
Remembering the image from Voyager 1
Taken three millions miles away
One could scarcely see the
Pale Blue Dot : our home
In this unimaginable universe
Creating long breaths of awe
As it did to you within the Now
Time's elusiveness shedding light
Upon the margin of our plight
Of unknowingness
There is no secret
I drop the flower to the stony pavement
And walk on."
Posted by: Elizabeth W | July 20, 2010 at 12:58 AM
Jonathan, good question. Now that you've pointed out what I wrote five years ago, it sure seems like I wouldn't express those sentiments today.
Now I'm more uncertain about God, ultimate reality, whatever you want to call it, than I was before. Including whether it is possible for us humans to know the Big Freaking Mystery of the Cosmos.
Or... whether there's any point in seeking to know what probably can't be known. I think there's an innate urge in us Homo sapiens to be increasingly sapient: to know more, to understand more, to reveal more of the unknown.
But I'm no longer nearly as grandiose in my expectations in this regard as I used to be. I don't see much, if any, evidence that mystical practices (or any sort of practices) lead to "enlightenment." Certain varieties of meditation seem useful for calming the mind and providing insights into how our psyche works. But knowing God or some other supposed divinity -- I suspect not.
Posted by: Brian Hines | July 20, 2010 at 10:07 AM
You want the hard truth? Life is exactly what it looks like. No more - no less. While you are alive, you eat, sleep, eliminate, reproduce, and think. Attempting to determine how things got to be this way is nothing more than amusement. There is no reason for anything.
Where are all the people who died? They do not exist. Whether they once existed makes no difference. It is the same for them as if they never existed in the first place, because they do not exist.
When you die (and I can assure you that you will) - there will no longer be a "you" to ever have existed.
The hard truth is completely obvious. No priests, gurus, shamans, rabbis, or PhD particle physicists needed.
Posted by: Willie R. | July 20, 2010 at 11:21 AM
I laughed when Sagan pronounced "eschew" as "es chew", thinking it was a funny mistake. Yet now I see the dictionary indeed mentions that pronunciation. That I could live for so long while missing this fact makes me dizzy. I don't think I can face this hard truth. I need to lie down.
Posted by: Oedipus | July 20, 2010 at 05:33 PM
Oh, "es chew" is an Americanism.
Posted by: Oedipus | July 20, 2010 at 05:49 PM
FYI Brian, I've linked this post here. http://spritzophrenia.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/somewhere-over-the-rainbow/ Once again, thanks for your commitment to truth, it's admirable.
Posted by: Jonathan Elliot | July 27, 2010 at 11:03 PM