I don't believe in God, but I am SO saved

I'm feeling pretty damn good about my afterlife. Mostly because I don't think I'll have one. So almost certainly I won't be feeling anything at all after I die, which takes away worries about what will happen.

Notice that almost certainly, though. I'm open both to the possibility that my consciousness could survive bodily death, and God could be waiting to greet the soul I don't believe I have.

In that event, no problem. I'm confident that my encounter with divinity will go just fine. Here's why I'm so sanguine.

Nobody knows which sort of God, if any, exists.

Broadly speaking, us humans have conceived of God in two general ways: Western (personal, anthropomorphic, involved with the world) and Eastern (universal, beyond conception, above it all while also being all).

I was baptized Catholic. Also had my first communion. Christianity-wise, I'm saved! My salvation ticket is in hand! Well, sort of, theologically speaking. But I only paid attention to the good parts in this article about baptism.

That covers the Western front. I'm even better off if God has an Eastern character.

I was initiated by an Indian guru who is considered to be God in human form. I meditated diligently as instructed for about thirty-five years. A central promise of the guru's teachings, a form of Sant Mat, was that union with God was guaranteed within four lifetimes.

Meaning, three rebirths max, and I'm connected with The Source! Even if my faith faltered in this incarnation, as it did with Catholicism when I was a kid. 

But like I said, it's impossible to know what kind of God might exist. The dude could be completely different from the Catholic and Sant Mat conceptions. Recognizing this, eight years ago I founded a new all-encompassing religion, Galobet.

Everything was becoming crystal clear, in much the same way as I remember my college statistics textbook becoming so much more interesting after a Benzedrine or two. Except, this natural high came from organic Fair Trade beans. And Galobet was directing my thoughts. He wanted to be known. I was to be his messenger.

I started jotting down the names of God associated with the major religions. I threw in Neoplatonism, even though it isn’t really a religion, because it is a philosophy that forms the root of many faiths. Not that I need to explain myself. Galobet can do whatever he wants; I am simply a tool in his mighty hand.

God—Christianity
Allah—Islam
Lord—Judaism
Brahman—Hinduism
Tao—Taoism
One—Neoplatonism
Emptiness—Buddhism

There was something here. I knew it. But Galobet wanted me to struggle with his revelation a bit. I wrote down the first letter of each name of God. I rearranged them in various ways. At first I had “Jehovah” for Judaism, but suddenly “Lord” struck me as a better choice.

I went from JAGBEOT to JAGOBET to LAGOBET. And then came the divine inspiration:

GALOBET. Right away it just seemed so…right. I had revealed the name of God, the God who encompasses all other gods, the God who was using my caffeine-soaked brain as his revelatory blackboard.

Thus if any of the major earthly religions have got God's nature roughly correct, I can confidently give God a cosmic high-five in the afterlife and say, "I was your devotee. Shower me with divine delights, the spiritual rewards I so richly deserve."

Ah, but what if God is completely, absolutely, unimaginably different from any conception a human being could have of the dude? (I will continue to refer to God as "dude," since the word is so marvelously all-encompassing).

No problem with this either! Every day I engage in an atheist meditation that pleases God.

What I say is: I open myself to reality, however it may appear.

Though I don't believe in God, just the possibility of God, I like to picture God smiling when she/he/it hears this. If I were God, that's exactly the sort of "prayer" which would please me. I wouldn't want people to guess about the sort of God I am, which is what religions do.

I'd want people to say "Great Dude God, whatever you're like, whatever you're all about, we're cool with that. Just show us your stuff and we'll go Yeah... nice!"

No egocentric guessamatic expectations. Reality welcomed, godly or otherwise, in whatever form is, well, real.

Bottom line: I am SO saved. Without believing in God.

Comments

[cc]

us humans have conceived of God in two general ways: Western (personal, anthropomorphic, involved with the world) and Eastern (universal, beyond conception, above it all while also being all).

You can't reason with theists. Anyone who can believe in the existence of a non-corporeal, omniscient, omnipotent, patriarch (or matriarch) is too irrational to bother with.

Nowadays, it's the guru-guided "spiritual" folks that present the challenge. They pride themselves on breaking with tradition and abandoning doctrine (except for their guru's dictums), and rest in the certainty that they have been vouchsafed a vision of what's beyond the veil of appearance, beyond words and concepts, beyond explanation or explication. They speak knowingly, confidently, assuredly, of the sacred, holy, ineffable Truth they've been enlightened by. With these nuts, what're ya gonna do?

[New reader]

Brian, I realize your reference to your insurance policies (in the form of baptism and RSSB initiation) were made facetiously, but may I make point out a half-facetious objection to that theory?

I may or may not have actually read this or heard this somewhere in the course of my scattered reading, I don’t recall, but here’s how I think (or imagine) this works.

We all have free will. When you accept Jesus as your savior, you surrender your free will to said God-son. When you accept the RSSB guru as your Master, you relinquish your free will in favor of the Will of said God-man.

In general, what happens to everybody after death is a function of two things : (a) the good and bad Karmas they’ve totted up ; and (b) wherever their free will (which still operates after death) takes them.

Now if you have given your free will up to a Master (Jesus, or a guru, or Allah, or Casper the Ghost), then said spiritual super-being steps in after death, and takes you with them, and puts you up in a glitzy suite in their five-star resort in Heaven. That removes the uncertainty of free will, since you’ve given that up. And these super-beings also minimize the effect of Karma as well, so it’s all good for you.

But if you’ve taken two (or more) conflicting initiations, then one of three things can happen : (a) Who will claim you will be a function of whom you look up to more at the time of death--so that if you look up to no one, then no one will come; or, (b) Who claims you will be a function of which super-being is stronger, and wins the arm-wrestling match that they have to establish rights to your soul ; or, (c) They’re both disgusted with your infidelity, and leave you be. Not very nice.

So I wouldn’t necessarily be so sanguine about a “broad-spectrum” portfolio insurance policies. The whole thing’s iffy anyway, but if you try to spread your bets, you also end up collapsing probabilities of getting any returns!

Poe’s Law Disclaimer : I’m kidding! Just having a mock-rational discussion, trying to use logic to dodgy axioms, based on my understanding of what baptism/initiation entails and what the karma theory is (and my understanding is shaky at best). But also half-serious, in the sense that some people do believe that no matter what they do, their baptism or initiation will save them, and that position—right or not, I wouldn’t know—is logically not very sound.

Disclaimer 2 : I expect you were kidding too, in your OP. Just in case you were even half-serious, and do indeed draw some amount of solace from your baptism or initiation, then ignore my ignorant verbiage. Wouldn’t want to disturb anyone’s peace of mind with smart-ass jokes, especially since I know nothing one way or the other.

[e]

I realize this is way after ....but when Googling something and Church o t C comes up I like to read it.

Galobet.
in India a konsonant is often given a sound/ a vowel after it. To make the leap with an english word- bite would sound like biteh or bitehe
Galobet without some of the sounds separating the konsonants would be glaubt.
Glaubt= he (she /it) believes.
From glauben, to believe.

God to love it!

[TejO]

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (1Corinthians 3:16)

[m]

I'm down for it!
Based on the above you ARE so saved.

Let's assume for a moment that the master was real and he was hiding and denying you that electric experience when seeing him making you unmistakenably sure of his 'true identity', that too then should be his will. You have put in more meditation than a slew of others I assume, for which you will get the benefit, combined with the fact that one supposedly can't get rid of one's own master. So, you're good.

Now why would a real master do this.
Maybe 1) its your 'karma', -he's starving you into eventual liberation/ self realization because the only place left to go is in, 2) or-i like this one- he is using you to annoy the satsangis that forget he 'is in charge of everything'
3) Perhaps he reads COTC on the side for entertainment as relief from the fawning and foolishness he has to deal with daily. If that's the case you're screwed because this IS good stuff-he will only lift the veil at the last moment.

Nevertheless, as you said, he would be banished by the satsang review committee if he weren't the guru because the latest thing said ....men shouldn't worry, bald is sexy.

[observer]

Here's another point:

4) He knows that some satsangis need to express their opinions which they can't do at satsang, amongst the religious types, so Brian is doing a service... There you go... doing seva!

[cc]

That the guru's dupes think Brian is serving the guru could explain why so many of them flock to this blog.