Life, Death, Spirituality, & Religion

Meredith B. Mitchell

In this essay, I shall attempt to convey my views about such concepts as God, destiny, reincarnation, etc. I have spent many hours/years pondering on these subjects and have my own views about them based on my personal perceptions and experiences.

Many years ago, I spent well over a year pondering and meditating on the concept of God, the creator, the "Higher Power," etc. The idea of some force beyond what can be directly observable has apparently existed from the time that the earliest reflective humanoid appeared on the earth. In the beginning were the multitudinous gods associated with just about every aspect of nature, both outside the body -- such as storms, sunrise, moonlight, and vegetation -- and inside, such as feelings, hunger, birth, and death. All of these were inexplicable mysteries because we humans had no apparent control over any of them. We can lift a stone and chew food, but we can't make or prevent a thunderstorm or fully control the body's mechanisms or emotions. The sense I get is that fault or responsibility for any occurrence or phenomenon must be held by an other who has capabilities and qualities like a person. The idea is, “If I didn't do it, SOMEONE must have done it.” Historically, when it has been a natural phenomenon or something otherwise inexplicable, the “someone” is perceived as a deity with human characteristics.

One of our human characteristics seems to be a natural tendency to project. (Projection is another concept upon which I pondered, meditated, and did research for over a year.) In my view (I'm not the first), a view that evolved over time, all perception is apperception: the viewing of anything out of the material of what is within us to be able to perceive. In other words, all perception involves projection. That function is mainly inherited, but it is also modified by experience. Two principles seem to be operating on our perceptual "material": the tendency to anthropomorphize what we cannot conceive directly and the tendency to assume that our feelings and experiences are universal, accurate, and "right." Because of the first principle, the gods, or God, has usually been imaged as human-like, having human characteristics, and acting in ways perceived to be human. God can become a lover, good, evil, paternal, maternal, vindictive, jealous, angry, lustful, kind, mean, and any other adjective which describes people's nature. And because we can only know what we experience, that knowledge tends to be placed everywhere; the idea that there might be another truth seems foreign, if not impossible, to those who cannot imagine that there could be some other reality than that within themselves.

The apparent urge or need to conceive a creator seems to be universal throughout human history. My efforts have been directed at trying to get at the roots of that urge. There is a kind of naive part of me that asks, "Why? Why does one need to know what lies behind natural occurrences? Things happen; isn't that enough?" Scientists seek to understand the workings of nature, but, at its foundation, nature is unknowable. No one can explain the postulated "Big Bang," for example. Scientists explain the beginning of life on earth as the simultaneous occurrences of many seemingly random, unrelated conditions occurring at a moment in time in the earth's history. But scientists cannot say why or how it came to be that the elements all came together at that moment. It's easy to go from "I don't know" to "it must be an intelligent design" or "someone like us, but far more powerful and with greater authority than us, caused it to occur." There seems to be a general reluctance for humans to say, "I don't know, and I may never know." Instead, superstitions and "beliefs" have abounded from the first human's existence.

Ultimately I came to a personal interpretation and understanding of the concept of God, the creator, or the higher power. For me, God is almost synonymous with Nature and all that is. Since all that exists has been created, then I have no argument against a creator, but for me the creator is defined only by what is created, not as an anthropomorphic force. In other words, the existence of nature per se, as I perceive it, proves the immanent presence of an unknowable, undefinable creator.

I pray; I pray almost constantly when I am mindful. For me, prayer is a kind of meditation on finding harmony in and around myself with all of nature -- perhaps within the entire universe, since there seems to be a kind of universal harmony. If I were to anthropomorphize God, prayer would be a focusing on walking hand-in-hand (simply being at one) with God and filled with inner peace, love, and acceptance of all that IS.

My thoughts about death start with birth. We are born out of two cells coming together. The cells were created in humans from their life force, food, energy, and all the elements generating those cells from scratch. Before conception, there were the elements. After death, therefore, I suspect, we return to the elements. I doubt there is any afterlife, reincarnation, or any such occurrence. Consciousness, the soul, spirit, and all that is me ends -- all except for the memories in others. Perhaps there are vibrations remaining, generated by my having lived and made movements andsounds. Like all those who have lived before, if such vibrations do remain, I imagine that they deteriorate in intensity in time. My body returns its elements to the earth from which all life began.

If there is no afterlife or consequences to the way we live, why live a moral life? Why choose to live any kind of life? For me, life's goal is the pursuit of beauty, and the epitome of beauty is love and harmony. To achieve those means acting to develop and produce them. The objects of love and harmony are not only within ourselves (for if we cannot achieve them within, we cannot know how to strive to achieve them without), but all the objects, creatures, and humans outside ourselves. The striving for beauty involves empathy, inclusion, patience, and a consciously developed basis for determining right from wrong -- all of which are idiosyncratic.