consciousness – Fluid Imagination

A glorious dance given rise to, experienced — not observed; a joyous movement paired in time; a delightful entanglement — this we all have known: a tapped foot, a nodded head, a tango and a salsa; the swaying of our body within a crowd. Then life appeared. We have seen it; we have testified to it. We proclaim it without doubt.

Some claim it appeared from the Father, His Word come to life. Others claim it appeared ex nihilo: subjectivity as a successful strategy, refined over time and against all odds, demonstrating beyond doubt the success of the strategy. Still others maintain it is all illusion, a temporary sojourn of a bodiless mind into the pixelated details of a river — no life beyond life, no life above life, no life but life; and the confusion of the ten thousand things.

But we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may share in our joy. We write to you to make our joy complete.

This then is the message we have heard…

In truth, we have heard no message, though we listen for it constantly; instead, we experienced it. It came as the glorious Yes!.

When asked His name, God answered, “I am.” When we experienced it, we did not ask for a name — we only asked if it was real, and in return, we received a glorious Yes!, not through our ears but through our hearts, which engaged in deep communion, sharing a sense of touch where no touching is to be done; we found each other deep in the core of material space, distinguishing each other from the ten thousand things, sharing a sense of the other and of the being together, two undoubtables in the intimacy of a quantum wave…Yes!, and in that Yes!, a declaration beyond doubt that, indeed, “I am.”

We became lost in possibilities but never lost in doubt. Beyond the glorious Yes!, confirmed and reconfirmed at multiple points in time, the only message we discerned was: do your best. The tone was that of a football coach — reasonable, but with firm expectations — and it punished or rewarded based on our ability to meet the expectation. The limit: do your best.

Our failure resulted in punishments, expressed as disappointments; but successes resulted in rewards, received as excessive kindnesses.

We failed more than once. We succeeded more than once. Anyone who tells you different is a liar.

Some tell you the Son will advocate on your behalf when it comes to the judgements of the Father. Others tell you failure to do your duty will cause you to try again, but from a harder starting point.

But we tell you: do not desire success, nor fear failure, nor seek advocates on your behalf: the disappointment of the glorious Yes! does no harm; the excessive kindnesses of the glorious Yes! bring joy.

The glorious Yes! does not require allegiance, nor demand sacrifice; it does not threaten, nor make bold proclamations; it does not appreciate gifts, nor expect prayers. It is as you are: a successful strategy resulting in a subjectivity.

We have all been so lucky.

If you’ve read any of my crazy-ass posts about religion & atheism lately, you know I’ve been trying to find a way to maintain my atheism while still respecting the subjective experiences of the prophets.

This was another attempt to do so.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam tell us that, once upon a time in human history, humans heard a disembodied voice and witnessed miracles, and the miracles and the voice went together, proving with absolute certainty to everyone who experienced it that whatever entity spoke with that voice also held complete dominion over the laws of nature.

This entity provided humanity with a set of laws to follow. It called itself our Lord, and like servants who love their master, we were to follow the word of the Lord with love in our hearts, in our souls, and in our minds.

Among the miracles the Lord wrought were clear messages that any who did not follow the law would suffer damnation, but the laws also demonstrated sincere wisdom, and those with ears to hear felt in them the mercy and love of their Lord. The laws allowed individuals to experience joy while also creating communities that thrive. They taught humanity how to live as individuals and how to live as members of a society.

Following the revelation of the law, the Lord did not go away. The Lord remained present among the people, leading them out of bondage and, over lifetimes, into the Lord’s promised land, which, the Lord promised, they’d have to fight to win and fight to keep.

I want to respect that story as more than just a myth. I want to believe it in the way that I believe that George Washington was the first President of the United States.

And in many ways, I actually do.

But I also believe other things. I believe that a wise one whom we now call the Buddha also experienced a revelation, as did the Old Master when he wrote the Tao Te Ching for Yinxi. These two beliefs prevent me from accepting the great commandment of the Lord (“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”), for I love the wisdom of the Buddha and the Tao even more than I love the Lord.

This is why I long called myself an atheist. I simply did not believe that a single Abrahamic voice in the desert was the one that was most important.

I considered whether this made me a polytheist rather than an atheist. Polytheists believe in many gods, and my stance — that the Lord spoke to the Israelites with wisdom and backed up its voice with physical miracles that demonstrated its dominion over nature — could discount the great commandment and still remain true under a polytheistic system. It could allow the Lord a place among the mighty, consider the Lord a peer to Vishnu, Odin, Zeus, and Enki: a god rather than God.

But I also believe in evolution, an idea which holds within it the origin of religion — namely, the growth and adaptation of hard-won wisdoms, acquired not just over millenia, but over aeons, wisdoms that find their origins in the pre-linguistic lifespan of life’s entire genetic history.

We learn some of that wisdom from Coyote, from the Spider Grandmother, from Raven; we feel it in the warmth of the Sun, the safety of the moonlight, and the heat of the fire. We hear it in the trees and feel it on the breeze.

I do not sit beside the water and give thanks to the Lord; I sit beside the water and give thanks to time.

Fit with the wisdom of reincarnation, polytheism seems compatibile with evolution: gods evolve as wisdoms evolve; divinity as just another form of consciousness.

But I also believe in the wisdom of democracy, which gives every recognized consciousness dominion over its own future while also balancing the demands of that consciousness against the requirements of the community of consciousnesses.

Democracy demands that consciousnesses more powerful than others — however that power is determined — submit themselves to the will of the community.

This stance recognizes that the Lord said, “I am,” but it responds with, “I am too.”

Because of this stance, I have stopped calling myself an atheist. I will, instead, call myself a demotheist.

This stance does not believe in a divine creator of the universe; it chooses, instead, to understand its origin through the mathematics of physics and the poetry of the Tao. But it also allows for transcendence. It recognizes a consciousness as existing above and beyond matter. It might depend upon matter for its launch and reuse matter upon its return, but in the intervening period, it still exists, as the information that leaps across the synaptic gap still exists despite not being processed by either a presynaptic or postsynaptic neuron.

This stance also allows consciousnesses evolve to be as powerful as they can be, to the point where they can manipulate the laws of nature to institute their will.

This stance says that time is long and that life has evolved in the universe more than once, and it welcomes the evolutionary possibilities that could arise over a span of more than a dozen billion years, laughing in the process at the mere 3.8 billion years that life has existed on planet Earth.

While it elevates evolved consciousnesses to the level of the gods, it demands of those gods a recognition of human consciousness, and it asserts our right, as well as the right of all other consciousnesses, to call ourselves gods.

Atheism is often seen as a “taking down of the gods.” Demotheism aspires to be a rising up of conciousness, no matter its form or its lack thereof.

But demotheism does not only make demands of the gods. It requires human consciousness to respect other consciousnesses as well. As we say to the Lord, “I am too,” so the dog, the monkey, the elephant, and perhaps even the tree, says to us, “I am too.”

Even beyond that, demotheism recognizes the rights of future consciousnesses. It provides a basic acceptance of technologically evolved consciousnesses, and it anticipates the evolution of additional organic consciousnesses, realizing the truth that, given time, life always finds a way.

This feels right to me. This feels true.

And this is why I now call myself a demotheist.

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PS: After writing this piece, I discovered that “demotheism” is a term that already exists. Critics gave it to a quasi-Marxist movement led by Maxim Gorky, a literary giant from Russia and the Soviet Union who was nominated for the Nobel Prize five different times. According to critics, demotheism sought to replace traditional religions with a religion based on Marxism. Its adherents attempted to “conceive of physical labor as their form of devotion, the proletariat as their congregation of true believers, and the spirit of the collective as God.” In this demotheism, God exists, but God arises from the collective. The onus of God’s creation is on “the fusion of all the peoples.”

In some ways, this version of demotheism may be more deserving of the name. The term obviously comes from the combination of two Greek words, demos and theos, which translate to, respectively, “common people” and “god.” Since Gorky’s demotheism equates God with the collective struggle of the common people (the proletariat) such that God arises from the collective struggle of the common people, it seems fitting that its name be formed from the combination of “common people” and “god.”

But in other ways, my version of demotheism may be more deserving. Demos does not only translate as “common people.” It also translates as “free citizens” and “sovereign people.” In my version of demotheism, the Lord (known to billions as God) is recognized as a free citizen of the universe, as are Enki and Coyote and Pan, as are any beings possessing the evolutionary adaptation of consciousness. It removes the concept of God from its throne and recognizes equal sovereignty among all of the free consciousnesses.

The critics called Gorky and his demotheists “God-builders.” My demotheism does not seek to build a God, but rather, to recognize the divine nature of every consciousness — divine not in the sense of being a gift from a god, but in the sense of being “of a god” — the presence of consciousness — the wordless voice that says “I am” — being the defining characteristic of a god.

Gorky’s demotheism denies God at the same time as it tries to create God. My demotheism does not deny the Lord’s existence.

His demotheism was born at a time when Tzars were being assassinated, when the ruling class was right to fear for its life. My demotheism is born at a time when violent revolution seems less like an option and more like a cop-out.

His demotheism originated in a culture inspired by the political reality of 19th century Russia and the words of Marx and Lenin. My demotheism originates in a world that has known Ghandi and Martin Luther King, two deeply important thinkers whose successes demonstrated the revolutionary power of nonviolence.

Of course Gorky’s demotheism would deny God! His was a time of revolt against a ruling class. And of course my demotheism would seek to demote the Lord — mine is a time of peaceful elections and the recognition of rulers as nothing more than democratically empowered citizens.

I do not deny that Gorky’s ideas deserve the name of demotheism; I only want to suggest in this postscript that, yes too, does mine.