Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "inspirational"

What is Religion?

This question torments a lot of young minds of modern society, especially those who are keen to study science. It is something that makes every single person on earth ponder in amazement.

Religion is simply a natural phenomenon of the human mind. It is something that is deep rooted into the neural network of the human brain. Or in short, it is a neurological phenomenon. And that natural feature of neurobiology manifests in vividly different ways in different people. For example, to me exploring and investigating the fascinating realm of the human mind, is my religion. To an evolutionary biologist, the theory of evolution itself can be his or her religion. However, to the majority of the human population the term religion refers to a specific book. And there lies the most devastating perceptual error of the modern human society.

Religion is not a book. The Bible is not religion, nor are the Vedas. The Torah is not religion, nor is the Quran, or any other scripture on earth. Scriptures are born out of a basic human urge to sustain the sensation of spirituality in an organized structure.
All the religious conflicts in the human society rise from the perception that when we talk about religion, we are actually referring to a specific book. And there's the biggest perceptual mistake of the human civilization.

All human creations including the scriptures are the product of billions of neurons firing together in proper harmony. And anything that a human creates can never be free from flaws. So cannot be the religious books of this planet. And chaos starts to invade the society when people perceive every single word from the scriptures to be literally true. Thus the mistakes of our Bronze Age ancestors become the cause of devastation in our modern society.

Biologically, the true essence of religion, lies within the human mind, not in any book, no matter how old they are. Religion is not a book. It is a natural feature of the human mind that created all the scriptures in the world, not the other way around.

Religion is the mind’s urge to become better in the spiritual domain. All those books only depict that urge. They only show what a handful of individuals in the history of mankind

experienced when their brain made them transcend from an ordinary wakeful state of consciousness into an ultimate state of divinity and bliss. It is what we call an altered state of consciousness. And you don't have to be a prophet or a messiah to experience this. The most natural way to experience a transcendental state of consciousness is through meditation. It has nothing to do with God. But it has a lot to do with exploring one's inner self and getting familiar with one's deepest desires, the inner divinity.
Thus all divinity, spirituality and religiosity exist within your very brain. I take immense pleasure in realizing that our perception of the whole universe emerges from the activity of the little specks of jelly inside our skull. From the complex and fascinating neural activity emerges our very human consciousness, which happens to be the most advanced among all species on planet earth. So, bring that 3 pounds lump of jelly into use. Human brain holds all the answers to you questions. You just need to ask the right question at the right moment. It is not about what the books permit you to do, or not to do. It is about what you as a precious member of mankind permit yourself to do. It is about finding the kingdom of conscience. In that kingdom of conscience you shall discover that all religions are biologically true and equal. They evolved in the human mind to ease the sufferings of daily survival.

And the ancient sensation that binds all religions together is spirituality. It is the basis of all religions on this planet, yet it is not tied to any specific religion. In fact, this neurological element of spirituality led to the birth of modern religions.

At the core of all religions, the rudimentary element of spirituality functions as a cognitive mechanism within the brain to inspire a human being in all walks of life. And all the vivid and varied religious rituals and regulations are manmade paths that lead towards that spiritual awakening. Mother Nature embedded the seeds of spirituality within our genetic blueprint because this fascinating mental quality proved its mettle in easing human anxiety and sufferings throughout our existence as a species.

Humans are the most interesting as well as confusing creature on this planet. We can be tough as iron, and quite amazingly in times of distress we can become real weak and vulnerable. So, Mother Nature thought, “Hey, I cannot let my children suffer like that. I need to do something about it.”

Naturally, she put selective pressure on the human brain and through millions of years in the pursuit of building various mechanisms in our complex neural network. These mechanisms are the pinnacle of biological revolution. They are the reason we can act as
an advanced species. They provide us amazing human qualities of love, passion, compassion, kindness, empathy, curiosity, and spirituality.

And this element of spirituality in our neural network constructs our rich and vivid religious sentiments. As I have said in my book Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality, “your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky, and so can be your religions. But in all your vivid and diverse paths of practicing religion, here is one common element that knows no bounds. That element is the eternal bliss that enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence.”

That divine element constructed all the philosophical teachings of the scriptures. However, some of the verses of those books which inadvertently advocate and promote hatred or violence, are simply the product of the dark side of the human mind. All those scriptures are like philosophical literature. Some parts of them are beneficial to the society and some others are quite harmful. Thus, taking every single word of those books to be literally true, only leads to chaos. This is what we call fundamentalism, and it is dangerous. It not only harms the society, but leads the entire human civilization back to the Stone Age.

Hence, to avoid such catastrophic scenario, every scripture, no matter how ancient, must go through rigorous human scrutiny. A rational mind should not accept a single word from the scriptures without properly examining it. A modern human being must be brave and upright, and embrace the goodness from all the scriptures and throw away the poisonous particles.

Religion itself is not harmful for the society. In fact it is quite the opposite. It is what gives a person hope to keep walking even in the darkest times. And we have proven this with countless neuroscientific studies. We the neuroscientists have proven that religion is healthy for the human species as a whole. It is an incontrovertible fact of science, just like evolution or gravity. In fact, religion is a crucial part of evolution.

But, on the other hand, the greatest threat to mankind is fundamentalism. It is the fuel for terrorism. And the moment, fundamentalism disappears from the face of earth, society would finally get rid of religious terrorism.
The point is, every person on this planet has been endowed with an inexplicable human conscience. Through various neurochemical processes, that conscience can solve quintessential problems of life. That conscience can tell you, whether something is right or wrong. And that very conscience can show you, that all religions serve a single purpose in human life. It serves as an infinite domain of hope. And we live in a society, where hope has become scarce. So, we need more of it. And if a person takes comfort in his or her faith upon divinity in times of utter distress, who the hell am I to say, “that person is delusion”. Only a blind idiot would call the faith upon divinity, a delusion.
My conscience doesn't allow me to be such ruthless. I am a human, who happens to be a scientist. And my scientific exploration of the biological roots of divinity has taught me Universal Tolerance.

Whatever may be the position of science, whatever may be the position of philosophy, as long as there is such a thing as death in the world, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity. And the beauty of Mother Nature is that, every time a person tries to inflict harm to that graceful element of faith, it reinforces itself in the human mind.

My goal is simple. It is to take the human civilization with me on the path of sweet general harmony. The beauty is in assimilating the appealing elements from all religions. The world has ample place for everybody. And once all the humans of this planet learn to embrace the goodness of each other, this tiny blue world of ours, shall become the happiest planet in the universe.

The point is, based upon one's needs, his or her brain develops various fascinating beliefs - religious, non-religious or purely spiritual. When a seed is put in the ground, and soil, air and water are placed around it, does the seed become the soil, or the air or the water? No, it becomes a plant. It develops according to its own law of growth, assimilates the air, the water and the soil, converts them into plant substance and grows into a plant.

Similar is a human mind. And similar is a belief system. The Christian is not to become a Muslim or a Hindu, nor a Muslim or a Jew is to become a Christian or a Hindu. In the name of general harmony, each must assimilate the spirit of the others, yet preserve his or her individuality and grow according to his or her own law of growth.

Any idea of separation is a bondage. True liberation of the mind is in non-differentiation. And that liberation can only be attained though love and compassion. So, in the name of general harmony, let's break the barriers down and embrace each other. Let's build a world beyond chaos and religious conflicts. Let's construct a world better than this one, where ones individuality finds new meaning in accepting the goodness of others. Where love and compassion shall run in the veins of every single human being.

Perfection is not a feature of our world. On this planet nothing is perfect. Yet we crave for perfection. Especially biological life on this planet is definitely far from perfect. We are not perfect. That's where the process of evolution comes in. Biological life including us the sapiens, keeps evolving from an imperfect species to a less imperfect species. So, we keep going in the path of getting less and less imperfect. The process of evolution is a relentless journey from imperfection towards perfection. This perfection is defined by its survival value. And those who can't keep up with the process, get extinct. That's how natural selection works. Either you are a winner, or you lose your license to survive on this planet. It is the very basis of biology. And biology is the bedrock of life.

And when a biological species evolves, in order to adapt to its environment, it adopts some new biological features and gets rid of the unnecessary ones. And this process of adoption and exclusion of biological features is a crucial element in the path of survival. And it has been going on since the birth of the very first life form on this planet, and shall go on in the future.

Human life is a hodge-podge of various biological features. However, the features that distinguish humanity from the rest of the species on this planet are those of our uniquely advanced neurobiology. Our very pride on being the smartest species on earth is predicated on a highly complex and magnificent neurobiology. Our fascinating neurobiology puts us apart from the entire animal kingdom. Without our advanced neural network of a hundred billion nerve cells, we are nothing compared to the brawn of the wild animals.

And this very neurobiology has endowed us with a beautiful psychological system, called the human consciousness. It has endowed us with uniquely majestic cognitive features. The 3 pound lump of jelly, which we call the human brain, is the birthplace of all our extraordinary achievements. Human Brain is the most complex organized structure in this entire universe. It is made up of a hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. The relentless activity of these neurons gives rise to all the richness of our conscious experience. All our feelings, emotions, thoughts, ambitions, love lives, our sense of self, and even our religious sentiments are simply born from the activity of these little specks of jelly in our head.

All our sentiments, whether they are religious, romantic or any other, are born in the neurons. In fact, religion itself is a natural biological feature of the human brain. And as I said earlier, any biological life-form must evolve in order to survive, while modifying its basic biological features. And one of the most significant features of human life, is its religious sentiments. Hence, when Mother Nature decides that some of those religious sentiments are not working properly, she puts selective pressure on the human brain in order to modify those sentiments, and if needed, terminate some and develop new ones. And in this process of religious evolution, two of the most glaring specimens, are Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama, whom you know as Buddha.

In the process of biological evolution, change in a biological feature takes a long time to become noticeable. However, the first step towards that change, leads to a big leap for the whole species.
For example, around 1.89 million years ago something extraordinary happened, that changed the course of mankind history forever. At that point of time your ancestral lineage reached the crossroads of evolution. Henceforth, evolved one of the most advanced early humans. They were the Homo erectus. You really owe a lot of your brilliance to them, because they did something that was and still is beyond the wildest dreams of the entire animal kingdom on planet earth. They solved one of the most important pieces of your evolutionary puzzle -the mystery of fire.

There was not a single species on your entire planet, that could thwart its instinctual fear of fire, until the arrival of Homo erectus. These early members of your evolutionary tree achieved the unthinkable. They conquered their primeval fear of fire and reached into the fascinating blaze like a true brave-heart. But for this to actually happen, there had to be one or a couple of brave Homo erectus, filled with vigor, who took the first step toward achieving their own fear of fire. And as soon as they conquered their own fear, following them came all the fellow erectus. As a result, for the first time in the history of life, a biological species harnessed fire. Naturally, they became superior to all other contemporary species, including the wildest ones. Suddenly everything changed. It was absolutely mesmerizing. As if your evolutionary timeline witnessed the captivating dawn of human excellence.

Similar extraordinary events of evolution in the human religious sentiments occurred when two brave men, took the first step outside their circle of orthodox system of beliefs. They took the first step towards shaking off the unnecessary and quite harmful elements of religious dogma, that were bestowed upon them by the environment. Their minds wanted to evolve into better versions of themselves, with new and refreshed religious sentiments.

Those two were Christ and Buddha. They were ordinary humans who, upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia (transcendence/nirvana/god – see What is Mind? to learn in detail) wanted to adorn humanity with better and less wild religious sentiments. They wanted to adorn humanity with true humanism. And above all they wanted to adorn humanity with plain ordinary everyday kindness and empathy.

Their attempt to reform the contemporary system of religious sentiments was hailed as blasphemy by the orthodox believers, however, as it always happens in nature, if a change is beneficial to a species, then that change eventually sinks into the psychology of that species. Naturally, two new systems of religious sentiments were born upon the foundation of the teachings of Christ and Buddha. These were Christianity and Buddhism. But, like all of their predecessors these systems are also man-made, hence are prone to orthodoxy and authoritarianism. And when such orthodoxy gets intense, an urge for a new system appears in the mind of thinking humanity.

As long as the teachings of great minds remain as a kind of philosophical literature, which you can read and analyze, and then embrace the parts that appeal to you while discarding the rest, they shall flow pure and strong in the hearts of many, but the moment, representatives of those teachings start making the peculiar claim of their exclusive textual possession of divinity while defying all other philosophies, the world will imminently plunge into chaos.

Thus, whenever fundamentalism, be it religious, political or educational becomes an impediment in the progress of thinking humanity, it becomes a sociological responsibility of the children of Mother Earth to break free from the bonds of textual orthodoxy, and if necessary build a new system aligned with rational thinking and universal acceptance.

Belief is indeed psychologically important for the human mind of general population, but that belief should be nicely compatible with scientific reasoning, otherwise that belief turns into prejudice, which is never beneficial to the human life.

Above all, it is the quality of life that matters. While, Science plays the most influential role in improving the quality of life as a whole, Religion on the other hand, plays the major role in strengthening life from within. In some occasions, both science and religion become expendable. But in no circumstances, the quality of life can be compromised. Religion and Science both must help a person wherever he or she stands, or else, they are of no use.

Motion Picture - it can be a great tool to inspire and shape the thinking of the masses, yet the harsh reality of the so-called modern society is that, most of the films that are made today have not the slightest bit of nutritious food for the mind, rather it is all a cocktail of various cheap stimuli. They can, if they want, make movies of great taste, capable of getting inside the head, or rather the heart of the people, and make them feel sentiments of utter significance both in the paths of individual and social progress, yet they choose not to. And their excuse for not making such movies is that, they do not sell – their excuse is that, people won't go to the theaters to watch an inspirational and thought-provoking movie – their excuse is that, people want entertainment, not philosophy!

However, regardless of such petty notion about film-making, there are some true filmmakers, who give their heart and soul to make movies that are most incredible in their ability to touch the heart as well as the brains of the masses. A Film has the potential to kindle such a spark of inspiration in an individual that it can alter the course of human progress. Today the thinker whom you know as Naskar, had his inspiration from not only the world of science and philosophy, but also from the world of motion-picture. Back in the years, when I was in the pursuit of recognizing my real self, movies did not only fuel that pursuit to some extent, but also, they taught me to speak languages other than my mother-tongue Bengali, such as English, Telugu and others.

The reality is, films that are made solely to sell, instead of touching the conscience of the masses, feed on the ignorance and confusions of the people, on the other hand, films that are created to both inspire and entertain at a deeper level, are more likely to have fewer audience. But remember this, my dear film-maker, the few viewers that your film receives because of being more inspiring and less entertaining, have the potential to shape their society in the line of the idea conveyed by you. Now you choose, my dear friend, what kind of society you wish to have - a society full of dumb manikins who love nothing more than pure, pedestrian entertainment, or a society where the very term entertainment is defined by the message conveyed by your film. A film with no message, is a film of no value in the society of civilized humans. You can tell the level of intellect and advancement of a nation, by the kind of movies its citizens watch.

A society does not stay dumb because of its dumb co-called political leaders, but because of those large number of creative individuals with great public outreach, such as film-makers, actors, music composers, singers, and others, who are more interested in increasing their fan-following than shaping the mind of their preexisting followers with their work towards a progressive future. There is a difference between healthy entertainment and cheap, pedestrian entertainment. And unfortunately, most of today's film-makers are inclined towards the later instead of the former, especially in the developing countries. In fact, to these directors, the only entertainment that there is, is the pedestrian entertainment - and as for the healthy entertainment, it is apparently a myth that is less likely to receive a broader audience.

So, now let's try to understand, what the heck is healthy entertainment! Healthy entertainment is a beautiful blend of stimuli that can connect with the viewer at a sentimental level, then sow the seeds of a certain idea or feed the mind with inspiration and courage. In short, healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction. This leads to not only an entertained viewer, but also an inspired soul. And that should be the purpose of film-making, and indeed the entire entertainment industry, rather than feeding the general population with garbage. Remember - Entertain, but also, give the viewer something to think about. Without an underlying message to think about, there is no difference between going to the movie-theater and going to the bar.

A Few Recommended Movies:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, People will Talk, Good Will Hunting, Patch Adams, Bicentennial Man, 3 Idiots (Hindi), Taare Zameen Par (Hindi), Oh My God (Hindi), Moner Manush (Bengali), Leader (Telugu)

Those who call you mad will one day worship you,
For no great achievement is possible without madness.
Those who laugh at you will one day learn from you,
For working through the laugh is a criteria for greatness.
Those who know not you exist will one day seek your guidance,
For your endless sacrifice will make you a beacon.
Those who find you absurd will one day bow in veneration,
For the absurd ideas take us to the most breathtaking destination.
Those who look down on you will one day look up to you,
For your sacrifice will place you on a pedestal of glory.
Those who are deaf to you will one day cross limits for you,
For your voice will echo in the hearts as a purifying symphony.
Those who see you inconsequential will one day pay you homage.
Breathe your mission, live your mission and your acts will forge fate's foliage.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mad About Humans: World Maker's Almanac