A Theistic Debate
There is a well known Zen story about two men who were arguing about a flag flapping in the wind. “You can clearly see, it’s the flag that is moving,” insisted the first man. “Indeed, but it is the wind that is really moving,” argued the second one. A Zen master, who was walking by, overheard the debate and interrupted them, “Neither the flag nor the wind is moving,” he said, “It is mind that moves.”
This short anecdote nicely sums up the endless debates that theists and atheists wage today. It also pretty accurately highlights their respective level of ignorance that causes the ongoing strife to continue.
In the context of the tale, the first man is clearly the theist, the animist, the so called spiritual person who interprets the world in a naive, rudimentary, and intuitive WYSIWYG (or “what you see is what you get”) way. The second man is then the atheist, someone who has a basic understanding of natural forces and their causal character but nonetheless cannot see the “big picture”. Most probably because he excludes himself from the whole equation. The Zen master then would be a scientist, an explorer, an unbiased seer and observer of reality.
Thus where the theist sees spirit guides and synchronicity, which the atheist dismisses as hallucinations and coincidence, the scientist sees events firmly rooted in what neurobiology and psychology try to describe (nothing more, nothing less). It is therefore not surprising that an average spiritual person rails against Darwin, Mendel, abiogenesis, or natural selection. One simply must discard all of those explanations if one wishes to preserve the undiluted WYSIWYG notion of separate “divinity” that appears to exist “out there”.
The position of an atheist is then merely frustrating — he looks the reality straight into the face, yet, for some reason, cannot see it. Case in point, Daniel Dennett — his description of mind is spot on, yet he concludes that consciousness is an illusion. He clearly conflates consciousness with mind. But I digress.
To put things into perspective let’s have a brief look at entheogens.
If you use them long enough (or their effect is particularly mind-blowing) chances are you will meet a “spirit” dwelling in the ingested substance. At least that’s how such profound encounter subjectively appears. Depending on a lot of factors the “ally” may be more intuited than perceived (though a full-fledged visual and auditory representation is not uncommon), but in all cases one meets with what appears to be an entity with its own mind, character, and will.
Now, science tells us that it’s all just chemistry. And that is a correct observation. However, while most recreational psychonauts, particularly those who have interest neither in spiritual matters nor science (or any deeper understanding for that matter), discard such experience as a mere hallucination, i.e. a chemically induced fuck-up no different from being drunk, the truth is more complex (though not as complex as theist would like to have it).
What really happens in such states is basically an intimate communication between two different species as the receptors in human body become saturated by chemicals contained in the particular entheogen. If you tried various psychedelics yourself you know that each of them has quite different effect and that effect even slightly varies between different strains of the same entheogen. It’s not a stretch to say that each plant has its own character, even if that character is basically just a specific mixture of psychoactive chemicals. The overall effect subjectively feels as if the plant had its own mind, and the forceful nature of the experience then clearly evokes a notion of autonomous entity with free will.
However, the whole playground is at all times human mind.
After all, even in dreams there are agents who exhibit free will, distinct characters, etc. but those entities live only within our minds. Some are just representations reconstructed from daily life. Some, which have more subjectively profound (mystical even) presence, then can be loosely associated with what Jung called archetypes — autonomous mental meta-programs that are common to all humans and are largely outside the focus of awareness. Well, and if these programs go haywire, you bet they can even kill you. Then again, in reality it will be you killing yourself.
Now consider that there is such a thing as “last universal common ancestor”. That is, a life form that is according to evolutionary theory exactly what its name says — a mother-father species of all known life on Earth. This makes humans physically related to all species we know of. Not only that — during our prenatal development each of us went through stages (very roughly) resembling the whole evolution process of our species. We were a single cell, a simple multicellular organism, later we had gills, tail, and so on and so forth. And we obviously carry these experiences physically ingrained within our bodies. It should not surprise anyone that we can recall them in one way or another. Voila and you have “spirit animals” and zoomorphic “transformations” (though those are more complex due to personification and parallel characterization between humans and other species).
Just as a side note, as far as I know, no living organism perceives e.g. photons directly. It’s definitely true at least for mammals and birds. In other words, world as we perceive it is without slightest doubt an illusion. The whole universe is rendered within mind-brain which in turn is an inseparable part of universe. That is the only parallel that you can draw between Eastern mysticism and quantum theory (and subsequently chemistry, biology, etc.).
And I could go on and on and tackle all the different supposedly supernatural phenomena which theists valiantly defend and atheists rightfully dismiss but let’s return back to the beginning.
It is clear as day that what the theist perceives as mystical divine duality (which he tries to transcend by merging the “divine” and “physical”) and what the atheist labels as mechanical indifferent randomness devoid of any notion of divinity that is just a prison for his “noble mind” is actually neither. If I should describe it, I would say that it’s all just singular existence in motion that knows itself through law-based mechanical randomness and that there’s nothing mystical or divine about it even though it subjectively appears larger than life or universe itself.
Still, what it really is you must see for yourself. Then you will also understand why it’s so hard, if not impossible, to put into words and why modern science has nailed down the mechanics of the motion with astonishing accuracy.
Good luck ;)
