Ground

Religion is an important part of many people’s lives. I could carry on with some diatribe about the evils of religion, but you’ve heard all that before. I’d rather talk about the essence of all religion. At the heart of any serious religion is:

1. Truth
2. Justice
3. Peace
4. Love
5. Tradition

I would contend that it is that fifth element that causes most of the ruckus. If you strip that off, you’ve got a nice looking package. If someone came to my door offering to sell me a world where everyone was honest, moral and wanted peace and justice for his or her Earthly cohabitants; I’d spend everything I had to get it. But, alas, that ain’t gonna happen anytime too soon. On the other hand…you never know…stranger things have happened. Why, just tonight I saw what I would estimate to be 80 mph winds – blowing the rain so hard that it seemed to atomize it at one point.

That wind reminded me why religion exists in the first place. We all feel in our hearts, there is something greater. For most of human existence, the “something greater” was unknowable. However, as mankind evolves, we grow ever closer to unlocking all the secrets of our multiverse (thanks Michio). Enlightened spiritual paths have encouraged the interconnection of science and “spiritual” belief. For, if spirituality is a name we give to the great unknown, then it only stands to reason that the more we know, the less there will be to “believe in.”

This does not mean that we will eventually eliminate spirituality because we have inherited the capabilities or humankind’s early representations of “god.” Oops! There it is. It took me three paragraphs and a list to get to…it…er…him…er…. Nobody ever accused me of being too succinct (except maybe my poor wife when she catches me in a grumpy mood). Yes, this blog is ultimately about god. Since god is god so god does not have an appropriate pronoun for god, then god will just have to be god all the time, rather than wrestling with inappropriate pronouns. Fortunately, I am going to stop saying god over and over again and start blathering on about what the underlying essence of the universal meaning of god.

Just as we broke down the base components of all religions (with the possible exception of #5), we should be able to breakdown the components of god. Hmmm! Tricky. Well, I can only think of two that strike me as somewhat universal (at least widespread): Immortality and omnipotence. Now, these are two ideas that lend themselves very nicely to science.

Immortality is simply the mastery of time. Once a civilization achieves this level, growing old and being terminated by an event in a single point in the endless streams of time becomes a thing of the past. Krishnamurti knew that there was a core of reality that he called “ground” because there is nothing lower level. It is in…er…at…dang! There’s a preposition problem now. I guess it’s an occupational hazard when you talk about fundamental shit (now there’s a good universal pronoun). But, I continue to digress… Ground is where everything comes together – that which connects everything in the multiverse. We’re talking the convergence point of all space and time and any other shit we don’t know anything about yet, but will find out about later.

Omnipotence is all about power and energy. Michio Kaku talks about the multiverse in his book, Hyperspace. He also discusses the significance of using individual power consumption as a consistent measure of the technological evolution of an intelligent species from anywhere in the multiverse. The underlying principle is that as a species evolves, its per capita consumption of energy increases dramatically. Even in our own time, if you compared the average daily individual power consumption of a wealthy person with that of a poor person in a poverty stricken area of the world, the difference would be dramatic (Google it – you’ll see I’m right). Imagine the power we will wield in 1000 years. How about 10000 years? It’s easy to presume that, as our understanding of the way everything works expands, so will our ability to harness ever expanding power sources. Today, we can tap small sources of energy or we tap a small percentage of large energy sources. If we don’t kill ourselves (or get blown off the planet by some geothermal cataclysm), we will someday be able to harness 100% of the energy from a whole star – individually! Now THAT’S some juice!

If you could harness that much power, you’d be able to reassert matter and energy to form any combination of…uh…stuff you wanted. And, if you lived on the ground, you would harness 100% of the power of the multiverse. You’d be god. By then, you’d know it, too. Science and spirituality converge! We’ll probably fuck it all up somewhere along the way. Oh, well – maybe I should just keep the faith.