This content explores the concept of religious belief through a multi-level framework, drawing parallels between ancient parables and modern philosophical thought to illustrate the progression from superficial adherence to profound spiritual understanding and surrender.
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There once was a kingdom with many
different religious sects who constantly
argued over metaphysical truths. Is the
world eternal or is it finite? Does a
person who has attained enlightenment
live after death or do they perish like
the rest of us?
Seeing this unrest, the king gathered
blind men and brought before them an
elephant. Each was allowed to feel only
one part but describe the whole elephant.
elephant.
The one who touched the head said it
felt like a jar. Another who felt the
tusk insisted it was a spear. So soon
they were arguing over what the elephant
truly was.
This is the Buddhist parable of the
blind men and it perfectly encapsulates
the limited subjectivity of our belief
systems. The Buddha believed that people
only see different sides of the whole
and so they engage in petty quarrels.
In more recent interpretations, this
parable is used to suggest that just as
the blind men had one part of the
elephant, each religion is simply one
aspect of a larger truth.
Religious thinkers from the Renaissance
thought something similar when they
uncovered what they believed was
evidence of an ancient theology in texts
believed to be written by an Egyptian
saint named Hermes Tismagist who
translated to Hermes thrice greatest
which by the way is just such a cool name.
name.
The Renaissance philosopher Marcelio
Facino believed this body of writing was
the first text to reflect an ancient
theology or Prrisca theologica which
they believed had the true theology that
threads through all major religions and
many different philosophies.
The notion that all religions share a
common theology is appealing for several
reasons. It implies that there's no
reason to fight over which is true as
they're all just perspectives on the one
truth. Thus, it supports religious
pluralism and almost demands tolerance
and respect for other forms of worship.
And it's a nice story. But
ultimately, is it true or even plausible?
plausible?
Is there really an ancient theology that
connects all religions and many great thinkers?
thinkers?
Well, for one, Hermes could not have
been the first sage. His writings were
later found to have originated in late
antiquity. So that's long after Plato.
As a result, Hermes would have then been
a beneficiary of the work of ancient
Greek philosophy and existing religions.
We know this because the writings of
Hermes come from the period when Greek
and Egyptian cultures overlapped and
merged in Egypt. But while this ancient
theology may not be accurate, it does
point to something important. For most
major religions, there are common
threads that are worth exploring at
different levels of belief that exist in
almost every religious or philosophical
belief system.
I don't subscribe to the notion that all
religions are the same. There are
important differences that matter. But
in the most popular religions, levels of
belief are often implied. Sometimes it's
the followers of a religion that makes
these distinctions clear. Thinkers like
Saurin Kerkugard, and sometimes it's in
the great texts.
Regardless, we can see an implied
structure of belief, a path from
immaturity to mature religiosity.
And that may not be a straight arrow,
but there are clearly higher and lower
levels to consider that may be useful to
you for whatever path that you decide to
take. And now I want to go into the
first level of belief. Level one, the
pursuer of pleasure.
The first level represents someone who
has not seriously engaged with any
religion. I'm not simply referring to an
atheist or an agnostic. However, this is
a person who is consumed by the pursuit
of pleasure.
Many religions and ancient philosophies
specifically targeted this dogged
pursuit of pleasure where a person holds
pleasure as their highest aim. You can
see this in the Bible, the Quran,
Buddhist texts, the analcts and the
Bhagavad Gita, Plato, Stoicism and and
much much more. The only school of Greek
philosophy that frames pleasure as a
positive aim is Epicurionism.
This fundamentally hedonist school of
thought where you evaluate things based
on the pleasure gained and the pain that
you avoid.
It's not so much about being fed grapes
in the middle of an orgy, although that
would be perfectly fine if you're an Epicurion.
Epicurion.
In the Bible, the pursuit of pleasure is
largely associated with sin. It's
considered a temporary joy that
ultimately leads to misery and pain.
It's only the consequences of sin that
have a lasting effect both in life and
life after death.
The Quran considers pleasure a sin if it
becomes an end in itself, distracting
one's focus away from God. In Buddhism,
our desire and attachment to worldly
pleasures are primary causes for
suffering. Our pleasure is only
temporary. When we let ourselves become
attached to it, we doom ourselves to an
endless cycle of suffering. The problem
is not the object of the desire, but the
desire itself and our attempts to hold
on to worldly things.
When we let ourselves become attached to
it, we doom ourselves to an endless
cycle of suffering. The problem is not
the object of the desire, but the desire
itself and our attempts to hold on to
worldly things.
When Nichze wrote about the death of
God, one of his main concerns was that
humanity would do after moving beyond
religion, he came up with the concept of
the last man to describe the unfortunate
ways people grapple with nihilism.
The last man responds in one of a few
ways. They either comfort themselves
with elucorary beliefs, sink into a deep
depression, or preoccupy themselves with
entertainment. In the latter case,
pleasure has become their highest aim.
And in the century and a half since
Nichzche's writing, it seems that the
pursuit of pleasure has truly become the
last man's primary coping strategy.
The Christian existentialist Saurin
Kerkagard offers one of the most
thorough accounts of the pleasure seeker
in the first volume of his book either
or. In the last section, the diary of
the seducer, the first person narrator,
Johannes, is a self-described athlete,
someone whose aim is to maximize their
pleasure. His main aim is to pursue love
in its most exciting form without
commitment or any greater meaning.
In his own words, "I am an ait, an
eroticist, someone who believes in love
and knows it from the ground up and only
makes the private reservation that no
love affair should last more than six
months at the most."
In the diary, Johannes courts a woman in
a way designed to bring him the greatest
pleasure. Once he sees the potential
object of his affection, a woman named
Cordelia, he embarks on a game of
seduction. He learns as much as he can
about her and inserts himself into her
life. Johannes then moves forward with
his conquest by befriending Edward, a
man who is deeply in love with Cordelia.
Johannes coaches him only to swoop in
and steal Cordelia's hand before Edward
can request an engagement. Through
letters and in-person encounters,
Johannes slowly convinces Cordelia to
sleep with him before marriage. After
their night together, Johannes has no
interest in seeing her again. He has
gotten all the pleasure he wanted from
their courtship and cruy discards her.
So what was Kirkagard's point in this
tale of pleasure and cruelty? It was
ultimately along with the rest of
eitheror to demonstrate how the life of
the athet no matter how calculated leads
to disillusionment and despair. Another
level of belief is required to avoid
such a dissatisfying fate. However,
while researching for this video, I had
to learn a lot about many different
religions, philosophies, and schools of
thought. Many of these have their own
books that I had to read to truly
understand. But with limited time, there
was no way that I could really sit down
and read every single book cover to
cover. I just couldn't have gotten the
information I needed if I didn't use
Short Form, the sponsor of today's
episode. Short Form makes the best
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They break down books into the core
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importantly, how to actually apply them
in the real world. While working on this
video, I read why Buddhism is true by
Robert Wright and short form helped me
understand the psychological insights
behind Buddhist philosophy, especially
the way our mind creates suffering
through craving, ego, and constant
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plan. Level two, inherited faith.
Odds are that most people you interact
with on a daily basis don't seem
particularly religious. They they don't
bring up religious values, nor do they
take the time to actively participate in
religious practice. And yet you see
polls suggesting that the majority of
people identify as belonging to one
religion or another. The people you know
may off-hand suggest that they're
Catholic, for example, despite the fact
that you know that they don't go to
church or pray the rosary. They say they
belong to a religion a lot like the way
you might identify with the country
you're born in. Rather than treating
religion like a choice to pursue a
belief system, it's more like saying
you're you're a Capricorn because you
were born in January.
This is a telltale sign that someone has
inherited their faith. They identify as
Christian or Hindu or what have you
because their parents did. They may even
go to church regularly, but don't seem
particularly interested in reading the
Bible for themselves. Obviously, your
family has a significant impact on which
belief system you identify with, but
culture plays an enormous role as well.
A person growing up in a nation that is
overwhelmingly of one religion is more
likely to identify with that faith. As
with family influence, this
identification can easily be a surface
level belief. Saurin Kickergart took
issue with this lacadasical level of
belief. He famously insisted that we are
not born a Christian rather we have to
become one. In his book attack upon
Christendom, Kerkagard criticizes the
idea that simply being born in Denmark
makes you a Christian. He felt that the
church had tried to make Christianity so
accessible that it no longer reflected
the New Testament. It made everyone a
Christian by default. And when everyone
is a Christian in this way, it doesn't exist.
exist.
I want to take a moment to express my
sympathies with those who stay at this
level of belief. Many people identify
with their parents' religion because it
gives them a sense of belonging. To
reject their inherited faith might
entail walking away from a family or
just becoming less involved. They may
also not want to feel like an outsider
in their community. In some cases, being
an outsider has very serious
consequences. Which brings us to the
next level of belief. Belief out of fear
Humanity has a long history of imposing
religious belief systems on unwilling
participants. For over 300 years, the
Spanish monarchy enforced Catholic
orthodoxy. They prosecuted hundreds of
thousands of people whom they believed
were secretly practicing other faiths
such as Judaism or Islam. They killed
thousands and expelled hundreds of
thousands of Muslims and Jews. In the
process, they created an atmosphere of
fear and paranoia.
These trials and killings were famously
carried out by the Spanish Inquisition,
which became wellknown and feared for
its methods of torture and secret trials.
trials.
The history of religious persecution is
filled with violence and brutality. But
you don't need the threat of death to
coersse others into belief. Religious
communities routinely ostracize and
outcast people for turning their back on
their faith. They often stand to lose
everything they care about, including
their families and their homes.
So that's human authority.
But we also need to consider divine
authority. In Christianity, there are
huge consequences for not believing you.
You risk eternal damnation and all that
entails. Much of what we imagine to be
hell was conceived in literature, such
as Dante's Inferno. But regardless, it
doesn't sound pleasant. Some believe in
a religion not out of love, but out of
fear of the post-mortem consequences.
You either believe and you're safe, or
you don't believe, and you risk severe punishment.
punishment.
The philosopher Bla1 Pascal turned this
ultimatum into a case for believing in
God. In Pascal's wager, you weigh the
possibility of eternal damnation versus
believing in God and receiving the
reward in heaven. For him, this was a no-brainer.
no-brainer.
Obviously, you should choose God. What
do you have to lose? However, there are
more considerations involved in this
simple wager. There's the fact that you
still have to place a bet on a specific
god. You still ultimately have to
gamble. Whether that's on religion being
true or false or on a specific religion
among thousands that exist with many
different consequences for choosing incorrectly.
incorrectly.
Perhaps more importantly, choosing to
believe in God out of fear doesn't get
you all the way there. You have to buy
in, which means overcoming your
skepticism. One common way people do
this is by moving to the next level of
What's in it for me? That's often why
many of us buy into religion. Or at
least it's a fair starting point. As
Pascal implied in his wager, there's
plenty to gain from adopting religious
beliefs. What could be greater than the
promise of an eternal heaven or
preventing eternal damnation?
Something almost everyone struggles with
is the possibility of the endless night.
Without a belief in the afterlife, life
just ends. Your consciousness ceases in
everything you know. All your
experiences and your bonds with others,
they just no longer exist for you. To
suggest that they're out of reach would
be inaccurate, as there is nothing left
for you to reach.
There are however helpful philosophical
angles for this problem. Epicurus
famously said something to the effect of
death does not concern us because as
long as we exist, death is not here and
once it does come, we no longer exist.
It's it's a nice way of viewing the
problem of death, but it doesn't quite
erase the anxieties and the despair of
that endless night. In fear and
trembling, Saurin Kerkagard writes, "If
a human being did not have an eternal
consciousness, if underlying everything,
there were only a wild fermenting power
that writhing in dark passions produced
everything, be it significant or
insignificant, if a vast, never appeased
emptiness hid beneath everything, what
would life be then but despair?"
This take is perhaps a bit dramatic, but
it does point to what is gained. Eternal
life and the end of existential despair.
Not every religion promises an
afterlife, but they all have an approach
to the problem of death.
Buddhism often takes a different
approach to the question of eternal
life, which is illustrated well in the sutapitaka.
sutapitaka.
The story is a dialogue between the
Buddha and a monk named Melanchia.
The monk suggests that the Buddha has
ignored many important metaphysical
questions such as what happens after
death. He threatens to quit unless he
gets some answers. The Buddha responds
with an analogy as he often does. He
asks the monk to imagine someone struck
with a poison tipped arrow. But instead
of just letting the surgeon remove it,
the injured person states, "I will not
let the surgeon pull out this arrow that
wounded me until I know if the man who
wounded me was tall, short, middle
height, dark or brown or gold-skinned,
whether the man lived in a village or
town or city, and so on."
The Buddha goes on with more details,
but the point is that the man dies long
before he gets answers to his question.
For the Buddha, the poisoned arrow is
the urgent matter that needs to be
addressed. The poisoned arrow in the
analogy represents our suffering that
arises from our endless craving. Before
bothering with the questions of the
afterlife and the cosmos, we should
first end the suffering that plagues us.
In Buddhism, enlightenment is not only
the sessation of desire for lasting
pleasure, but also the detachment from
the self and the eternal soul. It
resolves our concerns for the endless
night by removing our desire to go on.
It pulls out the poisoned arrow that
causes us to despair to begin with.
Getting into Buddhism starts with the
promise of what is gained in this life,
the end of our suffering. It's in our
self-interest, even if it involves
acknowledging that there is no self.
Level five, taking responsibility.
At this stage, you are more willing to
examine your religion and ask important
questions. You'll scrutinize the meaning
of texts and try to understand how they
all fit together. This is also
unfortunately when people are most
likely to leave their religious
communities, especially if they don't
get satisfying answers to their questions.
questions.
Your approach to religion may become
very rational. You reject things that
seem illogical or contradictory and
you're willing to point them out. This
is why this stage can be filled with
conflict. Some choose to return to their
old way of thinking about belief while
others continue to grapple with its
complexity leading to a more complex
understanding of their religion.
In the Thera branch of Buddhism, there
are four stages of enlightenment. When
one enters the first stage sautana,
they've stopped believing that following
rights and rituals will lead to
enlightenment. In this first stage, they
intimately recognize that there's no
permanent self or eternal soul. They no
longer doubt the path as they know it
works and have given them a sense of
happiness and freedom. In this level of
belief, you're taking control and you've
committed to diving deeper into your
religion. Once you've taken
responsibility for your own belief,
there's still a significant path ahead.
How will you reckon with the truth of
your religion? Now that you've bought in
on a deeply personal level, you may be
inclined to pursue it rigorously and
with the urgency that your commitment
demands of you. We're talking about
changing the way you live every day and
making real sacrifices.
Level six, religious maturity.
At this level, you've honed your focus
on a divine purpose. You're less torn
between worldly concerns and your belief
as you've let religion become the focus
of your life. This is a level that most
people do not achieve and are probably
not interested in attaining. This stage
often results in a in a form of
aseticism. That's when you forgo worldly
pleasures and relationships to focus on
the divine. Monks are what we typically
associate with this level of religious
belief. In Hinduism, this level of
religious maturity is called the sasa
stage of life. This is where you reject
material desires and importantly your
prejudices against others. In the Hindu
faith, it's important not to treat
others as completely separate from
yourself. The deity Brahman pervades all
things and all people. Mistreating
others is to injure yourself, which is a
strange thing to do. Why would you do that?
that?
In Buddhism's third stage of
enlightenment, one's sense of desire has
completely ended. You no longer wrestle
with craving, similar to the syasa stage
in Hinduism. Your sense of compassion is
unconditional. You no longer hold ill
will towards others. The Buddha,
however, warned against extreme
aestheticism. His doctrine of the middle
way suggests finding a path between
indulging in sensual pleasures and self-mortification.
self-mortification.
The point is not to starve yourself of
pleasure, but to reduce your attachment
to them. The ideal lifestyle then would
still be modest and simple, but not one
that actively punishes you.
In Kirkugard's text, the purity of heart
is to will one thing, he describes this
religious stage of maturity. You move on
from double-mindedness where you are
distracted by pleasures and selfishness
and focus on the good. Kerkugard
describes this person as the night of
infinite resignation. They've given up
everything in this world to focus on
achieving the eternal life in the next.
They no longer consider the temporary to
be worthwhile. It's just a distraction
from God. When you believe in your
religion at this state of maturity, you
don't feel the need to put off focusing
on it. It becomes the passion project
that you can't put down. It's the video
game you stay up until 2 a.m. trying to
beat. You're going for that high score
with the divine, and you refuse to put
that controller down, even if that means
going hungry and ignoring all other
worldly things. Now imagine for a second
they made religion a video game.
On second thought, forget that. They
probably have, and it was likely
terrible. Anyway,
you might be thinking at this point that
we're at the end of the levels of
religiosity. Belief at this stage is
strong and true and can't be doubted.
How can you get any higher than that?
Well, the truth is we have one more
level of belief. I know that seems
impossible, but it's true.
The last level is about taking that
religious intensity and doing something
very important. Level seven, letting go.
In his writings, Kirkagard identified
three spheres of existence. The
aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. But within the religious
sphere, there are two types.
Religiousness A and religiousness B. A
is the aesthetic life I just discussed.
The person who focuses on God and
rejects worldly pleasures. Religious B
is our final level of belief. They've
made a leap of faith that religiousness
A hasn't. Becoming an aesthetic and
focusing on God is firmly in our
control. But to take a leap of faith is
to completely rely on the divine. It is
to relinquish control. To have faith is
to make a logical leap. In monotheistic
religions, you have to buy into the idea
that there is only one God. And in the
case of Christianity, sort of three,
sort of one. It's a bit of a mess. The
paradox is the point. Um, anyway, there
is no objective proof for God's
existence. If there were, there would be
no room for faith. you would just
believe in God like the way you would
believe in the shoes on your feet. To
believe is to take a leap of faith which
Kierkagard suggests may put you at odds
with reason and even human ethics. It
may make you isolated and lonely as it's
a subjective experience that cannot be
explained rationally to others. To truly
believe in God is to subjectively
believe rather than rely on others and
supposed proofs. In the history of
religions and philosophy, there have
been many arguments for and against the
objective existence of God. For
Kirkagard, that's sort of a waste of
time. If God could be objectively
proven, there would be no reason for
faith, and thus there's no personal
commitment. You have the math right there.
there.
But by having faith, you let go of your
need to control your religious fate. You
trust despite how absurd it may seem.
You don't try to learn or come up with
objective truths for why you believe in
what you do. There are too many
mysteries and paradoxes in transcendent
truth, making a comprehensive
explanation nearly impossible. You have
to let go of objective certainty.
In the 9th century, a Buddhist monk
named Lingji Yijuan told his disciples,
"If you meet the Buddha on the road,
kill him." It's a provocative piece of
advice. But what does that mean exactly?
Ultimately, it is the idea to kill your
conceptualization of the Buddha. You
have to let go of external authorities
and even your own conceptualizations of
spiritual beliefs. Your experience of
enlightenment will be personal and inward.
inward.
In Zen Buddhism, you're looking for the
mind beneath all formal structures such
as logic and words. You're trying to
exist purely in the moment. You have to
move beyond thinking of the Buddha and
specific doctrines. You have to forget
the path and guidance. You have to kill
the Buddha to get to the real nature of
one's own mind.
Dowist philosophy is focused on letting
go of a greater purpose and embracing a
way, also known as the Dao. Instead of
focusing solely on a god and serving its
will, Dowists are encouraged to practice
buoui, roughly translated as
non-purposeful action.
In Daoism, the universe is generated by
cosmic order that if followed, can lead
to flourishing. When you act without a
greater purpose in mind, whether that's
a project or self-interestbased goals,
you're more able to go with the natural
flow of the universe. The less
purposeful your action, the more you let
the order of the universe flow unimpeded.
unimpeded.
And that is the final level of belief.
While each example is different, they
all in the end imply letting go of
something that we come to hold too
tightly, even if we came to grip it
because of our religions to begin with.
So maybe the blind men were never meant
to agree about the elephant. Maybe the
point was not to collapse every religion
into one indistinguishable truth, but to
recognize the limits of our grip on it.
Across traditions, across centuries, we
see the same movement from pleasure to
inheritance to fear to self-interest,
responsibility, devotion, and finally to surrender.
surrender.
Not surrender as if in defeat, but
surrender as in release, the release of
certainty, the release of ego, the
release of the need to be right. At the
highest level of belief, you are no
longer clinging to the tusk or the trunk
or the tail. You loosen your hands
entirely. And strangely, that may be the
closest anyone ever comes to
understanding just how ginormous the
elephant is. Not by feeling for its
individual parts, but by moving back and
feeling the amount of light and wind
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