The Religion Effect.

Last night I listened to one of the Vedic mantras that Tina Turner has recently been recording, and then read all the comments appended to it.The song and video were fine; it was the comments which caused me disquiet.

I attach high credence to much of what the Vedic school professes, but it troubles me that when people choose to align themselves with a particular religious tradition they turn into simpering acolytes and start talking in platitudes and highly presumptuous certainties. They become helpless followers who believe what they’re told to believe, and think that by using weak, quasi-spiritual language they’re expressing knowledge, wisdom and a superior position. They claim to have found the truth, when what they’ve really done is joined a different queue at the lucky dip bazaar.

Oh powers-that-be, let me remain a cynic and searcher who knows nothing which can’t be proved or at least personally and convincingly experienced; who believes nothing because belief has no substance; who attaches levels of credence based on instinct and the available evidence; who follows a road based on intuition because I am probably as much a part of the ultimate God as every other iota of existence and feel that worshipping myself would be as silly as worshipping anything else; who strives to live life in accordance with ethical principles which shouldn’t need to be taught, even if it takes time to discover them. And then hope I’m on the right road.

And the bottom line has to be that I might be wrong.