Longing for Home

Ever since I can remember, I have felt a great sense of homesickness when I look up at the night sky or at images of space. I have always felt that I came from the universe and one day I shall return. Because I was never indoctrinated into a religion, I feel like my soul was able to hold onto the memory of where it came from and longs for the day when it can go home. These days, with the sad state of the world, that longing is stronger than ever, and is partly what prompted me to start this blog. 

Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud. Image from James Webb Space Telescope

In the Beginning

My parents both grew up with religion, but left the church and became atheist as soon as they became independent adults, and they raised me as an atheist. To date, at the age of 51, with the exception of weddings and funerals, I have never attended a single church service. My mother did give me a children's Bible as she felt I should at least know about the religion that dominated the culture we were living in, but to me it was simply another story book and I was more interested in reading the Famous Five and Nancy Drew books.

When I was around five or six years old, Carl Sagan's Cosmos aired on TV and I remember being glued to the screen with my parents. I didn't understand much of it back then, but it captured my imagination and he said something that stayed in my mind for the rest of my life: "we are all star stuff". Perhaps it was those words that seeded my feelings of being at one with the universe or perhaps his words confirmed what I already knew to be true, but they were the basis of my developing belief system. 

Later in school we learned the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one state to another. Around this time I was also interested in the paranormal, ghosts and unexplained phenomena, and I started to wonder if there might somehow be a link. Though I didn't believe in a creator or god, I believed in the paranormal and therefore if ghosts were real then that implied that there had to be life after death. Perhaps the soul was a kind of energy, I thought, and that after death that energy transforms to a different state, a different dimension, like the non-corporeal beings in Star Trek that lived in different dimensions? Yes, I was and still am an avid Trekkie. 

The only exposure I got to religion, specifically Christianity, back then in my formative years was at school. Scripture studies were a compulsory subject until the age of 14. Many of my classmates also attended Sunday School and there were Christian Union clubs as well. Being pretty much the only atheist in class, I soon learned not to draw attention to myself and would sing along to hymns and bow my head during prayers. It was easier to blend in than to try and explain why I didn't go to church, but there were times when I didn't want to pretend and at one point I decided to join the Christian Union club at primary school to try and become one of them. All the praising and worshiping of something that was (to me) make-believe was just silly and after a few meetings I gave up. I decided it was a waste of time and if I was going to spend time on make-believe, I would rather spend it on my own make-believe and create my own stories.

I didn't pay much attention to Christianity after that other than to debate the Bible and existence of god with a Christian friend of mine. I also wrote a couple of school essays on the topic. It was a subject that my parents and I often discussed and I am eternally grateful that they raised me to have a curious and open mind. 

In my teens and twenties I had a lot of pen friends and was corresponding to people from different backgrounds and beliefs from around the world (this was in the days before the Internet). Their friendships broadened my mind and instilled in me a love of learning about other cultures and this grew when I was able to travel abroad and visit places around the world. I made friends with Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists and other faiths in between. 

Though, I'm not able to travel now, I still love to watch documentaries about different religions and cultures, and different places in the world. I am fascinated by the ancient world and the myths and legends that cross cultures and point to a lost civilisation predating ours and may be the source of so many religions' creation and flood stories. 

Not only am I interested in our ancient past, but I am also fascinated by the nature of our reality and our very existence. What I find most exciting is that my earliest belief, that we come from the universe and will return to universe, might be closer to the truth than I ever imagined. Both quantum science and noetic science are producing evidence that hints that this might be the case. Noetic science is showing that consciousness may not reside in the brain, or the body at all, and may in fact exist in a field (or dimension) outside of the body and that our brains act like a radio receiver tuning into our individual consciousness patterns. Quantum entanglement gives the framework for how this might occur and the two theories combined are giving weight to the theory of panpsychism – the idea that consciousness gives rise to matter, not the other way round (i.e. materialism – matter giving rise to consciousness). The implications of this are huge. If consciousness exists outside of the body then it may indeed survive death (and near death experiences would suggest this is true) and that would mean our souls are essentially our consciousnesses, and if our consciousness continues on in a different non-corporeal dimension then that means life after death is not contingent on belief in divine being or divine judgement. So, my idea of 'The Universe' as my divine higher power, may not be God as the theists believe, but rather the ultimate unified consciousness field from which everything arose. Instead consciousness itself is the creator, the Source, from which we came and to which we will return when we die..

So when my Christian friend speaks about God and my Muslim friend talks about Allah, and I refer to the Source we are in fact all taking about the same thing.

This is why I am baffled by religious dogma and intolerance. I don’t get it. Every religion and spiritual belief is simply a different interpretation of the same divinity and origins. If God, the Source or whatever you call your higher power, were an ink blot then it’s as if people are warring over whose interpretation is the right one. They’re all right. The interpretation is personal and different for everyone. The ink blot is not affected by our interpretation of it. The ink blot remains constant and unchanged.

You also don’t need to have an interpretation to see the ink blot and know that it exists.