Deep Dark Secret

My deep, dark secret: I have a religion.

I am acutely embarrassed by this. I certainly don't WANT to have a religion. I wasn't in the market for one, and for a very long time I was in denial about it. Me? A religion? Absurd. I am on the side of reason and science. I don't even believe in God, Jesus, Santa, The Easter-Bunny, the Great Mind Control Squid, Aslan, Tom Bombadil or even Bob Dobbs.

I have no interest in the bible. I read it while I was exploring literature, (well, mostly science fiction and fantasy) and was entirely underwhelmed. The Bible simply did not stack up to The Lord of the Rings and if I had to have a holy book, it was more likely going to be written by Roger Zelazney than either dead ancient guys or L. Ron Hubbard.

The problem is simply this: I have experiences that cannot be put into words. I am a severe asthmatic, and have been very near death five times (and in one case, possibly technically dead for a very short time, but my memory and the memories of the others involved are all contradictory, so I may be wrong about it) and in the three that I remember clearly, something happened. I can't verbalize what it was, because I do not have words that fit, and I know a LOT of words. What happened was deeply meaningful, in an emotional sense. What I mean by that is it FELT meaningful. I had the recognition of truth, knowledge, gnosis. What that truth was, is incommunicable.

This incommunicability is not, by any means, unique to me. Almost every mystical tradition acknowledges exactly this state. Science does not speak to it in any helpful way. I am sure that a neurobiologist can explain WHAT is happening in every technical detail, talking about areas of the brain where the 'truth' button resides and what combinations of neurotransmitters push said button. But they give no hint as to why we should HAVE such a button, and why it gets pushed when it does.

Near death is not the only time I have gotten this sensation, but near death is the only time I got it that I wasn't looking for it. The only time I don't think it could be self-deception or wish-fulfillment or some other non-mystical rationalization.

Then I taught somebody else to have that experience. She told me I was her priest. I was horrified, but she meant it in a slightly different way than I thought. She meant I led the way, not that I 'was' the way. And our relationship was much more a teaching pair than priest-student. She used "Shaman" because she said it came closer than 'priest' but I thought that too 'new age'y.

Also, when I was 14, I watched "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan. Like a lot of others, I thought he was over-the-top passionate about science and the bigness of the universe and such passion was a tad creepy. Later, I realized why it creeped me out: When he was saying "Billions" in his geeky way, he was praying! That is, he was doing the same thing that I was doing, that I have no words to explain. Familiar ground for me, tho, because I am acutely embarrassed by it in myself, seeing it elsewhere was unwelcome. I would guess that Sagan himself would be horrified by how I am describing it, but if we could have agreed on the vocabulary, hew would understand what I meant.

So there it is. I have a religion. Don't tell anybody.