The hidden man is God’s own being

Before I begin, it is important to emphasize that to think of yourself as religious does not require you to be a member of a church, or any adherence to dogmas. Rather, religion is defined by your relationship to whatever you deem as divine. Or, like William James wrote, “… (religion) is the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” 

A few years ago I moved from Italy to the US, for university. Alone, I should add. No sooner had I said goodbye to my parents when that very night, in my dorm room, I was pulled into a black abyss of existential dread. What was I doing there? Why had I put so much pressure on myself to get the proper grades, only to live in a country which I did not (yet) like, with people I did not know, studying for a job somewhere down the line which was not even guaranteed. As the days progressed these sentiments, instead of subsiding, increased. In a surprisingly short time I became incredibly nihilist. 

Fast forward a few months, a friend asked me to go to Hillel with her — a Jewish community just down the road, which met several times a week. The people were extremely hospitable, and I felt a connection with almost everybody. Though, surprisingly, what kept me coming back were the weekly Torah readings. Why? What did those religious texts convey that my otherwise (somewhat) logical mind was so willing to accept as truths? 

Undoubtedly, religion has played a significant role in sculpting civilization throughout history, in its attempt to answer fundamental questions about the existence of human beings in the universe. Religion gives an answer to the inadequacy of the world presented to us in our everyday life. Many, if not all (even if unconsciously), are haunted by a fundamental anxiety of which our so-called “reality” can find no relief — our fear of death. If we allowed ourselves to be completely consumed by this thought, we would no longer be able to function. 

How does one deal with their existential dread in a world where our extensive scientific knowledge has placed religion in such a perilous position? Science tells us that religious dogma is an illusion and false. It tells us that the enlightened individual should not live by those fabrications. But while we might not need a divine being, or divine beings, to explain the phenomena which occur in our natural world, does religion not have something to teach us about how to live our life? What good does it do us psychologically to depend wholly on the picture science paints for us? An infinite, indifferent, dark cosmos, lacking in every way subjective human values. Has our abandonment of the religious worldview placed us in a void of cynicism and confusion? 

It is difficult to be a religious / enlightened person when the very facts of life supports the results seen in lab experiments and mathematical equations. What helped me out of this logic-obstructing mental space was the realization that the belief in something more does not equal the belief in God. The belief in, for example, Spinoza’s God, which finds itself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, is not equivalent to the Judeo-Christian God.

Just as you can have an inner “demon” lurking in the back of your mind, speaking down to you, you can also find your own inner god, housed in the crevices of your unconscious. That, I think, is the “god” I found at Hillel, and that is the god which helped me back on my feet and fed some sense into my otherwise cynical mind. It is also the god which has for thousands of years spoken to philosophers and theologians alike. Most of whom have alluded to the idea that a larger power exists and expresses itself within the depths of our psyche. “Behind your thoughts and feelings there stands a mighty commander, an unknown wise man — he is called Self.” - Nietzsche. 

In this day and age, we seem to pay for having been religious for all these two thousand years. Through technology and science we can deduce that a divine God presumably does not exist. However, it is important to remember that there are things that occur everyday which are inexpressible and inexplicable. We do not know the depth of our mind. The intricacies that go on within to make sense of the world without are a mystery to both philosophers and scientists alike. In order to live a fruitful life one should not shy away from living, and if the belief in an inner, or outer, god or God makes life worthwhile, then why not?