Being Supreme

Living in many countries and living amongst people of as many faiths as there are social groups, belief systems and religions, I wrestled with the question: Is there a god? Are there gods?

My answer lies in non capitalising the word god. In theological college in the 1960s I was introduced to the study of comparative religion. A new world opened up. Dr Bob Fulcher was the main lecturer: a wonderful man; a rarity amongst Methodist ministers in one respect: he was not dogmatic. He delighted in exploring ideas. He listened more than he lectured. He took us to mosques, synagogues, catholic churches, revival meetings: my eyes were opened. I began to read more about things beyond Methodism.

I saw so many varieties in faith. Could I discount the validity of each? Of course not. I started a journey, all those decades ago, that resulted in my seeing that religious belief was as much a matter of aspiration as of revelation. I saw that the faith we espouse is as much a matter more of where we are born; the faith of our fathers. We are born to Christian parents, we stay Christian: we are born a Buddhist; we stay Buddhist.

If there was one god or even a god, why did he have so many faces?

The simple answer seems to be: because religion derives from man’s aspiration to the highest values of which he is human spirituality is capable. It is the finest expression of the humanity of man. It is not a revelation from above.

Think about Moses. God writing ten commandments on slates. Consider Mahommed revealing what he saw as Allah’s will. It took him twenty-three years. Maybe he was a slow writer? That many years to write a best seller?

Study the origins of Hindu scriptures, Buddhist tomes, Zoroastrian texts: all revealed by some holy alien? No: expressions of revelation from within — exclusively by men — that came from years of a combination of inspiration, thinking, meditation, prayer: call it what you will. Men wrote them all.

The common thread? Wisdom, knowledge, belief come from putting wisdom and realisation into words. Each holy text comes from unique societies; unique experiences, unique understanding. Each one is driven by the norms and requirements for a stable and good society: where it lives, how it lives, how it loves; evolved into a form which provides guidance for that society in its own setting.

Is it the truth? Better to say that it contains truth. Each version deserves respect. Each should be seen as a work in progress, truth aspiring to ultimate but perhaps unachievable perfection; expressing a range of beliefs from social laws (don’t kill anyone) to the finest of which humanity is capable (Walk not on the earth with conceit and arrogance: Al Isra 17:37).

No text is or ever will be of god. It is for god and for those for whom that god means something. Nothing derived from a unique culture can transfer unchanged to another.  Nothing can be the final, incontrovertible truth. 

Take Christianity. Once we say: ‘the cross is the only truth’ we miss the point. We can say ‘the cross is truth’: but is not the only truth. It is a way lf looking at an event or an individual who points us better things. I do not use the word, higher things. Not because higher is inappropriate, but because its connotation suggests revelation from above rather than understanding from within.

Revelation derives from aspiration and inspiration. It allows us to be truly human at the finest morality of which mankind are capable. It is not something revealed from beyond the stars from a supreme being.

Supreme being? The word ‘supreme’ is an adjective. It relates to our own being: jointly, across the world, from tribes to faiths, as we aspire to be truly human. That wisdom from the family of humankind is the supreme to which we aspire.

How do we so aspire? How do we expand our parameters? Some people think. Most of us let others do the thinking; they don’t understand the intricacies of a position, and jump in belligerently to defend what they have not thought through themselves. They follow. They become dogmatic. ‘Yell loud: argument weak.’

Ultimately, dogma, not belief or even faith,  will lead to Armageddon. One way? There are many roads. All take you on a worthwhile journey. The important thing is to reach your destination.

Getting back to my more reverential days: I learned fairly quickly that our professors were not always right. I asked another of our theology professors (my uncle), what makes Christians different?

‘Love’, he answered, glaring at me in a way that suggested he was its main fan.

After years stepping out, in dozens of countries in Asia and the Pacific, and beyond, I learned that all societies love. I have found more love in Islamic countries, in Buddhists countries, in Hindu countries than I ever found in the streets of Christian countries. I am talking about love that expresses itself as care, consideration and kindness.

Take a simple test. Walk down a street in Australia. In most western countries, families live in protected castles. They come home and retreat into a womb protected by high fences and guard dogs. Does anyone rush out and welcome you as you pass by: a complete stranger? Does anyone say: ‘Come in and join us for a cuppa?’

Rarely. Maybe in Birdsville? Walk through a slum in Mumbai. People will smile. They chat. They offer tea. They are happy to share.

Wander through a village in Bhutan — some some of the most wretched places I have ever seen are in that fabled but misunderstood country[1] — and you will have to fend off smiles and invitations to stop and share what little they have, be it only a smile.

Fall off your bike in Kiribati when you ride under an unseen clothes line strung between two coconut trees and villagers will rush out to help. Some might ask for compensation for their destroyed clothes line; but they care. Sure, people do that in Australia and the west as well. This is love.

Take another case. New York. 1981. I visited Wall Street to give a talk at the Chemical Bank. I rounded the corner. Traffic was at a standstill. A cabbie sat on the bonnet of his cab smoking. Under the cab was a dead body: the cabbie had just run over him. Wall Street? The local people? They averted their eyes and scurried on. Better not to get involved: compensation here is different.

That is humanity at its finest?

In Calcutta, I caught a cab to return to my house after visiting Mother Theresa’s disgusting facility. We stopped in a horrendous traffic snarl. Two reasons: cows, but more jamming were thousands of protestors. The cabbie turned to me.

‘We’ll be here a while. I’ll turn off the meter, Let’s have some tea’.

He got out, taking with him a small kettle. He lifted the bonnet of his Indian made Ambassador car and boiled the billy.

Drivers surrounding us joined in. Some brought chapattis; some sweets; others more tea. We chatted whilst we waited for the jam to clear. We laughed. We were one.

That is love.

In Australia, a traffic jam is more likely to lead to road rage.  

In Baluchistan; a tiny hamlet: no women in sight. I had to wait before I entered the village as they were rounded up by their protecting males and hidden from me. Of course it rankled, but I recognised it as their own view of what made for stability in their society. For them, it worked.

We sat on the floor of a hovel, the only furniture a mat. Eyes peered through the cracks of the walls. Ladies eyes. I could see them. They could see me. We men sat cross legged. A tiny wooden shutter in the wall opened. Tea was passed through. It was delightful. I said as much. Feminine titters of happiness wafted through.

After the titterers scurried back to safety, I was allowed to leave. What does one learn? That women suffer? No: that women in that society are capable of joy.

If goodness comes from society, and from within us, why pray?

In Townsville, in my last assignment as a reverend in 1965, before I saw the light and left — I was not defrocked, I was unsuited—I sat on a panel of reverential types at an Easter celebration. It was a Q and A session.

‘How can we tell when God answers our prayers?’

I was given first answer. I stumbled. I waffled. I had no idea. I felt inadequate: embarrassed  by my lack of understanding.

Ian Mavor, another Methodist thinker (a rarity) was asked to answer. He sprung to his feet.

‘Glorified common sense’, he shouted and sat down.

Stunned silence. My reaction? He was so right. All these years later, my reaction is the same. He was spot on.

Meditation? Prayer? Different concepts. Part of aspiration and inspiration; but if either is seen as water being poured from a holy chalice in the sky, it is a questionable practice.

Start with meditation. Some people use the word meditate when they mean thinking or contemplating; others use it to refer to daydreaming or fantasising. Meditation is a way of resting the mind and attaining a state of consciousness that is totally different from the normal state in which we exist. It is a (not the) means for fathoming all levels of our inner selves. It achieves a consciousness of true humanity: from within.

In meditation, our mind is clear: relaxed. We focus within. We are awake. We don’t worry about what is happening outside. We focus only on our inner state. We don’t think. We absorb. Our mind quietens. Silenced.

What do we learn? Perhaps nothing.

What do we achieve? The most sublime realisation of our true humanity. We have no god to whom we direct our thoughts. No great being in the clouds who gives us a sign. Any ‘god’ is within us.

Prayer? Quite different. It assumes that someone is listening. That is a comforting thought. But think carefully here. When has a voice spoken to us? If it did, was it a god? Or was it our common sense realizing the answer?

 Prayer. It is hard on the knees to start with. Mind you, so is the lotus position.

Prayer is espoused as a conversation with god. A conversation? A conversation is two-way. We take it in turns. It is a dialogue between the believer and his ‘believed in’.

It is the listening side that is the hard part. In today’s world, listening is a lost art. In prayer, you hope that your ‘god’ will answer. In meditation, you rely on realisation: common sense perhaps? Which is the more likely to result in your knowing what direction to take?

We hear so often that god answers prayer. So does happenstance and our daily experience. Things happen. It is how we interpret why they happen that is the key.

I opt for meditation. Do I pray? Sometimes, in extremis, I do: in the wild hope that maybe, just maybe, there is a god and she might help. Does she? It is impossible to say.

Yet Christians make the most astounding claims for the power of prayer. In 1986 we theology students were taken to a healing rally at an evangelical church on the outskirts in Brisbane. Wow! In a massive warehouse, thousands of screaming faithful swayed and cried out. The noise could have drowned out the City Hall organ at full volume. The rock band that they used for ‘music’ built up its intensity.

I had never seen so many people in one place, apart from at a football match. The similarities were not lost on me. Neither was the fact that our churches were never full.

The service worked up to the climax: the bit where the anointed one would heal the sick. The pastor called for sinners who needed the healing hand of god, to come forth. (One came fifth.)

 A straggle of tottering people lined up. The pastor prayed — a tad ostentatiously I thought — his hands one by one touching the heads of the ill. He called for the demons to depart. People screamed. They frothed at the mouth: some cried out with joy; others wept; all proclaimed that they were healed.

If faith healing is such a good thing, why wasn’t the good pastor working in a cancer ward in a hospital?

The second last to be healed lurched forward on her crutches. The pastor did his thing, casting out the demons.

‘Throw away your crutches’, he screamed.

She did. She turned and beamed at the crowd. They went wild. She turned toward the exit from the podium. She took three steps. She fell flat on her face.

The Pastor did not miss a beat.

‘The devil is still within you! Pray! Pray! Pray’.

Translation: ‘Take three aspirins a day and come back next week’.

In 1963, the Billy Graham crusade came to Brisbane. I was asked to be an organist. I was given a copy of the service and the sermon. At certain points I was required to play quietly, building intensity and tremolo as the sermon reached its climax. It worked. The faithful were asked to make a decision for Jesus. They did. In their hundreds. The crowd roared. The organ throbbed: Hammond Organs are great throbbers: turn on the Leslie speakers and full tremolo and you can convert a deaf elephant.

Like the healing pastor, those charlatans in their private jets all the way from the Southern States of the USA knew how to work a crowd. They also knew the role that music lays in evoking emotion.

Was it faith? I see it as showmanship.

Quetta. !999. Friday. Thousands of men streamed into the mosque for Friday prayers. I was not allowed in. I watched. I understood nothing of what was said though I could hear strident calls from the Iman.

When they had been stridented, the faithful poured out. They went home. They picked up their Kalashnikovs. They resumed fighting.

Tarawa, Kiribati. 1999. A protestant service. Nearby were two other churches: one Mormon. One Catholic. The pastor revved things up. His sermon was on true religion. He decried the false gods being worshipped in the hell holes nearby. The crown moaned and yelled.

Fired up, they streamed out when the whistle blew and belligerently railed at the other Christians. Thankfully, the Kiribati government, aware that there had been bloodshed between belligerent believers before, placed their police on protection duty: to intervene when worshippers of the same god expressed so much hatred of those who followed the sandal rather than the singlet that the only solution was to maim and — should the spirit so lead —kill  l the heretics.

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea: 1983. My first cantata was performed. It went well. The critics were impressed. My theme was religious: basically the story of Jesus, flavoured with Bougainville and Buka traditional ideas and music.

One of the critics; effusive in this praise, speculated as to my faith. He declared that I must have been a Christian Agnostic. He was a local Anglican priest.

He was right. It surprised me. He put in to words something that was a part of my journey, but I still had a long way to go. I had never thought about classifying myself that way. I only thought about creating the music that I had written.

An agnostic? The word derives from the Greek agnostos, meaning ‘unknown’, ‘not yet known’, or ‘unknowable’. That sat well with me. I am content to stick with ‘not yet known’ and allow the possibility that one day, more might be knowable.

I do not pretend to know what so many people are sure of. All I know is what I see. What I experience. What I love. How I behave. How others are affected.

Don’t ever force me to take your position. You are free to disagree. I in turn won’t force my ideas on anyone. By all means, let’s discuss. In the end, we are what we are. We believe what we believe. I believe in humanity.

Do I believe in a supreme being? I believe in supreme being. That is different. I follow the message: not the messenger.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it. No matter who said it. Believe it if it fits with your own reason and common sense. That was the Buddha’s attitude. What a shame his followers in today’s Myanmar, Bhutan and Thailand ignore this revelation.

When my son Robin died in Timor on 2006, we thought that, as he was friendly with a priest at the Motael church, it might be appropriate to hold it there. The priest agreed. The evening before the ceremony, he sent a message to say he would not do it. He sent it through a minion. He refused to meet us to explain why.

We held his memorial in a garden on a beach. Perfection. We had decided to cremate Robin. We asked the local Sikh temple if they would oblige. They would not. He was not of their faith. We cremated him in the incinerator in Dili’s garbage dump. The company that did it? Anteater Pty Ltd.

Hundreds came to the memorial. Gunfire sounded in the city. No body. No prayers. Allison, Noreen and I — along with hundreds of his Timorese friends — celebrated Robin’s goodness under trees, on a beach, in a garden. Joining us were those who knew one thing: Robin was a good man.

Man’s true spirituality is in being truly human. The best of music is not inspiration from gods: it is an expression of the incredible powers we have within us. We are not playthings of devils and gods. We should not externalise blame if we ‘sin’. We are responsible. We do good. We do evil. We.

If we have talents others see as wonderful, so be it. Smile, and contribute that to the betterment of mankind. That is true spirituality.

That is being supreme.

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[1] See my book ;With a Dzong in my Heart’ Amazon