
The blissful silence of knowing
In other words, there is this enormous ‘churn’ of souls coming and going, every second of every day. And depending on what they believe, largely determines how they structure their lives (though their beliefs, values and morals), as well as how they approach their death.
The Numbers
Approximately 60 million people or 0.77% of the global population die annually. That is approximately 2 people per second, or 164,000 per day. Depending upon their faith, they arguably discover firstly, whether there is life after death and secondly if so, whether that accords with the beliefs of their faith. Perhaps even more strikingly is that there are approximately 146,730,000 people or 1.88% of the global population being born annually. That is approximately 4.66 people per second, or 402,000 per day. In addition, our population is increasing by approximately 2.75 people per second; 237,600 per day; or 86,730,000 per annum. So not only are people arguably discovering the truth of their faith at the moment of their death (or very soon thereafter), there are more than twice as many being born into a faith than are leaving it through death, and this will, to a greater or lesser degree, shape the future of their lives.
In other words, there is this enormous ‘churn’ of souls coming and going, every second of every day. And depending on what they believe, largely determines how they structure their lives (though their beliefs, values and morals), as well as how they approach their death.
Diversity is important
As Aldous Huxley astutely observed, “power lays in the ability to make other people accept your view of the world, and this uniformity of perception kills the human spirit.”
Disovering faith for ourselves
Having someone else bring interpretation and meaning of spiritual or religious doctrine to us and representing it as “truth” without personal reflection, contemplation and interpretation into our own thoughts, feelings, life experiences and sense of reason could easily fit the description of “blind faith” or “lazy faith”. That is, rather than discover for ourselves the true meaning and relevance of faith to our personal lives we appear to be quite happy having someone else to do that for us. This may work well for us whilst life is going well but it rarely, if ever, works when we fall on hard times and seek to fall back on a deeper sense of meaning and purpose to help guide us through personal tragedy and adversity.
Focusing on the esoteric experience of faith
As Buddha said, “You can pave the world in leather or you can wear shoes!”
Signposts to a profound life experience
To do this, we need a change. But changes of circumstance are the illusion, not the intent. We are always the object of change, never our situation. When life presents us with difficulties and we experience things we don’t like, lose things we do like, and do not get our wishes fulfilled, we suffer. Our ego steps in and falls back on what it knows and has always done. It seeks to blame the world. Change arrives because we need to move forward, not retreat to the past. As Buddha said, “You can pave the world in leather or you can wear shoes!” We can try and change the outer world to suit our endless desires and avoid our endless afflictions, or we can take responsibility for our life and all of our thoughts, words and actions and seek to cultivate a pure mind of happiness and compassion. Hence, the purpose of faith, at least in part, whether seen through formalised religion or more esoteric spirituality, is to give us the signposts to achieving a life that has a profundity beyond all words, images, sounds, experiences, thoughts or other expressions. The opportunity, hopefully before, but at least at the moment of our last dying breath, to genuinely realise “the blissful silence of knowing”, and that my friends, would constitute a good life.