on faith, prana and god--a philosophical inquiry

 I often hear people saying they are atheist, hence they deny the existence of god –preferring rational, scientific reasoning to religious dogmas and superstitions.

 We could accept this statement and go on living, but for me there is something fundamentally wrong in this. Let me try to loosen this entangled skein step by step.

I will try to falsify the following sentence:

I am atheist hence I do not believe in god.

Semantically, a-theism means the negating the belief on god.

The statement is already fuzzy as to deny the existence of god it is necessary to first define what god is.

First falsification

I often met self-proclaimed atheists in the west and noticed that people by atheism means the disbelief of a form of god as described in the Abrahamic tradition: an anthropomorphic transcendental being located somewhere in time/space. In fact after living in India for nearly three and half years I do not recall to have ever heard somebody calling himself atheist. In India it is already confusing defining what ones considers for god, let alone denying it.

We need to take the similarities in the definitions of what god is from world religions to make an objective definition which could suit the objective meaning of a-theism. Word-wide religions do define god as life, if in fact the bible defines life as the breath of god (ruah or spirito), in the Vedas god is also called as the pranava or the infuser of prana—life force.

An atheist is someone dis-believing in God or, to use different words, he belief that god does not exist. Taking the above definition of god as life an a-theis by denying the existence of god he is denying the existence of prana or life.

Which is absurd. 

Second falsification

By re-arranging words we see communality in between a believer (mr A) and an atheist (mr B). They both believe in something, what changes is the subject of it—god or (non)god.

What is then belief? To have belief means to accept or to have faith that something exist even if without proof.

So both Mr A and Mr B have faith towards something.

This was an unusual and quite twisted way to introduce the subject of this blog—faith. I wanted to make one thing clear: the existence and essence of a subject necessarily implies faith towards something. If for a Subject to exist there is the need of an Object, I might conclude that “faith is the existence and essence of man.” This is a strong statement of mine which could make a philosopher like Sartre smile.  How can I defend such strong argument?

For ‘to exist’ I mean to live: from birth the body/mind complex function until something breaks this regularity causing death which is the negation of (individual) existence.

For essence I mean the deep cultural, psychological and characterial tissue framed around the ‘I’. This is what will later manifest in ego and mind.

There is a biological and psychological need of continuity in our body/mind. By comparing the body/mind to a river, there is the need for a river to have a beginning and ending point to be healthy, if otherwise water will be stagnant or the river itself will die. Body has its aims pre-programmed and dictated by the genetic code (DNA). The DNA also influences some of the subject’ instincts so to ensure life to be maintained in its body for eventually being passed on. The remaining of the psyche of the subject is moulded by his life’s experiences.

At the physical level, each cell of the body seems to have faith in its task; this faith is fuelled by the prana given by the food provided. A wrong or weak prana implies a shaky faith hence malfunctioning at the physical level. Prana and faith seems to be then one equal to the other.

At the mental level it is a bit more complicated because the mind grows with its few instincts or tasks which to ensure the survival of the subject. The mind is intrinsically pure and I-centred but external conditioning experienced in life will obfuscate its focus and conscious point. Saying that the human mind lacks an objective is like saying that it lacks faith or prana. For this reason faith is an essential feature in a child development, which does not simply belief his parents and experiences but faithfully follows their examples, learning from mistakes that faith means saving lot of energy and suffering. Once the child is grown and his basic needs provided, there will still be need for the mind to find a focus where to make his faith or prana flow trough: a social relation, a sport, a god or science for instance.

A healthy mind is a mind capable to efficiently work in time and resources, with the fewest distraction from its wavering. Depression and anxiety are nothing else than the incapacity of keeping or finding a stable objective from which project and manifest one’s faith—prana.

As prana and faith are here said to be the same we could also say that life is the existence and essence of our being.

Going back to the initial statement and adding the information acquired by this philosophical investigation, my conclusion is that it is actually illogical to negate the existence of god because:

A)   one can deny a concept but one cannot negate his same essence and existence; A person to share his beliefs needs to be alive, hence to have prana in his body/mind.

B)   Expressing disbelief is manifestation of another belief and cannot be absolute (as point A states). Believing implies having faith and having faith implies prana.

The conclusion of this blog is that faith is existential and essential for life and god’s existence cannot be denied. What one can do is to live in what the yoga philosophy defines as Isvara pranidhana or to surrender (have faith) in your only certainty: you are alive. 

Keep on doing as marvelously as you can.

OM

http://www.atmavikasayoga.in/