 119. Parental Deity |
THE PARENTAL DEITY AND THE "ONE" TO BE REALIZED
There is a common notion people have which they associate with “God” (or the Divine), and which they commonly identify as a basic “religious” feeling or concept. It may be described as a feeling that, even when you are alone, there is “Somebody Else” in the room. This is just the opposite (or the antithesis) of the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life. I Speak about God all the time—but I am Speaking from a Disposition that is entirely different from the “point of view” of conventional “religion”. Perhaps, by contrast, you could say that the Disposition of Real Transcendental Spiritual life is summarized in the notion that, no matter how many people are in the room, there is still only One Person there!
In general, discussions about “God” or “religion” tend to be naively associated with the idea of the Power that is “Other”, or the One Who is “Other”. This “God”-idea corresponds to a rather childish (or even infantile) sense of Reality. Children are not, in general, great metaphysicians or great mystics! They have some very primitive kinds of awareness, as well as some remarkable kinds of awareness that adults tend to lose or dismiss. However, when children communicate their sense of “God”, they very often express a feeling that has been dictated to them by their parents. They naively describe Reality according to a child’s psychology—that child-made awareness of Reality which is not natively associated with great, abstract propositions. It is not that children are free of mind, and (therefore) their “religious” concepts are purer than those of adults. The “religious” concepts to which a child can be sensitive and responsive are generally built upon the psychology of the childhood situation—which is one of being dependent on a parent or parents, particularly on the mother. The parent-child relationship—in which the parent is a great, “experienced” person there to protect the smaller, vulnerable person—provides the naive basis for childish “religious” views and for what are commonly called “religious” views in general. In other words, the notion that people have of “God”—apart from Real-God-Realization Itself—tends to be a carryover, an extension of the childish situation. Therefore, “religion” tends to be regarded as a “solution” for a rather infantile “problem”: the need to be protected, sustained, and made to feel that everything is all right and that everything is going to be all right, the need to feel that there is a superior “Other” in charge of everything.
When people communicate to their children about “God”, they commonly speak of “God” as a kind of super-version of mommy-and-daddy. When people speak to one another about their earliest “religious” consciousness (and it is more a kind of conventionally acquired mental attitude than it is a matter of direct perception), they commonly talk to one another in terms of a child’s model of Reality. However, to truly enter into the Process of Reality Itself, you must transcend the child’s version of Reality. To become human, to be an adult, a mature human personality, you should have overcome that childish view—but, commonly, people do not. Thus, to the degree that people are “religious” (in the conventional manner), it is that portion of themselves that is basically childish or infantile that is being “religious” or that needs “religion”.
The entire domain of conventional “religion” is (commonly) the domain of immaturity—or of childishness and adolescence, rather than real human maturity. When people believe in “God”, what they are actually believing is that everything that is “outside” of themselves is ultimately epitomized in some Person, Force, or Being that is not merely making and controlling everything, but is in charge and is going to protect them—and, especially, that this “Other” Person will protect them and even help them to get a lot of things they want, if they will enter into a special kind of relationship with that One. That relationship is very similar to the one that you were called to enter into with your parents: “Be good—and we will love you, and protect you, and give you things that you want.”
Thus, popular (or conventional) “religion” is largely a cultural domain of social morality. People are asked to behave in one or another fashion that one would call “good” in order to maintain a good association with the parent-like “God”, so that they will be loved and protected by that One and given the things they want (while they are alive, and after death).
Conventional “religion” is largely an enterprise of childhood—of the dependent, childish state. When people become adults, however, they have more hard facts to deal with in life. They feel much less protected than they did as children in the household of their parents. So they begin to question and to doubt the existence of this Parental Deity. Such individuals may continue to be conventionally “religious” in some sense, willing to play the game of social morality and good behavior—but they carry on a rather adolescent relationship of dependence-independence, or embrace and withdrawal, relative to this “God-Person”.
