Psychological Phenomena of Religion and Spirituality
Growing up, I never had any exposure to any religion or spirituality. My upbringing was completely secular, and I was engrossed in science, technology, and math from an early age. Eventually, when I was taken to church with my grandmother. I took part of some ceremony where I lit candles in the front of the congregation. I wasn't given the context of why I was doing this; I was told to light the candles and I did. This was the primary reason I was never drawn to religion when I was young: I didn't see the point because no one really told me the point of it all.
My unfamiliarity with religious concepts was fairly prominent. I remember one lunch period back in first grade. By chance, the topic of Adam and Eve being the first humans came up. While I was familiar with the general reference, I remember not having any significant clue about the story, let alone any wisdom contained therein. I was so unsure about the whole thing that I actually convinced myself in that moment that it was really Bob and Eve. This mistake led to one of my early exposures to crowd psychology. A debate broke out as I remained adamant about Bob being the first human. Initially, I was the only one defending Bob's existence, but by the time lunch was over, there were six kids on the same page as me over our ancestral origin.
This is the mindset I approached the metaphysical questions that curious children ask about. No one fed me ideas. Instead of relying on some authority for answers, I found or created my own. My entire childhood was filled with wonder as a result. I looked to the large and small, the stars and atoms. My nose was always in some book, or imagining how everything worked. I created my own meanings for things, even a whole language to describe things differently.
Naturally, my inquiries made me a logic-oriented person. This led to me taking the prescribed cultural detour through militant atheism in my late teens. Fortunately, that ended quickly; it was an unsatisfying perspective. The existential quandary of purpose pushed itself into the forefront of my reality. This sent me down the path of philosophy, which I followed chronologically, to see how human thought evolved. When I met Wittgenstein, I realized that I may have interpreted past readings or lessons incorrectly, or at least not having received the full perspective of them. I happened to be engrossed in my early attempts at writing, and fixated on the absolute meaning of words and phrases. Wittgenstein presented the right information at the right time in my life to make me reconsider my understanding of spirituality and religion.
I dove into theology, but being still being hypnotized into being jaded by antitheist ideology, I was adamant that the answers I sought must be in the Eastern Religions. I wandered through dense jungles of information on Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. When I was foolishly satisfied that my understanding was the epitome of enlightenment, I decided to head to the West, where I was blown out of the water again. Judaism and Christianity in particular opened my mind in a whole new direction once I finally gave them a solid look: the direction of the esoteric.
As I dug deeper and deeper into different schools of magic and alchemy, I eventually came to understand that there could be no absolute truth, but certain modes of thought are more useful for different things. A eureka moment hit me not long after. It was obvious that these things I discovered through my own inquiry have been understood through different lenses throughout history. Not only that, it is statistically impossible that this knowledge hasn't been used by leaders throughout the ages to deliberately craft the form of religion for their people's unique circumstance.
Traits of Gods/Goddesses or spirits describe the nature of how the world works. Filling the mind with different archetypes and symbols produces different ways of thinking and perceiving the world. Knowing this, a person can determine how these different modes of thought operate through observation, and craft stories around a desired outcome. These stories may not describe a precise model of reality, but they are accurate enough for the average person to operate unhindered while reaping the benefits of the altered way of looking at the world.
To expand on this: I used to run track and cross country. On long runs, I found that I ran faster when I imagined I was being chased or competing in a big race. By changing what was going on in my brain, I in turn changed how my body was operating. Getting lost in a fantasy reality where the stakes were much higher resulted in more adrenaline being produced, along with many other subtle changes that come in a fight or flight response.
This is a great physiological example of how different focuses in the mind can result in different objective outputs. I know for an absolute fact that running up hills is easier and faster when the mind believes it is important to put the pedal to the metal. My perception in those instances changes to reflect my inner state of mind. Likewise, if two different people have different perspectives of the same experience, their inner worlds will reflect this, which then ripples outwards as they make different choices based on their beliefs.
Let's say a person is faced with a challenging presentation at work. If they wake up the morning of the presentation and focus on how terrible it will be, feelings of failure and hopelessness will pervade their existence. They will dread the approaching moment, and when it finally arrives, they will not perform their best. Instead, if that person woke up and performed a ritual where they attuned themselves to a deity that personifies charisma and confidence, they would shift their mental focus to be more aligned with those aspects. If a person convinces themselves that such a being is guiding their actions, the fear of the approaching meeting dissipates, and performance improves.
This is the underlying principle of alchemy, in my opinion. I know there are others who focus on different aspects, but to me, the basis of alchemy lies in changing how we steer our fleshy vessel across time. I see the human mind to contain the philosopher's stone; the resource which can change any other resource into anything else. If we can alter our perspective enough, we can see alternate ways to proceed moving forward, and thus lead the universe to a different potential future. To me, existence takes a form similar to giant game of plinko, where each one of us is the puck dropping down peg by peg. Each moment is a choice where we decide to proceed this way or that way. Understanding this, anyone can deliberately craft a lifestyle and belief system to maximize or minimize certain parts of their psyche and fundamentally change how they make choices.
Changing one's belief system requires one thing: faith. This is a difficult sell for some people. I know when I was younger, I would have scoffed at someone selling the idea of faith to me. My quest for epistemological certainty had no time for such things. But, if we deconstruct what faith means to the mind, we see that it really boils down to how the brain is valuing information. Thus, a key part to magic rituals and the like is getting the mind to revalue certain information: to accept information it knows is not true at face value.
A few great examples of practices that work to this principle: numerology, astrology, and tarot. If you spend time thinking in this systems, eventually the brain will value them and insights gleamed through them can be used to alter our trajectory moving forward.
These modes of thought are not about describing a precise model of reality: they are a means to step away from our precise model to see if there are objectively better alternatives. For instance, if I wanted to quit eating sweets but felt overwhelmed by my sweet tooth's desire, I could look on the package for numbers. Having conditioned myself to see value in numerology, any connections I can make to convince me not to eat the sweets gives my brain more arguments to abstain.
This is really the purpose of religion and spirituality: to change our collective decision-making to be better than our instinctual drives. Humans have the potential for divinity, but if we let our desires and demons pilot the ship, we lose so much of our potential. Each moment is a choice, and we can choose which direction we travel by what we fill our minds with.