by Satyen Thaker
This is a conversation I usually avoid like the plague. Because in my experience, there is no end to these discussions. There is no proof, and I feel like there will never be any proof. The only proof that ever shows up is evidence that humans have constantly manipulated, corrupted, and perverted all religions…Everyone is either just guessing, or they have blind faith, or they’re getting something from a particular religious community that conveniently fills a current void in their life, or they have some malicious self-serving motive.
Blind faith is something that I am vehemently against, for anything, not only religion. I strongly feel that everyone should think for themselves, instead of having someone else think for you. Now if you have really thought about some religion, and you have really decided on your own that some particular religion is best for you, great! Go for it. Just as long as you don’t try to control or hurt anyone else!!!
Blindly following the influence of another Human seems absolutely ridiculous to me, and quite frankly, completely irresponsible. Because everything affects everything. Everyone affects everyone, in some way eventually. Ever heard of the Butterfly Effect? That sh*t is real!
I consider myself Agnostic. For me, that basically means I don’t think humans are even mentally capable of understanding the true nature of our reality. There is an idea about our purpose that makes sense to my human brain. The idea is not new, but I’ll need to do another blog post specifically on that. As far as the matters of a higher power, or our reality, to me anything is possible.
Religious or Spiritual experiences are interesting. The thing is, you can’t even trust your own perception. It is deeply flawed, and heavily influenced by just about anything and everything. It’s constantly changing. Take your eyes for example, if you stare at the Sun for a few seconds and then look away, what happens? In that moment you will see a residual image of the sun. Can you trust your eyes at that moment? Or take your ears for example. I have spent the majority of my life swimming in music, and I can definitely say I know my ears better than I know my eyes. And actually, I know my stomach even better than my ears 🙂
Getting back to sound, I have spent the past handful of years or so really focusing on the engineering/production side of music. I started music fairly young, on the Performance and Composition side, but lately I have been obsessed with the other half of music…ultimately the perception of sound, and manipulating it. I will get into this in greater detail in future blog posts, but I will simplify right now and tell you it’s crazy how much you CAN’T trust your ears. Our perception of Sound changes even more than our Visual perception. And what makes it even crazier is that you wouldn’t even notice, because you can’t see sound. It’s easy to notice when your eyesight is messed up, but it’s extremely difficult to notice when your perception of sound is even slightly warped. And this takes years of learning and ear training, because it’s essentially a new sense that you have to develop. More on this in the future…
I promise this is all connected to what I was originally talking about!
Let’s get to the stomach briefly. Have you ever been Hangry? Of course, everyone has. How did that affect you? I’m sure you can safely say it affected you in pretty much every way, and not in a good way. Did you happen to have a very negative view on whatever else happened around that moment?
What about when you ate that orgasmic dessert? How good did you feel? Did you realize all the ways it affected you? Did you happen to have a very positive view about whatever happened around that moment?…What I am trying to get at is that our perception at any moment in time is constantly changing, so how can you really trust it when you don’t even realize what all is affecting it?
There is also a thing called Expectation Bias. This applies to everything, but I will give you an example of how it applies to our perception of Sound. And this one is crazy, check it out! In this example, it’s more specifically called the McGurk Effect:
https://youtu.be/0jNNFVT76G0?t=1152
Side Note: Eric Valentine is an extremely successful Record Producer in America. He has worked on countless Radio Hits. And what I really love about him is how down to earth he is. I love it when super successful people are unpretentious. Another great thing about him is that not only is he extremely smart, but he is sober. He dropped out of school to become a record producer, he’s been around the whole insane Hollywood drug party lifestyle his whole life, it has been in his face constantly, but he still never got into it. I find that amazing.
Now onto Emotion, the most POWERFUL influence on our perception in my opinion. Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Excitement…all of these have well documented effects on the mind. The brain is an amazing piece of biotechnology, it can even conjure up hallucinations! As I have shown with Expectation Bias, you can pretty much convince yourself of anything.
Getting back to religious experiences, can you really trust that what you were feeling in that moment was from a higher power? Could it not be as simple as maybe your perception or expectation was temporarily out of whack? I am not trying to discount anyone’s spiritual or religious experiences, but I am just trying to say that before you immediately label some experience you had as spiritual or religious, just stop and think about all these things I just pointed out, pay attention to your body and your surroundings.
I am not saying that your experience wasn’t real, it could be! That’s what being an Agnostic means to me, anything is possible, we don’t know Sh*t!!
All I am saying is just try to keep your mind open to all possibilities. Because at the end of the day, there is no proof for these kinds of things, and all you have is your experience, and your perception of that experience…which is affected by EVERYTHING!
Memory is also another crazy funny thing, which distorts constantly over time, but that needs its own blog post.
I certainly feel like I am sensitive to vibes and energy. I actually have no idea what I’m really feeling though, just that I feel something. I even find myself making decisions based on these feelings, all the time. But for me, the way I keep all this in check is I just pay attention to whether or not those decisions are working for me, and not hurting anyone else. I’ve had countless strange experiences that I have absolutely no explanation for, and I’m sure all of you have had them as well. At some point I did consider them spiritual or religious, but now I just try to keep an open mind, and I tell myself I actually have no idea. Because the human body and mind, while extremely powerful, are deeply flawed, constantly in flux, and cannot be trusted unless you are really in tune with everything, and understand where everything is coming from at every moment…and even then, no one is perfect.