It’s hard to write a concise piece that addresses such a big topic. It’s arguably true that every individual who has ever lived has generated or believed in some supernatural being beyond the convention of ordinary reality.

An Experiment

To begin with, we should first tackle another broad and difficult topic of “Reality”. I need you first to close your eyes (after you read the question that is). I want you to answer the following question:

“Is the reality inside of your brain the same as the one you move your body in and share with others?”

or… “Imagine an apple, a desk, a person. Is what you just imagined real in the same way that you ate something for lunch?”

Clearly not; but both are realities for you. You imagined something, and that was part of your reality, but it isn’t the same kind of reality as what you ate today.

Now I want you to answer one more question: “How does your God(s) help you?”

This is a tricky question. If you believe a certain way about your God, you will claim that God helps you in many ways both inside your brain and in the physical world. I’m used to specific terms, and I will now refer to the imagined reality of yourself, as the mythical/mystical reality (MR) and as the physical reality as “shared historical reality” (SHR).

Realities And Their Limitations

It seems to be that even in the cases in which you claim divine aid in the SHR, you are really claiming an influence in MR leading to aid in the SHR. Ultimately, unless you’ve seen God and he literally handed you aid of some kind, you must acknowledge that a God’s direct influence is in the MR and not the SHR; at least that you have ever personally experienced.

I think the previous paragraph is the most agressive one you’ve read so far, and as such I suspect many will flare up in reading it.

Why? Why is it so hard to let go of your God(s) even for a moment? Perhaps that is what makes them God(s), but I believe I can offer a better explanation:

When we obsorb SHR it must always pass through our own individual brains which means that it will always be filtered by the MR. Always. I’m not one that’s big on superlatives, but we’re talking about a fundamental system design that is true for all such systems.

In other words, the SHR passes through the MR precisely because we all have brains that process all information.

Location of Gods: The Cardinal Rule

But if you think that I’ve led you here to this point to tell you that there is no God, you are mistaken. You have many God(s), regardless of your religious classification or attachment. We are mystical beings. The error, I seek to rectify in this short word-filled essay, is the placement of the God(s), not their existence.

Change is produced by some magical unseen process of the mind, and the Gods aid this. But the placement of the Gods in the external reality, the SHR, is the handicap your system employs.

We need Gods that we recognize as our own, that helps us, aid us, push us to become better. We also need to keep these Gods from entering the SHR. Gods can be many things: a sports team, a religion, an idol, an ideal.

What we really want, if we want to have a strong and flexible mind, is a way of thinking about the world that we can easily correct when we are wrong (flexibility), and know when to “stick to our guns” (strength). But in order to create such a system we have to start with a base, a landing pad of how reality works.

And so, I’ll end with the simple creation of one rule and the division of reality in two compartments: No External Gods.