RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY AND THE MODERN WORLD

Atheism, the idea that there is no God or Creator, is a conception of the human mind which occurs at various stages of mental and spiritual development. It appears in undeveloped minds who are unable to perceive any deeper reality than what is evident through the physical senses. Atheism also appears in more developed minds who see through the limitations of organized religion and its dogmas and can no longer accept them as true.

Some Dharmic teachings, like Sankhya philosophy or Buddhism, are atheistic in the sense that they do not regard God or a cosmic Lord as the ultimate reality. They may recognize the Creator as a secondary reality, however, and see Pure Consciousness as the ultimate truth of being. Such systems are atheistic only in the sense of not regarding theism as the ultimate truth. Such non-theists are not materialists but have a trans-theistic spiritual view of Reality.

It is wrong to say that atheists are bad, whereas those who believe in One God are good. The important thing is our inquiry into Truth. If this inquiry is more alive in an atheist than in the dogmatic follower of a particular religion, such an atheist is a better seeker of Truth and therefore closer to God who is Truth than the so-called religious person. Actually most of us are atheists, including those who regard themselves as religious. What we believe in is not spiritual reality but in money, sex, power, converts and ideologies, all of which are material. Seeing reality as other than Divine is the root of all of our problems.

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