The Placebo Universe

What is the universe? What is God? Do I believe in God? Do I believe in the universe? Do I believe in the power of my mind? Do I believe in belief?

In particular, do I believe in God? People ask this question as if they had the slightest clue what “God” is. People affirm as if they knew everything about what “God” is, and people deny as though they knew everything that “God” isn’t. I ask you, what is God? It is a word, no more, no less, but a word that has the potential to install belief in one’s mind like no other. What is strange is not the fact that people believe in or don’t believe in it, but rather the way they seem to “know” what they are or aren’t talking about.

What do I believe in then? I believe in the complete power of belief itself, and I believe that it has nothing at all to do what what anyone happens to believe in, but only everything to do with the act of believing. Human beings - they are indeed very peculiar. They seem to have so many different belief - they believe in so many different types of things - they agree and disagree on what they believe in, but they forget the one thing that gives their belief the power it has, that they simply believe [in something], be it “God”, nirvana, science, whatever.

Ok what’s the point? I’ll get there. Recently I found a group of meditation practicers and have been exploring the depths of consciousness myself. It’s been quite impressively rewarding, but I was somewhat surprised to find that the members of my group seemed to hold a firm belief that I didn’t - that is, the belief in the guidance of “Shifu”, the leader of a certain sect of Buddhism. Now that I’ve thought about it, I have absolutely nothing against it, but in the moment I was quite shocked at their seemingly unanimous belief that “without the guidance of Shifu, one could never attain the level of transcendance ultimately attainable”. I was confused because I thought Buddhism (as far as my knowledge of it) was all about the belief that anyone has the power to reach Nirvana, and that it is not in fact almost impossibly difficult to reach, but rather exceedingly simple since you reach it once you realize that it’s always been there. In short, I had no idea why this Shifu character was at all necessary, and why the others would not believe in the power within themselves as their source of transcendance.

But the answer is immediately apparent in the question (as always). Most human beings just seem to be used to believing in things outside of themselves. But this in turn has absolutely nothing to with the cause or source of power or ability. It is no more relevant to attribute the ability to transcend conscious experience to the self than it is to something outside of the self because it it not the object of the belief that matters. It is the act of believing. It is simply a statistical fact that most people find it easier to believe in something outside of themselves (rather than believe in themselves) and therefore carry that belief, and statistics remain no more than statistics. It’s got nothing to do with what you might call “truth”.

Perhaps the way I type this with such assertion is absurd because I type it as if it were the truth of the truth, as though there was a way to know what that even means, but it’s not. I do not propose it to be the truth, it’s simply a higher level model that has wider explanatory power than it’s narrower sub-counter parts. In other words: If you believe that God (exterior) is what’s all powerful, then your model (i.e. narrower model) does not explain why/how those who do not believe in God (exterior) are able to attain their wishes and vice versa for God (interior, i.e. yourself). But if the model (i.e. higher level wider model) simply says that the act of believing, but not the object, is the source of the power, then it does not contradict/exclude any data (since believers of everything are included).

So then the question is not why people need to believe in Shifu (the exterior) rather than believe in the power within themselves (since neither is relevant), but rather, why they need to believe in anything at all. Well, then ask what does it mean to “believe” without “believing in something”? How does that even begin to make sense? But it’s not a matter of making sense or not, that’s just the way human beings are used to the concept of “believing” whatever that means. 

And finally, what is God? What is the universe? What is consciousness? What is any object of any belief? IT IS A PLACEBO! It’s a purposeless place holder that exists to complete the concept of “belief” and carry out the power of “belief” without actively serving any “cause”. Quite simply put: Someone has a headache. You give him placebo pill, and his headache goes away. It’s not that the placebo was not the cause of the relief but that it wasn’t what was necessary. What was necessary was the belief, and only the belief, in the placebo.