Open Writing

We humans have always needed a belief in some power, (or powers), greater than ourselves. We have called it by many names. Around it we have built 'belief systems', which we then pass on to our children, too often without explaining them well enough. I tried to believe what I had been told, but could only accept some of it as a working hypothesis yet to be proved.

At age 7 I heard that 'good people go to Heaven and naughty people go to Hell'. I had been told that I had been naughty, I didn't know why.

I have blown my chances already, I thought. But some of those in my school class had been 'naughty' also, so at least I would have company.

There came Religious Instruction, or Indoctrination, as well as fairy tales and myths such as Santa Claus. I was not sent to Sunday School. Mother thought walking a mile each way on school days was enough. But she read to us amazing Old Testament stories. I wondered why no modern people could throw sticks on the ground to make them turn into snakes, and whether. Moses and Aaron were able to pick up the 'sticks' again. And why was it naughty to kill people except when they were on the other side in the war, or when they rebelled against being ruled by the British for their own good?

Up to 1925 I 'understood' that British and European people like us in Australia should go to church on Sundays, say prayers, believe what we are told, and pay to send missionaries to heathens and savages so we could 'convert' them and grow tea and rubber on their land.

Of course we were not all the same. Some, like Grandpa on the farm next door, and Miss Walsh and Bill at school, were a bit different, being Catholic, but not like the Jews who thought Jesus had come much too soon to be the right prophet.

Boarding school, which was Church of England, was also a bit different from Mother and her parents, who were Methodists. Mother, an independent thinker, had moved a bit away from fundamentalist ideas towards New Age thinking, which had been around for some time. However, we did go to a newly-built Methodist church during the 1930s, where I was given charge of a new choir because I played, as a learner, with the local Shire Band. I based my instruction on that of the bandmaster, but without some of his more colourful language. Music, the universal language, has always brought me closer to inspiration than has any form of ritual or religious practice.

During the 1940s I met Jews. I also met Arabs, who had a belief system which Mohammed had proclaimed as an improved version of Christianity. In 1942 in Ceylon I met other alleged 'heathen' who had adopted the belief system proclaimed by another great leader, Buddha.

Everywhere I had been the people were very much like us. Some became personal friends, just as so many Christians were and still remain. I still remain uncommitted to any one belief system to the exclusion of others.

Alongside all these systems there have been, for centuries, mystical orders, which have aimed to preserve ancient knowledge and wisdom, forever adding new discoveries. Freemasonry is one of the best known, but the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, goes one step further by giving to both men and women of all sincere belief systems an equal status in the long quest for universal truth.

I conclude that every constructive and honest belief system has a 'placebo effect'. If you sincerely believe that some superior intelligence can guide you, it will, whether you call it God, Allah, Jehovah, or whatever, in conjunction with the effort of your own powers of thought and known principles of living. It has to be a joint venture, and for unselfish aims. Therefore, there can be no place for a system which proclaims itself as the only way to 'salvation'.

© Ken Sillcock