A Film that Helped Me Come to Terms with My Atheism

Right now, a whole bunch of people who clicked a link to read this blog are probably clicking “back,” or closing the tab.  Most of the folks reading this blog are coming from a forum where many of the members are religious in some way.  One of the concerns that I’ve had is that folks who believe in a god or a set of spiritual beliefs might not come around if they though that I was gonna attack or otherwise ridicule those beliefs.  If you’re still reading this, I assure you that I won’t.  That isn’t to say that I won’t call some things into question, be unintentionally offensive, or (very occasionally) poke light fun at established religions.  However, I like to think that I at least try to stay away from pointless cruelty, at least where religious discussion is involved.  Most times, I actually succeed in that endeavor.

I started to become an atheist when I was about nine.  I won’t get in to particulars, but it was around then that I started to notice the world around me a little more, and questions started to raise in my mind about the possibility that there was no Great Benevolent Consciousness watching out for us.  I still clung to religion, in myriad forms for years, well into adulthood, but I never really believed that any of them were a way to understand the meaning of life.  No holy man, witch, high priest, or guru was ever able to give me what I felt to be adequate answers to my questions.  Spells, rituals, sacrifices, and prayers did nothing to alter the course of reality in a way that would not have otherwise been affected—at least in my estimation—by the natural course of time and action.   If I wanted things to go my way, I had to stop talking to the air and take matters into my own hands.  I became my own God, in a way.

One of the things I can’t stand about zealotry, and I include many atheists in this, is the tendency to take proselytizing to a dark place where someone is made to feel bad or stupid for what they do or don’t believe.  I think that is a bunch of bullshit.  Proselytizing should never be a forceful or negative act.  It should never be done using fear, intimidation, or violence as implements of salvation.  If you feel it is your place to bring someone you care about into your belief system, you should be doing it out of love, and you should do it by presenting it as a choice that they make for themselves.

Which brings me to the documentary that helped me come to terms with my lack of belief in the spiritual and solidified my belief in myself as the maker of my own destiny and the only one who could answer my prayers.  And, at first glance, it looks like a cruel prank.
                  
Kumaré is a documentary by Vikram Ghandi.  During Vikram’s own quest for spiritual knowledge, he started to investigate various gurus and mystics to see if it wasn't all just a tall pile of horseshit.  He went all over America and India to meet and interact with these sages, only to come to the realization that they were, in fact, all full of shit, to one degree or another.  But what if he, himself, became a guru who, from the very outset, claimed no great mystical enlightenment, and merely wore the trappings and spoke in a funny accent. Would he be able to pull it off? Could he help people find an inner peace without the use of “magical powers” or “metaphisical insight?”

So, he gets his look together, and gets to work building his myth after enlisting the help of a hot ethnic-looking woman, and a cute-as-all-hell redhead yoga instructor.  As an aside, in the very beginning you see him introducing his team and drawing what must be the symbol of this new, fake movement on their foreheads, and I swear to you, it looks like a cock and balls.  It has to be.  That shit can't be an accident.  They start formulating fake yoga, and even a philosophy that basically boils down to telling the would-be follower that this whole thing is a sham.  But he does it  mystically,  and in an exotic accent, so people eat that shit up like a fat chick at a cupcake factory.

The recruitment of these followers, er, follows.  You want to laugh at these people, but these aren't just a bunch of incense-sniffing, bark-chewing California-types that'll hop on any movement that contrasts with western culture.  These are people.  And some of them are really stressed-out people with some fucked-up circumstances.  One of these folks is a death-penalty attorney.  I've worked in human services, and that shit is hard.  But comparing what I did to what this poor woman does is like saying I know what it's like to be a rape victim just because some fat dude once brushed up against my ass on the bus.  It isn't in the same fucking universe.  I would rather have a career driving wrought-iron nails into planks of oak using only my face than do what this woman does for even one day. Dealing with people in fucked up situations for a living is some stressful, mind-shearingly depressing shit.  When I was doing it, I would sometimes pray for some sort of guidance or relief from the knowledge that nothing I did for these people was ever going to really help them.  I was a medic with a pack of band-aids standing on Omaha Beach.  Nothing ever came of my prayers,  but I can understand the urge to believe that there has to be some kind of meaning to all this horrible shit.  Someone must be able to give us an answer, right?

Not all these people suffer to the same magnitude in their daily existence as death-row-lawyer does.  Most of them are normal folks who are just looking for something that will make them feel a little better about being a more advanced monkey crawling around on a mote of dust floating through infinity.  Some of them are looking for redemption from past sins that still haunt them.  I'm not trying to down these poor bastards for looking outwardly for this comfort.  Shit, I know none of that stuff is real, but I long for the same feeling of acceptance, redemption and worth.  Them's jus' folks, same as me.

As part of his excursion, Vikram (I'm going to refer to him by his first name because trying to remember the alt-code for é whenever I type Kumaré is a right pain in the ass, and referring to him as Ghandi just seems, well, wrong) also meets with several spiritualists and so-called mystics.  I'll be straight up and say that I don't like these assholes.  They remind me of those fucking televangelists that are alway conning grandmothers and poor people out of their SSI checks.  Seriously, I bought in to some of this shit a while back. Looking back on it now, I'd have an easier time admitting to being a bukkake practice target than to admit to myself that I actually believed in some of this shit for even a short time.  Gods below, that stuff even made sense to me.  I went to the bible camps. I hung out with the wiccans.  I attempted to commune with ethereal forces, and, after the brief high of being included in something new faded, I was left with less money, a bunch of books and crystals and shit, and the same empty feeling that followed the realization that none of these pointless exercises did a damn thing to help me feel anything approaching peace.  But there was never a shortage of these underhanded cocksuckers waiting to take me on my next adventure and try to wheedle a little more cabbage out of me.

 Things begin to get pretty heavy pretty fast.  Folks start telling Vikram incredibly personal stuff and asking his advice on some relatively serious matters.  And in some of the shots you can tell that this poor bastard is saying to himself, "What in the blue hell am I supposed to say to that?"   But, people just keep doing it, even though he's not trying to draw it out of them.  I can tell you that, even if you're only remotely human, this level of trust really affects you.  Add to that the fact that these people are expecting some of the deep knowledge that comes from  spiritual enlightenment,  that's some serious pressure.  I didn't envy Vikram his situation. I don’t even like when people ask me what we should have for dinner, or if I thought the ending of LOST sucked.  I for damn sure wouldn’t be too keen on advising them on whether or not they should end a marriage.

Throughout the film, Vikram explains to both the audience, as well as his followers, that the whole point of the Kumaré movement is self-empowerment, but he frames it all in the mystical.  I won't answer to the ethics of this (I failed that class), but at least his motives seem pure.  As the film progresses, we see what each of the followers is getting out their interaction with this  fake  guru, and, oddly, at no time did I look at any of these people and say, "What a bunch of fucking morons."  So what if they were missing the picture because they were staring at the nice frame?  They were still getting it on some level.  The fake begins to become real.

Eventually, there is the big reveal, which is that it was all a sham, and I'm about to ruin it for you.  It's not as dramatic as you're thinking.  If this was put out by the soulless shitheads at TLC we could expect that someone throws a chair at Vikram and starts cussing him out.  But maybe the reason that none of that shit goes down is that, even though this guy was outwardly doing this to make a movie, at the heart of it he just wanted people to look inwards for the cure to their sadness or emptiness or indecisiveness or stress.  And maybe these folks, at even a subconscious level, realized this.

 I would recommend that anyone, atheist or faithful, give this film a go.  For the faithful, perhaps it might offer them some insight into how they can use what is within themselves to follow the path laid out for them by their god.  For non-believers, perhaps it will reinforce the idea that we are the ultimate determiners of our own destiny.  For me, it made me realize that I don't need a religion, holy man or god to find my own path.  Have I found it yet?  Maybe, maybe not.  But I'm enjoying the search a bit more than I was.  I’m for damn sure saving a lot of cash that I can now spend on a higher class of beer, instead of buying a bunch of books and crystals and shit.  And, I must say, that does give me a sense of peace.