G for God.., Q for Questions!!
As a kid I would look up at the blue sky and wonder, how can they walk there? don’t they fall down? I believed in the tales and stories about god, watched movies about them and I really believed that they are there, in the sky, and would come down to grant '3' wishes if one prays[ 3 is a very funny number by the way, carries greater importance and has extensive usage in ones life]. I would go to temple with my parents and do all the procedural tasks of pradakshine, taking mangalarathi, taking teertha.. I enjoyed it. But I didn know what was praying, so i did as it appeared, just closing eyes and joining hands.
Sometime later I had moved to my next level of praying, I was asking god what I wanted. I never bothered to check if he was giving what ever I had asked, but continued to ask things whenever I prayed. I was told if you ask god with pure devotion he will give you things which you had wished for. I also wondered; can we bribe god!! I had seen people praying “ If u can make this wish of mine come true then I will give you golden ring, or mastakabisheka or even money say 101 or 1001 Rs/- as kanike!!”. However all these were fine with me because at that age most of the things were mystery, and this was one of them.
In school I got to know about our solar system, planets, the earth, the moon… this was my favorite topic during schooldays. With this knowledge, lots of questions aroused. Ok, if there is no sky-world of gods, then where are they? So, there is no god? I did not ask anyone about this, I was afraid. I was afraid and stopped asking that to myself, after all, I never wanted to get fried in a large vessel full of hot and burning oil for asking that question!!
Lately, I realized that I have got answers for most of the so called ‘mysteries’, if not completely but to a major extent. One of the exceptions was ‘GOD’. My understanding about god was very little. By then I knew that god is not there in sky, there is no such thing called sky, it’s an illusion. We are seeing what is not there!! . There were times when I completely disbelieved in god. Standing aside and believing that majority of the population is wrong and I am right was thrilling. But then i would look around successful people, industrialists performing yagna poojas in their factories and altering their houses according to vastu. I would get confused again, why do they belive in god? I would reassure myself in the words I read somewhere, ‘people who have been lucky and have risen to heights which they had not even dreamt of are highly spiritual. And also people who invest loads of money in business get reassurance and feel secure by having faith in god. That’s why they do so....’ But when I was exposed to different ways in which people seek god, I was forced to change my mind. Maybe they had an explanation, may be they had maturity to understand god.
People go to temples, churches, mosques, they prey, they try to connect with god, they try to find him in themselves!! So is god ones integrity, Ones beliefs, Ones values? And do people find god by being true to themselves? I have seen great thinkers and spiritualists saying “God guides me to live every minute of my life synchronous with my values and beliefs. I will never be guilty of doing something wrong because god is always there, guiding me to the right path, giving meaning to my life. This is how I try to seek god in myself.” These words give new definition to god, rather a true definition which most of us may not quite comprehend. I have not understood this way of looking at god, maybe it takes great level of maturity and knowledge which I don’t possess.
From thousands of years, people have understood god in a more meaningful way. Then why did they come up with human form of god? God with arms and legs like us, Family like us? And stories involving gods and humans!!? One explanation I could think of is that, in earlier days, the concept of god was required for stable, peaceful, and happy society and social life. It was necessary to induce in people right values like truthfulness, honesty, integrity, discipline etc.. These values were associated with god. Tales and stories about god was the best way of educating people, by making god as their icon thus making people follow his values. This worked amazingly, people believed in god, in his values. So, now can we say- the person who wrote those stories created god for human wellbeing? Well its not one person who did that, if we look at the literature we get hundreds of versions of these stories, all preaching the values which are ‘right’ at that point of civilization, using god as an actor.
Different religions have their own values and their own way of preaching it. Hindus preach by seeing god as a family man, as a husband, wife, children, relative etc.. Christians see God as superpower and Jesus as son of god. They don’t want to associate family and wife with Jesus; maybe it’s their way of preaching. However differently the religions may preach however different their values may be but their ultimate goal is to bring order in community. Without religions and their concept of god, earth would have been a total Chaos.
We also see god in one more dimension, The Nature. If we go on questioning, where did man come from? Who designed our cells to be so? Who designed the complicated process of one sperm competing with millions of them to fertilize an egg, and how can that zygote divide into specific number of cells, each cell forming a part of our body and each of our body cells designed to be divided specific number of times before they die? This complicated process happens in millions of humans with astounding perfection. And this is just the process in humans that we saw; there are billions of varieties of plants, animals, insects which have specific anatomy and life processes. So who designed it to be this way? Many of the things have been explained as science; after all we have had great scientists who could prove that ‘if we can bend space, we can bend time! And time moves slowly near earth and quickens as we move away because time is relative!!’ Even with all these explanations there remains unexplained ordered or random behavior which the scientists call as Natural or nature. We call it ‘God’.
Good never exists alone, if it does we cannot classify it as good; it is the ‘bad’ which gives ‘good’ its value. So with god power, there exists a concept of evil power, associated with bad things, which try to hurt humans. One such concept is ghosts. Interestingly, many people claim to have seen ghosts, but I have never heard of anyone claiming to have seen god!. And also if these ghosts truly exist, what is their purpose? Is it to harm humans? Why do they want to harm us? So is there a lifer cycle of rebirth?
Questions come up infinitely as we dig in. I don’t know how deep the hole goes and I am also not sure if what is being offered as explanation is the truth. At the end of the day, I am back there at the beginning with loads of questions. I ask myself, ‘do u think there is god?’ I don’t know, ‘do u think there are ghosts?’ I don’t know. I keep oscillating between options. Recently I saw a documentary aired in discovery channel about ghosts, then I say, why not, its possible that ghosts may be a reality.
Some things go beyond logical explanation and cannot be reasoned using our limited knowledge. There comes the anomaly of choice, the choice of believing or disbelieving something. Both are equally good and equally bad. Ultimately its about believing in our choice that helps us make peace with these questions.
Sometime later I had moved to my next level of praying, I was asking god what I wanted. I never bothered to check if he was giving what ever I had asked, but continued to ask things whenever I prayed. I was told if you ask god with pure devotion he will give you things which you had wished for. I also wondered; can we bribe god!! I had seen people praying “ If u can make this wish of mine come true then I will give you golden ring, or mastakabisheka or even money say 101 or 1001 Rs/- as kanike!!”. However all these were fine with me because at that age most of the things were mystery, and this was one of them.
In school I got to know about our solar system, planets, the earth, the moon… this was my favorite topic during schooldays. With this knowledge, lots of questions aroused. Ok, if there is no sky-world of gods, then where are they? So, there is no god? I did not ask anyone about this, I was afraid. I was afraid and stopped asking that to myself, after all, I never wanted to get fried in a large vessel full of hot and burning oil for asking that question!!
Lately, I realized that I have got answers for most of the so called ‘mysteries’, if not completely but to a major extent. One of the exceptions was ‘GOD’. My understanding about god was very little. By then I knew that god is not there in sky, there is no such thing called sky, it’s an illusion. We are seeing what is not there!! . There were times when I completely disbelieved in god. Standing aside and believing that majority of the population is wrong and I am right was thrilling. But then i would look around successful people, industrialists performing yagna poojas in their factories and altering their houses according to vastu. I would get confused again, why do they belive in god? I would reassure myself in the words I read somewhere, ‘people who have been lucky and have risen to heights which they had not even dreamt of are highly spiritual. And also people who invest loads of money in business get reassurance and feel secure by having faith in god. That’s why they do so....’ But when I was exposed to different ways in which people seek god, I was forced to change my mind. Maybe they had an explanation, may be they had maturity to understand god.
People go to temples, churches, mosques, they prey, they try to connect with god, they try to find him in themselves!! So is god ones integrity, Ones beliefs, Ones values? And do people find god by being true to themselves? I have seen great thinkers and spiritualists saying “God guides me to live every minute of my life synchronous with my values and beliefs. I will never be guilty of doing something wrong because god is always there, guiding me to the right path, giving meaning to my life. This is how I try to seek god in myself.” These words give new definition to god, rather a true definition which most of us may not quite comprehend. I have not understood this way of looking at god, maybe it takes great level of maturity and knowledge which I don’t possess.
From thousands of years, people have understood god in a more meaningful way. Then why did they come up with human form of god? God with arms and legs like us, Family like us? And stories involving gods and humans!!? One explanation I could think of is that, in earlier days, the concept of god was required for stable, peaceful, and happy society and social life. It was necessary to induce in people right values like truthfulness, honesty, integrity, discipline etc.. These values were associated with god. Tales and stories about god was the best way of educating people, by making god as their icon thus making people follow his values. This worked amazingly, people believed in god, in his values. So, now can we say- the person who wrote those stories created god for human wellbeing? Well its not one person who did that, if we look at the literature we get hundreds of versions of these stories, all preaching the values which are ‘right’ at that point of civilization, using god as an actor.
Different religions have their own values and their own way of preaching it. Hindus preach by seeing god as a family man, as a husband, wife, children, relative etc.. Christians see God as superpower and Jesus as son of god. They don’t want to associate family and wife with Jesus; maybe it’s their way of preaching. However differently the religions may preach however different their values may be but their ultimate goal is to bring order in community. Without religions and their concept of god, earth would have been a total Chaos.
We also see god in one more dimension, The Nature. If we go on questioning, where did man come from? Who designed our cells to be so? Who designed the complicated process of one sperm competing with millions of them to fertilize an egg, and how can that zygote divide into specific number of cells, each cell forming a part of our body and each of our body cells designed to be divided specific number of times before they die? This complicated process happens in millions of humans with astounding perfection. And this is just the process in humans that we saw; there are billions of varieties of plants, animals, insects which have specific anatomy and life processes. So who designed it to be this way? Many of the things have been explained as science; after all we have had great scientists who could prove that ‘if we can bend space, we can bend time! And time moves slowly near earth and quickens as we move away because time is relative!!’ Even with all these explanations there remains unexplained ordered or random behavior which the scientists call as Natural or nature. We call it ‘God’.
Good never exists alone, if it does we cannot classify it as good; it is the ‘bad’ which gives ‘good’ its value. So with god power, there exists a concept of evil power, associated with bad things, which try to hurt humans. One such concept is ghosts. Interestingly, many people claim to have seen ghosts, but I have never heard of anyone claiming to have seen god!. And also if these ghosts truly exist, what is their purpose? Is it to harm humans? Why do they want to harm us? So is there a lifer cycle of rebirth?
Questions come up infinitely as we dig in. I don’t know how deep the hole goes and I am also not sure if what is being offered as explanation is the truth. At the end of the day, I am back there at the beginning with loads of questions. I ask myself, ‘do u think there is god?’ I don’t know, ‘do u think there are ghosts?’ I don’t know. I keep oscillating between options. Recently I saw a documentary aired in discovery channel about ghosts, then I say, why not, its possible that ghosts may be a reality.
Some things go beyond logical explanation and cannot be reasoned using our limited knowledge. There comes the anomaly of choice, the choice of believing or disbelieving something. Both are equally good and equally bad. Ultimately its about believing in our choice that helps us make peace with these questions.
posted by Manoj at
7:40 PM
1 Comments:
dude
gone through your post...felt like an honest depiction of what everything goes through an avg Indian male's psyche..good one there
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