So, I'm at home in my semester end holidays. And within a few days I was bombarded by religion an unbelievable number of times, every time in a different way. It was almost like the universe was trying to tell me something.
It started with a religious ceremony at the inauguration of my uncle's new factory. Well, actually it happened on its eve. He had organised a Sundarkand path which is a celebratory retelling of the part of the Ramayana where Hanuman crosses the ocean to search for Sita. I was there with my father. At the end of it, some standard Bhajans etc. were sung. As usual I was contemplating the origin, purpose and meaning of religion with my mouth not singing in the praise of the crores of gods we have in Hinduism, with my hands not clapping in the rhythm of the melodies. My father saw this and confronted me that night, whether or not I believed in an almighty, a supreme power. Due to my all-the-time-uncomfortably-honest nature, I flatly said no. He paused the confrontation till the next day as... Wait. I'm not here to tell you a story but a thought.
My father many a times tells us stories, some interesting logics behind religious practices. So, during the continuation of the confrontation, he was asking me to start praying daily. I am not against the idea of chanting the shlokes and following the mantra for pleasing various gods. But I am not willing to do it to please various gods and ask them to bestow on me their various gifts. Instead, I am willing to do it because I have experienced that vibrations produced in our body while making particular sounds have actual effects on our psyche and health, and I have great faith in the wisdom of the sadhus and munis (The thinkers of the ancient society and the ones who have the last say on the hindu dharma). I mean I believe that the mantras are composed so as to create vibrations that are good for us and help us develop ourselves and overcome our emotional and mental blocks. While I am all for the mantras, I am certainly not up for bhajans, songs composed by the followers, not the leaders (sadhus), in the praise of gods. I find most of them pathetic to some degree (Why do they do that? They sing songs on the tunes of the latest item number or other Bollywood music. They condemn things with sexual overtones, while singing bhajans on tunes that remind everyone of the bare waist or midriff of the girl in the item song). As a reason for me to pray, my father gave me another one of his amazing logics. He told me that praying will help me maintain my hygiene (I tend to be a tiny bit lethargic when it comes to bathing) as the body needs to be purified before indulging in prayers, and it also helps bringing routine into your life, as you have to take out an hour in the morning everyday for the whole prayer routine. That's when the idea unfolded in my mind.
What I think now is that the sadhus formed this amazing system of mantras to help people develop themselves, and create a generally peaceful, harmonious society which can remain functional for a long time. And it did, for so many years, while they were simply supervising it. I think they formed a way of life for people to follow in order to live a good life. But they needed some way to make people follow it rigorously without question or resistance. So, what better than belief? So they created the whole system with crores of gods and all the stories that guide us. Also, there is a reason for the gods to have a human form (Well, most of them). The reason is that humans emulate other humans' qualities very efficiently and more easily than other methods. So, I saw an intricate, efficient system where the children grow up listening to the multitude of stories. This makes an impression on their brains, which is repeatedly strengthened by ritualised worshipping (You might not like monotony but you like rituals. If not, your body still does and last I remember, the brain is still connected to the body.). The gods in the stories are the ideals one is expected to emulate. The society creates an environment where these ideals are reinforced constantly. The result is a society where people care about each other, are actually in touch with their conscience (The thing that tells you what's good and what's not), and where burglary is the last resort for survival and where the burglar also feels guilty for it.
But then I thought what about the caste system and the superstitions? I thought about it sporadically over a day and came up with the idea that handling crores of identities is nowhere near an easy task for a human and that the great thinkers must have overlooked some loopholes. These loopholes over the time caused the different divisions of the society (castes) to be treated differently. Like, people came to relate to filth as bad and unholy due to the requirement of bathing before prayer. This evolved into the idea that the caste of people who were responsible for the tasks like cleaning the street, cleaning the human waste etc. are unholy due to their proximity to filth and these people were discarded and even banned from the holy places. And thus the discriminating caste system was created. Similarly, some reasoning must have given birth to the superstitions. Though some of them are so absurd that I just cannot imagine the origin of them.
There is also an interesting thing about this system that I noticed. For this system to be effective, one needs to believe in the Gods. But the realisation of this system leaves you in a limbo on the existence of God. It gets tougher to believe but also gets tougher to disbelieve as the system does not deny nor confirm the existence and also because it is just an idea, though a good one. So in order to be part of the system you should not be aware of it but even if you become aware of it, you do not do anything and just keep on following it and possibly in a better way as you can now recognize some wrong or stupid things that can be the result of a loophole. It leaves the possibilities open, thus highlighting its brilliance. When I contemplated about this system keeping in mind the history the stories speak of and the existence of the landmarks, it weakened my belief in the system but still it stood mysteriously firm. It was as if holes had been punched through my idea to allow the possibilities.
Just the thought of applying this approach to other major religions overwhelms me. This experience has placed me back in a confusion about the existence of a God or a supreme power. Currently I have another idea that there is a single consciousness that all humans are attached to and on some level follow. Actually consciousness is not the word I should use because I believe this thing does not have its own consciousness or will but actually is formed completely of the wills of humans. It acts like a medium, like a sea with each human mind having its own wave, and the collective wave influencing individual waves and deciding the path of humanity. This collective wave can give the appearance of a supreme power while we, united, are the power all along. So, basically, this idea allows a God to exist and not to exist at the same time (Reminds me of good ol' Schrodinger's cat.). And it also allows the existence of the idealistic structures like the one discussed above.
This idea gives such a grand feeling to me that I sometimes feel apprehensive of its validity. But I reach the same point when I rethink. And, papa, if you are reading this, sorry but I just am like this. I don't really care if God exists. I just think of God as something to fulfill humans' need of a sense of security (even if false). But that doesn't make me a bad person because I don't follow rules preached by people, which can be looped with little effort, but I follow my conscience with no fear, which tells me what is right very clearly and fast. Also, God gives to those who are good, not those who lick soles. Even if not, I don't really want anything much from life. What I do want, I'll get it myself. And about getting what I deserve: I only want what I want; if I deserve something I don't want or don't care about, there's no point in me getting it.
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