THE BELIEFS

I am agnostic. I believe that it is impossible to know if God exists. (a=not & gignoskein=know) I am unable also to come to terms with the phenomenon of death. I know it is inevitable, it is a profound reality, more real than anything in life but I can not accept the notion of rebirth (reincarnation) nor of the Day of Judgment . What exactly is death ?To me death is a final full stop for all living beings beyond which there is a void that no one has been able to penetrate. We simply dissolve into nothingness. Tom Stoppard echoed some of my frustrations when he wrote, "Death is the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see.And when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound." Or, as Paul Valery put it, "death speaks to us with a deep voice but has nothing to say." There is another interesting fact about death as it is said in Mahabharat, that the greatest miracle of life is that, while we know that death is invitable, no one really believes that he too will die one day. Death comes to others; we expect to go on living forever. I also find no rational basis for accepting the theory of the system of reward and punishment in heaven or hell. For me, if there is a paradise, it has to be a paradise on earth.

My understanding of region is different. All I believe is live and let live. The rest is marginal. Gods, prophets, scriptures, rituals, pilgrimages mean very little to me. In the name of religion unlimited blood had been shed ruthlessly in the word. Karl Marx was an atheist. He erred on many points but he was right in saying that religion is an opiate of the masses.

To the westerners brought upon Hebraic, Christian and Islamic beliefs, the Hindu-Jain-Buddhist-Sikh concept of Samsara-birth, death and rebirth – appears altogether more sophisticated than their theories of the Day of Judgement, heaven and hell. Is there any rational basis for believing that there is life after death ? Our scriptures (Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh) state categorically that there is. Most of this belief is taken from the Upanishads and summarized in the Gita.. It is maintained that on death, the body dies but the soul lives on. The soul changes bodies as person changes his or her clothes. The Kathopanishad asserts that birth, decay and death occur only to the material body but there is something beyond the body which does not perish. It is the “atman” hidden in the heart’s cavity. “Every seventh year all the particles of the body change and get renewed but still one is the same person; the identity never changes.” The question is, what is the foundation of this identity ? What exactly “atman” is remains shrouded in mystery answered by the negative, not this, not that. It is all-pervasive “parmatma” as well as individual “jivatman”. When the latter merges into the former, “jyoti jyoti milay” your light mingles with eternal light (Adi grantha), and a person achieves liberation “moksha” from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. At the same time our Hindu theology also provides a system of reward and punishment through the theory of transmigration of souls as well as an interregnum, the state of limbo in which the soul subsists awaiting decision whether to be reborn as a good person for good deeds or as vermin as punishment for evil acts in previous life. By argument one cannot explain what exists after death; “naisa tarkana matir apaneya”. There cannot be any scientific proof that the a’atman” exists after death, it is ever present in the sense that it cannot be verified. No one has the foggiest idea 0f what the soul really is. So why labour with argument : those who believe will go on believing, those who don’t are not likely to be converted by jugglery of beautiful phrases. I find the soul is yet another figment of the human imagination created to buttress notions of an afterlife.

My view of the origin of life on our planet ? Do I accept the Judeo-Christian-Muslim belief of it being created by a supreme God or do I accept Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, not from divine but natural causes – from amoeba to fish to land creatures, birds, mammals, monkeys right up to man ? There is also the intermediate theory put forward by Hinduism and its off-shoots (Jainism-Buddhism, Sikhism) of order “rata” emerging from chaos by the intervention of divinity in the form of a creator, preserver and destroyer. “Personally I do not accept the theory of a divine creator of life”.

I do not understand, why do people pray ? Even murderers and bandits pray for success before they go on their murderous or robbing missions, and that the worst black marketers, smugglers, and tax evaders are often very devout. Most people pray for money, success, and good health. Ask yourself, does strict adherence to the routine of prayer or telling beads of a rosary make someone a better person ? serve any useful purpose ?

We are on trickier ground when we describe God as omniscient, omnipotent, benign and just. There is so much injustice and cruelty in the world, so much suffering imposed on the innocent and the god-fearing that it can scarcely be argued that there is a divine purpose behind it. When a child of six going to school is crushed to death by a drunk truck driver who gets away with it, how can anyone ascribe it to a merciful and just God? Either He did not have the power to prevent the accident or was callous enough to inflict suffering on the child’s family. Where was God when evil-minded people planted a bomb in the Kanishka and sent hundreds of innocent men, women and children to a watery grave? Or when an earthquake destroys the village after village ? When gas leak from the a factory kills thousands and thousand people ? Unless we can answer these questions rationally and not shelter behind explanations like ‘atoning for sins committed in previous births’ or being rewarded in heaven, it is better to keep silent.

The important thing to remember is that belief in God has nothing to do with being good or bad. You can be a saintly person without believing in God and a detestable villain believing in Him.

All religious scriptures are held in awe either as words of God or divinely inspired utterances. I have discovered that people who are moved by recitation of scriptures of any religion ( which are full of praises showered on God) are more hypnotized by the sound of their words than their sense: the more obscure the language the greater its spell-binding power. The more one try to understand their meaning through translations the less one will be impressed by them. Without exception they are unscientific (one can’t blame their authors as at the time science was little advanced), repetitive and tediously boring. Personally I get more out of Shakespeare, Goethe, Kalidas, Ghalib, Tagore and Iqbal than I get out of all the religious classics put together.

The scriptures for whatever they are worth should be read and understood and not worshipped. In this context the most difficult phenomenon to explain is the way Sikhs, who others boast of not being idol worshippers, treat their sacred book ‘ Granth Sahib”. They put it to bed at night, rouse it in the morning, drap it in expensive raiment, have elaborate canopies over it, wave fly whisks while reading it, take it out in massive procession. They organize non-stop reading of it ‘akhand path’ that last for two days and nights by a relay of readers (often hired at different rates for different purposes), and believe that its recitation, even when they are asleep in another room, does them good. I often wonder what the gurus whose works are compiled in the Granth Sahib would have had to say of their followers, few of whom even try to understand their messages. Similar disappointing sight I used to witness in my childhood In jain temple, when the devotees used to open the doors of book shelfs storing scriptures and perform ‘aarti’ after daily ‘pooja’ ceremony.

It cannot be disputed that we Indians, whether we be Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhist, or Parsees, spend more time on religious rituals than any other people in the world. The Hindi adage “saat vaar aur aath teohaar’ (there are seven days in the week but eight religious festivals) is not an overstatement. Count the number of religious holidays we have in a year. Then add up the number of hours people spend saying their prayers, going to places of worship, on pilgrimages, taking care of sadhu and sanyases, attending satsangs, listening to pravachans, kirtans, bhajans, qawwalis etc. It comes to a staggering total. Also prime morning time which can be utilized in many useful activities like exercise to keep fit and studies, is spend in temple going and extended prayers and performing pooja. Ask yourself if a developing poor nation like India can afford to expend so much time in pursuits that produces no material benefits.

Agreed that it is entirely up to all individuals to spend his or her time as they like. If they get fulfillment out of prayer and ritual they have every right to do so. But what men of religion have no right to do is to impose their religiosity on other people. The use of loudspeakers for azaan or kirtan and bhajan mandalies amounts to such an imposition. The craziest example is the all-night jagarans and aakhand-kirtan which disturb the sleep of entire localities, disrupt studies of students and injure heath from noise pollution. The use of official media like radio and TV for propagating religions through broadcasts of celebrations and hymns needs to be curbed. Taking out processions through crowded bazaars and upsetting civic life also amounts to imposition of one’s ritual on other people, and should be discouraged. One should not forget that such religious processions and public ceremonies are often cause of bloody communal riots.

A modern fad which has gained widespread acceptance among the semi-educated who wish to appear secular and modern, is the practice of meditation. They proclaim with an air of smug superiority, “Main mandir-vandir nahin jaata, meditate karta hoon (I don’t go to temple or other such places , I meditate)” The exercise involves sitting lotus-pose (padma asana), regulating one’s breathing and making your mind go blank to prevent it from ‘jumping about like monkey’s from one (thought) branch to another. It is said that this intense concentration awakens the kundalini serpent coiled at the base of the spine. It travels upwards through charkas (circles) till it reaches its destination in the cranium. Then the kundalini is fully jaagrit (roused) and the person is assured to have reached his goal. What does meditation achieve ? The usual answer is ‘peace of mind’. If you probe further, and what does peace of mind achieve ?’, you will get no answer because there is none. Peace of mind is a sterile concept which achieves nothing. The exercise may be justified as therapy for those with disturbed mind or those suffering from some psychiatric problem, but there is no evidence to prove that it enhances creativity. On the contrary it can be established by statistical data that all the great works of art, literature, science and music were works of highly agitated minds, at times minds on the verge of collaose.

I get angry by the atmosphere that prevails at the places of pilgrimage – Hindu, Muslim, Jain and Sikh, all over the country, the large number of people who make their living by parasiting on hapless pilgrims, and the total absence of an aura of sanctity that one naively expect to see. I find that religious parasitism is a phenomenon more of the Indo-Gangetic plain; one sees much less of it in the South. Though mosques, gurudwaras and jain temples are free of agents of religious organizations and keep beggars outside sacred premises, every where corruption and misuse of offerings are a common practice. Recent incident of Swami Jayendra Saraswathi Kanchi Shankaracharya, one of the four main Hindu pontiffs, who has million of followers in India and abroad, arrested on charges of plotting and being an accomplice in the murder of a former official Thiru Sankararaman (critical of Shankarachary’s unholy activities) of his hermitage, and also attempted murder of G.Radhakrishnan, his wife & another person in Madras in 2002, has sent shock waves in Tamil Nadu and beyond.

There is little to choose between Sufi Dargahs like those of Hazrat Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer and Nizamuddin Auliya in New Delhi and historic Hindu temples such as vaishno Devi in Jammu; those in Mathura, Varanasi, Vindravan, Badrinath, Hardwar, and Allahabad in UP/Utrakhand; lingaraj and Jagannath in Orissa and Kali temple in Kolkata . All of them have as many beggars as worshippers and everywhere you go you are accosted by men armed with receipt books asking for donations for some charity or the other. And without exception they are ill-maintained, squalid and filthy. The most sinister freemasonry is that of the pandas who fatten on pilgrims’ religious susceptibilities by robbing them shamelessly. This practice is continuing unabatedly particularly in Hardwar , Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneswar and the jagannath temple at Puri. At Puri the Pandas begin to close round you half a mile away from the temple and do not leave you till they have extracted whatever you have in cash on your person. It can be a harrowing experience. Most of the temples are far from being clean and properly looked after. There is none of the solemnity one expects in a place of worship.

In the quest of getting answers to my questions in this regard, I have visited many “ashrams” and heard discourses by munis, acharys, grus, godman, swamis, and mullahs. They bamboozle with jargon and have nothing very new to say. Most of their sermons are variations of the theme that God dwells within every human being and if people looked inwards they would find Illumination, Truth and Reality. It is no more than pouring new wine in old bottles. These grus read very little beyond Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the epics, and rarely bothered to read books on Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Vardhamana Mahavir of Jains and Buddha knew Hinduism but nothing else. They were rebellions against the orthodox Vedic ritualistic cult of that time. I am not sure what Zarathustra knew when he elevated the flame into a symbol of purity. We are on better ground to dig into the material on which Jewish prophets built the edifice of the Hebrew faith. We know that Christianity, and following Christianity, Islam heavily borrowed from the teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament. Islam boasts that its founder prophet Mohammed was totally unlettered. Jainism (also Buddhism) does not espouse belief in a creator god, it has its ethical core the doctrine of “ahimsa” or reframing from harming or injuring (by body, mind, or speech) any living being. Jainism is opposed to the Vedic religion and Upanisadic theory of atman but accepts the theory of rebirth, heaven and hell. The theology of Sikhism is largely based on Vedanta.

I find that these religions teach us to renounce life. They are all life – negative, their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys.

To me , life and God are synonymous. Life is full of pleasant things. Life should be lived as intensely as possible. Not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers and offers only once. In fact, life is a far better world than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word “God” exists only in scriptures, it is a word , a mere word invented by men out of the fear and inability to understand and to control innumerable events in nature. The ancient men borrowed the concept of the creator, omnipotent, and compassionate God from the early tribal head system.

Life is within us and without us – in the animals, in the trees, in the plants, and in the whole universe. This whole existence is a dance of life. Life has no arm other than itself, because life is another name for God himself. Every thing else in the world can have an aim, can be a means to an end, but at least one thing one has to leave as the end of all but the means of none. One can call it existence, one can call it God, one can call it life. These are different names of a single reality.

God is the name given to life by the theologians and it has a danger in it because it can be refuted; it can be argued against. Almost half of the earth does not believe in any God. Not only the communists, but the Jains and Buddhists and there are thousands of free thinkers who are atheists. The name “God” is not very defensible because it is given by man and there is no evidence, no proof, no argument for it. It remains more or less an empty word. I t means whatever one want it to mean.

When we have only one life to live, and not knowing when it will come to an end, I want to get as much out of it as I can. I will indulge my senses to the full; see all that is beautiful in the world; its mountains, lakes, its sea-shores and its deserts; I will gaze with wide-eyed wonder at rain clouds rolling by and marvel at rainbows spanning the horizons; I will savour the delicacies of different countries and sample their vintage wines; I will listen to good music, and go into trances watching beautiful ballerinas dancing on the stage; I will inhale the fragrance of flowers, herbs, perfumes and of the dry earth when the first drops of rain fall on it; I will ogle at lovely women, make passes at them and if they are responsive, I will see what I am able to do. I am not a hedonist who indulges himself in the sensual for the sake of indulgence. The good things of life can only be enjoyed by people who have put in an honest days' hard work which gives them a sense of fulfilment.

Worship God in any form you like, that essentially is what Hinduism teaches. Hindus have no prescribed scriptures: no Zend-Avesta, no Torah, no Bible, no Koran. Read what moves you the most. Seek the Truth within yourself. And, is not the message of Gita spiritually elevating ? Nish kama karma; do your duty without expectation of reward. When you engage in the battle of life, do so regardless of whether you win or lose, whether it gives you pleasure or pain. There is also the Lord’s promise to come again and again to redeem the world from sin and evil-doing. Hinduism has no prophets, no one God, one can choose any deity one likes and worship him or her. All this Hindu philosophy is very well but what is the justification in worshiping a monkey as a god, an elephant as a god ; they worship trees, cows, snakes, and rivers. They also worship the “lingam”, which is the phallus (penis), and the “yoni”(vulva), the female genital, as god and goddess. They have obscene sculptures on their temple walls. They have deities for measles, smallpox and plague. Their most popular god, Krishna, started out as a thief and lied when caught thieving; he stole girls clothes while they were bathing so he could watch them naked; he had over one thousand mistresses; his lifelong companion was not his wife but his aunt Radha. Hinduism is the only religion in the world which declares a section of its followers outcastes by accident of birth. Hindus are the only people in the world who worship living humans as godmen and godwomen. There are such innumerable men and women who claim to be bhagwans. Hindus believe a dip in the Ganges washes away all their sins, so they can start sinning again. What basis is there for their belief that after death you are reborn in another form depending on your actions in this life ? You may be reborn as a rat, mouse, cat dog or a snake as the hindues believe.

What does all this amount to ? Not very much. I don't know where I came from, I dont't know the purpose of my existence; I don't know where I will go when I die. I fear I may make an ass of myself at the time of my death - most people do. I don't want to cry for help, or ask God to forgive me my sins and make any display of weakness. I would like to go smiling or I would like to go in sleep.