“Everywhere O Bharata, faith is in accordance with one’s nature. A person’s faith is according to his nature.” [Bhagwad Gita, Chapter 17, Verse 3]
Everyone tells me there is One God. That we are all actually worshipping that One God by different names. That it is the different names that are the cause of all the strife in our world.
I find that the thousand names we give to God come to mean very little as time passes. The names turn into pictures, and the pictures remain just that. At one place God is split into a thousand pieces and splattered all over a geographical mass, known by a thousand names and given a thousand faces. At another place, God is crushed into a singularity so unforgiving that he cannot mean anything more than what he is allowed to mean.
In either scenario, He ends up non-existent for all practical purposes. His presence means little to anyone feeling a little lost by the faith-powered tornados that ravage our world.
Where then does he live? I am an agnostic who errs(?) in favour of faith whenever he has to. I have stark raving atheists in my family as well as devout faithful. Either kind is hard to reason with. But I would be making a mistake if I generalise here. None of them are alike.
No two believers, no two non-believers are alike.
Every one of us worships a different God. Even those who claim to worship none. God is inescapable.
None of us can make a move if the God within us doesn’t allow it. Everything around us is His doing. The hope or the lack thereof, the destruction, the anger and frustration, the sparks of creativity and the beauty all around us, is his work. It is a different Him at work each time, working through us.
He is each of us, literally. The tolerant worship a tolerant God. The bus-burning types are not godless either. Their God sees nothing wrong with burning buses (He probably encourages it). Same for the selfish, the sacrificing, the thieving, and the virtuous. There are as many Gods as there are people in the world. He is as simplistic, or as complicated as we are.
If we come to sleep
we are His drowsy ones.And if we come to wake
we are in His hands.If we come to weeping,
we are His cloud full of raindrops.And if we come to laughing,
we are His lightning in that moment.If we come to anger and battle,
it is the reflection of His wrath.And if we come to peace and pardon,
it is the reflection of His love.Who are we in this complicated world?
Poem from Mathnawi 1 , 1510 – 1513
Each of us is Him, quite literally. We exercise a manner of control over our surroundings that we often fail to notice. Our wills accomplish all sorts of things in our respective worlds. Working together, we make more of an impact. Colliding wills cause conflicts. All of us exercise God’s will.
I feel that giving God’s will an image, as if it is something outside us, robs it of all meaning. It sounds like something external, meant to be read out to us and something we all are meant to obey. I feel God’s will is what we are living, dos and don’ts included.
My God is prudent and takes care of me. He chastises me severely when I don’t think before I speak. He keeps warning me about losing my faith in myself. My God has a sense of humour. He can be reasoned with and he always listens, no matter how rambling my rants. He helps me put my words together when I stutter.
This post was first published on mypajama.com on June 19, 2007. I went back to it after watching the Kite Runner movie. I thought it deserved a second publishing.
Well written, but bit complicated. And I think it is obvious also. The moment you try to define god you end up in giving your own perception of God. I simply think God is somehting which is undefinable. The moment you try to define it and understand him then only you can say how far you have understood him. But like it bro very much!!
I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins and he’s slowly persuading me to arrive at the extreme alterative, that God is just a comforting fairy tale that serves as opium for the masses. Whether I should choose to continue to believe in such an entity is now upto my perceived need for such hand-holding and re-assurance.
I suppose that, is what people refer to as their experiences which strengthen their faith, in a entity that fills the voids in their understanding of the universe.(plz excuse me. I’m no good at short meaningful sentences) Come to think of it, no person understands the entire ‘current state’ of sciences at any given point in time. So there really is no one alive, who is god-like in the sense, of knowing ALL the discovered mysteries of the natural world.
I wonder if I will feel all alone and scared, minus the support systems in my immediate circle of society that will probably embargo me like International aid to India every time India tests a baby-nuke in nowhereistan. Fear keeps me an agnostic, yes, the worst fence-sitting kind of agnostic, who neither believes, nor dares announce it in certain circles.
@ Vimal George:
Dawkins’ arguments are flawed. The experiences you talk about not having had do not exist. Your life, or mine, or anyone’s is proof enough. And God is no “ONE”. It is a more detailed concept. One that defies our one-way view of things. If you want, we can chat about this some time.
Oh, are you a Deist or a PanTheist then? Some one who doesn’t believe in a personal god like Einstein once proclaimed….
we’ll discuss it in another space i guess. But the funny thing is, ‘mankind & religion’ is about the few topics that i’m really interested in blogging about and I don’t have the nerve yet. lol.
Why are all the interesting topics liable to get you involved in ‘accidents’….
@ Vimal George:
I suppose my views on God will have to make a blog post. Will do my best to explain.
But to quickly answer your question(s) – No “ism”. It simply involves realising that “one” and “many” are identical. I know I am sounding mystical, but its very practical actually.
Also, there are no accidents.
I suppose we want God to be personalised like everything else. It makes it easier to identify with God once you have set boundaries.
I really would say, the thoughts are pouring with a forceful flow.
Cherished to read few of your articles.:)
Cheer’s ,
Rhydemz