It is the same “God” question again! In some part of
my brain I feel the uselessness of dwelling on this question again and again,
because in some part of my brain I feel there can never be “the one correct”
answer to this question. But so it is with just about everything in life isn’t
it? It is all a game of perspectives and alternatives. To quote an example I
heard in one of my lectures as part of my post-graduation course in Elementary
Education, suppose you are sitting in a room and there is a glass of water
lying in front of you on a table. After some time, you vacate the room and go
out. Keeping all the other things constant, will that glass continue to lie on
the table? At first glance, this question seems childishly simple to the extent
of being silly. What does your presence or absence have to do with the
existence of that glass? How can your going out of the room change the location
of a glass of water in any manner? As clear and factual as it sounds, let me
give you another perspective that we discussed that day in class, but the
import of which is fully clear to me only now. How do you know in the first
place that the glass is kept on the table? Because you can see it lying there
and hence, your brain/mind (I will be using both interchangeably here) tells
you so. If your mind didn’t tell you, you would have no way of knowing it. Let
us consider for a moment, you don’t have a mind. In that case, you can argue
that you may still know about the existence of the glass if others told you so
and you trusted them firmly. Let us suppose again for a second that this is a
legitimate way (although I strongly disagree) to know something (I am not
referring in any way here to physical disabilities like blindness. A blind
person can know things through other sense organs like touch, smell etc.). Even
in that case, the other person will still have to go through your mind in the
first place. Blind belief also would require your mind to agree to believe blindly
in the first place. This proves that the existence of a mind is a prerequisite
for existence itself to be real. Everything that you experience requires the
faculty of your mind for that expericence to exist in the first place. Now, let
us go back to the case of the room and the glass, where we started off. Once
you leave the room, you are no longer able to experience/see the existence of
that glass. So, how can you say that it still exists there? You can at best
conjecture that keeping everything else constant it still has to be there. But
how can you say this with as much certainty as when you could say it when you
were in the room? At least to my understanding, you cannot. (I would be happy
if I am provided an explanation that proves to the contrary, may be that will
answer many of my questions). If something as simple as the existence of a
glass that is as close to a fact as can be, can have another perspective
attached to it, then how can we claim that any other thing will not?
Coming back to the “God” question, is there an
all-powerful being that created everything that is? If yes, why did it do so?
For some solid concrete reason, or just for fun? Why did it create such
diversity of everything - inequality being the sole essence of all existence?
Why did it create everything in opposite pairs – life and death, happiness and
sorrow, high and low, night and day….and the list can go on and on….if it is
the all-powerful, all-benevolent, all-righteous one, why did it not choose to
not create fear, hunger, poverty, suffering, anger, malaise, ego, and all the
innumerable ‘vices’ and ‘miseries’ in the first place? The answer that usually
follows these questions is the ‘theory of karma’. All that is happening to you,
all sorrow that you are reaping is not ‘God’s’ doing, but your own…because
every action has an equal and opposite reaction, whatever you sow, so shall you
reap. Then why do we see innocents, even infants who don’t know even the
meaning of happiness or sorrow, suffering untold miseries. The next
explanation: their ‘karma’ form their previous births. At some time, some
place, in some history that cannot be established or verified, that can exist
only on faith, because you choose to believe in it, in some such history, this
individual would have done something really notorious to deserve all that is
happening to it today. It is but natural that such a proposition can exist only
on faith, because reason can never have anything to do with something like
this. Then why do so many of us believe in this? May be because we are
compelled to attribute a reason to something that belies our understanding. May
be because we need to still keep on breathing and moving and living despite all
the million absurdities hitting at us from all directions. May be because we
have attributed such all-encompassing stature to our “God” that we cannot
attribute this inexplicable misery to it at the same time. So we do the next
best thing. Attribute it to ourselves. Own up everything. The good or the bad.
All our own doing. If not in this birth, then in some previous unknown birth
that is sure to have existed. As true as that glass on the table in that room.
This is all good isn’t it? Everything explained
away. Everything understood. Then why does it not feel so? Why is it that there
is that huge ball of indigested questions churning up inside all the time? May
be because something somewhere just does not add up. If “God” is “THE ONE”,
then why did this world have to be the way it is? And if all this is our own
doing, then how is that entity “THE ONE”? How is it all powerful? How can an
all-powerful entity allow anything like this to go on, without batting an
eyelid? Why does everything have to have a cyclical reasoning that throws
oneself into a vicious circle of uncertainty? Just for instance, suppose
something terrible happens to a person, which she has done nothing to deserve.
What does she do after all the initial wails and cries for help? What does she
do when living with this terrible feeling is becoming impossible? She needs to
desperately find the reason for this madness. It has to be something, somewhere
just hidden from her eyes. And then it strikes. Yes! It was her own doing, may
be not in this birth but some random previous birth somewhere. She definitely
has deserved it. Not only that, whatever has happened has happened for the good
because it has only rid the burden of a sin from her tainted being. She has to
repay one loan less now. What is the choice available to her if she doesn’t believe
this? Is there any real choice? How does she go on living? Holding on to this
thought with all her might comforts her, at least lets her move on. But if it
is all ‘karma’, then what is the need for ‘God’? Why do we need to believe in
an all-powerful entity? Why are we desperate to hold on to something at times
of need? May be because we are human. That is the mantra…we are ‘HUMAN’ and
being human, before anything else, means that our first and foremost value
needs to be ‘HUMANITY’, plain and simple, HUMANITY. Why not, just for once, stick
to the creed of humanity? Why not live by it and die by it? All the good, the
bad and the ugly, is it not created by us? Is it not in our hands to try and
choose wisely and steer the world towards that sunlit path of hope, of love, of
prosperity? Is it that impossible to create a world that swears to live by and
die by that creed of ‘HUMANITY’? Is it really, if each and every one of us
willingly and positively and sincerely set out to do so? It is for each one for
us to answer for ourselves….
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