Deciphering Faith
Just my belief on the matter of faith and religion. What is more important, faith or humanity? And how the powerful class of clergy and other prominent religious segments of society have blocked us from attaining the true essence of religion, and start a humble journey of spirituality.
Dear readers,
Since my childhood, I have been perplexed by the curious world of mythology and Hindu mythology in particular. Born in a spiritually active family, my upbringing gave me the privilege of questioning the dogmas and the established norms. There is always a logic behind all statements, even the nonsensical ones are self-explanatory. The moment we forget logic and turn a blind eye to knowledge or Vidya, we are robbed of our spiritual sense of enlightenment, or of Vairagya. I was always drawn to the challenge of well defining God, and understanding his powers and his true nature. My parents have always exposed me to critical thinking and logical reasoning, and I have been brought up in an atmosphere of scientific temperament with a huge allotment for mathematics, so nothing which was without logic or an Enigma was an object of study to me. Any abstraction stirs curiosity in me to define it, all mysteries compel me to find out the algorithm. But I had left this pursuit of truth a few years ago, I was too engrossed in my pride in knowledge, the sin of Sahadeva. This pride blinded me and diverted me from my path.
But sights of religious extremism in my nation, the unbiased mother who nurtures each child with equal love, made me whirl down the lane once again, in search of God. It's absolutely important to decipher the basis of all religions, the core message, to unite everyone in this secular age. I tried to educate myself on other religions and their approach to understanding God, from Islam to Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism. Though my knowledge is extremely limited, I could evidently see, how Swami Vivekananda was right all along, and so was Mahatma Gandhi, when they tried to make us understand that all religions were different paths converging to the same outcome, and Kabiguru Rabindranath stated that temple of God resided amongst the masses in our hearts and work.
The core integral message of all religions is humanity and universal peace. I saw around me, people belonging to religious institutions, trying to undermine the freedom of other people and minorities, or trying to impose their traditions. They forgot the basic message of Liberty, and also in their attempt to dominate became inhuman and deviated from the path to God. People have largely misunderstood the meaning and need for religion, and certain people have corrupted and defiled religions to gain power and homogenise people.
I believe in power too. As I started to study statistics and quantum mechanics, I was curious about the source of randomness. What is actually 100% random? Something which won't be influenced by anything and can never be truly predicted. Birth and death can be a possibility, but complete knowledge of a system, like Maxwell's demon, would make it easier. So I presumed that maybe, God is truly random but all-knowing, the power is a superposition of all the states at the same time, only we have failed to understand that. This coincides with the theory that God is everywhere at once, so God can't be found somewhere with full certainty and if we do, the system would collapse, because that randomness is needed elsewhere as well. This made me think of an electron. Strangely, an electron has so much uncertainty attached to itself, and knowing anyone, would make us lose every other important information, be it momentum or position, and maybe even spin, which can be altered but never made random once measured, for we have taken a conscious action, and that alters something. Something seemingly belonging to a different dimension altering the state of a quantum system, we were still uncertain about it, at the smallest level, and even at the largest level of our observable universe, and what lies beyond. This power is multidimensional, not only in the Spatial dimension but also in time and also kind of consciousness.
So I was reviewing my idea of God, as a truly random, all-knowing, omnipresent, omnipotent, conscious, multidimensional, infinite and infinitesimal, with the portrayal of Shiva, Shakti, Vishnu, God and whatever this power is named by whichever group. It's also stated that we carry this energy, no matter our morality, social footing, or anything we tagged ourselves with or classified ourselves into. I found nothing which could sum it all up into a neat framework, and the question wasn't one or many, formless or with form, or name of it. But then I realised what if it's the building block of life and matter, back to square 1, what if its energy? Like the lagrangian framework of physics, the standard action and Lagrangian, how it uses the total amount of energy, and it's always conserved and constant. How beautiful was this symmetric framework, I thought to myself. I know I make no sense, because I'm trying to summarise the great complex idea I have stumbled upon, and I still don't understand it in full.
Religion is just an interdisciplinary, cross-subject, study of life and how to utilise our emotions, humanity and conscience to cultivate positive energy, which alleviates the state of mind, which would lead to happy lives. It's just a process of knowing oneself and bridging the gap between logic and myth with philosophy and literature. And here we are, the so-called modern people who haven't understood that the basic purpose of religion is not to be a favourite or go to some heaven, it's to carry out the Dharma of humanity and service to mankind.
The soul and the Goddess
My sacred syllable ह्रीम्] transcends,
the distinction of name and named,
beyond all dualities.
It is whole, infinite being, consciousness and bliss.
One should meditate on that reality,
within the flaming light of consciousness.
Fixing the mind upon me,
as the Goddess transcending all space and time,
One quickly merges with me by realizing,
the oneness of the soul and Brahman.
—Devi Gita, Transl: Lynn Foulston, Stuart Abbott
Devibhagavata Purana, Book 7
Brahma is matter, Brahma is the dynamic of life and he is the change, he is chaos, randomness yet the pattern. Brahma is the field and we are the elements made up of Brahma. We are the carriers of energy in a field of energy. Now whether it is positive or not, is up to our deeds and thoughts, which directly put an effect on our minds and lives and society as a whole. In the whole of the world as the fight for greater equality and justice is moving forward, have faith in yourself, you are god and the power you behold is the same as his, be conscious and focus on it. Respect every other person, irrespective of their tags, and try to unite. We are all children of God, and God ourselves, for it is nothing but energy. We all have different capacities, but if we are conscious of our humanity and can propagate and meditate on the religion of love, justice and peace, we can reach infinite potential. Every major brand of religion is just a way of elaborating on this subject, which some would use to mislead you and try to stir you into the false and vain race for hierarchy, and thus betray the purpose.
I believe in myself and the Shakti within me, it's up to me to do justice to it and cultivate the energy and power, and utilise it in service of humanity. I have also seen my idea and realisation fix within the broader context of many interreligious traditions and principles, and because I am born in a pluralistic, and multicultural nation like India, it makes me connect with a wider spectrum of life and culture and history, alongside food, architecture and a great many things. In a unified peaceful way of living and peacefully coexisting that trying to dominate is the sweet utopia for the world, where we can grow and prosper together. This is what they teach or rather the mantras try to parcel, that we are one with the supreme mother, and today I confer it onto you, as just a small piece of advice. I might sound ecstatic, or lunatic, if so, please ignore this as a blabbering of a child, you have all freedom to do so. But like APJ Abdul Kalam, Hardy, Einstein or Ramanujan, who all at one time wanted to know God, or in the absence thereof, and come up with their theories, here's my humble thought.
I believe in the power, and a formless, nameless power, which is always constant, activated by conscience, and knowledge, which has infinite potent to empower all, and runs the world, while being present in all and everything at once, and is multidimensional so that not one person finds it and collapses the dynamic, propagating system into a constant static one. Just a reminder, believe in yourself and don't be befooled by people who just wish to be merchants of hatred and terror. The first thing we trade is our senses when logic is killed. Logic is the key to unlocking realisation. I made many unrelated arguments to provide a basis for my thought, but I believe in them. But still, my realisation is incomplete, and today's religion is incompatible without updating it.
Thanks for reading.
