Why do I love ideas but am suspicious of all ideologies? Why do I not need a God to be religious and why do I not need a religion to love God? Why do cosmos and God mean everything together and each nothing at all by itself ? Why do I not have to believe in scriptures in order to be thrilled by them? Why do I love prophets but am never able to respect them? Why do morality, virtue and evil seem so ridiculous and compassion so profound? Why do loyalty and love not mean anything to me together and everything each by itself? Why have I felt that it is impossible to say "I love this but do not love that? Why have I always felt that love is something else when qualified by an object? That one can only say "I love", but not that "I love this, or I love that?" Why pain is noble and profound when it belongs to someone else and a bit of a selfish pity when one's own? Why pain has a higher meaning than love? Why does even the happiness you bring to a humiliated mother or a suffering child or helpless sister or poor father far nobler and intense than even the greatest bliss the fulfillment of a relationship can bring? Why being truthful and pious in a relationship is nobler than being alone and happy, and yet an overwhelming feeling of being in love with no one in particular brings you closer to an even higher bliss? Why defeat in love is sweeter than victory in war? Why losing humility is a bigger loss than losing an argument, even a war? When will these questions cease? Should they?
Organised religions, no matter how noble their objectives initially must have been and no matter how useful a purpose they must have served in introducing some sort of order in primitive societies, have come to be identified more with exploitation, mayhem, hatred and cunning than with the professed noble goals. Certainly, I regard these religions -- and other forms of religious bigotry like communism, socialism or whatever( even secularism, which by itself has become an intolerant communal group) --......I regard these religions and ideologies as not only mischievous but also brutal and cunning. SO clearly, my God is not a separate entity, an iconic emblem of morality wielding draconian powers. I am closer to Einstein's -- and mystic's -- concept of God, and that God defies all definitions and contours. At best, even religions talk about the same force --Nau - Nav - name -- also mean energy. ( Jeta keeta, teta nau... All that exists is Energy) Obviously, no sane man can accept ideas that run contrary to empirical evidence,and thus a God creating man in his own image at one stroke is out for me. But the symbolic value of that myth still remains profound. Interestingly, despite the loud political sloganeering around the findings of scientific discoveries, especially around Darwin, the theory of origins and evolution of species changes nothing except details about the act of creation; as for the essentials of cosmic mysteries, only half baked religioinists and half-baked scientists would get into a quarrel. There is vast zone of agreement between them. A book, Tao of Physics, makes an interesting reading in this regard. That the book is written by a scientist of great repute -- Capra -- helps. But my observations draw only partially on those ideas.
Organised religions, no matter how noble their objectives initially must have been and no matter how useful a purpose they must have served in introducing some sort of order in primitive societies, have come to be identified more with exploitation, mayhem, hatred and cunning than with the professed noble goals. Certainly, I regard these religions -- and other forms of religious bigotry like communism, socialism or whatever( even secularism, which by itself has become an intolerant communal group) --......I regard these religions and ideologies as not only mischievous but also brutal and cunning. SO clearly, my God is not a separate entity, an iconic emblem of morality wielding draconian powers. I am closer to Einstein's -- and mystic's -- concept of God, and that God defies all definitions and contours. At best, even religions talk about the same force --Nau - Nav - name -- also mean energy. ( Jeta keeta, teta nau... All that exists is Energy) Obviously, no sane man can accept ideas that run contrary to empirical evidence,and thus a God creating man in his own image at one stroke is out for me. But the symbolic value of that myth still remains profound. Interestingly, despite the loud political sloganeering around the findings of scientific discoveries, especially around Darwin, the theory of origins and evolution of species changes nothing except details about the act of creation; as for the essentials of cosmic mysteries, only half baked religioinists and half-baked scientists would get into a quarrel. There is vast zone of agreement between them. A book, Tao of Physics, makes an interesting reading in this regard. That the book is written by a scientist of great repute -- Capra -- helps. But my observations draw only partially on those ideas.
1 comment:
Organised religion, no matter how noble their objectives initially must have been and no matter how useful a purpose they must have served in introducing some sort of order in primitive societies, have come to be identified more with exploitation, mayhem, hatred and cunning than with the professed noble goals. Certainly, I regard these religions -- and other forms of religious bigotry like communism, socialism or whatever( even secularism, which by itself has become an intolerant communal group) --......I regard these religions and ideologies as not only mischievous but also brutal and cunning. SO clearly, my God is not a separate entity, an iconic emblem of morality wielding draconian powers. I am closer to Einstein's -- and mystic's -- concept of God, and that God defies all definitions and contours. At best, even religions talk about the same force --Nau - Nav - name -- also mean energy. ( Jeta keeta, teta nau... All that exists is Energy) Obviously, no sane man can accept ideas that run contrary to empirical evidence,and thus a God creating man in his own image at one stroke is out for me. But the symbolic value of that myth still remains profound. Interestingly, despite the loud political sloganeering around the findings of scientific discoveries, especially around Darwin, the theory of origins and evolution of species changes nothing except details about the act of creation; as for the essentials of cosmic mysteries, only half baked religioinists and half-baked scientists would get into a quarrel. There is vast zone of agreement between them. A book, Tao of Physics, makes an interesting reading in this regard. That the book is written by a scientist of great repute -- Capra -- helps. But my observations draw only partially on those ideas.
Post a Comment