Is God there?

As a toddler, sitting on your father’s shoulders with his hands folded around yours in the ‘namasthe’ posture you are introduced to the most powerful idea in the world, GOD.

As a child you look up to your parents, find in their words your inspiration. You feel secure that your parents will look after you. You are brought up in an environment where you are constantly monitored, looked after, with someone always telling you what is right and what’s wrong. They lord over you, albeit in a graceful and benign manner in some cases and harsher in others. But the lordship has always comforted you as it makes you feel secure. But growing up, you know that your parents aren’t always right, opinions differ and arguments arise. Still your need for someone to look after you doesn’t go. It is ingrained in our minds and our thought process, whether we accept it or not.

So where do we go looking after for that comfort and security? We invent someone. We make ourselves believe that someone more powerful than us is living somewhere and ruling over us. We call the idea, GOD.

Nature was human’s first God. He had to live in nature like other life forms and had to respect it. Gradually, his dominance over it grew and began to look for another God. Here God and religion in the form we know today came about; organised, ritualistic, orthodox, gradually seeping into people’s minds as it was the most easily available thought and idea present to comfort people.

Everything that was useful and comforting to man came to be associated with God. For instance, let us take the aspect of light. Light, as in sunshine, is useful for man. So it was used by man to describe God. Every religion shows its God in eye-blinding brightness. Arjuna, when he saw Krishna in the full brightness. Christ resurrected himself in daylight in a way which bathed the whole world in brightness. The angels or devas are always a halo which shines and the Gods invariably wear white as this colour displays brightness in the most glaring form. The sun is invoked as God in many cultures. The moon, too, is invoked as a God because it is a source of light in darkness. But darkness is never invoked as a God. Even if it is, at least, it never has come into prominence. Why is this? Simple, humans were always uncomfortable in dark. This was true in older days. So it came to be associated with devils and ghosts. This idea was passed through generations. So even to this day darkness is linked to everything that’s bad, though it’s just another half of a day.

God has always been someone who has everything with him (or her) that a human craves for. That has always been the image of God in human’s mind.

Now the rituals come into existence. It was brought about by elders to control youngsters who reel. They were made to follow these rituals lest they face God’s anger. It is a very powerful took thought it may sound silly. There are many among us who don’t take a haircut on Tuesdays, who take a bath before going to a place of worship, don’t eat meat or drink or smoke only because one’s God doesn’t allow us to but not because of one’s conscience, we invoke God every time we see a temple, even if perfunctorily or even afraid to use small caps while writing God lest we face God’s anger.

The rituals are good to discipline a person but if overdone can make the person not think about whether his actions are right and appropriate. The biggest danger about these rituals is that it looks down upon the person who questions these. It endangers the single most fundamental aspect which differentiates humans from other life forms, the ability to question and think. Why, what and how- only these made us advance in life and help us in lead better lives. Rituals are good, but only those which stand up to scrutiny and there are not many that do.

God, in the form we invoke him has never been there. It was created just for us to inspire and motivate ourselves. We draw strength from our own resolve. God was created only to make this easier.

I maybe wrong and I’ll be glad if someone proves me so.

P.S: This is dedicated to all those who believe in God with all their heart, not to those who invoke God only in times of crisis. Unfortunately, I think I belong to the latter.