Prologue
Just for a little background - I was born in a Hindu family. My parents are very religious but they never forced it upon us - they did introduce it though. In fact my sister was very attracted to Christianity for several years and my parents never had a problem. My father especially is a devout Hindu. I have never seen him miss his daily prayer of an hour in the morning. Much of it is chanting the praises of God. He is not particularly ritualistic barring lighting the lamp and offering Harati (using camphor) to the God. I have always looked up to my father and so as a kid I used to pray the same way (not for as long, though). That's probably the beginning of my tryst with God.
God over the years
My religious beliefs / monologues with God could be broadly classified into three phases. I mention the dominant reason in each of the phases even though there is a streak of all three all through.
Epilogue:
As a side note - I tried to put myself in the shoes of God and see how would He react when faced with a certain situation. Very soon it stopped making sense because God influences/works on the aggregate.
Otherwise, I still pray to God - and it is extremely convenient to do it the religious way I have been used to - though not a voracious reader whenever I get time I have been updating myself of various schools of spirituality and forms of yoga. It is still making sense to visit temples because I feel several of my fleeting questions get convincingly answered during these trips- a heightened thought of God could be a reason. I did try to also reason idol worship, presence of several Gods (and even more, families of Gods) and some of the rituals that made sense to me - I will write about them some other time.
The evolution of my thoughts on this subject would not have been possible if not for my discussions with Hima (the other half), Manjusha and a few of my friends and colleagues.
Just for a little background - I was born in a Hindu family. My parents are very religious but they never forced it upon us - they did introduce it though. In fact my sister was very attracted to Christianity for several years and my parents never had a problem. My father especially is a devout Hindu. I have never seen him miss his daily prayer of an hour in the morning. Much of it is chanting the praises of God. He is not particularly ritualistic barring lighting the lamp and offering Harati (using camphor) to the God. I have always looked up to my father and so as a kid I used to pray the same way (not for as long, though). That's probably the beginning of my tryst with God.
God over the years
My religious beliefs / monologues with God could be broadly classified into three phases. I mention the dominant reason in each of the phases even though there is a streak of all three all through.
- Up to around 12 years of age: I used to believe that prayer is something through which I can get things from God. I used to pray for good grades at school, for things I wanted and also sometimes good things for the people I liked. I had believed He would oblige when I pray. As a kid it never occurred to me how could the supreme being be flattered.
- 12 to 20 years of age: This is the period when I started asking myself why should God oblige even if He exists? What way am I special compared to the several million others who do the same or more sincere prayer, even if I buy into the logic that He treats all of us as his children. I sort of felt that if God is there, he would love his children who are 'good', 'do their bit', not definitely those who just praise Him ...This is also the period when I started trying to reason each of the rituals I / my family followed. Over the years I started reasoning that I needed to trust God to give the cent percent to what I am doing at that moment .... especially when the odds are against. Its only the belief in God that gave me strength to move on in trying times. I have never been able to convince myself that God existed, so I tried to reason that God doesn't exist - I couldn't do that as well - so I left that question. None of these have never stopped me from offering prayers. However, the purpose of prayer gradually started drifting from 'to please God' to ' to keep thinking of God ' and 'thanking God '
- 20 years to present: Over the years I gradually started reasoning that it is the power of strong desire which is the most essential in making people lucky. Obviously the strength of desire is proportional to the belief of the likelihood of it happening - which is easy if the omnipotent is by your side and ready to pitch-in when needed. Recently I read this book "The Secret--Rhonda Byrne" and found the whole 'attracting positive energy' concept pretty interesting. I still believe in the existence of a supreme power thats maintaining overall sanity in the world we live in but not so much in the shape or stories around It. Thinking that we are in some way related to the Supreme Power, allows a possibility of becoming that super power as well. One hypothetical approach is to get the traits of God - just like what all miracles do we expect to occur before believing when God presents Himself to us. A humanly impossible trait is to certainly be excellent in each and everything. Then the inference would be to striving for excellence in each and every thing one does should get one closer to becoming the supreme power.
So I started believing that, by continuously bettering myself I can become God. The flaw in the logic is that 'good' is not absolute - it is defined for the existence and continuation of society and hence specific to a particular one - all the 'accepted' virtues seem to have as the core purpose the continuation of society. Clearly good is not the way to reach God for He is absolute and beyond society, region or race. Then the only way I could get better is by having a control over my mind and body for my thoughts and actions (the 'I ' here can't be the mind or the body - has to be something else and for want of anything better I would think 'I' as the soul here). I find the Bhagavad Gita thought of eternity of soul strongly appealing.
I still have a lot of loose ends in my thought process - but to consolidate as of this writing (2012) - The soul is the form of God, it exists in everything that exists .. it may be convenient to assume soul as the piece of God within. All this writing is a result of thinking. Mind is what I believe is thinking and it resides in my brain. Clearly I have not realized the existence of my soul. Its easy to see the inseparability of body and mind if thoughts (the works of mind) are a result of the processed inputs from the senses. I don't know the path to connecting to my soul - the introspection continues ........ but I know when I can connect to my soul (that is when my mind body and soul becomes one) - I am God ....
Epilogue:
As a side note - I tried to put myself in the shoes of God and see how would He react when faced with a certain situation. Very soon it stopped making sense because God influences/works on the aggregate.
Otherwise, I still pray to God - and it is extremely convenient to do it the religious way I have been used to - though not a voracious reader whenever I get time I have been updating myself of various schools of spirituality and forms of yoga. It is still making sense to visit temples because I feel several of my fleeting questions get convincingly answered during these trips- a heightened thought of God could be a reason. I did try to also reason idol worship, presence of several Gods (and even more, families of Gods) and some of the rituals that made sense to me - I will write about them some other time.
The evolution of my thoughts on this subject would not have been possible if not for my discussions with Hima (the other half), Manjusha and a few of my friends and colleagues.
