Jun 25, 2009

Love and God

Over the years, I have experienced two distinct emotions and thus far, I have never been able to come to terms with either of them. I lost faith in both; I have modified the belief in one and accepted the rationale behind other’s belief of the other. Both have been responsible for tiffs with my parents and both have led to countless hours of thought, strife, and emotional trauma. One is love; the other is religion.

Please do note that I have called religion an emotion, taking to past the field of a belief and bringing it to the realm of experience. The reason that I have done this is simple; the connection that I can see between love and religion is in their experience and the effect that they have on an individual.

The tie that binds both love and religion is something called vulnerability. I will see what justice I can do with vulnerability in the picture.

Vulnerability is the feeling of helplessness that overcomes a person on certain situations. It leaves the person open to attack and many a time the person is rendered weak and defenseless.

Just as I have talked about vulnerability above, it becomes easy to see as to how both religion and love cause vulnerability. With respect to belief in a super-powerful God, we leave ourselves open to the pain that comes with that belief. We are dependent on that God for running most of our daily lives and we tend to let him/her be the final judge on what we do with our daily lives.

This in many ways seems familiar with what I have seen and heard as well as experienced from love. It makes one incredibly vulnerable when it comes to the person who is the target of the emotion. Everything that they say/do not say, do/do not do makes a difference, rather makes too much of a difference. Just as it is with the lord, even what is presumed to be shortcomings is forgiven for they are the ultimate being in our eyes. We have put them on a pedestal and we are not ready to take them down from it.

The flip side of this vulnerability is that even though we are vulnerable with that one being, either the God or the target of love, we are stronger with rest of the world. Both are beliefs that go to strengthen the person’s defense systems against all possible attacks from the outside world. I did mention that the vulnerability is towards the target of the emotion.

A staunch believer in God is not going to give too much of importance of what goes on around him/her for they know that it is just another game that is played by the Almighty. Just as the Almighty got them into the current situation, the Almighty shall bring them out safely.

Similarly, with love, the fact that there is that one person shall go a long way to render the rest of the world impotent. The attacks, both personal and professional shall bear no fruit, as the lover shall find solace in the arms/illusion of arms of the target of love.

There is no on who is capable of hurting the lover except the lover’s lover themselves, just as there is no one capable of hurting the devote other than God himself/herself.

Jun 23, 2009

God and Joy

During one of my very infrequent trips to a temple with my parents, a thought occurred to me, a thought that is in its process of crystallization. This post is more of an attempt to crystallize that thought, rather than to state a point of view. As always, the topic continues to be open to discussion.

It has never ceased to amaze me seeing the throngs of people who travel great distances to arrive at a temple, stand in the queue for hours together; all just to catch a moment’s glimpse of the so called Lord. Every time that I am in the temple, I am more interested in seeing the expression of pure joy on the faces of the devotee rather than strain my neck trying to catch a glimpse of the deity.

Being a self confessed non-believer, I needed to know what it was that was driving this effort, what drives the person to do whatever they do, all for a moment’s glimpse. It was then the answer was obvious, to catch a glimpse of what they believe is certainty, to realize something that their daily lives do not provide.

In one of my earlier pieces, I have talked about the fact that belief in religion and belief in a god provides a person with a certainty and a purpose, one that is readily available, something that the other non-believers have to search and find on purpose. Now, armed with this belief, when a person reaches a temple, a church, a mosque, a gurudwara, they realize that they are in the presence of something that to them is greater than they are. This greatness has all the power that someone can think of, to give, to take away, to create, to protect and finally to destroy.

When they are in the presence of this raw power, one that makes life certain, one is overcome with an amazing sense of belonging. This is the one thing that any human is in constant search for, the certainty of life, the knowledge that they are not alone in the world, and they would have eternal company. To see the physical manifestation of all their doubts, in the form of a deity, a cross, a stone, or even an abstract thought called god, is bound to bring joy to any human.

Since I have begun with what it means to a believer, I need to expound how does a non-believer achieve this level of joy, why he goes through immense tests of belief and strengths to achieve certainty.

The simple fact is he does not achieve certainty for all he has is uncertainty. Now, this is no similar to man before he achieved a belief in god. The person who believed moved one step forward and found peace. The one that is left behind, who refuses to acknowledge the god that there is, has to come up with a measure to bridge that gap.

This leaves a non-believer like me with just one option, rush to the only other certainty, death, or make peace with the uncertainty, understand that life as we know it is just a set of infinitesimally small combined probability and move on with life. In the end, it is all about peace.

At this point, I would like to conclude with a few lines from Demons, a novel by the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

God is necessary and therefore must exist. However, as a man I know that he does not and cannot exist. Do you not understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living? Do you not understand that a man can shoot himself for that alone? You do not understand that there may be such a man, one man out of the thousands of millions, who will not want it and will not endure it.