Ishwar and God

It is hard to imagine a world without Gods but very much possible without an Ishwar. This is because of the essential difference between the believers of the two concepts. For its believers, God is someone who exists outside of us, whereas Ishwar is an integral part of its believers’ being. There is a big difference between the two. For the God believers, each of them have been created for a purpose and the Creator (God) is constantly watching them from outside. Each one of them are answerable for their deeds on the Judgement Day and will go to Heaven or Hell depending on the results of God’s judgement. Thus for the believers of God, everything they do in their lives is for a good judgement after their death and a world without God is simply unimaginable. This is entirely different from the Ishwar believers who spent their life after life trying to realise the spirit within them and finally to be one with it.

One of the main faith problems of India is to do with this extremely different concepts of Ishwar and God. Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) that propagates the concept of Ishwar had gone through its God phase ages back. But being the one and only religious faith that was freely allowed to evolve and develop, the faith itself has realised Ishwar at least a few thousand years ago. There are still strains of God worshippers within HSD, but they do not represent the vast majority. As of now, due to this conceptual difference about the Almighty, HSD is in strong conflict with the Semitic religions coming from the Only My God (OMG) nations. Ever since the advent and development of Science as a widely accepted and convincing tool for objective assessment for mankind, the future and glory of HSD has started looking up once again after centuries of subjugation. If Science and Religion shall eventually meet at one point, it will only be in Hindu Sanatana Dharma.

It is then obvious that the truth about Ishwar is much more strong and powerful than the one of God. Nothing illustrates this point than a funny story about a cross-connection that happened to a simpleton living in one of the OMG nations. The accidental remote connection on his phone got him Heaven’s lady secretary on the other end. Quite naturally the simpleton was flabbergasted and wanted to speak with his one and only God. But promptly came the question from the secretary “Which one of the Gods do you want?”  He was shocked because he was always taught that there is only one. So he told her that there must be only one and asked rather angrily whether she is joking. But the last laugh was hers when she said that during all the weekly meeting of Gods, they always laugh about the foolishness of their believers in Earth and how they are effectively deceiving them, before they offer their prayers to the one and only Ishwar.

God Definition

The bitter fight between fanatic atheists like Richard Dawkins and uncompromising believers like Deepak Chopra has reached highpoint. In a way it looks progressive because the set of blind followers who believe in a Man look alike God breathing down the nose of all believers, watching and determining the life of each one of us is fast dwindling the world over. Church goers are few and far between among the Europeans and never ending violence and eternal bloodbath is questioning the very foundations of the youngest religion supposedly founded on brotherhood and peace. Days are numbered for both the major organized religious ideologies in the modern era when Big Bang will be taught in nursery schools. The relevance of a God which claimed to have created the universe some six thousand years ago is almost expired.

Nevertheless we cannot let the God debate go on forever in an unhealthy manner. There is no doubt that it has started affecting the evolutionary progress of Man. It is time for Homo sapiens who are about four hundred thousand years old to evolve further. But for unnecessary controversies and acrimonious debates time is ripe for the advent of a Super Race of humans as predicted by Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Only a synergy of Science and Religion can provide all the required tools for the evolution of entire mankind into the next stage that is vital for its survival when our life giving star Sun start turning into a Super Nova engulfing the entire planetary system. Neither Science nor Religion can achieve this yeoman task independently.

We are living in a glorious era when Science has established the Big Bang that occurred about 13.72 billions ago without any iota of doubt. Matter and energy for the entire universe as we see today was created within a brief moment of time following the Big Bang. But who or what created or resulted in the Big Bang can never be explained by Science. Many argue that it is Consciousness. It is here that a confluence can occur between Science and Religion which can take the entire human race onto its forward path of evolution without any conflict. All that is required is to define God as follows:-

“God is that which created the Big Bang and continue to be omnipresent as the passive Consciousness”

Multiversal Reality

Scientists have already established that our universe came into existence almost 13.7 billion years ago as a result of Big Bang. Barring the glorious theory of Advaita, which postulates an omnipresent God, all other religious theories about a universe, beings and humans (in His own form ! ) created by God sometime around 6000 BC have been debunked in its entirety. Only a few hardcore idiots and those who are afraid of religious establishments believe in such figments of misleading imagination by a clever few to establish their power over the meek followers. It is difficult to believe but proven true beyond any doubt that all the sub-atomic particles that make up our universe were created within a brief period of the Big Bang.  We are not capable of adding or subtracting anything from it, but only of changing from one form to another. With great efforts, we have already gone back 13.7 billion years in history and now we are stuck at that point.

Biggest question in front of current scientists is about who or what caused the Big Bang. Some scientists avoid the question with their argument that there need not be a reason for everything. But the instinctive rationality of human beings will not be satisfied until and unless the question is answered. For those who are agnostic (like me) it is easy to find an answer by attributing it to the unknown God for the time being, until someone with a fertile mind and intellect come up with another hypothesis. In fact, many such theories have already come up and best one that looks promising is the concept of a multiverse. Mathematicians have already succeeded in their hypotheses upto 11 universes existing simultaneously. And a few outstanding theoreticians have attributed the cause of Big Bang to the clash of two such wobbling universes when both happened to be perfect planes, which is of infinitely miniscule probability. So far the theory looks logical and it will drag out history by few more billion years. But then the question arises as to who or what created the multiverse.

An interesting offshoot of the multiverse theory is the reflections of reality in many of the phenomena mentioned in The Bhaagavada, by far the most mundane and most complex ancient text that mankind has seen. Perhaps there is no better way to think of Bhagawan’s Viswaroopa than by accepting the reality of simultaneous presence of multiple universes. It must be definitely possible for an omnipotent God (or even ghosts and souls) to be present partially and fully in a multiverse, and give the images to the realized souls as described in The Bhaagavada. And those who claim to have got a sight of God might have really done so during an accidental or deliberate peep into the neighbouring universes. It is possible that a warp like reality of a multiverse can become the much wanted connecting point for Science and Scientific Religions (Sanatana Hindu Dharma).

    

General Theory of Theology

It was not very long ago that Newtonian Physics was considered the last word in Physics because it could explain and predict all phenomena that we see around. It could even explain the motion of celestial bodies. But the whole edifice collapsed when we started dealing with the sub-atomic particles. Special and General theories of relativity were required to reach a reasonably acceptable level of hypothesis that could explain everything. We are passing through an identical phase in the case of metaphysics now. The theory of God (theology), which is central to all religions, has entered its final phase now. Rigid Science which is nothing but the other side of Blind Religion is dead and irrelevant to modern Man. Pure, impartial and realistic Science has made tremendous progress and it is challenging many of the hitherto unchallenged tidbits of Science contained in some of the holy texts. Time has also come for proposing a General Theory of Theology to explain the Science of God who is supposedly ‘controlling’ the whole universe (or multiverse).

Different religions and their own versions of God have evolved in different isolated pockets around the world at different times. Exchange of ideas and debates on the various concepts of God were physically impossible during yesteryears. Vested interests in each society kept their own concepts of God in isolation and prevented all forms of challenges to their own supremacy for obvious reasons. With the unprecedented growth in Science and Technology in the past two centuries, many such limitations have vanished. Details about any religion or any concept of God are freely available in the internet now. So also the latest in Science and Technology. But religious bigots are still trying to retard the progress of mankind by preventing free enquiry and debate. We should not allow this to happen and all progressive sections must make the debate continue without any break.

Need for God

The Big Bang theory and all pervasive Higgs-Bosons (God Particles) have been confirmed by Science. We now know for sure that our universe is 13.7 billion years old, our beloved planet about 5 billion years and Man a few million years old. All these unquestionable facts have serious implications. It will take some time for its effect to percolate into all fields of human knowledge. But it will definitely change everything we can think of. The simplicity of having everything originating from a single entity and having something that is present everywhere cannot be ignored. Though some scientists may sound over confident in their explanation of everything, the fact still remains that there is indeed ‘something’ which maintains order and evolution of universe in a particular direction. But equally important is the fact that, as a bare minimum, the very ‘something’ has to be omnipresent, omnipotent and permanent in order for everything to be as it is. All variables can be appreciated and measured only against something that is invariable in every sense.

Need for God becomes inevitable in the context of the order we see in the universe. Scientists believe that everything started off from zero energy and it was a slight tilt in the universal plane just after the Big Bang that created all the various particles constituting the universe which is still of zero energy. Then the question remains as to who or what created the ‘slight tilt’ that resulted in all that we see around. Why not attribute it to something known as God? Another important aspect is the fact that Science can talk with absolutely certainty only about physical aspects of the universe. How about all other aspects of the universe like relationships between various animate and inanimate objects? What about the social, emotional and evolutionary aspects of those with life, especially of humans? And what about the most certain and yet the most misunderstood aspects of birth and death? All these unknown aspects call for a need for God, which is nothing but the ultimate answer to everything.

Use of God   

Most part of most religious thoughts deal with human issues. Makers of religions put forth their own theories that can provide answers to various problems that confront humans. God is an essential content in all religious thoughts and each of them define it in their own convenient ways. And then they forget the simple fact it is the very same God that they have reinterpreted. Clash of religions starts from that point. It was understandable in old days because only the religion makers thought about God and claimed to have understood it. That is not the case anymore. In this age of information everyone can know about everything if one wants to. Once all of us realise the simple fact it is the very same God that we are talking about, there will be nothing more useful to us than the concept of God.

An ideal world would be one when each human being will have his own religion with a version of same universal God. This would sound an impossible dream but the concept of personal God in ancient India refers to such an ideal state of affairs. There are many who ridicule the talk about 330 million Gods in Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) with out realizing the fact it is something much above their own understanding. Having a God of your own who can teach you, make you realize things, scold you, pamper you and even play with you will make all the difference in any human being, who is nothing but a bundle of flesh with ego, emotions and maximum helplessness that only he or she knows. All great men are those who have effectively used such Gods to get the best out of themselves and had immense faith within. This would include even the most acclaimed atheists among us.       

A General Theory of Theology assumes great importance in contemporary context. The best definition for God is that it is an Energy, Matter or Consciousness (all interchangeable) that is omnipotent, omnipresent and permanent. And more importantly, God is definitely not something that is making, managing and monitoring everything (especially humans) for providing rewards and punishment. It is possible to have other universes where the same God is in control but it does not matter to us. All things in this universe are evolving against the background of a permanent and unchanging God. Morality and righteousness are something that is natural in the make-up of evolved humans. While certain collective virtues take us forward in the path of evolution, the negative elements impede our progress. And ultimately it will all end up gradually only to be reborn again because the entire universe is cyclic, symmetric and of zero-energy in nature.          

Advaita Established

It was anticipated for a long long time and now it has really happened. Existence of one of the most fundamental particles – rightly called the God particle – is finally established beyond any doubt. Our elite scientific community, that consists of some of the most intelligent human beings alive today, has given their seal of approval to the existence of Higgs-Boson particle that ‘substantiates’ everything in this universe by giving them mass. It is present in everything and that includes you, me, them and whatever one can think of. It not only means that the God particle is present in everything, but also that nothing is possible without the presence of God particle. For the ardent followers of Advaita philosophy in Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) the new discovery is nothing surprising. The present finding merely substantiates what Adi Sankara propounded hundreds of years back.

The conflict or synergy that exists between religions and Science is reaching its pinnacle very soon. We understand from the scientists at CERN that it will take a few more months to put their final seal on God particle. But as and when it happens, the fundamentals of modern Science will reach a complete synergy with the concept of Advaita that was propounded by Sage Adi Sankara. At the end of a purely impartial, objective and sincere pursuit in search of the absolute truth, a team of most modern particle physicists, using the most modern equipment that costs billions of dollars, have come to the very same conclusion as it was conceived in the mind of Adi Sankara who is rightly considered as the most intelligent human being that ever lived. Mankind is now seeing the absolute truth in simple terms with very naked eyes.

Sankara’s Advaita

Unlike other religious philosophies, Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) has always encouraged freedom of expression and reformation. The process is still going on. But its latest watermark that is unsurpassed by any subsequent reforms is Sankara’s Advaita theory. In retrospect, it looks as if it was the final culmination of a long evolutionary process in HSD that spanned over atleast 5000 years. In very simple terms Sankara was stating the obvious about an omnipresent and omnipotent God, when he said that He is present everywhere. By one stroke of logical explanation, he made all concepts and ideas about an external God, who is monitoring and judging others, completely illogical and even irrelevant. The present confirmation of an omnipresent God particle reaffirms Sankara’s theory and all the religious philosophies (mostly Semitic) built on foundations of an external God lies completely shattered. I wonder whether the Semitic religions have any future at all outside its hardcore fundamentalist followers, who might hang on for political reasons.

Sankara not only propounded the Advaita theory but went on to propose that all that we perceive is just an illusion (Maya). While there are many who have challenged the Maya theory, there has been almost complete acceptance of Advaita theory among all the saints and sages in HSD in the last few centuries. In modern times, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Vivekanand, Saibaba, Mata Amritanandamayi etc., have reasserted the Advaita principle repeatedly. Adi Sankara came on the scene when HSD was on the decline due to the revolutions unleashed by Lord Budha and Jaina. Rituals and social practices among the ordinary HSD practitioners had become unsustainable and it was natural to have revolutionaries like Lord Budha to challenge the system. But both the revolutions were unsuccessful because its theory appeals to only our logic and not to our eternal rational quest for a God. Sankara’s Advaita fulfilled all such requirements.   

HSD Substantiated

With the final seal of approval on Adviata and God particle, the stature of HSD as a religious ideology is going to reach greater heights. It is perhaps the only current religious philosophy that would be acceptable to the entire spectrum of mankind spread between ordinary basic believers and most intelligent theoretical physicists. What is present in everything is called God and when such an element of God is present in all humans, how can an external God, made up of the very same God particles, sit in judgment over any of our deeds? Any idea of an external God monitoring, rewarding and punishing humans sounds absolutely ridiculous. He, who is within us, cannot reward us for our good deeds and punish us for our heinous crimes. If we are at fault, He is also equally responsible and how can He blame us and punish us for the same? It is even idiotic to think of such a God who enjoys all power but takes no responsibility. Ever since the advent of Advaita, the concept of God is quite different in HSD.

In Advaitic HSD, God is really present everywhere and He (in fact it is She) is omnipotent. If we take only the human beings, there is God present in all of us, but in varying intensities. God particles give only the quantitative mass to all of us, but there is a qualitative element as well. It means that the heavier ones among us may not necessarily be more Godly than lightweights. It is left to the individual’s efforts to refine the quality of God within each of us and reach a state of ultimate oneness with him. HSD scriptures give enough and more ideas and suggestions about practices to be adopted in order to reach Him. All that is lacking in most of us is the will and dedication to go for it. But those who have opted and acted have always been rewarded with the ultimate bliss.

India can be rightfully proud about the involvement of two of its greatest sons in the unraveling of this greatest mystery of mankind. If the theory of Advaita was propounded by Adi Sankara, it was Prof. Satyendra Nath Bose who propounded the theory of bosons in modern times. There is nothing surprising because only a profound civilization like the HSD could have produced such outstanding thinkers and scientists. Both might have been merely following their conscience which is an integral part of one of the greatest civilizations with an accumulated wisdom of generations of sages and saints who always encouraged freedom of thought, enquiry and expression. Jai Ho Bharat.          

Converted in Vain

One of the most prosperous ‘business’ in today’s world is that of religious conversion. Democracy in one form or another is bound to blossom all over the world one day and all the organized religions are preparing for seizing power through ballot boxes. In democratic arrangements, numbers determine everything and those religious communities that pray for universal well being and voluntarily follow family planning policies can appear to be idiotic and foolish. But that may not necessarily be the obvious end result. Those who are experts in the religious conversion business know that the process is indeed reversible. If humans are deceived by false promises and coerced during difficult times to convert, the reverse will automatically follow when they realize the truth during better times. As the saying goes, some people can be fooled for some time, but not all people for all times. 

 

India has always been a fertile ground for religious conversion for the missionary forces spearheaded by Europeans and Arabians. Though Christian missionaries pioneered in the field, the sudden enrichment of Arabian peninsula by oil discoveries in the fifties and sixties has resulted in stiff competition from the Islamic forces as well. India’s native religion has always been and will remain unorganized, liberal and highly flexible. A billion such humans is a huge attraction in the religious phishing market and billions of dollars and dinars are poring into India every year to catch as many preys as possible. It has been going on for many centuries, but the marketing efforts of the competing forces have reached a highpoint now. Both the two competitors have started eating into their rival’s portion more than the vast common areas still unexplored. From such competitive heights, their fall will be much more sudden, steep and unpredictable, especially when so many of the successive generations of victims have started feeling that their forefathers converted in vain.        

 

False Promises

 

Human behaviour will always follow the established pattern of hierarchy of needs in any culture or civilization. The same has happened in India. At one time Indian nation was the richest in the world in every sense. Its indigenous wealth and philosophy could easily satisfy all the physical and spiritual needs of all its citizens. No outsider had any scope for interference and Indians never looked outside for anything. Adventurists from all over the world were coming to India to see and experience the wonder that was India. Trouble started when ideological explosions happened elsewhere and spill over isms wanted to recruit more people into their fold to dominate the world. Colonisation of the free world by those who were discontent and dissatisfied with whatever they had at home started off the real problems in today’s world. Looted wealth from the colonies and accidental discoveries of freely available natural resources has provided the momentum for marketing their own version of God and religion as the best.

 

Looting of colonies continued unabated for centuries and what India lost is perhaps unimaginable in real terms now. Christian missionaries and Islamic preachers who followed their plundering frontline had enough crowd to convert and more than enough wealth to lure them. All those who were starving for food had little objection to accept any form of God if milk powder and bread are made available. And those who had no clothes and shelter accepted any form of worship if such basic requirements are freely available. But the basic human needs of food, clothing and shelter fall in the realm of physical requirements and have nothing to do with God and religion. Those who go for fishing with plastic baits can deceive only the first few and may risk their own lives by eating the fish with plastic inside. The logic of religious conversion is crystal clear when we find that the Christian and Islamic missionaries in India are still targeting only the poor in the most backward areas. More than others, they know how weak and hollow are their arguments of superiority. Most of their theory and practices are nothing but poor copies of the original eternal one.     

 

Feasible Solutions

 

Religious conversion is a revolution when it is done voluntarily. But forced or coercive religious conversion is a heinous crime against humanity. Those who indulge in it are destroying the very essence of their individuality and existence. Those who were following Sanatana Dharma for thousands of years over several generations have the basic ingredients of it engraved in their DNAs Forcibly changing them to follow foreign beliefs and dogmas is like throwing the fish out of water. There is no doubt any ideology or ism undergoes a evolutionary process and along its path it will accumulate lot of unwanted beliefs and practices. The so-called caste discrimination in Hindu religion is one such and it has lost its foundation in the current evolved Advaita form of Hindu Sanatana Dharma. Castes (groups or sections of people bound by common heritage) will continue to exist in one form or another, but no discrimination is possible on account of that.

 

 And if the scourge of caste discrimination can be eliminated from Hindu Sanatana Dharma, the door must be kept wide open for the reverse revolution to take place. Those who have revolted against discrimination and made the supreme mistake of abandoning their own legitimate home must be able to come back and rejoin their family. This must be easily possible in a truly secular India where the religion of candidates is not asked for providing food, shelter, clothing, health and education. Those who converted to alien faiths in search of equality must realize their mistake when those same religions are demanding reservations for converts from ‘lower’ castes. Other than the false promise of equality, there was absolutely nothing that would have attracted the converts in comparison with what they had in Hindu Sanatana Dharma.

 

 

It has been established time and again that in terms of spiritual heights, rational depths and practical freedom, there is no other faith that can stand anywhere near Hindu Sanatana Dharma. Its philosophical algorithm is something like an open source code in comparison to the closed ones provided by others. It is left to the individuals to modify and adopt the code in tune with one’s own capabilities. Since God is present in everything that we can think of, there is nothing that can stand between us and God like in other religions. Sankara’s final stamp of approval on Advaita has taken Hindu Sanatana Dharma to a different philosophical plane and all that we need to do is to take it back to its days of glory once again by allowing the free return of all those who converted in vain . 

Overloaded Planet

It has been quite clear for sometime now, that Earth is an overloaded planet. The six billion human load is unbearable and making life more and more miserable for an increasing number of people every year, though there exists some organisations making a living out of this business of population growth. Sustainability is the hottest topic in every international forum now and it is quite surprising that all of us are missing the fact that our own planet has already reached unsustainable proportions. The utopian concept of Socialism can be thought of in two ways – bringing in ‘equality’ either by trying to make all people rich or by making everyone poor. By increasing the denominator, whatever be its justification, the chosen route seems to be the latter. At this rate one of our future children will definitely step on the destruction button for planet Earth.

India is one of the most overloaded geographical areas in the whole world and within it the state of Kerala presents the extreme limits of population density. Not a single rainy season passes off in Kerala without spurts of Dengue fever, Rat fever, Cholera, Jaundice etc., etc. What is the most important reason for this? Nothing but an unsustainable number of human beings per square kilometre. Kerala has one of the maximum density of population and the ‘safe’ inhabitation land area now available is carrying almost double the advisable number of people. The net result is pollution of all water bodies, lack of safe drinking water, lack of infrastructure to process the human waste etc., etc. Almost three fourths of all human problems relate to population explosion and yet there are no serious attempts to control it. The revered Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer has recently come out with a report recommending strong measures against population explosion and as usual all religious retarders have jumped in.

Discourage Overproduction

There is no doubt and no two opinions about the need for children to sustain humanity. Nobody has ever questioned that. And nobody questions the relevance of marriage and family in human lives. All the questions now center around the number of children each family must have. But invariably the religious retarders always succeed in confusing birth control measures with abortion and pro-life slogans and defeat any initiatives in population control. All they want is license for uninhibited reproduction like animals. All forms of excuses (including God) are drawn into the debate to camouflage and confuse any debate between restrictive reproduction for common good versus wanton reproduction with ulterior motives. Though God often finds a mention in their arguments, the real motives behind increasing ‘tribal’ strength is crystal clear to everyone.

It is always the organized religious groups that oppose any restrictions on population growth. The logic is obvious. The strength of any organization is directly proportional to its strength and all organizations want to be strong and powerful. And all organizations are self-centered and bothered only about their own God, their own office bearers and their own tribe in that order. The point they often miss is that the whole world is interconnected and each of us (including our man-made Gods) are dependent on each other. Any attempt to grow beyond the limits of sustainability will unleash destruction from within our own system. An overcrowded Earth is an unsustainable entity and no amount of organization or religion can remove the limits. Restriction in numbers is one of the basic requirements in any organic system and Earth is no exception.

Encourage Restriction

Restrictions are often positive when compared to complete ban imposed by religious doctrinaires. Like animals, every man is born free and what ultimately differentiates man from animal is due to the reasonable restrictions imposed on him or her by the society. Our culture is nothing but a sum total of the impact of these restrictions. But for these restrictions and regulations, man will go down the evolution chain again to the level of animals and birds. Present condition of humanity is even more precarious. We have in our midst a set of people who are monopolizing the custodianship of all morality and liaison with God. Acceptance of reasonable restrictions, as opposed to illogical do’s and dont’s imposed by such monopolizers, is the need of the hour. If they are not shown their place, perpetrators of such obscurantist ideologies will make our lives unbearable mentally also. While population explosion is putting our physical existence at risk, victory for religious obscurantism will make us animals again.

Imposing reasonable restrictions on the size of families should come natural to any society or government in twenty first century. It is common knowledge that Mother Earth cannot sustain a population of more than say 4 or 5 billion humans, which is just one living species among millions of others in this planet. We simply do not have the natural resources to sustain so many human beings and all natural disasters happening now are indeed man-made in a way. And restricting our numbers is the only way to ensure progress and development with social justice. This has been proven beyond doubt in almost all European countries and states like Kerala in India. The present high standard of living in colony-dependent European countries and self-sufficient Asian states is additional proof for this. The only mistake that happened is the case of some European countries is that they went into a negative growth in population.

Justice Krishna Iyer’s recommendation to Kerala government to impose restrictions, including penalties, on families with more than two children is a progressive step in the right direction. It is exactly what is needed in a progressive society with cent percent literacy, highest rate of family suicides and complete consumerism. Kerala is not producing anything sufficient enough for itself other than children which further increase its needs. Thus it is caught in a vicious circle and the only way to break it is to restrict its population growth. Other than the petty minded religious hierarchy, no one is expected to oppose it. But the famed Kerala elite must speak out and defeat all the religious obscurantism that is overtaking Kerala these days.

Death of a God

India lost one of its most revered Gods, Bhagawan Sri Satya Saibaba on 24th April 2011 and his absence will be very much felt in the days to come. There is only one all pervasive Ishwar, but we have several Gods reflecting and reminding us of the presence of Ishwar in everything. Indians have always recognized the Gods in our midst at all times. It is the presence of these Gods which makes the Indian nation a unique one with heights of philosophy and lows of poverty co-existing side-by-side within a vast population of over one billion. It is very much easier to satisfy our innate rationality when we have faith in an all pervasive entity whose net quality is in favour of sustaining this universe by natural evolution depending upon the cause and effect of individual actions. The concept of an Ishwar who is ‘wasting’ all ‘his’ time in ‘making’ humans, monitoring, punishing and rewarding us is alien to Indian philosophy. It is almost absurd to even imagine one like that. Ishwar is more of a logical energy and it must be its reflections in the form of Gods who interact with us.

Saibaba was truly such a God who interacted with millions and millions of people directly and indirectly. He could achieve much more for ordinary humans than even governments with huge resources at their disposal. His only asset was love and his only investment was again love. Even his arch detractors have nothing to say when it comes to his unique contributions in the field of health and community welfare. Without any outside support he brought drinking water to many districts in Andhra Pradesh. Compare this with governmental efforts in states like Kerala, with 40 odd rivers and one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world, struggling to provide drinking water even 60 years after liberation from British rule. And Satya Sai superspeciality hospital is perhaps the only hospital in the world which does not have a billing section at all. Those who criticize him must now show the moral courage in trying to do something of social significance in their own neighbourhoods.

Godly Presence

More than a social worker, it is the presence of Ishwar in abundance that stood out in Saibaba during his lifetime. Stories and anecdotes from his early childhood days are plenty. It is upto individual followers to believe or not to believe in them. For his arch detractors, it may be cooked up stories, just like the ‘magic’ he used to exhibit in producing various gifts out of thin air. Some of his bitter rivals have even brought out documentary films to highlight his gimmicks in their never ending attempts to expose him. But all such attempts have failed again and again. More their opposition, more became the number of people who came to see him and even worship him. Thousands flocked to him to get a glimpse of him and listen to him when he used to talk. And when he became physically weak even to talk, the number of people flocking to Puttapurthi became unbelievably high. There is a big lesson for the so called ‘rationalists’ in this. Man is intrinsically rational and a Rationalist Association can never replace the individuals’ rationality. They should leave it to the individuals to believe or not to believe.

But even those (like me) who have not seen the Bhagawan can easily vouch for his divinity. The sthayi (stable) form in his face and monotonous stability in his actions for the past several years are proof enough of his divinity. Try doing nothing for a few days and you will soon realize the greatness of such Indian Rishis. Deep meditation and Samadhi are the next steps in this path to absolutely stability. The inherent entropy (measure of disorder) has to be brought down to the levels of absolute permanence to achieve oneness with the all pervading, indifferent and immovable Ishwar. By his grace of absolute stability he was providing the sense of stability to millions of his believers who are constantly agitated and unstable under the influence of their own worldly problems. The so-called atheists and rationalists cannot provide such solace to the agitated minds who are constantly perturbed by misfortunes, misery and man-made disasters. Saibaba was definitely not an ordinary mortal and the truly rational believers do not need any more proof regarding this. His was a divine birth meant for bringing solace to millions.

Divine Successor

The controversies regarding Saibaba’s successor smell of a deep rooted conspiracy. His was a divine presence and it is not possible to elect or nominate the next Saibaba. He will come in due course. He will establish his presence and command his acceptability over a period of time just like his predecessors. All that we have to do is to wait for the next incarnation to take place. Unlike temple idols we cannot install a new idol and continue the worship. Exactly like his predecessors, the new Saibaba (Premsai as he will be called) will come and establish his divinity within a few decades. Those who are controlling the reigns of Saibaba Trust must show the sagacity to understand their role. None of those who constitute it have the required divinity and it is not expected also. Those who clamor for action by the Trust are more interested in seeing the end of Saibaba’s legacy, rather than the incidence of Premsai in a much more apt form.

There should not be even an iota of doubt in the minds of ardent Sai devotees that the lineage of Saibabas will continue. Spirituality of Hindu Sanatana Dharma needs the presence of such individuals of heightened divinity to provide guidance. Thousands of such individuals with heightened divinity are already in our midst and the true Premsai shall definitely show up at the appropriate time. No amount of impersonation or false claims is going to succeed in the case of Godmen, as they are called. We have seen umpteen cases where the likes of Premanandas have miserably failed. We all have the divine spark within us and we will always realize the truly divine avatars in a short time. And only those who can offer the much needed spiritual solace in the midst of ever growing human misery can sustain their status in the long run.

Exit of Saibaba is no doubt a tragedy for us, but an end for everything but Ishwar is inevitable. Born of ordinary parents in a nondescript environment, the achievements of Saibaba make his life truly remarkable. What more proof is required for his status than this? He not only radiated divinity, but also attracted some of the most creative minds into the field of service for humanity. His absence in our midst will be felt for a long time to come. But the simple fact that such an exalted soul lived among us and he did bring about lot of changes in our society is enough to make us nearer to Ishwar. His dawn in post-1947 India itself was a great boon for us and his messages have highlighted the relevance of Hindu Sanatana Dharma to an international audience. Legends about Saibaba will continue to inspire generations in the path of doing service to the needy.

External God Delusion

An organized campaign orchestrated by the organized religions to establish the irresistible delusion regarding an external God that is far removed from all of us is growing day by day. There are powerful forces at play with vested interests to prevent ordinary mortals from realizing the simple fact that there is no such entity as God who is working full time to monitor our activities. There is no God who can give us rewards and punishments. Those who are constantly driving this point into the mind of the poor and vulnerable are doing a great disservice to their own selves. Evolution of man to superman has been stunted by this sort of selfish deeds of a few thousands among the six odd billion humans. Efforts of those few who have realized and are convinced about the non-existence of any God that is external to anyone or anything need to be doubled to get rid of the current delusion. The single hand effort of Prof. Richard Dawkins is admirable and his book “God Delusion” is a must read for all those who are in serious pursuit of the ultimate truth (which we consider as God).

Dawkins has clearly exposed all the existing popular religious theories about God and the organized religions stand completely exposed as a result of his campaign. But he has clearly erred on one point ie. regarding the concept of God in Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD). He has mistakenly identified the core of HSD with a few facets of it visible to him in the West. Hindu mythology and Hindu festivals that overflow with the joy of multitude of Gods are only some of its umpteen lower versions that are meant for the ordinary mortals. Variety is the spice in everyone’s life and a religious philosophy that can elevate those who can understand it to an entirely different plane is only providing versions of it for accommodating one and all. But those who really want to go deep into it must not have missed the wood for the trees. Advaita philosophy lies at the core of HSD and if only Prof. Richard Dawkins understood what is Advaita, could he have avoided the few mistakes in his work. Nevertheless he has almost done the impossible by completely demolishing God delusion in his own society and its neighbourhood.

Ultimate Realisation

The concept of Advaita which establishes the presence of God in everything and anything that exists (and that we can think of) has been a thread that runs through HSD at all times. There are many even in India who still believes that it is something that was newly propounded by Adi Sankara (considered to be the most intelligent human being ever lived by those who have (bothered) to read and understand his works). Acrimonious and violent debates between strong schools of thought like Dvaita, Advaita and Vishitadvaita within HSD was commonplace in ancient India. Each of them had outstanding supporters and their arguments substantiating their own respective positions are plenty in the so-called Vedic literature. Among the three, Dvaita and Vishitadvaita are nothing but the original wine of what has been presented in new bottles in modern times as organized religions. Theological debates that are contemporary in the Middle East and West had taken place in India thousands of years back.

Adi Sankara immortalized himself by becoming one of the last scholars in ancient India who put the final seal on Advaita. His literary works which elucidates his arguments leaves no doubt in our mind about the authenticity of Advaita. He is the one who settled the longest debate on God by stating the obvious that God is nothing but the spirit or energy or righteousness that is present in everything. Now every religion talks about an omnipresent and omnipotent God, but when it comes to details the same God is external to us and is detailed as someone who is more bothered about our affairs than we are. This is nothing but cent percent contradiction. How can an omnipresent God be NOT PRESENT within you also? So if at all there is an omnipresent and omnipotent God, only Advaita can be true. Who wants a God which is not omnipresent and omnipotent? The defeated isms have made a successful comeback in other parts of the world in the form of organized religions preaching a God which is clearly external to us. And that is what modern Sankaras like Dawkins are now stripping apart. As for mankind as a whole, we have wasted and are wasting our time. If we had continued from where Adi Sankara had left off, the whole mankind would have attained self-realisation. And we would have had a paradise here itself!!

Analogously Digital

Though Advaita is the last word as a religious theory, its strongest proponent Adi Sankara cannot be considered successful because of his failure in building it up as a formidable ideological argument. Almost all the popular religious texts in HSD espouse Advaita, yet when it comes to the level of understanding of a common man, the force of argument and understanding weakens. The ultimate religious text viz. Bhagavd Gita is full of descriptions and symbols about the ‘advaitic’ nature of God. All the characters (and even animals and the inanimate ones) in Mahabharata & Ramayana stand out with the presence of God in varying degrees. While in Lord Rama and Krishna the divine content is almost full, it is the lack of it in Ravan and Duryodhan that makes them unique. Presence and absence of God is almost binary is nature with an infinite number of interim stages of its presence.

A complete emancipation of any human being will only come with his full comprehension about the analogously binary nature of God as espoused by Advaita. All his (or her) doubts will vanish only after a complete realization sets in about the nature of God. Name and form becomes unimportant then. And this exactly is the very reason for weakening of HSD society. All the realized souls and emancipated personalities in our midst take a backseat and tend to vanish from the vanguard of our society after they have realized the worthlessness of names and forms. The isms that have been squarely defeated earlier have surfaced again fully utilizing this opportunity. And the vulnerable, as all of us are at times, always get attracted to the easy ideas and quick-fix solutions like prayers and rituals instead of full application of their innate rationality and reasoning powers to understand God.

We still require all the efforts of all the thinking people in this world to ‘popularise’ Advaita to the entire humanity. The efforts of people like Prof. Richard Dawkins (www.richarddawkins.net) assume great importance in this regard. By effectively pulling down the concept of an external God, he is knowingly or unknowingly espousing the cause of Advaita. All his remarkably convincing arguments exposing the propaganda games of organized religions about a God that makes, monitors, punishes and rewards Man provide good framework for the ultimate success of Advaita concept. An ardent advocate of Advaita and a firebrand atheist are separated only by a veil of ignorance. This systematically arranged universe of ours needs the existence of an all pervading glue of logic, which we call as God. It is present in everything including humans in varying degrees and I have no doubt about its increased presence in people like Prof. Richard Dawkins. Best wishes for his noble endeavour of exposing the two organized religious ideologies.

No God, Only Godmen

Godmen is a derogatory word among the so-called Communist intellectuals in India and perhaps their cousins all over the world. One cannot blame anyone who truly believes in the absence of a superior logic to rubbish anything related to God. We should definitely respect true Communists, Marxists and Maoists when they ridicule God and Godmen based on their ideology. But then the question turns to the basis of their ideology itself. Communism has failed completely and what we are seeing in China, Russia and even among Indian Maoists are only dishonest and hypocritical attempts to push the secret agenda of a few in the name of Communism. We too had very many true Communists who were hardcore atheists in their younger days; but ultimately all of them failed in their pursuit and some of them even became prominent Godmen. So how can followers of a ideology that failed in the span of a century ridicule the rationality of our shastras that advocate Godmen and have survived many millennia. It is now proven that Man’s irresistible quest for a rational explanation about God cannot lead to anywhere else but to the spark of Godliness within him as demonstrated by many a Godmen.

The case of the two Semitic religions is no different when it comes to Godmen. Deriding the concept of Godmen has always been a prominent weapon of the two Semitic religions that are competing to convert the whole of India into their folds. Their foreign progenitors were inherently incapable of comprehending the Vedic signals from India that pointed to an all pervading logical entity that can be called God. Instead they believe in a God who lives in another world. All their techniques to convert the followers of Hindu Sanatana Dharma (PTBH) have an element that ridicules the concept of finding God within Man. The clever ones among missionaries and mullahs know that their own existence will be questioned if the truth of an all pervading entity finds any foothold among their followers who are trapped under an ideological slavery. They are hell bent on keeping God away from Man and operating their wholesale agency business. Little do they realize that the eternal truth shall always overcome the transient ones and the truth of Godmen shall be firmly established one day.

No Separate God

The concept of a separate God can hold water only when it is possible to provide proof for separate origins for God and others. Whatever little theology that could be built up by the followers of such religions has been completely shattered when Big Bang started seeing light of the day. So far prophets, messengers and godsons were having a good time formulating faiths with ulterior motives for domination and subjugation. Just the simple fact that their blinding books have many references to non-believers when their separate God is supposed to be all-powerful shows the hollowness of their claims. An omnipotent Creator should at least have the vision to refer to all humans as His followers. Instead the books containing His dictates’ are self-explanatory in revealing His diffidence and inabilities. How can any entity that cannot ensure that all ordinary humans believe and follow it be granted omnipotence? It is only as strong or weak as any of us are.

Another strong argument against the existence of a separate God is the present condition of human race in this universe after almost a dozen billion years of existence. There are religions and religions, each with a version of God of their own. Not all can be true. If any particular one is the real truth, all those who fully follow it should have succeeded in every respect by now. Extreme violence and misery in the Arab world, steady decadence of the Western world etc., points only to the lack of any substance in their beliefs of a separate God, which is all-powerful, compassionate and omnipresent. The utter failure of all Hindu schools in the past that advocated Dvaita and Visishta-Advaita in India also proves this point beyond any doubt. There is definitely a God but it cannot exist outside any of us. Like all forms of energy that needs storage or conductor, God is nothing but a logical energy that resides in each and every thing in this universe. It cannot have any human feelings like compassion, vengeance and benevolence as promised by the prophets and messengers.

Only Godmen & Godwomen

Where the concept of a separate God dies, the relevance of Godmen begins. Given the fact that God is present in all of us and that all of us are different, it is only natural to conclude that we all have different ‘quantities’ of God. The concept of Godmen (and Godwomen) comes in here. Divinity of the entire six billion people can be plotted in a graph and we are sure to come up with a clear bunch at the top. These are the people like Saibaba and Mata Amritanandamayi who have demonstrated their uniqueness without any doubt. A lot of us are confused between divinity and miracles. Most miracles remain inexplicable for those who consider it as miracles and it is not necessary to possess divinity to show miracles. A magician may be able to show it better. Divinity is nothing but the silent radiation of God energy. Even the most unbelieving will feel excited in the very presence of people like Ramana Maharshi, Saibaba and the Mata. I do not think anyone will demand proof for their positive divine capabilities when we compare their achievements to that of the rest among us.

Another equally important truth of evolution comes in here. In the broad spectrum of divinity pattern distributed among us there cannot be any doubt about the slow and steady process of spiritual evolution. Knowingly and unknowingly we are accumulating knowledge through our experiences. Those who have inborn qualities of radiating God energy and those who accumulate the same consciously during their lives go on to become Godmen. Many of their deeds and words point to only one thing – that they have much more of God energy than we have. The basic inequality of human beings is nothing but a reflection of the different levels of God within us. All other inequalities in terms of social, economical and even physical parameters can be altered. An individual’s divinity can be altered by only him (or her) and that too based on his (or her) individual efforts. The one and only way to realize the God within you (and become a Godman) is through strenuous hard work or prayers.

All of us have God within us, but to become accomplished Godmen there is the acid test of sustained acceptability. Many a Nityanandas and Premanandas have failed miserably in this regard. Truly accomplished Godmen in the past like Ramana Maharshi (www.ramana-maharshi.org) were highly indifferent to publicity. But the strength of divine signals emanating from such rare personalities not only overwhelmed the locals but followers from far and abroad. A list of devotees who fell for this seemingly unimpressive saint is truly astonishing. In contemporary times, the accomplishments & achievements of Mata Amritanandmayi (www.ammachi.org) and Saibaba (www.saibaba.org) need no further proof to establish their claims as genuine Godmen. Those among us who are wasting our time in failing to recognize their divinity are making the big mistake of searching for a non-existent separate God when Godmen are readily available in our midst.

Faith Formulations

It was an eye-opener when someone told me that I am in a world of my own creation. Though he was taking me to task for a questionable doing, I realised that he was cent percent true. All tangible and intangible items in my world are my own which I have acquired through my own five senses and same is the case with all living beings. Anything can make sense to me only if I am aware of it in the first place. And everything in my world cease for me when I am no more. The tangibles include the entire physical world around me including my own possessions, relatives etc. And my own knowledge, concepts, languages and thoughts make up the intangibles. The crux of this irrefutable argument is that each and every one of us is living in a different world, each of our own making. And we make sense to each other only when the commonalities amongst us are substantially high. We should be happy that such commonalities do exist and are increased over a period of time due to accumulation of knowledge from the surrounding environment. If a new born child could be brought up in a completely isolated environment, the world that it will progressively develop will be highly revealing to all of us who take many things for granted.

The isolated child (let it be a male) will survive only if it is cared for till it can manage of its own and let us assume that it shall be arranged. The first impression that he will develop about the world will be his self-primacy - that everything else exist for his use. He seeks no further explanation about why it is so. He feels superior, intelligent and happy. He becomes a truly atheistic Marxist communist. In the next stage he starts bothering about the other things around him, especially the living ones. Invariably he sticks to his own primacy and concludes that other living beings are something lesser and everything is created for him by some unknown Creator. He feels no qualms about harming and even killing others. He becomes a true follower of an all powerful but formless and merciful Creator who rewards and reprimands. He attributes more qualities like compassion and forgiveness to the Creator who can also speak and instruct in human languages. He develops the concept of sin and starts to believe in pleasing his Creator for achievements. But as he grows into more wisdom, he realizes that there is nothing else other than what is already within him and surrounding him that makes his own world. His irrepressible urge to understand the omnipresent God (not Creator) overpowers him. He begins to indulge in faith formulations to achieve the same and becomes worthy of being a human being. My own faith formulations may be of interest to some.

My God

If we are alone in this world we need no culture and no God. When we have one more to share this world with, we need to confront, adjust and compromise in order to live on. Our culture begins at this point and the need arises for a formless, indifferent and an all powerful, super intelligent impersonal entity (God) that can explain everything and for us to fall back on. Though many of our saintly leaders claim to have seen, heard and even talked to God, nobody could ever demonstrate it convincingly to another person. The nearest we have heard of is arranging a feel of God, like what Ramakrishna Paramahansa did for Swami Vivekanand. The underlying truth is that God is not someone who is compassionate, merciful etc., who is directing our actions, keeping a log of everyone’s activities and ever vigilant about what all of us are doing. God has no rewarding mechanism for sending us to heaven or hell after our death. God is something that exists among everything in this entire universe which neither cares nor bothers about what we do. But its very existence must definitely mean something to each one of us. It is entirely upto each individual to reach out and realize God.

Our failure to clearly define something which cannot be defined is not a failure at all. The nearest we can reach in terms of defining God is by analogies. One such wonderful analogy is that of God with Electricity. In today’s world, there is nowhere that is out of reach for electrical and electromagnetic energy. It is invisible, all powerful, but only when used or misused, to each according to their intentions. To me, God is something like this. An all pervasive and all powerful energy that can be used for our own good (misused for our own bad). It is estimated that the number of electric impulses generated in a human body on a single day is much more than those in entire telephone network in the world. In a similar fashion, the energy or logic of God is all pervasive and all our actions call for a reaction that fits into the overall logic of the universe. We are all born with a piece of that logic and what we achieve individually and collectively are based on the fuzzy logical results of all those in interaction. I believe that we are all like metal tops rotating on a magnetized environment. It can collide and fall off or it can rotate till the starting energy gets exhausted.

My Religion

Religions have already been defined as paths to reach God. Having agreed on the existence of God and its nearest analogies it is inevitable to look for a way to understand and reach it if possible. If we analyze the available world history, we can find several ideas, suggestions and concepts for approaching God - some rational and some others purely irrational based on the perceived notions of few individuals. There are those who claim to have heard from God and given us revelations that makes no meaning to ordinary folks. And that bred a set of interpreters who are attempting newer and newer versions of their interpretations of these words, each suiting their own private agenda. The do’s and dont’s in these commentaries exposes their real intentions most of the time. The political and powerful aspirations hidden in these interpretations are making today’s world a very dangerous place to live in. It is time we ignored these doubtful interpretations and each one of us attempted to define a path of our own. The desire to know God is instinctive in every living being, but as humans who are endowed with more intelligence we should create our own paths.

God has always been there and will continue to be there. Given such a nature of God, how can we approve of any suggested paths that contain gibberish words from some olden days making no meaning to many of us. If God can utter words, it must be meaningful, never ending and must continue at all times. It should be theoretically possible for any living being to interact with God at any time without any mediators and agencies. This is exactly what happens in the case of those who demonstrate miracles and unexplained capabilities. Those who desire and strive to establish such contacts with the immense energy reservoir can always look forward to success at some time. The techniques of praying, sacrifices, rituals and practices forming part of the established religions are nothing but some of the ‘proven’ methods to achieve this contact. All may not work for all and it is upto each of us to select the methods best suited to one’s character.

During these long years of attempting formulations about God and Religion, one thing became crystal clear to me – that there is no easy way. Those who are selling easy formulae of just believing in a few words, doing a few rituals, living in particular ways etc., to reach or realize God are only taking themselves and their followers for a ride. Making contact with the vast resource of (God) energy, that is least concerned about us and our affairs, is a rigorous, skilful and intelligent one-way act. Only intense, systematic and sincere efforts (termed ‘upasana’ in Sanatana Dharma) can take anyone nearer to God. And only by a progressive process of approaching God can anyone achieve anything of their needs. All other happenings in our lives are purely on account of the fuzzy logic of constant interactions with others (living and non-living) surrounding us, which we believe as our own destinies. Only a miniscule percentage among us can establish the contact with God and dissolve in it by realization. If the contact can indeed be made, the advantage of divine outpours can be enormous. But those who are unsuccessful continue to be born and re-born again.

MYTH OF COMPASSIONATE GOD

Concept of God is the very basis of every religion but it differs vastly between religions. As an integral part of our journey towards salvation, the different religions have defined God to be of different type and kind. There must be a concept of God in every religion and without it, everything about its beliefs and rituals would be meaningless. In all religions God is omnipotent and omnipresent. The difference lies in its other features. In some religions it is feminine and in some others it is masculine. In some it resembles humans and in some others it is quite unlike. In some it is of a particular form and in some others it is formless. And more interestingly, and of more consequence, God has definite characteristics in some that contradicts completely with those in others.

In today’s world, if one is religious it means that one is a follower of an existing established religion. And to be irreligious means that one does not believe in any of the existing religions. But this is not correct. Each one of those who are termed as irreligious may still have their own versions about God, unless of course one is an atheist. An ideal atheist must be one like Bertrand Russell who did not see any reason to believe in any form of God at any stage in his adult life (at least he said so). In a way atheism must also be considered a religion just like zero being considered a number. Perhaps Indian is the only civilization in the whole world which also accommodates true atheism as one of the means to realize God i.e. about its non-existence.

Proactive God

In many of the organized religions of the world, the concept of God is a proactive one. This is very clear from the well known expressions in everyday use among its followers. Most Compassionate God and Most Merciful God obviously refer to someone like us but with unlimited compassion and mercy towards the followers. And that our actions are always under the surveillance of God. Our goodness is rewarded and wrongness punished. But the questionable feature lies in the possibility of compassion or mercy for those who look for it following their ill deeds. To err is human but to look for an escape without any punishment is also equally human. It is this unfairness of humans that is most effectively and efficiently (mis)used by the designers of organised religions. And most people fall for such attractive gimmicks even when it relates to God.

In organized religions, God is considered an ever vigilant and efficient monitoring agency. Any form of monitoring leads to control and it is this remote control that is believed to keep Man in the right path. But what can happen if the control mechanism accommodates failures and adjusts for mistakes? The system will ultimately fail. The analogy of God with a vigilant but accommodative control system is an apt one. An ideal control system should severely punish deviations and reward compliance. And it should never allow any compromise with detected deviations lest wrong models become possible and wrong precedents would get set. The whole mechanism would collapse one day under the weight of accumulated wrongness. Unfortunately this is what happens in the case of followers of such wrong concepts of God.

Reactive God

In sharp contrast to the concept of a proactive God is the one with reactive features. This clearly means that either a reward or a punishment follows each one of our actions. A reactive God is normally dormant and becomes active only when an action takes place. It does not act of its own initiative but will only react to our actions. The concept of a reactive God fits in well with those of an independent fate or destiny. Each and every object in this universe has a purpose and follows a course of action. In the case of the animate we call this course as fate or destiny which they are born with. A reactive God will not have much role in the current status of any being but will only monitor and control the incremental effect negatively or positively based on the value of their actions.

The most rational way to explain fate and destiny as something we are born with is the theory of rebirths. Fate and destiny of anything animate at any point of time is on account of its accumulated karma from its earlier lives and deeds so far in the current life. The clear advantage in this concept of a reactive God is its unambiguous positive encouragement for anything good and punishment for any wrongdoings. If we can easily get away with our misdeeds by fooling an omnipotent & omnipresent God by playing on its compassion, it may be better not to have any God at all. God must be an all knowing and powerful yet impartial judge for all our doings at each and every moment in our lives. Eye for an eye must form the basis of natural justice dispensed by God.

As a rational being I consider it the solemn duty of each human being to think his or her own way through the concepts of God available in front of us. The concept of a compassionate or merciful God looks abhorrent to me personally. If I knowingly make a mistake I must be prepared for its punishment too. Those who think that the most benevolent, most merciful and most compassionate God would pardon or lower the punishment just because they are smart enough to repent in time and offer a confession are too ridiculous and cruel. Such a God could not have sustained life for so long in this world of struggle and competition. A purely reactive form of God that is tough, fair and just is the best one that appeals to me. Sinning must never go unpunished and if it is possible to escape the consequences of sin, then there is no God at all.