God Stuff

Hari (good to begin with God's name?!) gets some credit for urging me to start a blog and get down to writing, something I always thought about but never got around to doing. Used to do a little writing in college, mostly humour (at least I thought it was!), but then got out of the habit. I always thought there was something conceited about writing one's thoughts - the assumption that someone else would be interested in what I think. I suppose that would be interpreted as problems with self-esteem - I can just hear the new age rebukes! On the other hand, one can write for oneself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Anyhow, such arguments go back and forth for ever in my head, and I end up not writing anything. So the heck with the arguments, and here goes ...

I might as well start my first blog with God. As early as in the seventh grade, I remember thinking that the concept of God made no sense. I remember a Hindi teacher, Mr. Yadayya Sagar, telling us in class that he would prove God's existence. He dramatically held up a piece of chalk and said, "This chalk did not simply happen, did it? Someone made it. In the same way, someone made all of us, and that is God". I remember thinking that that was a silly argument, for if everything needs a maker, then who made God? I certainly did not voice my objection, for this man was feared by one and all for his famous wall-chair punishment meted out to children, and though I never received that treatment, I had no desire to find out how open-minded he was to disagreements with his opinions. He was, by the way, a very good teacher, quite well liked and respected. Anyhow, I had no answer to the "who made God" or "who made the universe" question myself, and I still do not. I suspect that no one else does either.

The question of why anything exists rather than not is fascinating, but ultimately unanswerable, I think. The most palatable explanation of human existence I have found is the old Indian idea, restated by many in modern times, that there is one consciousness that can only experience itself through myriad manifestations of life forms, humans being among them. It still does not account for why the original consciousness exists rather than not.

Growing up, I found the question "Do you believe in God?" a very awkward one to answer, because I realized very early that there were too many assumptions built into the question, depending on who asked it. What exactly did one mean by that question? If God is simply a label for an abstract force that caused the universe to exist, then God exists by definition because the universe exists. One might as well call the universe God. However, belief in God is hopelessly tangled with ideas of how God expects humans to behave. People assume that belief in God goes hand in hand with all kinds of other things, such as the idea that one must pray, or go to a temple or church or mosque on certain days, or any of a million other beliefs regarding day to day activities. Most human strife can be primarily attirbuted to this - the belief that there is a God that consciously orchestrates events, that there is a particular way he/she/it expects people to behave, and worst of all, that my group or religion is the only one that knows the true way.

I am getting tired of writing now, so I will end with this thought. As I write this first blog of mine, I am also watching the second cricket test match between Australia and India at Sydney on another window of my computer, and despite crazy umpiring on day 1 of the game, India just took a first innings lead with centuries by Laxman and Sachin. So I know there is a God :-) !!