Do you believe in God?
I do not know if God exists and I don’t think we can either prove or disprove it.
We simply don’t have all the data.
Maybe all the data we need are right in front of us, but we don’t yet know how to read it
My family is extremely religious.
They are Hindus.
They worship many Gods, the creator, destroyer, and the one who maintains the balance
They don’t merely worship these Gods.
They celebrate them!
Very early on, I was repeatedly taught that, “No atom would even move, no seasons will
ever change, if not for God.
God is the reason for everything.
It is the absolute.”
It was intended to impress me and solidify my belief.
But it did something exactly opposite.
It made me angry.
If God made even the atoms move, then it is also the reason for all the sufferings.
If it is all-powerful, then it is letting everything happen.
It is responsible for every rape, every murder and every child’s death.
So why worship something that’s causing all the suffering?
I roamed around with this pent up anger for a while and I carry that anger even now, to
a certain extent.
But now, I realize that things might not be as black and white as I like it to be.
For a long time, I equated religion to God.
It was also unfortunate that I equated religions to sufferings, because religious separation
has led and is leading to brutal wars and ugly violence.
I was confused as to why there were so many religions to govern humanity and why every
certain group thinks that they are special and their God is the absolute while dismissing
the rest.
As I grew up, my perspective gradually changed.
I realized that God is actually an umbrella term.
I’ve met a homeless man who considers the restaurant owner who feeds him everyday as
his God.
If you consider simulation hypothesis, then the super computer, which would run, the ancestor
simulation model could also be considered God.
As I travelled and met people from different cultural backgrounds, I realized that none
of the opposites have a distinct line in between.
Everything has a grey area.
Good and bad, Happiness and Suffering, nothing has a stark distinct line in between.
They co-exist.
I once had a late night conversation with a man whose religion was Shinto.
Shinto is a Japanese religion, which doesn’t have any primary scriptures or prophets.
Shinto’s Gods are called Kami.
They are sacred spirits, which take the form of the important and quintessential aspects
of life.
Sun, rain, tress and rocks can also be Kami.
The reason why Shinto fascinated me is because that the religion understands ethical ambiguity.
Ethics, when it comes to Shinto is cultural and most importantly situational.
There are no rules or commandments.
Shinto has no moral absolutes and assesses the good or bad of an action or thought in
the context in which it occurs: circumstances, intention, purpose, time, location, are all-relevant
in assessing whether an action is good or bad.
Shinto texts have many examples of even kami, their Gods, making mistakes and doing the
wrong thing.
This clear difference with faiths whose God is perfect is probably why Shinto ethics avoids
absolute moral rules.
People of a particular tribal religion in South Korea believe that Humans are a collateral
damage caught in the middle of the eternal fight between the good and the bad.
In this case, the forces of good and the bad are so mighty and magnificent; they are both
indifferent to humanity.
Our very existence itself is a tiny by product of this fight.
The tribal religion’s definition of God literally translates to
‘That which cannot be known.”
I feel like no matter what we do, we are always in search of God, that which cannot be known.
Our journey, no matter what we believe, is a step towards that understanding.
In an essence, a scientist and a priest share the same journey.
Their perspectives may differ, but they both strive to understand.
Actually, this quest to understand is looming in the background of all of our creations.
From the finest poems to the greatest scientific breakthrough, every single thing we create
is an attempt to understand a bit more.
Once I asked a good friend to describe what the term God meant for her.
Her reply floored me completely.
She thinks that God is everywhere, not just everywhere, but we are in God.
Our surroundings, the environment, things we encounter everyday are God.
But we are unaware of its existence as there is no anti environment that enables us to
perceive the element we live in.
She further offered an analogy of the fish in the water.
But I am going to quote Albert Einstein on this one:
“Of what is significant in one’s own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should
not bother the other fellow.
What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?”
Years later, I revisited Hinduism, to study some of its primary texts, not because I believed
in a religion, but because I was open to knowledge from an ancient source.
At that point I was more curious than resentful.
To my surprise, I found that Vedas, Hinduism’s oldest scriptures, don’t preach an all-powerful God
instead they attempt to understand God.
Vedas claim that once formless and infinite, the absolute consciousness craved to experience
separation, the polar opposites and the in between.
It wanted to witness pain, suffering, happiness, sadness, birth, death, life and loss.
So it manifested itself into individual consciousness to witness its own magnificence.
It is the observer and it is that which is observed.
I still wouldn’t call myself a Hindu, much to my dad’s dismay.
I do not want to fit into any religion.
I am probably an agnostic.
I simply don’t know.
But I definitely learnt to appreciate new perspectives that aids in my understanding,
even if those perspectives come from religious texts.
I am fortunate to have a few friends in my life who is as invested and even obsessed
in this understanding as I am, because I do often hear some excellent perspective altering quotes
One of them is ‘God is hiding in between thoughts.’
and another friend when he was addressing my anger towards the unknown, said this …
“In all probability, you will die without finding God or understanding the workings
of the universe.
Your anger is not going to help it in anyway.
Just surrender.
Surrender, not to any God, but surrender to the fact that you don’t know anything.
Be silent and observe.
It will find you.”
True to his words, once it did find me.
I call it, the God experience.
It was 3 am.
I was sitting alone in the shores of a lake, in the middle of a forest in Northern Canada,
looking at the still water, the mist and the moonlight.
I was silent while observing the quietness and the stillness.
I was completely present in the moment.
It hit me out of nowhere.
It was like a trance.
What I felt then needed no explanation.
It was the absolute.
I was completely content.
For that second, I didn’t need any answers nor was I searching for anything.
It felt like I knew everything there was to know.
That second felt like an eternity.
That was God for me.
Eventually I came out of that trance, or maybe it left me.
Then life continued like nothing ever happened and so did my search for understanding