God – the Impotent, Schizophrenic, Glorified Waiter
1000 Dalits are being reconverted to Hinduism from Christianity. I am sure many Christians would be sad and many Hindus will be happy. Although none of those sad Christians can say how this conversion away from their religion of these far off people will hurt their personal lives and stop their salvation.. and on the other hand, none of the happy Hindus would be able to say how it will help their personal lives and ability to reach Moksha!
This is what is sad. Everyone believes in God.. but none knows or is clear why we believe in a God that has become nothing more than a Glorified Restaurant Waiter to us! We keep ordering things and asking “Him” to give us something new everyday.. and if he cannot, then we start cursing Him.
To all those who believe in conversion and reconversion – religion is no more than tribal war. Its not about getting to the truth but about increasing the tribe! And for that they will employ any methods! Christian missionaries and Muslim evangelists have been known to strike at the poor and the tribal and use either money or “altruism” to gain in tribe – and believing that such an action helps their chances in the getting salvation. Of course, such nonsense can only be believed by someone who has no clarity on what is God in the first place! For such people God is like this schizophrenic character who is moody, fussy and simply someone afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)! This God has no self esteem but a lot of ego which gets hurt and feel good for the oddest of reasons – how one eats, how one sits, how one talks, how one dresses, how one shaves. No wonder you see enough attempts to bring down Islam also. It will also see its disintegration as have all the various ideologies throughout human history. Same with Christianity.. same with Hinduism and Buddhism. Everything…. only to be replaced by new cages!
What will never be affected will be the Truth. Truth is independent of the Religions and preachings. Its up to you whether you are in search of the Truth or just looking to follow some dictates of a person who said something without any context to eternity (whatever may be his/her assertion).
So, Truth will be there whether we know it or dont. Very few honest attempts have been made in human history to get to that and pass it down… and even those schools of thought haven’t survived long.
Ultimately the coming generations will be as much alone in the spiritual journey as were yesterday and as we find ourself today. Jumping in the boxes will not solve anything.
Religion should be about freeing men and women and not bounding people. There was a time when from east to Gandhar (Afghanistan) and beyond to Iran, Vedic “religion” or philosophy ruled. Then it all started falling of. Why did it happen? How did the appeal of Islam in that area grow and why? How did a philosophy that was the highest that human thought has ever reached become so ritualistic and strait-jacketed that dismantling it became not only easy but necessary?
Institutionalization. Formal structures.. and rules and codes. When an Analytical Spiritual pursuit changes to Prescriptive Religious Instruction, “Saintly” egos clash with Nature’s truth.
Whenever these personal egos take over the search for truth, closed minds take charge. And its not just to do with One religion – its with everyone. All organized and institutionalized religions will face this. The “Truth” however will remain constant.. it will, however, never be affected. Just as egotistic, institutionalized and close minded those idolators were then in the entire Middle East, similar is the state of the people there now with their new affiliations – Christianity/Islam or Judaism! And what is happening in India is no different.
Vedas and Hinduism was NOT about religion.. the philosophy was about exploration and open mindedness.. and self effort. No God or Guru was either important or necessary to the highest thinkers. But look at how people flock to any and every Guru – who are so eager to dish the latest philosophy. People fight over temples but cant find time for introspection – create idols of Krishna, but have no time to think over what he said.. yeah, yeah they would love to hear what the new Guru has to speak about the Gita… but borrowed knowledge is as luminiscent as a grey aluminium foil! That is not what freedom is about! Freedom is being light ourselves. To let the inherent and obviously divine light that is inside all of us shine through – which has been blocked by the baggage of our prejudices!
If you have to help anyone get free from another religion – please don’t convert. Ask him/her to start living on his her own without affiliations. Without any God to fall back on. Not to be an atheist for the way its approached, its also a religion – as much ritualistic and as much close-minded, irrespective of what the practitioners say about it. Instead become humans and be the natural self. Taking people from one box to another is no freedom. When those Christian Missionary vultures would have descended on these tribal dalits who probably did not believe in any religion much except worrying about the next plate of food, and done their conversion, they would have damned them and their generations from freedom for ever. Now, these Hindus who have reconverted them to Hinduism have done no good either. They have just moved them from one box to another.