Good day, all!
This one is too hot to handle, and I may add a prologue and epilogue to this.
Prologue;
1. I think there is a God. The term God doesn't make me happy, but then it's the closest word I can think of for something superstitious. And it is not a belief, as I had progressed too far inwards and outwards to make it almost real. No proof, but as whatever I do is for myself, and my thoughts are not for sale, there is no need to convince anybody. It definitely is not supernatural, as I normally prefer to consider everything as natural, whether it is within the realms of our mind and body or not. More on this may be added later. The answer regarding the search for the one who created God may be kept on hold, as I had mentioned in my earlier posts. As it is, there are so many logical solutions once you are ready to think beyond the apparent and illusory world we call real.
2. Free will issue (credit for this word goes to a junior colleague of mine who was a Muslim, into radical thinking). But then I was aware of such a possibility even before, and say, much before I read Buddha's teachings in a Singapore hotel room in the year 2003. I believe that there is no free will for us, and we are just puppets on a chain, and how it affects my life and others' may be dealt with in the main body. A simple way to understand this is just by analysing the physical sensory input to the RAM and ROM of your brain.
3. The quality of uniqueness of everything we perceive, as it can not be proven that two things are equal beyond leaving any doubts in this world. And so the above-said points may not be valid at all for others at all, or unacceptable to others.
Discussion on the topic;
God is definitely a concept made by science; human beings follow, if you look at the root word of science. Apparently, animals and other living things also have their own share of science built in, but they are not that ambitious, or rather, they do not want to conquer all. They apparently just need to survive. I do not know the logic or how they think, if at all. Even the Christian Bible has verses like "Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" and “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Anyway, who cares for the Bible these days except the some ones in distress or with some hidden agenda? All religions are very close to the definition I have, but the only difference is that omni-galore is not acceptable. It is actually quite stupid to try to define something beyond our perception. Maybe considered only a discussion of possibilities. (All these are not really considered true as per Hindu mythology or systems. There, the divisions are more precise than Roman or Greek or similar polytheistic ones; I consider the ten entities defined from Prabrahma to Subrahmanya, and not other things. Many consider the sun a God, or at least Godly. The sun definitely plays a very important role in the existence of life, but it has to be consistent and keep on doing the same thing like a machine, apparently. So I do not theorise that God can not stray from a path it is supposed to follow. Or, rather, it has a master plan. Earlier I had mentioned how automation works, God's signature in everything we perceive, and there are only discoveries and no inventions. In line with those topics, human beings toil and make things work/ happen and get accepted by trials and experiments, and naturally, Murphy's law was also accepted, and so things fail and revisions and updates, repairs and scrapping all come along the way. That said, we are relying on scriptures belonging to religions; it is very difficult to get to the truth behind them. The knowledge can not be transferred through scriptures written many years ago, by people with an intelligence level much higher than what we have now. It is also that human language always lacks the potential to deal with anything other than the physical. Physical is not the right term; maybe superficial, about materials and emotions too. Even, I do not think I can transfer everything I know coherently. I see a lot of contradictions apparently, and it is not humanly possible for me to clarify that they are not contradictions. In a Hindu way, there are four ashrams one has to follow one after another, but it seems like I was led to live all together. Actually, I should have taken up writing when I was fully on Sannyasa, but here I am struggling with Grihasthashrama. I make my own laws and do not want to deter from that. So, what is the purpose of my life? It is a very common question everybody faces. I feel that it is also not within our perception. I have worked on many ships, and I always do my job for a stipulated period, get paid and take leave. But the owner keeps the ship till it is worthwhile, and the owner gets all the profit and the feeling of completing the challenges involved in running a ship. Anyone who does not seek happiness or peace of mind: this life is worth living. If not, then life is going to be unhappy and full of turmoil. It's like entering a room that is hot, or you did some work and feel warm, and there is no means for a fan or similar; you just accept the situation, and you may feel that the warmth is fading out. But if you concentrate on the lack of a fan, you will become miserable. There definitely is a purpose which is beyond our perception. Being adventurous and ready to go through hardships without crimping is the only way out? By saying the way out, am I meaning death? But then death is a myth. Only if you manage to get out, keeping your persona and an invisible ethereal body is the confirmation of your death, like what is depicted in an old English movie, Heaven Can Wait. Here I may extend this topic to the next paragraph.
The most important reason is my repeating the relative aspect of all we perceive is the persona we all carry. Name carries the most important part of the persona, as the question of who you are leads primarily to the name. But even without a name, I feel that human beings end up carrying a persona. I am not sure wild animals carry a persona. And the level at which pets may have a persona too may be studied, but we should not worry too much about the animals now. It may be pointed out that our earliest memory in our early life may be a few years after birth, to my knowledge. That is the start of your persona. The mask started sticking to your face. And slowly it gets stuck, as if by an anaerobic glue. I used the term anaerobic purposefully; there is not even air between you and the mask. But you lived even before your persona started sticking to you, and most of your building process, or the foundation, was done without the knowledge of your personality. Tracing back your history is not at all possible, and you study world history, scriptures, and whatnot. There is a story said: Sadhguru, Bodhidharma Buddha told a Chinese emperor to kill his self. He might have meant the ego part of the personality. The self is the one which was not contaminated by the persona and is unpalpable and undefinable. Just to make it materialistic, I am using the term life. Now, ego is not an essential part of personality, and there may have been many who walked this earth without an ego. Selfishness, as used by Ayn Rand, also is not about ego. If you read any self-improvement books, all will be on personality development and not the self part. Now shall you shed the persona? As far as I know, no, as it is your hideout and refuge. But knowing that your persona and your self are separate entities but not separable can help you a lot. This may look insignificant, but it is the most important aspect, which gives you some knowledge about birth, death and life in between
As I had said earlier, one issue we face definitely is the definition of God as creator and not necessarily one who controls everything afterwards. Because the immediate query will be: who created the creator? So naturally, science left the concept of God high and dry. As I had previously reiterated on and on, the query for the creator of the creator, and the inability of the human mind to grasp the nothingness or infinity in this so-called time-space frame we live in, makes whatever we perceive something magical or almost virtual on an absolute level (which I can barely perceive). So science has thrown the term God to the dogs and apparently never looked back. Maybe science is still keeping it, even though apparently not. To make it clearer that whatever we perceive is not absolute reality, let's look into mathematics, on which modern science stands; a point is imaginary, a line is of infinite length, and zero does not exist from my part. What we can perceive is only a line segment, if at all. Whole geometry is imaginary. Now the integers too are assumed ones, on a perceived materialistic level. Stephen Hawking wrote a book: God Created Integers, but I would say we discovered integers. The best part is that from all this imaginative algebra we went ahead and created the square root of minus one as an imaginary number, and named it i. Why i specifically, I do not know? I may call it a super imaginary number. Did not stop there and made things more complex with complex numbers! Equality is another thing very much used in mathematics. And it is a favourite one for politicians too! Equality is never possible at an absolute level. Two things can never be equal. Or atleast science/ human perception can not prove it, as we still have not determined all decimal values of pi. And it is not possible, too. By the way, a meter was defined on the basis of the circumference of Earth, and no wonder someone trying to calculate the circumference of Earth in meters ends up with some fancy values! And the reference for the value of the meter was initially represented by a platinum-iridium rod, which later was abandoned and transferred to the speed of light concept. Still, it should be based on the Earth's circumference! Can you show me pure gold or pure water? I am not going to accept your techniques, and I can become adamant about it. Pure water, which is quite benign, may be the most reactive substance in the world. The superheated one can do quite a lot of work, and the constituents of the water are also quite dangerous! Now let's take the vision. Vision is the most superior sense of ours, but it can be beaten very easily, particularly by magicians.
The people who had taken God had always good intentions and were mostly segregated geographically and hardly used to confronting each other. But then the sea and ships made them mix, and now the conflicts are galore! Separate sects were formed out of each religion, and you see a lot of serious fights of all sorts happening. The most important issue is totally neglected, as the majority of people do not believe in God, and the primary investigation should be to find whether God is a possibility or not. That should be the most sensible approach, I feel.
I came across the word 'free will' after I turned 52, but I was very much aware of such a thing. I was brought up in a region where I was exposed to all three major religions of Kerala. And the concept of God, initially through Christianity and later through other religions, was drawn into me. From early childhood, as a usual practice, we too used to say God knows if we did not have any idea about something. I was superstitious and always believed that something beyond our knowledge exists and even today with all what science had brought up still holds good. I was not strictly religious, and I can not just keep believing something, and my inquisitiveness made me try to find the truth about God's existence whenever I can. I just can not accept scriptures written many years back to accept something. If Moses could accept the fire and thunder as God's identity, I, living in a modern period, can not accept it. The concept of the lack of free will will not make any changes to your life, as Buddha had feared. It is done so intricately, and it can never become conspicuous; particularly with the uniqueness instilled, nobody may believe in it either. Say, like, here we say Namaste to wish each other, and it is really great culture; only if both know what it means. But a handshake is more accurate, and if any one of the two knows what it is, he/ she can read the other one's mind with that. Coming back to free will, an actor in a movie can follow the script, and he can do a good thing or a bad thing without biting the conscience. Also, many times the actor gets engrossed in the role he is playing; they find it difficult to come out of the character after the shoot is over. And an actor has to do the role, whether he will be a hero or a villain, and in the end, what happens to him, the scriptwriter decides. Only that in movies, actors are prompted at least through the script, but in life we are in an impromptu mode and without the script known to us. Whatever it is, it becomes destiny. Can you change destiny? Silly, you!
Epilogue: Hope I was coherent enough.
Never to end...
