ShriSadhguruJaggiVasudevji, a prominent Hindu writer states:“This is the only culture on the planet which is a godless culture in the sense that there is no concretised idea of God in this culture. You can worship a rock, a cow, your mother, you can worship whatever you feel like because this is a culture where we have always known that God is our making. Everywhere else people believe that God created us. Here we know that we created God so we take total freedom of creating the kind of God we can relate to.” (SadhguruJaggiVasudev:“The Hindu Way of Life,” Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad dated 30 November 2010.)
The learned guru had the liberty to generalise the concept of God in Hinduism so much so that a tree in one garden and a stone in one’s yard would become an object of worship “because what one is reverential towards is not important; being reverential is what is important.”Amystic mantra indeed!
Contrary to this concept, Shri MSN Menon describes that man himself isGod! He explained Hinduism as: “Hinduism is a highly complex religion. Man is not his body, says Hinduism. Man is the Atman. Body is the temple of the Atman.
“What is the Atman? Atman is the Brahman, which is why Hindus say “AhamBrahmansi” (I am Brahman)” (Organiser, 26 December,2010).
Thus one finds so much conflicting thoughts about God, the Almighty in Hinduism that one may prefer to be an atheist! And be a Hindu all through the rest of his life!
Islam, as the final verdict of the Divine Guidance, not only gave a clear-cut concept of God but also stated that the universe, nature and mankind are His creation. He is the Lord, the Master and the Sustainer of all of us. He is the Lawgiver and the Sovereign. Man is His servant and the only duty of this servant is to obey, surrender to and worship Him alone, as He is the living God!
The Guidance from Him is the Qur’ān and the Role Model in life is the Life, Works and Deeds of His Messenger. So be a Muslim (one who obeys and worshipHim alone) and Islam means the religion which ordains obedience and worship of the Almighty.
Views on ‘The Hindu way of life’ published in the column: “Mystic Mantra”(Deccan Chronicle,30November 2010), mentioned that ‘Everywhere else people believe that God Created us. Here we know that we Created God so we take total freedom to create the kind of God we can relate to’. The worshipers of idols stress that they perceive God in these artefacts and seek His bounties by offering their prayers. But it seems that he considered their idols only notational beings and nothing else. Atheists do not believe in the Super Being known as God but pseudo theism is only a matter of frivolity – not any serious idea about the Divine.
Pondering over further on SadhguruJaggiVasudev’s thoughts about God. He emphasised that man created God and not the vice versa. There were men like Pharaoh and Nimrod who considered themselves the Divine. Yet there were Prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad who acknowledged that the universe and mankind were created by the Supreme Being whom the world knows as God. Very few people in the world, past and present, hold the former viewpoint. A wonderful book,The Evidence of God in the expanding Universe by John CloverMonsmahas collected the findings of about forty eminent scientists who acknowledged that this universe is not Godless. Albert Einstein believed that the order or discipline in the Universe points to a ‘Mind’ behind its functioning. Theism is the belief in the existence of God with or without a belief in a special revelation, while Atheism is its opposite. In India those who declared themselves as atheists are not more than one percent. But those who assert that man himself is the Creator of God or the idea of Godhood is to be categorised as what?
Since Divinity and death cannot coexist hence those who claimed divinity or were attributed this traitby their followers, they were doomed. There are religions which mainly exist or founded by persons claiming divinity on account of utter ignorance of the fact that the Almighty who is the Creator, Sustainer and Master of this Universe and mankind is infinite and eternal. His existence is not a notational being but all the human races from im-memorable times believed in Him. Of course the forms of their belief differed. Hence the pseudo-atheist religion found in the name of Hinduism is merely a cultural way of life and not at all any divine faith.
CONFUSION ABOUT GOD
This is with reference to some illogical thoughts expressed by the columnist (‘Think it over’,Organiser,26 December 2010), ‘Men are children of God’ in the eyes of Christians, they are slaves of God in the eyes of Muslims. And Hindu’s?“I am God” (AhamBrahmasmi) says Advaita. Elaborating his viewpoint about the creed held by Muslims, he says: ‘If Muslims are slaves of Allah, they will remain so forever. They will not be asked to think for themselves’. He adds: ‘The Christians lived in darkness for a thousand years when they were dominated by the Church. As for Muslims, they are still in darkness. Hindus have always been free to think’.
I am sorry to write that the octogenarian is himself in darkness about Islam as professed by Muslims today and it is his deep-rooted hatred multiplied by ignorance which prompts him to utter such non sense. Considering the greatness of the Creator and His unlimited bounties on us, one is bound to be in awe, gratitude and humility. The word Abd in Arabic is synonymous with Dasa in Hindi. It implies to a worshipper, a devotee, an obedient servant and a slave as well. If the Almighty is our God, we are His worshippers, devotees. If He is our Master, we are His servants, slaves. If he is our Sovereign, we are His obedient subjects! As for free thinking, let me stress that we are not loose thinkers as ‘do those who believe in a ‘laissez-fair’ culture. We follow the discipline of the Qur’ān and the words and deeds of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be to him). We are not like those insolents who are born as slaves yet consider themselves as the Master. They claim ‘Godhood’ yet they have infirmities like hunger, disease and death!
The Almighty created them out of nothing, a drop of semen. He sent a ‘Spirit’, a command from Him, to ‘be’ a living being and the child is born. The philosophy of Advaita wrongly mistook Spirit and Matter as a distinct and separate state. The final analysis of matter is energy of different wavelength which too disappears like the spirit. When a human being is dead, the spirit leaves first and the body dissolves into elements (Matter) which would also disappear one day or the other, but the Almighty is Eternal and Infinitely living. The Qur’ān revealed that the soul (Nafs) is different from the spirit (Ruh) and the body (combination of matter and spirit is the soul (Nafs).
The columnist considered the human beings or man as the Atma (Spirit) and forgot the Almighty (ParamAtma). He is still groping in darkness yet considers himself enlightened.
DO GOD REVEALS HIMSELF?
Apropos of Mr.MSN Menon’s thoughts about religions in general (Organiser,19 December 2010). Writing under his single query: Are religions God-given?,he has raised many questions. His arguments about some aspects of religions having resemblance to each other are not correct. The fact lies in his first assumption: “All things are said to have come from God.” It is but natural that thoughts emanating from a common source would have resemblance in content matter (central idea), yet some difference in details. A genuine critic would recognise this fact but a guilty reader would find it to be copied down (borrowed from each other). There are texts in the Bible and the Qur’ān about the past events resembling each other.
Again a genuine critic and guilty reader would reach contradicting conclusions regarding the texts of these two ‘Semitic Scriptures’.Mr.Menon has again drawn wrong conclusions of the similarities of names of ‘the Lawgivers’ of some of the religions. He has quoted the situations of Manu, Manes, Moses (as ‘Lawgiver’) Adam or Aadima (about the first man), Christ and Krishna (birthplaces, and other conditions) etc. If Mr.Menon goes on comparing in this way, he would surely find resemblance in the episodes of Abraham and Rama, Moses and Krishna too. The formers not only had encounters with tyrant kings but their wives too were eloped. Both Moses and Krishna were taken away by a river and faced the wraths of tyrant kings. Both of them claimed that the scriptures associated with them – The Bible (the Old Testament) and the BhagwadGeeta had the Divine origin. The Psalms of David and BhagwadGeeta are the songs divine, again a similarity!
A serious and highly academic pursuit of religions and the divine scriptures would reveal their common source. It is not worthy that some scholars have founda similarity between the Gayatri Mantra, Sermon of the Mount (Bible) and the first opening verses (Qur’ān). These similarities pointed to a common source (Divine) and not to a layman’s idea of coying down from each other and that too without acknowledging proper reference, dishonesty indeed!). A genuine god fearing man would never attempt such a mean thing!
SIGNS OF GOD
I do not see God with my mortal eyes but millions of people pray to Him days and nights. Sportsmen (and women too), when they perform better, thank God. I see Sachin pointing his bat towards the sky and cricketers prostrating their heads on the ground. Days break and nights fall. Seasons come and go. Air, water, light (provided free). Farms, gardens and forests provide us nutritious foods. Minerals are also the source of energy. Formal and informal sources of energy are there in the earth and in nature which are exploited to run our industries. Oceans and rivers, lakes and other water storages also store foods. The animal and the plant world too is a store of provisions. All these items of fete for whom? For whose survivalis the unique planet full of life giving resources? Man only, a Creation of the Almighty!
A child is born in the family after many prayers. Soon after its birth mother’s breasts are filled with milk. The family is graced with mercy and love. The infant age is passed amid care of all sorts. Schooling begins. Learning, playing, studying, acquiring knowledge and gaining skills, training and developing one’s capacities, these are the means for a sustainable career in life. Parents, teachers, friends and colleagues, family members and neighbours, co-citizens and officials, system and the Government perform roles to bring out a good and responsible citizen of the country. Who is instilling care with mercy, provisions, resources, persons of duty and a benign system for whom? Man only, but why?
Calamities, epidemics, droughts and famine, cyclones and tsunamies, abnormal cold and heat waves, cloud bursts, floods and other forms of natural disasters occur in spite of advancements of science and technology as they occurred in the past. Although our means of prior information has‘minimised’ the loss of life and property yet we are unable to ‘control’ these unforeseen happenings of life. We murmur – why this nature’s fury? Is the doomsday nearing? The Maya’s calendar indicated no date after 21December 2012! Suddenly starts a rush towards saint’s graves? Renowned temples, bells of churches start ringing.
There is hay day for ‘murshids’, ‘gurus’ and ‘fathers’. Radicals taunt overthis ‘madness’. Scholars write books entitled ‘God is dead’! Writers proclaim: The future of God is bleak! A guru stretched his imagination negatively and wrote an article chanting a mystic mantra: The man Created God to satisfy himself. Yet another learned columnist went a step further, man himself is God! (AhamBrahmasmi). I do not really appreciate Advaita, a Hindu philosophy about religion which taught monism.
The Universe beyond us and Nature around us is full of wonders. The Sun, Moon, Stars we notice daily. The seasons, good or bad, the animals and plants we come across and the studies we have undertaken in our laboratories and libraries. The anatomy of the human body itself revealed a marvellous creation! The foods we consume and the provisions we manufacture. Our natural resources of energy and our horizons of knowledge abounded and scholars, scientists, philosophers and intellectuals are engaged to locate the source from where all these gifts are forthcoming. The order and discipline in the Universe and nature pointed towards the Mind behind these wonders of life, Universe and nature.
Einstein and many scientists have arrived at the conclusion that the Mind who is so conscious that it had planned so perfectly and bestowed the human kind with a mind to discover the Mind, the planner and the executioner, the maintainer and the provisioner of life and its accessories for what purpose? Certainly, the Mind behind all this Creation has entrusted some, noble duty for man to discover Him while serving the fellow creatures!
We travel towards a destination. We notice signs which lead us to our goal, signs which caution us about the danger, signs which give mileage covered and ahead, signs which indicate facilities available during the journey. During our journey we help each other, yet we seldom discuss the purpose of our voyage as everybody knows it.
The Universe, Nature, the Earth and the Animal and Plant worlds and mankind, etc. have signs and our whole life is dependent on the bounties which signify the Bestower. The capacity, talent, life giving energy and the means to sustain it signify a giver or provider. In fact, our whole life and the system which facilitates it is the sign of its Designer.
We know that the current we use comes from a powerhouse. The water which comes through the taps comes from a water tank. The vegetables and fruit are purchased from markets. The commerce and industry is run by many natural factors, including human efforts. The vast resources of energy were provided by the Creator whose kindness we seek. If our planet exhausts these resources, we have a cosmos of unutilised means. An unlimited Universe of resources is in the waiting. We know that there were prophets, seers, saints and honest persons who were guided or revealed the Truth of these Signs and they led us through their role models a purposeful, responsible and worthy life on earth during a life time yet for a limited period. They also told us that you will be accounted for whatever you do here and you will appear before the Master, the Creator and the Designer whose Signs you noticed, whose bounties you experienced and enjoyed.