After a satisfying dinner at home last December, Bapa
, Maa
and I were lying comfortably on bamboo mats on the verandah. The night was cool and starry and the nearby hills' silhouette gave a cosy feeling. Bapa was explaining Godhood to me; Maa customarily was listening attentively. During the "discourse" - it was an after-dinner conversation - I came to a conclusion that Godhood equals "meaningless"ness. It seemed impregnable at that time. I kept the conclusion to myself. I thought about it once or twice after that day, but mostly to confirm rather than examine. Six months have passed since then and when I had all but forgot, the memory of that day revisited me. Something happened that was trivial at face value, but because of which it dawned on me that the conception of God as Meaninglessness doesn't easily lend to a personal experience. This is because an experience is by definition the collage of stimuli combined with personal interpretation. Meaninglessness and Interpretation are at direct odds.
When I feel acute melancholy, the innate in me prays. With praying accompanies a confusion and also embarrassment. Embarrassment at the hypocrisy of not bothering with praying when things are okay. Amusingly, during anxious times, this form of hypocritical praying doesn't seem un-kosher. I can content myself by viewing it as a therapeutic. Instead, accompanies a jovial self-mockery at the blatant hypocrisy of it and I can laughingly recall when even the self mocking alleviated the anxiety slightly.
So, is there a conception of God that lends to personal experience ? Is there a God to whom I could pray for comfort and care freely ? Be it melancholy or anxiety or despair or sadness, the need for comfort in these times is present for me. (Aside : Humour this fantasy of mine - humans never do die and, thus, nobody is devoid of parents ever ! End to all worries which, of course, are taken care by parents.) I genuinely respect persons who can will themselves on through such times without needing a God. It is a great credit to their will, even when they are brought up to be independent and strong-willed. But, I think there can be an useful conception of a God who not only is our crutch in bad times but also shares our good times. And it is this - He/She is the ideal of all that we want in a person.
If we could find our ideal persons in reality, who would be ideal friends, philosophers and guides to us, then I would not be writing anymore. It is a general observation that we humans don't find the ideal in the real and it is not because of any inherent shortcomings of reality. It is because of an altogether human characteristic of ours which is hard to characterize as either folly or strength. We always want more from reality. It is ingrained in us. Godly -- and bordering precariously on inhuman -- are those who can find the ideal in the real. Even the ungodly ones have found it for fleeting moments - perhaps while looking at a rose on a dewy morning or in midst of the great mountains or, for those with a warmer inclination, at the beach by the enormous ocean. This quality of ours has helped us achieve wondrous advancements as a species. It has wrought on us disasters and catastrophes when we wanted a bit too much. This observation - which might well be an inescapable law of the human condition - might sadden; for therein lies the seed of the destruction of a greedy prayerless soul.
What can lead us to our God ? There is no general single answer. For myself, I see a necessity for a training program - to create and sustain in my mental universe, the ideal person, my personal God, to whom I could pray freely, who would love me and care for me, whom I would worship and love and, maybe at times, dislike (I was rightly told by a loony stranger on a LIRR train from New York Penn station to Stony Brook, while having nostalgic times with close friends reminiscing about high school and such, that the four letter antonym of love is a much too strong a word to be used lightly). This formulation, if I may say so, is necessarily anthropomorphic or at least capable of human faculties. I can imagine an unconscious robot helping me get rid of anxiety by solving the problem at hand; but, it is inconceivable to me how it can love and console. This mental construction of a God, if reinforced with care and faith or aastha, may potentially be as devoid of falsity and fiction as the world we inhabit while reading a good book. It can become a true part of our experience and existence. More than a truism, it can bloom into truth itself.
In order for this conception of a personal God to be useful, one needs an acidic honesty with oneself and an appreciation of nature and the concomitant concepts of creation and destruction. Even the ideal person can't bring back dead loved ones to life or avoid a natural calamity, neither can he/she help one be at peace while looking at the one behind the mirror. In fact, looking at the mirror is unique among the various daily mundane activities in that it requires insignificant physical or mental effort, yet when desired sets up the easiest venue for introspection where one is truly on one's own. Thus equipped with honesty and an awareness of the jagat, the vedic word which sometimes denotes creation, one can deeply experience God as the ideal person. As an end and/or corollary - it is both for me - one's person and condition will be bettered.
-
To all the owls,
who gave us, in the north of Hind,
the sweet appellation of "ullu",
who gave me the inspiration,
by being not Godly but human.
