Cubic Venerations

“You know, I’m fed up with all of this God nonsense! Can you show me God? No, seriously, can you show me God? If you can, I’m game. Here, take me with you right now. Show me where he is. Is he in the trees? Is the ‘spirit’ within that gives them life? Is in the sky? Is he the one that makes it look all blue and nice? Or, like Friday from ‘Robinson Crusoe’ says, is he in the animals? Is he what makes the cheetah sprint and the fish swim and the man think? Where is he? Is he in you and me because you say so? Or is he in you and me because that’s why we think, that’s why we know? Or are you now going to turn the other cheek and tell me that God does not exist? That all those things around us are capable of doing their thing because science dictates that they do? That the trees grow because there’s enough mineral and water in the soil, that the fish swim because it’s got fins, that the cheetah sprints because it’s built all dynamic, that man thinks because he has a brain and the mind with it? Whatever you tell me, it will be based on what you know. You can never tell me something you don’t know. You can’t tell me that you don’t know the answer to a question without knowing that you don’t know the answer! There is no escaping your knowledge; the brain cannot ever lie without knowing that it is lying. Even if I’m giving you wrong information without my knowledge, it will be because the brain is not aware of the mistake. If it becomes aware, then it knowingly masks the awareness. That’s all. And now, if you tell me there IS a God somewhere, then you know that there IS God somewhere. How do you know it? Did you hear it from someone like I’m hearing it from you? How do you know that person wasn’t lying? How do you know that the person who told that person wasn’t lying? You can see I could go on and on, and I hope you can also see the point here. You can never know. If there was or is a God, you will not find out unless someone shows him (or her) to you, or if you stumble upon him (or her) while crapping in the woods or something. You can never ever find out for yourself about something unless you have either been looking for it, or you have stumbled across it. There is no other type of revelation possible, and I think you know that from you own life. Even if there is no God, how do you know? Are you telling me that since you saw no one with a halo over the head while crapping in the woods, there is no God? How do you know for sure. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn’t!

“What I’m saying is, don’t waste your fucking time looking for something that might not be there! When you’re sitting down reading the Bible, you’re reading about man being good and man being bad and God correcting all of it and forgiving it and doing magic tricks. What religion has done to you is it has blinded you from your own efforts, from seeing your own capable self doing all those things which apparently some God did! Don’t you see that the ‘love’ pardons and befriends is only a product of man’s intention? Do you need a God to tell you something which you you’re capable of? It’s like having a middleman in business. You know you can seel your products to the customer, but you employ a reseller just because he can do it better, right? Wrong! You employ a reseller not because he can do it better, but because you can’t do things as well as he can. You’re just fucking lazy. With God in the picture, you’re not just lazy, but you’re arrogant, you’re foolish and you’re an absolute retard for ignoring what’s at your feet and looking into the distance.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll agree with what you’re saying. You’re saying you need something to represent all these symbols, something that provides you with support everyday. Am I right in thinking you want something like a prayer? Like you say all solemn and all problems are solved and your mind fortified? I’ll give you a prayer. Look to yourself. You are young, you are strong. You have a mind, an infathomable mind, which cannot be controlled by any living man. You are capable of thought, which no other beast on the planet is capable of doing. You are here, and that’s what matters. You’re not like the twisted paradox in the ‘future-life’ of an unborn child or the infinite retirement in the eyes of the dead. You’re here, that’s it. What do you have to do? You’ve to live your life. It’s yours, you dumbass. Yours! Not anybody else’s. You’re not going to let anybody tell you what you do or do not deserve, you’re not going to tell anyone those things for that matter. Don’t waste your time. If you need something to waste just to feel vain about it, then it”l happen automatically in the form of the life you’ll be throwing away. No one knows where in space and time come from. It’s just that when we ‘come to life’, we become understandable to others. You wouldn’t want to return to that statelessness knowing you did nothing, would you? It’s an experience in the offing, take it or leave it. There are thousands of billions of such stateless people waiting to be born, but you have the good luck of getting here first. The world you see around yourself is what it is: the world you see around yourself. By this, I mean that that which you see is there and breathing or lying only and only because YOU see it. If I saw it first and told you it was there, you’ll know only because You learnt of it from me. It’s knowledge, conscious knowledge, that’s the greatest determinant of our future. There could be some other hidden parameters too, but since they’re hidden, you needn’t be bothered about it. Now, at this point, I must introduce you to someone.

God

“Meet my God. Yes, I’m showing It to you. Yes, my God is an ‘it’. Not a ‘him, not a ‘her’. It. In fact, my God is a small little cube, all blue and nice. You see those little cubes next to him? Those are his divine brothers and sisters. You might be wondering how I could be so dumb enough to give you all that crap about not knowing and stuff, but this God, I know it’s there because I’m showing you. Now, this cube is my God.  My God can turn blue and then just sit there on the floor. He is my God because I found him. You can’t oppose me there, can you? I know my God exists because he does. He’s right there, see him? And I know he’s my God because my God told me. That’s how I found out. My God chose to pop out of the skies, drop into this forest, and tell me, stupid little me, that he’s God, and that there’s nothing I can do about it. So I decide to do nothing about it. Why is it a cube? Well, I’ll asnwer that with a question, and you answer me that. Why is your God a man? Why is your God a woman? Why is your God a little pig? If God can be all those things, then my God can be a cube. I don’t think God’ds got a copyright there, that he can only and only be an animal. Can my God teach me love? No, I asked him not to, because I can do that on my own. The cube doesn’t have to teach me something I already know or can find out myself. All the cube needs to do is be a God so that you and me can go about doing what we do best. You agree?”

Here's something to start your day off.

The Devil is watching.

You atheists must look a bunch of nitwits right now, eh?

(Thanks to Puneet Sharma for the find!)

Who is an atheist?

I want to begin with discussing the question: does our past really play a role in the shaping of our future? If so, how does it? I was reading the Srimad Bhagavatam, a translation and transliteration of the holy Vedas by Vyasa, a Sanskrit scholar, and was browsing through the Twelfth canto when I found a section on the Karma Yoga. I could not understand the slokas, and the translation and meaning sections also didn’t help much. It was too deep, too blue. I gave up, but not before reading the summary of the chapter: the Karma Yoga dealt with one’s actions and their reformation in order to live a full, wholesome life.

Now, just consider the contemporary scenario. The world around is powered by science, and education plummets us forward and ahead of the illiterate. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be learnt or taught, if there is no education. In turn, the education that powers us does so by filtering out an immense amount of information, thereby creating knowledge. Our knowledge is most probably restricted to those matters that aid in the improvisation of our lives. Education imparts perception, perception imbues understanding, understanding delivers belief. I for one cannot simply accept when someone says there is a God. I need proof because I deign myself a man of science. I base my faiths in logic and reason. They have suited me well in many matters and thus, I effect that they aid me in my religious principles as well. For, religion is hollow sans belief, is it not? Anyway, I simply can’t come to terms with God – science presents me with the option of basing my faith in some other cause, a cause that is logical and reasonable. Let God exist for those who cannot switch to science and its “explanations” abruptly (I’m, of course, talking of the elderly, who saw drastic changes in their lives as they moved through the Industrial Revolution), or to those who consider science’s prowess a sign that points to it being another of God’s innumerable creations. For that matter, science itself might not be absolute but that’s a different issue. What I’m saying is that intelligence has transformed me into an atheist, but not a complete one at that. I would like to believe in a God at the borders of science, where logic itself fails at explaining phenomena like the structure of space before the big bang.

बुद्धीन्ध्रियार्था रूपेण |
जनानाम भाति ताधाश्रयम ||
ध्र्श्यथ्वाव्यतिरैखाभ्याम |
आध्यांतावाद अवस्तु यात ||

Therefore, in the absence of a spiritual power or, say, the Absolute Truth, my future continues to be the enigma it is in the absence of Karma Yoga. There is no Heaven or Hell to judge me, I am not part of a cycle of birth and death, I don’t have to pay for my sins by the eye-for-an-eye principle. It is my mind which is at work behind all these things, and it is me who is responsible.

Karma Yoga dwells on those sections of life that are sometimes derived from just experience (the past). If a car hits me while I’m crossing the road and I break my leg, some would say I might have broken someone’s leg in the past like that. Even then, if I have, I would not beat myself up for committing that sin. I would blame it on me, my decisions and values, my behaviour, my self. I would place my values and morals above my spirituality. Even in such cases, Karma Yoga seems to resurface when you subconsciously establish a connection between your past and your present – a form of the placebo effect.

* * *

Some elements that guide you in life are, like I said, your education, your understanding of the world derived from your perceptions. Who you are is completely by determined by these elements and there is no refuting that. If your parents have screwed you over, it is you who has decided to blame them for it and continue being screwed, instead of learning from your mistakes and building your strengths and weaknesses. When you believe that your past is connected to your present, it is your education which is being dwelt upon: when you try and recollect as to why you performed such an act in the past, the lessons you may not have learnt at that time are costing you your health or wealth now. The spiritual in us seeps into our personality when we refuse to accept our insecurities for what they are and, instead, choose to mask them with reasons that suitably plug the hole. Theism only makes us feel secure in a small period of time, and it holds us and hugs us all through our lives if only we trust our minds with it.

One of the greatest political leaders and scholars I know is Periyar (original name: E. V. Ramasamy), a Dravidian social activist in Tamil Nadu, India. An important contribution of his to the Indian society was the awakening of the non-Brahmins, and the instilling of self-respect in them. His many speeches and articles and essays spoke about the Brahmins who claimed to be superior just because they controlled the temples and performed archanas. He implored the people to realise and understand that spirituality and godliness was not everything: he believed that everything was what it was only if we, the people, made it to be. Above everything stood us, our morals and values, us as who we were and us as what our duties were. God was no obligation.

That religion is only as strong as the weakest believer is very true. More than those who devoutly believe in a God and His/Her prowess, there are those who use religion as a mask, as a shield. The following is a quote that summarises what most atheists believe in, in that we are only non-believers, not fundamentalists.

“…the talk of the atheist should be considered thoughtless and erroneous. The thing I call god… that makes all people equal and free, the god that does not stop free thinking and research, the god that does not ask for money, flattery and temples can certainly be an object of worship. For saying this much I have been called an atheist, a term that has no meaning“

– Periyar

However, I am an atheist – in that I believe in Periyar’s definition of God, and therefore am inevitably an atheist because I don’t believe in God as He is otherwise. I don’t know if I am an agnostic. But I am not an atheist or an agnostic like some of the many people I know: people who think intelligence recapitulates atheism. I have reasons for my choices, and I have given them.