THE GREATEST EXISTENTIAL CRISIS OF ALL TIMES - ‘GOD’

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who can-not learn, unlearn, and relearn.”?

? ― Alvin Toffler?

One fine day, he suddenly says, “A recent reading of a completely different perspective on this matter has led me to modify my thoughts and beliefs about it”. As I sat on the hilltop of Dalma, a place at my hometown (Jamshedpur), that we frequented as a family for some fresh air and quality time, a place that I visited to bring my strange musings and carefree imaginations to a hypothetical existence, I watched in silence and shock as I heard these words being spoken by my maternal grandfather, Dr. Bhola Mahton. For one reason that I had always known of him to be a man who didn’t believe in the existence of God. Year after year, I have been a witness to the religious rituals and prayers of my grandmother, while watching my grandfather staying almost completely away from the whole process; ‘almost’ meaning except for those times when he was emotionally blackmailed by my grandmother into participating. He was a gentle soul with a mind and perspectives that were way ahead of his time.?

I still remember his stories based on his experiments with God while he was a child, the said experiments being completely rebellious and with the intensity of a critically scientific mind. He was told by his deeply religious mother to pick flowers from the neighbourhood for her day-to-day morning worship ritual. There were times when a few flowers would fall down on the ground during this process, to which his deeply devotional mother would be of the strict opinion that the fallen flowers were not to be used in the ritual itself as it had touched the?ground and thus, deemed impure. Considering the concept that is often taught to us as kids that God created everything, his thought process immediately made him question the validity of the contradictory argument that if everything is truly God’s creation and he is supposed to be the guardian of the universe, a flower that has touched the ground should not be considered defiled and no longer fit to use. To which he was told that if such an object is used in the process of worship, the person being a part of such audacity would die a horribly painful death. Being the analytical and curious kind that he was, he decided to test this theory by deliberately picking up the fallen flowers that would later on be used for the worship. In reality, he lived an exceptionally fulfilled life and passed away very peacefully at the age of 92 in 2018. However, I do wonder at the strength of his patience that would make him wait all his life to find out if his hypothesis was accurate. Such was his mind and such was his scientific curiosity that absolutely set him apart from the rest of the world.

Coming back to his shocking statement, initially I was sure I had absolutely heard it wrong. How could someone be so flexible in his approach towards life that he could suddenly, at the age of 75, I might add, be ready to change a principle that he had nurtured all his life within himself and that too based on a new way of thinking that a younger generation had instilled in him. But then again, that was him – Stability with flexibility. Brings to my mind a certain incident in the life of Dalai Lama. A scientist once asked the Dalai Lama, “What would you do if something scientific disproved your religious beliefs?”. To which, after much thought, he replied “I would look at all the papers, I’d take a look at all the research and really try to understand the ideas and perspectives, and in the end, if it was clear that the scientific evidence disproved my spiritual belief, I would change my beliefs.” Makes me feel like my grandfather would have made one hell of a leader.

He laughed his ever so carefree laughter at my shocked face as if he had anticipated that exact reaction from me, just like a kid laughs when his prank turns out to be successful. After I got over the initial shock, I asked him “What is the source of?your change in perspective and in what way do you feel it is an improved version of your lifelong philosophy?”. He said,” All humans have the luxury to change their thought process and principles in life, but very few are privileged enough in their own minds to be able to actually do this in practicality. This specific privilege is the basis of all evolution. To be able to evolve with time is man’s greatest skill in the process of the survival of the fittest.” I admit that I may not have understood the real value of those words back then, but when I think about it now, I realise how, the simplicity of that particular thought, affects mankind or rather the entire world in a massive way. How simplified his mind would have been to be able to put such a strong reality into such uncomplicated words that express the core of his sincerity towards his thoughts. Even when I didn’t understand the real meaning of those words, I remember feeling extremely mesmerised and proud of him.?

“So, earlier I did not believe in the existence of God.”, He continued. “Having been involved in the rational and scientific methods of judgement, I was of the conclusive opinion that an entity, such as a spiritual superpower, has been designed by the human mind to instill a sense of fear for the actions that we do commit, and to impose responsibility on for the things which are out of our control. For example, spoken sentences like, God will punish those who indulge in bad deeds or the earthquake was an act of God, nothing can be done to prevent it respectively. However, when one starts looking into the details of how perfectly this universe has been structured, it is absolutely impossible to question the existence of a source of energy that is responsible for creating something so precise. Look at anything around you, what we do, what we feel- all of it is a result of complex chemical compositions that have been set in their ways in our brains. Take the example of something as simple and at the same time as complicated as the world of human emotions, why we feel a certain?way is a result of the hormones that are secreted as a resulting reaction of an action. Similarly, look at the leaf of a plant – the complex structure of how the water will be transmitted from the roots to the leaves for the process of photosynthesis to sustain the plant- everything has been structured and planned in an extraordinarily brilliant manner. How is it possible that all the world and all the physics, chemistry and biology involved in it can only tell us the process in which things happen and why none of it is able to explain who made the rules for these processes to be executed in the same fashion all over the world and that too in the such perfect synchronisation. For example, we know all humans across the world will have tears in their eyes when they cry. Now, the tears are the responsive reaction of the lacrimal glands when the emotions of sorrow or extreme happiness are felt. However, we still do not know who decided it to be structured this way and why? But it is worth wondering that the process remains constant throughout the world and it involves some extensively complex set of chemical reactions in our bodies, which is set to perfection in itself. This makes me believe that there must be some source of power that could have structured everything for the process of evolution to take over and now that it has set the functioning in motion, is merely the manager of the above-mentioned processes. However, there may be some exceptions to these processes, similar to any other manufacturing and sustenance structure, but the overall composition remains the same.” Even after so many years, that moment still feels like a key milestone in my understanding of the composition and the functioning of the universe.

To understand my comprehensive take on this, you must know a little bit about my train of thoughts too. Since my childhood, I have been a complete dreamer, getting lost into my train of thoughts and going deeper and deeper into the details of things. Some people may call me an over-thinker, I personally prefer the term ‘empath’. At this particular moment, his words made me deep dive into thinking about all the processes I could think of that have been planned with such perfect synchronisation that it is very difficult to dispute it being created by any other entity than a supernatural state of higher being. My own wonderings often make me question the relevance of God as well as science. What I have come to believe is that religion and spirituality are two entirely different entities and in order to understand the true nature of science, we might have to believe in the creation of the universe and the state of its source of power. Being spiritual does not necessarily mean the same as being religious. In the scale of balance, the opposites are the only two counterparts that can be brought together to create harmony and balance. What spirituality would essentially mean to me might mean something else to someone else. The ability to respect other’s opinions as much as you respect your own distinguishes the wise from the extreme faction of our culture. While some may argue on the significance of the cultural implications and practices, I am a firm believer in the saying of “change is the only constant.”?

And it is only with true empathy that one can really move towards changing the social order for the better and towards a goal greater than themselves and maybe even greater than life itself.. Here’s hoping!?

Cheers!?

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