Why God!
Why God?
Today early morning I got up from a dream asking this weird question. I don't remember exactly the context and details of the dream, but the question remained with me.
Why God?
More than what is a God, the question was why God.
Years back, I used to write a lot about I am being in friendship with death and his friend God. I used to think if perishable or mortality was not there in the world, God wouldn't have been discovered. Imagine a world where things don't perish, die, end and are immortal!
The world would have been a static place. Things wouldn't have changed. Time wouldn't have moved. There wouldn't be a concept like birth, life and death or movement. So, I used to think death or perishable created the world we live in and the fear of death or loss created God, a concept that can differ the death or the act of change. Back then, I decided that one who has the power to differ mortality cannot be mortal or one who stops the change can't have a change. In other words, I assumed that an immortal God is the creation of death or mortality or change.
Static and immutable God of an ever mortal world.
In Advaitha philosophy, they called that static God concept nirguna parabhraman (inert god). According to them, the ultimate realisation of the faithful.
I thought wow!, I am enlightened
But as grew older, the next enlightenment came to me. If the God who can differ the change or mortality is the nirguna parabrahman (inert God), then there is also no death to death or mortality to mortality or change to the idea of change!
They are static too -Death, mortality or change is also immortal and static. I was confused. While an immortal static God is only a concept, the idea of death, mortality or change is an action than a mere concept.
My next enlightenment came up to me then-Ah aha!, no wonder to protect the position of the static God, these intelligent philosophers had created the idea of the immutable soul, that doesn't die or change, in all of us
Smart guys and an enlightened me, I thought. I am simultaneously being a static soul and a perishable body, which I thought is my next enlightenment.
Static God and static mortality (never changing form of death or change) and mortal body, but unfortunately made the inert God equal to the immortal death/change, because as mentioned above, death is a permanent reality. Shankara, the proponent of Advaitha, smartly said, if God is immortality, then immortality can not inhabit in mortality or in a mortal body. In simple terms, he argued, a vessel can not float as static in a flowing river (something always changes position). So he argued that what is mortal or changing, the world we live in has to be an illusion-Maya, that can not exist. Only the static - inert God can exist.
My enlightenment got punctured. Back then, so were the many other enlightened men and women. They said, Hey, hello, what man! If mortality can not contain immortality, how will an illusion contain immortality or inert or static? If the body and its changes or mortality is an illusion, then where does the static soul or inert God resides?
Advaitha crumbled and Dwaitha emerged. They said, keep them separate guys -immortal God and its mortal container -body, keep them separate. Don't mix them, they don't gell well.
Advaithis don't give in so fast. They are epistemologists and argue with logic. They use tools, techniques and methods to build their arguments.
As the Zarathustra argued, they argued back to dualists, that the shadow does not exist in the fire, shadow is the character of the objects in the path of fire. The character of fire is static and immortal. The shadow of the object in the path of fire changes from object to object and its position to position in the path of fire. Since every object contains the same fire and the immortal fire doesn't originate or depend on mortal objects for its nature, the object and shadow are ephemeral or illusion. When the fire ignites, nothing remains that have any reminiscence of the form of the object or its nature. Burnt-down objects all look the same. In other words, the material world is an illusion or Maya. Similarly, like fire, the atman is present in all forms that can neither take birth nor die, so it is inert or nirguna brahman. They further argued that those who question this inference are the ones who confuse a rope for a snake due to their ignorance. The right knowledge will clear the air.
They told the other guys, (more than dualists, they spoke to the Buddhists) look guys, do not commit the blunder of confusing rope for a snake due to ignorance. The atman within is the brahman everywhere, it is pure and universal. Like fire, nothing attaches to it or brings changes in its immortal and universal nature. It is ignorance without the right knowledge that confuses us with the illusion of the existence of the body as a container to carry the atman (fire). Only the atman(fire) is true, the rest all are just maya, born out of our ignorance. Although Adi Shankara was smart with his epistemological logic and its structural presentation, epistemology or logic as the method of intellectual interrogation was not discovered by him. So, some with those structural training in intelligence, turn back to Shankara and asked if everything other than brahman is an illusion in this world, kindly tell us who is then this 'ignorant' who needs the right knowledge to understand brahman, the ultimate God? What is this ignorance, right and knowledge? Aren't they also illusions? How can illusion perceive the brahman with the qualifications of immortality and inertness?
Adi Shankara, in his eagerness to counter the Buddhist Madhyamika philosopher Nagarujuna, following the footsteps of Gaudapada, although, proposed the hypothesis of illusion or Maya concept to bridge the chasm between material and metaphysical worlds, unfortunately for him, the Maya itself became a concept of heightened contradictions. He evaded the questions and their answers and moved on in his life by instituting intellectually militant Shankar mutts in four corners of this country and physically militant akharas to protect and defend his Maya hypothesis in his Maya or illusional universe! Period.
I thought, wow! This time I have hit the jackpot -the non-dualist Advaita's denial of material form (body) in the art of form (God), doesn't have a sound logical basis like the denial of canvas by a painting in its existence as an artwork. I thought this is my next enlightenment moment. But I was wrong again.
Painting on a canvas is not art, there is art in painting! Painting on a canvas is only artwork and canvas is neither the painting nor the art.
The body (canvas) is neither painting (atman) nor art (brahman), once the painting is finished, the canvas (body) is only an illusion (maya). Only painting and art exist, says non-dualistic logic. Realising this logic is jeevanmukhti or ultimate liberation, says Advaita.
This time instead of imagining my enlightenment, I become confused!
How will art theory or history replace the canvas? or knowing the logic of art theory or history can liberate one in art!
My friend artist and colleague Ravindra Gutta says "knowing theory, history and principles of electricity would not explain electric shock or its feel. Art is that electric shock".
The logic of the method prescribed by the Adi Shankara as the process of Jeevan Mukti to arrive at non-dualism or Advaita exposes his inability to liberate himself from the deep-rooted Chaturvarna caste concept of Hindu society. In his formulation of the jeevanmukti concept, he applies the same logic of erasing the farmer from your food on the plate or erasing the craftsmen from the pot on your table, or one who does physical work becoming invisible in the social hierarchy for the visibility of one who talks. His rejection of physical reality for conceptual approximation gives us a clear indication of the same.
I said, my God! Why God! As he turned God into a theory or language-dependent cognitive estimation, his non-dualistic Advaitha has reduced God into a logical /conceptual approximation by excluding the rest of the universe from it. He missed the electric shock my friend was talking about.
If bajagovindam was written by him, the poem that asks human beings to have just faith in God, rather than critical interrogation of God through logical perspectives. Looks like later date, he has understood the problems of his hypothesis or the pitfalls of his inference of Advaita.
In the first stanza of the poem, it says "
Pray to the lord, pray to the lord, pray to the lord, you foolish man
At the time of parting your body,
No rules or grammar is going to save you"
He was not the first one to say that or the last one. At the end of his intense intellectual engagement with philosophical and spiritual concepts of the Universe and life, one of the greatest intellectuals of Madhyamic Buddhist philosophy- Nagarjuna declared "he has nothing to say". After the first world war and during the second world war, when Europe witnessed the biggest onslaught on the human race, where millions had perished like parasites, and the art, philosophy, culture, religion, God and all those facets that mankind thought were important in their life had failed to save the humanity, DADA artists declared "no meaning is essential" and started anti-art movement. Later on, one of the biggest conceptual artists of Europe, Marcel Duchamp also declared "I have no problem and I have no solutions", rejecting the very idea of problem-solving (to that God is relevant) and the method of critical intelligence as a means to understand it.
Yes! Finally, if not completely, my engagement with Advaithic Brahman is over. My enlightenment is done.
I went back to sleep again, referred to as sushupthi by Adi Shankara, and not into Turia, a stage of super consciousness where atman and Brahman will become one. Since with the kind of pitfalls we find in his basic concepts of Advaita, I don't have to think about it anymore and can go to sleep.
God?
I am not worried anymore. After all, Believing in God, or not believing in God, is a matter of belief, and belief is defined as an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.
Like water doesn't make the river, the flow makes it and flow is not in the river, but the river is in the flow, the unseen rhythm of the flow in life, sometimes makes one wonder - if art is there, then isn't art(God) there?