There has always been a trend in the thinking of intellectuals. Intellectuals here as per my definition are people who are well-read in the worldly sense and have formed opinions based on careful reasoning, deep thinking and are reasonably open and rational. These people are not fundamentalists but refuse to believe anything without an agreeable justification - fair enough. For a long time in the history of religion and spirituality, there have been intellectuals who opposed to seeing God in a form. They either think it is too narrow a definition for someone so big like God or the other side which thinks that people who believe in Idols and God as an entity have still got to grow up! Reasonable thinking, I would say, because believing in an idol or a form might run the risk of limiting one's view of this world to force-fit in to that picture. They believe that people judge right or wrong by benchmarking against that idol (or a book!). So there were people who started Arya Samaj and the great saints of Advaitha philosophy. Although in different streams, both rubbished the need for idols. "When the God is You and You is Him", why need an idol they would ask.
But laymen like me never could comprehend this argument beyond a limit. I always thought everyone lives by holding on to an idol. For, what are ideals if not a different form of idol? We all live by a certain ideology and that is idol worship. These ideas/ideals can change but when you leave it you are either dead or you don't need it anymore for you yourself have become that idol. That is when we leave it. The only way we can move beyond idol/ideal/idea worship is to just not have any ideals or ideas, to live without the need of them for judgment, to live without the need for argument - for you don't see the difference anymore; Because you see the same thing in every voice and in every idea. But as long as you hold on to a thought as yours, consider it right and feel the need to express it as different from others, you have already made an idol out of it.
But what is wrong with idols anyway? Why should it be intellectually demeaning to accept that my entire life is revolving around an idol? There was an interesting argument that Lissome put forth in her blog for proving that she is an atheist - in her stern refusal to call anything incomprehensible as God. She says that it is being lazy and intellectually blunt and people hide behind the name of God to cover this up. I personally think that is a gross generalization. There are millions of people around me as I see who are just like the other atheists as per her description, rational logical open and true and everything associated but are real stern believers in God. They are just calling that way of life as God-intended. What is wrong with having a name and living a way of life and still living the same without that name? And also not everyone who is a theist fears God and does behave in a way to be rewarded later in other life. So do they become atheists with this new definition? And what is at the root of our desperation to name everything and then discuss over definitions? I do that all the time too, but I know that is the reason for any difference I feel with the person next to me or a blog next to me - a name and its definition.
That makes me wonder how could Sri Ramakrishna become all-loving and a wonderful soul by talking to the Maa Kali idol in that small, dilapidated temple? How could Ramana Maharshi not differ with millions of people who discussed/argued with him by silently staring at the hill of Arunachala?
I concluded that we as humans need the forms and descriptions but definitions are what push of us away from one another. Probably that is the reason I bumped into reading this paragraph just yesterday in blog when my ind was thinking about this!
"When I approach Thee regarding Thee as having form, Thou standest as a Hill on earth. If with the mind the seeker looks for Thy (essential) form as formless, he is like one who travels the earth to see the (ever-present) ether. To dwell without thought upon Thy (boundless) nature is to lose one's (separate) identity like a doll of sugar when it comes in contact with the ocean (of nectar); and when I come to realize who I am, what else is this identity of mine (but Thee), O Thou Who standest as the towering Aruna Hill. - Sri Arunachala Ashtakam"
Some time back Satan was the flavor of the blog world with Prototype X (http://iamsociety.rediffiland.com/blogs/2008/05/10/Worlds-Greatest-Villain-Paradox.html) , Lissome (http://lissome.rediffiland.com/blogs/2008/05/30/THE-MARRIAGE-OF-HEAVEN-AND-HELL.html) writing brilliantly and thoroughly about the dark side of the world. These posts and some really awesome History Channel Series called "Exorcism: Driving out the Devil" got me thinking as to why India did not have major dark ages of exorcism and mass murdering in the name of Satan. Why the western observers while branding Indians as backward with superstitious, pantheistic, pagan worshipper tags missed the conspicuous bright spot of ancient and medieval India's civilization and religion - the absence of a real Satan in the literature. Yes, I agree that there have been discriminations, humiliations and awful customs that distanced people and communities from one another in the name of caste or in the name of Shaivite/Vaishnavite and so on, but never in the name of the Devil or a Satan.
How could it have been possible? Not that we don't have Ghosts in our folk tales or Rakshasas in our mythology (history? ;-) of Ramayana and Mahabharata. We too had our share of evil people to make the stories more interesting and making our hero's deeds, truly heroic. But never are these characters attributed to human beings to be killed and tortured in the name of exorcism as in the medieval Europe. My take on that is here!
For one, Indian Hinduism never branded the alternate way of life, as evil. It is just an alternate way of life, a different way to reach God or God in a different manifestation. I am no expert but as they say there are three Gunas: Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamasic but without the three the world is just incomplete. While being a insightful scientific premise about the nature of matter (in matter, energy and the inertia), this at the same time was a master stroke at bringing in harmony in the society and I believe is at the root of tolerance by real Hindu definitions. So Aghoras can eat meat, drink alcohol and live next to human corpses but Hindus never deny the sect as not theirs. Same is the case with some of the projections of Hindu gods -Shakti in her angry form, Shiva in his primordial form and so on. So much so that I vividly remember going to the village deity's temple as a kid, afraid initially but grew up to appreciate the need of God/Goddess to manifest in that state as just a terrifying really angry mom! Here Satan is an alter-ego standing on the other side to God.
Secondly, most of the real Indian way of life is not to scoff at someone who is selfish, greedy and so on, with the standard definitions of evil. It is to lovingly understand that everyone evolves at their own pace. While this has led to condescending and "You-will-take-time-to-reach-where-I-did" attitudes thrown around by "learned" and "religious" people, the intent was perfect and the concept accurate with the prerequisite assumption of reincarnation and "Every life is a lesson". So there is no place for a Satan, just a someone who would sooner or later know that hatred and greed are not the way of life.
Thirdly, the Rakshasas who could have been the Satans from our mythologies. But nope, they somehow did not become Satans. A lot of our demons are pretty talented folks with just some greedy, selfish intentions. Each one of them had their boons after a pain-staking effort that they put towards achieving it. Pretty real and practical it seems - Are these not like the perverted nuclear scientists of today's world? I love Ravana for what he is from the story of Ramayana. An impeccable devotee of Lord Shiva, probably a great scientist (Supposedly wrote a book on Gayatri Tantra, explaining the technique of utilizing Gayatri mantra for worldly accomplishment) and led an awesome disciplined life all the way. So much so, that there are temples in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka for this great king. So are other Rakshas kings and their Guru Sukracharya. Putting aside the reality of their existence,these characters who impacted Indian social life for long are no Satans - no good as per the original definition of Satan ;-)
Fourthly, the devils as they exist in Indian folklore. I remember that starry night while all cousins and nephews are sleeping on the terrace on a summer night, to beat the South Indian heat and smoke rising slowly from behind the trees. When all the stories of the neighbors sighting ghosts at the Banyan Tree, the Reddy girl who committed suicide in the village lake, and all the stories rushing together putting that smoke into context and the scare that caused, the screams that were let out and the commotion that ensued! I am sure every Indian kid has a similar ghost story to tell which he heard from their grand- parents or people they know in the village. While exorcism and related beating with neem leaves is common in a lot of Indian village, Ghosts as my grandma told me are souls finding no rest. They are troubled people and they need our prayers for a safe travel forward. Anyway, my assumption is that while a lot of Indians are scared of ghosts, this the basic attitude they carry towards ghosts and other beings of that family ;-) The person is never put to death as an acceptable way of Indian exorcism. While I don't push my ideas on to other people, most of my personal beliefs on this space are formed listening to my really knowledgeable grandma and a few books I picked up as per my interest -For instance, a book called "Astral Plane by C.W.Leadbeater")
My knowledge of the Satan in Islam is limited but I like their description for Jinns (esp. Iblis) as someone - ".....not considered to be a 'fallen' angel, but a jinn who was among the ranks of angels due to his wisdom and piety; in Islamic belief, angels always follow God's commands, but jinns (like humans) have free will, which explains why Satan was able to rebel against God's command of bowing to Adam" (Courtesy Wikipedia)
So from a purely Indian perspective, I think it is unnecessary to debate about Satan for we never acknowledged his existence in the first place. But as a true global citizen, let the debate go on!!
Note: My usage of the word Satan is as per the Christian definitions of medieval Europe - you know, the one with horns, a tail and the real fun guy to imitate on a Halloween!
This piece of writing is inspired by the Talks by Lee Brown and Dan Katchongva on the "Prophecies of Hopi Indians"
Thousands of years and hundreds of civilizations have passed on this planet which itself is billions of yearsold. We have grown on this planet learning to identify the differences - to know a fire from water and a tiger from a deer. Identifying differences made us develop a sense of judgment to know safety from danger and helped us survive.
While our pure animal instinct drove a lot of this judgment, our intellect helped us analyze and make a knowledge base out of it. Intellect built on instinct as a foundation and made us better than our brethren in the animal community. Using different colors, different words and different ex-pressions - we built on our animal instincts to go beyond basic ex-pression of fear, love and hunger. This intellect made us creative in ways that are quite different from a lot of other animals- in our communication and in ex-pression of our thoughts. At the root of our world today as we perceive it is the difference.
While this ability to identify differences is a gift to us as humanity, it is surely nature's gift for it chose to express itself so very differently. Without different colors, we would not be able to walk on our alleys and without different sounds and reverberations, even the bats in the dark can never know where they are. Initially a tool for survival, I believe that over time, this ability to identify differences has grown in to a mental obsession in us humans. This obsession with identifying and judging differences has sharpened human intellect and created various schools of thought, of philosophy and art forms rich with subtlety. Our words and ex-pressions grew manifold to capture this multitude of differences. So a smile is different from a simper, and a simper is different from a smirk. So it is in art forms like painting and singing and dancing and so on. And don't even get me started on the number of different animal, plant and viral species we have identified to date and the differences in how they sleep, what they eat and where they live and when they mate. That is quite an achievement by any standard that we understand the nature deeply and the myriad different ways in which it manifests all around us.
But this obsession with identifying differences has slowly transgressed and we now identify ourselves with those differences. So while it is good to have the knowledge that different persons believe in different religions, we now have started to identify ourselves with those religions. So much so that we discuss and debate which is better - an innate, not expressed, human/animal instinct to know which is safer to our survival. Identification of differences as knowledge (as is the case in animals and plant species classification) is not dangerous but our identification with the differences we have as individual humans is. So we have debates, endless justifications and arguments, tearing apart each other to identifyat what level we are different from one another. The objective is to prove that we are different, and that each individual is unique.
But I think the time has come to move on. We now understand and appreciate that all of us are unique in our own way. Any more time spent on finding and showing that we are different is useless. The time now is to identify our similarities. How I am so much like you and you like that colleague in office who you hate so much! How I go through the same emotional crests and troughs like you do. To accept each other as a part of one human race and we as humans as a part of this large diverse family that inhabits this planet. It is time we work on finding similarities, that one thing that connects all of us on this planet and to identify that similarity. Appreciating differences without identifying with those, I believe, is the new revolution in thought that is destined for this century.
All of us know how historically we have had diverse civilizations communicating sparsely with each other and the knowledge of one another only being through the travelers and tradesmen. How we fought over petty differences and an animal instinct to overpower and to exercise control on neighbors, how we resorted to holocausts and nuclear weapons. But we are being pushed to an edge now by the nature because we have failed to learn our lessons. Like a mother, for cajoling did not work, we are being threatened by nature to work towards identifying similarities - to identify and care how all of us in our own way have messed up the planet.
We are 8 years in to the new millennium and a new century and if someone asks me now what I love this century to be remembered for, I would say "While the previous century or two have been awesome in understanding the differences and myriad forms of universe and their working, this one should be remembered for us waking up to realizing the essential oneness in those forms!"I strongly believe that the long tortuous human history has occurred and worked to prepare us for this moment that we are standing at today.
This is a time where each one of us individually decides the fate of our collective future, probably not just of us but of the generations to come.
I used to pride myself that I am a spiritualist without being religious or ritualistic. But the place of Arunachala seems to draw me towards itself for a strange unknown reason. It is a different place, different language, a different set of people. I don’t understand a lot of the language that is spoken around. But there is an intense pull that drags me to go there again and again! I went to Arunachala again this weekend, fourth time in the last four months. Its not poornima (full moon!) so the crowds are less, almost zero.
I, with another colleague, landed in arunachala and decided to do the Pradakshina (Parikrama!) around the hill in the night. And we were blessed to have the company of an outstanding individual, due to divine providence. A simple person called Mr. Uday Kumar, a tailor on the Girivalam route - near Adi Annamalai temple. He has been doing the pradakshina around Arunachala hill for the last 24 YEARS, EACH AND EVERY SINGLE DAY, WITHOUT FAIL. A WALK OF 14KMS EVERY NIGHT! So much so that he is locally fondly called “The Pradakshina Man!” I mentally fell at his feet when I heard that!
It was an honor doing girivalam with him - a simple man with simple stories about the grace of arunachala. A person who is not in orange robes, he is the not the usual stereotype. When he started speaking, it was impossible for me to understand his Tamil (given that my knowledge of Tamil is from the movies!). But the emotion could not be missed, so the words started sinking in and strangely became comprehensible. A man of such great record, of 24 years and such humble stories of a person who got a job, who got blessed with good health and more. A man of such great compassion, that for 7 days he walked two times around the hill, instead of his regular one time, for someone else’s health - when the man who was ill was just someone whom he met like I did meet him yesterday.
I could have written a travelogue of my trip but that seems useless now. A Bachelor of Arts in Tamil, umarried and with a voice of divinity, it was really a different experience walking around the hill with Mr. Uday Kumar - listening to his pleasantly sudden outbursts of hymns to the hill Arunachala and in the numerous temples around it. For instance, standing in front of the 10000 Shiv Lingas in the Nityananda Swami Ashram at 12′o clock in the night, when all around you is silence and the breeze from the hill, listening to his singing the Shiva Panchakshari Strotram was a shower of bliss on me. His greetings of familiarity to the numerous sadhus on the way, their playful requests for a specific song, to a specific diety - the 6Kms of the 14Kms I walked with him was an experience I would probably cherish for a life time.
In the morning, I did walk up to Virupaksha cave and sat quietly. I went to Ramana Ashram too and did drive around the hill again in my car in the morning. But one snapshot stuck in my mind - Sitting in his 1.5 Rooms shack, that doubles up as a house and tailor shop sipping on a tea made by his neighbor who runs a tea-stall suddenly made me feel like a fool.
I was lost in thought - “Having how much is having too much? And what exactly does a man need to be happy?”
The Pradakshina Man!