Understanding god

Don't be scared by the title; every one of us is trying to find the god; it's just that we have not been able to formalize what we are looking for in our minds. Let me take you back on my journey of this GOD concept. I was born in a Hindu family, and like everyone else around me, I also understood god as a heavenly entity who is supposed to be respected and listened to. I surely enjoyed all the festivals associated with different gods of Hinduism, but as I grew older and read a little science, the image and understanding of god started to fall apart. Was I becoming too smart to see through society's fake narrative about god? All those customs and rituals stopped making sense to me. I even stopped sitting in the Diwali pooja and all other festivals. I stopped going to the temples as I realized that an idle would not help me pass the exam or anything else. So what's the point of even visiting a temple. As I grew older, even the fun I had with the activities associated with the different festivals started to fade away. No longer did I busted firecrackers or played Holi. If I was supposed to become the true charvaka or atheist, I should have given up everything associated with the god, be it the temple, festival, or any other activity with god in it. 

I read a little more science, and my belief in science became even stronger, rejecting the idea of god even more vehemently. Earlier, my reason for rejecting god was that an idle couldn't help me pass the exam, but now it reached even more deeper levels. I started understanding how the universe works and read about the Big Bang theory, some astrophysics, the theory of relativity, and quantum physics. Not that I understood these complex subjects in great detail, but even with my limited understanding, the idea of god started to seem farther and farther. This continued for a bit, and after a while, I was fully on the bandwagon of atheism. And I believe most of you have had a similar journey till now. None of you think any more about god and religion. You carry on with your life as if god is inconsequential. 

But little did I knew how my life would take a complete 180-degree turnaround. During my bachelor's, we were introduced to philosophy by Dr. Mamta Anand; her class quickly became my favorite subject. As we delved deeper into different philosophies, my mind started expanding for new possibilities. Everything was smooth sailing until we read a few excerpts from Upanishads. After getting introduced to Upanishads, nothing remained the same. I went on a journey to read Upanishads and other scriptures before rejecting them. I thought to myself, let me give it a read and have a solid reason to give up religion and god rather than god not being able to help me pass the exam. After the initial spark from my professor, I started looking for new sources to understand this. I will never forget that wonderful night when I first stumbled across a lecture on Mandukya Upanishad by Swami Sarvapriyananda. Swamiji belongs to the order of Swami Vivekananda and has a very good knowledge of modern science and Vedanta. Before that eventful night, never had I ever been challenged so deeply by any idea. That lecture changed everything, since then I don't even know how many lectures I have seen, or how many hours I have spent understanding and reading the religious scriptures. I've not read anything in full detail, but since then, I've explored Buddhism, Islam, Yoga, Christianity, and god knows how many other philosophies. I've spent around 5,000 hours thinking, reading, and watching content on God. My life has transformed in such a way that now I see most things in my life through the lens of divinity. 

Now some of you might be thinking that I might have started going to the temple, started praying or other common things associated with the religion. But sorry to disappoint you, I still don't do any of these. For me, god is something else; it's not some heavenly entity anymore, but rather an idea that I live with. It has become part of my day-to-day life.

Enough with my personal story; let's set up the context for what I mean by saying the word, God. Imagine a scenario: you are on a ship on the day when Pearl Harbour was attacked by the Japanese. You see a torpedo approaching you, making a big hole in your ship, another dive bomber dropping bombs from the top. All you see is fire, your friends being burnt alive, jumping in the water to save their lives. Your ship is sinking, and your ears are bleeding because of all the noise from the bombs, but you know from your past experience that 50% of the people will survive this attack. Do you know what's the most natural instinct at that moment, Hope? Hope to live, see your family again, play with your child again, and breathe the fresh air. And this hope is what I call God. If you are truly rational, you shouldn't hope because hoping will not change the outcome, but you will still do because we are meant to follow what's divine. This automatic response of hoping and believing in something bigger than yourself is god.

I know you are still not fully convinced; let me bring in another interesting personality. Carl Jung says that everyone has a hierarchy of values, and we operate in the world using these values. These values are our guiding lights; we don't randomly go and hit people or do anything stupid. Everyone may have a different set of values, but everyone has a hierarchy of values. This set of values is what determines how you act and behave, and whatever this value might be, it's God for you because, ultimately, it is guiding your life. So, in short, Jung defines god as a set of values that guide our life. 

Let me add more nuance to this argument: how do you differentiate between right and wrong. We have a projected future self in our minds that is better than our current self, smarter than our current self, and less prone to misery than our current self. As all of us are evolving towards the future self, to make moral decisions in our present, we draw a line from our current self to our future projected self, and we operate in such a way that we reach that future self in the best possible way. Somehow, our own projected seld guides us to make decisions in our present. And once again, that future self, which in reality doesn't exist, is still somehow guiding us and thus becoming our god.

As Rig Veda says, God is not some heavenly being, "Gyanam, satyam, anatmam brahman". It says that every form of knowledge, every form of truth or reality (real or imagined reality), and infinity of time and space is god. Note that it doesn't say that god created this, but this itself is a god; god can't be a being because a being is limited in one way or another. And if it is limited in ways, it can't be god. The only thing that can expand to everything is an idea, not a physical entity. God is consciousness or cosmic awareness that is present in the entire universe. These are the kinds of ideas you will find in Upanishads. If any of you ever try to read these great books, you will realize that there is nothing more complex than these scriptures.

But I'm positive you are still unconvinced; you want more arguments and logic. Upanishads give a very good view of god in its ultimate form of Nirakar Brahman through the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. But it's too complex for most of us; let's try to understand it through some simple means.

Have you ever wondered why you have subjective experience? You can achieve all of the tasks without any subjectivity? This is called "The Hard Problem of Consciousness", a term coined by NYU professor David Chalmers. We understand everything through subjectivity, not by looking into objective reality. Now, if all we feel and understand is through subjectivity, and if our subjectivity is guided by ideas that might be given in a book or being imparted to us by our projected future self, that means those ideas automatically become god for us as they completely control us. Never underestimate the importance of an idea. You love your partner; is just an idea, not an objective reality. You create an image of your partner that is often free from flaws, and you fall in love with that image rather than the actual person; that's why people often can't see the red flags until they are cheated once. Being human is an idea; all things that are not animalistic in our nature are just ideas. And in all of those ideas, the ideas with the highest priority are your god.

Ideas transform our lives; ideas push us to do things that put us in a higher state of being, which we call being closer to god. When you go through certain experiences where you feel bliss, where you feel kind, compassionate, loving, and caring, that's when you basically reach closer to god. All of these positive things are attributed to god because that's what makes you happy and peaceful; anything that will put you in such a state will start with an idea only. It's not that god can only be associated with positive things. But, if you are mentally strong and can understand the concept of suffering, you can associate god even with misery. You will start seeing misery as a way to reach a higher state of mind. And more often than not, the misery brings us closer to god. Most of us are not reaching these higher states because life is too comfortable, making us unable to act morally and ultimately realize god. None of us can automatically switch our emotional states; rather, we play with some ideas, act on those, and then finally reach the happy, joyous state. I recently wrote a quote, "What can you offer to the gods, except your ego. Giving up your ego is the only way to reach a higher state of experience.", Go and read any scripture; you will find this idea prevalent everywhere. 

I hope a few things have started making sense, but not fully yet. Let me give a few more tries to explain this concept. For the argument's sake, let's consider that there is no god. There is no value system; ask yourself, how would your life turn out if you acted in the most immoral way? Whatever you consider immoral, you will lose all your friendships, family, and status and, at last, will just create unrest in society. Now ask yourself, what is better, to believe that there is a god, idea, or set of values that bring order to our lives or just act randomly in the world. There is a beautiful quote by JP on this "I don't know whether god exists or not, but I would like to believe it exists so that I can have order in my life". 

Just try to remember the best moments of your life; when you were experiencing those, I'm positive that you were operating with compassion and kindness, free from jealousy, greed, and all the negativity. What was that, if not the death of your ego at that moment? and as stated above, what can we offer to gods other than our ego? That means we must relinquish our ego to feel the best emotional state. And the act of giving up the ego in itself is the act of reaching out to god. This act of giving up our ego makes god as real as us, as it is helping us reach a more blissful state. Imagine you just cleared the IIT exam, landed a job at Google, or just married the love of your life; whatever it is, you will not be irritated that easily because your ego is calm right now, and if that's the case, then you are automatically walking the path to the gods.

Believe me, once you start attempting to realize god, you will come across experiences and emotional states you have never felt. I'll tell you about one such mental state: runner's high. After an intense exercise session, your body releases endorphins, making you euphoric. When this happened to me for the first time, I broke into tears. I was already running for over an hour before hitting the runner's high, and I had this amazing feeling I had never had before. I felt bliss despite all the pain, and I was weeping like a child; at that moment, I felt that I was divine and everything around me was divine. Now, if all of us are moving towards our future-projected self, then doing things that bring us closer to that better-projected self is what, if not a peek into divinity. People who take their work seriously or care deeply about anything consider all of those things as pure and divine, again an idea associated with divinity. 

Finally, do not forget that we are social beings, and we all have several customs in our lives, and most of these customs come from religious books only. Showing gratitude or the idea of marriage and love, all of them mostly originates from religious books. Before you completely reject god and religion, go and have a read; there is nothing more profound than these books. I found my path and hope you find yours. 

Please message me if anyone wants to get even more nuance on the idea of god. Let's learn from each other.

Om, peace.