Who is your God?

​Some days ago in the night around 11 my father’s phone rang. A patient he had operated in the day had gone serious. My father told us this and said that he had to go see the patient. He was too tired so I went along with him and took the steering wheel. Our house is about 15 kms from the hospital so it took us sometime to reach. It was cold so my father ordered me to come along with him. We parked the car and went inside. The family of the patient was already too stressed as I could see. My father was calm and asked them not to worry. His junior came upto him running and they started talking something I had no idea about. I took a seat in the hallway. There was silence there except the occasional phone call that the family was receiving. People were sleeping on the floor, some were sitting on the chairs talking maybe about themselves or maybe the people that they had in mind. There were people who brought cups of tea for the family that was present there, some even shared a laughter on a newspaper clipping, while some indulged themselves in heavy doses of self proclaimed nationalism. I was fast falling asleep as I had a sumptuous dinner and the tiredness of the day was getting to me. I closed my eyes and slept only to be woken up by my phone. My mother had called me to inquire what had happened. I slept for two straight hours! I told her that my father was still in the operation theatre. Time passed, slowly for the family of the patient. After six hours he came out. The family was curious about the condition of their beloved. They encircled him and were curiously listening to him. 

“He will be okay.” he said and all of them had a smile on their faces. One very young man almost the same age as me came upto him and said, “Sir, if you were not here, I would have lost my father. You are our God.” he came and touched my father’s feet. The whole family followed suit. He didn’t like and tried to resist but he was overshadowed by their love. 

“He will wake up in the noon. Take care of him. And I am just a normal being. I just did my job. ” he said and asked for permission to leave. He came upto me and said,”  Sorry Son you had to wait because of me.” “No problem Papa. I had my sleep.” I said. 

We went to the car while he talked to his juniors and briefed them about what had to be done. I started driving and he slept on the seat next to me. We reached home, it was the crack of dawn. He went in his room and slept. I went to my room and immediately dozed off. I woke up after sometime to check on him. He was already at his work back at the hospital. 

This whole incident did something to me. 

God, the mighty creator of the world. The one force we all look upon to guide the drowning ship of our lives to paradise,  The one we wish things to become reality, the one we adore, the one we respect, the one we fear. Is God a being, a force or something else? 

Life began on earth some 3.8 billion years ago. It was rather simple, single celled organisms that had first made earth their habitat. More complex forms of life followed to the present, now forms of life we see all around. At the start of human life, it was mainly dedicated to gathering and hunting for food. Their day would start with the Sun and would end with the Sun. Survival was the sole purpose of their lives. The invention of fire brought a new horizon to the then humans, who before fire were living just like their other animals counterparts. Eating raw. Fire allowed them to cook and their play with food began. Fire also allowed them to be awake in the night as now they had their own Portable Sun. Done with the daily agenda of the day(in this case hunting, gathering, eating) they would have sat and tried to have a conversation (although understanding their language would be very difficult, I shall try to, with improvisations on their language. 😉 ). 

Man 1– hoo hahaa jrr hohoho heee ha. 
(bro, I think we need to clear the cave of the  big rocks) 
Man 2– okokok wiii ka napa  kaaaa hoo.
(It takes a lot of time. And my wife wanted me to get her a new leopard  hide. It’s new fashion.) 
Man 1– eeeee vaaa nnaa. 
(oh bro I understand. I’ll think of something. Don’t get eaten up bro.) 

Those big blocks of stones couldn’t have been moved if not for the invention of wheel. With wheel, men, material, ideas and ideologies traveled to far off places and humans would have felt that they want to do something other than just gathering, hunting and eating. There would have been times when they would fear something. The roary weather, lighting or days when they couldn’t find food, faced an issue with health or lost someone they adored. That’s when they would have started to believe in something that existed not among them -a power that would help them when they sought out to it. Something undefined, supernatural. They would have prayed to it and the weather would have cleared, naturally or they might have found a dead animal to eat or a simple vomit would have cured them. They would have attributed this to some extraordinary power as they would have thought it responded to their grievances. 

A saying from a mouth reaches the other ear with the many additions from every ear it enters. Just the way the concept of God would have come into existence. God is the Creator, Destroyer of the world. He is omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, universal and absolute. He created man in his image. God is this universe. He has created this world. Everyone ends up in God. He punishes you for your sins. He will cast you to Hell if you don’t respect his disciples. He  watches over you. God is ultimate. God is true.

Where is God? More importantly what is God? 

Experiments of man with the God brought up the many traditions we see around. The growth of all ideas, the spectacular structures we see around, the rich heritage, the scrolls, the books, art and what not. Even birth of  Science can be attributed to the concept of God. God is the universe. The process of Thesis and Antithesis brought many changes and many developments to the now grown tree of knowledge which once was an unplanted seed. 

Philosophers of all times and ages have tried defining God. But what I think, God is subjective. He or she or maybe it,  varies from person to person, place to place, time to time. 

Human tendency is such that we tend to put the blame of our problems or sticky situations to sometimes destiny or maybe sometimes the God. We try finding a source of happiness, an approval to our actions by attributing those actions as the will of someone supreme, God. Think this. How many times have you thanked the God for a wonderful day or a wonderful meal that’s on your plate. How many times have you asked him to absolve you from your sins, your sickness. 

For the people who don’t believe in God, this concept is really termed as amusing. As how can people trust someone or something they can’t even see or perceive. They believe in the moment, pleasure although not only physical pleasure but a more happiness causing one,  being their only motive. People like Carvaka who dared to think this in the 6th century were looked down upon and were mocked, even prosecuted by the self proclaimed disciples of God. 

If God had existed and if he was the one just and loving, why would he want something he had created to perish. If he wanted them to let them live on his conditions, why would he had given each of us an independent mind, different body structures, capabilites and talents. Don’t you think world would be mundane place with all the similarities? 

Sometimes in my home, when my mother recites a hymn or reads to me a scripture considered auspicious, I just listen, to admire the  amount of work the writer had put in. My parents know that when they would ask me to bow down in front of the statues in temples, I may refuse because they know I am little too logical. But I don’t revolt because as I did say already. Concept of God is purely subjective. I do that just to please them. I would be highly dishonest if I say that I am not frightened or sometimes I am not down, needing a ray of hope. Those are the times I seek some force to calm my inner self. Music, writing, my pen is a big relief in times such as these. But the best medicine is the image of my parents and my brother that just creates an explosion in my mind. A very happy explosion that just casts away all the darkness.

My conversations with God are an extended version of my conversations with myself for I believe if God was to exist, he would have existed in every atom of the universe. When I am down, I curse myself to be in that situation for that much time. I believe in the present. Past as an instrument to mock someone would be wasting the precious moment. Nobody knows what conditions lead to something or the other and above all who are we to judge a person by their past. If past had to be used as an argument, Ravan, the highly intelligent, the wise and the mighty wouldn’t have gathered a more maligned image than the one he has in Ramayan. 

Whenever joy, my still to grow Labrador sleeps, I see his legs moving, sometimes he barks at objects in his sleep. What would he dream of? Who would his God be? The answer would become very clear the next day when he in the morning seeing my mother move, he jumps on her and wakes her up. His universe is our home. His God is mortal. 

My faith in God dwindled when I saw my grandmother dying infront of me. She was the strongest woman I had seen. Medical science had lost hope. To God I turned. And then she went away from me. 

We all are mortals. We will turn to soil someday. Why waste time in believing in something that doesn’t exist? That’s what I thought. 

But then God is purely subjective. I may sound as an atheist. Not believing in the will of God and the theory of karma or anything else. But I seek positive vibes which everything or anything or any person gives out. I find solace in the peaceful surroundings of a temple that is perfect for meditation, to have a conversation with yourself, to listen to yourself. I am fond of these places because of the energy they give out. People say that karma exists and that you will reap what you sow. But I believe why should one think of things that they have already done. Nothing can be done about it. The only thing that matters is how you act in the present which definitely should be done to avoid the mistakes done earlier.  Do good not to please anyone but to come home after a long day of work and be able to look in the mirror. The world doesn’t care what have you done or what will you do. They all have problems of their own. But the only person that matters the most is the one person in the mirror. Do good things so that you don’t get to say, I could have done that thing or I could have been an agent of change.

Be the change you want to see in the world. 

Now the question this article asks. Who is your God?

My answer is quite simple. I don’t think except my parents and my brother anyone or any God  can give anything more. So for me, every day to whom I come back home to, they are my God. And that’s the religion I will always follow. 

If you are ready to answer, go ahead. Ask yourself. 

Who is your God? 

For you!