I was born and raised in a conservative Hindu family; my parents being ardent followers of a renowned religious preacher. I was schooled in a Missionary School and then thrown into a cosmopolitan environment at one of the biggest metro of the country. During this span of my life my concept of “me” has changed dramatically. The following paragraphs follow a line of thought that I have developed till now and seem most appropriate to me at this instant and it won’t be a big wonder if it changes tomorrow.
The answer to the question “Who am I?” is answered differently by different religions. Therefore in order to believe which answer is correct we must start with which religion we believe is correct. Thus it is natural to start this discussion with religion. The world as of whole is governed by two set of norms: Political and Social. Political Norms are the set of rules and regulations that a particular state and its citizens are supposed to follow. These are dictated by Constitution and enforced by judiciary. Social Norms are another set of rules and regulations that is generally dictated by scriptures (Gita, Quran etc) and is enforced by Society.
If we imagine different religions as different kingdoms from the medieval history a lot of things start to make sense. The kingdoms have God as a king, the preachers as generals and the followers as common footmen. The soldiers have never seen the king but they have endless faith in him. Only the generals seem to know and hear from the king and pass down his orders to the soldiers. As a child I often used to wonder why things like religious riots, religious conversion does exist. An act of conversion is like invasion and various techniques are applied for attack and defence of a religious stronghold. Each kingdom thinks that by invading foreign lands they would be able to bring those people under the jurisdiction of their holy (superior) king and those people would be uplifted. Also it would increase their army base as well. People who think that their king is no good and that another one will provide them food and shelter often change their loyalties.
During the course of history, numerous religions have been born; some have survived, some have merged with others, some are on the verge of breakdown and some have been completely annihilated. Now we come upon a natural question: which one is real one; the true king... who is the real God that we are supposed to follow?
Now imagine a God. What qualities do you expect in a God? The first is undying or immortal : God cannot die. Hence our God should be same as the God of the first caveman. It should have existed before the first living form took shape. So anything that is supposed to have a birth date cannot be God. An obvious inference is that it is something that existed before anything. So can something come from nothing? Second is it should be same for all humans: black or white, Indian or American, Muslim or Christian. I would like to extend this to animals and aliens (if they possibly exist). A famous saying goes that God has made human in his own image. I would state other way round that human has made his God in his own image. Had the evolution path gone hay ward and had cows taken our place as the prime living being, I am quite certain that Gods would have had figure of a cow. So consistency in space and time constitute the relevant and important properties of God.
So what is it that satisfies these two criterions? Nature. The tiniest bit of earth that we see was here before everything else in some form or the other. They were here before the Big Bang and would be here after the Big Contraption; maybe in different form and states. Thus Nature is God. The land, the water, the air all these are parts of God. But material alone is insufficient to create life. Just as combining a heart, a brain and other organs over a skeleton and wrapping it up in flesh won’t create a living being. There is a “force”, an order, a soul that drives a living being. Similarly there must be some force driving these changes as well. That force though invisible is, has been and will be there in all time and space. Let us call that force “Spirit”.
Thus God has two parts: God the Body: Nature and God the Spirit. Just like us... a body and a soul. Thus there is a piece of God in everything in entire existence and together they form God. Thus we are part of God and he is part of us.
The corner stone of any religion is respecting your God. So what does my faith say? How do I respect my God? My God does not require sacrifice. He demands respect for both his body as well as his spirit. Since we can sense the spirit though our normal five senses, we ought to respect God’s body: the Nature. A crime against Nature is a crime against God. Every untreated sewage drain is like injecting our God with syringe of poison. Every piece of plastic is a germ on Gods body. So till when can we expect we can continue to harm our Gods body? We are part of it and will perish with it as well.
P.S. With the before said statements about religion, reader must not interpret that there is no need of religion. A society without religion is like a state without laws. But like laws they need to religion needs to evolve and address present problems.
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