Skip to main content

Religion and God




God as defined on Dictionary.com
the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.

Religion as defined on Dictionary.com
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Religion is but a means to reach an end not the end in itself. The end is God. Religion is nothing but a hypothesis, i.e. a proposed explanation to the phenomenon which has not yet been otherwise experimentally proved. It binds you within boundaries, within rules, within moral code of conduct.

In blindly following the religion of one's birth, we lose the power inherent within to think for ourselves. We lose the power to reason, to think, and most importantly the power to disagree. We tend not to question one's religion and it's principles but accept it in the form it exists. If Lord Buddha thought the same way, he would never have got the enlightenment.

The main aim of any religion is to teach you to respect mankind. In the words of Swami Vivekanand, if you can not respect your brother man, the manifested God; how can you worship the unmanifested God?. He also explained that various religions are like different vessels containing water. God is like the water that takes a different shape in each of these vessels.

Religion only shapes an entity which is same through all of them. Religion provides us a radii in this circle of life on which if we tread we reach the centre where the Lord resides. God is there at the centre of all religions, and all of us are on our way to the same destination only via different routes. All those fanatics who think they follow there religion in its true form and find themselves at loggerheads with other religion, have actually gone off the tangent of this circle.

God is not Religion and Religion is not God. Just as the journey is not the destination and the destination is not the journey. The journey has a route , has directions which will eventually lead you to your destination. It is but only a set of beliefs.

If you have read all the holy books of your religion and practised all its rituals but your heart is not pure, not open to humanity; it's all in vain. God is not any external entity, you yourself are your God and you are the Prophet that bears the teachings of the God. The learning has to come from within.

"If you are not a Prophet, there never has been anything true of God. If you are not God, there never was any God and never will be." ~ Swami Vivekanand

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The God Delusion

People all over the world create delusions around themselves, a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidences. In India alone we have 33 crore Gods to choose from, for the 100 crore population; a sort of personalised delusion for everyone. In addition to that there are crores of God men. The social structure is so formed that it makes us oblivious to the delusion. We continously doubt our own abilities, and associate results to the blessings of some higher beings. The degraded self-esteem is what pushes you deeper into the delusion. To quote Douglas Adams - "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" The belief that the world was created by some God and that everything in this world is His creation is fundamentally flawed. If he created everything than who created Him. Putting the creation of everything under the ambit of one entity was to simplify the exp...

The Goa Travelogue : Trip of a Lifetime

Our group of friends shifted hostels in the second year and took rooms close to each other and the friendship grew stronger from there with each passing day. Thus was born x0x-ers (3, 4 – 0 – 1, 3) i.e. rooms 301,303,401 and 403. We spent countless hours planning trips, parties, discovering music and other random shit. Goa is a destination every college group plans to visit during their college days. This was one trip we just had to make. After hundreds of hours spent on planning the trip, many last minute changes and one person pulling out we finally managed to make the trip with a bunch of our European friends joining us there for what would be the most memorable trip of my life. I as a writer am incapable of putting in words the sheer fun we had on this trip so most of you would not realise how beautiful some of the moments were. Day 1 I arrived before everyone else travelling from Mumbai. Riding 30 km on a scooter solo from Madgaon to Calungute was a sign o...

He who knows how to be Poor knows Everything

In today's materialistic world, being poor is the worst thing that can happen to you. Being educated, being moralistic and being principled amount to almost nothing if you are poor. There are no opportunities to come out of that quagmire. Someone who has been through this and has somehow overcome the mountain of difficulties, would possess incredible amounts of determination, will and belief in his ability. Such talent is rare but often results in producing the greats. Being poor teaches you time management, how to make the most of your time to survive. It teaches you adaptability, how to adjust to the extremes of living conditions. It pushes you to extend your boundries and grow farther. It makes you emotionally and mentally strong. Someone who has been facing defeat after defeat but still gets up everytime to face adds so many facets to his personality. You learn only from your mistakes. If you have never faced defeat, it would be hard to survive. To relate to my own l...