(In 2014, I wrote an essay in Malayalam, titled Science of Values and Geo-politics in a green-politics magazine. As a response to that, C.R. Parameshwaran, an intellectual, wrote an article entitled Nowhere to Go. The following essay – A God That Is Human, was my response to his writing. In this essay, I explore the idea of God, and the purposes it serves in our lives)
In CR’s article, there is a persistent pessimism about human life. In his view, human beings are basically selfish and therefore an overall transformation of humanity is not possible. CR’s pessimism is, of course, something many of us share. From a philosophical standpoint, his position leans towards determinism – the view that things are predetermined and hence not really changeable.
However, human life is not governed by determinism alone — it also contains free will. We can make better choices as we deepen our understanding of life. If selfishness belongs to the realm of necessity, wisdom and the choices it opens belong to the realm of freedom.
Nonetheless, I agree with CR on certain things. The world might not embrace all the values and ideals worth embodying. Even if the world takes them up at some point, it could be a passing phase; self-centeredness and narrowness may overcome us sooner or later. A lover of humanity must be realistic enough to accept these possibilities. Otherwise, they could end up in despair.
However, for those who have certitude about the value of life and the care it naturally deserves, such pessimistic views need not deter a life based on greater ideals. To explain why, let us first explore some universal conditions of human existence.
By nature, there is an element of necessity in human life – a body that needs to be fed at least once a day, for example. Things like accidents, diseases, mental struggles, dissonances in relationships and death will not leave our lives despite all the progress we may make in our societal life. Consider that a boy dies in an accident when he is just sixteen. What would his mother’s situation be? Can any material comforts or prevailing social justice console her truly?
Suppose someone manages to live through all these challenges; would anyone remember them after three or four generations? That individual along with their name and form will vanish into an unfathomable nothingness. Or say someone remembers them! Does it hold any significance for the dead? One has no idea of what follows after death or what comes before birth, and is equally uncertain about the significance of life in between. In all, life looks like a non-stop wrestling with nonsense.
If this is the destiny of an individual, the fate of humanity as a whole is not different.
It is quite reasonable to assume that we as a species would go extinct at some point in time, at least with the end of the Sun as we know it. Along with us, everything that we cherish and despise will perish.
If this is our final destiny, what is the relevance of all the values we hold dear? What is the point of someone being devout to certain ideals? Aren’t all these values mere social conventions, finally? In fact, dedicating one’s life to selfish hedonism makes a lot more sense. If we think about it, how logical is Capitalism founded on private interest.
If that’s all there is to human life — a predestined nothingness — can there be a greater absurdity or tragedy?
It is from these unfathomable depths of fate and necessity that wisdom elevates us to boundless Freedom. To understand how, we need to examine the idea of God or Goddess that has been with humanity since we started asking questions.
What is God?
God emerges when we give a human form to what can be philosophically called an all-inclusive principle. Yet, despite this humanness, God is completely free from all human necessities – it is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent; the one without a beginning or end. It also carries the promise of justice that transcends all the struggles in human life.
Still, what is the meaning of that humanness of God?
It reveals the possibility of a human being to unshackle oneself from all the limiting aspects of life and to embody a boundless perfection. The humanness also implies that such a universal value is resonant to the human will. Viewed in this way, practices like prayer and meditation are our ways or methods to attune and merge with such an absolute value. Wisdom maxims like I am the Absolute (Aham Brahmasmi) or I am the Way, the Truth and Life1 proclaimed by humans throughout history are testimonies to this possibility. Take out this principle, all the meaning of life would disappear, and we would end up in the absurdity of the mundane. That is, this value is the foundation of all other values in life; without it, everything will become incidental.
As the source of all that is, God signifies the oneness of everything. Ideas like good, not good and better are also dependent on this first principle – that which helps us to realize oneness is good, otherwise, it is not. Briefly, the vision of an absolute value is as necessary as food in human life. That is why, in spite of all the efforts to get rid of God, it continues to be with us implicitly or otherwise.
However, if we conceive this value dualistically, as something that is separate from us, things will again turn absurd.
Consider those ‘believers’ who massacre ‘unbelievers’ in the name of the most merciful God, or those who staunchly believe in Karma, so that they will not move a finger to help someone in distress since that distress is God’s will. As these situations exemplify, God has been a tool for violence of all sorts. However, the solution is not to dismiss it with some half-baked, ideological arguments, but to understand God non-dually — as an approach to Self-realization. We also need to understand the universal values and concerns inherent in all religions while keeping aside the historical and geographical specificities of them. As we comprehend such values principally and axiomatically, the divisiveness among religions can wither away. God, the core of all religions, could then reveal the oneness of humanity irrespective of our contextual differences.
People differ in their capability to understand this absolute value principally. Or it is easier for us to identify with it, when it is in human form. The only solution to the limitations of conceiving the Absolute dualistically is to keep a non-dual philosophy alive and thriving for those who intend to dive deeper.
CR writes that those who fight for values either die in that battle or kill themselves (out of desperation), or by acting against capitalism, eventually get co-opted by the same. My only contention is that he appears over-zealous in his convictions.
A human being indeed overcomes the duality of I and the other proportionate to the depth of their devotion to that all-inclusive Value. As they embrace oneness, they experience a vast, liberative, intimacy. That is why seers call God, love. And as that love matures, one realizes that the kingdom of God is not an otherworldly situation or an event in the future, but a reality that is here and now2.
It does not mean that once we realize all these, we will not get tired or sick anymore; in all likelihood we will. However, we would know them as bodily necessities and hence incidental. We would know that as there are necessities that cannot be wished away, there is a Freedom that cannot be touched by any of these. It also implies that it is not in the heights of transient material comforts and pleasures that we are going to find contentment but in wisdom alone. Contrarily, selfishness is an antithesis to all these possibilities of wisdom.
Since this essay opened with the question of human selfishness, it is worth examining the concept more carefully. An individual body has an exclusive time-space. That is, a body occupies a time-space that cannot be occupied by another body at the same time. The counterpart of this exclusive body (a-sat) is the all-inclusive Existence (sat). On reflection, one can notice that the human mind naturally oscillates between these unique and universal aspects of existence. So, at one moment the mind moves to exclusivity and otherness —towards other unique bodies — and the next moment it turns to inclusivity and oneness. The exclusive sense of body is important in the context of self-preservation; when one suffers from stomach pain, someone else taking medicine will not do. The inclusivity does not necessarily mean a body-dissociated state either. The self, in fact, by anchoring in the unique body connects to the universal, and together they hold the whole range of existence. A true education helps us to comprehend the unique and the universal, non-dually — to understand that As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. The wisdom that results from such a unitive understanding gives our lives an unambiguous sense of direction.
Seen in this light, selfishness is a narrow, insecure state of self, characterized by alienation from fellow beings. Those who idealize that state and treat others accordingly are the inhabitants of a diminishing world. This self-inflicted regression itself is the punishment for them, not necessarily anything that happens in an afterlife, as religions tend to suggest. Likewise, an honest life, even such a single moment, is never in vain. Whenever that happens, we are in touch with something timeless. The body necessitates action; let our actions be aligned with reality — our oneness. We don’t have to bother about results; they inevitably follow. Nor do we have to wait for anyone else to join; truth is not dependent on the number of people who approve or reject it.
We all seek happiness that lasts, and we all are community beings by nature. This means we can influence each other in liberating or limiting ways. That calls us to contemplate normative values that can help us to be mutually supportive. If we can have an educative process and a culture rooted in such values, it would empower the whole humanity without negating the unique characteristics of various cultures.
Despite all these explanations, what might be the purpose of this great, terrifying life? People have tried to explain life as the desire of the Universe to know itself. The human longing for meaning might be a reflection of that desire. Perhaps the final Self-realization justifies all these circuses! What we can say for sure is that when we talk about God, we are indeed talking about ourselves3.
- New Testament – John 14:6
↩︎ - The disciples asked Jesus, When will the kingdom come? Jesus said: It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it. – Gospel of Thomas, Verse – 113.
↩︎ - This writer is aware of the possibility of many questions and concerns this essay may raise. A detailed look at all that would require a thorough exploration of the Science of the Self (Atma-vidya), which falls outside the scope of this essay3. Those who would like to explore more may refer: One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction by Narayana Guru- Translation and commentary by Nataraja Guru, Pub:Narayana Gurukulam, Varkala. ↩︎
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