(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-scholar, 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 general. He thinks that human nature is dominated by instinctive selfishness and therefore an overhaul transformation of humanity is impossible. CR’s belief is something many of us share. Philosophically viewed, his position leans towards determinism – the view that things are predetermined and hence not really changeable.
However, human life is not just about determinism or fate; it also contains free will. If selfishness is something that comes in the realm of fate, wisdom and the choices it provides are representative of free will.
Nonetheless, I agree with CR on certain things. The world might not embrace all the values and ideals worthy of embodying. Even if at some point the world takes them up, it could be just a passing phase; self-centeredness and narrowness may overcome us sooner or later. A lover of humanity must be realistic enough to accept and face such possibilities. Otherwise, they could end up with severe depression.
However, for those who have certitude about the innate value of life and the care it naturally deserves, none of those pessimistic views need to be a reason to avoid a life based on greater ideals. To explain why, let us first explore some of the universal conditions and experiences of human life irrespective of time and space.
By nature, there is an element of necessity in human life. For example, a body that needs to be fed at least once in a day. Things like accidents, diseases, mental struggles, dissonances in relationships and death, will not leave our lives in spite of all the progresses we may make in our societal life. Consider that a boy dies in an accident when he is just 16. What would his mother’s situation be? Can any material comforts, or social justice prevailing, 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, form and everything else, will disappear into an unfathomable nothingness. Or say, someone remembers them! Does it hold any significance to the dead? One is clueless about one’s life both before birth and after death. One is equally oblivious to the real significance of life in between. In all, we got a life to live that looks like a non-stop wrestling match with nonsense.
If this is the destiny of an individual, the fate of humanity as a whole is not different either.
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 detest 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 ideals mere social conventions, finally? In fact, dedicating one’s life to selfish hedonism makes much more sense. Frankly, how logical is capitalism!
If that’s all to a human life, that is, a predestined nothingness, can there be a greater tragedy or absurdity?
It is from this unfathomable depths of fate and necessity, wisdom elevates us to boundless Freedom. To know how, we need to examine the general characteristics of the idea of God or Goddess, that have been with humanity from time immemorial.
What is God?
We get God when we add a drop of humanness to what can be philosophically called an all-inclusive principle. However, in spite of their humanness, God is completely free from all human necessities. Ze is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent; the one without a beginning or end. Ze also represents the final justice that compensates for all the struggles in a human life.
Still, what could be the meaning of the humanness of God?
It reveals the possibility of a human being to unshackle themselves from all the limiting aspects of life and to embody a perfection that knows no bounds. The humanness also implies the responsive nature of that universal value to the human will. Viewed thus, practices like prayer and meditation are our ways to attune and merge with such an absolute value. The wisdom maxims like I am the Absolute (Aham Brahmasmi) or I am the Way, the Truth and Life1 which are proclaimed by human beings across time-space are testimonies to this possibility. Take out this principle, all the meaning of life would vanish. We would end up in the absurdity of the mundane.
In other words, this value is the foundation of all other values in life. If it is deducted, all values will become incidental. By being the source of everything thus, it also signifies the oneness of everything. The 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. In short, the vision of an absolute value is as necessary as food in human life. That is why, in spite of all our 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 exists outside of us, things will again turn absurd.
Consider those ‘believers’ who massacre ‘unbelievers’ in the name of the most merciful God, or those who staunchly believes in Karma, and hence will not move a finger to help someone in distress since it 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 and as an approach to Self-realization. We need to understand the universal concerns and values inherent to all religions, while keeping aside the historical and geographical aspects of them. We need to understand it principally as well as axiomatically and thus the differences and divisiveness among religions can wither away. God, the goal of all religions, could then be something that reveals the oneness of humanity, irrespective of 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. All I want to say is that he seems to get too excited about 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 the vastness and sweetness of a liberative intimacy (at least unconsciously). That is why many seers call love, God. As such a love matures, one realizes that the kingdom of God is not something that happens 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 any more; we most probably 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 is untouchable by any of these. That is also to say that, it is not in the heights of transient material pleasures that we are going to find our liberation but in wisdom alone.
On the other hand, selfishness is an antithesis to all these possibilities of wisdom. If explained, the matter, by definition, has its exclusive time-space; a matter occupies a time-space that cannot be occupied by another matter at the same occasion.
Human mind is an amalgam of such an exclusive matter (a-sat) as well as of an all-inclusive Existence (sat). That is why the mind at times contracts to the constraints of exclusivity and at other times touches the vastness of the infinite and the eternal. Or, at one moment, being exclusive and alienating everything, and in the next moment being inclusive and embracing everything. Matter has a tendency to continue in its habitual patterns3. Therefore, a true educative process must be capable of liberating us from such contractive patterns while helping us to comprehend the existence and essence non-dually.
The discretion that results from such a unitive understanding, gives us an unparalleled sense of direction to life, irrespective of the circumstances. And whoever goes against such an inclusive value and treats their fellow beings as other, because of their gender, religion or wealth, are bound to inhabit a limiting world. This (self-inflicted) regression itself is the punishment for them; it is not necessarily something that happens in the afterlife, as religions suggest.
On the other hand, an honest life, even such a single moment, is not in vain. Similarly, valuations that label someone as a Buddha or a commoner are merely societal; all that matters is whether one lives in harmony with oneness and acts accordingly towards fellow beings4. Body necessitates us to act; let’s act in reference to our oneness. We don’t have to bother about results; there are results. Individuals, as their contemplation matures, become increasingly intimate with truth. Their lives and sharings will inspire their fellow beings and thus humanity will not go astray. Truth will liberate us is an infallible law, and that the truth of that law is not dependent on the number of people who approve or reject it.
We all seek happiness that lasts. In that situation called life, we all can affect each other in a liberative or limiting way. That is why we need to contemplate certain normative values that can help us to orient ourselves in a mutually supportive way. If we can have an educative process and a culture based on such values, it would empower individuals to overcome all sorts of personal hurdles.
Still, in spite of all such explanations, what might be the purpose of this great, terrifying, life? People have tried to explain life as the manifestation of the desire of the Universe to know itself. That fundamental urge of the human being, to seek lasting happiness or meaning, might be revelatory of that will of the Universe. And that final Self-realization might be justifying all these circuses!
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 essay5. All those have realized the truth, without an exception say that all such enquiries would cease once it is understood. Anyway, what we can say for sure is that, when we talk about God, we are indeed talking about ourselves.
- 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.
↩︎ - The law of inertia, also known as Newton’s first law of motion: An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion continues to move in a straight line at a constant speed unless acted upon by an external force.
↩︎ - Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the Law?
Jesus answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. – Mark 12:28
↩︎ - 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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