God and his Merit System

The idea of penning down this post occurred, when there was a casual discussion with my friends and colleagues about the interesting values behind Ramayana and Mahabharata.

In my observations, I noted that believers of God, had always sought or resorted to God, during their tough times. Generally believers of Hinduism, not only put the onus of their tough situations on God, but also on their own fate. So what is fate or destiny or karma?

Fate (leaving aside the bookish definitions) can be considered as a meritorious system of effects for the deeds done by a person – which we either construe as rewards or punishments; rewards for good deeds and punishments for bad deeds; which in Hinduism, not only relates to what one does in his current birth but also had carried forward from his/her previous births (what else can explain about a child being born to poor parents, while at the same time and almost at the same place, another child being born to rich parents).

The role of God is to serve as an administrator or that of an implementer of the fate or meritorious system. God may give solace, reduce the impact, or effect of a bad fate, and even may help you to completely pass you through the tough times, but then wise men say that, it is how the fate has been defined for you – that you will be blessed and be guided by God.

Therefore, God as an administrator (though very much could be the creator) of this system, reserves the right to add/increase/decrease/remove the effects, therefore bringing in the flexibility to the otherwise rigid system of cause (deeds) & effect. However it should be noted that whatever the deeds and effects may be, they once again gets added up to one’s list, and will be evaluated again as the cycle (of birth and death) continues.

P.S: May be this merit system can be thought of a well-balanced zero-sum game, another example highlighting the art of delicate balancing.

My two cents worth of view on Hinduism

Fortunately I had umpteen opportunities to discuss about Hinduism with many diverse people; people who were orthodox, who were moderate and liberal, who were atheists, and also people who were either orthodox or liberal followers of other religions.

Well, first the disclaimers. I am neither a Pundit, nor a orthodox follower (hence the title – two cents).  My views given below are my own, and that I had realized or evolved over long periods of time.

To start with, Hinduism is a label attributed (probably by the Britishers) to the people who followed a certain culture and were living around the current Indian geographical regions. Over the years,  it became branded as a religion, though it is not an organized religion unlike   many others. Also, as mentioned in my earlier posts, a religion is only a path to spirituality, and many texts, like Ramayan or Gita, that are attributed to Hinduism, reinforce the same – in other words, an orthodox following of Hinduism (or any religion for that matter) may not necessarily make a person spiritual! 

If I had to share one most important facet or fundamental trait of the religion of Hinduism, then this would be the one.

Every thing you do or believe will have an effect.

Though this may be sound too simplistic, this forms the basis for many other concepts or philosophies in this religion. The point to be noted is that even an intangible thing or even as abstract thought or belief will have a resultant effect. Also, even if you claim to do nothing, or even think of nothing (Meditation!), it will have its own result / effect.  Belief (a strong thought with conviction, as I would like to put it) is emphasized very much in numerous ways through out Hinduism.  If you have a strong and unshakable belief or faith, you will get the results of your belief.

The implications of this simple concept are phenomenal and in-numerous. Add to this, the resultant effects get carried forward to your next re-birth, and that’s Karma in the most simplistic sense. In Hinduism, this concept of Karma, leads to the cycle of birth and death and therefore reincarnation of our soul.  This leads to the concept of destiny or fate, which is determined by your actions not only in this current birth, but also from the actions of your previous births or incarnations! 

The concepts of karma, destiny or fate has the potential to answer any question that one may encounter or realize for oneself, generally during the toughest times or during their peaks in life. To give an example, How two children born at same date and same time, and probably even the same place and the same environment get their lives shaped up differently ?

Why new religions find it difficult to evolve?

I feel, this time, I have a more introspective topic to write about – about the evolution of new religions – continuing with my previous post on “Religions and Institutionalization“.

As usual it started with a ‘controversial’ discussion on religion and God, and as we sifted through topics like Scientology and Tom Cruise an interesting question emerged – why we do not have any new religions emerging recently? This is despite having a much smaller world – interconnected in many ways, including the Internet and its latest social networking platforms, when propagation of messages can go viral!

A quick survey on the Web did not reveal much, (though it revealed interesting religions as in this link) and an extensive search would be required considering this list. Though  many of them are referred as ‘religions’ and some were found as late as in 1980’s they do not seem to have any significant following. But at the same time, we cannot underestimate them, because today’s popular religions also would have started in the same way, but took atleast 3-4 centuries to spread and establish themselves across the world. So, we never know! despite the connected world we live in.

In my analysis, I believe that there are two strong characteristics that are exhibited by today’s popular religions, which will stop or delay the arise of any new religion – one is continuous propagation (and propagation through all new media) by identified leaders – and the other is the embedding of the sense of community among their members, which is done by regular and mandatory gathering of their members in a place for worship. The latter ideal ensures that people don’t get distanced too much from their current religious practice and instills a sense of ‘belonging’ and probably ‘pressure’ on who are not inclined.

Disclaimer: I don’t intend to start a new religion! and I am not an atheist!

Religions and Institutionalization

We had an interesting discussion on “Institutions” in one of my classes where I was explaining about the quality processes that has to be inculcated in an organization, and work towards insitutionalization of the same to reap the benefits. Well this blog is not about it, but about religions.

Religions serve as an excellent example of institutionalization – institutionalization of beliefs on God, and the processes represent the rituals and customs carried out by the followers of that religion.  Now the question: Does institutionalization really benefit here?  My answer: NO.

When we institutionalize the beliefs on god, and evolve them as religions, it becomes one more identity for a person. However the purpose of any religion is to lead its followers to the spiritual path, and largely that requires an individual’s own effort and will.

A religion can provide an identity, impose conditions of behavior, that might lead to the spiritual path, but can’t guarantee it. Also here we are dealing with abstractness and results or effects would not be tangible always to measure. A goodness of a person has to be judged over his/her lifetime giving appropriate weight to their environments and circumstances – well that’s what GOD  would supposedly do in one’s after life, according to many religions.

In quality processes, there is a scope for review and continuous improvement, which can lead to new and different processes over time. However today’s religions does not allow to redefine or re-orient or even re-look at the changing needs and hence constrain you to the same beliefs that were set long ago, often justified by saying that all of the processes (rituals, beliefs, and customs)  followed in a religion relate to “core values” and hence are sacrosanct and there’s only one choice – either you subscribe to it or get left out. 

Disclaimer: I am NOT an atheist.

God – Representations & Manifestations

This world has an inherent knack of giving numerous representations to a single object!. So, it may not be surprising when we see or create many representations for a single concept or entity that we deal upon. The main point behind these numerous representations is that everyone would like to visualize a particular object or concept or entity in their own way, based on their perceptions, thereby leading to multiple representations. When these multiple representations or visualizations are correlated they could give a much deeper and probably better understanding of a subject.

By nature, all objects themselves can have different forms or manifestations, based on a lot of factors. The underlying base for these factors is time; As time changes the forms or manifestations also differ!. To illustrate this, look at the Sun; It appears or lends itself to different forms (to other planets)- in the morning, during the day, and during the evening. Ofcourse, there are scientific explanations behind it; but speaking abstractly, as time passes, these forms or representations also change!. Not only the way in which we see the sun changes from time to time, but the sun by itself also changes from time to time – as a star it has its own life cycle – for instance the sun is becoming more luminous – at the rate of 10% every billion years.

As there can be innumerable representations of the same object or entity, and also each objects can have numerous forms or manifestations over the time – one could realize that God too can be visualized or represented in many forms and in many ways!, and if God could be factorized to a base – i.e., energy, then God too could manifest in multiple ways based on time!

Renunciation

A couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to meet a young Swamiji. He was wearing saffron robes, and gave a very short lecture to us, about a Kriya – an exercise that would benefit all of us. During the lecture, he also mentioned about his journey of life, and how he went on to embrace spirituality.

Actually the Swamiji was a former student at the place, where I am working now. He went out of this place in 1999, after completing an IT course (I joined here two years later – in 2001, as an employee) and after which he was working for some IT companies in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and then finally chose the spiritual path!. So, we were naturally curious to know the turn of events in his life that lead him to his current state.

One thing that was apparent from his talk was that he had been searching for ‘something’ that was not materialistic and probably would have ended up in those saffron robes. It also appeared that he had come out from most of the common worldly desires like money. However, he did not advise us to take the path of spirituality, for he knows that we are immersed and enjoy ourselves in those trapping of desires!. And I don’t believe that only food, money and sex are the powerful desire trappings – it’s even name and fame that are as powerful as the former, or perhaps even more.

Thinking about desires further, it appears to be extremely difficult for one to completely come out of all the desires – including the desire to live, which is why I think the path to spiritual elevation is supposed to be taken at an older age. According to me, one has attained the highest position – in spirituality – if he has come out of all the desires. But then, finding such a person is going to be extremely difficult for anybody, and a person inclined and committed to find such a person, would rather himself come out of all the desire trappings.

Coming out of all desires is what is called as renunciation. It is being in love and peace with everyone, but absolutely without any attachments or expectations. And I believe that even if a person has some desire it may easily lead to a trap of multiple desires, coming out of which would test even the noblest of the souls.

Some Short Philosophies in Tamil

It’s really been a long time, that I wrote something in Tamil. So, here I am going do that. But what to write ? – For me, it’s simple – philosophies as usual ( தத்துவம் in Tamil). English translations are also provided.

உயிர்- உடலையும் உள்ளத்தையும் இணைக்கிறது; இல்லாவிடில் உடலும் உள்ளமும் வேறு வேறு!

English Translation: It’s the life force that binds both our body and mind (soul). If there is no life force, then body and mind are separate entities!.

(உண்மையான) சுவாமி – ஆசை அறவே அற்றவர்; மற்றவர் – ஆசாமி!

English Translation: A REAL saintly or godly person is one who renounces ALL the desires, while others are all ordinary persons.

The Biggest Abstractions

Abstractions are the models of either real or notional entities. Abstractions, many claim that it leads to simplicity. Though all of us may not like all of the abstractions that we may encounter, in our lives, generally speaking, we as a human society have always cherished the abstractions. If you do not believe this check the list below. Abstractions though helped us to overcome complications had also limited our thoughts, behaviors and actions. Assume that if one abstraction has been accepted by everybody – which is a model of something, then we are limited by the preciseness of the model, and for that sake everyone knows that a model is a model and not the exact entity itself. Well, now let’s start with the biggest abstractions that we generally encounter.

The first biggest abstraction is God – who has created this Universe in the first place. Though this may be arguable for some, the next biggest abstraction is – Time – which has been accepted by everybody!. Humans have modeled a clock, a calendar to model this important phenomenon!. I also consider time to be the real taskmaster that drives all of us. The next biggest abstraction, that I could think of is Numbers, that lead to Arithmetic, and of course the entire subject of Mathematics. Adding to this, without experiments, even Science, is only of abstractions. The entire concept of Money and Finance is also an abstraction, which had been evolved out of the abstraction of Numbers!. So, we live in a world embedded with multiple layers of abstractions!.

Ofcourse the list can go on and on, with simple abstractions to complex abstractions built on multiple layers, but I would like to stop here, and wonder about the most basic and elementary abstractions, which may throw some insights and spark new thoughts, and after all the world will call you as an ‘intellect’, if you work with higher and higher layers of abstractions!

God and his Open System

As (I might have) indicated earlier in my blogs (such as “Secrets of Nature”, “Beliefs on Evolution“, and Superior Evolution), it makes sense for us to perceive the creations of God – essentially the Universe, as a System and of course, I believe that God has created this system.

I also sometimes believe that it is this System, created by God, that creates each one of us, than God himself creating each one of us individually, and the system has also spawned up the entire earth and the world we live in. We are all components or entities within the system, and I believe that god has designed and put in place controls, limitations and other mechanisms for the effective functioning of his system, and of course, god will and can control his system.

One secret to understanding God’s own system is to understand nature that will unlock all the secrets of the system. Talking more from the system theory perspective, a system, is called a closed system, if it does not interact with the external world. In such case, a closed system cannot change and also cannot evolve. However, as we know the system created by God, the Universe, is subject to change and evolution, and hence very much an open system.

As the main system, created by God is open, all the entities and all the other subsystems within it, can only be open naturally. Hence, it is highly impossible to design and have a fully closed system, and run it for long!, as in a closed system, there cannot be developments or enhancements possible. So, for a system to function, it should try to mimic the parent system, and hence should be open, and should interact with diverse external environments to enrich and sustain itself. This could be true for families, organizations, countries, cultures etc…. as these are all sub-systems within the global system.

Well, now the IT people, may ask if God has created a open system, where is the source code?. My answer is, the source code is available for all of us, but we have surrounded ourselves with such worldly illusions, that we are unable to see it, – forget deciphering it!.

Circles and Spheres – Visualization

Some time ago, in the second-half of 2007, we had a guest from the University of Arkansas at Little rock, Prof. Srini Ramaswamy. After his presentation of Modeling and Simulation, he spent some good time with us (the staff members). The last question that was posed to him, was on his beliefs on God, for which he gave an elaborate answer, and finished with a statement, “After you finish drawing a circle, you don’t know from where it was started or where it ended “, which symbolizes our lives.

Taking these cues, I start dwelling on my thoughts …

Correlating this with statements that usually associate circle with life, like “Life has come a full circle”, and “Everything is circular in this world”, etc… I now begin to dwell on circles ….

A point is a circle whose radius tends to zero (Mathematical Definition!). A line is a series of points that are interconnected and likewise, we could go on to claim that every living and non-living entity is made of atoms and atoms are spherical in shape (by the orbit patterns of the electons; and though there is no clear proof; we continue to visualize them as spherical structures), and after all the circle is a two dimensional visualization of a sphere!.

Moving with these thoughts to the philosophical region, and correlating with circles and spheres, we could say that we are orbiting around in circles or spheres, but transitioning from one state to another in the process of revolving!!!.

Have I provoked your thought processes? …. More to come later!!!….