God , an investigation - Part 3 - the origins

If I were to scan my autobiographical memory to regress to a point when I first became conscious of “GOD”; I have to confess that I do not know. But I am fairly certain that I was not born with that idea. My childhood memories are ones of general “well-being” and nothing more than that. And I am sure, that many of my readers will concur with me on that. As a child, I am sure, I cried a lot when in distress, and smiled uninhibitedly  when caressed, and do not remember feeling guilty of either. Each emotion was played out with equally ferocious intensity with the gay abandon of a pulsating organism. I do not also remember recognizing a Mind/Body dichotomy arising in me at the tender age. All that prevailed then were a series of biological urges and its immediate satisfaction; a slow understanding of bare emotions that helped me to survive; and a steady habituation of words that formed around the general contour of sensory perceptions…

So the question then is, when and how did I get the notion of God into my system. Was it an act of imitation, or indoctrination, or education? Was I shown the beauty of heavens and led into believing that a divine father or Mother or both rule the skies? Was I taken unsuspectingly to a temple and asked to fold my hands together in obeisance to an authority positing a power far in excess of my parents? Was I taken to a witness a death and then surreptitiously made to understand that those who do good deeds die peacefully reaching heaven safely, and others rot in hell? Did my teachers inculcate in me that each day had to start with a prayer to a Deity, depending upon the kind of school I was studying in? Did the idea come from the fact that I was taught that most festivals or holidays had a God imbued meaning of Good and evil, right or wrong or an invaluable lesson in Moral science?; or did the incredible stories and myths on impossible exploits of the vast pantheon of Gods and Goddesses, repeated incessantly, awoke in me a feeling of empathy to believe in those legends and hope that they are indeed true and factually possible… I really would not know. The actual impetus for my belief in a Godhead conveniently lies buried in the hazy mists of time. All that I know is that my psyche was impregnated somehow with a personal notion of God or a supernatural force and its root were sunk pretty deep in me at a time when I had no choice in determining what I needed: attribute it to emotional vulnerability or intellectual dependence, the fact of the matter is that they played a very important role in instilling the first stirrings of a “God notion” in me..

Anyways at this distance in time, it is clear to me that one is not born into any religion but rather molded into it. And this molding does serve a practical need in binding man to live in a particular society, where he needs to have some kind of higher sanctions to keep his impulses in check for general welfare. Though inwardly resenting authority of any kind, we did realize early in our history that a notion of God is the strongest glue to hold a community, state or race together; and force Man to adhere to an ethical life. Karen Armstrong demonstrates in her book “The case for God” that all religions were born out of such a primordial urge to ascribe a supernatural sanction to ordinary acts of daily living. Religion also has also been a way of circumventing the mystery of Nature and life around us by explaining it away in the name of God, and also a nagging sense of comprehension of Man’s insignificant place in it.

The genesis then of four principal organized religions in the world namely Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all born out the above premise. There is nothing inherently wrong with such a conception, but then as one intellectually matures, it becomes imperative that we understand the structure of this indoctrination and take an “outsider” view of it. Otherwise, our inner growth gets stunted; and we keep groping around in circles to free ourselves of habits of conditioning. And Religion, which essentially, and should by definition be enlarging our vision ends up becoming a constricting, divisive influence - fracturing the psyche, making us unsure of our beliefs, and move us to observe with pitiful agony the march of one’s physical body towards its annihilation, without ever giving ourselves a real chance of validating the veracity of our entrenched hopes and ideas that were sown in the innocence of childhood.

The kind of religion that I have talking about in this essay is the ritualistic, idolatry and based on codified beliefs. But, every faith have had its outcast's as well. The Men and Women whom we largely classify as mystics - whose words and actions always seem to repudiate the conventional beliefs and ideas of established religions. And it seems that these mystics across ages, cultures and civilization have always spoken the same language: - “if you meet GOD on the way, kill him”. They are the renegrades of religion. The orthodoxy have always bought down the inquisitorial sword over their heads, and perpetually attempted to twist and turn their insights into a stream lined system, but somehow these “God intoxicated Atheists” have managed to slip through the web of formal structure and present to us a vision of religion and spirituality that is not based on fear, insecurity or imagination. The emphasis, for them has been the individual, his notion of alienation and its fallacy; and a distinct possibility of redemption from this skin encapsulated ego in this very life, nay- this very moment…

It is in their wisdom that I hope to find pointers for my search….