Man Vs God - Who created Who??

I, Venkatesh, an orthodox brahmin iyer of age 17 was on one of my family tour/outing/pilgrimage with my family to tirupati when my uncle reminded me that Lord Balaji was a very ‘powerful God’ and so I should pray to Him devoutly. I didn’t put much thought into it and did as I was instructed. I prayed to the Lord for everyone’s well being, for good marks in twelfth and to get a good college. As my life progressed, I was attracted towards the philosophy propagated by Adi Sankara, the Advaita philosophy. I started pondering over it and found that the crux of the philosophy was ‘Aham Brahmaasmi’, ‘I am God’!! Being a science student, I was always interested in the cosmic space that existed out of the world; the galaxies, nebula, black holes, star clusters etc which led me to the big bang theory and documentaries of Stephen Hawkins, the theoretical physicist. At this juncture, my mind started comparing the two incomparable – philosophy and science; Advaita and Big bang theory since in essence, both were similar with minor modifications in each. What advaita referred to as Brahman, Big bang theory called it as the start of the Universe – The big explosion.

Almost five years after the tirupati trip I went for another ‘family tour’ to a different shrine where I heard a similar statement being said. About the powerfulness of God, the existence of different Gods with different forms, different characters who even fought each other at some instances. The mind which was pondering over big bang and advaita for a long time, suddenly found the idea of God dumb and stupid. During the course of five years, so much had occurred which had shaped the way in which I see and understand happenings around me. The only question that remained was, “Why did the great Adi Sankara who had such immense knowledge of proposing a version of Big bang theory two thousand years ago without any scientific proof, also bring in the concept of Smartha and Shanmatha tradition of worship?”

Actually the answer was very simple and was connected to the way of Indian lifestyle and religion. Ancient Vedic Religion and the predecessors of these folks worshipped Nature. They had the habit of worshipping anything that was useful to humans and helps them. From the air we breathe in (Vayu Dev) to the energy source of all life on earth, the Sun (Suryanarayanan), everything is worshipped and deified as God. Some of them are: rivers (Ganga, Yamuna etc), food providing plants, elephants (Ganesh), monkey (Hanuman) and even mother Earth herself (Bhooma Devi). The interesting thing to note is that according to Hindu Dharma and Advaita Philosophy whoever the God is, He/She must always come under the reign of the Siva (in Saivism) or Vishnu (in Vaishnavism) or both (in Advaita).

So this brings up another question. What about the other Gods like Rama, Krishna and a whole lot of human-like Gods. They are probably just humans who due to their great deeds and the high respect they earned among their people were praised, their actions were exaggerated and in few generations they were apotheosized and believed as the incarnations of Siva or Vishnu. Rama would have probably been a very good king and his rule should have been so just that they still keep his reign as the gold standard and is referred to as ‘The Ram Rajya’. Similarly Krishna would have probably been a very naughty child from a rich landlord family who in his life turned out to be a very cunning diplomat who managed to change the tides of the great Kurukshetra war! Thus in a similar manner every person who had done good, appreciable deeds have been pushed to the status of God in the course of time.

So my hypothesis is that, the Indians who had the habit of worshipping anything that interacts with the humans and after many generations deified them as Gods, ultimately found the fact that all the elements surrounding and interacting with them always followed a strict ground rules within which they were supposed to exist. These undefined rules should have probably confused them and those unnamed rules were hence called Siva (in Saivism), Vishnu (Vaishnavism) or The Brahman (Advaita) under whom all the other Gods surrender and are answerable to Him alone. Interesting thing to be noted is that in Saivism and Vaishnavism, it was made sure that the presence of Lord Siva or Lord Vishnu be made inaccessible. Hence Siva was given a place in one of the highest peaks of Himalayas near the Mansarovar Lake and Vishnu was given a place in the deep trenches of the Indian Ocean. Had it known that such scientific progress would be made to conquer the mountains and oceans, ancient vedic Indians would have probably shifted both their habitats to other planets or stars!!!

Science on the other hand, by experiments and hypothesis ultimately found the secret behind all the rules within which ‘they’ existed. All such rules were compiled together and a name was given to them collectively. And it’s called ‘PHYSICS’, the laws of nature!!! So my ultimate hypothesis is that Indians who tried to apotheosize every form of nature and every great human who existed during those times also noticed that they were all controlled by and they obeyed according to some unknown rule which they weren’t able to identify and hence named them as Siva or Vishnu, but in reality the rule was nothing but Physics.