Who am I?

To all the patient readers of my blog, i know you would all by know been confused. Initially I talked about Sankara and Advaita, then gradually moved to atheism and claimed that there is no ‘God’. Then suddenly I post a poem of Siva! So who am I? Well, I too am not sure as to which side I am in!

1. I am undoubtedly believer of Advaita, so am an advaitin! I have kept Adi Sankara and his advaita principles at great awe and respect.

2. I am a person who believes that there is only one single source of power and accept many of the universal facts present in Vedas – the source and origin of advaita philosophy.

3. I do accept Sankara’s idea of Shanamta worship ( pray to any of the following six Gods: Siva, Vishnu, Sakthi, Ganesh, Skandha and Suryanarayana) and the ideologies behind it.

Just because am a believer of Advaita doesn’t mean I have to worship God. Advaita says, ‘Atman is Brahman’. That fact is accepted. But what is the need to pray and worship that Brahman (God in general terms)? Yes it is true that there is a single source of power and that everything originated from that single source of power. It has even been proved scientifically. But why should we worship that source? We humans originate from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and many other elements. Just because we are made of these elements do we worship them? No, because for the simple reason that we don’t find any conscience in them. I wonder who told people that the almighty powerful single source has a conscience. What if the source is just raw power and nothing else? If it is so, then isn’t it similar to praying to a battery or to electricity?

Some of the facts present in Vedas are undeniable and holds good even to this day. But in the modern day world there has been many changes that could not have been predicted in the vedic ages. So naturally some of them are unpractical and unacceptable. An example would be good here.

Vedas point out that Brahmins are not supposed to undergo travel to foreign countries, most importantly not to cross seas and oceans. Reason: Brahmins are vegetarians. So travelling through ships for months together would mean no vegan diet and hence they would be forced to eat fish! Secondly, Brahmins don’t have any work in foreign countries in the social setup of the vedic ages. Their work was to do Yagnas for the welfare of the country. Clearly we could see why it need not be followed now. Travel by air just takes a few hours and they do provide us with vegetarian food. Also the vedic social hierarchy has long been collapsed and Brahmins in the present day are present in all statuses of the society, from doctors to businessmen.

Sankara’s shanmatha tradition was to narrow down the whole range of Gods present in India to a minimum of six. His idea was that once people start following this practice along with advaita principles they would realize the truth about the singularity of God! They would realise the truth, ‘Atman is Brahman!’ Another reason is that you cannot make lesser intellectuals understand the vast and highly deep ideas of Advaita. So it is always better to make them worship a defined set of deities instead of allowing them pray to whatever they find around them, from trees to rocks. It is also one of the reasons that he brought this tradition. But after 1500 years, the tradition is almost forgotten and advaita is a long forgotten word.

So who am I? A person, who believes in a supreme power source (God), and does not believe that worshipping that source, would bring about any change in the lives of humans, since it is of my opinion that there is no need for God to have conscience. But as a matter of fact I find it so hard to put every pressure, tension and stress with myself. I require a vent by which I can let myself free of these feelings. There is no better way of doing it than praying to God. It creates a protective feeling that I have a guard around me, a sense of hope when it seems all is lost. So I do pray to God just to overcome the above said reasons. May be I am a pseudo-atheist, a person who believes that there is no God but still prays and worships God not because I believe any miracle would change my life in a minutes time but just to keep myself comfortable!

According to Hinduism, a person who doesn’t believe in God isn’t considered to be an atheist. An atheist is a person who doesn’t believe in Vedas. But since I believe in Vedas am not an atheist. I am not an agonist since I have no confusion regarding the presence of God. I am sure that there is God! I am not a theist either since I don’t technically accept the presence of a God with conscience! Yes am also confused to the same extent like everyone else who is reading this post!

Comments are welcome as to who you think I am.

The Force and The Brahman

At around 800 C.E a baby was born in Kerala, by name Sankara to a brahmin couple who wanted a son but weren't blessed with one. Myth says that the couple prayed to Lord Siva at Vadakkunathan temple for a son. The Lord accepted their prayers and gave them a choice. Either to have sons who would live long lives but with mediocre intelligence or a single son with short life but highly intellectual. It is said that the couple chose the latter choice. Sankara like a dutiful brahmin boy went to gurukul, learnt scriptures, Vedas etc in a very short span. Unable to being bound by the earthly lives, he embraced sanyasa and started propagating his ideas and cerebrations through the length and breadth of the country.
So what is the idea propagated by Sankara? The answer is too simple. His ideas which are referred to as Advaita philosophy simply means lack of duality, a Singular Power. Adi Sankara referred to the Singular Power as 'The Brahman', the ultimate soul.
Advaita states that every individual is a part of the eternal soul, The Brahman. There is no difference between each and every living and nonliving thing. Everything originated from Him and will end in Him. Each and every individual is separated from Him by the worldly distractions that surrounds him and prevents him from attaining the ultimate knowledge, the truth about 'The Brahman'. Sankara even details out these distractions and the measures to be followed to come out of the worldly web which is beyond the scope of the blog! Perhaps I will save it for some other day.

The next question that arises is who is the 'Him' and where is the 'Him', about who Advaita and Sankara shower encomiums? He is not the one to be visualized. You are Him. Everything around you is Him. Every single constituent in the universe is a part of Him. Him is nothing but the energy that flows through the cosmic space, into each and every organism, that which makes our heart beat, pump blood, think about Him etc.

Around 1100 years later a german theoretical physicist by name, Hans Albert Einstein stumbled upon the idea of Theory of Relativity and gave a simple equation E=mc2, which became the platform for other scientists to expand and prove the existence, creating and the current position of our Universe.

Theories about Universe started developing based on Relativity and finally they came up with 'The Big Bang model'. The model provided insights to how a big explosion occured at some point of time after which the universe which was of size less than a quark started expanding rapidly to reach this present state. The theory states that when big bang occured, the laws of physics, gravity, force etc came into being. If there had been a minuscle change in the laws during the creation, then i'd probably not writing this blog, the world wouldn't have existed and the whole universe would have collapsed within femto seconds after the big bang.

Hawking even goes a step beyond this and contemplates that even as we talk new universes are created with a big bang outside our dimension. The laws required to stabilise a universe may not always be created during the Bang. Gravity may not be thr in some universe, gravity may repel in others, conversion of mass to energy and vice versa may not occur, entropy may decrease etc leading to collapse of the other Universes.

So after this successful big bang thingy, matter - antimatter interaction occurred and matter emerged triumphant, quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons and atoms were formed, hydrogen came up, H2 under gravity came close, created intense heat resulting in fusion of H2. Then came the mini stars which produced helium as they died, along with carbon, neutron mass and some light elements. During death, the explosion that followed threw the elements to far away regions. The cycle continued and finally heavy metals like gold, platinum, uranium, silver etc were also formed by the same mechanism. A similar formation of a star with many elements resulted in the birth of Sun and its planets. And that's how earth was formed. Life evolved as time progressed in it and finally the life which formed, started thinking about its creator, for which many different names were given as time progressed. Adi Sankara calls the creator as 'The Brahman', Christianity as 'Lord' or 'The Father' and Islam as 'Allah' but modern physicists call them simply as Force, Nature or Physics.

So from the big bang point of view, everything originated from the big bang. Everything around you, including you, your pen, your PC, the breakfast you had in the morning, the stars, planets, moons, galxies etc all originated from the big bang. Everything gets recycled again n again.

Now scroll up and look what advaita says. The crux of both the philosophy and theory are the same. Just the name of the Universal set comprising of all things in the Universe differs. Advaita calls it as The Brahman whereas modern theoretical physicists refer to it as Raw force and Physical laws governing the Universe.

The main aim of advaita philosophy is to prevent future births for every life on earth. To attain 'moksha'! To escape from the continuous cycle of birth and death and mingle together with Him. Having proved Advaita is almost similar to Big Bang, the previous point or the aim of advaita may seem to be an anomaly or flaw in Advaita which 'The Big bang' fails to vindicate. But it is not. As I already mentioned, everything originated from the big bang.

Hypothetically let us consider a star 'X', which was formed by hydrogen fusion, resulting in helium. The helium, under gravity moves towards the core where further pressure and temperature at later stages of the star increases resulting again in fusion and creation of heavier and denser elements like carbon, nitrogen which again undergo the same processes and finally heavy metals are created. During death of the star, the star bursts and the elements are spread throughout the cosmic space. A portion of it reaches a dense mass of hydrogen gas area (nebula 'Y')and thus develops a new star out of it called Sun and other planets including earth. So whateva that is present in the earth comes from the star 'X' and nebula 'Y' including humans.

So from where do we come from? Star 'X' and Nebula 'Y'. Now let us go into the future. Five billion years from now, the Sun would have used up all of its hydrogen, starts using helium, it puffs up like a giant red balloon and would engulf all the planet of the solar system. When the Sun explodes it throws out chunks of essential elements and molecules to outer space just like the star X. Thus a group of hydrogen atom formed during big bang formed 'X' from which our earth came, human body came and finally the elements go to some other nebula becoming cradles for new stars and planets and may be even new life.

Something strikes a bell?? U can always scroll up and check for the advaita aim. There isn't much difference between the two. Does it? So does tat mean that Sankara knew about the big bang model, cosmic space, birth and death of stars etc? If so why doesnt he explain it properly then? Considering the superstitions, the understanding capability and IQ of humans 1200 years back, Sankara would probably have thought that it was better to coat the bitter truth with the sweet flavor of God instead of breaking the truth directly and be ostracized.