God or something like that

I am not sure which of the following statements is true. I exist in the periphery of religion or religion exists in the periphery of my life. Either way, in my life, religion and periphery go hand in hand. This is not a result of long periods of deep thinking or walking into the higher realms of agnosticism or atheism. I believe the shift took place due to a series of unanswered prayers from my childhood. Every night prior to dinner my parents would light up the lamp in front our small pooja area with pictures and small statues of Gods that we had collected over time. Then the family stood in front of the lighted lamps with the Gods behind and prayed.

Every day I had a long list of requests. Please make the principal declare a holiday tomorrow. Please make the teacher who has a given the homework that I have not completed sick and ensure he/she does not come to school tomorrow. Please bring down the school building by tomorrow morning. Please make be sick so that I can take off tomorrow. Most of the requests were around school and homework. Nothing worked. Even my most passionate prayer did not fructify. I got disillusioned but I did not write off God. I did not jump to the conclusion that God did not exist. Instead, I reached the conclusion that God did not accept specific requests. So I moved to generic "please save us all" prayer.  It worked! I am alive still.

The concept of every night prayer went out of my life once I stopped staying with my parents. In the initial years, I was in a hostel and used to visit a temple every Sunday. The "please save us all" prayer continued. But once I moved out of hostel, even the regular visit to temples stopped. Temples were visited when either I wanted to visit them or they wanted me to visit. Most times, the latter happened. My greatest religious achievement in life was visiting Sabarimala subsequent to undergoing the 40 day vratham.

So I am not the religious kind and yet I am not an atheist. I believe I belong to the agnostic realm. I have a feeling anyone who is not a believer belongs to that realm. Only those with a very narrow definition of the term God can believe the nonexistence of God. The atheist, as they are called or liked to be called, too are grappling with a number of unknowns but they don't choose to delve in them. We have no idea about why we are doing what we are doing. The questions go right down to the essential existential question. So how can we be sure of the nonexistence of the inexplicable. Even science is unable to explain our existence and go beyond the Big Bang.

Being an agnostic is convenient. One can visit temple when one wishes. Neither do I have to keep away from the temples nor do I have to visit it on any occasion. Some days I feel the urge to visit a temple and sometimes I satisfy the urge. Even when I visit I only prefer certain temples. I would prefer to stand in front of a plain wall in prayer at my house than visiting a down-the-lane-encroaching-the-road-while-blaring-out-loud-music temples. On certain days, I remember God only when I run into an annoying issue. If the problem exists, I look up at the sky and shout at him. If the poor fellow exists up there and can hear me then I sympathize with him and/or her. 

I realize God and religion are different. God is the concept for everything that happens around us, which baffles us as we are not able to understand the reason for its happening (at least beyond a point). Whereas religion is the means that people choose in reaching out to God. People search for different mechanisms to reach God. Some believe they have succeeded in the attempt. A few are able to convince the world or a part of it of their success. Thus a new religion takes birth.

Unfortunately, our brains are mysterious creatures that cannot be tamed. We believe we posses it but in reality the brain possesses us. Do we have any control of our thoughts and emotions? No, never. Some great souls claim they do but I am not sure. Even in the case of Buddha, whose messages primarily deal with control of our thoughts, I see an ambitious person who wanted his thoughts and messages to be accepted over others. The sixth century BCE was a fertile and revolutionary time when a number of alternate thoughts stood against the Vedic thoughts and practices. At that time, these thoughts were probably not religions. Each of these thoughts and its proponent(s) had a large following. The leaders of these thoughts debated, argued and maybe even have fought against each other to establish supremacy. Ultimately, the followers of Buddha succeeded. Thus, it seems Buddha himself had ambitions to win over the others and possess a number of followers. 

Thus the brain has a mind of its own and does not listen to us. We want to be happy but an Amazon package does not arrive and we feel miserable. But the brain has the ability to do more. It has the ability to hallucinate. In his book "Phantoms of the brain", V. S. Ramachandran talks about a number of hallucinations that a person's brain can come up with. Reading the book tends to take one's belief  off the supernatural experiences that people claim they have had. Our brain has the ability to convince us anything it wants. So we cannot believe any of the supernatural experiences that people have had. It is probably a trick by their brain or a lie (either from them or by others over the years).

While, I tend to believe in the existence of God as something that is beyond my understanding that is making me and everything else in this universe to live (or is it "live"?), I have no faith in people who claim they have the ability to communicate with God. I don't think we can communicate with God till our brain let us off the cause or reason based thinking.

I am an unfortunate person, though. To have thought of all the rot that I wrote above. Its my brain. That fellow, has been taking me down this pointless path of rationalism and yet not letting me be on that path completely. I envy all the religious people on this planet. They have placed their complete faith on their respective Gods. Life becomes simple when you live with the thought "God will take care of me". If something goes wrong, they think "its Gods will and I am sure good times are round the corner". They believe in heaven or the next birth where all the difficulty will be paid back with interest. They visit their places of worship and come back in peace. Their Gods are powerful whereas my God is inaccessible. 

I have never been a witness to a supernatural event but my evil brain is desperate to go through one. The only way it can have experience of such an event is if my brain conjures up one but it hasn't and I have the feeling it won't. To make matters worse, my brain wants me to believe that certain events in my life had an element of miracle in it. For example, once I was broke and the money that was expected to come was delayed. I was driving home and my car was stuck at a signal. I gripped the steering wheel, closed my eyes and prayed desperately to God. In this case, my request was specific - I want that money to come in now. I think I added a please at the end of the prayer as an afterthought. When I reached home, I got a call confirming that the money has hit our account. It could be a coincidence but we are talking about money from a Government department where coincidences are rarer than unicorns. So, this was a strong case for divine intervention. There are other incidents too that my brain assigns to divinity corner at some times and to coincidence corner at others.

But there is a problem with the above incidents. These, too, deal with causes that is actions and reactions. It is logical - I have a problem and am hoping for a solution, which God provides. God acts like a super parent; a hierarchy flows from me to my elders (humans) and to God ultimately. It is not very different from the experiences of a religious brain and mine is not religious. So even when most of it is looking at such events in the divinity corner there are many parts of brain smiling cynically shaking its head (what am I writing! How can I stop this nonsense! God help me!). So these do not satisfy my cynical brain.

Once I stayed at Guruvayur; the first time I had done so. I heard about a spectacular morning ritual at the temple called Seeveli. Early one morning, I went to the temple. I recorded my presence with Guruvayurappan and waited for the Seeveli to begin. The ritual consisted of decorated elephants walking around the temple accompanied by musicians on Chenda, horns, cymbals and other musical instruments. The environment inside the temple with the milling crowd, the loud music from the melam and elephant walking through it was electric. I was in trance and even as I write these lines, I live through the experience. It was not a supernatural experience, for sure, but it was divine. Music and fervour seem to be the only means available for me to have a divine experience.

Recently, I received an invitation for a Saibaba pooja at my apartment. It should be obvious from everything I have said so far that I am not a devotee of Saibaba. I have probably visited a Saibaba temple once in my life. Normally, I would have ignored the invitation and preferred to stay home to watch a mindless movie. But on that day, I was forced to visit the pooja and I was glad I did.

The pooja consisted of a set of people singing bhajans. The singers had beautiful voices and were skilled at singing. The result of their abilities, belief and passion for both Saibaba and singing were spectacular. The structure of the bhajans helped in invoking passion within the singers and listeners. It started soft and mellow and proceeded to a crescendo, which usually took up 75% of the song. The singing to the beats of the tambourine enthralled me and pushed my brain to erase the line between natural and supernatural.

As I reach the end of this piece, I hear my brain humming the lyrics from the song "God Am" (by Alice in Chains). 

How proud are you being able 

To gather faith from fable 

Can I be as my God am 

Can you be as God am 

Can I be as my God am