This is one of the topics, which I wanted to write for a long time. I was always amazed by the concept of God, How different people perceive it, How the concept is perceived the world over. How the communists see it, How atheists see it, How agnostics see it, How staunch believers of various faith perceive it. So I am going to try a hand in explaining what I feel and believe. It is heavily influenced by past thinkers from India notably Adi sankara, (known as Sankaracharya). The spark to write which was present for a long time, got a push when I couldn’t make a friend understand something which I wanted to tell about God. Happy Reading.

First and foremost, God is not a tribal leader to rule you, to grant you your wishes when you bow in front of him, to punish you if you don’t kneel down in front of him. He is not a jailer either and he doesn’t have a file for you to note down the good deeds and bad deeds and weigh you in terms of that and thereby to sent you to Hell or Heaven.. There is no hell with burning cauldron nor a heaven with virgins and wine. Even death in Sanskrit is called Yama, which is nothing but “Time”. It will come at its own time.

Having said that, let me talk about Hinduism as religion, it is not a religion. Nothing revolutionary, it is not a religion just because it is not centered around a prophet or god, its a socio-cultural way of living which is being followed in south Asia for ages with foundation based on not just one single book. The religion is more called as Sanathana Dharma by certain scriptures (which means eternal religion), There is no mentioning of the word Hindu in any of the Vedas and the following literature. By the way,  Can a single book explain everything we need to live and understand about God? No way! So there are many sacred books in Hinduism rather than one, The foundation is based on Vedas,

There are four Vedas

1. Rig Veda (1028 hymns and 10,600 verses)
2. Yajur Veda (Sacrificial Prayers, Around 2000 Verses)
   1. Shukla Yajur Veda(White)
   2. Krishna Yajur Veda (Black)
3. Sama Veda(Around 1900 Verses)
4. Atharva Veda(760 hymns, few as verses, few as prose)

Can just Four books of so many verses explain the entire way of living and cosmos, No, So there are Brahmanas, which are commentaries on these Vedas, They are 16 in number(If I am right) which may be written in the form of Samhitas (collections). Apart from this there are Vedanta, Upanishads, Aranyakas. Then after that came Vedangas(which means limbs of Vedas) they consist of grammar, phonetics, astrology etc. Then there are Parisistas which when translated means supplement. Then there are 18 Puranas which gives details of creation and destruction of universe. Then there are Upavedas which are four in number, The famed Ayurveda comes under this. Then there are the Ithihasas which means history, under this comes the great epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana.

The size of Ramayana and Mahabharata itself is pretty amazing, it is pretty foolish to compare it with Iliad and odyssey of Homer. Mahabharata alone is ten times longer than Iliad and Odyssey combined, with more than 90,000 verses and 1.8 million words. Sadly, many of the ancient texts are not present anymore due to various reasons, destruction of ancient universities in Nalanda and elsewhere is one of the reason.

So, coming back, these books though form the basis of Hinduism( I’ll use the term Hinduism due to convenience) is not closed for questioning, one can question, argue, doubt and comment on it. That is why there is mentioning of atheism, agnosticism in Hinduism. After all, Hinduism as I know, is not monotheistic but can be so, is not Pantheistic but can be so, is not atheistic but can be so.

Upanishads mention God not as what it is but what it is not, Which is easier, It mentions God as follows,

That which makes the tongue speak, but which cannot be spoken by the tongue...
That which makes the mind think, but which cannot be thought by the mind...
That which makes the eyes see, but which cannot be seen by the eyes...
If you understand the meaning of I neither know nor don't know, then you understand God.
Those who know that God cannot be known, truly know God.

When I mentioned Atheism, what I meant was the belief of lack of super-human intervention of God in Human life. In other words, God is whatever is present and whatever is not present, in short God is the universe, just like one of my friend explained that God is like a spider’s web, The spider creates the web and lives in it and also is a part of it.

Also you might have noticed that God is mentioned as ‘that’ and ‘it’, and not as any he or she, Vedas call God by various names such as Nirguna- attributeless, Nirvikara- Opinionless, Nirakara- formless, Ananta- Infinite.

But few people in Hinduism  pray to the attributes of Universe, like Sun, Rain, Fire etc. Few scholars in the past propounded atheism to remove this stigma. But in actual Hinduism is neither atheistic nor theistic but it be called as trans-theistic.

In Hinduism, you can consider those forces as also God, after all, it is part of the universe, so it is part of God, so it is God. There is a verse as follows,

Ekam sat vipraa: Bahuda Vadanti

which when translated means, Truth is one, People say it in different ways.

Now as the time passed, the message of truth was lost in the lineage, So to makes things easier for the common man to understand, scholars built ways, so that common man can understand and reach the truth. Most importantly four philosophies were developed from four Vedas by Adi Sankara, those being,

• Prajñānam Brahma - Brahman is knowledge
• Aham Brahmasmi- I am Brahman
• Tat Tvam Asi-That thou art
• Ayamātmā Brahma-This Atman is Brahman

All the four are based on Advaita ( which means non-duality), Buddhism loosely dwells on this monistic way of thinking. Many Hindu conventional people criticized on his thoughts mentioning it as radical. But the same Upanishads and Vedas have the same arguments which those opponents couldn’t see. Sankara created these schools of thought based on sastra (scriptures), yukti (reason) and anubhava (experience), and aided by karmas (spiritual practices).

In fact, the entire Hindu religion was modeled to follow these schools of thought, the temples, idols were created to follow these philosophical and scientific traditions, though people forgot or are unaware of the reasons behind these traditions which paved way for the radicals of present day to consider some of it as superstitious due to its lack of purpose or reason is a sad state. Also there are right-wing Hindus who blindly believes in certain traditions which may have been relevant at a different point of time for a different socio-cultural reason is a sad state.

There is a temple in south Kerala deep in jungle, the pilgrims need to trek 4-5kms( it was around 20-40kms, before the roads were paved) to reach the temple, the trek is hard and laborious in the deep jungle, and before the trek the pilgrim is supposed to take 41 day of observing hard rites including but not limited to celibacy. Once the pilgrim reaches the  sanctum sanctorum very tired and exhausted, He is greeted by a message written in Devanagari script “तत्वमसि” which is “Tat Tvam Asi”. The pilgrim is not greeted by promises of gifts and blessings, but by this simple philosophical thought/truth.

- A believer, Santhosh K Ramachandran

Sources: Wikipedia, Few blogs, Few Hindu websites, Few original thoughts.

I may add one more part to this, considering opinions and comments, also am having a small doubt that I haven’t expressed what I wanted to…