By Ananya Nandakumar
“I am a woman, a man, an Indian, an American, an Indian American, Caucasian, BIPOC, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic…”
All these identities that bind you to a body that wants to be affiliated to a certain race, gender, sex, ethnicity, religion, and nationality is limiting your experience as a sentient creature with a limited amount of time here in this world. Pondering over advancement to improve one's quality of life is an unavoidable element of life. This advancement may be towards betterment of one’s own species that focuses on longevity (which is what evolution is about) or towards spiritual betterment, an advancement that helps a living being transcend into a position that alleviates the agony and miseries of their current situation.
And if we think about it, any advancement is to solve a suffering that a creature is enduring. Such affiliations to different roles do not help either. Every war we have fought is the cause of an attachment to a religion, nation, philosophy, and ideology. It is usual to say that eradicating such wrath and animosity against opponents leads to peace, but nipping it in the bud is what we should strive towards. But how can we put a stop to it? People commonly claim that religion and ideologies are the sole causes of war. I disagree, particularly with the notion that religion has done more harm than good. Before any civilizational progress, when we were living like animals, life was short and difficult to even survive. Any living creature is here on Earth to advance, and hence the very nature of experiencing the world becomes pondering over everything that is around you, including your own existence. And religion is a product of such ponder. It helps bring perspective on some things for people who follow it by bringing discipline into one’s life.
Unfortunately, over time, the product of such ponder has eliminated its core idea and become fundamental in nature. The higher the number of people who follow it, the more mundane it becomes. The idea of religion is something that is personal to one’s life. Interpretation of “God” maybe different for everyone. One might see God in nature, and another might see God as an all-powerful being living in a higher dimension. Whatever it is, at the core of it, it is just a therapeutic way to deal life. Delegating “fate” in the name of God takes the load off one’s mind. People simply do not want to think and deal with the harsh realities of life and hence de-loading all the work onto a third party in the name of faith is easier.
Thus, the issues caused by religious ideas and ideologies are caused not by the faith itself, but by a lack of understanding of its basic values.
In Sanskrit, there is a popular term called “Aham Brahmasmi” translating to “That I am” It puts an emphasis on the fact that one is not the body, the brain, or the mind that they think they are, but the one that created all of that. There are just different ways to interpret it. A theist may refer to it as the divine, an atheist as death, a Buddhist as Shunyata, and a spiritualist as a soul. A dualist may perceive it as distinct from their own body, but a non-dualist detaches from the body in order to merge with the self. Whatever it may be, it is you.
A lesser-known theory that is an alternative to the Big Bang is the Steady State Theory. Ideated by Siger of Brabant in the 13th century in his thesis named “The Eternity of the World”, he argued that the physical universe had no beginning and was thus eternal. But it was quickly rejected by the then Pope in 1277 CE over claims that “there was no first man”, which opposed the ideas in the Book of Genesis. Since then, the Big Bang has gained prominence in modern science as definitive proof of Cosmic Background radiation (CMB), and densely packed galaxies and stars far away in the cosmos have been discovered with advanced technologies. However, the question of why or how the Big Bang occurred remains unsolved. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, according to the rule of conservation of energy. The Big Bang is based on the unfathomable premise that matter appeared from nothing. This question has stymied humanity's progress in its comprehension of the universe.
An intellectual once told me, the universe is always in a steady state, and gets into a Big Bang which is what we perceive as an observable universe with physical realms. So that means, the Big Bang happened? Yes, it is your own birth. You come into “existence” simply from being able to perceive this physical realm with your sensory organs. As Stewie from Family Guy says, it is a temporal causality loop where you create the universe, so that the universe can create you. It creates you to understand itself. Not just you, but everything around you. Using a complex system, it creates a User Interface for us to perceive its creation in an easier way. We just look at this UI as our reality. But the reality isn’t real. Everything around you exist to show you what you are not.
Once people understand the very nature of the “God” they are worshipping, or the “ideology” they are affiliated to, the need for having one fades. One may continue to worship or be affiliated to an idea, but the problems relating to the radical nature of such things may be mitigated. Because, what is more special than being universe itself?
So go ahead and take that nap, bunk that class, and cheat on your diet once in a while. Have fun because nothing matters in the end. We are born here to live and die, might as well make it joyful.
By Ananya Nandakumar
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