Thursday 15 June 2017

Why Invoke God?

    When we do not know who or what is God, why do we invoke God? First of all, it is sheer ignorance, avidya or anyathaa vidya,knowledge covered by fear, desire, attachment and ego that makes us to look for some support and we seek God. In this eagerness to get some support we seek the help of even a stone, a plant or tree, a bird, or even the slippers (paduka) of some body (a Guru>) and go ahead! This has been an age-old practice and there is nothing wrong since it is just a belief system! However, people of strong minds, rational beings, resist such temptation and walk straight without even looking at a temple! One may call somebody an atheist or a believer, a non-believer, etc. But all these are of no meaning or may we call it nonsensical? But doing harm to others, speaking untruth and acting against the common interest and against the welfare of society is a sin these very people who worship God..People do not realize this. 
   God is a concept that has no foundation, whatsoever. The Western philosophers have discussed much about this and so far have not even one! This is not the case of ancient Indian sages, or fo that matter, now and here many a siddhi purushas, attained persons, sadhakas well versed in yoga have visualized God.There is no doubt about this visioning, darshan, visioning God by Rishis, drushtaras.    Thos who have seen God in person need no proof. And, those who do not know what is God or those who need no God need not bother about it. That is it!
 Now, as regards existence of 'God', "this(God's existence) can be known by shastra pramana, the spiritual texts, which give us some idea about God. All other proofs which seems to demonstrate the existence of God ultimately fail to do so since suitable counter-arguments may always be successfully arrayed to destroy the efficacy of such arguments." (ibid, p. 189)
    "God cannot be perceived either by any sense organs or by the mind". The sense organs can help us to know only those objects with which  they can come in contact with. The mind, on the other hand, cannot make external objects known to us without the help of sense organs. Even what the yogis perceive may be just a memory of what they might have experienced in a state of extra-sensorial perception, and may not hold good for others! This experience of yogis is not transferable.
   The concept of God has been invented by those who could not explain satisfactorily how this world came into existence. "There are some who would want to support the cosmological argument on the ground that no less than a supreme person, entirely different from the individual persons, could be regarded as the maker of  this vast universe! The individuals have no capacity to create anything larger than themselves. They cannot even see things lying far away and things obstructed from their view. If they close the eyes things disappear and most of the time nothing exists when they are deep asleep! Thus it is necessary to hold that the maker of the universe must be a being of unlimited powers, a God?"
   Thus not one God, a number of them came into existence according to the needs of time, needs of circumstances, and the existing belief systems. But all these can be simply discarded when a person starts thinking  in a rational, scientific way. Even then, there is scope for the existence of a God since all the concrete phenomenal objective mundane worldly existence cannot be explained wither scientific or logical way. Since the material world has emanated from a spiritual background that is abstract and may be, non-existent! This calls for a supreme Lord, the God. Thus, God is an absolute necessity rather than an assumption, presumption or a creation of a confused mind. God is that supreme vast invisible force, abundant source of energy, light, intelligence, consciousness, etc that pervade the entire cosmos and creates and destroys anything everything. Even Gods- smaller or petty Gods are created by one supreme God, paramatman. Thus we have crores of Gods and Goddesses, all energy aspects of One supreme power, shakti. Thus, we have a God of a certain name, power, equipment of armas, and signs and symbols for every purpose and all our daily needs.are fulfilled when we invoke them with devotion sincerity!  
   The Agama shastra dwell at length on all these and narrate how Gods emanate in different forms, vyuha, bhava, vibhava, vyuhantaras, etc. We will give some of these in the following blogs, one by one later.

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