The face of uncertainty : God

The face of uncertainty : God

            Thousands of miles above earth, and all we see is a beautiful blue marble in eternal blackness. As we move farther and farther away we can see the smallness of it all we pass the tiny little son in an equally tiny milky way as compared to the humble little universe it is in. Space passes at undefined speeds now, passing millions of light years, absorbing in all the universes which are weirder than can be imagined. Time looses its significance as our perceived units fail us as the length of the journey could only be described as well over eternity. But surely, all this can not go on forever, it has to end or doesn’t it? But then what is there at the end? And if there is an end what is beyond that. There couldn’t be “nothing”, cause if the blankness of nothing borders this ultimate-super-universe that contains all that we know and that which we never would then where does the nothingness end, surely it couldn’t go on forever…………. And thus the software in our brain fails. Our beloved reason, which guides us every step of our life gets hopelessly trapped in the perpetual conundrum. It can not survive with out facts, suggestions or observations, neither of which exist in the vacuum that brain faces now. The only thing that can heal the mortally wounded reason now is faith, that is, the mind saves reason by feeding it imaginations as truth and letting it think that it has, as always, resolved the issue. People across the globe have different names for this fib, we call it God.

            For those of you who are from not humans and hence puzzled by the concept, I will introduce to you how my fellow chimps & I define god. It is an almighty/ultimate being which is capable of being/doing anything in ways that are not fathomable to us because of his will. It is the ultimate hypothesis. We, humans can answer every imaginable questions of you might have. What we know, we can confidently explain and take credit for. As far as the few things we don’t understand go, they are the works of god, which, as you must have realized is actually our creation* and we feel proud to be associated with him and his work.

The mysterious ways of god are not only good to save my rational module from malfunctioning but can also help in various other situations. E.g. When I give and interview for a job I desperately want and don’t know how it might go, I pray to god. When I am waiting the results of that interview and don’t know what is going to happen, I pray to god. When my beloved one dies, my emotions break all barriers and run amuck, I get excessively depressed and don’t know how to face this devastation, I pray to god.

But alas, people’s definition of what can be called uncertain or stressful or right or wrong are as abundant as people themselves. It is therefore not surprising that some people invoke god answer the questions about their origins, others commit hideous atrocities against someone and find a justification of their actions in god, and yet others find that by enforcing validity of the god concept they can sooth people’s feelings and humiliation of not knowing and gain masses unquestioned support in the process to help them serve their own god, their personal interests. It has been argued that the momentary comfort of god in critical situations cause humanity unacceptable physical and intellectual damage .

But if we do away with this that still leaves us with the original agonies which need to be mitigated & questions that beg answers, without god there is no hope. There are at least three alternative approaches I can think of. One way of solving the problem is just facing it head on. Grapple with questions till there is an answer, Great scientist do precisely that, they are so obsessed by mysteries that they never surrender to them and pursue them tirelessly till either mystery or they cease to exist. One can also take the emotions head-on, the emotionally strong do precisely the same. They fight their feelings and bravely fend them off. This attitude is not a particularly attractive one though, because the callousness is almost unnatural and the repression might prove to be harmful to the mental health. The exact opposite approach can be adapted with similar results. One can just immerse oneself in it all till it ebbs away. One can just think about the problem and try to answer it till he looses all the interest or just let the emotions flow and let out all the steam or agony till the feelings are there no more. But I think the best approach is the middle road which ironically, is often taken by true spiritual leaders. That is to be humble, when facing the great uncertainties and the unfathomable accepting our incapability to address the matter. Just like the religious resign to a fictional deity, one could simply resign to the problem. We should realize that though we are the only ones smart enough in this planet to be asking questions we are still not wise enough to have the answers. In our anguish, rather than asking ourselves meaningless questions such as whether the ones close to our heart will still be happy after they die and making up answers to part with the thought, we can find our peace by making sure that they are happy when they live so that when they do have to die they can look back at their life and depart satisfied. To me the final approach is especially appealing because we act most nobly and rather than unconsciously trying to prove our mental and emotional transcendence we humbly accept defeat.

The curse of our conscious is that we feel things, want answers and need happiness. Unlike all of the other creatures of the planet we can not just ‘be’, we have to ‘be happy’. May be instead of just trying to dominate our nature and universe all the time, if we succumb to it once in a while and see our unimportance in all of it we can truly attain what they call nirvana.

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* By our creation we may be talking about Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism amongst tons of others. All of these are equally true and equally wrong at the same time because they say pretty much the same thing but use wrong words and/or fictional characters to say it. I know the other versions are wrong because I know the true one actually involves <Insert your god here>, we call it <Insert your faith here> revealed to <Insert your ancestors here>.