‘GOD’ -
The word in itself has an aura of ambiguity as well as certainty.
Its inherent meaning seems constant and dynamic at the same time. God seems to
have many names like Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma or Zeus for the religious
believers and God is expressions like The Universe, The Great Void, The Force
or in the most poetic manifestation(from the Gnostic Gospels) 'The Shadow of
the Turning' for the much more liberated, yet agnostic believers in
spirituality.
I have absolutely nothing against these terms. They are all
equally adequate as well as inadequate definitions of the definition-less.
Culturally, though not theologically, I am a Hindu but having been brought up
in a secular environment where there was enough space to embrace my own sense
of spirituality and at the same time learn to not discard other people's
beliefs, I have my own Personal God. Agnostic (Agnostic Theist) by belief, if
somebody asks me about my God, I would say I believe in a God who is not
judgmental and dosent expect money or other rites in return for His patience
and Presence. He would also never get angry if you were not able to attend mass
one Sunday or committed a folly which is quite human and would never ask you to
roll on the ground as penance for the very same. ‘I believe in a Magnificent God’.
‘God’ to me is a warm term. A Presence so Personal that even the
absence of its physicality does not bring in any element of Non-Personality. My
God is ‘The King of the Dark Chamber’ as Tagore says where the dark chamber is
my own conscience and my God can be seen only when I close myself in my Dark
Chamber. He is a Ponder. An Experience of Stability for a few split seconds
amidst the testing moments of a destructively chaotic life.
I am not coming to the most popularly arrived at conclusion that
God is an Abstract or that His definitions are the same in every Religion
though they manifest differently. In fact I am not trying to draw inferences or
derivations at all.
Rather, on a very personal note, I would like to make an honest
account of how I have reached out and connected to My God. I have seen God.
Felt Him and conversed with Him.
Every night when I lay alone in my bed, the remoteness of my room
tells me My God is breathing in me which is why I survive the lonely night.(The
loneliness here has nothing to do with my relationship status, the reference is
to the inescapable human loneliness which surfaces itself as the night
approaches) Every time I heave a sigh of relief after I wake up from a bad
dream, I thank God. Each time I find I have someone to push me forth and boost
my ego when I find myself totally lost, I know thats because My God sees
everything that is happening to me.
The vast and intriguing
nature as well as the small and simple decencies of human life all are filled
with a spiritual aura of serenity, which, to me is that of My God. My God is
the Pace of Time – Steady, always present but very Quiet.
This is not a romanticized description made exclusively for this
post but as I said, this honestly to me is My God. That entity which is
everywhere, that entity which can be both the molecule and the mass, that which
is both Life and Death is God for me.
Many ask- If God exists, how would you explain the suffering of
the poor? Well, I have no answer but I believe its all part of a larger design
which has its own balance and economics. Or to put it more specifically, I
don’t know why that happens.
God for me,is not an economist or a political activist. He is A
Quest and an Answer. A search for the self within the self. He is personal and
has nothing to do with social welfare or economic equality. He can be looked
for and found by anyone who seeks irrespective of the seeker’s social
condition.
My God is Smile, Tears, Love and Peace. He is the resurrected
Faith I carry after it gets demolished each time by the merciless thing called
life. He is the Willingness in me to Trust, to Forget and to Forgive(whenever I
can). He is the Stillness of my chaos and the pandemonium of my Silence.
I am Agnostic, but I have a God. And He is entirely Mine.
