822. Befriend God…….!

Ours is a country where polytheism is followed. This polytheism was the source for many philosophies emerging and the sects getting the separate identity. Eternal Sanatana Dharma which was the way of life was split into many cults and sect with its own culture and tradition. This culture and tradition has given the strong identity to my country. We conceived it and follow it strictly and it has become our religion.  

We are because of what we believe in. The whole concept of this religion is because we lost interest in search for the answers of our existence and purpose of our birth. Our existence and purpose of our birth is such a complicated interrogation that we found it safe to put our faith on something we call “GOD”.

So we became “God Conceiving”. We wait wasting our lifespan believe that GOD will someday let us comprehend those secrets. Hence there is a constant need to keep GOD in good books. We became “God Adoring”.

We started to feel that if we do good, He will be pleased and will shower grace on us. Likewise anything wrong done would be punishable. The puranas were penned to justify this; God does good to those who do good to others. This led us to believe that if anything good happens in our lives it is due to helping others. 

The feel of fulfilment of helping others which a decade or two was called “Philanthropism” just faded. Right now it is just accumulate the good done to reciprocate for the good to be received. Thus all of us have become accountants auditing our actions and categorising them as good and bad.

The bad times encountered were obviously pointed to bad actions. To get relief from enduring the rough times we needed some remedy. Thus was Astrology conceived which branched out to numerology, gemology, palmistry, tarot reading, vaastu, fengshui and many more. The end result of this was a seeker who was “God Adoring” became “God Fearing”.

According to Hinduism the notion of morality is complex and God is not a wrathful person waiting to pounce on errant individuals. Amazingly the venal villains in our puranas, in fact, acquired their power as the grace from one God and it took another God to undo the damage and finish off that villains. Polytheism explained at the best.  

By endearing oneself to a particular God, He might grant boons that could make one invincible and fear no God. For example: Hiranyakasipu did obtain a boon that he would die neither in the day nor at night, neither inside a building nor outside, at the hands of neither man nor beast, neither by a weapon pierced or thrown at. And to outsmart the villain another God took an unimaginable form of half lion and half man came out of a pillar at dusk took the villain on to the threshold hurled him on His lap and ripped open his belly with His nails.     

The ultimate goal is not to fear God but to get God on our side. God-befriending is better than being God-fearing….just as Arjuna did……What say???