Divination Ramblings...

No,I haven't turned a religious fellow all of a sudden...I just wanted to have a catchy Title for this post,but cudn't come up with anything else.Well,whoever said I was a creative genious,eh?hehe..

Theology is not a subject I dwell upon too much,not seriously on a personal level anyways.
I have declared myself to be an Agnostic on the Orkut profile,but that's because it was the closest which cud describe my thots abt religion and stuff,since I am not an out and out Atheist!

6th september was my birthday,tht was 5 days back.Incidentally,it was also the Ganesh Visarjan day.Talk abt an auspicious day,eh?Well,tht being the case,my mum tried to push me to go to the temple and offer my prayers since according to her such chances shudn't be spurned.
She knows my feelings abt this whole GOD thingie,but then i don't really blame her for trying.

I dont remember going to a temple and actually praying ever since I left school..One or two instances when I had to go to a friend's place 'coz he had Ganpati at his place..thts all.
Even then,I didnt really pray as such..Just imposing my presence for the sake of Conformity.
Ah, hypocrisy..more like cowardice,huh?But that was then,now my friends know how I feel,and I hope thy will spare me the ordeal!

My parents are your average religious ppl,we used to go to a temple every week on Fridays.For me and my siblings,tht was more like a family outing..I remember saying the 'Shubham Karoti' every day in the evening until I was in 7th Std.Not tht I was a religious person back then..It was more of a going thru the motions thing,ha!

Right since I was a kid,I had a very healthy apetite for reading..I could and used to read anything and everything I could lay my hands on in those days!Seeing this,my father had bought me some of those Ramayana,Mahabharata,Krishna,and other such story books for kids.
Boy,was I impressed..After that I can boast of even reading Shivlilamrut and other such puranas..I had started Dnyaneshwari too(Gosh!) but it was too boring to go on...

All these books and religious scriptures were ironically instrumental in moulding my present day philosophy.Then,it was interesting as a story,nothing GODly abt it..come on wat else do u expect from a 10 yr old kid?Later,when u start forming ur own opinions,when u start questioning things and stop believing in things blindly jsut 'coz someone says so in the name of god,I didnt find any satisfying answers..I had read a lot of material by then and not just these religious books.And I found myself laughing at the idea of believing in the existence of these deities and gods and goddesses...

Sure,there must be some supernatural existence which is the reason for the order and beauty around us..But attributing it to a whole array of 33 crore deities..I found it a bit preposterous .

The original Vedas prove that the Aryans were nature worshippers!Their chief deity was Indra,thts the rain god for ye ignorant ones!
Over the course of history,as their occupation changed and they became an agrarian economy,their deities changed too.Then came the rut in the society due to the caste system gaining ground..Here after we see the adevnt of Buddhism and Jainism.
Gautam Buddha and Mahavir were not gods..nor did they proclaim themselves to be the ONE or his Child as we see in Islam and Christianity..
But their followers made them out to be such..again the effect of passage of a lot of time.

Rituals began to be followed even in Buddhism and ppl were disillusioned.
The Aryan religion was revived by the upper caste Brahmins and that was the advent of Hinduism as we know it today..A rather clever ploy by the then caste Brahmins was the penning of these scriptures,puranas and Godification of some historic figures and battles(Ram,Krishna..its obvious guys!)..ppl began to take interest in this religion again.
This was the time of the codification of Manusmriti,too.

I dont want to comment on the rights and wrongs in this matter,after all it might have been a necessity a 1000 years back,we will never know.
What I know is that today you dont want to be bogged down by these rituals,traditions,stories and beliefs.

Some call it faith,well as long as u keep ur faith to urself,its no big deal!
I have been fortunate enuf to be born in a family,where they have never forced me to believe in something..The environment where i grew up was like any other typical middle class family in a city like Mumbai.
My dad had asked me just one question when I refused to go to a temple wth the family one day...
Did I believe in God??At tht time,I did..and to a some extent, i do even today.
But i was pretty sure even then,i dont believe in a particular god/deity and I told him so..Why shud I offer flowers,light a lamp and pray to a statue of stone or metal,when I dont think of it as God???I dont believe in Idol-worship...
He told me it was a way for people who don't bother abt such details, to base their faith on something or someone.As long as I was not an Atheist,he was fine wth it..
Well,I for one, was glad my dad understood me so well!!Can't say the same abt my mum,hehe..

Today,I am clear abt one thing.There's no need to name ur god as Rama,Krishna,Shiva,Allah or Jesus.If u want to pray,pray!But do it from ur heart.Just because u go to a temple regularly and recite some aarti or bhajan doesnt mean you have the right to tell others how they shud pray or wat they shud or shud not bliv in..
Intolerance which we see gaining so much acceptance in today's society is a direct result of these obsolete thought-processes, beliefs and rituals we follow blindly.There comes a feeling of smug superiority in oneself,leading to a thinking that all the rest are inferior to me while my way is the right way..
Some bastards even go all the way saying "My way or No way".Case in point..the Jehadis!

Frankly speaking tht is the only time when I pause to think abt god and such.Whenever there is a terror attack,one can't help but think of the fallacy in the basic principles,the basic values these ppl are brought up with.

To each his own,thts my funda..now if only, everyone starts following it too...*wink*