God created us in his form, they say. If they were to be believed then God comes across as a fairly racist chap. For the argument appears to be just another ruse to underline the supremacy of white race and its religion. Michelangelo and De Vinci were also party to the crime, and so all the images of Gods, angels and the cherubs too have a very fair skin. Even Adam and Eve are not rendered in beautiful black though the mankind originated in Africa. But every religion and its churches have always sought to muzzle the voices of science and reason.

It remains to be debated if there is God and if there is spirit, without which there could be no religion and no spirituality.

Since touching and seeing is believing, till date there is no conclusive evidence of existence of either God, abominable snowman or the aliens. The stories of sighting God are as credible as those of sighting Elvis and UFOs. There is absolutely no way to ascertain until the apparition is caught in flesh and blood. Until then God remains a hallucination and a figment of ripe imagination that could be seen only with the mind’s eye. The phenomenon and its experience is an entirely subjective one based only on personal belief. And so God seems to be there for those who wish to believe in it without seeing it; and at the same time it is not there if we wish not to believe. If Einstein entertained thoughts about God’s existence then probably God did exist within the realm of Einstein’s individual experience and imagination. And if Darwin was convinced that there is no such power, which is separate from nature and its sciences, then he was right too. God is a very personal and individual idea and so there could be as many forms of God as there are believers. Whatever it may be, God is not a reality but is definitely here to stay as long as there is human imagination. Animals and robots are enviable carefree spirits who would never know the fear of God.

This fearful God and his adversary the Satan, who is friendlier and more accessible, are neighbors occupying the most notable addresses within the human mind. I was stunned when I listened to Dr. Abid Hussain, ex-Ambassador of India to US, say that it is the masterstroke of Vedanta Philosophy, which rules that God & Satan do not exist without us but both are very much within us. Both are creations as well as properties of our mind that determine our actions depending on which one is in the ruling coalition. If we choose to vote in the Satan for the top job then our thoughts, words and actions are satanic at best. God finds himself sitting mostly in the opposition and vainly opposing the passing of motions and laws that suit the devil’s workshop. On very rare occasions the better half seems to take over and strangely we become the blithe spirits that choose to do the right thing and spread joy and sunshine all around us. Those moments are almost always the ones when we are busy tending to our work or to our family or to some other charitable and pious endeavor. Therefore the importance of work, worship, prayer and philanthropy cannot be stressed more. It is the power of belief and of prayer that helps us overpower the Satan and to put a brave front whenever we are faced with afflictions, calamities and tyrants; the problems beyond the power of an individual and of modern sciences. The faith is the last refuge and is also a fortress that keeps the Satan from infiltrating our minds.

Faith is power. It is the sort of power that gives strength to a mother to lift the burning wreckage of a car and save her baby trapped underneath and gives strength to an ordinary father to move mountains to care for his family. But even faith is powerless when it is in the clutches of Religion and Church. Faith and Religion are not one and the same and I will dwell on that at length in a separate article dedicated to reclaiming of true faith. For now it would suffice to say that if faith is a need and a beautiful creation of human mind that yearns for God & soul then religion is a hegemony created by the satanic mind, which seeks to overpower the God and the faithful.

Niyanta Deshpande
Tokyo, Japan