CORONA MONOLOGUE (8) -By N P Samal

MY GOD, YOUR GOD

A theist, or a monotheistic, or a polytheist, or a heathen... A fundamentalist, or an evangelist, or a prorselytizer... A die-hard, or a convert, or a secular... A Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Sikh, or a Jew, or a Zoroastrian... 

You may be one from the above list, or all. But definitely, you are not an atheist, or an agnostic, or an infidel, or a pagan, or a savage. There is God in you. If there is Lord Krishna in you, you are a Hindu. If there is Allah in you, you are a Muslim. If there is Jesus in you, you are a Christian... Just wait. Can there be God inside a human body? May He be. I admit there is a God within your body. But I swear, there is no God in me. God cannot live within my body. I know I am impure. I know I am not sacred. My body contains filth, toxins, impurities and germs. I smell foul. Headaches, heartaches, stomachaches, backaches,  arthritis, maladies, diseases - all have made their burrows in my body. My mind is filled with anger, hatred, greed, envy, pride, lust, self-conceit... How can God live in this odious place? My body is too profane for God to live in. And, therefore, no God - your's or another's - can dwell in my body even for a second.

Where there is godliness, there is cleanliness. Where there is cleanliness, there is godliness. If our body and mind are clean and pure, there may be God in us. Here I draw the asterisk : If there is God in us, why do we then keep Him in temples, mosques, churches and in other places? Why do we go there to worship Him? Why do we not worship Him within ourselves? Whatever, being an ordinary mortal, I am not a Fidel to argue against God living inside your body or in places of worship. I am too improper to comment that your body is impure like mine. Moreover,  I am too ignorant to know the choice of God. It is God Himself who can choose where to live - in a neat-and-clean place or in filth and miasma.

However,if, at all, God is living in every human body, is it the same God, or there are different Gods? If the same God, why do humans differ from one another? Why are there differences in beliefs? Why are there differences in practices? Why do some humans live in luxuries, and some in miseries? Why do some laugh throughout their life, and some cry to death? Why do some humans master others, and some serve others? 

Let's accept there are different Gods living in different bodies. But how many different Gods can there be? And how do Gods distribute among themselves who will go to luxurious bodies, and who to miserable bodies? Or who will go to master bodies and who to servant bodies? Or who will go to male bodies, and who to female bodies? Moreover, the number of human beings has reached seven billion plus and increasing by the second! Are new Gods created or same Gods multiplied? Anyway, be it the same God or different Gods, you do know there is your God living within you.

Is God in you active or passive? Does He control you or obey you? Does He acknowledge your good deeds?  Does He advise you against bad deeds? Does He admire your righteous deeds?  Does He condemn your wrongful deeds? Does He acquiesce in your bad deeds? Is He subjected to your authority? How do you wish Him to be? Do you want Him be a promoter of your self or critic? However, you own your body and mind. There is your God in you. I must not question your sovereignty. But please be honest. Do you have answers to the above questions? I know you will parry them. I know you will define God differently and explain the questions over. I acknowledge your intellectualism. I do admit you are capable of defining God. But you state that God is indefinable! You state that God is infinite! You state that God is formless! Then, how can you define God? How can you standardize God? Well, because God is omnipresent, so you assume God will be there within your body? But what is good in God's living in the human body if the body is servile to demons? Are you sure that your actions and behaviors are guided by God, and that you are not demonic or inhumanly? Have you ever counted your virtues and vices? Are you sure that you are not in possession of vices?

Endless scientific reasons are there against  Myths of God living in you. ( I may favor His 'intra-human habitation' for emotional reasons. But our God-related emotions are not congenital. They have been forced upon you since you dropped out of the womb.) It is a fact that we all are humans. If at all God lives, He may be living in Nature, or at best in humanity, but in no case in humans. Humans without humanity are place of demons, not of God. You feel this. I feel this. Although, I do not know if humanity can be divided by God or Gods. 

Commonly we believe that God is limitless. He is larger than the universe. The whole Creation is contained in Him. He is the Creator of the whole things contained in the Creation - the tangible,  the intangible; the visible, the invisible; the reachable, the unreachable; the conceivable, the inconceivable; the living, the non-living... He is the Whole. He is the Infinity. But Hindus believe the Infinity is Lord Vishnu. Muslims believe the Infinity is Allah. Christians believe the Infinity is Jesus... Do all Gods together form the Infinity and share the same Infinity? Or, are there different Infinities? Are they, as we believe, the same Infinity in different names? Or, one God in different names? Or, one God in different religions? Or, one God in different ideologies? Whatever, what happens when a Hindu becomes a Christian, or a Christian becomes a Muslim...? How does a convert draw the Infinity on his new God? Can the Infinity, or the ideas of the Creation, change when you change your belief from one religion to another?

Who created whom - God humans or humans God? If God created humans, did He create them with religions? Did He create one kind of humans or different kinds? Did He create one religion or different religions? Whatever, do never nurture the idea that humans created God. Dare not propound this. There could be the Fourth World War over religions, not over water as has been presumed. 

God is nothing or He is everything. He may be microcosmic, or He may be macrocosmic. But, above all, He is transcendental. Human mind cannot reach the Divine Transcendence. God is beyond human comprehension. Every human is too infinitesimal and short-lived to involve the Eternal in the temporal, the Infinite in the finite, and the Undefinable in the defined.

God is living in your body or in the heaven is immaterial to think at best. You yourself sometimes doubt if really there is God in you. You may have a belief that God has protected you from many dangers and fulfilled your wishes, yet you also have a number of experiences when you have cursed God and questioned His existence. You know God has gone with your actions to both success as well as failure. You know you have fluctuating faith in God. You know things have happened in your favor even if you did not pray to God. You know things have never happened even if you have smashed your head at the feet of God. So do I. So do my experiences. God does not exist for you or for me at all. And it is gospelic we will prosper with the same God, if there is God at all, or with no God existing. But in no case, there can be one God for you and another God for me.

We do feel that in the present situation when the Pandemic is running riot, God has lost His relevance. Where are religious leaders? Where are Gurus? Where are Shankaracharyas, the Mullah, the Pope, the Dalai Lama...? Where are babas, matas, demi-gods...? Are not all hiding? Just peep into their groove. Their body heaves. Their mind shivers. They do not allow their followers to touch their feet... The Hugging Mother does not hug. The embracing baba does not embrace. They themselves have lost faith in God. The deliverers of God themselves feel Godless. They know that God is not living in their body. They also do not know if there is any overhead God. They are the real filth. They are the bearers of many destructive viruses. God cannot live in their body. They stand one religion against another. They create confusion about God. They make people fatalistic and God-fearing. They create religious hatred. Thus they exploit people. Thus people get exploited.

From the beginning of the idea of God, He has been defined, undefined and differently defined time to time. The scriptures are misinterpreted. The persons those who wrote these scriptures are different. The persons those who interpret them are different. Both belong to different ages. Both belong to different earths. The makers of scriptures theorized the unreal. Their knowledge was confined and too shallow. The interpreters of scriptures put the unreal into practices in the present enlightened world. People of the modern scientific world are split between myths and facts. They believe science can some day replace God. But God has been so deep-rooted that His relevance is still epochal. But religious divides do not augur well for human future. This is the time we unified different ideologies. This is the time we combined our Gods. Hopefully, the time is coming when different Gods and different religions will be forfeited. But the civilization now is at a dangerous risk. Let's stop hating each other. Let's kill our paranoia which creates hatred. Let's stop violence against other religions. Let's think my God is your God and your God is my God. The pandemic has come, and will go. But the religious hatred has posed itself as the biggest threat to survival of the human race. It will never go. Let's kill it...

-- N. P. SAMAL, POET, AUTHOR, ACADEMIC