The Essence Of God

Being born into a hindu family but one where too many rituals were never follwed(though very spiritual) I had enough liberty to think in an unbiased way about what religion and God meant, or more imporantly what they meant to me.

I have somehow never thought of God as any of the idols you get to see so often. Being a bengali the Durga puja has been a very important part of my growing years, but somehow these elaborate pujas and festivals have never been much about God and feeling Him (or Her) near as it has been about the pandal hopping or the hanging out with friends and cousins. Somehow in all that noise, the sound that would tell me the meaning of it all is lost.

So here it goes..I have never beieved in religion. It just doesn't make any sense to me. How can an institution ever define something so deeply engrained in my soul, that I myself have trouble understandig? How can it define so ordinarily and collectively such a distinctive part of God that is my soul. I agree that religions were established with the pure aim of benefiting people. But now if wars and hatred and intolerance of others is justified in its name then something has definitely gone gravely wrong.

If it were for me, I would have to agree with Mahatma Gandhi when he had said that there should be as many religions as people if you equate your connection with god as a religion. My god is mine alone in the sense that the way I feel about god I could never and would never expect anybody else to feel that way. Its unique as its pesonal. In moments of absolute aloneness it is this god in the form of your soul that gives you the answers you seek.

For me these moments of aloneness, absolute darkness is special, necessary even, to appreciate that incessantly burning glow I see before my eyes when I know I'm with Him. The glow that is overshadowed in the everyday hustle and bustle. The feeling that gives meaning and purpose to the otherwise mundane life we lead.

Its unwise to generalise and then to punish for not conforming to this generalisation. It is in my opinion a murder of the very essence of our love of God.