Musings in the Dark

It was terrific rainy night, day, and, then a night again.
The splatter of the rain outside,
reminding the gone days of Kerala monsoon nights.
The rain beat severe on the roof, and all around outside
As dusk came sooner than it would,
I longed for the elixir of life.

Not to be left behind the lightning struck
the cymbal followed ;
all the lights went out ,the sweetness of dark dawned like sunrise.
And caressing the glass of amruth- I sat in the dark.

The candle burning bright
I saw the flame haughty and regale.
The air of immortality, and lordliness
unashamedly thrown around.

A tiny fly went past the flame.
And the little turbulence bend the flare.
Yet, accepting not its frailty, the flame jumped back with insolent vigour.
It then reminded me of men and women
who bask in the feel of omnipotence ,loudly denying their ephemeral existence!

I washed down my smile
with an added mouth full of the elixir, and
continued to watch the flame with the wryest smile I could bring about.
It began to rain and howl with more vigour, perhaps telling me,
fella, ‘you have a point’.

Stone Idols

Continuing with my reading the book I began a  few days ago on my train journey to Chennai and back, I stumbled upon another interesting piece – the essay was titled “Cartesian Thoughts on Hindu Stone Gods”, the theory of doubt being used to analyse an unknown phenomenon.

The essay begins with the statement that westerners were brought up learning to believe only what can be seen and to have faith only in what is experienced. Under the umbrella of logic and reason from Rene Descartes – the Mathematician, physicist and philosopher.

I reproduce an abstarct of the reading I had.

Those of us from the west are taught to disbelieve in the unnatural, the supernatural, and the religious and generally what is invisible to the eye. Many with Marxist leanings and touch of atheism. This is why many of us when we come to India , have difficulty with the way Hindus adore gods in statues .How in heaven can there be any divine presence in piece of stone ?

Yet a few westerners, instead of rejecting outright this pagan habit sustained for millennia, have tried to analyse it, using the very Cartesian logic with which we are endowed because of our education. One such person was Alexandra David – Neel, writer, explorer, and the first western woman to have explored Tibet way back in the 1940’s.

She remarked,” The energy which the Hindus project on the idol is not totally immateraial.The existence of the real or not of the deity is unimportant, what matters is the accumulation of psychic force in the idol ,a kind of charging a car battery. Once fully charged one can draw out energy from the battery. With the persistent devotion, adoration and frenzied prayers, the statue continues to get charged. Once fully charged one can draw energy out of it. This happens over centuries”.

Her summing up is simple, Gods are created by the energy emitted by the faith in their existence.

Will this rather scientific or unscientific explanation of idol worship be sufficient to convince disbelievers?

The fact is all religions however Cartesian they are, have their share of beliefs in the supernatural and unscientific. Is it more rational (than worshipping idols) to think, for instance. as Catholics do, that Mary conceived a child while a virgin, or that Christ came back from the dead and ascended physically to heaven, or that Muhammad  was transported to Paradise in the skies in a Golden Chariot sent specially  flown down, or the God of Moses inflicted plague on the hapless  subjects of the all powerful Pharaoh?

Descartes must be turning in his grave- the rational, logical thinking west!! (My quote)

Euripides

Euripides , the ancient Greek 480-406 BC- one of the three great tragedians of ancient Greek

literature;

How right Euripides was when he muttered -

The mob gets out of hand,

Runs wild, worse;

Than raging fire,

While the man who stands apart

Is called a coward!