Why We Need Logics

Like most of the people of my generation and a lot from the older one too, I was clueless why we followed certain rituals and traditions. The cluelessness and the lack of reasoning created a chaos in my head and stopped me from following what we call our customs and traditions.

Being born in a family where father is an ardent follower of Arya Samaj and mother, a devotee of Durga, you have a choice to make, brain put to work, curiosity fuelled and you have a time of your life finding what is right and what is wrong!

Whereas my father said God has no form, I saw my mother worshipping deities. The little mind did not know which path to follow, though the ‘One Power’ concept left a deep indentation in the heart and mind.

Where does God live? Would God be unhappy if I didn’t do pooja? Doesn’t He already know that I love him and I respect him? Why we need to chant mantras? Answers that I got could not suffice the hunger of knowing the actual reasons behind them. And also there were certain rules related to religion that deeply infuriated me in my growing up years. I went out of my mind when I was told that I was not supposed to touch deities while on periods and no visiting holy places! I could not find any logic to support it.

I would think to myself if He has created me, I, in my entirety, belong to Him. He only made me this way. Mera achha bhi uska, mera bura bhi. Though it is not my bura, it is his science. And as always, I could not find answer for this too. Hence, I became a rebel. Rebel against religion.

I stopped visiting temples, stopped worshipping. It was my way of not surrendering to the illogical system that was supposed to be followed, with eyes blindfolded.

As I now discover on my journey to seek, I am awestruck and overwhelmed and left with goosebumps because all what I have seen, been told to do since childhood, which I had been reluctant to as there was no logic available to tell me the significance, turns out to be pure science and metaphysics.

Had I been aware of the relevance of those rituals, those little things that used to be a part of our daily life, the magnitude of its effect unknown to me at that time, I would have been in a different phase of life today. But nothing can beat the feeling of unearthing the meaning of life by your own self!

In archaic times, Hinduism used to be a full-fledged spiritual machinery. The customs followed were all backed by science, with eye-opening reasons behind them. Over a period of time, the spiritual culture of the land lost its form and age-old traditions got distorted. With Mughal invasions and later British rule, the close to nature and living with inner bliss format got inebriated to the extent that it became difficult for us to identify with our own selves. Things rounded off for social relevance, whole system twisted and turned to suit political and personal reasons. With significance unknown and relevance unfound, to me, it all looked like a religious melodrama.

Despite the fact that we are born in the land with highest level of human spiritual evolvement, we are ignorant of the very basics of it. We invariably ape the West, because our minds, our education system, our identity have simply become the byproducts of the British culture.

As the facts are unfolding, I feel blessed, contrary to what I have felt my entire life, to be born in a culture where everything is believed to be based on energy. We are all ‘Energy Beings,’ be it human or the whole cosmos, is the origin and foundation of the entire system. It’s my loss that I am discovering things now when I have lived almost half of my life. Rather late than never. At least I would not live the rest of it in ignorance. Never knew Nazar Utarna, a ritual that is done in almost all homes of India, is a simple and scientific process of cleaning one’s energies of negativity.

So this is what has happened to us modern Indians. We do things, if only we happen to do, not knowing why we are doing it, then slowly we lose interest and stop following, simply because we don’t know why we are doing it.

There are reasons more than one behind the conduct of women in periods and religion related saga. What is being followed till date is the distorted and beaten up form of a logical and functional system that was followed to suit ancient times, no more relevant but still dragged. It is like bullock carts were used once upon a time. Now that I have a car, still I need to put the bull in front to pull my car because that’s what our ancestors used to move around!

If we are smart enough not to let the bull pull the car, we need to be smart enough to sieve relevant from irrelevant in all spheres of life.

In an age where there were no appliances or technology to make life easy as it is now, people had to go through a lot of physical work unlike today. For instance, they did not have the convenience of opening a flour bag and getting the meal ready in minutes. They toiled really hard from the point of getting the grains to cleaning, washing, drying and grinding all by themselves. So women, to give their bodies rest, were waivered from such labour intensive work.

Earlier people lived surrounded by nature. The woman in menstruation was kept enclosed in a house because of the fear that wild animals might get attracted by the smell of the blood. So simple reasons like these necessitated that a woman be treated differently at that time which over centuries became a malpractice simply because things were followed and passed onto generations without knowing their very significance.

As I mentioned, it was all science based, visiting a holy place had a science too but after the Bhakti movement, the devotees’ emotions took over and the science behind visiting holy places got subdued. This is where the priests and the pandits became the owners of God. I chose to refrain from visiting a temple, even though wanting to, because of the malpractices and the conduct that priests generally have everywhere. Don’t they act as if they are the Gods there?!

One question that has always made me scratch my head is that why we need to visit a temple when the same idol I have at home. Looks like I found my Head & Shoulders :P

These days temples can be found in every nook and cranny of a city, under every peepal tree one can hold sight of, idea behind being acquiring the land and making religion a profitable business.

In olden times, temples were strategically placed to receive maximum energy from magnetic and electric wave distributions and copper plates were used to radiate it to the surroundings. Moreover, the sages and seers, the ancient spiritual scientists, infused the surroundings with the energies of the sacred mantras. Being in the presence of such force helped people lead a blissful, experiential life. This explained to me why I felt something different visiting certain holy places.

There are numerous other things like fasting, wearing tilak and sindoor, touching feet of the elderly, joining hands in namaste, all revolving around detoxifying the mind, body and soul, energizing the seven chakras and making one more receptive to the divine.

For proper functioning, lubrication is not only needed in joints, it is needed in life as well. Imagine what it would be to climb a fleet of stairs with a pair of bad knees. Climbing would not be much of an issue if one has been paying attention and working towards maintaining them. So not the incline, knees are what need more focus. I have identified the lubricant for my joints, please do find yours too!

We are born in a rich soil, things do go haywire sometimes. Not cribbing, not running away, not settling with what has been thrown your way but finding ways out, putting things back to track, getting connected to the roots, making your own path is what we need to get things sorted. It is just a matter of being aware. Know who you are! Dive within!

Simplify, Live Happy!