Discussion – God is not dead 2

Podcast

Any questions? Thank you again for inviting me for this part 2 of the discussion on God is not dead. So we will look at the broad issues raised in association with God is not dead, part 2, the Pure Flix movie. I will discuss the place of religion and faith in the public sphere today.

Yes. So a quick plot summary is that there is a university teacher who compares Jesus' teachings positively with Gandhi's teachings and Martin who talks about how Martin Luther King derived many of his teachings, many of his values and his teachings from Jesus' teachings and she is labelled for proselytising for teaching within her history class and an attempt is made to suspend her and then she mounts a defence hiring an attorney who gets various experts from the field. So it's interesting that the historical and the transcendental intersect at some level and the attempt to deny the historicity of the descent of the transcendental or the manifestation of the transcendental has repeatedly backfired.

Okay. Yeah, I think I need to unpack that. Across religious traditions, there have been talks, discussions of beings descending from a higher level.

In the Bhakti tradition, a foundational concept is avatar. Of course, now the word avatar has got a digital meaning wherein if we have a online group that is said to be our avatar, so you could say that it's a projection from this arena, from the physical arena that we live in to the digital arena. So, in that sense, commonality of the idea of transition, a descent is there in that sense of avatar also.

But avatar is primarily used for someone who descends from the spiritual arena to the material arena. So, now when such a descent happens, what we cannot prove and what we can prove has to be carefully understood. So, in general, the paranormal events and the normal events, we can differentiate between the two.

At the very least, we can establish whether such a person existed or not. So, in our tradition also, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were for some time rejected as just imaginary writings, as myths in the negative sense of the world. But now, the historical record strongly conveys that Krishna did exist.

The date when Krishna existed is open to debate and further investigation is required to make any definite statement about that. But still, the idea that Krishna existed is something which no mainstream scholar doubts. And same way, whether Jesus existed or not, that is something which is not a matter of doubt now.

Both Jesus and Krishna did exist. And, okay, so your question is, how far does establishing the historicity of Jesus or of Krishna, of the divine descents actually establish the validity of their essential message? Well, the two are different but still they are related. If the person didn't exist at all, then their entire message becomes a reconstruction or imagination by certain people with certain vested interests.

And that is definitely a deleterious idea for any believer because it's… Now, I do not even like the word believer. I would use the word practitioner because this is one difference I would stress between some mainstream versions of Christianity and some and the yoga tradition as is we understand it. The yoga traditions focus more on practise, not so much on beliefs.

Of course, some thinkers have gone, some thinkers of Hinduism have gone to the extreme of saying that Hinduism is characterised only by orthopraxy and not by orthodoxy. That means there is only emphasis on practise and ideology, doctrine. We can have anything, but I don't think that is true if we consider that India has had a tradition of vibrant intellectual discourse and debates wherein different philosophical schools of thought has strongly attempted to establish their superiority over other schools of thought.

So, the emphasis which I am stressing is on not so much on being a believer as being a practitioner is that the bhakti tradition focusses more on inspiring people to become practitioners than believers. Okay, so you want me to explore this further? Is belief not important? No. Belief, what we believe in is certainly important, but what we believe is reflected in how we live and what we believe is also transformed by how we live, by what we practise.

So, I think the key difference here is what is the stress. So, in many areas of Christianity, the idea that we believe in Jesus as our saviour is considered a central act of faith and it is considered a central connection with Jesus, which is the primary foundation for being saved and as is often shown in Christian narratives that a person at the end of life, even after living a full life of atheism has a deathbed conversion and that person will attain God, attain the grace of Jesus. Well, certainly to accept God at least at the time of death is better than to die rejecting Him.

But what goes to God and what takes us to God is primarily our consciousness and our consciousness is transformed not so much by what we believe but by how we live. So, just by accepting a certain belief system one doesn't necessarily become elevated. One doesn't necessarily learn to experience a higher reality and if we are still attached to the reality over here if our essential desires have not changed then even if we get to the kingdom of God that is the world where God is the king and everybody delights in God's glory but if we have not tasted that glory of God, if we have not relished that glory of God if we have not developed a longing to delight in that glory then eternity will become eternity of hell.

Without developing a taste for the glory of God eternity with God will not be eternal glory but will be eternal misery. So, in our tradition when we stress on encouraging people to be practitioners what that essentially means is that we adopt the practises by which gradually our consciousness gets elevated and transformed and unless we adopt that consciousness unless we adopt the practises that transform our consciousness our beliefs remain superficial and vulnerable to attacks by either sceptics at an intellectual level or to attacks by temptation at a socio-cultural level. See, there are two stages of belief that is Shraddha which is tender faith compared to a banana tree and there is Nishtha which is strong faith compared to a banyan tree and what takes us from what makes our raises our faith from tender to tough is practise.

So practitioners rise from tender the tender faith of Shraddha to the tough thick faith of Nishtha and what signifies the commencement of our spiritual journey is not being a believer having Shraddha but practising the processes that will raise our consciousness with associating with spiritually minded people and adopting spiritual practises ourselves. Yeah, I don't want to go in a tangential direction. I just wanted to highlight the difference between these two so that at least the basics are clear.

if somebody becomes a converted at death bed that's good that will elevate them but whether that will send them to eternal life with God that remains open to question because their consciousness has to become attached to that higher reality. Moving further if we consider some other issues would you like to discuss? Yes. Okay.

We are discussing how much the historicity matters. I would say it matters more in your tradition Christianity than my tradition because that stems from the difference between believers and practitioners. Our understanding would be that it is when we live a life of spiritual discipline when we practise spiritual disciplines that's what elevates us whereas if it is Jesus dying for us that is the central basis of our belief of our central basis of our spiritual elevation of our spiritual redemption then the act of his resurrection becomes important.

So do we accept his resurrection? I would have to think more and consult with scholars from my tradition who have studied Christianity extensively but I can make some points about it. Firstly that the dead continue to exist and the dead can manifest in certain forms is not deniable is not it can be accommodated within the bhakti worldview. The bhakti worldview explains that our existence at three levels body, mind and soul and at death the body is what is destroyed and is abandoned and the soul along with the mind go to the next destination in a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution and in this journey what happens essentially is that there are no rigid rules against turning back or staying back.

If a soul is very attached to a particular body or if a soul has a particular purpose that it desires to complete in the vicinity of the area where it has lived in its previous embodied condition then that soul may hover on in that area and that is what is called as ghosts. Now the word ghost definitely has a negative connotation but you see the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost in Christianity specifics again may be different about what that means but the point is that if a soul stays on in the particular area then the soul can sometimes in order to communicate with people in that area they can the soul can very well by the mind's subtle powers manifest a form similar to the form it had earlier by which people who knew that person in that previous life could recognise him. So that's for example a grandfather in a family after they die somebody may go to their room or their place where they've been staying and somebody might see a hazy form which looks like their form like the form of their grandfather and that figure might even speak some things and tell some things.

Now of course the point here is not to say that any sighting of any ghost or any claim of any paranormal communication is essentially true, not at all. The point here is that there is a possibility for explaining this within the bhakti worldview and so Jesus of course considered a tradition to be a prominent spiritual exponent. Swami Prabhupada called him our guru because he had so much love for God that he was ready to die, lay down his life for the service of God.

So with that understanding Jesus can have the mystic powers by which he can reappear in his body or reappear in a body that looks like his earlier body and by that he can communicate and give conviction to his followers. Okay, what about the empty grave? As I said I don't have any clear answers about this. With mystic powers that grave can the body can disappear also because ultimately the body is meant to disappear but normally the way it disappears is by it is burned in our tradition or it gets you could say reduced to earthly elements by interaction with the various bacteria and other things which live in the earth when the body is buried.

That's one way. So the disappearance of the body is something which is again possible although there is the concept of also great sages departing from this world in their self-same bodies and not leaving any body behind. And if somebody disappears like that then they are considered to be special.

So leaving the body behind with grace without attachment without fear is considered glorious and leaving the world without leaving any body behind is considered even more glorious. Whether they exist eternally in that body in a higher arena of existence or whether they have another bodily form in a higher arena of existence but just to demonstrate their transcendence their spiritual exaltedness they leave without any body that can be something which is variable so but irrespective of the specific mechanism by which resurrection happens resurrection is not incompatible with bhakti philosophy the bhakti worldview more important is that resurrection would not be the central basis of the faith it is not because at least in our tradition that Jesus rose that or a particular founder rose from the dead that should follow him it is because we are eternal spiritual beings and eternity is our right which we can claim by diligent practise which attracts higher grace and at higher grace leads to the success of our spiritual journey or so you are saying that the tradition the Christian traditions focus more on grace and we focus more on our human endeavours I wouldn't reduce it to that simple because even in the bhakti tradition human endeavour is not considered alone sufficient it is essential in most cases but it is the divine grace that enables us to do what we are not able to do and I would say it's not that different also because even Christianity without works is considered useless so maybe things are not that black and white but the stress on proving the historicity of certain characters and especially trying to prove the historicity of paranormal actions done by certain characters that is I wouldn't that is not so much there in our tradition in my tradition and yeah having said that historicity is not central at the same time it is a significant step forward in giving credibility preliminary credibility in sceptical eyes or even in inquisitive seriously inquisitive eyes to whatever is told in the tradition as I said earlier that if certain great teachers or great seers or some great avatars they didn't even exist then speaking anything based on then any teachings which are attributed to them they significantly lose their credibility because they become simply the poetic reflections of some anonymous intellectual experts having said that if you focus much that was personally dismissed as imaginary or even delusional has been later on discovered to be historical this applies to if you consider the western tradition it applies much more to geography described in the time of Jesus and before him in the Greco-Roman civilisation that existed at that time one major difference that I would like to point out here is availability of funds the focus on intellectual research to establish one's tradition on a sound intellectual foundation is a financially intensive endeavour although it's not a huge expenditure but still it's an expenditure and somehow that expenditure has not been done so much by the dharmic traditions current versions at least and that's why much archaeological research is pending even the government doesn't do much and because the government controls much of the archaeological society so private agents are not that inspired and even if they are realistically inspired they do not have the authorisation to do such research so could if there was a court case could we defend the historicity of Krishna and say yes could we defend the historicity of Ram yes to a lesser extent because Ram existed much earlier than Krishna both according to current historical accounts if at all they accept the historicity of Ram and definitely according to scriptural accounts but there are other figures whose historicity would become increasingly difficult to establish with the current levels of empirical research so and the strategy of establishing historicity through talking about descriptions by rival traditions who are critical of that tradition that has been adopted with respect to Krishna also so I think one argument that is used to establish the historicity of Jesus is that even proponents of other thoughts other schools of thought who did not accept Jesus teachings did not accept Jesus as a saviour who did not accept who were not adherents or proponents of Christianity but were its opponents even they may have accepted that a person called Jesus existed same way in the Indian tradition we have Jains and although Jains is a very small community in India currently there was a time when they were very prominent and Buddhists are very prominent Jains and Buddhists at one time had very vibrant very you could say vibrant on a positive note vehement on a negative note intellectual confrontations with apparent tradition that we now call as Hinduism and they have often criticised these eras of this tradition have often criticised the moral credentials of Krishna or even sometimes of Ram or some of his actions but none of them have challenged the idea have used the criticism that did he exist and we have to understand that these traditions I would say the historical validity of their criticism would be even more value would be more potent than similar testimonies for Jesus existence because Christianity was a new emerging religion and there was not much reason or threat or there was not much problem for at least the early generation of followers of other faith to criticise Christians because Christians were in minority they were being persecuted it was of course after the 4th century when the pagan Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire then unfortunately those Christians who got power used that to persecute their persecutors so this is an unfortunate example of how power corrupts yeah of course I'm not saying that all Christians are like that every tradition has had its saints and those who make us proud to belong to that tradition and every saint has had people and movements which make us feel embarrassed to belong to that tradition so the point I'm making here is that the rival traditions they criticise Krishna Jainism and Buddhism but they were emerging traditions and their very existence required them to establish their autonomy from the parent tradition from which they were break-offs and thus their criticism was quite transient but the fact that despite the strong strength of their criticism and despite the contextual necessity for them of such criticism none of them bring in the criticism that Krishna was a myth that Krishna didn't exist at all so that is a strong circumstantial evidence which can be used to establish the historicity of Krishna going further can we consider the idea that every one of us is ultimately going to have to make a choice so again in the movie the courage to stand for one's convictions that talking about Jesus as a great wisdom teacher there is nothing wrong even if you do it in a religious setting even in a non-religious setting in an academic setting I think that is a challenge which all religious traditions have and I don't think things are that bad in India of course I think things are that bad in America also is open to question movies generally have to for the purpose of dramatisation usually need to do some amount of exaggeration so the Ramayan in the Mahabharata and to some extent the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata so the Ramayan and Mahabharata are two epics that have shaped the Indian mind enormously and you will find references to them permeated across the breadth of the culture right from movies to songs to day-to-day conversations and so forth and could a teacher refer to these teachings and not be persecuted let's say yes it depends a lot on how they are presented are these presented as absolute truths that everyone has to accept or are these books presented as wisdom texts are these teachers presented as the composers or the central characters are they portrayed as characters with extraordinary virtues or extraordinary characters or just characters beyond the kin of the ordinary and the extraordinary that is transcendental characters so for example if you could say talk about Hanuman who is a servant of Ram Hanuman is considered the son of the moon god or of the wind god rather so now can he be can that particular aspect of his birth story be demonstrated only indirectly through many paintings many wall paintings and many correlating textual descriptions but that alone would not be enough for a sceptic so moving on the key thing is that the teachings are important and living the teachings is more important than believing so one practical principle that is often talked about which is not which can become a distortion if taken to an extreme is that when scripture was written is not as important as why it was written and when a particular teaching originated is not as important as the teaching itself when a central role that plays in this tradition in our tradition ok so your point is that whether the support community which how much of the appeal of religion is because of the social support system and do people need to rally together to support their the courageous practitioners of course one of the main reasons why people come to the spiritual is for the social we live in a fragmented society and people want a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves at a basic level the family unit gives them that sense but and when that is also broken the nuclear family is the smallest sustainable family unit but if even that is rejected then things become very difficult for people to continue on with so a major attraction of religion is the social support that people have but is it I agree with you your question is that can coming to God for social support backfire yes definitely because when we come for social support if we don't get what we want if somehow say a number of people in mainstream society who are unfavourable to us is more than the number of people who support us in our own community then that can lead to a feeling of victimisation also it can lead to a greater disturbance if somehow within the spiritual community that we are a part of within that there are frictions within that there are conflicts within that there are sometimes cold wars sometimes even hot wars so if we recognise that the social support the rallying of people for a particular cause that is the second aspect now to conclude the first point is that if the attraction to social leads to again the practises that strengthen our attraction to the spiritual to the transcendental then that is good attraction to the social should strengthen our attraction to the spiritual not be a substitute for it yes in general activism is important because by nature we as living beings are active and activism is a natural outpouring of our innate nature to be active and when there is spiritual activism then our activity becomes channelled for some purposeful cause which is bigger than ourselves in and that cause can make a contribution even in this world while also helping us establish a connection beyond this world so in general followers of traditions could be encouraged more and more toward activism towards recognising that unless we are active we can't move so your question is that how do we recognise when to be an activist and when to not be an activist actually for most of us for most people say choosing a particular path of path towards God is an act of courage but that doesn't intrinsically make us constantly courageous about everything about every aspect of our life courage has an aspect to it which is contextual and courage is an aspect to which it is intentional so most people today are interested in pragmatic spirituality that means spirituality that enables us to function that adds value to our life that makes our life in the world better therefore it makes pragmatic sense but a lot of people are not interested in that kind of spirituality or at least we see that if pragmatic spirituality is what people are practising then they will not be willing to make sacrifices they will not be willing to accept difficulties they will not be willing to become martyrs now of course it's not that one has to become a martyr certainly not the important thing is we have to grow spiritually and specifically how somebody will grow spiritually can vary from person to person depending on their situation and their disposition you cannot have a rigid formula for this still the principle that we will have to pay a price for our faith that is something which cannot be denied that is something which everyone of us has to accept and everyone of us has to make that choice sometimes it may come in a dramatic way with a lot at stake for many people and sometimes it may come in a less dramatic way through the small small choices that we have to make on a daily basis by recognising that the choices are just unavoidable for everyone of us if we are at least we have at least have the inspiration to sacrifice then that is something very beneficial all of us need inspiration all of us need models in our life all of us have an innate sense of excellence as well as an innate longing for excellence and if it becomes not just professional excellence but you could say ethical excellence spiritual excellence then whenever we have models of people who have that kind of excellence then they can help us to come out of our apathy and complacency and march toward excellence or at least take baby steps toward excellence if not march so the readiness to sacrifice is cardinal to spirituality to the journey toward God in fact we have to choose not necessarily between the world and God constantly but we have to choose the world choose God and then choose the world for God that means that even when we don't have to choose between the world and God we have to choose within the world for God the world is not a monolithic unit with everything bad or everything good and sometimes we have to choose things in the world which can enable us to connect ourselves better with God and connect others better with God so that choice is vital and to the extent we can get inspiration for making that choice to that extent we are well situated in our own personal spiritual lives we are progressive otherwise we stagnate or we may even become regressive we even move backward ok are there examples in my tradition of people today having to pay a heavy price for their spirituality yes certainly I think the levels of the sacrifice are never as dramatic are rarely as dramatic as are the as are often depicted in movies but one of the most heart wrenching things that I have observed is that is the challenges that the devotees and the bhakti yogis in the Hare Krishna movement faced when they were confronted with the persecution in the former Soviet Russia I recently met a person from the former USSR a lady who was she was a young girl and she discovered God at that time now of course she is in her 60s but she had to flee from her country because she was blacklisted and not only was she threatened but her whole family was threatened and at that time there were informers practically in every household and so for people at that time they had to sacrifice everything not just sacrifice their own safety sacrifice their own career sacrifice their own families but sacrificing their country and come to an entirely different country so that they could share they could practise and they could share to some extent the path that enriched their lives if we if nothing else see those who rise to extremely difficult challenges and have the courage of conviction can give us gratitude that we have it relatively easy in our practise of spirituality that we can move forward without any major obstructions from the outer world we are relatively speaking in the history of the world as we know it as compared to the previous century we are living in a much more peaceful world there are no world wars killing millions across the world today and most of the world even if it is materialistic it provides us reasonable facility to practise our faith and even if we don't become activists against the encroachment of the state and the leftist propaganda on our faith at the very least we can be grateful practitioners even if we can't be courageous activists we can at least be grateful practitioners even if not courageous activists that is something which we all are called to and we all need to do so when we keep making the small choices right consistently we keep growing and when the big choices do confront us the chance that we will the likelihood the probability that we will be able to draw on our inner resources to make that choice courageous choice that will be higher if we have made the small choices right previously if we haven't made the small choices right then making the big choice will be almost impossible and even if we do make the big choice and even if it is a dramatic choice the spiritual growth overall by that may not be that much because when there is a dramatic option then often it is our sense of specialness and to some extent we could say our ego that makes us do those things it is not necessarily our heart's commitment to the cause that makes us do those things so when we do when a special mimic challenge inspires conference us we may face it and it is definitely laudable if we face it but whether it is the ego's craving for specialness or the heart's courage of conviction that is motivating us to embrace that challenge is open to question in the daily challenges to choose God instead of the world whenever it becomes a competitor to God that is courage and we need to exercise that courage on a daily basis okay one last question yeah so does my tradition also say that when we turn that amidst tests God becomes silent yes and no sometimes we are tested by the external circumstances which bring us closer to God but sometimes when we when our emotion becomes disconnected or distance from God it is good to check our expectation if we are expecting God's answer on a particular terms and if you're not getting the answer in those terms we may feel that God is far away but if we desire to experience only his presence and are ready to experience it on what his terms or on whatever terms that he decides then his presence can be experienced much more on a much more regular and determined basis you can experience it so I would say that it is a very difficult phase when we are going through when we don't experience God but it is interesting idea that when the student is giving the test as was quoted there that the student is giving the test the teacher is the most silent we would say that this has this has a conception that God is not present within us or within us also the teacher and the student are different which is true but so we have to make the choice and sometimes the choice is not a moment's choice it is a choice that we have to consistently make moment after moment after moment and eventually the voice that has gone that seems to have gone mute will become active so how long it will take for it to become active we can't say and we need to have the patience to persevere so if we have experienced God's presence in the past and we see that not as an entitlement but we see it gratefully not that we deserve to experience God's presence but that gives conviction that it is for real and then we become ready to strive more to experience it that's how we can move forward in our inner journey and we can eventually transcend that dark night of the soul when not only is there darkness outside but there is also darkness inside when we can't see God's actions in the outer world and when we can't see his actions in our inner world also then we could say that it's a very difficult phase but again the three level model of the self can help us to make sense of that that the physical and the mental are different from the spiritual and God exists at the spiritual level this is a physical can distract us externally the mental can distract us internally and we see that not feeling his presence does not convey his absence rather it can be simply the active presence of the mind thank you again for giving me an opportunity for this discussion see you again for future discussions thank you and all the best.