This post is part of the my blog series non-duality.
In the previous article -
"Does God exist?", I shared about the reasons we look for the existence of God, and why this
question arises in most of us at one point or the other in our lives. Before
we explore the nature of the creation around us, it might be helpful to
inquire how humans/we've been searching for God, and what methods and logic
we've been employing over centuries to understand the nature and purpose of
our existence.
So, in what ways we search for
God or in what ways we try to understand ourselves? Is it any different than
the way we understand everything else in our life? For most of us, it is the
same. We search for God/self the same way we understand the world around
us.
"We experience everything in life through the lens of a subject,
object, and the action between the two"
When we are born, we don't have an understanding of who we are. As we grow
up, our parents, caretakers, society, and the communities around us shape an
image of who we are. As we grow older, we develop a clear sense of who "I"
am. At a very early age, we learn that there is someone called "I", that
exists separately from all other things that exist around us. The separation
between us and the objects leads to three distinct things in all our
experience. Let's take the example of looking at a phone. When we look at a
phone, there is I -- the subject who is looking, and then there is the phone
-- which is the object of our perception, and the third thing is the act of
perceiving the phone (seeing, hearing, and touching in this case). In this
example, our experience can be defined as I am looking at the
Phone through the act of perceiving through my eyes, ears, and
skin".
The subject, the object, and the act of perceiving the object. These are the
three things that drive our entire experience of life, whether we are
perceiving through our five senses (eyes/seeing, nose/smelling,
ears/hearing, mouth/tasting, and skin/sensing) or using our body to take
actions with our hands, legs, speech etc.
Whether we look to
understand the creation around us, do a self-inquiry, or look for the creator,
we employ the same approach of subject, object, and the act of perception
between subject and object. Human experience has been mostly understood
this way since the evolution of conscious humans.
We use the same model to search for God and to understand the world around us.
This lead to the evolution
of religions, philosophies, doctrines, spiritual practices, and other methods
that either look at God and self-realization from the perspective of a subject
(I), an object (God), or a combination/merging of both. Let's look a few of
these.
"Theistic religions believe that God/Deity exists as a separate entity
from ourselves (an external being/object)"
In line with the way we look at the world, we created a path of seeking with
religions, rituals, and practices that depict God as an object external to
us. Many theistic religions were developed with this belief of the existence
of a Supreme being or Deities as something (object) external to us. Most of
the mainstream religions of today are based on this belief. Some religions
believe in monotheism, where they believe in the existence of only one God.
Religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism are some of the
monotheistic religions. Other religions like Hinduism are polytheistic,
which believes in the existence of more than one God/Deity.
The core requirement for these religions, philosophies, and
doctrines is "belief". As this path expects the seekers to believe in
something outside them, belief is the foundations of these religions. The
existence of a Supreme being or the Deities can't be proven, so belief is a
necessary requirement to be able to follow these religions. For people who
have the affinity to place their belief and devotion wholeheartedly, this
path works wonderfully. Religions in this category have created prayer areas
with huge beautiful buildings, elaborate sacred rituals, created stories
about the miracles of the Supreme being/Deity, and detailed commandments and
rules to invoke belief in their followers.
This path also poses a challenge to the believers. As this path expects the
seekers and followers to believe in something that is outside them, and
place full belief in an entity which they have never experienced themselves,
even a slightest doubt in the existence of that external object will pose a
challenge for their practice. This is one of the main reasons why many young
people around the world these days are leaving mainstream religions which
their parents were able follow faithfully without doubt. It is impossible to
prove the existence of an external supreme being. So, it is challenging for
today's generations, who are leaning more towards knowledge and logic, and
they expect someone to prove the existence of God before they can place
their belief in it.
This path provides the seekers with a God or Supreme being that is perfect,
without any deficiency, and one with the purest and most noblest of
existences. They believe that by following all the necessary rules, morals,
and commandments, they will go to heaven and they will be taken care of by
God.
Some others developed practises and traditions that are inward
looking at the subject of our experience, "I"
Another path also emerged that focused on finding God and understand the
deeper purpose of our life by looking inwards, towards the subject of the
experience, that is "I". This path focused more on self-inquiry, looking
inwards, and realizing the nature of self. Many practices were developed to
achieve this. Some of the mainstream philosophies and practices that were
developed on this path are Buddhism, Jainism, Yoga, Sankhya etc.
Various practices and infrastructures like monasteries and meditation
centres were developed to help the inward seeking people. People come
to this path after realizing that they must look inwards before they look
for God anywhere else. However, it is challenging for many people to stay on
this path as we are used to experiencing the world through objects. So these
seekers developed sub-practices and traditions to create an external object
out of these purely inward looking practices. One example of this is
Buddhism. Many Buddhist traditions around the world believe Buddha as a God
(external object) and worship him. Even though Buddha's teachings were
primarily focused on self-inquiry, followers created their own traditions
around it that are in line with their way of looking at the world.
This inward looking path doesn't have the need to believe in the existence of
God. As this path looks inwards, the requirement for this path is to believe
that "I" exist, which almost all of us can do without any doubt. This path
however raises a key question -- what happens after we die? Our impermanence
is the biggest challenge to this path. Even if we realize God within, what
happens when we die, when our body disappears? Impermanence is an issue for
these seekers. As seekers on these paths advance, they try to solve the
problem of impermanence by creating an ultimate goal to liberate themselves
from the cycles of birth and death and merge with eternity.
"A third path called a non-dual path also emerged that believed in the
interconnectedness of everything and that there is no duality (no
two things)"
In addition to practices that focus on an external God and paths that focus
on self-realization, a third path also emerged in human seeking. A non-dual
path, which is based on the idea that everything is interconnected and that
there is no duality (no two things). These paths are mostly intellectual
practices/philosophies. Many of these traditions developed around the world
both as independent traditions and also as sub-set of other dualistic or
self-inquiring paths. Some of these paths are Advaita-Vedanta,
Daoism/Taoism, Confucianism, Sufism, Mystical Christianity etc.
Whichever path one chooses, follows, or gets attracted to at any given point
in their life, one thing is common in all these paths -- the seeker, that is
"I". It is an undeniable fact that the limits and extent to which one can
understand anything in life is limited to their understanding of themselves.
So, before one takes up any path or a religious practice, for practicing the
presence of God or a path of self-inquiry, I think it is of paramount
importance that one gets a clarity to the question "Who am I?" I will try
and discuss this topic in my next blog. Please stay tuned!
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