Existence of God

Perspective on God

ENGLISHPSYCHOLOGY

Shrey Kothavade

6/1/20243 min read

Who is god? Can we meet him? Can we plan a visit to god? Answers to all these questions are still uncertain or we can say they are unanswered. As a child, I used to ask my parents, “why should I pray to God?” They tried to explain some spiritual things, some facts but I was never satisfied with their answers. Google, YouTube, Yahoo platforms gave me strong arguments to fight on this with my parents. Atheist, the concept from western culture had a huge impact on me at that point of time. Frankly speaking, I really started to believe that there is no such thing as god.

A few years later, I started thinking about why do I not believe in god? Which landed me with the conclusion that I had Expectations from god, and people who argued that had the same base, they had expectations from god which were not fulfilled. So, the question arises what are we expecting from God? Are we expecting God to solve our day-to-day life problems? Or are we expecting God to make us healthy, successful, or rich? Or are we expecting God to solve all griefs in our life and make us happy forever?

Expectations from someone can bring us in a miserable condition. Expectations from someone might make us Lazy. We can relate this to the English idiom, ‘You reap as you sow’. If we keep expecting from someone, we will eventually become very lazy or we will take people for granted. The moment you stop expecting anything from anyone, the question on God becomes irrelevant. Then why should we worship God?

Our problems in life, the want to get rich, successful, happy, or satisfied are all based on decisions we take in life and ‘Karma’. As Newton's third law states, “Every action, has an equal and opposite reaction”, same goes with Karma. The actions we do or the decisions we take in our day-to-day life are consequences of what is happening in our life. We take many decisions based on our intuition or brainstorm. But the decisions taken with a calm and peaceful mind are hard to regret further. A calm brain and a peaceful heart are the keys to healthy decisions and leading to a happy life. But then how are god and peacefulness related?

Fortunately, India is gifted with a great history, mythology and ancient scriptures. All of these depict various Gods who can help to reach that calmness that can eventually help us in taking decisions that we like or appreciate. India has the most amount of preserved ancient scriptures than the whole world combined. These scriptures state various ways to lead on the path of a healthy and happy life. Swami Vivekanand quoted this in one of his famous speeches, “As the streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked, or straight, all lead to thee.” Our scriptures depict various ways to attain that inner peace. Also, they portray numerous gods. Such as Lord Brahma is a symbol of the creator of the universe, Lord Krishna symbolizes maintenance of the universe and Lord Shiva symbolizes destroying power. Yoga techniques from India are now used by many celebrities as well as normal people from all over the world. Lord Yogeshwar is considered as Source of Yoga whereas Lord Shiva is considered as First Yogi. Do follow the teachings from God and worship them for their teachings. With time, people consider worshipping god based on their rituals and starts criticizing them too.

Humans have an average lifespan of 79 years on earth. Would we prefer this timespan to understand gods’ teachings? Or without understanding, criticize their teaching? You must believe in god is not what I am suggesting. Start attaining Inner peace through various methods such as yoga asana, meditation, etc. As you progress in these, your point of view towards god might change. Start with a clear mindset, and you don’t know whether you will end up being a believer of God or an atheist. Be Positive and Be Happy!

- Shrey Kothavade