I am not a religious person. I
believe in no ‘devils’ and hence I find no need for ‘god’. Upanishads, the ancient Indian book, tries
to answer what god means in a different way, and somehow I happen to like it. Again the poetry
of Upanishads is open to interpretation, and each individual can interpret it
in the way they like. Religious thoughts did not
attract me to the ‘Upanishads’, rather I found it as a window to the mind of
our ancestors. I expected mythologies, rituals, 330 million gods. Isn't that what Hinduism is all about? But, what I
found was something that I did not expect. Yes there were rituals; yes there
were mythologies, but they only acted as spice to a rich underlying philosophy
coming out of the brilliant minds of the bygone era. The philosophies have been
passed down the generations for centuries orally and would not have survived
without the spices. But what is interesting is the amount of research these people
have done on the human psychology at that time. Human beings quest to know why we are here, to know who put us here, when it all began.....the ultimate truth, is probably as old as humans themselves. Even Vedas questioned:
RV 10.129
1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no
realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water
there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign
was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature:
apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in dark, All was
indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great
power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the
primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the
existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was
above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action
here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it
was born and whence comes this
creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows
then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed
it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily
knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
Gods came later? Does that mean they did not create us?
