DID THE GOD ERR?-2

To an extent, the eternal struggle between good and evil can be understood once we understand the basic premises which we make about life. First premise, which we make, across the religions, is existence of afterlife. Second premise which can be taken into consideration is, the God gave us intelligence, thus power to decide what is right what is wrong, what is good what is bad, what is evil what is divine. Being intelligent, it can be easily assumed we don’t do anything which we consider bad, evil or sinful. Also we justify all our acts, anything that we can’t justify to ourselves is either not done or is not repeated, if at all we do that once.

Before you read any further take a break, just imagine no afterlife exists, we don’t have souls and we won’t be born again and then allow your intelligence to explore how you would like to live life.

No after life would mean that whatever we can do to make this life comfortable we should do that. After all the only purpose of being alive would then translate into eat drink and be merry. Only rules which define good bad or ugly will go around, what makes me wealthy, powerful and comfortable. Conspicuously absent would be the desire to do good karma, need to pray, time to meditate, being fair, truthful and upright.

Now add to this recipe the spice of your intelligence. You are not going to have after life and your intelligence lets you discriminate between good and bad. Everything that serves the purpose of making life more comfortable would be correct and good. Its ends, that would be important not means. Anything that lets me make enough money, amass enough power and have enough luxuries will be repeated and will not be put to any moral or ethical test.

Now, take the diametrically opposite view into consideration. Everyone is a soul and thus after life is inevitable. Either you will be born again or you will achieve salvation, this will be the result of your Karma which you do in the human life. Good karma will bring one closer to God and bad karma will lead to rebirth.

But, how do we decide what is good karma and what is bad karma. I am a vegetarian and eating meat is bad karma for me. For a non-vegetarian eating flesh is absolutely fine. The intelligence, the power to discriminate stands divided in such dilemmas. I repeat many actions which by the measure of others are inappropriate, but, my intelligence approves of it as good karma and thus I repeat it over a period of time.

Good karma is karma done as per the Gods will, and we all were taught this in childhood, don’t tell lies, don’t steal, don’t hurt anyone….. and so on. Gandhi outlined its opposite in form of seven deadly sins (Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Knowledge without Character, Commerce without Morality, Science without Humanity, Religion without Sacrifice and Politics without Principle). Great epics like Mhabharat and Ramayan bring out every possible sin a human can commit.

‘Saatwik’ is the best way of doing Karma the scriptures tell. Any karma failing the test of Saatwik way of life, which has been laid out by God himself and presented to us by many epics and saints in simple form will be good karma, rest all is bad karma and drifts us away from God.

Then, is it fear of God and fear of rebirth that should lead us to lead saatwik way of life? The answer is NO. Any God, religion or way of life which instils fear should be shunned as fear is one of the vices listed out by God himself. Its responsibility of mind (intelligence which discriminates between good and bad) towards the soul which shall take us in the direction of having Saatwik life.

Yet again, did the God create sin? No he did not, he created certain rules which we should follow if at all we should achieve emancipation. We fell outside the Lakshaman rekha of Saatwik rules and created sin.