Kabir Deb
It is a journey towards decoding the Bhagavad Gita from the lens of a neurobiologist or a skeptic life science teacher.
The only thing that is similar between the room of a too religious human being and an atheist is that they both have walls around them between which an emptiness exists which they call as their home, but there are no windows or doors. The first verse in Gita where Dhritarashtra says:
धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः |
मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय ||1||
Now there can be numerous meanings of the same verse, but I’ll keep my opinion from the perspective of psychology since Gita is a book on human psychology. It says, to know something we’ve to participate in the process of knowing. The two words (धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे) of the verse speaks of the entire essence of Mahabharata. We’re surrounded by battles that very much belongs to the binary society of ours where we generally pick sides. Bhagavad Gita never speaks of anything that’s binary. It speaks of the many from the perspective of One; and of the One from the perspective of many because that’s how we live our life. That’s how we are.
The problem comes when we stop ourselves from going into the Kurukshetra to establish the truth. It can be my truth or your truth but both of them are a part of the eternal truth that exists in the form of matter/energy/universe/existence. Those who are way too religious lose the innocence that spirituality demands and for that the only thing that enters in their mind is the thought that someone else has cultivated or established. They do not go for the process of seeking or exploration. They do not believe in questioning the eternal truth even when the eternal truth has given us the mind so that we never fail to question him/her/it about the conflicts of the life we’re facing, and how to actually love the life we’re living. Bhagavad Gita never negates the idea of life, no matter how much it speaks of the soul. It always speaks of the value of the road/journey.
The same goes for those who are atheists, and I am not saying that “not-believing-in-God” is a crime or sin. It never was. It never is. It never will be. But the thing that makes them religious is that they’re so closed inside the realm of atheism that they forget that this whole institution or belief has become their religion. They have turned into fanatics just in the name of atheism. They keep on asking “Who’s God?”, “What’s God?”, “Where’s God?”, without understanding a simple thing that to know the divine one has to step into the periphery of the divine. You cannot just stand miles away and then question someone that I haven’t seen him so does he actually exist? That’s as ridiculous as any religious fanatic or extremist. Dharma isn’t about any divine offering or the land of the divine. It is simply the process of doing what we do, and through that we seek the divine which lies in the journey of doing what’s peaceful.
One cannot sit in a room, use the 10% of the brain (strictly neurobiologically speaking), and then believe that one has known the divine which many of us and our Godmen keep on doing. The divine is unknowable, and the process of knowing the unknowable is what gives us the joy because we’re on the journey of introspection and self – awareness. Similarly, those who say that the divine is nothing but an illusion have to understand that even they are using the limited extent of their mind which can easily speaking of worldly things but the entity that thrives everywhere in the form of energy, love, rage, compassion, empathy, etc., cannot be claimed as an illusion and that too without entering its periphery. The “too religious people” and “atheists” have knowledge, but they are not on the road of knowing.
Now one can easily ask me that what’s the basic difference between them? Knowledge comes from scriptures and textbooks or any book which we read to show someone that we know and to give us an identity based upon an ideology we believe in or a philosophy we claim that we’re children or masters of. But that’s knowledge and it ends with the pages of a textbook and thoughts that arises in the form of ripples. But when we are in the process of knowing, we are actually going through the scriptures and textbooks, but more than that, we’re trying to experience everything that’s going on around us to simply say that the idea isn’t greater than the experience. Religious warfares/oppression take place because they think they know everything and they can use the tool to call themselves superior and subsequently oppress the ones they think are inferior (but actually none of them are superior or inferior). Similarly, atheists become fanatics and try to pull down others, malign the thoughts of an innocent human being because they too have gained enormous knowledge but of someone who was/is a human being. May be it could be Kant or Sartre or Nietzsche anyone. They easily oppress/suppress/stop people from the process of knowing.
So I’d return to the basic verse that has been written in two lines but has a deep meaning which I don’t think anyone of us are actually implementing. So just leave everything that you believe. Religious or atheistic, it doesn’t matter. Just become a flower and bloom. Soak the water that comes in your way. Help the bees that depend on you without expecting anything from them. If they’ve to do something, in the form of pollination, leave it with them. If we’re full of love then Dharma will surely grow like anything. But for that one has to enter the Kurukshetra. If we keep on seeking evidence, but fail to seek answers that comes with the ripples inside our mind, then it is just like touching someone but failing to love her/him. Love doesn’t have an evidence to prove itself. Neither you can prove love. Yes, you can extract the hormones but that won’t be love. It’d be cruelty. If you dissect a flower, you’d miss its beauty. Spirituality is all about seeking love, compassion and peace. Nothing else. Period.
Kabir Deb is a poet, editor, author and content writer.