Sri Sangom's view:
According to me, there is no "spiritual path", but, so long as a person is unable to completely get rid of all the brain-washing accumulated during life through parents, religion, society and even by one's own erroneous judgments about god, religion, truth and all such related things, one will continue to go round and round around the very same things, very much like the bullock tied to the (old-world) oil-presser or சக்கு (cakku). This is very similar to the example of a geo-stationary satellite; what is required is to "break-free" of the gravitational pull of all the conventional wisdoms inculacted in us by parents, religion, society and even by one's own erroneous judgments about god. Then only we will become "Space Explorers" in the true sense.
My view:
1. Every one born in this world has to live here. He/she does not have the option "not to live here" and do something else.
2. He/she has to live in a society. This is again a given situation without any option available to choose from.
3. As a person lives in this world in a society he has to follow a certain rules and principles for the common good of the society and for his individual welfare. The later depends on the former. These principles are compiled as sastras. As time goes changes are incorporated in these sastras but with extreme caution because good and bad for the individual are relative to time.
4. Every one born here is not endowed with the same kind of intellect. Some are born with an inclination to delve deep into the happenings around them while some others just enjoy or suffer whatever is happening and live their life out. It is those who are inclined to think that have the problems of accumulation of burden of knowledge.
5. As time goes every knowledge leads you to just one question and that is the question which humans are trying to find an answer to for the last so many centuries. That question is this: What is all this cause and effect chain of phenomena that are happening around me? what is the root cause of all this? Is there a root cause at all? If there is a cause what is it like? can I not comprehend it? If I cannot why I can not? Or is it that these are all effects without a cause? Am I looking for a cause because I am used to only cause and effects? What kind of thought process will lead me to understand the riddle that says effects can be there without an ultimate cause? Am I capable or am I equipped to comprehend that thought process? Or is it that it is all a big dream and when the dream ends the substrate too just disappears.
6. When an individual is troubled by such questions without answers anywhere in sight he feels totally helpless. He looks into the archives. He finds that his suffering had been the suffering of many souls in the millennium past and they all had come to a certain conclusions as to the way in which this intractable problem has to be handled. The Hindus decided that they have to have an easily imaginable, perceivable and understandable anthropomorphous form as God entity so that they can get rid of the basic problem of comprehension and capture of the root cause to some extent. Then they found that they have been handed down answers to their daunting task in the scriptures as these scriptures were the quintessence of all the wisdom of wise men over centuries.
7. The individual in search of “truth” (the term truth is used to just denote the root cause which is being searched) in today’s world with a questioning mind finds that he can “willingly” and “deliberately” go with the thought processes of these past geniuses as long as it takes him somewhere because the negation of any root cause (the atheistic thought) leads him to a stone wall which these ancestors called the Sunya Vaada. While he is ready to accept the sunya vaada and conclude that there is no root cause and every thing comes to its end when it ends, he also wants to look at the alternative view point. Thus he comes to a religion and all that comes with it including the morals, the evil and good and the ever existing fight between the two, the God principle, the freedom or the tyranny that comes with the God principle depending on which religion you are looking at, the system of values, culture etc., etc.,
8.As long as the physical world and the myriad phenomena supported by the substrate of the physical world is dealt with, the man is perfectly at ease and is the master of the situation. This is because he is able to analyse and get to the root of the cause of all effects and all those phenomena are within his comprehension because of this cause effect coupling. He is comfortable dealing with them. Only when his questioning mind moves to the fundamental problem of the root cause of all that are there, he become uncomfortable because he deals with an entity (if at all it is there) which he is unable to comprehend or contain/mark/hold within certain boundaries. So he takes either the easy way out of denying the existence of the root cause or the other tortuous believer’s route.
9. I have gone through this dilemma for a long time (it was like a labour pain) in the beginning and had been in the denial mode for long. Rather I used to even use all my reasoning abilities and intelligence to find new theories to deny existence of a root cause. Then the sheer familiarity of those mental processes and the ultimate emptiness of that existence led me to recalibrate my tools. With those tools I went after the accumulated knowledge available to me from generations of ancestors in the form of scriptures. For this I had to learn a language right from its alphabets, as the material I wanted to look at was in that language and the language had unique nuances and syntax. When I had finally gone through the material I had the satisfaction of understanding the alternative to the stonewall. Yet the raw and intelligent animal in me says that after all even all this accumulated knowledge may not be really “true”. And I understand that because I love that animal in me and I know that it always has a point. As I am in command I tell myself what I have in those scriptures is better than having nothing or ending up in the stone wall. And there is another reason why these scriptures can be really speaking the “truth”. I find many other “minor truths” said there are really true and so the “major truth” revealed can not be untrue. This again is a logic of my intelligent mind and the scripture does not depend on this argument. I understand that.
10.I understand the Geo-stationary satellite well. It is geo-stationary because it appears to stay in one point in space relative to the rotating earth. In determining its orbiting speed the relative difference between its orbiting velocity and the orbiting velocity of earth are carefully calculated and the difference is factored into the orbiting speed of the satellite so that it remain “stationery” relative to earth. This is all science which the animal in me understands well. But there are many fundamental questions relating to the heavenly bodies for which I am unable to get the final answer and it is then that I feel miserable. I can not rest without finding the answer and it is then that I turn to the scriptures. The accumulated wisdom available there indicates to me a possibility and I am satisfied with that. When I accept the scripture there is another advantage that accrues to me. I can dispense with all that I have acquired and accumulated over time from scriptures, from science, from observation, from experience in the world etc., It is then that I go to my anthropomorphic entity (my creation for my convenience and yet all powerful-yes just that one word is enough to explain it) and say, hey! here I am. please take me. I have nothing with me. I am empty. LOL.
This post is for those who feels they find me explaining their plight some time in their life. Not for those who are immersed in the world and just live their lives out. LOL.
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