The Divine Classification
I think every thinking individual is troubled with existential questions about God, creation, life, death etc in some point of time in his/her (political correctness comes with it's share of pains) life. No I am not about to answer the BIG question "Does God exist?". That is an interesting question which does have interesting answerS. The plurality is the cause of all trouble. So let me indulge in a smaller problem,
What are the different types of Gods available to mankind.
The very basic form of divine classification is based on the number of Gods. Much like the the audio systems ; mono, stereo and surround sound. But there are indeed fundamental differences between Gods and audio systems; the mono is the popular God system. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all monotheist systems. The holy stereo system is less popular but important nonetheless. They believe in the existence of duals. If Bush were to form a holy system, it would be a stereo; "You are either with us or against us". Zoroastrianism is one such system. I don't completely understand why Christianity, Judaism and Islam do not belong to this category. They do have the concept of Satan. Trinity is the third form: left, right and sub-woofer. Both Christianity and Hinduism have the concept of trinity. Till we remain in the domain of finitely many Gods, Hinduism beats them all with 330, 000,000 Gods ; it is a truly surround sound experience. The Greeks and the Romans had only a few hundreds each.The other classification is based on gender:
- Male
- Female
- All of the above
- None of the above.
The more educated seem to have their owns notions about God. Here is another classification:
a) The traditional God.
b) The abstract God.
The traditional God is usually the one attached to a religion. The abstract God transcends religious boundaries; its the nature, the universe, the inexplicable, the collective consciousness. While traditional God is for the masses, the abstract God is for the intellectuals. The abstract God is explained by "scientific reasoning". The abstract God doesn't lean on the Bible, the Quran, the Torah or the Gita for support, it finds answers in quantum mechanics (science) , the human genome (life) and ofcourse the black hole ( ah! Mystery! ).
I should give myself a chance to speak now. I think that fundamentally there are two kinds of Gods:
- One who saves your ass when in trouble.
- One who does not save your ass when in trouble.
Is it reasonable to think that God would save your ass only when you believe in Him/Her/It and pray?
It becomes easy to answer profound existential questions if they are posed as simply as above.
5 comments:
330, 000,000 where did u get that number from...its amlost one unique god, per individual in america :)
Thats the number my Dad used to quote. But I have verified it. Search for "33 crore" in the link below
http://www.varnam.org/blog/archives/2004/12/true_liberation.html
I think whether or not it is reasonable to believe that God will only save your ass if you believe and pray depends upon what kind of being you imagine God to be.
If you imagine God to be a glorified, immortal (or at least with a much longer life span) human, then we could probably expect something like that.
When I was younger, I always told myself that if that's what God was, I wasn't going to pray to him.
If you believe that God is infinite and eternal, and that in His/Her eyes the span of a human life is naught more than the blink of an eye, then I imagine that God's ego wouldn't be as easily wounded.
This second point takes us back to the first, however, and might explain why it often seems that God is the first type of God, rather than the second. But to understand that, you also have to add the concept of the reincarnation of the soul, and assume that for the individual soul, our identity in one incarnation is not as significant as we tend to believe it to be.
If God, concerned only with our eventual (and inevitable?) mohska, can see that it will break down our ego (barrier to the experience of our divine nature) for us to have a life time in which we feel abandoned and forsaken by our creator, then God will do so.
It seems unfair and cruel, but only from the point of view of the ego.
Why are scientists so readily able to accept the idea of the reclycling of energy in the physical universe, but not the recycling of consciousness through it? I don't remember that the atoms and molecules that made me used to be a part of another object in the universe (though they most definitely were), yet it's inconceivable that I might not remember that I have lived another life in another time.
Seems a bit odd to me.
1. male
2. Female
3. All of the Above
4. None of the above
LOL! Could you please elaborate what options 3 and 4 mean? :)
3. Well in Hinduism, there is a deity called "Ardhanari" who is composed of Shiva (male) and Shakti (female).
4. In many religions (e.g. Islam) God does not have human qualities like gender.
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