Who’s the potter pray and who the pot?

    The theory of the presence of a God increases the impact of suffering in human existence.

    As I begin writing on this controversial topic, let me list down a few facts.

I had been a practising Hindu for over 18 years.
I had been a practising Spiritualist for over 4 years.
I had been a practising Christian for an year and a half.

    I was a Hindu by birth. The Hindu codes of conduct were inculcated in me from childhood. The Hindu methods of worship were religiously followed at home and were imbibed by me with great respect. I was taught to revere older people and their words whether they made sense or not. As older people gained a status of authority their words became law.

    As I grew older, I chose my own deities to worship. Accordingly I was a pious devotee of the Hindu god Hanuman. My devotion went to the extent of circumambulating the Hanuman shrine abot 108 times every Saturday. I also performed several ritualistic poojas to Shirdi Sai Baba, Durga, Krishna and other gods in the pantheon. I knew several verses and incantations by heart and thought myself to be a chosen one who had gained knowledge of my own humility under these glorious gods. However, my prayers were continuously strewn with demands for this and that. Some of these demands came true, either by my hard work, or by human intervention. Yet, I would devoutly fulfil the prayers at the temple remembering the "favours" done by God. Sometimes some prayers went "unanswered" and I developed a kind of anger towards God. Now, I fought with God inside my head. I thought I was maintaining an excellent relationship with God for me to be able to quarrel with him whereas there were other lowly creatures who had not even realized his presence let alone quarrel with him! Now, God had begun misbehaving with my life. I fell sick and there were a horde of other troubles in my life. Now I was guilty if I had not prayed properly or if I had not fulfilled some of my vows to God. I was intensely angry with God and refused to pray. Thereafter I did not go back to idol worship or circumambulating shrines.

    The next level I went to was "spiritual" worship. Here I began recognizing what I called the power or supreme force or intelligence or divine guide or whatever shit you want to call it. I was trying to "connect" to this source of knowledge and inspiration. I began to see divinity in all of creation including human beings (which was a terrible mistake as I later realized.) Now, I turned into a blob of mush and sentiment. I was full of love and compassion. Anything and everything moved me to tears especially whatever I deemed to be a "sign" from the divine power. I had been a chosen one among the rest of the lower mortals who went about their materialistic ways.

    Then came Jiddu Krishnamurty. Though I have immense respect for his philosophies till today and have developed most of my ideas based in the revelations his writings gave me, as such J.K. turned me into a spineless, complacent piece of goo. The "acceptance of all things idea" that J.K. had inspired me to adopt and the power he had given me to accept meaningless things, had turned me into a non-aspirer with no ambitions. Life was at a standstill. There I stopped and went back to living a very materialistic and sensory life. This was when another set of hallucinations occupied my mind.

    Christ. I still may not deny the presence of Christ. He had been so deeply developed and well-imagined in my system that I cannot imagine him away. I still believe I love him. Like Pygmalion, it was a relationship I created and loved. Until disillusionment that is. Sometime in my life when I was introduced to existentialism and absurd theatre, I began to see "reality". As such previously aware of J.K.'s school of thought living in "reality" has never been a problem, though I often choose to be in the fantasy world. It is a "choice" however. Now, after absurd theatre, it was inevitable to observe the absurdity of life.

To me "God" is a supreme form of mental delusion and "Religion" is socially-approved madness. It is a fantasy that carries people to a stage where others pointing out to their madness angers them and their fantasies may lead them even to murder. It is mass hallucination. There IS no GOD. For saying this, I might have to answer a hundred people who have absolutely no proof to the existence of a God. Talking of "leap of faith" I too believed that it was required to believe in God without reasoning it out. I dont see any rational method for believing in God. There is nothing rational about it. Anything rational cannot support a meaningless and illusion-based concept such as God.

    Now coming to my title, the presence of a figure called "God" does not alleviate the problems of human kind except probably as an emotional crutch or as a form of escapism. On the other hand, god and godhood and the promises it delivers, substantially increase the impact of a problem in a human mind. To elaborate on this I would like to put down a few points:

1. The presence of "a god" or "gods" makes man believe that the source of his troubles is outside of himself and someone who controls his life has a hand in it.

2. The presence of "a god" or "gods" makes man search for solutions to his troubles outside himself i.e. at a temple or in front of a stone statue.

3. The anger that wells up within a man at the time of trouble is doubled by the thought of the presence of an inactive, misfiring or malfunctioning god or gods.

4. The guilt manipulation done in the name of God is incredible and destructive to a man's psyche.

I think the most ridiculous thing about mankind is its belief in God. It is the most idle and unproductive preoccupation of human minds. On the one hand, the God system requires extreme imagination and self-deceptive conviction towards a nonexistent variable. On the other hand, it is the most unimaginative form of human conditioned response. How many times do people call out to "God" without the slightest shame of calling out to a non-entity. How many of us can call out to a "Ablichiomes" or a "Diplodocus" in that fashion, though the latter even has some evidence of having existed? (The "Ablichiomes" is thoroughly a figment of my imagination though I won't prohibit to you its usage for any idle preoccupation or for making money. I am already being termed "insane" by you.)

The God belief system has certainly become a source of productive income for a bunch of conmen who call themselves godmen. Religion is nothing short of organized fraudulence. The theory of God is the most successful invention of the human mind and the absolutely well-masked absurdity of all times.