On religious faith

"This happened in October of 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death. Naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should immediately go into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instant I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: you do not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a non-believer is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise, were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it."

- Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved.

Eternal gratitude to Gauphus for this.

Faith is...

...to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true.

A Season 3 episode of The Mentalist has made me think of faith. The episode speaks of a 'temple' where blind faith in the teaching and the teacher is advocated. Predictably, those in power are corrupt and take advantage of the 'flock'.

Echoes of many an exposé of such religious scams come to mind. The Catholic priests' paedophilia, brothel-monasteries, money-mongering saints - they're all quite... normal, so to speak. What makes me wonder, though, is the gravity with which we regard these scams - over other kinds. It seems that a betrayal of faith is greater than a Satyam-Maytas, or a political trade, or a havala; if all of these are of immense gravity, that is so people people's trust in them was betrayed.

I am aware that I am speaking of two things here: faith and trust. I am beginning with the assumption that faith (in something) is a necessary ingredient of trust. And in that vein, I have two things to talk about: the nature of faith, and the uses to which we put it.

Kant, one of the first (in my opinion) to actually bridge that unbridgeable gap between logic and the beautifully, heartbreakingly vulnerable human need for hope ("Hope, like love, needs constant nourishment to survive"), spoke of practical postulates. These were essentially unprovable, because no universal, concrete proof could be provided for them; religion/God or faith were his perfect examples. To Kant, unlike Descartes, God did not exist beyond proof of doubt. Descartes sought to ram it down our throats that if God were conceivable, He existed. The infallibility of human thought was his first false assmption. To Kant, however, the existence of God was necessitated by human need; it was not logical, scientific or mathematical certainty, and in the face of need, certainty had no place. Extrapolate that to any kind of faith (if you are an atheist or Agnostic) and one sees what Kant meant.

All religions, all faiths, all -isms exist to fill this practical gap. We all believe because we need to, though we may fill them differently. At the basest, most ignorant, surface level, we may disregard the need for this faith (and it is my assumption here that every one of us needs to create some meaning out of life, even when we find solace in the idea that life has no meaning) and spend lifetimes lost and anxious, with faith in ephemeral pleasures. We may have an inkling of this need, but no faith in ourselves, and so turn to a form of religion that advocates no autonomy (The Mentalist's blind faith is an example). Or we may, like Ayn Rand and yet not like her, seek faith in man's glory and achievement, and find faith in an egoistic form of ourselves. Or like Vedanta or Buddhism, we may seek that faith in a 'higher, more enlightened' Self. Whichever way we choose, that gap needs filling. The greater autonomy we allow ourselves to fill that gap - the greater choice and greater honesty (and knowledge is necessary for such honesty) to choose with - the greater respect we give to ourselves. Or so Kant says.

The uses to which we put faith. Varied, and as with all variety - both good and frightening. The best example I can think of right now is of religion, from Season 6 of The West Wing. Senator Vinick (a surprisingly and fabulously moderate Republican), when repeatedly questioned about his church-going activities, talks of what it means to have a separation between Church and State - and that is absolutely true, I think.

"I don't see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes."

When Christopher Hitchens accuses religion of being the cause of war, bloodshed and much unhappiness, he's not wrong, nor extreme. In the war for supremacy among faiths, we have sacrificed high ground and important things. Vague as that may sound, I am talking about the losing battle we fight against power, achievement and money. Faith in itself is a good thing - we need it and we can put it to good use. But to pick it up as a tool, violating Kant's Second Formulation, and to wield it for ulterior purposes (and here I stand for inherence and deontology over utilitarianism): that is when we lose our rights to good, beneficial faith. Praying won't bring that back.

Deepavali

It's Deepavali.

I used to be told that there were two ways of celebrating Deepavali. One was the conventional way, with family and friends, sweets and a feast, new clothes and crackers. This was routine every year, and Amma used to make the most incredibly tasty sweets and pass them around to stuffed mouths and greedy hands. Much before dawn, my sister and I would be wildly shaken awake, dragged to the temple and made to stand in the midst of the lights and chants and dressed-up women. And once that ritual was done, we'd race to join the kids in the neighbourhood, with pencil sparklers and catherine wheels and those pyramid sparkles. I remember our most glorious moments were when the umbrellas (ghostly pink and green and white) came floating down from the rockets we'd painstakingly lit and prodded upwards.

Then the day would pass like any other, though added bonuses of the best sort of food and payasam, and there would be Lakshmi Puja.

I learnt of the other way when I met S-ji. That way was/is intensely personal, and here, the symbolism and the hidden significance take the limelight, and ritual and crackers recede into the dim background. This is that significance that Wiki tries to condense into half a page, and something I have heard almost all my life with a strange and half-undeserving feeling.

Sitting around him on certain earmarked days, we would hear of how Deepavali is one of those days set apart in the Hindu calendar to remind man that material pursuits are shrouded in unreality and ephemerality, and that the Real was right here, way deep inside, and we were all looking in the wrong places. All one needed to do to realise this was rake away all that trash one called thoughts, for they blinded and blocked the truly important. Deepavali, with its Lakshmi Puja (for she is the Goddess of Wealth, and not merely material wealth), was an invocation to that inner light, and a festival to set aside material pursuits and start the spiritual journey.

I'm not sure I understood what he strove to make us understand, but then, perhaps that is secondary for the purposes of this post. All I'm required to know for now is, Deepavali is a festival of lights, and the lights are to be lit within and without.

Happy Deepavali. May you find your light.

Believing

Tup. Ttup. Tttup.

There is a woodpecker outside my window. I cannot see it, but its conversation with the birch breaks into my stuporous consciousness like a bomb into silence.

I can't see the birch now. My worktable isn't near the window. It used to be, looking out from that tiny perch onto a world exploding with colour and form.

That was the issue, of course. There is that part of the brain, which has heard it all from them, that tells me all of it - this splash of colour, this multitude of form - is... what is the word? Wrong. No... That's not it.

Unreal. Yeah. That's the word. All of this is unreal, they say. All that is tangible, all that I can see, taste, touch, smell and hear - everything unreal. It doesn't matter that I can see it; I must believe. Thinking is dangerous, you know.

And that is why my table was moved from the window, of course. If I were to see so much colour, I would have trouble believing what I am told. To believe that so much beauty is an illusion, that all of it is like ghosts in the netherworld, would be sacrilege, blasphemy... and well nigh impossible. The wall helps. It's stark white, and rectangular.

There are moments, naturally, when I wonder if this premise of unreality isn't too farfetched. But then, they wouldn't lie to me, would they? They said it's all for Truth - and what would one not give for Truth?

I'm still trying to find it, of course. It is a difficult path - it needs me to forget that I know so much, needs me to be blind to so much. But it'll be worth it, you know, in the end. Truth = happiness and everything you've ever wanted, they said - and how can it not be?

Meanwhile, I believe in what I am told.

The world is full of colour, but my wall is bare.