Profile of a honey bee

2006-07-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

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Truth, God, Vedas and Shantaram

2006-01-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

Though I am not an avid book reader, I recently completed reading Shantaram by Gregory .D. Roberts. I would love to provide you with my views about the book. I would like to confess that this is an epic of a book. Although it looks intimidating at first due to its mammoth size, it is a great read. Despite its monstrous size, you never feel bored at any time and once you start reading it, you simply drift along with the book. The author maintains the rhythm of the book by incorporating various sub plots to keep the readers from getting bored.

I have personally gained a lot from this book. Apart from literary gains, this book has given me the answer to most of my questions. We commonly question the existence of God. Even those who do believe in God are unable to justify the reason for the natural calamities. They usually procrastinate by saying that it is God's test for the humans. We fail to understand the difference between what is true and what is believed to be true. What we believe to be absolute truth may not be so. We call it a truth for the sole reason that there is a high probability for it to be true which has been calculated based on the facts we have. All theories are based on some assumption or what we call as axioms(a self evident or universally recognized truth). This is quite similar to Vedas. The Vedas weren't written by anyone. They were the rules that existed even before man came on earth. These rules of living were jotted down by the sages so that the common man could read them too. For all those who think that Vedas is a treatise about religion, let me make it very clear that Hinduism originated from the Vedas and not the other way round (The Rig Veda is a book of science, and the only reason that we have not been able to understand the science in it is because of the layers of ignorance and misinterpretations that have accumulated over the millennia, says Roy in this intriguing book, Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism).

Something more about the Vedas:

At the earlier stages of spiritual evolution and metaphysical thought the Vedas mention the names of various gods and goddesses: Mitra, the Sun; Varuna, the god of night and of the blue sky; Dyu and Prithivi, the Sky and the Earth; Agni or fire god, the friend of all; Savitri, the Refulgent; Indra, the master of the universe; Vishnu (though not a major divinity in the Rig Veda), the measurer of the three worlds; and Aditi, the mother of all other gods (the Adityas).

Gradually, however, we come across a tendency towards extolling a god as the greatest, controlling all other divine entities. This marks the progress of man's concept of God or the ultimate Reality from polytheism to monotheism, ultimately leading to monism. That is why the Rig Vedic rishi asks: ' Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema? To what god shall we offer our oblations?' (1) And again, 'Ko dadarsha prathamam jayamanam? Who saw the first-born?' (1.164.4)

References:
Ref1

Ref2

Oops, sorry for the digression but I couldn't hold myself from converging the two views one by Gregory.D.Roberts and the other in our ancient Vedas. Coming back to the point, the author gives a "Resolution Theory" to explain the unexplained which I'll continue in my next post.

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Profile of a honey bee

Truth, God, Vedas and Shantaram