” As a source of objective morality,the bible is one of the worst books may have. It might be the very worst, in fact, if we didn’t also have the Quran”- Sam Harris.
Morality, like free will, is one of the most contentious themes of both serious, intellectual philosophy and our worldly, mundane lives. Deeply related to the enigma of free will, it has been intractable since the time men have debated about it. What is good and moral? What qualifies as a crime? Is capital punishment valid? Will a more efficient legal apparatus ensure a more moral society? It encompasses not only grave, nation-wide policy issues but also more practical, every-day dilemmas. Is it ok to lie if that benefits somebody? Is revolting against the tribe or community acceptable? Is an extra-marital affair forgivable? Throughout history, across time, all cultures and religions have pondered these quintessential questions in public forums and private, in civil disagreements or gory bloodbaths. Morality is such an innate part of human existence, so pertinent, that it evokes equal parts mystique, confusion and anger. The same combination of emotions that characterizes discussions about ‘God’.
All the world religions lay claim to a standard of morals, given to them by their ‘Gods’ as unbending laws. A variety of religions, with their variety of Gods and a variety of moral codes. Be it Catholicism’s canonical law, Islam’s Sharia, Judaism’s Halacha, or Buddhism’s Eight-fold path, they are as distinct as their conceptions of ‘God’ are. The notions of sin, guilt, hell, salvation and atonement are different in all. On the one hand Christianity speaks of the original sin by Adam, our forefather, for which all of humankind has been condemned to suffering. On the other, Islam refutes the notion of one man paying for another’s sin, making it an individual onus. While Christians laud Jesus Christ for dying on the cross to pay the debt for humanities’ sins, Judaism claims Jesus had to die that way because he claimed to be divine, which he was not.
In the Christian universe, there is an eternal hell, and the only way to you can save yourself from this eternal damnation is through belief in the ‘person’ of Jesus Christ. In the Islamic one, you can repent for atonement from hell, while in the Judaic Universe hell is not a very important idea at all. While Hinduism is pantheistic, and you can worship chosen idols from a panoply of ‘Gods’, Islam will punish this gross transgression of idolatry by death. On one hand Hinduism revels in its celestial excesses, and on the other Buddhism denies that ‘God’ or even the soul exists. On the one hand, material and emotional fulfillment, Artha and Kama, are two of the four important goals of life in Hinduism. On the other, desire of all kinds is the root of suffering, and hence avoidable for Buddhism. According to the Hindu conception of karma, your actions in your past births have decided the status of your current one, while Christianity claims this is the only life we have. Buddhism strongly endorses reincarnation, nowhere more evident than in their mystical ‘reincarnation hunt’; child successors of their spiritual orders. While Christians believe that they are defenseless sinners in the eyes of God, deserving his anger, Hindus feel paralysed by the karmas of their previous births.
What a bizarre irony! Each man’s existential questions are same, but the religious answers are an entire spectrum of contradictions. The same man, the same specie and yet such divergent ontologies, such disparate epistemologies. Such disparate ideas and methods, so different they distort the crux, the meaning of life itself in many ways.
Can such contradictory religions make claims to any kind of absolute moral standard? An objective one? Seems unlikely to anybody with an unbiased eye and no undying loyalties. There can be no doubt that all religions are products of the human mind. It is preposterous to think that Christians will eternally burn in hell for their sins while Hindus will take rebirths according to karma. Laughable that a Hindu can worship different Gods on different days while a Muslim can kill someone who draws a face for his God. How can it be possible? These are conceptions of different human minds, flights of fancy. Distortions of the truth. Oversimplifications. This is not in the least to decry or minimize the saints, the post-humans – the Buddha, Mohammed, Jesús, Krishna and the likes, the harbingers of these religions. Not at all.
All of them were speaking of Yoga but were sadly misunderstood
These men consummated their human existences, achieved the ultra-cognitive knowing, and ultra-sensory bliss which is the peak of the Yogic process and sought to tell about it to others. They told in every possible metaphorical language, the undescribable knowings of its ultra-cognition, and the unfelt pleasures of its ultra-sensory bliss. Words must have beggared description then as they do today because no vocabulary exists for adequate telling. How could they have described that which does not arise from the mind and senses? Where are the words for it, because words arise from and within mental and sensory frameworks, no? How could people who never knew this ultra-cognition, or felt this ultra-bliss understand? Can you describe the ocean to somebody who never saw more than a glass of water? How will you describe snow to someone who has never seen or felt it?
Imagine you traveled back in time to the seventeenth century to explain the internet to someone as sharp as Newton himself. You could simply say there is a worldwide virtual information platform arising from computer networks. You could try; you would draw a blank. Next you could give references to a library; not physical, but carried through air particles (sounds absurd even as one makes that analogy), which anyone can access through their individual tablet like portals (sounds like fantasy, does it not!). Effectively and not, you will have used many metaphors. Newton could dismiss you outright or openly vituperate your superstitious imaginings. Let’s say you carry some credibility and he believes you. However, in what ways would he understand it, or explain to others? He would use your metaphors, your analogies, taking them prima facie, because he has no way of comprehending a worldwide information network or a computer. He does not have the cognitive framework to think, understand, nor explain it to others as it actually is. Does he have the vocabulary for it? So even your metaphors will fail because he would literalize them, even if he is Newton, no?
No wonder all religions seem like fantastic, magical imaginings, which they are in their descriptions. So those who heard, the disciples and the translators, did not understand. As a result, they minimised these declarations, simplified them to make sense of it to themselves, and to preach to others, both. They reduced it to their own cognitive levels, to their own understanding, and gave birth to religion. Different people with their different cognitive aptitudes gave different interpretations of the one common Yogic phenomena. A phenomenon, an instinct as universal as hunger, thirst or sexuality. That innate, that primordial. Yet unknown, because it lies latent, dormant in most men.
Do you see then how different religions and their moral frameworks arose? These post-humans must have had different vocabularies, a different choice of words, and as we understood, different operating system types. Muhammed was a warrior type so he naturally must have spoken in the language of aggression, grit and self control, as must have Buddha. Krishna was a merchant, his language must have been sensuous and colorful, Jesus a labourer who must have talked of surrender, service and sacrifice. Moses the educator must have thought it best to share the same knowings in a set of commandments.
It is the people who heard who distorted them, twisted them to suit their own intelligence and power plays. No wonder the different religions! Remember the two- dimensional flatlanders from a previous blog who can see mere cross-sections of a three-dimensional entity? Many shadows, many cross-sections. Confusion. Relativity. Ontological excesses, dreaming up things that don’t exist. Just because they cannot see the third dimension themselves, just because they cannot perceive the whole.