Original Thinking

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Wednesday 18 July, 2007

By Vikas Vij 15:40 18/Jul/2007 1 Comment(s)
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Last year I took my little son to Nehru Planetorium situated at the "Teen Murti" House in New Delhi. A portion of Nehru's last will is inscribed in stone at the Teen Murti lawns, which stated as follows: "I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others."

Jawaharlal Nehru, even though a Brahmin (a "Pandit") by caste, was privately against all kinds of religious mumbo-jumbo that goes on in our world.

Several years ago, Nehru's famous book "Discovery of India" was turned into a 52-episode landmark serial called "Bharat - Ek Khoj" by Shyam Benegal. The title song of that serial was a stunner:

Srishti se pehley sat nahin thha
Asat bhi nahin, antariksh bhi nahin
Aakaash bhi nahin thha
Chhipa thha kya, kahaan, kisne dhakaa thha
Uss pal tou agam, atal jal bhi nahin thha...

Srishti ka kaun hai kartaa
Kartaa hai ya woh akartaa
Oonchey aasmaan mein rehta
Sadaa adrishya banaa rehta
Wohi sach-much mein jaanta
Ya woh bhi nahin jaanta
Hai kisi ko nahin pataa
Nahin pataa, nahin pataa, nahin pataa...

This song resonated in millions of Indian living rooms every Sunday morning for a year.

Pay close attention to the last 4 lines of the song, and to the emphasis on the words "Nahin pata, nahin pata, nahin pata...." These words constitute the original central philosophy of the East (the Rig Veda) as well as the West (the Socratic philosophy).

This incredible song is actually a translation of the "Creation Hymn" of the Rig Veda, that has continued to captivate the imagination of scholars for centuries all over the world. The Creation Hymn wonders about who or what (or some other pronoun that we don't know of) created the Universe.

Rig Veda, the oldest known scripture to man, is probably the only ancient collection of verses in the world that does not talk about God and His glory. It is the only book that encourages thought and a pursuit of knowledge, and not fearful belief.

The thinkers who sat by the banks of Indus, and sang the Creation Hymn, must have thought hard to crack the mystery of the Universe. Finally, finding no answers, they simply put a question-mark on the origin of Creation. They simply concluded: "We don't know." Just as the entire edifice of Western philosophy got based on these words of Socrates: "All I know is the fact of my ignorance."

The Rig Vedic thinkers did not provide misleading, imaginary or hallucinatory answers. Instead of answering the question for the sake of answering (and thereby cheating and robbing mankind of its ability to think), they left the question unanswered for the next generations to pursue it further. So that thinking, and not bhakti, would become the destiny of man.

Two thousand years after the Rig Veda, the Greek thinker Aristotle, once again thought hard about this question for a lifetime, and in the end he said that till mankind exists, men will continue to ask this question, but will not find an answer to it.

Two thousand years after Aristotle, Albert Einstein spent another lifetime trying to unravel the mystery of the Universe, and said in the end: "I feel like a child playing with pebbles on the shores of a limitless ocean."

By giving an imaginary answer like "God" to this unanswered question of Creation, is to murder thinking. Once thinking has been successfully murdered, then Bhakti enters.

At the most, we can use God as a hypothesis to help us lead to better answers. But to believe the hypothesis itself as the conclusion, is the end of thinking and the beginning of blind bhakti.

God is but a hypothesis, a theory. Seek, search, prove, demonstrate, and then arrive at a conclusion. This process could take a million years of thought. Or, as Aristotle said out of frustration that till mankind lasts, it will never find the answer.

Worshipping a mere hypothesis is for the unthinking bhakt. If you see a two-year old child who has not been brainwashed yet, he will have no fear or bhakti or any other emotion towards God.

Prophet Mohammed said that one hour of thinking is worth more than 70 years of praying, and that the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr.

Thinking is original. It creates something new from scratch, without building upon some pre-existing knowledge.

Your brain is your very own. Allow it to think originally. On the subjects that the world has no knowledge till now, you know as much or as little as anyone else. Your brain is as capable and qualified to think as anyone else.

Original thinking is but a function of your self-esteem.

On the question of your "Creation", think for yourself. Only you can discover yourself. By seeking a guru or a religion to find the answers, is like blind leading the blind. Doom is assured on that path.

Venu Gopal said...
7:06 PM 18/Jul/07
You have written a brilliant essay. Actually, the Vedic Hymn did not say "... maybe He knows, maybe He knows not ..." in the mode of ignorance. It simply said that when we awaken to the ultimate knowledge, the knower vanishes. Then who knows? This speculation is in the realm of Vedanta and words fail because words are limited. Only silence is.