With the blessings of Prathamapoojith (the first prayed) Lord Ganesha, my Guru (Guide) and the God of wisdom and Knowledge Lord Hayagreeva, write this blog:

Jai Matadi, my dear readers! Hope you got to understand the title, well if not, then let me tell you, I just now came back from my visit to Mata Vaishnodevi temple and I just had enough time to visit the great Shri Ram Temple “Raghunath” temple in Jammu. I hope to write a blog on my travel to Vaishnodevi in may be next blog or later or may be not.

Anyways, I surely want to share my feelings and thought process for which I need answers from spirituals.

I was in my side berth in the sleeper coach, I suddenly woke up around 2.30 AM and could not sleep, I kept remembering some deities and mantras, etc. but could not sleep; then from the moving window I could see that the stars were now bit by bit vanishing, there was a bit of light in the sky. I could see some portion above earth dark and the sky blue. I could see the sky down from earth dark-yellowish-orangeish-reddish-blueish in the top. The stars were not at all visible now.

The normal answer is “its sunrise and the earth’s movement (circleing/rotation) to give a morning and the night is over for the new day to begin!”

But you think, “the stars exist in the sky, but, just because of the sunrise, the stars not visible! So if one immediately travels to the other part of the hemisphere, one can see the stars! Or if one is in a space shuttle one can see the whole planetary system and other things in the galaxy!”

Don’t you think “God even if he exists, just because, our mind/ brain gets diverted by some other things, we start questioning the existence of God! A light of sun can make the stars vanish, tell me, what about God then?”

That’s when the further thought came to me, read carefully!

“Have you ever thought or read of human anatomy, or the birds or animals or Trees! Its so complex and still our doctors & scientists try to figure out various things in our body! Do you think its Evolution? Or do you think, its some expert creation! Each nerve/ arteries/ veins / eye lids, eye balls / ears / nose/ all the required chemicals / electrical impulses/ heart/ brain!! O God! I wonder, who could have made the humans and other creations!! Simply unbelievable!! And we have scientists who are trying to create babies out of nothing!! They still need some dna or sperm or live egg!! Can they create from nothing? Each piece of creation is made to cater to other creations!! The tissues / cells in the body are made to grow, proteins/ calcium, etc.!”

then I remembered a news item where a father is to a be mother! What was it I don’t know!

Then I thought, “if humans made robots and computers, can they give these robots flesh and bones or make them grow?”

A human yet has not reached the levels of God to Create! The day a human creates another human, there will be a war!!

While coming back, today, from train window, I could see, the passing trees! These green trees are all immovable, these trees are all fixed, they grew there! The train is moving, but, I could see the trees moving! But then, the trees are fixed, the train is moving, whether the time is also moving? There is continuous movement! So it’s a time travel in short!

My friend was telling me, God created humans, but then found that, these humans were not ageing, so he created the concept of time! I asked him, then, why did God create the concept of atma / prana? Why the concept of re-birth? Why humans are not given the faculty to remember earlier births? But some gifted once by accident recall past birth too!! So whether the atma retains some memories! Why the new borns after every few years are much more fast and intelligent or learned then their predecessor/ ancestors?

Finally, concluding my thought process, this whole creation is a game for the God! That’s when, I am not able to deny that, God visits earth, leaves his imprints or footprints or his forms! So there must be some Super being, who gave first seed or proto type of human to earth, which multiplied!! Each human is said to have a rishi as the ancestor in India! So should be for the other countries too! Can one trace the origin and then tell about the end?

The famous temple Nataraja in Citambaram, where the priests are known as Dikshitars are said to have landed there with shiva! You can see carved wheels of chariot which some say is the space ship depicted!

I am a learner and want to learn! So whatever I learn, if can be shared, will be shared for you all!!

By Raghu Iyer

I got to read this in the noon in the times of India, which share here…interesting indeed…

SECOND OPINION

God, how smart we are

13 Jun 2008, 2203 hrs IST, Jug Suraiya

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

As usual, science has got it all wrong. According to researchers at Ulster University, Northern Ireland, atheists are likely to be more intelligent than those who believe in God. Not only that, but according to Italian scientists brainy people (atheists according to the Ulster researchers) thanks to the SSADH gene that they possess tend to live longer, by as much as 15 years, than non-brainy people (who believe in God, as defined by the Ulster lot). Pure poppycock. According to this view, atheists, like scientists, must possess the intellectual rigour of constant scepticism. They take nothing on blind faith, but demand to see the evidence.

So let's take a look at the evidence as presented by the daily news. The Nithari killings and (possible) cannibalism. Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who kept his daughter chained up for 24 years and fathered seven children from her through repeated rape. The Katara murder case. The Neeraj Grover murder. The Aarushi case which on prime time TV has overtaken IPL viewership; murder as a spectator sport more exciting than sport itself. Wars. Terrorism. A world which spends $1,339 billion a year on arms, $202 for each person on the planet.

What sort of God made such a world? An all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, all-dogooding God? Or a bungling, bumbling, amateur deity, a sort of god who couldn't even put after his name 'BTech (failed by the grace of God)' because, heck, wasn't he supposed to be the God by whose grace he'd failed himself?

Atheism requires no special brain power. It's as easy as falling off a log. It's believing in a God who -- omnipotently, omnisciently -- creates all these horrors, and more (Hitler, Hiroshima, Mao, Pol Pot, the AIDS virus, sickle cell anaemia, Alzheimer's, polio etc, etc), which requires adroit intellectual footwork. (By sending us all these plagues he's only testing our faith, you see. The more our faith is tested, the stronger it gets. But why couldn't God -- who can make everything -- make our faith strong to begin with, and come with a lifetime guarantee? Go figure.)

It's not atheism that presents intellectual puzzles, it's belief which does. According to believers, 'intelligent design' (i.e., God under an alias) created the cosmos and everything in it, from the rainbow glitter of the dragonfly's wing to the gossamer web of galaxies spanning the darkness of space. Neat, huh? So how did it all get there, all in that particular order and no other? When asked this, the atheist shrugs mental shoulders, maybe mentions the Big Bang theory, Darwin, Stephen Hawking, then walks away, whistling, to see if there's another nice murder on TV, or at least an air crash.

The believer, on the other hand, has to contend not just with crashed airplanes but also with metaphysical flights of fancy. The possibility of life originating on Earth without intelligent design (God) is like thinking of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and, by random chance, assembling an airworthy 747 jetliner, fuel surcharge and all. So far, so God. But what 'intelligent design' (God) created the 'intelligent design' (God) which created the 747 (life on earth)? And so on, ad infinitum. It's like playing sudoku on a Rubik's cube. You have to be real smart in order to do it.

Far from being a no-brainer -- as scientists like Richard Dawkins and others would try to convince us -- belief in God is an all-brainer: it requires constant, counter-intuitive reasoning and indefatigable powers of mind. For instance, just thinking of a God who apart from creating and maintaining everything in the universe, from electrons to supernova, has time to read every thought in your head every second of every day and on that basis determine whether you should subsequently go to heaven or hell, or be reborn as a cockroach, requires ingenuity of a very high order. Like conjuring a 365-day, 24x7 BPO with just one Operator.

No doubt about it. Unlike the dumb atheist, you've got to be brainy to be a believer. Which is why only believers can work out why God makes them live on an average 15 years longer than atheists. Considering that there are far more believers than atheists, could it be thrift? Hell, you know what rents are like these days.

secondopinion@timesgroup.com