This is something I want to discuss with my grandfather. But he is in Varanasi and I in Bangalore. Of late, my visits to Varanasi have become too few. And he is too old and has difficulty hearing through a mobile. So I will write down here what I want him to know about my conflicts.
I follow no religion and believe in no god. I do not know Pagan properly, but if it is what I think I understand then I would like to call myself a Pagan instead. This is something I need to ask my grandfather. So here I am, a person who does not believe in any divine power. I have had quite a lot of discussions with people who challenge my stance. But I do not budge. I do not want to believe in God and am not going to change my stance.
Not long ago, I was not like this. There was a gradual change in my attitude towards god. At a very young age I would read Ramayan and pray to god. That was a time I was influenced by the society and people around me and let me tell you, being brought up in India, it is not easy to escape the notion of existence of god. I remember visiting a Hanuman temple every Tuesday with my grandfather to listen to priests chant Hanuman Chalisa. I would visit temples of Durga and all with my grandmother.
Then came the adolescence stage when I would question everything in the name of science. I would tell people that even the Church had been questioned. I became agnostic. It was at this time that my grandfather insisted that I read the book Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse. The book made little sense to me and my attitude remained the same.
A few years later and I became an Atheist that I am now. I have my own set of rules and guidelines that I strictly follow. They govern my actions and are what make up my principles shaping up my personality. I am happy and at peace with myself.
Yet sometimes, there are these moments of doubt. They stem from a basic conflict in my guidelines. On one hand I have convinced myself that there is no god to look up to. And on the other hand I have decided to try and have an open mind towards all opinions. Being open minded doesn’t mean I accept them. It only implies that I am tolerant towards the opinions of other people. And it is the latter that has given birth to the doubt.
Let me go back to the book by Hermann Hesse that I have mentioned above. In the book, the author tells us a story of a queer trip he decided to take. It was a group of people wanting to travel east to discover some divine power. Every member had a personal reason for making this trip. Throughout the journey, the group would break up to fulfill their quests. They would always manage to regroup and continue the journey. On one such personal trips, our author and a small group of people had doubts regarding the journey. Simply put, they lost their faith but decided continue the journey none the less. However, much they tried but could not find the group. They assumed that the group had disbanded and deserted the quest. They went back to their home. A few years later, the author was in India and he accidentally came across a member of the group. He happened to be the president of the group. He told the author that the rest of the group, the ones who still had faith, continued the journey and found whatever they had joined the quest to find. It was just the author who had deserted the journey.
Now this story makes more sense to me. It forces me to question whether I have lost that path because I stopped believing. Am I an Atheist only because I wanted to be, instead of it being a logical decision? And this doubt was reinforced by a book by Paulo Coelho – The Witch of Portobello. I now wonder whether I should be more open in my beliefs and be an agnostic once again?
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