It is that time of the year when I look within and reflect. It is not a sudden urge. It is, generally, part of a longer – many a times as long as the whole year – tête-à-tête with my self. So far in past attempts, I have disentangled confusion, seen and given vent to clarity. Please wish me luck with this, too.
History of the World, Mankind, and Time
The world is about 4.5 billion years old. On a cosmic calendar, it is not considered very old. Humanity is even younger: just about 300,000 years old. That brings us to the question: How old is the concept of time? Guess what? It was just about 6000 years ago when we, somewhat erroneously, started measuring time through moon. The lunar calendars, the first conscious attempts at conceptualising time, can be traced back to just about 6000 years ago. The year was made of anything between 354 to 384 days. We used to refer to the past as “many moons gone by” and look at the future as “many moons away.” Even after the Christian Calendar was invented, based on the rotation of the earth around its axis, and elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun, the fascination with time measurement through the moon still continued. Please reflect that as late as just 66 years ago, a Hindi song had this line: Chand phir nikla magar tum na aaye (The (full or new) moon was seen again, and yet you didn’t visit me).
Initially, the world was anarchic. What we now term as the Laws of Nature or even Laws of God must have existed but, we were blissfully unaware of these. We did everything without a reference to the past – either of the humanity or of our own. Indeed, the concept of past itself didn’t exist. We lived perpetually in the present. As seen by our present progress in the evolution and despite all our discoveries and inventions that have made the world better, at that point in the History of Mankind, we were the happiest though, as is the case with happiness even now, we didn’t know about it.
Yes, when we discovered Sin, we tried to apply it to the beginning of Mankind itself. However, a reasonable person would know that let alone the Concept of Sin, not even the Concept of Time and hence Past existed. Hence, the story of Adam and Eve having been expelled from Heaven due to their eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil), must be the product of the Man’s imagination when he understood Time and related it to his Past. There couldn’t have been any sin committed by them because Sin, related to actions in the Past, just didn’t exist when Humanity started on earth.
Laws of Nature, God, and Society
The universe that we know about and the universes that we still don’t know about were also born out of total anarchy (after the Big Bang). Gradually, many – if not most – celestial objects fell into known patterns based on these laws. Indeed, many of these patterns made us discover the laws.
Even as the Laws of the Universe, Nature, and God were discovered by us, we also made laws of the society and civilization that we are part of. As we gradually shifted from being wanderers (nomads) to living in communities and societies, we made laws to protect the bigger interests of the society.
Just as in our understanding of the Cosmic Laws, we weren’t always right in many of the laws that we made for the society and civilizations. We changed these – in some cases even drastically – when we understood better. So, please do remember that many laws are not permanent; we follow these until a newer one is discovered or made better suited for us, the world, and the universe.
That brings us to our Concept of Right and Wrong. Our history would tell us that this thought we would want our children to know about early has been quite fuzzy, to say the least. The Right and Wrong kept changing so much so that now, in our own present, we can somewhat correctly conclude that what is Right is Right for a a major part of the society at the present time. It wasn’t Right before and it may not be Right in the future. The same is the case with Wrong.
At another time in the history of mankind we can make a Right or Wrong stand on its head. It is just relative and true for a particular period of Time.
Knowledge, Mind, and Reasoning
As the World and Life on it evolved, the most powerful Life on Earth at the present period of Time is Mankind. It has taken tens of thousands of years for it to evolve to the present level.
First, let me merely repeat what I wrote in ‘The Most Important Relations and Relationships’:
“I find Human Evolution as a very fascinating subject. Humans or homo sapiens, as we see them around now, at some point of history of primates, separated themselves from the apes (hominids). Genetic studies bring out that the history of primates is older than 85 million years ago. There have been many theories (in the absence of recorded history we have either theories or gospel (word of mouth)) regarding the Evolution of Man, the foremost or the most accepted being the Darwinian theory. All these theories explore only the anatomical aspects; for example, the origin of man standing and walking on two feet and legs (bipedalism). Nothing has yet brought out the evolution of emotions and relationships, except in gospel. And that is the aspect that fascinates me most. For example, who was the first man or woman to fall in love? Or was it at the great ape stage or even earlier? When, how and why did the first man get angry and who triggered those emotions in him?”
However, it is reasonable to assume that the same DNA and its mutations that made varieties of Life possible on Earth, also made it possible for the Mankind to have Knowledge, Mind and Reasoning.
Indeed, all Civilizational Knowledge is written in our DNA very carefully from generation to generation. Thus, the present Mind of Man has evolved over generations to its present form.
As you look at Life on Earth millions of years ago you realise that the mutations of DNA that survived the best are those that were best suited for a particular environment during a particular period of Time. As with anatomical mutations, in the recent History of Mankind, one realises that the Human Mind has become more and more powerful simply by Powers of Reasoning. One can confidently argue that now, as compared to anytime in the History of Mankind, Reasoning has helped the Mankind more than the lack of it; both to survive and make a better and securer life.
In this evolution of the Reasoning Mind, it is easy to conclude that unless outdated concepts such as Community Religion (“Do this and don’t do that”) based on blind faith are in sync with the Reasoning Mind, these would become extinct some time in future. How much time would it take depends upon the tenacity of blind faith. Lets not forget that the Reasoning of Copernican Heliocentrism about the Earth revolving around the Sun, until it took centuries to prevail and be regarded as common knowledge today, was held to be inferior (blasphemous) to the Community Religion’s blind faith that Earth was the Abode of Gods and hence, everything in the Universe revolved around it.
Conscience, Sin, And Guilt
The Reasonable Mind and The Concept of Right and Wrong evolved almost simultaneously in the History of Mankind. Just as we did with Religion, we also did with Morality. Certain things became Right and Moral to do whilst others became Wrong and Immoral.
Our Reasonable Mind also made us realise that some force or power must be controlling our Mind. Else, how would we be able to control this Reasoning? In our Evolution, Conscience evolved: “a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual’s moral philosophy or value system.” We willfully made our Reasonable Mind slave to this cognitive process called Conscience; controlled the mind, so as to say.
Sin is merely a Religion’s way of telling us that all our transgressions against the Law of Nature or Law of God (Divine Law) are immoral. Whenever we did these, it made us full of Guilt.
The process of Evolution as observed by Man made Man realise that just like only those mutations of DNA survived that were adaptable to the environment and multiplied in larger numbers than the weaker mutations, Religious ideas would survive if these had the largest followers. Adding to the numbers of the like minded, therefore, ensured the survival of the idea of that particular religion; evangelical indeed.
However, in the Evolution of Mankind, there would still be large numbers of people who would drift away from the original idea just as those who became followers of a particular religion drifted away from beliefs held by them before the advent of that religion.
Religion, therefore, invented the idea of Fear. Idea of Fear already existed in the Physical World: we feared wild animals, floods, fires, and other disasters. Religion merely adapted the Concept of Fear to Guilt and Consequences of not following the Divine Laws.
Heaven, Hell, and Fear
Religion discovered that one of the easiest ways to keep its flock through Fear of Consequences is by creating the Concept of Heaven and Hell. Heaven is for those who follow the Divine Laws and the fires of Hell are for those who willfully deviate from these laws.
It was a flawed concept, but, it controlled large chunks of the Humanity for at least 2000 years.
Why do I call it flawed concept? Simply because we know that there is nothing like Free Will. As Swami Vivekananda said we have to go beyond the confines of the universe to exercise Free Will. So, to conclude that Hell is for those who willfully deviate from the Divine Laws is not in sync with the limitations of the Man. We still do many acts without deliberately thinking about them or their consequences. “Forgive them, O God, for they know not what they are doing” as reportedly uttered by Jesus on the Cross didn’t have a smaller meaning about the limitation of His Roman persecutors but a larger meaning of the Limitation of Mankind.
Various thinkers (they are the ones who change the world), therefore, concluded that Sin and Guilt are not exclusive acts of omission and commission by a particular man. But, since we are all related, people around us have all contributed to that Sin. The Indian Government is in the process of changing laws for Mob Crimes (as I told you, laws are always changing). Similarly, for Sin, shouldn’t we be sending many, many people to Hell rather than the one visible man whom our senses perceived to have committed that sin? How do we know what was written on his DNA when he was born? How do we know about collective Conscience of generations rather than just our own exclusive Conscience? In the ultimate analysis, we know not what we are doing; it is beyond us.
Optimism
Yes, the essentially flawed concepts of Sin and Guilt kept going for hundreds of years. Our Societal Laws, themselves, have been based on these Divine Laws (In God We Trust, so as to say). God, and Guardians of Laws on Earth would punish us for our acts of commission and omission. More than the physical punishment, our Conscience and Guilt would punish us; the degree of this (self-inflicted) punishment would vary from close to zero (for the non-thinking Man) to close to hundred (for the thinking Man). As Kahlil Gibran said, “A thinking man can never be happy.”
And now the flaws in the Concept of Sin and Guilt add up even more. The World and Mankind is progressing because of the Reasoning Mind of Man. However, the Reasoning Mind is the unhappiest, and many a times the only unhappy one, because of Conscience, Sin, and Guilt. This is not a good Evolution. It was required to keep us following the straight line in an anarchic world. But, it is sure to become outdated over a period of time, say, in another five hundred years. We can’t continue to control the world and society through a negative of Sin and Guilt. A time has to come in the Evolution of Man when we control the Society more through the positive of Love than through the negatives of Sin and Guilt.
Wishful thinking? No, I have, in the last few decades, seen this change. Religion itself is perceptibly shifting its focus from Sin, Guilt and Fear of Consequences to “God loves us unconditionally.” This is in reaction to the dwindling congregations in the churches around the world and, hence, the survival instinct of the church.
My early thought process was influenced by many authors and playwrights. One of them was the American author and playwright William Saroyan. In the preface to his celebrated play The Time Of Your Life, he wrote:
“In the time of your life, live so that there would be no death or ugliness for yourself of for any life that your life touches. Be the inferior of no man nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself; no man’s guilt is not yours nor of any man’s innocence a thing apart. In the time of your life, live and let others live. But, if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regrets.”
Our Lord Krishna taught us this eons ago.
