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1
The Age
of Ignorance
is Over
It
happened slowly and steadily:
walls that I felt disappeared;
boundaries that I knew dissolved;
holy light filled the dark.
He guided me to a different world,
situated beyond the edge of time,
abode of unwavering lively peace,
land of never-setting sun divine.
Give me your hand;
let me take you there.
Thousands of years have gone since God was first
imagined. Since then the concept of God has been
influencing unbelievably large portions of thoughts
and activities of humanity. Your mind is full of
innumerable stories, notions, and beliefs about him
developed through human history, but he himself has
remained a mystery for you. Countless people have
tried to find him out but all in vain. The time of
such ignorance is over. God is not interested in
hiding anymore: now I shall let you know him and his
true attributes and influence.
In the night of ignorance, some people have been
thinking of themselves as closer or dearer to God on
the basis of their religion, faith, community,
character, and so on. God, whom I shall take you to,
is not the God of people of any particular religion,
faith, or school of thought. He is not a heritage of
only humankind either. He is one and the same for
everyone. He is the God of every human being, everyliving being, every living and nonliving being—he is
the God of every being. You will know him
irrespective of your caste, creed, community,
religion, gender, social status, economic status,
occupation, nature, character, and behaviour.
Alas! You have been deceived so much in God’s name.
He was not known to anyone, yet many people claimed
knowing him or realising him; being in contact with
him; being his messenger, relative, or
representative; or even being his incarnation or
embodiment. Since they were ignorant of God, they
could not point towards him; so they told people
that being a supernatural power, he is generally
beyond perception and only those who have paranormal
power, sixth sense, or pious soul can realise him.
They devised innumerable weird, difficult,
impracticable, and thorny paths for people to
prepare them by making their souls holy to realise
him.
Enough of your deceiving others or being deceived by
others in his name! God is not beyond normal
perception. He exists and is perceivable to
everyone. Prayer, virtuous deed, desirelessness,
austerity, penance, and so on are of no use in
knowing him. You need not have any paranormal power,
sixth sense, or holy soul to realise him. To lead
you to the knowledge of the supreme being, neither
have I devised any difficult, thorny, or slippery
path for you, nor shall I ask you to undergo any
type of austerity or penance. To know him, what you
have to do is just to listen to what I say with an
attentive and open mind.
In the beginning, to let you get a general concept of
what the world has believed to be God, I shall
present before you short summaries of what eight
major theistic religions of the world say about him
and the set of the most important epithets added to
him by the majority of theists of the world, because
he is God not of any particular religion but of all
the religions.
I
shall show you that God had never been known to
anyone and all that had been said, written, and
believed about him is hypothetical. To open you up,
to decrease your blind faith, to increase your
receptivity, and to prepare you further to know him,
I shall answer the questions that this raises, such
as if he was not known to anyone, why and how did
people ever start to imagine his existence? what
were the reasons of any person’s claim of knowing
him, having a link with him, or being his
incarnation? how did our holy books that are seen as
containing his orders, words, or will by many come
into existence? and how were the epithets that are
commonly believed to be describing him (‘almighty’,
‘creator’, ‘eternal’, ‘omnipresent’, ‘omniscient’,
‘all-good’, and so on) added to him?
As I said before, God is not beyond normal
perception. He exists in reality and is perceivable
to everyone. To take you to him, I shall involve you
in a process of search or identification, but I
shall not leave you midway with a future promise.
Not only shall I let you know him exactly and
precisely, but I shall also explain with the help of
a number of examples why any other being cannot be
God.
In the history of humankind, hardly anything might
have been thought, discussed, said, and written
about more than God might have. Since he was not
known to anyone, people belonging to different
religions and residing in different parts of the
world added not completely but to notable extents
different sets of epithets to him and developed
different beliefs, concepts, and stories about him.
After I let you know him, I shall take you through
an analysis of the key portions of all that has been
said, written, and believed about him to let you
identify the truth in it.
Since God himself was unknown, the epithets added to
him formed the nuclear portion of whatever was
believed about him in general. What highlights their
importance is that the small unanimity found among
people of different faiths is confined mostly to his
epithets—the only thing that shows that people all
over the world have believed in one and the same
God—but in absence of this knowledge, you could have
never been sure whether any of his particular
epithets was true to him or not. After letting you
know him, the first thing I shall do is to show you
which of some most significant epithets added to him
by the theists, such as ‘almighty’, ‘creator’,
‘eternal’, ‘omnipresent’, ‘omniscient’, and
‘all-good’, describe him correctly and which are
absurd to be added to him, and thus I shall reveal
the attributes that are truly possessed by him.
Mostly whatever has been said, written, and believed
about God lies within the domain of religion. In the
age of ignorance, people have been having fierce but
inconclusive debates and conflicts on who knows more
about him, whose religion is better and deeper, and
whose religion is closer to him. I shall let you
know not only him and his attributes but also how
correct or incorrect the basic concepts of each of
the major theistic religions—Christianity,
Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism,
Taoism, and Zoroastrianism—about God are. It will
also give you an opportunity to compare the
correctness of what your religion says about him
with what other religions say about him.
There happen to be some beliefs that lie at the core
of any religion because they play a vital role in
its propagation and sustenance and also because they
differentiate it from other religions. For example,
many
followers believe about certain person or persons,
especially for the propagator or propagators of
their religion, that they were close to or in
contact with God; were his messenger, relative, or
representative; or even were his embodiment or
incarnation and about their key religious books that
they contain his orders, words, or will. While
analysing the correctness of important religious
beliefs, I shall let you see how logical or absurd
these two beliefs are.
Around the central religious beliefs lie the beliefs
about the paths and ways of realising God. I shall
show you the reasons of the propagation of some of
such beliefs as about prayer, desirelessness, and
virtuous deeds and their vainness for his
realisation.
The concept of God provides living sap to theistic
religions. Lastly, I shall discuss briefly the worth
that will be left with these religions after I let
you know God, his attributes, the truth behind the
claims some persons made about knowing him or being
his representative or incarnation, and the futility
of the paths and ways proposed by them for realising
him.
The main purpose of this book is to let everyone
know God. To solve this purpose, the topic ‘destiny’
is also dealt within it to a significant extent.
The concept of destiny, if not as old as, is not
much younger than the concept of God. Through human
history, different people have believed in destiny
to different extents, most people have had a keen
desire to know their future, and countless people
have been involved in the business of prediction of
the future, even if it was not proved that the
future is predestined. For the revelation of God, in
this book, I shall show that the future is
predestined and unchangeable, and thus I shall try
to bring destiny out of the ambit of belief and
disbelief.
You know that your future is affected by the
decisions you make at present, and you think that
since you have the capability to change your
decisions, you yourself have the authority to change
your future too, to the extent it depends on your
decisions. No, it may disappoint you but it is not
true. Before I present a universal proof of the
predestinedness of the future, I shall let you see
how destiny comes true in your life through your own
will. It is true that it is you who makes the
decisions, but it is also true that while doing so
you act just like a tool. I shall show you that the
decision you make in any particular situation is
predestined and unchangeable and so is the future
that results from that decision. The authority you
think you possess to change your decisions is purely
illusory, and so is the capability you feel you
possess to change
your future. You just cannot change your decisions
or your future from what is predestined.
By mentioning that I shall present a universal proof
of the predestinedness of the future, I mean I shall
prove that whatever has to happen in the universe in
the future, whether it is related to living things
or nonliving things, including phenomena such as
thoughts, ideas, plans, and feelings, is predestined
and unchangeable or inevitable. Yes, I shall show
you that your future is as unchangeable as your past
is—that is, you, anyone, or anything cannot change
the number, magnitude, or intensity of successes and
failures; achievements and losses; joys and sorrows;
and even dreams, thoughts, ideas, and plans of your
future life from what is predestined.
I
shall proceed to take you through a discussion on
the possibility of prediction of the future, and
finally at the end of the part related to destiny, I
shall introduce you to the potential that the
knowledge that the future is predestined and
unchangeable possesses to affect the way of your
thought and life.
The relation between God and destiny has always been
a matter of great discussion. People have been
wondering that if God is almighty, what role destiny
might have to play in the course of events, and vice
versa, that is, if everything is predestined, where
does the almighty God fits in. This confusion will
end now, as I shall show that it is the almighty,
omnipotent, or supreme God who not only governs
whatever happens but is the master of destiny of all
the living and nonliving things that exist.
In the appendices, I shall present a scientific proof
of the predestinedness of the future, show the
vainness of the objections that can be raised
against the proof on the basis of the principle of
indeterminacy, and reveal what poses the ultimate
limit to the accuracy with which the future can be
predicted. In the process I shall explain the real
meaning of the principle of indeterminacy in
reference to the corporeal world and unravel how
physicists have been misinterpreting and misusing it
since its finding.
The task this book has to accomplish is not only to
deliver the knowledge about God and destiny, to
remove blind faith about them, and to end the
conflict and violence going on in the world in his
name but to lead everyone to deep and lasting inner
mental peace—how much reason will you be left for
tension, worry, anger, and so on if you know that
whatever happens in the universe, including in your
life, is predetermined by God and is inevitable?
Along with the proof of the theorem that the future
is predestined and unchangeable, Part 2 contains
discussions on other topics related to destiny.
Revelation of God and other related topics have been
dealt with in Part 3. As I have pointed before, both
topics ‘proof of the predestinedness of the future’
and ‘revelation of God’, seemingly entirely
independent, are actually deeply interrelated—former
being one of the foundation stones for the latter.
Therefore, for your thorough understanding of the
topic ‘revelation of God’, which has been dealt with
in Part 3, you are advised to go through Part 2
first. |
