God= Man Himself Idealized!! Hi Dear Ones! We shall talk this morning about faith, its pluses and minuses. Faith, taking origin in varied geographical locations as a palliative or analgesic to the pain of existence in the midst of umpteen uncertainties, promoted itself tyrant-like till it grew into being one of the many fully fledged religions with their own inflexible doctrines, shibboleths, rituals, ceremonies and conventions, star chambers and instruments of torture. A cursory glance across human history confirms that faith has done a lot by way of good and bad. Not only did it give an extraordinary drive and enormous self confidence to our ancestors to migrate long distances and to overcome virtually insurmountable challenges, but also aided and abetted them to massacre one another during crusades and other battles ,feuds, skirmishes or wars. Not merely is it, by its very nature, totally blind and irrational in the extreme but also refuses to see eye to eye with reality and material evidence. Not only does it mother forth blind beliefs by the dozen plus non specific fears/anxieties but also indirectly help crooks exploit those that are out-and-out believers. Not only does it split national populations vertically from top to bottom but also horizontally across barriers. Not only does it trigger communal clashes, but also incite the ignorant and the fanatic to bring down places of worship of rival faiths in a brutal bout of fury and collective ferocity as we see in William Golding’s remarkable symbolic novel titled “Lord of the Flies”! Faith indirectly gave rise in the past to devotees turning out copious textbooks, holy books, legends, fables or parables, holy places in remote locations, amulets, rituals, and paraphernalia. Human faiths also had numerous devotee personnel hoping to propagate them elsewhere than the places of their origin, and particular institutions to ensure they can go on across centuries. These places-called temples, churches or mosques—primarily catered to the believer’s need to periodically get internally re-charged after experiencing a downside of some kind in personal confidence or merely for an emotional ‘top-up’. They were far from being commercial centres at all, till Vatican felt short of having enough funds in the 14th century or so. I have been wondering about when it was that Man started to commercially use divinity’s images to fatten his own wallet, and whether it was after he saw the possibility of accumulating riches by doing that after the Industrial Revolution taught him how to exploit and amass wealth in the quickest span of time by marketing the Godhead concept itself Probably the Neanderthal man had no distinct faith in a deity of the modern kind, we are not sure, and all we know is that he worshipped the forces of Nature since they held much nuisance value in his eyes. We were a running and jumping race, as we know from the mural scrawls on the Mexican cavern walls and Egyptian pyramids, but the paganism and animism that we had just before Hindu beliefs were born –about 100 centuries ago—sneaked into Hindu faith too in part. Hence the snake worship and tree worship rituals that we still adhere to. The segment of the North Persian human tribe that migrated to the East –the so called ‘Satam’ language family group—imagined the deity to be above us and gave her a feminine shape with wide hips and full slightly pendulous breasts to suggest “absolute fullness” of femininity. Hence the origin of the Mother Goddess concept, which has crept into all Indian States in one form or another, not the least of which is the Durga Pooja of West Bengal—and also into Indian politics whenever an iron lady shows up. In spite of all that I have told you so far this far, it remains a fact that Man is God as he would be if He, like Francesco of Florence, made a self-portrait in oils. I happened to read the following in a John Ashbury poem: Vasari says, Francesco one day set himself To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . . He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made By a turner, and having divided it in half and Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass, Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait Is the reflection, of which the portrait Is the reflection once removed. The glass chose to reflect only what he saw Which was enough for his purpose: his image Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle. (Self Portrait in a Complex Mirror)
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:19:26 +0000
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