The Other Side of Belief by Mukunda Rao

Author:Mukunda Rao
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789352140961
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-07-09T04:00:00+00:00

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Avatars as Ultimate Models

All ancient cultures believed that battles could not be won without the help of gods or divine forces.66

Several of the Vedic hymns are invocations of and prayers to gods—Indra, Agni, Vayu and so on—to come to the aid of people both in their pursuit of livelihood and in their battles against their enemies. Just as in Hindu myths, in Greek myths too, we find gods taking sides with humans and participating in their affairs. These gods were biased and protective gods, whose existence was tied up with the fate of the human beings they sided with. They were not gods of knowledge or wisdom, or even of love. Those came later.

The idea of the Messiah, which is again found in all ancient cultures, was basically an extension of the communal or tribal God, who protected his people against their enemies, against the so-called forces of ‘evil’ or oppression.

To put it differently, a Messiah represents God’s technology of intervention in the lives of his subjects, in order to establish good over evil—evil often being the ‘other’. In the Occidental context, the Messiah has always been in the shape of a messenger, while in the Oriental cultures it is in the form of an incarnation (avatar) of an aspect of God or Divinity itself. It is only over a period of time that this idea of Messiah was modified and expanded to mean divine intervention for the welfare and salvation of the whole of humanity. But since historically there has been more than one Messiah, signifying more than one God, one evil, one way, and one teaching or revelation, this has also resulted in a clash of ideas, symbols and visions; a clash between the so-called Truths.

Reflecting upon the causes of conflict and violence among the various religious groups, Joseph Campbell talks about the needless conflict and antagonism among three great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each group says, ‘We are the chosen group, and we have God’ and they can’t get on together. This is because the three of them have three different names for the same biblical God and are stuck with their metaphor. In Joseph Campbell’s own words, ‘They haven’t allowed the circle that surrounds them to open. It is a closed circle. . . Look at Ireland. A group of Protestants was moved to Ireland in the seventeenth century by Cromwell, and it never has opened up to the Catholic majority there. The Catholics and Protestants represent two totally different social systems, two different ideals . . . Each needs its own myth, all the way. Love thine enemy. Open up. Don’t judge. All things are Buddha things. It is there in the myth. It is already there.’67

It is, of course, there in the myths, the plural ways of seeing and being in the world, and the great ambivalence that is ‘living’. Apologists for religion might argue, it is there in the teachings of the messiahs too. But is this really so? UG is ruthless when he says, ‘Messiahs have only messed up the world.

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