Converting and reverting!

https://topszotar.hu/angolmagyar/revert

Just the other day, I heard a person revered as knowledgeable by the people around me. What was said prompted me to enter a reflective mode, as I often do. 

His discovery is this. He had never heard of anyone converting to Hinduism. Most Hindus are born into the religion. Anyone outside the fold of Sanathana Dharma is cordially accepted into the Hindu's house of worship and cordially partakes in their festivities and rituals with open arms. There is nothing like a ritual to permit others to enter the fold. Unlike the modus operandi of Hotel California, everyone can check out or leave at any time. 

The learned man went on to say that if one were to accept the teachings of most Abrahamic religions, one would need to undergo a baptism of fire or water. They are required to be converted, i.e., from one faith to another. "So what does that mean?" he asked. By default, everyone is born a Hindu, the factory setting. Only when one wants to change the operating system does one need to make changes to the operations. Smart alec, I thought.

A few months later, while scrolling the reels on social media, as is the commonest pastime these days,  the infamous convert around town was giving an insider account of how to clandestinely convert underage students in schools. An interesting phrase that he used while referring to conversion was 'revert'. In his mind, people are merely returning to the fold of the one true religion after being misled for so long. When someone embraces Islam, they just revert to what they were supposed to be. We assume that babies are born pure, like a white sheet of cloth. Life taints them. By embracing Islam, one is given a clean slate, given the opportunity to revert to that pristine state of white fabric. Actually, coloured cloths can be clean too. (That is another story about the fixation of Man of the colour white!)

My question is, since there is no concept of rebirth in the Abrahamic faith, when was the setting made? Was the factory setting in error, necessitating reversion? 

Everybody is convinced that their own belief system is the one and only true faith, like they were a personalised audience with the Maker himself. The rest of us just grope in the dark and try to make sense of the silky texture here and the stony, hard surface there, to create a composite picture in our minds of what is actually happening around us and where we are heading.

The only instance I am aware of is when the bank replies to me that 'they would revert to me after perusing my documents' and when the blood biochemical and tumour markers return to normal. And conversion when there is seroconversion of IgM and IgG antibodies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Seeing is believing?

Ankhon Dekhi (Seeing through own eyes, Hindi; 2014)

Written, Directed and Supporting Actor: Rajat Kapoor.

On one end, we are told not to accept everything related to us without prior investigations. We have been thought to sieve, evaluate, ponder, perambulate and scrutinise thoroughly before believing anything to be true.  Even then, sometimes, our senses deceive us. Seeing is believing, they say, but in the same breath, they say the world is an illusion, Maya, a mirage: so many names. 

On the other end, we are also cautioned that specific unwritten rules cannot or should not be questioned. This includes queries on divinity, scriptures and belief systems. They have a name for it, blasphemy, and the punishment does not look pretty.

It is said that we only use 10% of our brain. Like much of our chromosomal loci which remain dormant, so is our brain. Would we be at a different level of civilisation if we were to utilise the remaining unused part of the mind? Or perhaps we would just be more creative in annihilating each other? Just to recapitulate, serial killers and psychopaths have extremely high IQs.

A 50-something-year-old man, Babuji, is going through an existential crisis of sorts. After discovering that his daughter's boyfriend is not as much a loafer as everyone describes him to be, Babuji takes a vow to also see things from his perspective; no more listening to hearsay. The problem is that he took the whole idea to the limit. He was sacked from his job at a travel agency when he refused to promote tourists' destinations as he had never seen them. Babuji quit his job as he thought it was based on a lie. Just lying around the house, jobless created friction with his younger brother who decided to move out.

His new outlook also helped Babuji to look at things from another angle. He appreciated things after a first-hand experience and expanded his knowledge in making money in a poker game. His one lifelong ambition was to experience the joy flying like a bird, to feel the cold gush of wind cutting through his bare skin as he scaled down a height in the free skies. But, as they say, be careful of what you wish for.

The character in the film reminded me of a sad incident that unfortunately happened to a friend's son. With the ease of access to knowledge to the studies of the occult and realms of the unknown, the curious young man thought that cyberspace was God sent. Exploring into readily available articles online, he delved deeper and deeper into secrets of life and Consciousness. He soon went in-depth to examine questions of Death. He was recruited (it was proposed later on) into a cult which wanted to experience Death. It was later discovered that he succumbed to smothering in a freak accident as he was performing experiments inducing asphyxia with a plastic bag. Sometimes, one wonders whether the human mind is capable of dealing with the Truths of the Universe. Are some things better left unanswered?

An entertaining movie minus the usual clutter that is often seen in most mainstream movies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 

Trust and Conviction

cgsociety.org

I heard a strange comparison between cryptocurrency and religion the other day.

When we look at the number of people who invest a significant amount of their hard-earned savings into multiple blockchain technology schemes, we sometimes wonder what makes people place so much trust into something so intangible. How many times in the history of man have we seen promises of easy wealth through a yet another newer and more novel way to beat the system? How predictably have the bubble repeatedly burst when people, like rats, followed Piped Piper to the caves?

Even with the knowledge of previous mayhems and follies, with their great reluctance to be detached from their world material wealth, the promise of multiplying their already burgeoning opulence is too much to resist.

There is no central control, hence the lure of concealment. There must be a reason the Blockchain technology is cryptic. Is going to be so mysterious that everything may just go up kaboom into thin air? There is nothing to claim possession, just a series of an algorithm to assert ownership. Right now, the proprietor can just sleep well convincing himself that he may be superrich one day. The day of a real cashless society who would pay for their coffee with Bitcoin is quite remote. It is a promise, no doubt, it may materialise one day, but till then, it is just promises written on water!

What do you know? The premise of religion is not much different from the above. The tenet of most religious practices is based on trust. The conviction that the elders in their faith have discovered a path to protect their interest when their time on Earth is up. That the promise of a figure who would be just out there judging our souls after keeping a tab on our good deeds whilst on Earth.

In both cases, there are no documents to uphold our interests on the day of reckoning. The future rests on mutual trust and blind faith that things will be all alright!