On an invitation of the Brahmakumaris’ Society, I once went to their Mount Abu headquarters. I saw their impressive, well laid-out campuses, gigantic assembly halls fitted with the state-of-the-art gadgetry, fancifully designed museums, extensive well-maintained gardens and parks, and a modern hospital. I saw their astonishing management skills, heard their meaningful discourses, witnessed their abiding faith and total dedication. I was happy to live in that environment. I also saw that they were projecting their founder, Baba Lekhraj, as an embodiment of Brahma or Shiva, gods of the Hindu Trinity. His portrait, suitably touched up with a halo, towers over all discourses, commingling with the radiant divine light, which serves as the symbol of the organisation. Now Baba Lekhraj was a pure-hearted soul. He was pained at the demeaning treatment that Hindu society gave to women, and was determined to bring about an awakening in them, and empower them for self-realisation and fulfilment. But he would have never dreamt that his followers would one day turn him into a god.

I have cited some examples of the human tendency to elevate men to the godhead from our contemporary life. With time, several stories would get circulated about their superhuman and miraculous qualities and become myths. Generations of followers polish and embellish these myths. And a new religion is born.

It appears to me that many millennia back Ram and Krishna were established as gods in much the same manner. Without doubt, they were exceptionally endowed as one can make out by reading Valmiki’s Ramayana or Ved Vyasa’s Mahabharata: they had instinctive readiness to act according to dharma, and were upholders of the societal maryada. They were unvanquished in battle, unperturbed in afflictions, untouched by fear; in short, a cut above the rest. Howsoever gifted, they were still men. But in time when they were proclaimed as God, or God’s avatar, many miraculous powers were attributed to them. For what good is an avatar, if he cannot perform miracles? He would be a mere man. Now this avatar thing is beyond me. To my mind, we all have our maker’s spark in us; we are all his avatars.

It is possible to restore old paintings and murals to their old glory by giving them a chemical treatment, carefully washing the soot and dust and other accumulations of time. After receiving such a treatment the 2000-year-old Buddhist paintings of Ajanta caves, and those of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo, now shine in their original hues. How I wish we could erase the false embellishments of well-meaning followers as well as inadvertent accretions of time from the portraits of Ram and Krishna, and behold them in their pristine colours. In my view, their human face would be infinitely more appealing and inspiring than their gilded, stilted appearance in our temples, wrapped in shocking silk or shimmering brocade, obscenely loaded with gold, diamonds and pearls.

I have conflicting emotions when I visit a Christian Church or a Hindu temple: in the one, looking at the crucified Christ, I feel as if the God is suffering while we are enjoying ourselves, whereas in the other, seeing our resplendent, well-fed deities, I feel the God is enjoying himself while we are suffering; feeling equally uncomfortable in both.

This tendency of deification is not restricted to the Hindu religion; it is found in all religions. Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mohammad were men of flesh and blood like us, albeit they exhibited an extraordinary keenness for search of truth from the very beginning. They had their tryst with Truth, and they gave it a new meaning and content on the strength of their own special encounter. Their teachings attracted many followers, and the rest is history. Many myths and miracles gained currency and got associated with their birth, life and death. Their followers believe in these myths, though they strain the credulity of those not belonging to their faiths. Just as Hindus take for granted the truth of the miracles said to have been performed by Rama and Krishna, the Buddhists, Christians or Muslims would defend the veracity of the miracles associated with their Saviour with equal passion.

The chief reason of violence and bloodshed in the world is the mutual hatred and distrust of religions. The Israelites and the Palestinians have been fighting each other from Biblical times, for over 4,000 years! The horrific dance of destruction, devastation, and death witnessed on the morning of September 11, in New York, Washington and elsewhere in the U.S. was reportedly enacted by religious fundamentalists.

To my mind, at the root of this inter-religion intolerance is the man’s penchant for creating gods out of men, to which I referred in the beginning of this essay. Truth gets individualised in this process of deification. It receives the imprint of a particular personality and gets branded. Those not belonging to the fold for historical or other reasons, hesitate to acknowledge it for fear of being misunderstood even if they are attracted to it. Or they may get repelled by the followers, or by the practices evolved by them, or even by the personality of the godhead as commonly represented.

Most of us belong to a religion because we are born in it. As Oliver Goldsmith told Boswell: "As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest." We rarely design our religion; we take it readymade. To tell the truth, the heavy mantle of religion is thrust on us at birth. You have heard of those heartless child marriages performed in parts of Rajasthan, where infant brides sleep blissfully in the lap of their mothers through the ceremony, and kid bridegrooms yawn. We rant and rave against this savage imposition on infants too young to know the import of what they are getting into.

Isn’t religion a similar imposition? Shouldn’t there be an age of consent in religion? It is another matter that just like most of those wedded in infancy survive their marriage through life and even develop their own version of love, most of us not only survive our religion, we come to like the bond.

Coupled with the problem of individualisation of truth is of its authenticity. The truth that Krishna realised, he imparted to his dear friend Arjuna lest he deviate from the true path of dharma. Arjun’s mind was clouded, and he felt shaken in body and spirit. Krishna’s sermon on the battlefields of Kurukshetra has come to us in the form of the Bhagavadagita. Now the Gita, as we know and revere it, is in eighteen chapters, with metrical cadences and lilting resonance. Apart from the wisdom it contains, it is a superb literary composition. Was it recited verbatim, in this form, by Krishna to Arjuna on that fateful day when contending armies from Bharatvarsha faced each other, itching to get at each other’s throat? Was there so much time? Well, maybe Krishna gave only the essence. But there’s the rub. Which was the Word and which verbiage? Which is the essence, which embellishment? It is true that in their time Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, and other avatars and Prophets, indeed realised Truth, which they shared with their followers. It must be borne in mind that their unique experience has come down to us through the imperfect medium of language and script. The shadows of memory and the layers of time fell on it. The interest and the angle of the followers have coloured it.

What is Truth? To what purpose does this wondrous universe exist? What power has created it, what pervades it? What regulates it, what are its rules? To whose tune the stars and the galaxies dance? What furthers its purpose, what frustrates it? Or, in other words, what is good, what bad? Where does man stand in this schema? These are the questions that have exercised mankind from its childhood. Answers to these questions would approximate to Truth.

Minds much greater than mine have pondered over these questions, and have revealed the truth as they saw it. I have no pretensions to science or prescience, philosophy or prophecy. But two things are clear to me. First, whatever be the purpose of the universe, its nature is dynamic; change permeates it. The particles and the cells that make it are dynamic, they undergo mutation and change every moment according to some natural laws. Behind the apparent, illusory stillness or stability on the surface, things are forever a changing. If the truth is related to this reality, truth too has to be dynamic. And if this is true, then no matter who has revealed it, however convincing and satisfying it may have seemed at the time, it will not hold for all time to come. And that is no calamity. It is, in fact, a cause for celebration. For we are only groping for truth in a dynamic world. An Einstein does not belittle a Newton, nor does a Stephen Hawkins shame an Einstein. They, in fact, complement and celebrate each other, and help mankind to approximate to truth. Take the Gita. A greater approximation to truth had not been known when it was revealed. It gives you a glimpse of the Supreme Reality, and will continue to light the path of many seekers of truth for times to come.