The Meek Inheritance

THE MEEK INHERITANCE – Written Feb 2001, Puttaparthi, India
Prologue
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, then say it with the utmost levity – George Bernard Shaw
Why doesn’t God clean up the mess that is this world? This question has been asked so many times that I think it has become trite enough to be slotted to the back of mankind’s psyche. The question has swathed out enough of mankind generation after generation into that unanchored group called atheists. Because man has made the mistake of putting a form to God, and that form may not be agreeable to all, atheists take up minds against God and everything connected to God.
And religiously-inclined people have done nothing to change the mind of these so-called atheists. On the contrary, their very behaviour - their acting at being pious - has turned off even people who are willing to give God half a chance. For being religious is the stupidest thing a man could be. It is an unnatural state for a human to be in. It is a contrived state, brought about by the mind twisting certain facts, certain fiction and a whole lot of imagination into a creed that a child would reject out of hand. Yet, grown-ups have died for these creeds, shedding blood like water.
Being religious is contraction – it tries to project God as a figment of imagination, the imagination belonging to someone who has had a vision of God and most probably does a bad job of putting out that vision to other people. His enthusiasm seems far greater than his ability to tell people what God is. Then the adherents of that form force people to worship that figment of God that they think is right. If a god that could be captured in just one form, that god is a very limited god indeed. All names and forms are his. To deride one and worship another is the greatest sin, if there is something called sin.
A man going to war for God is to be pitied, and kicked on the backside. No one can say they have fought for God – they have only fought for what they think represents God – Jerusalem, the Kabba, the Babri Masjid, the Ayodhya temple. A god that wants one people to fight another people is a disaster of a god. Worshippers of such gods are the true heathens and pagans. The best Christian, the best Muslim, the best Hindu has been the one who forgot everything and concentrated in adoring the object of their adoration without saying a single word to hurt another human. All the rest have been men and women with a motive behind their belief, tainted by some human emotion like greed or revenge.
Religion limits God and any religion that limits God, or the abilities of God, is a sham. And to ask people to blindly follow God is to insult their intelligence. God does not want faith, blind or otherwise, but trust. And trust can only be given after a thorough testing, a rational testing. This is where all religions have failed for the stupid atheist.
I call him stupid because he wants to test figments of imagination while God looms in his face, and around it and inside his head. To test Christ, to test Krishna, to test Buddha – how is it possible? They existed millennia ago. What they were in actuality and what they became after several generations had spin-doctored their story is the cause of much strife in this world.
Christ did not want to start a sect – Paul did that in his enthusiasm as a late comer wanting to make a mark in this new movement. How far did he go in testing the boundaries of reality in his one-upmanship with the apostles? Buddha, the great exponent of non-violence, died after eating poisoned meat given by a woman. And can death, disease and old age ever be hidden so well from a person that he is shocked into a life of austerity on seeing it for the first time? Much of what is in the Bhagavat Geetha, given out by Krishna, are extrapolations by later translators. Which part is his? There are many people who swear by the Geetha and don’t know which part they swear by. It is stupid of atheists to place their belief on the non-existent of God based on the beliefs of some religious sects.
No-one has ever heard of an atheist becoming a martyr because of his beliefs, or his disbelief. To what extent is the atheist willing to test their belief in the non-existent of God? Is he willing to die for them? What is the basis of his belief? His belief – see, he has a belief too. If God is extra-sensory, why does he base his belief in the non-existence of God on the senses? The atheist is ill-advised because he is placing his trust on his senses which are fallible – senility and insanity are facts of life.
God has never failed a test – people have failed to test him, that is all. Practitioners of religions have been tested. Saints have come about because they were tested severely in their faith and trust in God. I throw my mind back and cannot see a single case in the history of man which God was tested. Can you?
I asked this question to Neil Sedera the second time I met him and he said: “God is evidenced in everything, even in the good and the bad. You have to separate him from everything to test him. The funny thing is that once you separate him, there is no need to test him. You have passed the test and he becomes yours”.
Nalin Sedera, who until 2018, had lived an anonymous life in Colombo, Sri Lanka, had an answer to every one of my questions. Now he was 53, a lawyer who had become an expert on the consciousness.
I first met Sedera in the monsoon of 2018. He and I shared the same birth year. We were introduced by a mutual friend. Sedera was slim and trim and looked 10 years younger than I did. We were 48 when we first met.
The first meeting was short. We met in our mutual friend’s apartment in a little town called Puttaparthi, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The dingy, one-bedroom apartment was being pelted by monsoon rains and Sedera had come in wet and looking slightly bedraggled.
His hair, jet black, was plastered to his skull. The forehead was set high and the nose flared out to indicate a physical man. He was not very tall. He was finely put together, well-packed but slim. It was his eyes that grabbed my attention. Sage’s eyes. Compassionate, alert and knowledgeable. The eyebrows were an anomaly – it seemed to be someone else’s. Well-shaped and fine, it did not belong to the almost rustic face.
When he looked at me intently, I knew I was in the presence of someone not to be trifled with. It was nothing apparent, just that his mien called for seriousness on the part of any one interacting with him. Yet, he had a ready smile, although it seemed tinged with genuine sadness. Definitely a compassionate man.
In my time as a journalist before the transformation, I have had to stare down quite a few determined men, some even with evil intent in their mind. While always preserving an outward calm, most of those looks have chilled me to the bone. I never could believe that there are men who could have such intensity, such coldness in them.
Sedera’s eyes had the same intensity, but without the chill. Neither did he have a burning sort of gaze that would have denoted an obsession or a passion.
It was almost a distracted gaze - its intensity directed inward. It was as if he knew me already and what I was telling him about me was old data that he was listening to because he respected me, and loved me.
Yes, love. A kind love that seemed to pour out of his pores. It was almost tangible. He made me feel warm. Not tingly warmth but a relaxed warmth – something you get out of a glowing fire on a chilly evening. This feeling just washed over me in little waves, as if large waves were something I could not have handled.
His handshake was limp. He just placed his work-hardened hands into mine and left it there for me to shake it. I had automatically offered my hand on being introduced to him. Handshakes were definitely something he did not like doing. He did it out of respect for me. I knew this within seconds of taking his hand in mine.
It was as if all these thoughts were being transmitted to me. It was as if benevolent thoughts were seeping out of his mind and making their way into mine. Smoothly; as if respecting my right to stop his thoughts from coming into my mind. With a slight hesitation in case my mind rejected those thoughts. We talked but I cannot remember much of what we talked about. My mind was not in a processing mode. It was just in an accepting mode. And his thoughts came flitting through. Nice thoughts. Thoughts of friendship, goodness, loyalty, duty, love and peace.
For the first time in my life, after half a century of searching, I had met a good man. A pure man with a pure mind and a loving heart. I felt fulfilled. I thought the purpose of my life had been achieved. How wrong I was. But I did not know until five years later.