A Taste of Organized Religion

The auto rickshaw drops us off behind a long line of cars. We walk towards the convention site and all around us there are men and women in sparkling white clothes.  Occasionally everybody turns to look at someone emerging out of a high end car that pulls up. Prestige and one upmanship are very important aspects of social life here

A SUV pulls up and the door opens to reveal a white man in a shirt that somehow seems whiter than everybody else’s. Whispers go around that this is one of the key speakers – an import from the west paid to address the congregation. Most people do not understand English but having a foreign speaker adds punch given the quality of local speakers.

The convention is more than a 100 years old and draws lakhs of people each year. It is held on the banks of the river Pampa every February when the river is in ebb and the river bed is exposed. The crowds that attend the convention which lasts a week are some of the richest Christian businessmen, plantation owners, NRIs  in India. The convention earns a lot of money through sales of books, music, donations, etc. The speakers speak about social and moral issues, correct behaviour and the kingdom come. The attendees sit through the sermons and then go back to their tasks of making money with renewed vigour.

This is organized religion for you. All the constituents get together periodically to stimulate and milk money from the cash rich flock so that it can flow through the right channels. The spiritual founder is deftly used to instil fear of retribution so that the miserly wealthy can be made to part with a little of their money. A large part of the money is required to sustain the religious organization, its offices and assets. Everybody goes back with the feeling of a job well done and a lighter conscience. This scenario is played out in all religious gatherings be it Christian, Hindu, Islamic, etc.

 Is this what the spiritual founders of these organizations visualized when they embarked on their paths of introspection, minimalism and rebellion against their social norms? Jesus Christ (as well as Buddha, Osho, etc) was a rebel. Long haired, wearing the simple robes of his time, accompanied by a band of dreadlocked, bearded and fierce looking men as well as a few women of social disrepute, he wandered the towns, deserts and the countryside. Converting water to wine, possibly indulging in cannabis, defending adulterous women are some of the feats associated with him. He detested the greed for money and the usage of the temple of god as a trading place. This man possibly bore no resemblance to the benevolent and mild looking man with Greco Roman features that we see in pictures adorning many houses today. There would probably be much more similarities with the Aghoris and sanyasis who frequent the riverside crematoriums of Varanasi.

What impact do you think Jesus would have on the psychology of the lakhs of convention attendees clutching their money bags, dressed in white and proclaiming abhorrence of wine, women and intoxication if he were to make an appearance in their midst today? Most people would probably try to drive him away from the site or leave in fear themselves.

You could say that the man and his philosophy are as far away as possible from the people who now walk around claiming to be his most fervent devotees. Today’s orthodox Christian says that any desire of the body is a sin and needs to be killed. The only desire to be cultivated is the desire for money. The more money you have and of course donate to the Church the greater Christian you are.

Spirituality as pursued by Jesus and others like him was an exploration, understanding and celebration of the body, mind and nature within which man existed. This body, mind and nature are treated as the house of god and actions are taken to ensure that this space remains blissful for all life energies. The world is filled with God’s creations and our bodies are just a part of it. Our bodies and minds should only take what is absolutely necessary so that other creatures are not deprived of the minimum required for life. Bodily desire is natural and should be treated as such. It should be quenched and not suppressed since the only way to conquer desire is to quench it. Suppression will only result in a violent backlash of psychological regression that will damage body, mind and society. A blissful body becomes a sacred space for blissful energies to reside in making each of us god like and our bodies temples of god.

The pursuit of money is the root of all evil in every spiritual philosophy since it is a desire that is seldom quenched. The arrival of money only initiates a thirst for more money. Accumulation of money deprives other creatures of what is as much theirs as yours.

Isn’t it strange then that in today’s world we seem to be doing exactly the opposite of what our spiritual leaders espoused and that too in their name? Money today is the ultimate focus and all creation is a means of making money and an opportunity to get rich. Persons who try to live the philosophy of Jesus are most likely to be outcast or terminated – e.g Osho, Gandhi, etc.

The system has found a way to make the rebel another of its tools. One of the key techniques is to elevate the founding leader of a spiritual movement to a god status. Through this one activity, the man who did what he did ceases to exist and has become a legend or a myth. Once the leader becomes a god, then the movement is ready to become a money churning machine. Followers will then revere the leader as a god. Actions performed by the leader become miracles and myths which are out of the reach of ordinary persons. Christ the god is to be worshipped, idolized and offered sacrifices. His deeds are all acts of God. The ordinary man can never attempt to follow his steps because who can emulate God? We then have an excuse to slip or stay in our levels of mediocrity and remain the way we are without attempting to change the way we live since there is a supernatural being that will do all this for us. All we need to do is to pay periodic sums of money and continue to focus on making money. Buddha the man and Jesus the man aimed to show that if we raised our energies we could be phenomenal beings but what our political, religious and economic leaders have done is show how even they can be used as raw material to make money just like the rest of us.