Temples of the mind.

The season of festivity just went by in India. Started by the mammoth ten day celebration to the festival of lights. it was strange because people just woke up from their slumber and started to become happy, whether they felt happy is another issue. But I am not interested in people or their happiness. I am interested in something else, something they call a synonym of faith and prayer. The house of gods. The temples.
On a recent trip to Rajasthan, which houses fields and fields of gold dust scattered abundantly, I saw something which make me feel small and big, at the same time. There were temples, small and large after every kilometer or so. And all of them were situated at such heights that made me feel as if some hand had put them from the sky. The sheer magnificence and grandeur of some obscure building located in a no man’s land was hard to take into my system. I visited numerous temples later and the usual opulence striked me time and again. I had the following conversation with myself regarding the mystery:

ME: Why is it that places of worship are built in a manner which makes an ordinary mortal feel dwarfed?

I : please elaborate.

Me: I stand before the huge sanctuary and stare into the nothingness of the domes and pillars, intricately carved with a perfection only a divine sculptor could achieve. For a moment I forget that the divinity is nothing but a consistent display of mortality. I forget that these statues have been carved by hands which were also used to have a meager morsel, hands which were as ordinary as mine and as millions of others flocking to pay tribute to the collective endeavour of that sculptor. Can you tell me,what is it that makes me bow before something that has been made my me? Tell me, what is it that makes me call a statue a god?

I: there are two reasons why you bow. The first is fear and the second is fear. It’s just that both the fears are different.
The first is the fear of the unknown, the second that of unvanquished.

Me: Elaborate.

I: When fire was not tamed, it was revered. It was revered as we believed that it was greater than us, we believed that we had no control over it. The primitive man had the air, water, sun and the fire god. Why? It was the fear of uncertainty, the fear of being incapacitated by these forces which led him to bow before them. Suddenly, he realized that fire was controllable, it was something producible and the god vanished. We revere the fuzzy, not the absolute. We are scared of an unknown force, a force which has been made unknown by default.

Me: Unvanquished? I think this comes as a natural heir to the unknown. How can you conquer something you are not aware of?

I: Yes. Indeed it is. It is made to look like that. Imagine, who should be the most logical agnostic in the world?
Beyond any doubt it would be the sculptor who sculpts the idol. Why would a human pray to a god he has carved? The parents are also sculptors. Do they revere their children? Would you pray to someone whose weaknesses you are aware of?

Me: No. I won’t. So, what are these people bowing before when they pray?

I: They are bowing before the fact that statue covered in gold housed in an opulent temple is the result of some divine intervention. They are also bowing before the convenient negligence that it is their strength which has given the godly status to god. But, I could have tolerated the affinity for such imbecile behavior, had the people kept religion to where it belongs.

Me: Why is it that people tolerate any level of incompetence when it comes to their work but do not have religious laxity?
Why is it that the worker and the sculptor have to live in mud houses while the lifeless idol sits opulently in golden palaces?
Why is it that the bridges and the airplanes are not bowed at although they require a greater precision and mind than the stone?

I: I would have to think about the first two questions but for the third, may be they believe that the man-made achievements are in their control but god’s will isn’t.

Me: yes, the unknown crops again. There is more fear of a disaster after calling yourself an atheist than calling yourself as a technological atheist. And if this is true, I wonder, if the bridges can collapse and god can play dice, it is still a probability game, the only absolute and sure thing is death. What is greater than that ?? life ?? yes. Why don’t we then bow to every minute of it? Why can’t we follow the religion of certainty?