As I’m catching up on my notes to share, the top-most one is the note for forgiveness! Every year around festival of forgiveness I ask friends, family and well-wishers to forgive me for my shortcomings, and idiosyncrasies. For the whole year, relationships accumulate a lot of mental and emotional clutter this is a moment to reflect and give a sincere shot to start fresh and reduce the clutter.
So friends, family and well-wishers – Michammi Dukhdam, if I have not asked earlier.
This year during the eight days of Paryushan, I fasted the first and the last day and read the book – “Conversations with God”.
After Nine Lives, I wanted to read Conversations with God. At times the book as very logical and fresh answers to questions man has asked God forever. The book proposes an interesting viewpoint to omni-potency of God – Why does God let the suffering on earth continue? To this question, the author proposes there is heaven or hell, there is no good or bad, there are no opposites and there is no happiness and suffering – these are labels which man has put on. God doesn’t see it that way – “I do not show My goodness by creating only what you call perfection all around you.” This is a relativist view of world but a very compelling one when judgement days are predicted and one man declares supremacy of his thinking over another man’s. It’s the very foundation of Jainism - many times referred as Anekantvad.
A symbolism the author highlights is about the holy triumvirate: God, the Son and the holyspirit. In authors viewpoint these are nothing but the act of knowing (or creating), experiencing and being (or conceiving). 3-in-1 is found every where in nature, it’s the sublime, they are the components of golden ration (a, b, a + b).
A good advice, on relationship put forth in the book is if you are not happy you can never make the relationship happy. You can’t expect the other person to change – “Let each person in relationship not worry about the other, but only, only about Self.” “You must first see your Self as blessed before you can see another as blessed”. This is a bit individualist thought, but the according to the author many relationships fail because one person’s obsession with the other. “Its not in the action of another, but in your re-action, that your salvation will be found.”
The book is very dense, and above few paragraphs summarize the thoughts which stuck me the most!