REFLECTIONS ON THE UNFATHOMABLE:
USOOB & UTOOG
Some decades ago, when our daughter was about eight, she asked me one day if I believed there exists a God. And the conversation went as follows:
Me: I have no idea, but I do hope there is Some Cosmic Entity.
She: Why do you hope so, Dad?
Me: Because I wish to say ‘Thank You’ to Someone for all the blessings I have received in Life.
She: What do you mean by Blessing, Dad
Me: For me, a Blessing is any positive experience, any person or thing that adds to the richness of life without my asking or striving for it.
She: Such as ….
Me: Caring parents, loving siblings, good friends, capacity to appreciate good things in life, an upbringing that enables me to be kind and caring: these are among the Blessings I feel I have received.
She: You mean you have been fortunate in life.
Me: Good fortune and good luck are prosaic terms. Blessing is a more poetic and meaningful concept.
She: I agree. So?
Me: I feel shamelessly selfish and pathetically ungrateful if I do not say ‘Thank You!’ to some intractable Cosmic Entity for the opportunity to experience the world for a brief bracket of the eternal stretch of Time.
She: But where will you find such an entity, Dad?
Me: The French thinker Voltaire once said that if God did not exist, we must invent one. What he meant was that this is how we can make people behave properly and keep society in order. I don’t agree with that at all. I don’t wish to trick people into believing there is God in order to make them behave.
She: I agree, Dad.
Me: Indeed, it is what I call the Candi Or Stick Approach (COSA) to make people behave well. It may work with children, but not with intelligent adults. I envision an Unknown Source Of Our Blessings (USOOB) and an Unknown Target Of Our Gratitude (UTOOG). That is God for me.
V. V. Raman & Indira Raman
(July 1976)
Spurts of Thought 