By Vijay Phanshikar :
“Si Dieu n’extait pas, it faudrait
l’inventer.”
(If God did not exist, it would be
necessary to invent Him)
- translated into English from French.
- François-Marie Arouet Voltaire,
French enlightenment philosopher,
in an Epistle (long advisory note) to the author of a book that sought to debunk founders of abrahamic religions. Nobody could actually determine the actual authorship of that book in 1769.
WHAT a profound assertion !
In simple terms, it means, humanity needs gods, and if God did not exist, then He must be invented. The depth of this thought is well beyond common comprehension.
Of course, for the believers in God’s presence, this statement means nothing, in a way. But even when they think deeply about those few powerful words, then they would realise its
importance.
There is no doubt, the very idea that God be invented if one does not exist, is absolutely thrilling and challenging and adventurous.
For, if at all God did not exist, early Man must have stretched and strained and stressed his rational thinking and creativity and poetry and philosophy to imagine how God should be. For, to assign all virtues to a (super)power and then carve a mental image of the
embodiment of all those and then
formalise the mental picture must have required a tremendously refined
human intellect.
True, non-believers would certainly question the need to have gods.
But ask them what they would feel if they were cheated or dumped or
threatened or made victims of vices such as aggression, arrogance, violence -- and they would detest the very idea, and expect everybody to behave in a certain fine
manner (so that the human community enjoys a virtuous, harmonious
togetherness).
That harmony, too, has been assigned to God as one of the attributes, so to say.
But then, the human race -- since Time began -- has seen various manifestations of God in different forms and has felt assured of a harmonious living because of the divine presence.
Those who understand the Sanatan
idealism also know how God is not a
creation of human imagination and how the Supreme Being -- the Non-dual Singularity, the Omkaar before universe was born has manifested itself through multiplicity:
Ekoham Bahusyaam -- One became Many -- so that the universe would expand in different forms that have a common thread passing through them all -- the thread or evidence of the life -- praan !
Ask this to a quantum physicist or a man of mathematics or molecular chemistry -- or any science -- and he or she would tell how the core of all existence has a manifestation of God.
Beyond the science, however, is the human need for lasting sobriety which is ensured by virtue and the
awareness of the presence of the divine. But when that awareness goes missing, then what emerges is a society or
community that tilts towards barbarism in different forms.
To such a fallible human race, then, God is the only sobering and calming factor.
Of course, to this purpose, the divine has always worked.
But to those who believe that God does not exist, Voltaire said, If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him !
Name Him differently, travel to Him by different routes, but do that without fail, Voltaire seems to suggest.
This has been an ancient Indian value -- through any name, via any route, one reaches the Ultimate:
Ekam Sat Viprah Bahuda Vadanti -- Wise people give different names to ONE TRUTH !
This discourse, thus, may tell Voltaire, in effect, “Sire, one need not do so much of hard work to invent God. He is there. He has been there. He will be there”.
But one tenders an apology here for
having called ‘He’ to God. For, one is
conscious, that what wise people
understand by God is an entity
beyond all epithets.