Imagining God in Color

Arab Muslims conquered lands in the name of Allah.

Europeans established colonial rule in the name of their respective kings and queens.

India was ruled for 300 years by Muslims. There are 13% Muslims in India today even after partition into Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The British ruled India for 200 years. There are 2% Christians in India today, roughly the same percentage before the British arrived.

By virtue of the caste system a Hindu lives in a glass house. Racial prejudice has nothing to do with Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Middle Eastern Jew, not a white European.

It can be said that the caste system was a subsequent addition or adulteration of the Vedas that was introduced in good faith at around 2000 B.C for the sake of social order and social welfare by Sage Manu in what are now known as Manu Smrutis or laws of the Hindu Religion.

The caste system in Hinduism is four thousand years old.

http://www.friesian.com/caste.htm

To be born a Hindu in India is to enter the caste system, one of the world's longest surviving forms of social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years, the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. The ranks in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings, or varnas, emerge from a primordial being. From the mouth come the Brahmans—the priests and teachers. From the arms come the Kshatriyas—the rulers and soldiers. From the thighs come the Vaisyas—merchants and traders. From the feet come the Sudras—laborers. Each varna in turn contains hundreds of hereditary castes and subcastes with their own pecking orders.

A fifth group describes the people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not claim them. Untouchables are outcasts—people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives, particularly in the rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of India's people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/

Mr. Chopra is no more guilty of marketing "his brand of Hinduism" than are any of the myriad televangelists who market their brands of Christianity. Judging from what I see and hear coming from many pulpits in Christian churches, Christians have taken the clear social justice mandate of Christ and perverted it to an exclusive club that, in many cases, is for men only. The image of God as father makes sense in that it was invented by a patriarchal society. The New Testament especially was written and, more important, edited by men. Today, the "ministerial" role of women is relegated to making announcements, placing flowers on the altar each week and running bake sales.

God is sexless, colorless. I think surprises are in store for those who believe that their particular brand of God is the only and correct one.

I thought that Kipling intended "The White Man's Burden" as satire. But since he so accurately protrayed the mindset of a subset of British imperialists, they didn't see the satire and adopted it as their own. Sort of like "A Modest Proposal". Believe it or not, people took that one seriously too.

Let us know what is Hindusim.

1) Hindus fight each other, because they inspired from Hindu Battle, Ram-Rawana, both preach same God.
2) Mahabaharat Yudh(Battle) also both Hindus and they fight each other.
3) In Hinduism they discriminate sub-caste (untouchable) funny thing is even in 21st Century they practice, they never marry,never eat, never look in the first morning.
4) They worship(LING) PENNIS of Vishnu, Elephat like man they worship even Scientis, they blindly believe, they have no mind and eyes for such fake Gods, because they link to the progress and materials, if they get they worship, otherwise next day they change their god out of 330 crores.

DEB CHATTERJEE WROTE:

The writer it seems he is fed up, he inspired mostly media which always tried to deface Islam and Muslim. The only request from my side is instead of getting confusing and confusing others better buy and Quran from the Market and study and come to the conclusion, I dont want to write about Hinduism, because every body know what is Hinduism and practice. Deb ommitted is totally and completely wrong to the media, by delivering this defenitely you will pay the price.

Shaffiuddin quotes Quran:

"It said, God is One, and he is Eternal, neither begets nor begotten, and nothing like him."
This “begets and begotten” blabbering is the Muslims' sinister rejection of the relation of Jesus and God, although their scriptures mention that Jesus is ‘from the spirit of Allah’. They never seem to grasp the concept of spiritual fatherhood.
The Quran in describing Hell mentions that Allah stepped on the edge of Hell. That means He had a foot. In another place the Quran states that He sat on His throne.Furthermore He is always referred to in the masculine . Muslims are fond of saying that Allah “created man in his own image. I am not sure if this claim has originated in their scriptures, but it would at least prove that Muslims are predisposed to think of God as having human form.

Why is The Post continuing to print this drivel? As if explosive-laden Islamic "martyrs" aren't enough, here's another example of the benefits religions confer on their followers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/world/asia/04india.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Organized religion is organized superstition.

"The moral duty to spread one's faith doesn't always imply using force, but the whole enterprise of converting the heathens was tied up inextricably with empire and conquest."

Truth is, the spreading of one's faith (especially if you are a Christian), should NEVER imply using force.

God doesn't force Himself on us; He gives us a choice. Jesus didn't force anyone to follow Him; he gives them a choice.

However that doesn't mean Christians shouldn't concern themselves with "converting the heathens." Chrisitans are commanded to go into all the world and tell the good news of salvation through Christ. What "the heathen" do with that news is up to them.

And, by the way, "heathen" doesn't imply race, it implies a lack of relationship with the one true God. Racism has nothing to do with it.

'consciousness is all there is' ramana maharshi

the concept of an 'ego', a free willed being, is an illusion. the realization of this is enlightment or the 'vision of christ' etc. this world of opposites in duality is what it is. it 'needs' no 'fixing' and functions perfectly as Planned. the ego tries to fix it according to this same Plan. as actors on a stage humans 'think' they can reshape the world with their 'personal effort'. trying to overcome this situation yields more weight to the original 'sin' which is that humans have free will. we 'think' free will is self evident because humans are designed to think thusly. google ADVAITA

From personal experience. Although my mother (Jewish) was very fond of the woman I was to marry, when the time came for the Justice of the Peace to marry us, my mother said she wouldn't attend such a "heathen" ceremony. Our next door neighbor's wife had converted to Judaism. One Friday evening, after looking at the candles glowing in the window, my mother scornfully and self righteously said that no matter how many rituals "that woman" followed, my mother would never consider her to be Jewish. Such tribal thinking is a curse: it is the basis for prejudice and too often has become the rationale for inflicting violence against the "other."

The conversion process used by Muhammadans was even worse than the Christians.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, had no qualms about banditry and murder. He used them freely to hold on to his followers and to convert "pagans" to Muhammadanism. Most of the converts did not give a hoot for the Arabic godling Allah, who was after all the family god of Muhammad's clan. His father was Abdullah and carried that name from birth. Abdullah means " slave of the god Allah". This was a common practice for Arabs to name children after the clan dieties. Allah was promoted to the chief and only diety of Muslims.

But what the new converts liked was the loot that came with Islam and the hatred for Jews that was and is an integral part of Muhammadanism.

Loot was both tangible like money, land etc and the other tangible: women including young female children. Some of the children that Muhammad acquired for his harem were teenagers. Saffiya was only 15 when Muhammad murdered her husband and took Saffiya to bed the same night. He later married her because she accepted Islam.

Another famous slave girl that remained his concubine was Rayhana. Muhmmad's thugs murdered her husband who was a prominent member of the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza . Rayahana was also a young teenager , a very beautiful Jewess who was added to Muhammad's harem. She refused to become a Muslim, Muhammad refused to marry her, and she was sexually molested by Muhammad until he died.

Many of the religious still seem to live in the "them" and "us" mentality even though the basic tenant of their religion is the fact that all were created by God and are all "God's children". That includes those who perform abortion, have abortions, gays, persons of all races, gender, and religious persuasion. In fact "we" are all "them".

While the "us" espouse desires to help "them", the less fortunate and ones who have not seen the "light", "them" are not "us" and won't be "us" until they share all of our beliefs, both religious and political.

I have been reading the comments section and the responses should tell you what will happen if you ask a media-made phony like deepak chopra to guest-write. that's why Vogue magazine refers to some blond-haired person on the NY social ladder as a yogi, totally undermining the ascetic and quest-related aspects of the sanskrit word to reduce it to 'practioner of yoga'.

there's a story in hindu scriptures where Narad (the personification of the free-wheeling, questioning, curious and mischief-making mind of - yes - a yogi) tries to convince Lord Vishnu (a solar deity now part of the Hindu Holy Trinity and of which Krishna is an avatar) that he loves Him best. at which Vishnu points out the exhausted, hard-working house-holder who takes the name of the lord in a free moment. that man loves Him best since he remembers God even though he's entangled in the web of Maya and Karma, and not living a life solely devoted to taking god's name.

in english, why dont you ask an ordinary practising Hindu to write about his faith next, instead of the air-brushed mr. chopra?

Our Very Religious and Somewhat Racist Nation
Standing in the entrance of Disneyland, I have often seen small children crying when their parents try to take them through the arches that lead into the main part of the park. At first I was puzzled by this strange reaction to the Happiest Place on Earth until it happened with my own children when they were small.

My wife and I discovered that the children were heartbroken to leave the most beautiful place (from a child's perspective) that they had ever been. The entrance to Disneyland has flowers, lights, a train, and music they loved. Why leave?

We knew it was better, but they did not. Of course as parents we gently tried to help them let go of the one good place in order to go someplace so much better, but often they did not want to go and so the old good became a bad thing keeping them from better.

I thought of this when it was pointed out to me that our very religious nation, dominantly Christian, has many people that also admit to racism.

Jesus Christ gave two commands: to love our neighbor and to love God. Racism is a horrifying sin against the command to love our neighbor as self. God creates people in His image, so racism is also blasphemy. It is also stupid since it prevents us from benefiting from the great goods that God would bring through other people.

Why then do so many Christians also struggle with racism? There was even a time when they tried to justify it! Of course some people are wicked just because they wish to be wicked. They may say they are Christians, but they are not. They know racism is wrong, but it is the wrongness that attracts them. These are troubled souls and they need more help than can be had from a simple blog post.

Why do good people struggle with racism?

I suspect part of it may be a first love swollen into an idol. The world contains many goods and one of them is love of the kin group. The love of my little family, my town, my kin adds charm to human existence.

Because most Americans love their families and had happy childhoods that were not, for good or ill, in interracial situations, they associate this happiness with all that is good. They know what they know and when growing up begins to push them out of the comfortable nursery and into new situations they react with fear.

The nursery love of those who are like I am is transformed by this fear and love is cast out. In some Americans, I suspect racism is the imperfect love made hateful by childish fears.

Most of us do not wish to be racists, but the terror of the different causes us to react badly. We love what is and for many that is comes with familiar foods, ways of speaking, and physical appearance. The good that was becomes the enemy of the good that must be.

Like the child crying in the anterooms of Disneyland, we fear losing an old good for an uncertain new experience. Things cannot stay the same, however, because change is part of God's order. Like tattered Christmas decorations hanging on a house in February, what was once lovely can become hideous.

God did not make us all the same. Some goods are general goods, but others are specific to me. There is a great danger when a man generalizes his specific experience and applies it universally. That this way of dong things was good for me yesterday does not mean it will always be good for me tomorrow or that it is good for anyone else.

Of course, the situation is even more complicated by evils that have been done. We are not born into a people without a history when it comes to race. Racial slavery was real and it was not so long ago as cultures go. We still live in the ripples of the Civil War.

Generations of racism and bad government policies regarding race have poisoned the culture that any child enters however good hearted. They cannot simply move from one good to another in many, if not most, cases. Instead, the joy of God's splendidly varied creation is further obscured for them by the activity of evils that are the fruit of racist policies from the past and from the present. What would be hard in any case is now made doubly difficult because of the ugliness they often encounter as they first leave the comforts of the known.

The small child hears the cutting racial slur. Filthy pop culture teaches them to denigrate difference and react to it with anger. Media from movies to Internet videos reinforce stereotypes and promote further fear.

Our growing up is too often stunted and we live crippled lives. We fear leaving the old good not just because of the natural fear of growing up, but because growing up has so often been made bad and ugly by racists. If we are not careful, we enter into an endless cycle of hatred and smallness that threaten our growth as a people.

The good news of the gospel is that such fear can be cast out by perfect love. We can have faith that, even in this broken world, the goodness of God is fundamental. Things are broken, but the rough places can still be made smooth. Jesus Christ offers universal salvation that is the way of forgiveness leading to love. For a Christian people to live in less than this full possibility is not just a sin, but a great pity. There is joy through the doorway of racial reconciliation. There are greater loves ahead than nursery loves!

Always hopeful and without fear, the American Christian must take Father's hand to go forward into the bigger world and so begin the joyful task of reconciling what is to what should be.

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Posted by John Mark Reynolds on August 2, 2008 11:37 AM

Nice try Deepak!

You picked up the art of the swindle from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and have it down pat!

Your strategy is to talk to secular Christians in their own language, here in the language of white guilt. But your goal is not to get white people to feel guilty; that's just an ends to a means.

Your goal is to spread your form of Hinduism, and make a ton of money in doing so.

Your trick is at the end of your little screed, "...but as long as other denominations preserve the concept of "pagan," the specter of lesser races will hover over the altar."

Nice switch of topics, eh? First you get us to feel guilty about our history, then you switch topics to something totally unrelated, and that is to try to eliminate the concept that some religions are pagan. There are no lesser races. There are lesser religions though. All people are equals. Not all ideas are equal.

Pagan is a valid term in the Christian belief, which contains a progressive history of God's revelation to the world, starting with the Adam and Eve, the Patriarchs, Moses and down to Jesus. My Germanic ancestors were pagans. It's not about race, it's about their stage in the revelation. God may reveal some parts of his truth in these pagan religions as a way of preparing them to hear the Good News. And the Church teaches that all men and women have the grace to achieve salvation, no matter where or when they live. But the fullness of truth resides in the Church, and all salvation comes through her.

You're trying to trick us out

The root problem is that the truth can't be known through the ordinary thinking mind.

Discovering through inner explorations all that the mind isn't (which is everything conceivable through thought), leaves the experience of what is.

Another way of saying this is that each person is invited to transmute a (false) sense of separateness within his consciousness.

Contrary to our conditioned beliefs, we're not isolated fragments (egos) in a hostile universe. At a deep level we're all connected.

Such realization removes racism, intolerance and any sense of superiority in one's self or beliefs.
Intellectual agreement unfortunately (as Deepak implies) doesn't accomplish the goal; only the experience of the real does that.

Chopra's piece is ingenious because Khrisna originally was pictured as Black not blue. For proof of this see www.pyramidoftruth.com Now the word God is a english rendition. When one reads the bible one cannot help but come to the conclusion that God is a Black male and one of the gods. See Psalms 82:1 and Psalms 86:8 among many other verses. Black people has been under a death like sleep for thousands of years now and lost knowledge of themselves. Many came out of that sleep and woke up.

Most Americans can see their president in color less alone their God.

Three interesting tests to assess the validity of different Religions assertions against pure logic:

a) The Tarzan Test: Assuming that Tarzan committed no 'Sin' would he be entitled to 'Heaven'?
Monotheistic religions would seem to bar his entry; for if he was allowed, how could others who have not 'sinned' cannot also be stopped. Curtains exclusivity.

b)Animal Test: Do animals have souls and if so what kind of afterlife is in store for them?

Again, monotheistic religions fall short, whereas religions like Buddhism and Hinduism do make some provision, right or wrong.

c)The Net Total Souls Test: If 'soul' is indestructible and no provision for reincarnation or progression is made, the Math of total number of souls starts becoming fuzzy. Unless you factor in life forms in outer space, with the same souls. Hello progression, bye bye exclusivity.

"In any system of organized religion, beliefe trumps direct experience."
When I was young I believed in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and God. Now that I have had the benificent grace of having direct experience I no longer have belief. Belief is replaced by knowing. The mind is the seat of the realm of duality. The heart is the seat of singularity. Belief is of the mind which is simply the wrong tool to know God as God is of the realm of singularity and duality. No use trying to figure that one out.......either you know or you can have faity which is the minds way of saying, be in the heart and have the direct experience of knowing. Being 'out of your mind' in this case is quite literaly wonderful. Be still and KNOW that I am God. Be in the heart. i the y's

I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I don't accept that there is god.

But, if one accepts the presence of an omnipotent, all-knowing sentient being, then one would also have to accept - in my humble opinion - the idea that such a being would be completely unknowable to us. Something akin to how an amoeba experiences human intelligence - and even this is a flawed analogy because humans (as we've seen) are far from omnipotent.

The Bible says that God has created all the peoples of the earth and appointed their boundaries. Presumably that means that each "kind" of person has to stay at some God-designated home. If you are a Bible-is-the-word-of-God believer, then you're stuck with the author's opinions. We'll never get around such beliefs until we can let go of this idea that a thousands of years old book was dropped on us from heaven.

Our minds may believe many things that aren't necessarily so.

Our Faith is proved by what we do.

I just returned from a 'fact finding mission' in New Orleans.

I heard about belief and I witnessed faith.

Christians from Florida and Wisconsin had converged in the ghetto known as Central City-once a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes- to work alongside formerly homeless recovering addicts to demolish the old so as to bring in new opportunities for the community at The Living Witness Church of God in Christ.

A few miles away, a humble Hindu physician from Oviedo, Florida, Dr. Pinkal Patel had spearheaded a medical mission of twelve others [most all were Hindu] who traveled on their own dime and gave up a week of their time to provide medical care to the under served in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, where many American citizens have not seen a physician since before the levees broke after The Storm of 2005.

We Christians call Jesus the Great Physician and his presence was evident in Christians who sweated during the last week of July and in Hindu's who were doing what Jesus commanded all his follower's do:

Bless the poor and care for the ill.

Dr. Patel doesn't believe in Jesus with his mind-but his faith led him to do what Jesus taught.

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http://www.wearewideawake.org/

Deepak Chopra's was brought under Hindu Mythology, it is natural to him what was his logic and understanding of the sarrounding. It order to know real way of life he should study honestly ISLAM. He can meet Dr. Zakir Naik in MUMBAI to know more Islam.

Deepak Chopra knowledge in religion is according to me is very weak and not complete. It seems did not know neither he studied Islam. His article is based on study of religion other than Islam. Islam do not project Man as a God. Chapter 112 (Sura Iqlas) of the Quran, decribed perfectly the God and his features. It said, God is One, and he is Eternal, neither begets nor begotton, and nothing like him. One can study detail translation/explaination of the the above versus, he will be knowing of the real God. In order to know about real Islam you can visit website: www.irf.net.int. or you can discuss with me on my mail address: shafiuddin1955@hotmai.com

Well the religions were created by man, not God, so we might expect some flaws.

Not that they didn't play a role in our evolution and serve a divine purpose.

But that was then and this is NOW.

It is about as ridiculous as discriminating against people that drive red vehicles.

Fiction filled minds... the notion of racism or difference is a tool to divide the general population and disempower, divide and rule.

There is an interesting quote though on http://Buddha.me

"Life is a challenge fit for a God"