Archive for June, 2005

note: the views are my own, they require some amount of flexibility in thinking, there is no attack on anything intended here.. if you don’t like this, you don’t have to read it.

now to talk about what i was talking about when i posted the earlier post.

i finished watching ‘the last temptation of christ’. while i will not call it a masterfully amazing movie.. it does challenge belief. enough to generate unnecessary controversy.

my roommate is a staunch believer in christianity, and all that – he couldn’t really stand the ideas stated in ‘the da vinci code’, and this movie was not too well received by him either. not surprising
an hour of discussion later, it came out : jesus christ is the ‘son of god’. he cannot be fallible. god is a being who is not fallible.

i know not enough of other religions to comment, but i do know enough of hinduism to say that while a god is omniscient from the point of view of the religion, that does not mean that he does not commit the occasional mistake. most gods have slipped up every now and then, and more than one has committed major errors in judgement. especially when they incarnate in human form.
hence, all of us, being normal(?) humans, can’t really be exempt from this rule.

back to the movie. a couple of thoughts come to mind.
it beautifully states that it is possible that jesus was a human who chose to live his life extraordinarily. he could have been faced with self-doubt, he could have been an unwilling leader.. who came to believe in himself as a saviour. people followed him not because he was seen as a man who challenged belief, but because he picked up a gauntlet that would not taken up by others.
if one thinks about it, it is very easy to convert such a person into a saviour of the world.. and make him the greatest event to happen to the planet. to the point, that our calendar revolves around him.
he was crazy enough to take on the world’s beliefs, and show them a way of making it all make sense.
it boggles the mind.. but it is possible.
its quite simple, isn’t it ? there is always more than one way of looking at things.
and the way one looks at things depends on what one chooses to see, and what one chooses to believe.

the extension they have placed on the movie, where they show an alternate reality to jesus; goes to prove one thing.. the power of choice. it is very easy to give up and defer the choice.. and eventually that comes to bite back horribly. but once the choice is made, regret is unnecessary. the choice cannot be made again and again. no choice should be made blindly.. as any choice can change the world as we know it.

the other point that the movie makes, albeit on a much subtler note is that, if one believes; anything is possible. jesus ‘wills’ the water into wine, by believing it to be so. this is hailed as a miracle… he does much the same with his other miracles.. but think of the point made here.
is it possible that the human mind can cause change by simply willing it to be true ? we all know our brain is capable of much more than what we put it through… is it possible for us to actually harness the power that may be lying waste within ? could channeling of mental energy cause levitation ? cause a spoon to bend ? change water to wine ?
maybe. if we believe it can.
maybe not. if we will shackle it with belief.

believing in something is one thing, allowing it to dictate life is another. we can believe in so many things. god. divinity. jesus. the power of the mind. that maths may actually be something that is worth the effort. existence.
but this does not mean that these things definitely exist. that i cannot have different beliefs. that all life has to conform to these beliefs.
we can change everything, if we want to. if we don’t… nothing is possible. ever.

when choice is made based on belief, one has to remember that the planet may not share this belief to allow the choice to work. but if one wants to, one can make anything work. each one makes his or her own choices, you don’t have to agree with all of them.
but that does not mean that my choice is wrong.

of course, i could be absolutely wrong here. there may be no such thing as free will and choice; and we could all just be puppets on the strings of gods. or aliens. all this could be one gigantic experiment. or a humongous joke.

i wonder.