Faith: Source of Superstition - Part 1

The whole movement of eradication of superstition revolves round this subject and all the brickbats and bouquets that are showered on us are related to it. Some consider our activities to be quite purposeful, beneficial and reasonable, while others take them to be just the opposite. Unless superstitions are eradicated we will not be successful in the 21st century; say some while others think that eradication of superstitions is actually a façade for destroying god, religion and traditions. What is superstition after all? They ask. It is much the same as blowing the ash that gathers on a burning piece of charcoal. Once blown the charcoal shines again. Therefore, it is necessary to blow away the ash i.e., superstition, occasionally but taking care at the same time, not to blow out the fire itself.

Relativity of Faith

Why are there so many opinions about eradication of superstitions? The reason is that one person's faith is a superstition for another and what a third person considers to be a superstition, is a very strong faith, almost a question of life and death for a fourth one. It thus becomes necessary to clarify what is faith and what is superstition. However one faces a difficulty here, because as we have already seen before, faiths vary with times and individuals. Every one has seen the photograph of Satya Saibaba. To his disciples he is a great Baba, guru, sage and even Lord! What is so peculiar about this Baba? He just moves his hand in the air and gives you holy ashes, gold chains silver rings and what not. It is claimed in his books that he even gives his disciples gold lockets and necklaces studded with jewels. These miracles have won him the faith of innumerable men and women including the prime ministers and president of this country. On the other hand there also exist a number of individuals who consider these miracles nothing but fraud perpetrated on gullible people to boost idolatry and superstition. This can be called idiosyncratic relativity of faith.

The Meaning of Faith

The word faith has diverse meanings. Consider the following statements: I have faith in my mother and father: I have faith in my guru or Baba: I have faith in my family deity and religion: I have faith in miracles, supernatural powers as also the power of the mantras: I have faith in equality and the constitution of this country. In each of these statements the word faith has a different connotation, but very few people are aware of it. We generally accept that meaning of a word as it is commonly used. Suppose you come across a person, while strolling with a friend, whom you tell that the person approaching you is a 'chamcha' of such and such leader. Now chamcha literally means a spoon. But when used to describe a particular person, your friend has no difficulty in understanding what you mean. Similarly the word faith when used in every day affairs generally means religious faith, faith in the other world or in the liberation of the soul from the cycle of birth and death. Thousands of preachers from millions of temples have been drilling into our minds that we ought to have faith and faith alone can help us navigate safely the hazardous sea of life on this earth. Do not reason, they preach, for reasoning leads one nowhere. Let your emotions guide you instead. Do not allow your conscience or reasoning intellect hamper your religious path. What they preach and demand from you is certainly superstition and not faith. Let us consider another pair of words, here, before we dive deep into the discussion on superstition and faith.

Spiritual Pretence Of Godmen And Spiritualism - Part 3

The deprived poor people of the ‘Bahujan Samaj’ turn to the ‘Babas’ to get relief from their poverty and the accompanying difficulties. The well-to-do educated middle class go to the ‘Maharaj’, who preach ‘live and let live’ policy. And the highly educated higher middle class go to ‘Acharya’ in search of ‘the art of living’. All these three institutions-Baba, Maharaj and Acharya- are individual centred. They start with the dictum-if the individual changes, the society will change. Next they preach the audience to uplift their own selves and progress. Finally they ask them to leave all the problems of their lives to the Adhyatmic powers of the god man and surrender to him. The audience is convinced that their beatitude lies in the total surrender to the god man. This whole process gradually de-socialises the individual.

Today all our energy is spent in fighting superstitions of the primary state. Those who do not openly indulge in deceit and exploitation but harbour very regressive thoughts and act accordingly as do the Maharaj are unfortunately left alone. And the fight against the Acharya is altogether out of the question. Such Babas hold workshops for personality development provide health facilities and also do some other socially useful work. But they also generate indifference and aloofness towards progressive movements, administration, community life and even generates religious hatred at times.

All this leads to the destruction of youth’s reasoning and gives it a wrong direction. This is quite dangerous and does not have a simple solution. We can only chalk out the direction thus: on one hand there is the responsibility of determining what is truth and what is not, what is right and what is not right.

For centuries, religion provided the answer to this. Scientific outlook fulfilled this responsibility in the field of investigation of knowledge and this was accepted by religion too. But in addition, with the help of rational thinking, scientific outlook also could find answers to questions such as- what kind of life should one live; what is good and what is bad; what should be the ideal of human life, etc. in the behavioural field. Adhyatma might do it too. But in the field of ethics, the difficulty Adhyatma faces is that the scriptures and the prophets’ words of different religions differ widely and at times contradict each others. Many times the ethical grain gets lost in this confusion and attention is concentrated on the sheer husk of rituals that remains. We all experience this every day.

So even in the ethical domain rationalism will have to undertake a critical appraisal of what is a ‘good life’. On the other side, in action, every rationalist will have to resolve that he will never loose the faith he has in himself. Dignity of a human being lies in living one’s life with the humanist stance, how and to what extent they can be solved. We all have a Guru in our own honestly and with courage. With the help of reason we are capable of identifying our problems and also understanding rationality to make us aware and alert. The individual’s journey on the path of life, under the guidance of his Guru within, is the essence of his life, liberation from Adhyatmic Buvabaji and also foundation of a healthy society.

Spiritual Pretence Of Godmen And Spiritualism - Part 2

Recently Satya Sai Baba celebrated his 80th birthday with all pomp and show. The birthday bash was dutifully telecast by all TV channels and reported in the print by all news papers. In the prestigious daily, Hindustan Times, Veer Sanghavi, the noted journalist raised some questions in his article ‘The Truth of Satya Saibaba’. He writes, you get a number of evidences of Satya Sai Baba’s perverse homosexual activities on the internet with the help of Google search engine. All these victims of Baba’s lust were in earlier times his devotees. A few of them might be bogus but all can not be so. How can hundreds of them publicly complain of sexual exploitation? This Baba performs miracles like pulling out gold chains, costly watches from thin air and a ‘Shivalinga’ from his mouth. This he or his devotees claim to be the sign of his divinity. But such miracles are common for any magician. Why doesn’t the Baba allow others to examine him before performing these miracles to prove his divinity? Why does he not pull out from thin air any thing that is bigger than his fist? Why did this god man hide himself in the bath room when his own disciples attacked him?

Another example is Asaram Bapu of Surat in the Gujarat state. This whole sale trader in Adhyatma secured for his institution a huge piece of land worth Rs. 40 crores for a throw away price of Rs. 29 lakhs. The Gujarat High Court castigated the authorities severely and ordered that the land be freed from encroachment by the Bapu’s institution and handed over to the District Collector within three months. Asaram Bapu has established Ashrams in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgad and Bihar which are presently in dispute.

Narendra Maharaj, one more godman openly talks about creation of a Hindu Rashtra (not secular but Hindu nation) and brazenly challenges the constitution. He instigates his disciples to indulge in violence against his opponents telling them to cut off their hands and feet. When he was asked to keep his religious sceptre away from him, while in the aeroplane, his disciples created a riot on the airport damaging its property.

Yet another god man Aniruddha Bapu claims that he knows the past and future births of all his disciples and also that he appears before them as different deities. The famous Ramdeo Baba gives a list of incurable diseases like cancer, AIDS, epilepsy, etc. on his website and claims that all these diseases can be cured by Ayurvedic medicine and regularly practicing Pranayama. The central ministry of health have served a notice on him in this connection. This Baba who is building ‘Patanjali Yoga Peeth’, a university for Patanjali Yoga, at a stupendous cost of Rs 100 crores does not pay his workers in the Ayurvedic medicine factory even the minimum wages. He maintains that there is nothing wrong in it.

Despite these and many more revelations of wrongdoings and corruption by the god men, their roaring business remains in tact. It is, therefore, all the more necessary and urgent to begin a harsh criticism of this phenomenon, for, this ‘Buvabaji’ is leading the public away from the legitimate social problems and their solutions and changing their awareness and understanding regarding the real causes of their difficulties. Under the influence of the Babas and Buvas taking action to solve the problems is altogether out of the question.

People today are more self- centred and absorbed in themselves. They do not like to talk about social commitment or equality and want immediate solutions to their own problems, stresses and strains. The modern Adhyatma offers ready made answers to their problems. The answers are deceptive but appealing and capture the imagination of educated young generation. In fact the path shown by these god men leads our young generation to run after the mirage called “Moksha’ that brings all investigating endeavours to a stand still. It contains the seeds of demolition of the social fabric. If the crowd that is presently enamoured of Adhyatmic Buvabaji is diverted towards progressive social organizations then we can hope for some social change.

Spiritual Pretence Of Godmen And Spiritualism - Part 1

The path of the rationalist movement is full of difficulties and challenges. One of those challenges is the spiritual pretensions of the god men. The nature of Adhyatma (spiritualism) of these men is different from that of the traditional Baba-Buvas. Their language is modern and sophisticated. With a few exceptions they refrain from performing miracles. They guarantee ethical sublimation to their disciples. Their spiritualism has a philosophical foundation and is coupled with some social service or other.

One tends to ask at the first glance, ‘So, what is wrong in all this?’ The people of this country are enamoured of the word ‘Adhyatma’ and all the practices and rituals that go with it. Although there are different opinions regarding the concept of Adhyatma there is some common understanding about its nature. Generally it is believed that – Adhyatmic principle is different than the material principle in that unlike the material principle it is a vital principle; for various reasons it gets shrouded in ignorance and becomes impure; being caught in various bindings it suffers. When this vital principle becomes aware of itself, i.e. realizes what it is, the vital principle- Atma becomes one with the Paramatma it attains unending bliss. This certainly is a very charming idea and we need not enter into the debate whether it is scientifically true.

For the present let us only consider how to recognize such a sublime Adhyatmic (spiritual) person? There is a standard answer to this. Such a person is self restrained, virtuous and would never take what belongs to others. Truth and non-violence are the core principles of his life. He is moved by the sorrow of other people and acts for the good of human beings out of compassion. He is an idol of purity and piety. He lives in this material world but his life illustrates that there is some thing more precious and beatific beyond this material world and it is several times more valuable than this corporal life. Swami Vivekananda, Gadge Baba, Gandhi, Vinoba and a few others are excellent examples of this.

A number of saints in Maharashtra with this line of thinking did valuable social work. Charity, forgiveness, truth and altruism are the most cherished values in the literature produced by these saints. Gadge Baba used to say, ‘God does not reside in the temples; he stays in the hearts of human beings.’ This is the back ground against which we should examine the present abundant crop of spiritual Buvas and Babas. On one side is the saint Gadge Baba a standard bearer of selfless service while on the other side are rallied our modern spiritualist self styled Baba, Maharaj, Swami and Acharya.

These so called Adhyatmic personalities never think of liberating the ordinary men and women from poverty, hunger, ignorance, diseases, exploitation, ritualistic practices, etc. They did not care to teach them dignity of labour or strike at the senseless superstitions; nor did they endeavour to purify the concept of god and religion in the minds of the common people. Instead of caring for the lame, helpless needy people, these modern spiritualists wrest personal service from them. Instead of pulling out the ignorant from the quagmire of rituals they organize big pompous and wishful Pooja rituals for satiating their vainglory. They wear garlands round their own necks but do not remove the noose round the neck of the common man. Of course cleaning the streets with a broom in their own hands, excavating gutters, living in a hut, wearing tattered clothes and eating only a small piece of bread from the palm and gulping it with water is not their cup of tea. This was Gadge Baba’s mission which he observed throughout his life.

Superstitions - Part 2

In general superstitions are considered as product of religious matters. Religion never changes whereas science adopts every new change after proving it. The holding and clinging to old unproven matter, which is peculiar to the particular place, time or community is also superstition. Superstition gives birth to fanaticism and fundamentalism. It is hindrance to progress and development of human beings. It often blackmails the emotions of a person.

The continuous change, i.e. evolution, is a law of nature. Survival of the fittest is the rule of evolution. During the millions of years of evolution of species physical ‘might is right’ was the law of the survival. This was changed when homo sapiens evolved on the earth. The brain of human being evolved has something ‘extra’ than any other species. That is thinking power. Without this human race couldn’t have sustained the harsh conditions of the nature. The might of human thinking or intelligence was new law of the survival. It was the beginning of the rational thinking. However it was raw and primitive. With the help of thinking power human being has created the civilization and captured whole world without bothering about other species and even his fellow human beings. Though the sword of scientific progress is for the human benefit, it should be in the hands of rationally intellectuals.

The present civilization is not a better one despite it is modern and progressive. We will have to create a super civilization by thinking more and more rationally. This may be possible through by adopting means of unexploited nature and species around us for producing superior, sustainable, safe and simple but sufficient material for everyone to live happily. That may be perfect rational thinking of super civilization.

Superstitions Part - 1

Superstitions

“Superstitions consist of beliefs and practices, which have no evidence to support them, and are inconsistent with the degree of enlightenment reached by a community.”

The above definition of superstitions, taken from the textbook of university degree course, is a most logical yet neglected definition of superstitions. It has wide range and covers every field of human activities and knowledge. The analytical explanation of above statement is that as long as faith and practices of a community are in line with its present acquired knowledge and experience (those might be wrong) can’t be called or felt superstitions themselves. This is because their level of enlightenment or understanding is not raised to the higher level of knowledge available in the present world. To raise the level of level of enlightenment they have to think rationally. To create rational thinking one has to adopt a scientific attitude. To develop this scientific temperament, knowledge about the world based on examination, tests and facts those can be proved is essential. This requires sympathetic attitude.


The science is the best instrument to stimulate the rational thinking and investigation of knowledge and experience acquired so far. This does not mean that rational thinking is a right of learned people only. The rational thinking is a born instinct in every human being, which is suppressed throughout the ages. Any individual capable of truthful reasoning is ought to be rational.


There are many doctors, engineers, leaders and even scientists who are learned people and sufficiently enlightened persons yet they believe in superstitions. Despite their modern living using all modern amenities and leading happy life, they are not performing science in practice. They avoid scientific attitude in their daily life. These intelligent people believe and practice superstitions because no one is forcing them to do so. But basically they are selfish or are afraid of something or simply they are hypocrite. By their untenable attitude, common people are confused but ultimately follow them. This act of contradiction is inconsistent with their
enlightenment and as such they can be called superstitious. The second reason for many learned and knowledgeable people being superstitious is because of their lack of rational thinking and its awareness. They couldn’t use science in practice and interlink it with matters of superstitions to investigate the truth behind it. They couldn’t really understand it without some guidance. One has to guide them with sympathy and friendliness.

Overview of Superstitions - Part 2

Scientists are also prone to having their untenable beliefs despite their eminence in their field of specialization. Even scientists can err in matters as religious superstitions. Clearly one man’s belief is another man’s superstition. Does education help remove superstitions? Not necessarily. Education will not help much to eradicate superstition; the latter will merely shift its ground from time to time without losing appreciably its hold over the human mind. There will still be that murmuring to intimates, or consciences, that it is after all better to be safe than sorry: I don't really believe, but . . .

Does religion help? Not necessarily. Religion may in fact fuel irrational beliefs. In this respect no religion is exempt. Some of the most basic beliefs of most religions can be classified as superstitions if the test of common sense and evidence is applied. The superstitions were taken for granted and none was dare enough to question them.

Perhaps there is an unshaken belief in miraculous cures, magical remedies and supernatural phenomena which might have persuaded to remain superstitious even in this age of reason and scientific progress. As such there is a section of the society which manipulates the minds of the gullible to their advantage and amass wealth and power exhibiting so called miracles and supernatural feats under the garb of divine blessings. These Godmen, Babas, Buvas, Matajis and Maharajas are main transporters of superstitions and have got their stronghold on Maharashtrian society. Educated and elite class also supports these godmen to protect their vested interests. This class has completely twisted the meaning of superstition (Andhshraddha) under the name of faith (shraddha).

One person's faith is a superstition for another and what a third person considers to be a superstition is a very strong faith, almost a question of life and death for a fourth one. The faith that does not allow to be questioned on the basis of facts or truth is superstition. Whether faith is superstition or not can be assessed by using following four criteria:

Verify the facts or the truth. When faith is used in everyday affairs, it generally means religious faith, faith in the other world or in the liberation of soul from the cycle of birth and death. While verifying the facts should not be based upon the testimony of words of some individual, or the testimony of the person or testimony of the book.

Ascertain whether faith adheres to non-violence principle. In any society people have diverse faiths. They all should be allowed to preach and propagate their faiths as long as they confine their activities within bounds of propriety. It is tolerance that is rooted in non-violence.

Fear and lure should not weaken the determination to adhere to faith. It should be dynamic.

Faith sublimates value judgment while superstition debases it. Faith should be replaced with loyalty towards human values, moral principles and ethical behaviour.

Since superstitions do not allow people to think and act rationally, irrational behaviour leads to heavy losses in terms of money, health, peace of mind and sometimes life also. The superstitious activities harm the environment. It leads to intolerance and violence which disturbs the law and order situation in the society. The strong belief in alternate therapies like psychic healers, faith healers, acupuncturists, homeopaths etc my ruin someone's health beyond cure. People still believe in miraculous cures offered by witchdoctors and faith healers (mostly babas and buvas) even though science and modern medicine has gone into depth about prognosis, diagnosis and cure of most of the diseases.

How then can we eradicate superstition? As Einstein endorses" Over thousands of years of evolution, everything has changed except the way we think " . There seems to be something in the human condition, in the thought process that makes us surrender to superstitions and to believe in the unbelievable. The primordial emotions of man have remained the same over millennia—fear, greed, hatred, envy, anger, desire. Every religion asks us to conquer these but to no avail. No Prophet, saint or holy man or woman has made much of a difference to humanity at large in our conquest of these negative emotions.