Seeking Part 2 - Clarifying Questions

Questions bothering me

I want to clearly lay down the questions that I want answers to, apart from the one that made me do all this, so that I can answer them all. Below list is not exhaustive. 

Most of questions seem to make me look like an atheist. But I am not, I am a somewhat close to "Seeker-Agnostic" who believes in supernatural. 

So here we go.... 

• Why are we here? What is our purpose?

• How did this Universe came into existence? Will it end? Why is there a Universe at all? Is there a role of GOD

• Is there a 'GOD' who created all of us? If yes, then why? If no then who or how we were created or came into existence? 

• Who is GOD? What makes someone GOD?

• Did we really evolved from 'Apes' or other species?

• Is there existence of spirits or 'aatma' as we know it? Are there "pret-aatmas"? Is there a parallel world of them?

• Is 're-incarnation' a reality and are there 84 lakh (8.4 million) joon's or yoni's or species as we have always heard or known from our elders?

• Is there really a law of karma? Is there really hell or heaven i.e. Narak or Swarga?

• Is destiny pre-defined? Can it be changed? Does astrology really works? Do stars have any significance on someones life?

There is a big possibility that I may end up having more questions than answers, but it will be worth a shot. 

First Post - Seeking Truth - 1

Me

My name is Kunwar. Actually, it is not. Since this blog is going to be about seeking truth, I should not start this post..that too ..my first ever blog post, with a lie!

But what is in a name? Nothing at all. Name should not matter, what should matter is the truth or reality behind that name, be it of a person or animal or God for that matter. Name is just a reference point. So let's use 'Kunwar' as that reference point.

Who am I 

I am in IT, completed my masters degree a decade ago and have sucked in oxygen on this earth for about 35 years now. I am also a father to a 5 year old. I was born in a regular Hindu family and raised as a liberal Hindu. Let us not go into what that term means "liberal Hindu". For me it only signifies that their were no restrictions at all barring that I was not allowed to eat Beef.

I had my fair share of being towed to temples and asked to bow my head in front of deities, against my will. Slowly, over many years, I also started believing in all the superstitions and magical solutions that will help me in getting what I want. Be it from romancing my next door neighbor to winning a lottery to getting good scores in my exams.

Reciting mantra's or prayers during important festival days like Diwali etc was fun and very moving because whole family was singing in chorus in front of various idols of God and trays of different varieties of sweets, my favorite one being Gulab Jamun and Jalebi and Barfi .. well the list goes on and on. Let's not digress.

But why are we discussing my religious background here? More on that later. But it is important to highlight here that my parents never stopped me from exploring other faiths.

Quest starts...

My quest for seeking truth started about 12 years ago with just one question "Why are we here on this earth?" I asked my parents and they were not able to answer. I asked few local pundits, they didn't seem to know that either. Some said we are here to sing almighty God's glory and blah blah. I find it total BS. Why would some God go through all the effort of creating this Universe, just so that someone can sing his/her glory!! What about animals? They surely can't do that.

Few months ago that same question starting bothering me. Then I started reading lot of articles, blog's and books. I watched and still watch lot of videos about spirituality, Sikhism, Hinduism, Christanity and Islam. 

This quest will not stop, unless you see my blog post titled "Quest Quenched" or something similar. Wow, I am being quite ambitious here and proclaiming the end of this search coming soon, well time will tell on how close I get.

From where to start..

I had 2 options .. 

• Religious 
• Scientific

I decided to start exploring from religious point of view, to know the ancient wisdom and see if I can also find the truth like many others. Well, at least, religions claim to provide just that but wrapped in lot of baggage. At least that is my first impression of all of the religions. You can call baggage bullshit as well if you please :-)

I did not choose science because it claims to provide factual truth depending upon the calibration of the tools being used and the conducive environment being made available and the underpinning state of the subject being unambiguous. There are lot of variables.

With the amount of U-Turn's scientists have made, it was relatively easy choice. Most recent "ohh shit moment" being ...taking out of cholesterol from "baddies list". See cholesterol-u-turn-as-research-shows-fatty-foods-might-not-be-bad-for-us-after-all or how about this one Bug-in-fMRI-software-calls-15-years-of-research-into-question or even better why-we-been-wrong-about-the-origins-of-life-for-90-years 

But that is how science works, that is the 'guts of science'...trial and error. I am not calling science bad or the one being without a clue. It's just that what they claim is true now might not be true 10-20 years later.