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Cult of Society

There are so many people in this world, and almost everybody has a different idea of what life means. For some people, life is all about eating, getting married, and having fun. Somebody spends the whole of his life in the quest for power. Somebody has an unquenchable thirst for money. Somebody devotes his entire life to spreading the message of his religion. Somebody is driven by curiosity about nature and relentlessly works throughout their life to discover a natural phenomenon.

What surprises me is that all of them are equally convinced. So many people believe in different gods, and each is equally convinced that the God they worship is the only one. Different religions preach many different things, and people from different religions believe that what their religion teaches is the gospel truth. People join a cult in the name of spirituality and become so sure of the ideas spread by that cult, however distant they may be from reality. It appears that everybody is out there to believe something "comfortable" and live with that belief. 

Truth is dynamic. The truth of the universe is changing every moment. The reality of the universe had changed significantly by the time we were sleeping in our beds. Many stars would have died their natural death, while so many new planets and stars would have emerged. The Earth also undergoes significant change in a short period of time. We can't recognise our 10-year-old self today. Could our 10-year self have ever imagined the way we are today? Of course not. Life is constantly changing, and so are we. However, we like to control everything. It is very difficult for us to accept the uncertainty of life and death. Our ego gets so frightened to live with that uncertainty, and here comes its trick. 

It is comforting to the ego to form a belief and live among people who share it. That's what all of us do. We are more comfortable among the people who share the meaning of life that we believe in. We go to get-togethers and social functions and meet people who share a similar view of life. We go to the functions and talk about the things we have done in our lives to raise our kids, earn money, or take a pleasure trip. People appreciate our story, pat us on the back, and we return home with a conviction that we are living our lives. We too give a similar endorsement to the life choices of the people who attend the social function. That is like the mission achieved. Similarly, people go to the cults of Babas where everybody is equally blinded, and all the disciples of the Baba talk nicely to each other, conform to the viewpoints of each other, and that's how we return home quite satisfied because our worldview has been confirmed by thousands of people. 

But all this patting on the back and mass hallucination takes us further away from reality. It's easy to conform to the belief system of the society we live in. To conform to the rights and wrongs and make the choices of life accordingly. To take joy in criticising people when they violate a societal norm, and to be appreciated every time we follow it blindly. To get a stamp of being a "good employee", "good father", "Good son", "intelligent person", and "kind-hearted" from everybody around. The ego feels in control of the situation. All these titles make us feel safe. However, we fail to notice the violence behind these masks. All these titles are awarded to us with the condition that they will be snatched away from us the moment we challenge the fundamental beliefs. All these titles are tools of society, forcing us to continue to conform to its belief system. To be able to live a life driven by the quest for truth, one has to throw away all these titles. Then only one gathers the courage to see through the facade. That's not easy because one has to pass through a Valley of Despair, full of uncertainty, to live in a state of flow, where we keep exploring the domain of the unknown without fear.



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