Understanding God in Mauritius....

Throughout the thousand of years, civilization have come and gone and within them have interpreted and modeled God as different according to their environment and social norms. Again at that time, the transport and communication modalities never enabled massive inter religious exchanges nor clashes and everybody lived happily according to their beliefs and as these civilization died, so did their faiths and beliefs.

If my understanding of the world and its evolution is correct, I will wander to say that we, the human race have been given a part of God. A unit of this human race, a human comprises of the Soul and the Body. Throughout these years, we have used our conscience and practicality to focus on the materialistic word with evidence of science while keeping the unknown under either strict scrutiny or total oblivion.

By my quite inquisitive nature, I will dare to say that the Holy texts of three main religions of our time, that is, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism speak the same language. True, many people argue that they have been written by man or distorted through translation and through the ages, but from what I have gathered and understood are that they all represent the same Divinity put in different interpretation. Different parts of India pray the same divine representation under a different name with different rites.

Suppose that One must realize that there is God anywhere and everywhere. God is energy as a basic interpretation. Funnily, I usually take the example of Neo from the Matrix when he awakes again at the end of the first movie to see everything in matrix form. Imagine you are Neo and the Matrix is pure energy ad this is how the world is. I am not imposing my view but sharing my understanding with you.

Now suppose our human nature is as such that we are molded by what is within and around us. We are shaped according to biological, spiritual, cultural, psychological and social spheres which gives us our identity. Socially acceptable norms in one country can be misunderstood/rejected in others. For example, recently, the use of the scarf in women of Islamic faith in France being banned did cause a long debate and movement of resistance and unrest.

With the actual world where money talks and science rules, the human has lost this spiritual aspect to a very much extent and many follow religion just as tradition, without understanding a single word that is being said. I have friends and acquaintances that know the Qur’an by heart or the Gita word for word and can recite it but unfortunately not understanding a single word of what is being said. I have even got comrades who usually quote from the Bible while not grasping its meaning which of course you may challenge me to be subjective yet again. Of course, I am sure that you may find many of such examples around you in the world of today who call themselves as a follower of that particular faith but not respecting it by behaving against its preaches.

Religion is a means of communication with God and is a translation of spirituality. They provide an insight of the unknown, set the guidelines and rules of a society as a whole while forming the follower individually to a particular perception and behaviour. 

We have focused a part of our mind on materialistic progress but many of us have been incapacitated in the development of spiritual welfare and understanding. We have grown outwards while our inner growth was kept to a strict minimum.

Such behaviour has impoverished our understanding of our so called religious faith and following as parents of society do. So, the burden of work, of sustaining a family among others (i.e. materialistic) has distanced the human away from the religion and spirituality as a whole. Hence the parent/s, follower of a particular religion/s, will practice his/her beliefs and the child will learn behaviorally from them and ass it on also.
So, with the intricate balance between the spiritual and material spheres of life, one will most probably shorten the practice of faith/ religion to provide more time to the material needs of the family unit and as this is passed on, these beliefs are distorted, lost and finally not followed anymore.

Adults have also mainly focused on the academic performances of their offsprings rather than their spiritual education and for those whose have thought about it, there is the risk factor that their minds have been manipulated by some religious leaders in the past for personal gains and hence distorting the whole chain reaction of spiritual education that is supposed to have been aimed at.
It is now to some extent that people are realizing that the materialistic society has weakened the pillar that spirituality is with a society plagued by drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, depression, homicides and suicides.
It is with firm belief that I support the inclusion of religious awareness and historical events of the country in the academic curricular to form the future generation to think with a less biased and more open mind that will embrace the same message of all the sacred texts rather than cross their arms due to their different religiocultural beliefs.
This weakened pillar of spirituality is like an injured diabetic foot of our nation where the germs of dirty politics will feast upon and this is what our Mauritian society has faced for so long now, with communalism being like a boiling volcano ready to erupt anytime, with no mention of still fresh wounds of such riots in the last 50 years.

This leaves me with two messages for you to take in, take home and everywhere else:
Stop using religion as political weapon!!
1 sel lepep, 1 sel nation!!