WHAT is Malaysia’s New Year resolution? If we have not set a common goal for all people to achieve, it is time to focus on improving multifaith understanding in line with the first and leading principle of the Rukunegara. The first principle says “Belief in God” – but probably less than 20 persons out of 34 million understand its true meaning.
Recitation of the Rukunegara in schools and government programmes implies full agreement that belief in God is the highest state of Malaysian citizenry.
As all religions profess belief in God, no religion should be considered as having inferior teachings compared with another.
Yet we copiously use the warring term “conversion” to describe the act of a person who steps out of one religion to embrace another. When persons convert, they renounce faith in their previous religion. It is a dangerous word because it has military significance.
Conversion was deployed as a backup tactic to weaken the enemy’s ranks during wars between nations that professed different religions.
Conversions often demoralised the enemy by breaking communal or religious unity.
A conquered population may also convert to avoid persecution, secure better treatment or receive full rights. This weakened the enemy’s morale and manpower by reducing their numbers.
When someone moves from one religion to another, the right approach
is to call it a transfer, just like a company employee transferring to another department. The employee remains loyal to the same CEO although now reporting to another head of department. Respect for the previous boss is maintained.
While there are valid social reasons for wanting a transfer to another religion, conversion is different as it is akin to resignation, wherein a person joins a competitor within the same industry and pledges to break all previous ties.
Meaning of conversion
What does “conversion” mean? Think of a block of ice that has melted. This is a conversion from a lower state to a higher state, and there are crucial differences between these two states. A fish trapped in water that freezes into ice will die; a fish trapped in ice that is instantly thawed will be revived and continue living in the water. It is a difference between life and death.
When someone converts by renouncing a previous religion to embrace another, is that person jumping from spiritual death to spiritual life? Over the past two years, as reported in mass media, the courts of law had to deal with appeals stemming from 16 cases of childhood conversions that occurred without the consent of both parents. Such conversions pit one religion against another.
Lying hidden behind these cases is the key issue: despite accepting the Rukunegara’s first principle, almost all Malaysians believe their own religion is truer than other religions. We need to ask ourselves: When persons change their religion, are they switching their loyalty to another God? Have they been persuaded to believe that the God of their previous religion is false?
Does the Rukunegara say “Belief in God” or “Belief in the True God”? What are the false Gods? There are only three according to Buddhist teaching: loba, dosa and moha (greed or lust, ill will or hatred, and ego or delusion), and all are human created.
When you show ill will towards another religion, desire to convert people away from it, and feel proud upon success, you are by such feelings and actions worshipping the three false Gods of loba, dosa and moha.
As 13 of the 16 cases of childhood conversion involve the Hindu faith, it is obvious that many religious activists believe conversion removes a Hindu child from the worship of false Gods.
To clear misconceptions that undermine national unity, here is a concise brief about Hinduism: The best source of authority on Hindu teachings is the collection of scriptures known as the Vedas, which contain descriptions of many Devas.
The Sanskrit word Deva has for too long been misleadingly translated as “God” in dictionaries, giving the false impression that Hinduism upholds belief in many Gods.
Devas are celestial personifications of natural forces and phenomena. Each Deva, embodied in a stone image, depicts some external aspect or internal attribute of nature. The practice 4,000 years ago was to teach environmental care and inner potency using intricately crafted stones as instruction manuals, just as medieval Europeans used fairy tales to convey teachings.
In the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, a questioner asks: “How many Gods are there?” Teasingly the reply comes: “Three and three hundred, three and three thousand.” The questioner persists: “How many Gods are there really?” The answer, still a teaser: “Thirty-three.” Again and again, the questioner persists. And the crisp answers come rapidly, “six” then “three” then “two” then “one and a half” and finally the correct answer: “one.”
What is the intention behind such a drawn-out reply? The Vedas instructs listeners to embrace diversities as all natural forms and forces are manifestations of a great underlying unity. As it says in the Isopanishad: “He who sees unity in all diversities is beyond all illusions and bereavements, is beyond all losses and gains.”
The questioner finally asks: “Who is the one God?” The answer: “He is Brahman and they call him That.” This use of two contrasting pronouns “He” and “That” informs believers that God can be experienced in two contrasting ways – as personal reality manifested to humans or as non-personal unmanifest reality.
You may relate to God as a personal being to whom you offer worship because He creates the universe. Just as a Proton manufacturer draws up specifications for the car, God bestows divine laws for our guidance.
Religions have different codes of divine law and different conceptions of this personal God to fit the cultural background of the civilisations in which they are embedded.
However, you may also perceive God as non-being. “All this world is pervaded by Me in My unmanifest aspect” (Bhagavad Gita). From the Kathopanishad: “It is seen in every form of the universe. It alone is the only truth, the One without a second.”
What does “the only truth, the One without a second” mean? To monotheistic preachers, it means there is just one true God and just one true religion (theirs, of course). But what this Vedic assertion means is that God is the one and only substantial reality. Unlike a car that exists apart from its creator, the universe is not a second reality apart from God. The universe is merely an apparent or illusory reality with no substance.
The universe is a thought of God
Here is a divinely awesome statement from Srimad Bhagavata that presages by 3,500 years the latest discoveries of quantum physics, the most advanced science today: “The objective world, a second existence distinct and different from the subject, seems to exist but it has no such separate existence. Such existence as it has, is like that of the contents of a dream or of a reverie, which are entirely based on the dreamer’s mind, and do not exist apart from that mind.”
Says the Bhagavad Gita: “Deluded by the three modes of Maya, people in this world are unable to know Me, the imperishable and eternal.” Maya is God’s power to make the illusory universe appear real. The three modes of Maya are tamas (mass), rajas (energy) and sattva (information). Sattva refers only to quantum information that runs all natural processes.
We know from atomic physics that the solidity of matter is an illusion generated by electrons whirling at 1,320km per second within a mostly empty atom.
Imagine the blades of a ceiling fan whirling at such speed. The fan will appear like a motionless solid ball hanging from the ceiling. But quantum physics has discovered that the protons, electrons and neutrons in atoms are illusory too as they arise from different patterns of quarks.
Quarks are the only true particles, and they too have no real existence. How do quarks form? The fundamental substrate of the universe is just a quantum information wave. An inherent disequilibrium in the substrate causes vibration. The vibration creates ripples that become a wave.
Wherever there are excitations of the wave, at those spots the wave surges and compresses into peaks. Every peak takes on the form of a quark. As it is merely the peak point of a wave compression, the quark returns to its wave-form, with decompression of the peak.
The Vedas goes beyond quantum physics in asserting that the real essence of the universe is God. “All this universe indeed is an expression of Your thought” (Shrimad Bhagavata). Just as a person and his thoughts are one, the quantum wave and God are one. This oneness binds everything together just as quarks exist in a web of relationships, with each an integrated part of the whole.
A religion that has found support in quantum physics is at the very least the equal of whichever religion you think is the best.
Nevertheless, there are valid social reasons for transfers from one religion to another within the boundaries permitted by Malaysian law. These reasons include marriage as spouses need to be completely aligned, to be with a circle of friends, to enjoy lifestyle enhancements such as personal and family life network support, as well as to ensure children get weekend moral classes and participate in non-harmful activities. But transferees must continue to honour their previous religions.
Joachim Ng champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
