by Susantha Hewa
It is not surprising that we hear of incidents where persons appear in society from time to time claiming to have abnormal healing powers or posing as saviours. There are other instances where a miracle may happen causing mass hysteria; devotees flock to see some miraculous change in a sacred statue and apparently experience a soaring of religious zeal. In most of these cases, there are racketeers and wily politicians who are skilled in turning the piety of the common people to serve their own interests.
There have been stories of statues belonging to various religions grabbing attention of people due to some of their uncommon changes in appearance. Such narratives create a short-lived sensation and die a natural death. Sometimes self-professed messiahs appear with their underlings often causing injury and even death to some of the fanatical devotees who flock in their thousands to witness such miracles. A couple of years ago a participant in such a healing session died due to a sunstroke.
There are also miracles said to herald future events. Once there was a story of a king cobra descending from the world of Naga to the Kelani Ganga to bless the new president to be elected in 2019. Last week, there was a disturbing news of several people committing suicide reportedly after participating in a series of religious programmes conducted by a ‘preacher’ who first committed suicide triggering a series of several more suicides of some others who are said to have followed his teaching. The country has also witnessed instances where parents following some religious sects, had declined medical treatment for their sick children causing them to die. Last year in Kenya, more than hundred bodies were exhumed from a mass grave in the Shakahola forest, where they, on the instructions of a priest, had starved to death in the hope of meeting their saviour in the next life.
Naturally, we blame these misfortunes on the gullibility of the victims while the caravan of folly and death moves ahead unhindered to cause more destruction. Of course, we become indignant of such charlatans and their easy prey but hardly think of the underlying causes of such untoward happenings, which we dismiss as anomalies. Are they just instances of some aberrations? What guarantee is there that such tricksters and self-appointed prophets wouldn’t appear to persuade some others to act with disastrous consequences? What sort of people can be susceptible to such fanaticism?
What is often ignored is that such destructive credulity is the invariable outcome and a logical extension of religious conditioning. As a rule, all those who fall prey to such extremism and the fanatical guru who gradually persuades them to cross the Rubicon, share the same faith. In other words, those who are of a different religious persuasion from that of the new saviour hardly fall in line with his teaching.
As we all know, people conditioned by different belief systems don’t see eye to eye with one another’s faiths. Each religious community tends to look at other faiths critically while accepting narratives and the doctrine of their own faith rather complacently. That such sporadic manifestations of religious frenzy and mass hysteria mentioned above are sneered at by those who don’t belong to the same faith reveal the usual tendency of people to suspect other religions and readily believe in one’s own faith. It is sad that such instances of hysteria and their tragic consequences are blamed on the swindlers and their unsuspecting victims, but not understood as fundamentally linked with the faith implanted and nurtured in their childhood. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to persuade another, who hasn’t already been programmed to believe in another life after death, either to commit suicide or even kill, with the hope of entering a better world.
If faith were not such a sanctified aspect of religion, we would not have occasion to talk about such instances of victimisation by religious zealots of innocent people – those who, often, are the most destitute sections of society that are eternally hopeful of escape from their economic woes. Poverty, sickness, unemployment, lack of education are the very conditions that urge people to seek quick fixes engineered by miracle makers.
Religion is not a simple formula for morality but a complex network of human experiences and behaviours. Prof. Ninian Smart in his book, “The religious experience of mankind” talks of six aspects of religion, which he calls dimensions, i.e., the ritual dimension, mythological dimension, doctrinal dimension, ethical dimension, social dimension and experiential dimension. Of these six dimensions, four, namely- the ritual, mythological, social and experiential dimensions are the principal driving forces of any religion. Of these four, the ritual and mythological components which are the inseparable fundamentals absorbed from early childhood, are the most visible and also identity-forming facets of any religion- thus, the most divisive in a social sense.
When we look at the occasional elation about unusual phenomena linked with religion, it’s obvious that it is the mythological element, which passes as ‘true’ in any religion, is responsible for making people extend their faith to readily accommodate such miracles as future saviours, blessed gurus, faith healers and wonder statues. Such religious euphoria cannot occur without childhood conditioning significantly contributing to form a mindset conducive to accommodating such fanatical views of those who are themselves victims of such programming.
The world would be more sober if religions were allowed to be studied at a suitable age without impressionable minds of kids being programmed prematurely. The problem is not with religions, but with the age-old method of parents imposing their beliefs on their clueless children. The obvious fact that fledgling minds with inadequately developed cognition cannot comprehend the truth or otherwise of this or that knowledge system, is conveniently overlooked due to the yearning for propagating one’s inherited faith. Isn’t such a fixation unbecoming of anyone who is supposed to be sensitised and disciplined by his or her religion to love all?
from The Island https://ift.tt/8Xi2mWU
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