Skip to main content

Atheist before God


Fantasy

Atheist died and found himself before God.  God smiled at him more affectionately than any human being had ever done while he was on the earth.

“I never imagined you existed outside human illusions and delusions.”  Atheist said with his usual candour having overcome his surprise.

“On the earth,” God said slowly as if he was pondering over each word he uttered, “I don’t exist much except in human illusions and delusions.”

“Oh!”  God’s reply was another surprise for Atheist.

“Do you think if I actually existed on the earth as I really am there would be so much evil perpetrated in my name?”

“Evil,” said Atheist. “And that too in your name.  That is exactly what me lose faith in you.”

“I know. Because you had no faith in me, you were a good human being.  What if you had also started fighting in my name?”

“Where am I?”  Atheist looked around.

God laughed.  “In the presence of God.”

“Heaven?”

“Call  it what you wish.  Names matter little here.”

Atheist hesitated for a while and then asked, “I’m not sure I’d be happy here.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure I’d like to be with religious people.”

“There are no religious people here.  Very few reach here after death and most of them are atheists, agnostics and other genuine seekers.  Even here they go around finding their own ways of existence.  You are totally free here to do what you wish.”

“What about religious people then?  All those who fought, killed and died for you?”

“Everyone reaches the kind of hell or heaven that they have created for themselves.”

“Didn’t you create hell and heaven?”

God laughed.  “Illusions.”  He paused and then said, “Hell or heaven – it’s the individual’s choice.”

Atheist pondered a while.  “Why did you create human beings?”

“Creation is not a choice.  Creation is an unfolding of what lies within one.”

Atheist felt sympathy for God.

 Atheist Before God was my suggestion for Indispire Edition 139.  The topic found only one taker.  The topic lingered on in my mind and here’s the result.  


Labels:

Comments

  1. SaketOctober 15, 2016 at 2:43 PM

    The moment I noticed this prompt, I wanted to write on it, though I am not sure what I would have written.

    Good that you wrote on it. Good that I got to read a nice post on this.

    Recently I read something and saw some videos suggesting that the life, the world, and our consciousness itself , is just a virtual reality. The word "illusion" suddenly reminded me of that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2016 at 7:29 AM

      First of all, Saket, I'm grateful for that single vote. Thank you also for commenting here. After all, nobody else commented. Probably a sensitive topic :)

      My firm belief is that there's nothing after death except the funeral fire and its ashes or the maggots that will feast on your body underground. That fate is terrible. Hence we need fiction. We need illusions.

      Delete
  2. rifle range boyOctober 16, 2016 at 8:36 AM

    My take. Life is just a dash between two dates, that's all. We create our own understanding and projection of existence as if we are the centre of existence. Perhaps, the cosmos doesn't much about us. We are not even a minute speck in the dust of the universe!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2016 at 10:03 AM

      The real seekers go on searching, Farouk. They have no egos. The infinity belongs to them.

      [This is no claim that I have no ego. On the contrary, this is an effort to keep my ego under control.]

      :) :) :)

      Delete
  3. Durga Prasad DashOctober 16, 2016 at 9:55 PM

    And it is a beautiful and thought provoking encounter

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 17, 2016 at 6:38 PM

    Sir you believe that god is just an illusion.good keep that. But surely there will be a day when everyone seek the help of god.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pranju chakrapaniNovember 6, 2016 at 12:14 AM

    Solipsism gives us the meaning to everything including this illusion of life and god or does it?

    Also, I would love to read your posts on Quora.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...
14 comments
Read more

I’m Alive

Illustration by Copilot Designer How do you prove to anyone that you’re alive? Go and stand in front of the person and declare, “I’m Tom, Shyam or Hari”? No, that won’t work in India. Let me share my personal experience. It’s as absurd as the plight of Kafka’s protagonist in The Castle. A land surveyor is summoned for duty, only to be told that the mere fact a land surveyor was summoned does not prove he is that land surveyor though he has the appointment letter with him. I received a mail from the Life Insurance Corporation of India [LIC] that I should prove my existence in order to continue receiving my annuity on the sum I had invested with them five years ago. They’re only paying the interest on the sum I have given them. They’re not doing me any charity. Yet they want me to prove to them that I am still alive in order to continue getting the annual amount they are obligated to pay me. This is India. LIC is a government undertaking. If I don’t follow their injunction, I wil...
11 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more