Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Religion can make one a devil.  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), shows how. Roger Chillingworth, a sombre scholar, marries a pretty woman, Hester, much younger in age.  During his long absence she develops an affair with Arthur Dimmesdale, a pastor.  When a child is born to Hester in the protracted absence of her husband, she is labelled an adulteress and punished. All this happens in the 17 th century Boston, then a Puritan colony.  The Puritans were a kind of religious fundamentalists.  They followed the letter of the law.  Love, mercy and other such tender feelings had no place in the Puritan worldview.  People should abide by the law at any cost. Hester is punished to wear “the scarlet letter” on her bosom throughout her life.  The letter A, for Adulteress, is emblazoned on her chest, and she has to spend some time on the pillory everyday displaying herself for the edification of the public.   Dimmesdale is struck with guilt feeling

Reading Deepak Chopra’s latest book, The 7 Spiritual Laws of Superheroes , is like experiencing a dream.   Chopra has a peculiar fascination with the number 7 just like Ayurveda has a fascination with odd numbers.   The number is quite irrelevant, I think.   The message is quite simple though profound: live with a clear idea of what you want from life and you will be a superhero. “It’s not the moments of tragedy that define our lives,” says Chopra quoting his son Gotham who is quoting Batman and who is also the co-author of the book under review, “so much as the choices we make to deal with them.”   The entire book, just like most other books of the kind, is about how we can equip ourselves properly so that we will make the right choices when faced with tragic situations.   That’s why reading it is like experiencing a dream: we know and love the ideal, but the bitter struggle between the ideal and the reality constantly wakes us up. This time Chopra has chosen to take exam

The basic theme of Kazantzakis’s novel, The Last Temptation of Christ , is the conflict between the body and the soul or, in the words of the novelist himself, “the struggle between God and man.” “A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long,” says Kazantzakis in the Preface.  “It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends.  But among responsible men… the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.” (emphasis added) Kazantzakis explored this theme with slight variations in many novels.  In The Last Temptation , Jesus overcomes the temptations of the flesh by courting death.  In Saint Francis , the eponymous protagonist overcomes his fleshly desires through rigorous mortification.  Zorba, in Zorba the Greek , subscribes to a unique version of the Buddhist middle path by blending the body and the soul in his own pragmatic way. “God and devil are one and the same thing!” Zorba declares repe

The Path of the Masters Author: Julian Johnson Publisher: Radha Soami Satsang Beas Though I bought this book when I visited a satsang 6 or 7 years ago, I wouldn’t have read it even now had my school not been taken over by the Radha Soami Satsang Beas.  Religion and spirituality don’t appeal to me.  In fact, the word ‘religion’ conjures up in my mind images of burning heretics and witches, crusades and jihads, protests and riots. I visited the satsang as a visitor driven by curiosity and not as a pilgrim.  The impression I gathered (from the only one visit I ever made) was that what attracted people to such gatherings was nothing different from what the author of this book discards as normal religion. There are many places in the book where the author calls religion “the solace of the weak” (Voltaire’s phrase), an escapist measure, or a childish solution to life’s problems.  Almost half of the book tries to show that traditional religions cannot bring genuine an

Very few Popes of the Catholic Church were saints.   Far from being saints, many of them were remarkably depraved compared to the common layperson whom their religion promised to redeem from sinfulness.   It is not easy to combine worldly power and spiritual sanctity.   Authentic spirituality is a highly personal affair though it can and does wield much power over other people.   The power that Mahatma Gandhi wielded over many of his followers was spiritual to a great extent.   The Buddha and Jesus also wielded spiritual powers.   Unlike them, Gandhi did not become a god because of the time in which he lived.   Like Jesus, however, he was martyred by his own truth. The power that Jesus, Gandhi and others like them wield is quite different from the kind wielded by, say, Hitler or Osama bin Laden.   It is the power of the truth they believed in and put into practice in their life.    The power that Hitler and Osama possessed was political and hence worldly.   The power that most