Some people are inveterate cynics who ascribe the darkest motives to even the noblest actions. When such cynics target religion, they see God as a concoction for gullible, weak-minded people who can’t face the “truth” of his non-existence.
What these cynics can’t face is their own weak-mindedness in confronting their biases. If God were just a product of imagination, then why would the ranks of believers include some of the wisest people throughout history – philosophers, artists and even scientists, people whose lives reveal them as neither gullible nor weak-minded?
While cynics struggle to explain intelligibly the prevalence of belief even among the discerning, believers explain coherently based on Gita wisdom the disbelief of the cynics.
God, Krishna, has given everyone free will. Though he wants them to have the highest happiness by loving him, he always respects their free will. So, he allows them to live according to their own notions of what will make them happy till they learn their lesson and turn to him for wisdom and redemption.
The Gita (04.11) explains that Krishna reciprocates with our desires. This implies that for cynics who want to deny his existence and defy his will, he reciprocates by letting them solidify their disbelief with thick walls of selective “fact-finding” and deceptive “reasoning”. Thus, for the cynics, the truth lies in the heart – due to their heart’s deep-rooted antitheism, they, by Krishna’s facilitation, end up believing the lie of their disbelief as the truth.
Of course, the truth lies in their heart in another way too. If somehow they become open-minded to enquire submissively about God and fortunately contact a Gita savant, then by the subsequent divine grace they can realize in the innermost recesses of their heart the truth of not just Krishna’s existence but also his unfailing love.
In some philosophy schools adopted logic is considered whitewashed deception. Doubt, the status between belief and disbelief, is a pendulum between trust and distrust on the outside, and, confidence and bewilderment on the inside. Lord Sri Krishna can only be experienced if there is an inclination, an openness of mind to perceive Him. Walking around with a blindfold and proclaiming that nothing is to be seen doesn’t mean there is indeed nothing to be seen. When we insist to keep the blindfold on, Lord Sri Krishna grants us that as well. With or without blindfold we all live in His Supreme Reality and we all follow His path. The unlimited mercy of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna however, has no limits and reaches into the darkest places: eventually the cynics get depressed in their limited experience, they hit rock bottom, and they naturally propel outside their box.
wonderful article!