Book Excerpt

Chapter One

“YOU ARE GOING TO BURN IN HELL FOREVER!” was the introduction of Christianity to Raja from Tom. “Since you do not believe in Christ, you will burn in the fire of hell and all the people you love will also burn in hell with you,” he added.

The two boys were sitting under a tree in their village in India along with Raja’s high school sweetheart, Sareena. The cool breeze of a late summer served as a stark contrast to what was just said. Raja was born a Hindu – deeply religious since childhood. Sareena was born a Sikh. Although Raja and Sareena were from two different religious worlds, both respected the other, loving each other regardless of religion.

While both were good friends of Tom’s, neither could agree on the matter of hell. Raja felt a wave of fear rising inside. Not for himself, but for his love, Sareena. “How could anyone burn someone like Sareena in hell simply because she did not ‘accept Jesus’?” he thought. Raja was brave enough and young enough to not fear hell but he could not imagine the love of his life ever seeing the smallest shadow of sorrow.

“Why should we burn in hell? Don’t we always do good and pray to God daily?” he protested. “My priest tells me that God is but one and so we both have the same God. Why would God send us to hell – just because we do not know anything about Christianity? It’s not our fault that we weren’t born into a Christian family. We believe that the whole world is a family, created by one Father – the Creator.” Raja continued his protest as if his religion demanded rationalization.

Sareena usually did not get into religious arguments, but today she supported Raja, “Our Holy Book also tells that, ‘God is one, but he has innumerable forms. He is the Creator of all.’ So who is noble and who is evil!? If this is true, how can anyone go to hell for not accepting Jesus?” continued Sareena.

Raja was already on the path of discovery. “Does God exist?” was his constant inquiry. “Who am I?” was the parallel posed.

It appeared natural to him to maintain seemingly paradoxical positions of deep faith and inquiry at the same time. It seemed that deep faith allowed Raja to have questions about God and himself.

As he was a seeker, he would love to know about God from other religions. Most Indian religions coexisted while respecting their differences; Christianity was the exception – in its harsh judgment of non-Christians.

“It must be how Tom interprets Christianity,” was the usual dialogue between Sareena and Raja as they walked together to their different temples. In Sareena’s temple, there were no idols while Raja’s temple was replete with them. The contradictions in their theology on idols didn’t seem to matter one iota. Both Raja and Sareena believed there was an Omnipotent God, so he could be in both their temples.

“Idols are just like pictures pointing to eternal God and are not God in and of themselves. Idols and symbols are there to help remind us of God but when we can assimilate God into our being, we should not need the symbols,” was the justification for the presence of idols in temples.

Tom, given to repeated mentions of Jesus and burning in hell, didn’t do so today as Raja was more concerned than ever about burning. – Both were deeply disturbed by the arson they’d just witnessed.

Stunned by what he’d seen, Raja was trying to take his mind off the hut that was on fire this very morning. He started, once again, to relive the entire incident…

Raja recognized at once that it was a fire engine. The sound was unmistakable. The students rushed out of the school to watch the massive vehicle rush through the street, speeding past their very building.

“Wonder where it is headed?” Tom asked.

“Looks like the slums,” guessed Raja. “That’s where the huts are.”

“Look! Tons of smoke! It is coming out in great clouds! Ron, let’s go see!” insisted Tom. (Raja looked at his friend pathetically. Tom had already given his friend a Christian name, “Ron,” and prayed for him as a means to save his friend from Eternal Hell. He did not know whether it would work, but he really wanted to save his friend from Certain Damnation. Moreover, he wanted Raja with him – in Heaven.)

“You know my parents will kill me, if they find out!” protested Raja.

“Tell them that you went there to help them. They would praise you instead!”

Raja thought about it, “They certainly will.” (His parents didn’t tolerate missing temple.)

“Let’s go!”

Tom once lived in the slums. He knew of a shortcut and both boys ran with their school bags bouncing to and fro on their backs. They reached the slums after five long minutes, and as they expected, there was nothing but commotion. They could see the fire in a section of the slum – firefighters intensely combating the blaze – in a desperate attempt to save what they could.

Suddenly, there was an acute flare-up from inside one hut. New screams choked the smoky air. A middle-aged firefighter, who looked like their chief, was running inside the flaming hut. Another was directing a water jet on and around him. It looked heroic to Raja. Unexpectedly, he noticed something peculiar pass across his friend’s face.

Alight by the flames, Raja could see that Tom was clutching the small cross that hung from his neck. Tom was watching, with strange fascination, something inside the hut. Then Raja saw it. A woman appeared to be inside, her entire body on fire, with the firefighter valiantly attempting to reach her.

The whole scene was so frighteningly horrific yet Tom watched with some sort of mysterious enthrallment.

“What are you watching Tom?”

But there was no reply from his friend. “I must ask him about it later,” Raja mentally noted.

All of a sudden, the hut crashed down! Cries of despair issued from the crowd. Moments later, a dark figure emerged carrying an even darker figure, walking towards the ambulance in unsteady steps. Medical personnel rushed to meet them.

In under an hour, the scene appeared secure – with Raja thrilled to have witnessed such displays of courage with his own eyes – and the efficient manner with which the firefighters performed their duty.

On their way back, Raja declared, “I am going to work for the fire department when I complete my studies!”

But Tom was not in a talking mood. Raja guessed that Tom had still not come out of the experience of watching a woman burn alive.

“Come on, Tom! We see such things on TV all the time!” He tugged playfully at his friend’s collar. “Now, come out of it and smile a little!”

Tom looked up at his friend.

“Now I know!” he said with a firm voice, “Now I know that your God must be Satan.”

Raja knew that Satan was a bad word, even in Hindi, but he kept quiet about it. He just managed to ask, “Why do you say so?”

“People who put these huts on fire are Hindus. They were burning the huts because people who live in them are Muslims. Only a Satan can do such an awful thing – and as all Hindus are ruled by this Satan – they do things like this. I already knew Muslims were ruled by Satan, by what I’ve already seen come from them, but now I know that even Hindu gods are Satans. There goes your daily prayer, Vasudhev Kutumbakam (prayer for the world as my family).”

Raja lost all patience with Tom’s accusations, but tried to be quiet and maintain his poise. After all, he did have a point this time.

“How can some call themselves Hindu and burn Muslims simply because they do not have their faith?” wondered Raja. “Does God really exist and if He does, why does God allow people to kill each other in His name?

“My Omnipotent God should be able to stop these people,” used to be his assumption.

“If He cannot stop evil, how do I know He exists?” he pondered.

“What happened in that slum is certainly the work of Satan,” replied Raja.

He went on, “God will never allow this and neither will the Hindu religion.

“In the Hindu religion, we call this the Ego or the Maya. It is the ego, which creates the separation and the illusion or the ignorance of trust which causes people to fight in the name of religion. Our religion is very clear: ‘There is no religion like service and there is no sin like hurting others,’ ” Raja quoted from the Hindu Holy Book.

“When Hitler killed the Jews, it was because of the ego of Hitler, his ignorance, his Satan – not because of the Christian God. Hitler was not Christian and these people were not Hindus,” resolved Raja.

“You have committed many sins, haven’t you Raja, as have I?” Tom continued, “We are all sinners and so we must pay the price. Jesus paid the price for all of us by dying on the cross.”

“And now you are going to add: The philosophy of God is just and kind at the same time. In justice, He must punish us but for His love; He forgives us!” replied Raja as if he had heard it all before.

“Yes, but you need to accept Jesus as he paid the ultimate price. That’s the only way God can harmonize justice and mercy,” interrupted Tom.

“How can God balance the sins of all humanity with just one sacrifice on the cross?” countered Raja. “If someone else pays for my sins, then it is neither justice, nor mercy for He who died on the cross.”

Raja was raised believing in karma as the foundation of life. He could not understand how anyone’s sins could be forgiven by another’s sacrifice. He just couldn’t reconcile what Tom had come to believe. Raja remembered that once he had successfully resisted the sacrifice of the lamb in his name, an act that was supposed to pay for his karma and bring him good luck. Raja couldn’t fathom how killing a lamb could bring him luck and happiness. Now, Raja was mystified and perplexed about this ultimate sacrifice of Christ, without knowing anything about Christ.

One day Tom invited Raja to his church to meet with the old priest he called Father. Father began by blessing them both. Tom had earlier asked Father to persuade Raja to accept Jesus in his life as the Savior. Father David was going to try, without appearing to force him – he felt that Raja needed to accept willingly, without undue pressure being brought to bear.

“I will answer any questions you might have about God and religion and introduce Jesus to you,” Father David began with a smile.

“I think Tom has told me everything about your religion. I cannot believe that there is a religion which believes that people of other faiths will go to hell – and people of their own faith will go to heaven – regardless of their actions. How can you have such a narrow-minded religion as that?” Raja challenged in inquiry.

He didn’t think that he offended Father David as these kinds of discussions were common among Hindus. Some Hindus believed in a personal God with form and others in an Omnipotent God with no form. Still others believed in the Divine Mother and yet others in the Divine Father. Some even believed that they aren’t separate from God or that there is no God at all.

In Hinduism, questions were permitted as long as they were leading toward a higher truth or revealing a different layer on the path of inquiry. Hinduism is one of the few religions that accepts even those who claim God is a nonentity.

This same religion, around the time of the Greek invasion, was found to be the way of life for all those people behind the Kush, hence Hind Kush. For thousands of years before that invasion, the term had not come into existence. During subsequent invasions and emerging schools of different thoughts, the followers of these “universally basic rules and regulations” were called Hindus.

Father David fell silent for a moment. He then replied, “I believe in the Word of God and the Word of God tells me what I must tell you: God cannot be wrong. Everything else you hear, is heresy spread by Satan.”

He continued, “We don’t have many gods as you do, for we have only one God. Since he is far superior to all your gods, we will not even acknowledge them!”

Father David then remembered what Father Yesudas had said, “We are with the King, and henceforth we care not of the satanic images.”

But he did not add that as he answered Raja, so as not to offend him. “I, too, have committed many sins but I am cleared of them daily. Moreover, when my time comes, I will call ‘Christ!’ and he will come and tell the hellkeeper to stay away from me. He will then provide me with beautiful white clothes and allow me into God’s heaven.”

“But Father! Saints told me that if we pray to any God or take a bath in the Ganges, we are spared from hell. So what is the difference? We all are sinners and any good that one does, no matter one’s chosen faith, should reduce the burden of one’s transgressions!”

“I don’t know about that, Raja! I suppose that goes for people with an abundance of good deeds. For sinners like us, Satan will definitely try to put us in that raging fire!” He added quickly, “But I will not be one of those lost souls! I will call ‘Christ!’ and he will welcome me to heaven!”

It was Raja’s turn to fall silent.

The sun had nearly set – darkness began to engulf their world. The friends got up and hurried home.

“Why are you late today?” inquired his mother.

“ I went to Church,” came the reply.

“Did you read the Bible?” she questioned. She believed that one can learn something worthwhile from all Scriptures. On her encouragement, he had read so many Scriptures and religious stories that he factually was confused by some at times, wondering whether the faith he had was just based in fear. At home, he feared his parents. In school, he feared his teachers. In temple, he feared his God.

Now he thought, “Am I faithful or fearful of God? Can this faith and fear coexist?”

Raja liked to debate religion with the Hindu priests because priests are proud of being Hindu and knew all about God. Though at the ready, his priest could not answer simple questions like, “If the Hindu religion is so great, why is India so poor? And why are so many Indians so corrupt? And what of the needs of the many as opposed to the needs of one’s self?”

His priest would rather finish the prayer rites and go home, than try to answer this question: “Have you seen God?”

Now, he had a totally different perspective from Father David about God. He used that knowledge to further challenge his priests with the sole purpose of finding out the real truth about God.

Father David was willing to listen and discuss, giving Raja another forum to seek the answer to his question, “Does God exist?” and “Who am I?”

Furthermore, his intellect will always debate the nonexistence of God, so let other people convince him about God! It was like a negative of a negative, becoming a positive.

“We have so many gods, why not add Jesus to my list of Gods?” was the ultimate reasoning he could not resist presenting to Tom.

“I, too, can call Jesus for help!” Raja told Tom with excitement. “Jesus can be our God as well, as He is for everyone.”

“You cannot have Jesus as merely one of your Gods. You should only believe in one Son of God and you must convert to Christianity. Then, and only then, will your life will be cleansed of sin,” explained Tom.

Raja found himself angry and frustrated with these increasingly demanding stipulations from his friend. What his intellect had seemed to make so easy, was after all so hard, due to Tom. Now, it was time to get even.

“Are you free of sins?” asked Raja.

“Yes, totally!” Tom exclaimed.

“Then, why is that I am at the head of the class? Having to tutor you until the day before final exams – to prevent you from flunking out? Why can’t you just call on Jesus to pass the exams? Do you not have to work hard to pass the exam, as in karma, than just pass with Jesus and your Christianity making it so? Everything in our classroom seems to work as in karma – except your heaven and hell thing. Who has seen life after death? We do not even know if God exists!” hammered Raja.

Raja was a believer but he always questioned who God really is. His religion allowed him to ask questions about God.

“Do not believe in anything I tell you about God,” said one saint who was visiting their local temple, “Go and realize for yourself the true nature of God. It is to be found within and not in the Scriptures. The Hindu religion allows people to question God and his love, as He is considered so above our egoistic thinking, that he will accept and understand it all with love. He is aware of our ignorance and his understanding is infinite.”

Tom was quiet upon hearing Raja’s outburst, as it was true that he had a hard time memorizing all the answers, lessons and facts and would always need help from Raja in his studies. More importantly, he was not free to challenge God with why he wasn’t able to remember the answers, even with so much effort. Nor could he answer why Raja seemed to know everything the very first time the subject matter came up in class. Raja had explanations for all of these – as to the karma inherent in past lives, being carried over to the present life, and hence – Raja possessing such a remarkable memory. However, Tom did not believe in reincarnations. He thought that all these must be just a random chance or some plan of God that no one knows.

Raja and Tom always discussed God like this and tried to justify their own way of knowing God with their own facts. Throughout their growing up together, Tom was deeply concerned with his friend being in hell after death. Conversely, Raja was concerned about the myopic viewpoint of his friend. Nevertheless, the moment they concluded their religious discussions of the day, they would go on with their lives as if their differences didn’t matter at all. They both liked the same food, the same sports, and shared so many other interests, that their religion was more of an expression of passion – not affecting their friendship.

“Let’s go to Sareena’s house,” called Tom from Raja’s door. They hadn’t seen each other for a week due to a curfew imposed in their village. Hindu and Sikhs had started fighting on an issue unknown to them, but when law and order was out of control, a curfew was imposed. Now that they were able to meet again, Raja eagerly anticipated Tom’s arrival. He was equally ardent to meet with Sareena, after such enforced restraint, and tell her how difficult it was to have to wait to see her, especially with no phone lines working.

They both were shocked when nobody answered the doorbell at Sareena’s house. A neighbor came crying, “You did not hear about Sareena? Her uncle took her to Bombay. There were riots here and some Hindus burned her family alive. Sareena is lucky to be alive, as she was at our house at the time, and those wicked people thought she was Hindu.”

It wasn’t known if Raja was sad, or angry, at hearing this hideous news. His stunned emotions were running headlong on too steep a roller coaster to tell. For the first time, he started crying, embracing his friend Tom, seeking badly needed support. His legs would not hold him up.

“How can we kill our own people? Forget the Divinity. What happened to our humanity?” Raja was trying to take the pain Sareena must have felt, knowing that her beloved family had been mercilessly slaughtered, knowing she would have to live her life out as an orphan,. Those bastards burned Sareena’s dreams. They ruined her innocent life – not even knowing who she was.

Raja had forgotten his own pain through his concern of not knowing where Sareena was, his guilt at being alive, not being able to help her family and, finally – by his utter helplessness to comfort her when she needed it the most.

He remembered all the sweetness she used to carry when they used to walk to their temples, “The world is created by one light. Who is noble and who is wicked?”

Now, for Raja, this seemed like a joke directly from Satan, mocking both of them. Raja saw that Tom was crying with him, as if they both were sharing this common pain, with neither having the words to comfort the other. When pain is deep, the world cannot bring solace. The only comfort is in allowing the tears to run their own course, creating an empty hollow, where one day healing may start.

Raja remembered Tom did not say that Raja’s God must be Satan this time but, in his grief, he wondered what difference existed between God and Satan. “Why me? Why Sareena?” he remembered asking himself, not knowing whom to ask.

“If God is real, why is there so much evil? Why does he not stop evil? Why is He so weak in the face of Satan?” he grieved.

“We both used to go temple to pray with him and I even accepted Jesus as a God, but nothing saved Sareena’s family…” such was his anguish.

Raja remembered, at that very moment, his relationship to God had started to change – from love to fear and even contempt, “Who cares if God exists? Let him do his job and I’ll do mine,” was his misplaced intent – a knife twisting in a heart filled with unbearable disappointment and pain.

Raja decided to punish the people who killed the family of his loved one. Now, it was a matter of justice – and redress for love. Raja asked Tom to give him a ride to the nearest police station.

“We’re here to report a crime. Someone burned the family of our friend, Sareena. They were Sikhs. Their neighbors told us that a Hindu mob killed them,” Raja kept going on and on until the Hindu police officer stopped him.

“These Sikhs are terrorists, they want a separate nation from India. Now they will get a separate nation – in heaven,” the officer opined.

Raja was shocked to see the carelessness of the police officer. “ No, they were not terrorists. They were our friends.”

“Oh, so you are friends with terrorists. I see you wish to be locked up in jail. Did you see anyone burn them? Who knows who was in the mob?” he growled.

“You can go ask their neighbor. They saw them,” Raja persisted.

“Get out! There is no case. There are no witnesses,” concluded the police officer.

“I will not leave until you give me the case number,” Raja insisted, bent on justice for his lost love. It was the least he could do.

“Put this guy in jail!” commanded the police officer to his assistant. The assistant obeyed.

Raja could not believe that he was behind bars, as if a common criminal.

“Do you want to go home or do you also want to go to jail with your friend?” shouted the police officer at Tom.

Tom left the station and hurried to inform Raja’s parents. His parents were in a panic – they’d never dealt with police or courts – and had little time to come to Raja’s aid. A new curfew was being imposed yet again.

Raja had to wait in jail for three days alongside actual criminals. For three days, he had nothing to do, no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.

He had another realization during those three days of introspection, “Something is wrong here. Does God exist transformed? Something is wrong here and I must change it – but I am helpless and life is such a struggle.”

At that moment Raja decided he would be poor and helpless no longer. Rather, he determined he would work so hard and earn so much money, that those who jailed him because he was poor would never be able to do so again.”

_____________________

“If you want to make lot of money and be successful, then you should go to the States. Here in India, it will take you a long time,” was Tom’s advice. They had ceased their discussions about God as all that mattered to Raja was exacting justice – by and through his determination to be successful and overcome any struggle.

When Raja was accepted to an American university, it was time to leave his India. Before he departed, Tom touched him devoutly, with his cross, as if seeking forgiveness from Jesus for Raja – hoping the touch of the cross would save him from Eternal Hell.

“Let’s get in the car. We’re running late for the airport,” declared his father. His mother hugged Raja and held him for a long time, uncertain when she would ever see him again. She was happy for him, as she knew that this was “the dream impossible” for Raja – to go to America for higher studies. Nobody from his village had even conceived such could be possible.

“Will my father hug me like this?” wondered Raja as he looked at his mother’s wet eyes one more time. Raja remembered his father as always working hard, having no time for himself or Raja. He knew his father loved him but his father had never expressed it. If money or time was the way to express it, his father had lacked both and didn’t ever hug his children.

As children, they used to bow and he would give them his blessings but there was no physical expression of love. It was as if the Hindi vocabulary lacked the words “I love you.”

Raja would be gone for at least two years, possibly longer. He knew this was the last opportunity he would have to tell his father that he loved him. And he knew that there were no such words in his father’s vocabulary.

“OK! I am about to leave!” Raja was trying to bow to his father but he stopped him. For the first time, he looked into Raja’s eyes and said, “Take care of yourself. I know you will accomplish all the impossible things in your life.

“With my savings, we could not even have traveled across India, much less to America. Today, you are going there, but son, never forget where we come from. People used to laugh when you would dream because they couldn’t conceive it would really happen. They never treated you fairly, as one with your potential should be, but only as a poor Indian boy.

“Today you don’t need to laugh at them. They were all victims of their own lack of understanding, not seeing the full potential life has to offer.

“You never let problems stop you from achieving anything, just as you never stopped dreaming. Today you are completing my dream!” and with these words, his father hugged him for the first time.

Raja was in tears.

He heard his father sigh for the first time, as if he could not control his emotions. Raja had never touched his father and today he not only had blessings with his touch but also his embrace. They both were crying and as it got louder, those around them started hearing it. It was significant that for the first time, Raja was not shy at all, crying in the presence of strangers. He kept his arms around his father and they both suddenly stopped crying at the same time, as if the tears had run out.

They were surrounded by silence and suddenly, time and space had merged. Raja in that very moment felt a divine experience that he used to hear narrated by his priests. He was lost in the joy of space-time conversion with a joy consciousness.

Their sadness of being separated by the vastness of space had transferred to a sense of compassion. He felt his own compassion flowing toward his father. In that moment, he gained an important perception.

The only way his father knew how to express his love was by his working all the time. Even if it meant being away from the family and sacrificing his own pleasures, he did all that, so he could provide for his family and have hope for their future.

“What if he had never told me that he loved me?” Raja thought.

This was immediately replaced with an awareness in Raja’s consciousness: “His compassion is always with me.”

Raja realized that one does not require language to express love. The soul knows when it sees compassion. At this very space and time, it did not matter to either of them that Raja would be gone for two years. They knew that they didn’t need anything – as the soul will always perceive compassion.