My Conversation with God

Originally written in Dec 2001 in personal diaries

He came and sat on the park bench besides me. I gave him a glance and fell back into my thoughts.
He addressed me, “Excuse me, do you mind some conversation?”
I was in my usual bad mood. “Yes, I do.”
He smiled, “Even after I tell you that I am GOD?”
I have him a thorough look and started laughing. “Oh, really!”
“You don’t believe me?”
“OK, if you are GOD, prove it”
“How?”
“Answer a few questions of mine.”
“Shoot.”
“First, if you are GOD, why are you asking me what I want to ask? Can’t you read my mind? You are supposed to be antaryaami!(omnipotent)”
“Oh! I see that this is going to be a nice debating session. Please proceed to your other questions and I will answer them together.”
This guy was really confident of what he was speaking.
“Second, if you are GOD, why can’t you inspire the feeling inside me that you are GOD? Why is there a need to prove? Third, why are you meeting me? I am neither a saint nor a Satan. So why me?”

Now he started laughing. “When people think of me, they generally bring religion into focus. You did not ask me anything about that?”
I could see that this guy really believed that he is GOD. To me, he seemed like some ordinary pedestrian. “Well, lets begin with these three.” I don’t know why I was humoring this guy.

He suddenly asked, “Why do you think I am obliged in some way to listen to you people, to solve your problems, to answer your questions?”
“Ha, so now you are backing away!” I entered the mode of pinning down the guy.
He answered, “Well, have you created anything of your own ever?”
“Yes, a lots of things.”
“Like that toy robot you made for the school exhibition?”
“How do you know that?”
“You forgot, I’m GOD, I’m supposed to know everything.”
“OK, so this is a well-researched attempt to dupe me. Well, I see the trick. I’m leaving”
“You are right about the ‘looking up your history’ part”
I stopped. “Ah, so you admit.”
“Admit what? Of course, when I come to meet one of my creations, I look up its history. Don’t you look up the past performance of your subordinates before meeting them?”
I started to say something, but he interrupted me, “Now let me talk a bit. When you created the toy, why did you make it with two arms and two legs and one head? Because you always extrapolate your creations from yourself. Your self is the only reference point you have.”
“What about the machine-dog which I created?”
“Oh! I forgot I gave you counter-logic abilities also. The dog was also a projection of the things around you. Your reference is what you see, what you sense. So you project from that.”
“Get to the point, man!”
“Be patient. What I was coming at is that you try to create out of your current reference. Even your imagination is in reference to your current environment.”
“So what?”
“So have you ever thought why you could not make the thing exactly same as yourself? Why the robot had something less than you?”
“Because I didn’t know completely of my constitution and hence couldn’t replicate it in the robot.”
“So the machine was lesser than you. Still, could you exactly predict what the machine is going to do next?”
“Yes, I could. But I get your point. I could do such prediction only because it was a very basic machine. If I had given it even a bit of intelligence, a bit of sensitivity to environmental conditions, I could not have predicted the response without knowing all the variables”
“Right. And the point you are making is that knowing all the variables is a waste of time, because you have designed the robot to act appropriately. Its like knowing the time taken to heat the water becomes useless if you have a thermostat temperature control”
“Yes, but I still did not get what you are arriving at.”
“What I am arriving at is that in the same way, I can also get to know what exactly you are thinking by getting to know all the variables that I have designed to affect you, but why should I put the effort? Why not ask you directly?
“I may lie”
“You lose if you lie. Anyway, I control your variables also. I have arranged them so that you won’t be lying.”

I was pissed off. This guy was talking some sense sometimes, but crap most of the time. Still, I said, “Proceed”
“So that answers your antaryaami question. Coming to why I can’t inspire you to believe that I am GOD, well, I can, but then my whole purpose of talking with you, making this effort to come down into this world of my own creation, would be lost.”
“Can I ask what is the purpose?” I was beginning to get intrigued.
“Can I take that later? First, to finish off your initial three questions, well, you because …”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. The choice was absolutely random.”
So much for my ego. “Am I supposed to feel lucky?”
“That’s your problem. I’m here because I want some feedback from you”
“Feedback?”
“Yes. You are a software professional, so you can perhaps understand it a bit better. This world of yours is a system designed by me and I want to get some feedback about the system from one of its components.”
This guy really, really believed he was GOD.
He continued, “I can see the disbelief in your eyes. But can you just assume for some time that I am GOD and talk to me?”
“Why should I do that?”
“Simply because this is the most interesting thing which has happened to you in quite some time, even if it proves to be false. So just humor me for some more time”.
This was true. I was sitting in the park contemplating on the sickening rut that I was in these days.
I decided to go along with him, though a bit aggressively.
“So if you are GOD, can you tell me why there are so much pain in the creation? So many wars, so much unnecessary bloodshed? Anxiety in individual lives, anxiety in civilizations. Why all this in this creation of yours?”
“Do you really want to ask that? The pain, the anxiety, is all supposed to be a part of the system that I have developed.”
“But why? When I design a system, I provide a painless “Close” button. I understand that death and regeneration was necessary for growth, for evolution, but why pain? Why not death straight away?”
He sighed. “I am tempted to say ‘So that you remember me, the creator’, as your priests do. But I won’t. Because I am not dependent on your praise or criticism.”
“Then what are you dependent on?”
“On the performance of my system. You see, you can visualize it like this. Humans today can make a toy world, give each toy a specific behaviour and then oversee how their system is behaving. Similarly, in our society, I am the creator of earth and am responsible for this system.”
“Who created you?”
“Nice question. How am I supposed to know? Probably, I am also a part of a bigger system. But we are digressing here. Lets come back to your system.”
“OK, so why so many religions? So many differences between people on the basis of religion, color of skin, genetic race, area of living, language?”
“Oh! I though I will ask you that question. I had not planned for any of this, neither had I put any restrictions on these not entering the system. I gave you people intelligence to react to stimuli in your own manner, form your own civilizations. I created a self-managed system with minimum GOD interference required. All this is your own creation.”
“But you could have stopped it.”
“Yeah, I could have, but you see, this world is only my experimental model. Probably I will put these checks in my next system.”
“So how satisfied are you with your experiment?”
“That’s why I have come to you. You give me feedback. What changes would you like to be made to the universe as such? And don’t be shortsighted. Think from a system point of view. I will come again tomorrow.” And he walked away.

ANY OF YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO TELL HIM?

Second Meeting

I suddenly found somebody walking by my side on the pavement. The second meeting has begun.
“So, what are your suggestions?”
“First I want to ask you some more questions.”
“Good. That means that you want to understand the system more thoroughly.”
“Not exactly. I just want to ask some more questions”, I repeated.
“That’s fine. Shoot”
“Why does the concept of GOD exist in our minds? Was it for your self-satisfaction? Surely the knowledge about the creator or the concept of the creator is not necessary for the system.”
He laughed, and then suddenly became serious. “You know, I had actually not planned on this. I had created the whole of your planet with sufficient self-sustainable features. But somehow, I overestimated what you now call EQ of the human species. At one point of time, I realized that they needed a higher assurance for survival. So I was forced to introduce the concept of supernatural in their minds. However, the development of that into various gods, prophets, religions, sects etc. is completely a product of the human mind.”
“I think the concept of religion should be removed from the system”
“Ah, probably you are right there. It is creating more problems than it is solving. That’s true. But you see, it is not as simple as that”
“Why?”
“For one, the concept of religion is inseparable from the concept of supernatural.”
“Then remove that”
“I wish I could. It is not possible in this system. Probably the next system I design after I scrap this one, I will give more importance to emotions and their handling, and hence would remove the need of the concept of supernatural. As of now, in your system, the way it has evolved, it is not possible.”
“ ‘After I scrap this?’ Does it mean this civilization is doomed? Then why bother with these sessions?”
“Don’t worry. It is not going to happen in your lifetime. Anyway, its just what you call versioning”
I remained dismayed.
He continued, “Coming back to the topic, the fact is that you people need an assurance of a higher providence to cope up with life. Given that, religion by itself enters the picture. Even if the current religions are all scraped, some genius among you will come up with the idea of following a path for being more close to that higher providence”
“Then let us have one universal religion”
“You underestimate yourself. Man is an intelligent being. If somebody tells him – ‘This is the way to do this’ - he will immediately question that. Why else do you think there exist atheists and agnostics in this world?”
“I am more worried about the theists and disputes amongst them.”
“That what I am coming at. Given this questioning nature, but with a need for a higher providence that is greater than this questioning nature, what happens is that many of you settle down on one of the paths proposed. Many of you start their own paths and other people follow them. Hence multiple religions, multiple sects, multiple superstitions, and so on”
‘So there’s no cure for this.”
“I told you I will correct this in my next version. Till then, live with this. Think more. See you later.”
Then he suddenly took the lane to the right and walked off. Before I could realize, he was gone. And I suddenly realized that I was exactly at the same spot from where we had started.