If there were no human beings on this planet, there would be no God-talk going on among the other creatures. Essentially, it is a human thing. Other creatures are okay with what is going on with their lives. Humans want explanations for everything because their intellect will not settle without answers. So if there were no human beings, none of the other creatures would be talking about God. This very idea that God is a big man up there has come because somebody told us that the existence is human-centric. But in reality, it is not. Existence is definitely not human-centric. Before you came it was there, after you go, it will still be there.
This idea of Earth being the centre of the universe and human beings being in the image of God has made humanity so absolutely crude and insensitive to every other life on this planet. If only such things were not taught to us. If somebody had told us that God looks like every other creature on this planet and not like us, you would treat all of them with utmost gentleness, wouldn’t you? This was actually done in the eastern part of the world, where God is the very earth that you walk upon, the water that you drink, the food that you eat, there is no other God to talk to. So you walk gently upon this planet and your humanity gets expressed. Right now, in the name of divinity we have completely forsaken our humanity. If you forsake your humanity, you will not know any divinity.
So Creation is not human centric. You are only a small happening in the existence. Tomorrow morning if you, I and everybody else evaporate, there will be no disturbance. It will be just fine, actually better! There will be no ecological problems. We think too much of ourselves, that is the biggest problem. As individual people, we think too much of ourselves. As humanity too, we think too much of ourselves. It is very important that we as human beings recognise that every other creature treats and experiences its life as important to itself as our life is to us.
When we say God, we are trying to refer to that which is the basis of creation. Because we have no clue what its nature is, we try to give it a human form because we are human. Various other cultures on this planet have given it various other forms too. People worshipped buffalos, elephants, snakes, cows, earth, fire, water. They gave it a form that they could relate to. In every village you go to in India, you will always find one tree being worshipped. In most other parts of the world, there is no relevance for animals because people were made to believe that every creature is here only to serve you. This is a gross idea in a human mind, isn’t it? Right now, the whole modern science is unfortunately going in this direction. We are only looking at how to exploit everything. We will not even spare a bacteria, an organism that we cannot see with our naked eyes. We know how to make use of them for our benefit. But after using everything for our benefit, it still does not seem like we have been hugely benefited. This is because well-being does not happen that way. Well-being will not come just because you try to milk the whole existence.
The writer is a world-renowned spiritual leader