Our Love for God Stems from Our Conditioned Behaviour
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
7 September
2022
Habits
are manacles.......... A German proverb
“The most perfect manifestation of compulsive
behaviour can be seen among the blind followers of all faiths, who follow their
faiths out of compulsion and habit, which is ingrained in their psyche."
Sigmund Freud, “Evolution of Religious Behaviour”
“I just cannot quit smoking," rued a
friend of mine. There are so many like him, who want to get rid of their
ingrained habits but are unable to. ‘A habit is something that becomes a part
of your consciousness and a compulsive habit takes over your consciousness,'
succinctly described the behavioural psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.
When
Napoleon Bonaparte was being shipped to St. Helena island, English jailor
Malcolm Abrine ordered thousands of books (the only privilege Napoleon got) for
the vanquished emperor because he knew that Napoleon was a compulsive reader.
The moment
we think of British PM Winston Churchill and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, their
images with an inseparable cigar dangling from the lips come to mind. Churchill
and Castro both admitted that carrying a cigar became their 'compulsive habit'
much more than smoking it. A compulsive habit is not always undesirable, though
often it is. Neither is it always pernicious to health.
Many people
are compulsive liars. They lie because they can't live without lying. It
becomes their unconscious habit and they keep doing it unwittingly. If they are
going to Delhi and you ask them where they are off to? They will say Calcutta.
If such a compulsive liar has eaten chicken at dinner and you ask him what did
he have? He'll invariably say something else. They are driven by a compulsion
to lie, despite knowing that this is not good. They are at their wit's end as
to how to slough it off.
Once the
distinguished English scribe Lawrence Booth jokingly wrote in ' The Independent
' that ' Indian cricket players are compulsive(ly) bad performers on foreign
grounds. But they are lions on tailor-made Indian wickets.' When a habit starts
dictating terms and makes us yield to its whims and fancies, it becomes a
compulsive one.
There are
overwhelming compulsions and impulses that elbow into every individual's
consciousness and remain there. Psychologists like William James and Adler have
found that almost all human beings have a certain compulsive habit, only the
intensity of it varies from individual to individual and at times, a compulsive
habit becomes so deeply entrenched that we become unaware of its presence.
Making a
gesture of devotion whenever we see a shrine is actually a compulsive habit
that has become so deep-seated in our existence that we are no longer aware of
it. It has been found that even atheists, who were once believers, bow their
heads while passing by a shrine! Their conditioned past (of a believer) acts as
a Pavlovian reflex to become a compulsive habit to feel a sense of 'veneration'
for the unknown.
A few years
ago in Kolhapur, I saw a modern-looking Hindu woman on a Scooty make a
religious gesture seeing the statue of a rather insignificant Maratha warrior.
Being a Hindu, she was obviously brought up and indoctrinated on idols and
icons. So, a mere statue of a warrior became a venerable idol to bow her head
to. We are all conditioned beings and cardboard creatures.
In fact,
human beings are robotically conditioned, according to the evolutionary
biologist Dr Richard Dawkins. Our so-called free will or volition is
subservient to our chromosomic conditioning of thousands and lakhs of years.
Mahir Ul-Qadri aptly penned, ' Hazaron Saalon Mein Banta Hai Insaan Ka
Khameer/ Hazaron Saal Bhi Kam Hain Is-Se Najaat Paane Ko ' (The fabric of
human beings gets formed in thousands of years/Millenniums are inadequate to
free oneself of it). Remember, what is inveterate, you can't extirpate.
Embattled
husbands and wives live under the same roof for decades as a 'compulsive
conditioned habit' to be living together. Man is a slave to impulses and yoked
under various compulsions. Despite his indomitable spirit to break free, he
often fails. Our traits die with our death. The US part-time poet Andrew Smikel
put it scathingly, ' When compulsions raise their ugly heads/ They cut you far
deeper than the sharpest blades.'
Now the
question is how compulsive behaviour makes us religious zombies. Jalaluddin Rumi
narrates a true story in his Masnavi (Volume no 2): One devout Muslim would
visit a village mosque every day. There was a donkey in the vicinity of that
temple. Seeing that man come to the mosque every day, the donkey would also
come and stand at the entrance to the mosque and didn't bray. Like that Momin,
donkey also started behaving in a devout and disciplined manner. That man was
very happy and told the Mujaavir (caretaker) of the mosque, “Look, he
(donkey) too has become so religious." The caretaker smiled and said, “He
has become disciplined because he's a donkey. He has nothing to do with Allah
or the mosque. He comes and stands silently at the entrance because you give
him some eatables after offering namaz. It's his compulsive behaviour. Don't call
it his spiritual inclination."
The moral
of the story is: We're all like that donkey, our religious discipline arises
out of our compulsive behaviour and a fixed belief that this religiosity will
get us god's blessings and benevolence. We, therefore, behave in a mechanical
way. Our love for god stems from our conditioned behaviour. Remember, most of
the religious people don't love god intrinsically, they love it out of a habit.
After all, Aadat Salasil Ast (habits are manacles).
-----
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to world's premier publications in several languages
including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/love-god-conditioned-behaviour/d/127903
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