John Mahmut meticulously read each line of the book open in front of him. It was a book with thick pages, and seemed to be rather voluminous. It was embalmed within a brown book cover.

The header read ‘Lore of the dark kings’.

“Still learning about your opponents, I see,” commented someone over his shoulder.

John read the last line of the paragraph his eyes still were on. “Amon York. How has your sister been?”

“Better than if she were in your company.”

John chuckled. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

Amon sighed. “Javed let me in. He had to.”

“That is certainly something I just can’t wrap my head around.” John looked over to find a dark-haired man, with another person by his side. “I see you got someone within this country to help you out.”

Amon fumbled with his pockets. He produced a picture, and handed it to John. “She told me to say she also missed you.”

John looked the picture over. And his eyes mellowed. “She looks lovely.”

“She told you to look at her picture each time you wake up and each time before you go to bed.”

“Isn’t idolatry forbidden, Amon?”

“It is. We condone it. Suppose you wore a pendant with a cross of Jesus, or you had a statue of Jesus on your table, I would overlook that. I am not going to interfere with another man’s and woman’s affairs, though. You know what would make me intervene.”

“I see.” John motioned to a chair in front of him, and motioned to a table. Amon walked over and sat on it. The man followed suit, taking a seat at the indicated table within the room.

“You have had more outside influence than me, John. Man has nothing but order in a universe to give to god. Within that order, we give our charity, devote ourselves to our family and devote ourselves to god.”

“I see. Well, it is still a problem to consider man-made order over universal order. You know how powerful universal order is. We have to draw the line somewhere. I think it is essential to draw this line to prevent ideological order from ruining the universal order.”

“I can agree with you. I don’t have the time to talk about this these days. And you are not the best person for this. You should entertain me, however. The world does not run around either of us, but god.”

“That is true. We have to live forthright lives.”

“That is indeed so.”

“I will differ on the last part though. We were created in the image of god, and should do our best each. How is Levi doing by the way?”

“You mean the mind of man reflects the mind of god. That would be the approach of Plato and some Jews who adhere by that. Levi is still performing guard duty. He does not want to sing.”

“That’s disappointing. He knows his words well.”

“I will tell him that.”

“You are way too serious for your age, Amon.”

“I am.” Amon did not bat an eye.

“Well, I am glad to be among conservatives. What I was saying is simple. Just as universal order does not seek to impose on us, but teaches us to live, so should we not seek to impose man-made laws upon ourselves other than that of freedom. We should certainly not kill someone else, or steal from him. God gave us the gift of our rationale and altruism, to pursue order and freedom. We are given our intuitions too, to make sure we uphold that order. I think it is wonderful that we are connected to the next generations. Man does not want to just live for eternity. Man does not want to just exist, even if in any state of existence at all. No.

That is not why God gave us life. Man is both the gift and the bearer of the gift. We want to bring about continuation. And the continuation we want to bring about is that of beauty, of pain, and the knowledge we have.

That is what makes us act. That is where we almost certainly all start.”

“You have it mostly right. There are some liberal thinking mixed in”

“There are indeed liberal thoughts.”

“Well, you can make arguments which are not religious and orientation. I will listen to what values you are describing. Let us leave that talk aside for a while, John.”

“Was that too presumptuous?”

“No, it is fine. We welcome people to our religion with open arms. So, for even you to say that, it is nothing. The wise man learns from every man around him. If you are thinking of a different approach, brother, then I think that is fine too. That’s what Lilith was looking for, anyway. If you had not come up, she would have married the suitor our parents chose and been unhappy. She is a feisty one.”

“I see. That’s great to hear.”

Amon removed his hat, and placed it on the table. “This liberal talk is what intrigues me.”

“Okay. That’s what we’ll talk about, then. As I was saying, we have freedom and order. And it requires honoring and celebration of these. So, we celebrate our god-given order, and god-given freedom. We celebrate every person who’s influenced us, every book whose author we would want to say did the right things, and every music’s essence, and every essence of our existence, so that we may find we started with celebrating them, to find god in them. Even in the fire we managed to create, as we continued through eras. So that we can finally dare to celebrate ourselves.”

“Fair enough. You should not go overboard with the celebrations though. Merit and justice are what will let you be pious.”

“Indeed. We have to stand by truth and merit in order to properly make sense of our world.”

“You get it.”

“That’s good to hear. The one point of difference when it comes to liberalism is religious freedom.”

“I know,” Amon said, smiling. “What you are trying to say is to differentiate between man-made order and man-made freedom. As a conservative, I can respect that. You received Lilith’s photo, as you asked.”

“Yeah, but before that, what’s the lad’s name?” John asked, motioning to the man who sat by the table.

“He’s Harish Roy. His surname is good currency for where he comes from.”

“That’s intriguing. Might consider joining in the conversation, lad? You don’t mind, do you, Amon?”

“Not at all, John.”

“I’m up for it, Mr. John,” conferred Roy. Roy took a seat beside Amon.

“So, shoot away then, my boy. What kind of religion are you part of?”

“I think it’s more appropriate to look at the strain I’m part of. I’m a Vedic Hindu.”

“Got that. Elaborate as you want.”

“Well, you see, we have one god, and he is called the Brahman. We have Vedic deities like Indra, and Surya. The Vedic deities are not God. You could say they are comparable to the Jinns you have in Judaism. Some of the Vedic deities reportedly had vices at times. Regardless, this has richness to offer to us. It has a certain appeal to Christians, just as much.”

“That’s interesting.”

“I still support the Christian concept of trinity, which is the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. In Hinduism, we have it in the form of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. That would be creator, preserver and destroyer. I believe each of them represents a different approach to vision for good, which might somewhat not seem obvious, but Jesus certainly came to be an example for humanity. For me, after some years studying Sanskrit, which is the language our scriptures were originally written in, I consider myself a Vedic Hindu. However, the essential problem is that I also consider the epic ‘Mahabharata’ to be of great ideological importance.”

“I see. Is it a problem of polytheism?”

“Yeah. Maybe someone needs to have a conversation about that. Maybe a spiritual guru or someone intelligent. I think that a lot of priests realise that need. In fact, Hindus have started favoring Vedic practices because of globalisation. And, I am just supposing, but maybe the incarnations of Vishnu were about deities who were specially endowed with a great vision for good.”

“That’s quite a distinct angle you are taking. Don’t you think polytheism is a good thing, seeing as you are a Hindu?”

“Yeah, you are right. I think, I may be a Vedic Hindu, but I do think that it’s fair to allow other people to have their own beliefs. It’s a problem of statism and anarchy. I think there is only one god, but people can pray to Him through various ways, and different values. And that validates the practice of polytheism, partly. I think that is what most versed and common Hindus think.

I think polytheism is a fair thing to contemplate, and in some civilisations, at least, to enable a fresh breath into the religion. That might be left-sounding, but I don’t think it is. We had ancient Sumerian civilisations, and the god ‘Marduk’ remained in some fields of study, like psychology. We have the god Apollo, from the ancient Greek civilisation, and he is still honored to this date. So, I think it is fair to note that people who believe in different modes of religion can still exist.

On the flip side, in present times, we also have the Japanese worshiping multiple gods, and that’s some richness of its own. I think, that I would be tyrannical if I were to force you to convert to Hinduism right here and now, and if you were to force me to convert to Judaism, and we are both not given the choice. But I prefer monotheism.

Now, don’t get me wrong. What I am saying is not that monotheism is the best. Polytheism is perfectly defensible if you think about it. People lead different ways of life, and have different ideologies. In polytheism, the people who are more involved in politics tend to worship certain gods more than those who are more involved in wisdom-seeking. And that allows people to express themselves within various systems of capitalism and magnanimity. It prevents conflict.

I think that, in my estimation, Christians tend to get defensive when the question of charity is addressed, and become socialists because of that. The truth is that we are all capable of charity, and I think that despite my preference for monotheism, we can afford to be more understanding towards polytheism.”

“Yeah, you were talking about a certain ideology within the story called ‘Mahabharata’. What importance would you attribute to that?” asked John, raising his eyebrow.

“Well, let me deviate here.”

“Go ahead.”

“I think it’s important to note how Martin Luther King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail, based on his Christian beliefs to bring about complete civil liberty. I think it’s important to note how Henry David Thoreau based his work ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Christian beliefs, and the Boston Tea Party to argue for civil liberty. I think it’s important to note how Jacob emerged from the whale and lead his people.

I also think it is important, here, to note Arjun’s will, in Mahabharata, being clarified and confirmed when he confronts a vision of the Great Being, and performs his duty. Similarly, Marduk helped his people by piecing out Tiamat, the dragon of chaos, and showing a vision. And so too did the prophets guide their people towards good.

I’m talking of individualism.”

“You sure did. That was great.” John relented.

“You see, we would never be sure whether religion would return or not if we ever removed it from the surface of the earth in the name of science. Say, after a century, or two centuries. It could most likely come back in the form of cults with dangerous ideologies. In fact, E.M. Forster rightly showed that in his book ‘The Machine Stop’, when he talked about a book which the characters considered to be the words of the Machine God. It is devoid of divinity and humanity equally.”

“That was fine, Roy. You made a good point,” Amon said.

John smiled, and looked at Roy. “You want to hear the other side of the story?”

“I do not know everything. Please go ahead,” Roy replied.

“That was gracious of you,” John commented. “Well, I can certainly understand the appeal you are talking about, when you mention Apollo. That is something to consider. Regardless, I’m not a big advocate of polytheism. That would disturb our universal order. God speaks about one purpose, and that is about us becoming better, and helping those next to us within a righteous system.

I am not fond of superstitions, and the resulting anarchy of polytheism in certain forms. I believe it also has a rather heavy economic burden on the individual. It has a history of being divisive, but that has subsided insofar as I know. I understand that we would require division of labor, but we should leave that to the free market, shouldn’t we?

I can understand how individualism keys in for polytheism, but it is one thing to have a monotheistic religion, and a free market, and another to have both a polytheistic religion and a free market. Maybe you are able to find your ego and instinctive desires reflected within this secular mode of being of god, and I think that is a good thing. The familial aspect is good, until it starts getting extended. That is what I have a problem with. Take the example of Buddhism, and contrast it. I think that being a Vedic Hindu is something which is equally, if not more, appropriate.

I will not go into graphic details. That applies for almost all religions. We don’t want to play the blame game most people of the left loves to play. We should respect each other. We don’t want to succumb to the spotlight effect and have our morality replaced by the Ids of some of us who are currently within controversial situations with respect to the global atmosphere. It is the majority rule, just as the left dictates, but we sure would want that majority to understand the good and the bad of politics, and choose wisely. It’s a conversation we would eventually need to have, much as those addressing the public.

And I can understand why charity could be the weakness of many Christians in the current narrative being paraded by the communist teachers, as much as it could be the same for quite some Hindus. ‘Keeping people poor’ is closely linked to the resulting spirit of socialism in any country. It could be the ideas prevailing the nations, as much as self-cultures. I think that you are looking for the kind of conservative Jews who understand reform, and the need to have people - personas - to guide everyone in the community. That is what solidifies us. I can speak in terms of representing knowledge and action, and I think that certain stories do portray transcendental good and values.

Maybe it is about the notion of the shadow self we have which we have to integrate, or conceptualise to be well-acquainted with it. I think the difference is that in Christianity, god presides over, but does not manifest himself in any way in the stories of Eve and Adam, and even Cain and Abel.

The rest is about political systems and social differences.”

“I think you are right, Mr. John.”

“I’m glad we are good on that.” John shook Roy’s hand.

“Well, this is pretty interesting stuff,” Amon relented. “I was nervous when I picked this guy.”

“Of course, Amon. Roy did a good job manifesting his being forward. And we were able to have this conversation. However you might think of it, speaking up is way better than just earning coins, and then not being given the choice after speaking up.”

Amon considered. “I am somewhat open-minded. I won’t deny your right to elaborate and explain, or even to defend yourself,” he told Roy. “Say, even on the supposition, in my case, that you are accused of not knowing the people of Greye, you are very likely to dig deep and come back with an answer. When there are issues concerning your own religion, for example, you are just as likely to dig deep. Same goes in economics, in politics and in science. That is the staple we go by.”

“That’s good to hear, Mr. Amon.”

“We good then, John?”

John chuckled. “Thanks for bearing with me, Amon. This was quite heavy-handed for our first conversation of the week”

“That was an awesome conversation. I won’t lie. So, a god like Marduk having a vision. Given the historical magnitude and perseverance of polytheistic religions, I think there is something to them. Apparently, he also ordained Cyrus to build temples for the Jews. The records for that are contradictory though. Let’s stop here. And talk business.” Amon said.

“Right. Been good knowing you, Roy. Amon, what have you got for me this time?” John leaned forward.

***

Update:

I have considered recreating a stand-up talk. For example, what is the answer to ‘what is life?’. Life as causality, or humor – it’s a vague and general topic.

You can look at life as katharsis in the the chapter topic ‘Reason’, divided in two parts.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/6028/project-from-december-2019/chapter/455386/lfsa-chapter-4-reason-part-2

You can just read Aidan Alastair to get to faster conclusions:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31409/aidan-alastair-volume-1

Objectively speaking, values and circumstances are subjective. If you don’t say, and you don’t do, something intelligent or something concrete in terms of rational output and emotional output, or don’t even ask to be informed, you might as well keep quiet. Based on this philosophy, I have thrown parts of my work to continue with other ideas.

*ThinkBig Motivation, 2022, (Full Audiobook) Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, January 25, online video, viewed on 25th March 2022, >