Anubhav

A few years ago, while I was walking towards the school foodcourt to have lunch, an Asian-American guy approached me along with his female friend. He was from some church. He started to talk .. he wanted to convince me that only through Jesus could I reach the Kingdom of Heaven.

It was not the first time that somebody had talked to me about this. And it was not the last. I also found out that other Indian students on campus were also frequently targeted by these churches.

If the path proclaimed by Jesus is so great and the Church is the only place where I can find God, why does the Church need to target people?

It turns out that churches in the US are facing an acute shortage of young people at their churches. So they have started to target people in order to convince them to attend their churches. But why target Indian students? Because (a) Indians apparently do NOT know that God can be reached only by following the path set by Jesus, and (b) a lot of Indians on campus are FOB (fresh off the board from India) and that vulnerability can be exploited.

To come back to the point, this guy and his friend tried very hard to make me understand why I should forget Hinduism and join the church. After nodding for several minutes, I finally ventured a question "If you have been following Jesus faithfully all these years, you must have had some inner experience? Can you please share some of your experiences?" I wish I had a camera with me .. to take a picture of the guy's face. And then I had my revenge. For I spoke continuously on spirituality and inner experiences for 15 minutes, trying to make him understand that convincing other people to join the church was not going to win him a place in Heaven or win favor from God. I also tried to convince him that Hinduism and Christianity were very similar as far as the teachings were concerned. I don't know if I succeeded, but I do know that he left hurriedly.

Anubhav is the key to everything. When one has true anubhav, words are unnecessary, expression is unnecessary. Anubhav cannot be given .. it has to be experienced by oneself. I cannot make someone else experience the taste of a delicious mango by merely describing its color and form .. it has to be tasted in order to have a true understanding and experience of its sweetness.