Ram Ram Ram....

It was a week end, and was relaxing at home. As usual, I was humming to bollywood music at home.

The music player started playing a Ram Bhajan from Swades. It had some words like "Man se Ravan jo nikale ram uske man main hain.."

A few thoughts started running through my mind....

Who is Ram? I had read it some where, that a highly dynamic person existed in history, who was referred as Ram. It was about 5000 years ago.(time being approx). He was supposed to be a powerful warrior and a great thinker. He probably had set examples as a complete ruler. However, I have not yet come across a fact in history that Ram was an incarnation of God. I do not or rather cannot challange the fact that Ram is an instance of the class God.

The next thought that started running was about Ram and Ramayan. Ram was indeed an incarnation of the supreme God. But a few questions started again. Is Ram really God, who is almighty. Basic questions:

If Ram is God, and Lakshman marked the famous "Lakshman Rekha", crossing which Sita was kidnapped by Ravan, why did Ram not realise it when was being done? Ram( being an incarnation of God) would have surely viewed through his eternal vision that Sita was kidnapped by Ravan. Ram could have controlled the loss, right at that moment, by stopping Ravan. Lots of lives could have been saved( army who died in Ramayan war), if Ram had taken the right step.

This probably was because Ram was a human, who was an incarnation of God. Hence, Ram was not able to realise by his "godly vision" that Sita was being kidnapped.

I was left confused with this thought and the next thought started soon. During "Sunder kand", Ram along with his huge army crossed the Indian Ocean to reach Sri Lanka on a bridge. But how was the bridge built? It was built of stones, which had Ram's name printed on it. The heavy stones which could withstand the load of Ram's army was floating on the Ocean. It surely is against the basic science, that heavy stones drown in the deep water.

Now, I am surely a fool. The stones floated, because Ram's name was printed on the stones. Ram's name was strong enough to create this miracle. Nothing new in this.

Why did Ram behave like the almighty God now?

Now, the confusion began. Is Ram whom we know from Ramayana a human or an incarnation of God?

I did some more processing on this thought.. Now, I realise that Ram was indeed a human being. But he surely was close to perfect and his principles were followed closely. Few historians made him a God, to make people follow him closely. This is not a new concept. Most of the religions in the current day have this concept.

Remember Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohommad, Mahaveer Jain and the Teerthankaras, all of then follow this line.

I personally feel that the concept of making a perfect person as God, is not a wrong concept. The crowd of humans follow God with belief and devotion. But very few follow a perfect human. To support my thought, who follows Mahatma Gandhi without questioning his principles? Very few people question Ram and his thoughts.

I conclude that Ramayan is a well authored book, where a "close to perfect" human is magnified as God. There are a few instances where we see disconnects in the story. I am still not ready to accept them as disconnects in the story. May be I am not competent enough to understand the complete Ramayan correctly.