Mother of a Blog.
Here's a collection of some of my rambling thoughts along with all the digressions over a period of a week or so. I have not attempted to refine them either in their content or form. So there are all possible errors typical of a first draft. Note: Two successive paragraphs, if they look logically disconnected, most probably are. Some might be connected by a bridge of thought that I would have not included for some reason. Sometimes I have digressed and never returned, and left the chain of thought dangling. At some places, the thoughts are not fully developed and at some, even if they are, I have not presented them in totality, again due to the discretion I reserve with myself. In most of the cases, the truth to be told, I was just too lazy to type. Laziness arises out if several reasons - either I think the thought is just too trivial or the thought has lost its rawness and freshness to me which makes it look boring to me. Sometimes, it's just the feeling of having an absolute indifference about penning down the thoughts - but this goes against the basic tenet of why I am writing a blog. That's because that feeling is fleeting. Then, by the time it has disappeared and I again feel motivated to write, the freshness has been dried away et cetera. So anyways, what follows is the remnant of all that process. By the way, on a totally different note, I have become a big fan of Woody Allen, and I would recommend Annie Hall for anyone to begin with. Then there is Manhattan (about "eternally dissatisfied New Yorkers) and the latest (running in theatres) is VIcky Cristina Barcelona (it's impressive to see Javiar Bardem in such a charming role after having seen No Country..)
Haziness is everywhere. I am standing there – barely able to keep my eyes open. I can only see white, the snow, the storm. The wind cuts through my body. I want to cry. Loudly. I know it's in vain. But I can not. If my heart could cry, it would deafen the seven worlds.
I want to write, give my emotions and passions a vent. But, I can not write. Have I the capacity to assign words to my own emotions? I think not. Probably, it is not me who is incapable, but the words are. O how worthless a creature I am! I know not how to play music – only had I known to play violin now, I would play it till it cried with me. Till its strings tore apart as the fabric of my heart has. Till it bathed in my tears and blood of my fingers. Till I would drop unconscious on the ground and the gods would clear up the clouds to see who he was that made even Cupid put down all his arrows. Had I a brush with me – but I knew only one color then, the white of the snow.
But I keep walking in the knee deep desert of snow that only gets thicker – as if it has the goal only of engulfing me. I keep walking – away from you, away from everyone, everywhere, away from myself. I feel lonely, not because I don't have company but because I have grown tired of everything including myself. I continue on my way, undeterred and undaunted. You know - I have no fear then. If a lion came in front of me, I would not divert my path.
Did I hate the world? Not at all. Neither did I love it. The whole of existence was a matter of complete and absolute indifference to me. I did not care if anything existed or not. I did not care even if I myself existed or not! Everything was pointless – not rooted in a zero but a big zero itself - nada, cipher, shoonya.
I felt old. Each moment seemed like years and each breath like death. I was in pain because of you – but not for a single moment were you in my mind. Nothing was. Any thought, as soon as it was born, died down. The vacuum inside – felt I would implode anytime.
Nothing delighted me. No tragedy could bring a tear to my eyes nor would a melody a smile on my face bring. Where're the books I read and meditated upon? Why does not the view of sunbeams froming behind the mountains shining the clouds from beneath giving heavenly hues make my heart leap with joy any more?
Hope, you are long dead, I cannot rely on you anymore. Love, stop pretending, I trust you no more. Intelligence, I had started doubting you even before you could figure that out. Madness, ah, you are my only true friend remaining!
And then in a moment, I don't remember in course of which activity – eating a muffin or sipping some tea, I am inundated with joy – without a cause or an explanation. Like a journey from zero to infinity, a transition from chaos to perfection. I could see as broad daylight that nothing existed but I. I am everything and everything is Me. How could not I see that? Really, how could I differentiate between this mountain and this lady driving the car and this boy drinking coffee and the coffee and all the things I could see and me? I consume myself for my own sake, what I see with my eyes in front of me is not separate from me. I am the doer and the deed and the means, wherefore these petty worries? If I get hit by a car, do I really end? This too was fearlessness but very different in nature from that I felt earlier – that based in the presupposition that “there is nothing” and this one rooted in “I am everything”. Like an alienated bubble I was wandering without realizing that I am the Water and the Air myself.
And then like a meteor with the brightness of a thousand Suns, this state of awareness vanishes – not slowly decaying but disappearing in an instant just in the manner it had arose. I am like an empty cup which when brought under a waterfall gets completely filled in a moment but only for a moment and when taken away from below the fall, remains only partially filled. What is partially filled is after all a linear combination of completely empty state and completely full one. And thus I am back to my mundane sane self – back to the worrying about presentations and shifting apartments and the most important question of all – what's going to be for dinner today.
And then and despite that I write - about things that divert my mind to muchgreater problems (at least pretentiously). Philosophy as an opium of sort?Could one call Music or any art an opium, something that takes one away fromthe reality? Only someone with a very twisted sense ofreality itself. Art, by it's very nature takes a person closer to the true nature of reality. What elevates is art – anything else is mere entertainment “manoranjan – manan ranjayati iti – one that please the mind”. The primary goal of art is not to talk to the mind at all but to touch that innermost string and make it vibrate so as to transcend your self and take it to an unbeknownst territory otherwise unattainable. Anything that plays with your mind is still not an evolved art (or work of an insufficiently evolved artist). Music operates most effectively in this manner – at a very abstract level. It is not the words that bring a tear in your eye. It is the notes. I don't understand Latin but I find my eyes moist and my mind completely thoughtless when I listen to Ave Maria sung by Lara Fabian or when Pavarotti sings “L'amore.....” in the song Miss Sarajevo. Many people complain that they don't listen to classical music because they don't understand the lyrics (especially Drupad shaili)! No, you don't understand music! The words merely act as filler to the notes. So when Ustad Aamir Khan or Pt. Paluskar sing the aalap before actually beginning with the bhajan/gayan it's a meditation meant as preparation for the transcdental state to be achieved. Unfortunately we do not have many musicians left in India (and the world) who treat music as meditation. Another art form that is potently effective is the visual arts – chiefly painting (also photography, in modern times but it cannot be as as effective as painting as the painter's imagination is not limited by what is present around him). And then there is literary arts – out of which poetry is probably the most efficacious (as seen in the metaphor used to praise prose “his prose is as beautiful as poetry). The reason being the same, poetry affects not the mind, but at a deeper level. Thus, anyone who tries to write poetry as a pompous display of his skills in grammar and vocabulary will come up with a most horrendous piece of poetry. A grammatically wrong usage in a poetry does hardly diminish its beauty – because poetry is not sentences – it is more than the sum of the words that form its body.
The art form that is potentially the most effective is cinema. It has the powers of the visual imagery combined with ability to affect you through the auditory sense (with appropriate employment of music) – all this threaded around the art of story telling. Given its scope, very little has been achieved in artistic sense in this medium. Imagine a prolific artist like Vinci or Michaelangelo engaged in this medium of art – they would change the world of cinema! The chief problem here is the financial prohibitiveness and an artist great enough to appreciate and justly use various aspects (like sound, camera etc.). and still greater problem is the fact that the greater the artist the more detached and condescending his views about money, which would make his relationship with the production house a nightmare for the latter! You do find the truly great pieces of cinema though – I have found Tarkovsky to be someone who has treated cinema as a pure form of art. His movies are not about content but more about form, giving his own “auteur” flavour to the films he has made. His almost meditative use of camera – showing flowing water, or waving grass with very slow panning, his use of dream-like imagery (seen right from his first film, Ivan's childhood) and his habit of not playing with your minds (by bringing some forced and “unexpected” twists in the story line to “surprise” you) make him a great artist in my eyes. His films thus make you meditate over it a long after it is over. 2001: A Apace Odyssey is the textbook example of how to make use of appropriate music in a film. “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (by Strauss) becomes indistinguishable from “The Ascent of Man” and “The Blue Denube” gives you the feeling of the infinite beauty and depth of the space through your ears! I shall not go over characteristics of each director and what makes his films “auteur” cinema.
And just like art, philosophy has to be elevating, ennobling in nature – it should not remain just intellectual masturbation. It has to be something, that brings your self nearer to the true nature of reality – to the Satyam and the Ritam.
I was thinking about how one could take an advaitin view on the world affairs (not just the self but the collection of selves forming societies, nations etc.). A view wherein the contrasts are inherent in the worldview, you remain neither on the left nor on the right as you conclude none takes you to the true nature of reality. Those positions are mere temporary troughs and crests your epoch is riding and the right and wrong is just a product of the epoch.. And how this enlightens a lot of things! This idea was similarly explored in what is known as "the Law of
Opposites" in dialectical materialism, based in Hegel, but in different light and with disparate conclusions. I myself owe this thinking
to, as most of my philosophical thinking, Advaita. I would like to expound upon this further in much greater detail but that will happen some other time. That is because, this piece is not an isolated thought but part of a longer chain covering very many aspects, linked together and forming an edifice. A single link of that chain or a single facade of that edifice cannot show the complete picture.
A bit on what I am talking about.I think where I differed from Marx was whatto do about it once you realize the named law in operation - best put by theBard in Hamlet,
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, -"
But, he did not think of another alternative. To search for the higher truth,an impersonal Brhman behind all this opposites and dualities. And surrender byelevating yourself as the impartial doer and knower of everything. This sounds very contradictory – elevate yourself by surrendering. But here the word “self” takes on different meanings. What is surrendered is the mundane self – the ego while what you elevate to is the one, undivided self or consciousness. And then you realize these futility and ephemeral nature of these actions and views on wars and politics and economics and everything that you are supposed to have “unchanging views” on. I remember when I came to know for the first time that tens of thousands of Buddhists monks were massacred in Nalanda and I said to myself in anger “why did they make not a single attempt to defend themselves against this barbarism? They would have been so beneficial to the humankind had they lived.” But no, it was probably in their infinite wisdom and the realization that consciousness and knowledge are eternal and unbreakable. It eventually does not matter what views you held and what you did in “answering the moment” - you will be confined to be children of the epoch, whose Weltanschaaung is restricted by the Zeitgeist. The goal should be to transcend the Zeitgeist. This is not succumbing to suffering. And of course, not everyone has to and will be a son of Man – breaking the barrier of time and space. There shall be people who respond to the call of the moment for that is how the world will flow its everyday course.
Another connected idea is regarding the Boltzmann's Brain paradox. Boltzmanntakes it a priori assumption that development of a single brain would requiresmaller perturbation in the law of entropy than a billion brains. I beg todiffer. The level of complexity in coming up with one single floating brain isno less that the complexity required to make a whole life-system as the earth.
The reason being: there cannot be a single brain as a final product. You will always have the whole eco-system or you'll have nothing. one billion humans do not translate to a billion times more complexity (and hence a perturbative decrease in entropy a billion times larger) than that for a single brain. Consider yourself one with the world. I am not saying this allegorcally or in a psycological sense (be empathetic to someone's pains,although that does follow from what I mean to say) but in a physical sense.How can you differentiate between yourself and the earth, water, fire, air and the space? We all are stardust, literally. Some material from a nebula of supernova (a carcass of a star) taking shape of the planet, some elements form some complex molecules that go on copying themselves and meanwhile introducing some mutations. If you look at a tree grow from "outside", what you are seeing is an object conceived out of the earth, consuming the air, converting the air to solid mass (carbon dioxide and water etc to carbohydrates) and then merging back to the earth. Some other objects consume these "trees" (basically air &earth) and water. How do you differentiate yourself *physically* between thetree or the Earth of the Sun or the stars (one of which someday contained thematerial you are made of and where that material will one day return to - thespace). Side note - as you might have observed, I have increased my respectfor the ancient Rishis of India and the Greek philosophers to have come upwith such a beautiful concept of the five elements (or four in the case of the Greeks).
So in physical sense you are one with the universe. What gives you the feelingof being separate is your ego, based in your consciousness. At this point I'llstop. This is something that I have not the audacity to speak about. I do noteven know if the bunch of molecules is enough to beget consciousness or it is acompletely different monster. I'll simply accept what Schroedinger, Neumann,Wigner etc. (who had some profound thoughts on measurement in QuantumMechanics) or Shankara or Buddha had to say about it.
Latter addition: I would refrain from saying anything more and recommend you to a magnificent book by Schroedinger “Meine Weltansicht – My view of the World”, one of the most beautiful and scientific treatment of Vedanta I have come across.
Speaking of Physical Reality, there are uncertainties at every level, some imposed by Nature herself and some by our own ignorance. If we go to the world of electrons, there does not exist an objective reality. Let's see how hidden variable theories stand - the reality is objective but there are some hidden variables that make it appear to be observer-dependent. I'll use an analogy – if you are talking to a person who believes that the earth was created by a God some 5000 years ago and you argue with him and tell him all about carbon dating etc and then show him a fossil that is dated to be a million years old. He will agree with you on the technique on carbon dating but when you bring the sample in, he'll say that the sample *appears* million years old but it is actually only 5000 years old and God created it as a test of our faith. Isn't the hidden variables argument akin to this, in nature? The belief there is in Cartesian (objective) realism. But I'll not disregard any physical theory just on these grounds. After all, there are many more reasons why science does not go well with the idea of a personal God. Against hidden variables, there is Bell's theorem.
I might, six months later bring a compelling argument against the Copenhagen interpretation, but I am not afraid of being self-contradictory. It is amusing why people berate self-contradiction in today's world (I am not talking about mundane matters right now, only the more profound ones:). As I already said, the truth is multifaceted and multidimensional, the more you progress, the more you are exposed to it, the more you'll change your views. The analogy of six blind men describing an elephant comes to my mind. If all of them are at a different but steady position, they will contradict each other in their description of the elephant, but if you are moving, you first feel its trunk and say the elephant is like a thick rope, you move forward and feel its legs and you'll change your opinion and integrate the new observation into your Weltanschaaung that the elephant is like a pillar. This is not self-contradiction, this is a mere indication that you're not stagnant, that shows your fluidity - a most important prerequisite for knowledge, and hence growth. And as Bohr once said, “The opposite of one great truth is another great truth.” So what is of utmost important is the sincerity and integrity with which you pursue your knowledge, whether you're right or wrong is secondary. (and I'll question further, is anyone really right or wrong?)
This is the scenario at the atomic level – almost certain absence of objective reality. Come to the cosmological scale. The theories here have basically very few data points to build upon. The Hubble shift, The microwave background amongst a few important ones with the most recent addition being the evidence for a positive cosmological constant, an expanding universe. One can easily start becoming an agnostic in this respect – can we really ever know the why and wherefore of the universe? Physics is not a closed logical system in a strict mathematical sense. Or else Godel would kick in – if the system is complete then it must be inconsistent, and incomplete if consistent – none of which the reality can afford to be. If the reality has to be self-consistent and complete, it has to be non-mathematical, i.e., at some level the physical truth would be mathematically inexpressible. Right now our knowledge of Physics is not yet complete enough that Godel theorem can apply. Today's physics is a lot of closed mathematical systems, some possibly inconsistent with each other, instead of a *whole*.
The problems are not simple by any measure when we start talking about ethics and the questions concerning reality of human nature. What makes it complex is the sheer complexity of human brain and to top that, the many-body nature of the problem (many human beings interacting with each other, not just in space but in time too. What someone thought or preached a millennium ago affects me now either directly or through someone else). And in this big morass, can you have an absolute, objective code of human behavior – or ethics? Morality is by definition relative, I am talking about whether ethics are too, at another level. The genius of Advaita and Budhhism lies (amongst many other instances of profoundness in both) in setting up a picture of the reality (based in Brahman or Shunyata) and then proceeding step by step from there to arrive at a code of ethics. Right now, I can summarize my guiding principle as “live with as little oppression to the world as possible”. This, after all, is based in my belief that I do not have a right to transgress anyone else's rights. Somethings follow directly from it – I will not eat non-vegetarian food, I'll not go to a strip club (argument for it: the girls there are there voluntarily. Counterargument: Free will is hardly free. It's conditioned by society. The male-dominated society has infused in the minds of women
(at least some) that self-objectification is valid and just. A woman wearing a veil in an Islamic society also does not have any feeling of victimization. The system is internalized in individuals. Thus free will is not free in the sense of being based in the individual.) But on the other hand, I have nothing against the open-marriages (non-marital relationships) or homosexuality or one-night stands, or any interaction where the individuality of concerned persons are respected.
But as I said this is based on the assumption that I should not oppress others. I have no scientific reason to base this statement. You could argue in the following way - since the whole life is just an organic mess – a bunch of carbon-based molecules combining and recombining and it does not matter what you eat – a tree or a chicken or a cow or a pig or a dog, since after all, everything is going to the same place it came from. It does not matter if you cheat someone. Don't care about global warming, even if we the humans caused it, what's wrong in it? Basically, nothing matters, so do anything and don't repent. Entropy always increases, don't try to bring order! Now, no matter how disagreeable I may find this line of reasoning, I have no scientific way of arguing against it. I cannot justify my stance that I should not oppress other living/non-living things. I cannot take away that conscious-prick during the instances when I don't recycle, or hurt someone emotionally with a cold heart or am acting just too selfishly without any thoughts about others.
An analogy - I know, I know, you shall say that analogies are not the truth, they weaken the logic in an argument etc. But those who stick to logic intheir scholarly pretension often forget the enormous complexity of the problemat hand. I am not even talking about the problem of nature of reality - whether it is objective or not or even about the questions of origin of theuniverse as we know it and the life. Even much more mundane and ephemeralproblems are too complex for one to know all the variables at play. And thatis where logic fails. Impeccable logic applied to incomplete data will alwayslead to inconsistent and wrong conclusions. That is why you find economists orpolitical analysts divided so widely in their opinions. That is why I wouldnot trust merely the intelligence of a person - a sufficiently bright personcan justify anything, plainly because he begins with incomplete data - he either out of honest ignorance or malicious intent, has not gathered all the data. And you can fit any line as per your wish to a set of points if you selected only two of them! Something along the lines of right vs left brained-ness. So,it is here that holistic, system-level approach kicks in. And there, analogies work beautifully. Of course, at the basis lies the acumen of the person, inhis discriminatory power of where to stop the analogy. E.g., your eyes arelike lotus. You obviously don't mean that the eyes are pink in color with green stem. But you get the idea. You use a metaphor because beauty is highly non-quantifiable characteristic of an object. Everyone can identify one wrong A flat instead ofan A, that is detrimental to the melody. But *no one* has been able to (as faras I know) reason out why a changing even half a note in a melody kills it orwhy a certain set of notes is aesthetic while another is not. And, the beautyis - this is true universally! A cacophonous sound to a European is also the same to an Indian or a Chinese. Music truly is a universal language! Now, I digress and coming out of two level of digressions is not very easy. So, analogies are nottotally meaningless if a wise person is using it.
The analogy I use is that of a complex structure of bubbles formed in flowingwater. A structure gets formed, acquires more and more complexity and breaksdown suddenly and spontaneously with no trace. For a "thinking" bubble, theultimate realization would be the awareness of its non-separateness from waterand air, that it existence was just an accidental manifestation of air and water due to acertain kind of vigorous motion therein. And also that the structure ofbubbles would break down under its own weight. What we see in the world -organized religion, politics, foreign policies, wars - they are just added layers of complexity in the world. There is nothing unnatural in the world -by the very fact that something *is*, it is natural.
