The hermit on the hill –

And so the hermit sat upon the mountain top for ages. That’s what the people said. For years and years or decades and decades or even eons and eons depending on whom you asked. But then only the hermit knew that he’d parked his Time (inside his water jug no less) while he meditated. Time for him did not exist. And if time did not exist he did not exist, for how could he exist without ticking along a timeline or crunched in the folds of it’s fabric. So he sat abstract inside the shell of his human form that people thought was him all along.

The Time in his water jug –

But Time can never sit still, it has to Tick! No, no! It can never be still. It has to tickle them timeline sticks. It tried to jiggle some to the right and then jiggle some to the left. And created much confusion as life went backwards and then forwards. People who weren’t born died and people died without knowing they’d been born. Trains were on time and lands lush with greenery until the sun seemed to gobble it all up. It then rained backwards and thundered before lightning struck. It made life devolve and continents to stick. But it still didn’t matter one bit as they seemed oblivious to it even as they lived.

Time then gave a shrug and tried an all round wiggle. The world went round and round as the stars and planets almost crashed into one another. Horrorscopes were cast as wars were won or lost. Some lives went on a whirlwind and others for a roller coaster ride. People said it was the wrath of gods or a curse for bad thoughts.

Time ticked on. No one seemed to know where from it came or whenceforth it would go. They sat with their scientific thoughts and prayers to assorted gods. The wrung their hands and shared their distorted thoughts.

Then Time could take it no more. Out popped the lid and out it came on a limb. It lashed out like a broken cassette tape, the end came first, then the preamble. People who’d never ever seen time on its own and stood in awe at the expanse of it.

Tame it they cried! Hold it they screamed, while we get to the beginning and end of it all. They formed teams to hold the ends and peg it to the ground. They named the start a Big Bang and tried to race to the end. And so it went for ages until there came a guy with static in his hair and a twinkle in his eye who wrung their old thoughts on a clothesline and made a fabric out of Time.

The pebble at their foot-

But no matter how they measured it – by linear foot or by cubic meter – Time stayed elusive. They gave up trying to figure it out and flopped to the ground where the pebble lay still. They never saw the pebble lay it’s time in it’s water jug as it never had a water jug to begin with.

The pebble stayed a pebble with or without time.

Tik tok tik tok.

If all is one and if one is all then there is none.

Numbers exist because of one another. 1 exists because of 2.. and 3… and 4… and infinity.

Take those away then one becomes infinity but then infinite number of the very same ones is meaningless as there is no other and therefore as good as zero.

You..me..him…her.. it.. they… that.. and this – all the same one. and therefore none. One and none. One or none. Pulsing coexisting. As one and as zero. But the same. None.

A salute of hope to my adopted country on its Independence Day.

Seemingly as antithetical as it could be to my birth country, modern to its mystic, Individualistic to its divinistic, I dreamt of liberty as I stepped off the plane, a lone suitcase in my hand and infinite dreams in my mind. The weight of centuries of history and shackles of traditions fell in shambles at my feet. I smelt, I felt, I breathed, freedom. The freedom only a young country built on the future, not on the past, can deliver. The freedom the soul yearns to start anew, not pegged to this belief or that, to this cultural coordinate or that. A country where the only limitation is your imagination, where ethics is religion, politeness a habit, any work a badge of honor and most of all a country where you could just be. Yourself. Oh yes, one could still feel ripples of racism in a mispronounced name, or in subtle hints in the whitewashed recesses of suburbia, or even in an extra frisk at the airport, yet overall it was still an optimistic America, still fundamentally a country of hopeful and aspiring free immigrants.

And yet today, that very same freedom and liberty stand in danger of being crushed under tumultuous politics that have rattled democracy to the bones the last few years, of getting drowned in a recursive recession, of being shot at in a strip mall, of being torn apart by rulings that shear the very fabric of liberty we so cherish, of bodies being held hostage by laws and to the danger of swaying to the vagaries of extreme rights and extreme lefts shutting down free speech that define the very vocabulary of a great nation …

And yet… I hope.

I hope that the old soul-liberating, freedom loving, spellbinding beautiful, brashly successful, distinctly diverse, ever welcoming, generous and glorious indomitable free spirit that is America will prevail. I still hold immense hope we will all be truly free again in body and spirit. That the euphoria of freedom washing over at first touch down on American soil is once again a reality.

O’ America, may you once again be the statuette of liberty from sea to shining sea.

Art and science – seeming contradictions but just different interpretations of the same subject we call life.

If art were a poem, science is its letters.

If art were a painting science is its colors

If art were a dance science is its very stance.

The grand unification a fact not a theory.

Frequencies and amplitudes, wavelengths and vibrations, scrawled equations on the blackboard dancing to rhythm on the keyboard.

Notes quivering in a vibrato, frequencies emanating in geometric progression, only to retract and tango before a crescendo.

The body responds, sketching a graceful parabola swirling into centrifugal pirouettes. Celebrating the biology of being, stretching imagination beyond comprehension.

Amid a delicate balance of light and dark, a bold splash of color takes apart, the ennui, and voila! A work of art!! Shades that compliment and shadows that define. Optics and chemistry parsing the world apart.

Art or Science? Art and science!

The yin for the yang, the form of the abstract, of being and meaning.

As I was looking for the meaning of a word one day, I ran into a flurry of synonyms and antonyms competing with each other in an avalanche that buried the word in a vain attempt to define and describe. All the glorious words I met tried to embellish it, polish it and even mirror it but none could define it as well as, well, the word in itself.

As I was looking for the meaning of an action one day, I came up with words that described it – the why, the what, the where and the how. I found words that surrounded and encapsulated it, words that marked its trajectory and charted its course, words that colored it and amplified it but none could define it as well as, well, the action itself.

I was looking for the meaning of an emotion one day. I thought I’d look for it in my thoughts as words had failed me before. I thought through it, I thought over it. I thought rationally and then I thought instinctively. I theorized over it and slept over it. I philosophized it and even enshrined it. But then none of the thoughts could define it as well as, well, the emotion washing itself over me.

I was looking for the meaning of a thought one day. I sifted through the crevices of my memories and etchings of my experiences. I tried to define it and delineate it. I tried to stretch it and extrapolate it. I even tried to derive the statistical standard deviation of its tracts along the quadrants of time. But none of them came close to well, the lone thought thinking itself within me.

I was looking for the meaning of life one day. I looked for it in words, I looked for it in my emotions and I looked for it in my thoughts. I looked for it in stones and in tarot cards. I looked for it in scriptures and religions, in science and in silence. I even looked for it in the wisdom of hermits and in parables of pebbles. But none of them came close to well, living the life itself.

Just live.

I mean it.

I am more

Than

what you see

What I say

What you think

What I am

From where I lay

I seep into

Crevices

Uncontained

realms

Unrestrained

Unseen

Unheard

The Implosion

Within

Contained

Restrained

And then the masses flocked to the hermit, who stood at the brink of pebbledom. They begged and they pleaded, they wept and at his feet prostrated, “You need to use your powers to help us,” they said. “That I shall,” said the hermit. “I shall teach you to be happy with less.” “Oh! No!” Clamored the masses, “That’s of no use to us! You must meditate until you please the Power that be to grant us immortality!”

So once again the hermit stood atop the mountain top, basking in its familiarity. Once again seasons passed, ants crawled, bees buzzed, spiders spun, and he meditated on, seemingly oblivious. No water entered those lips, no food touched that belly. He is close to Nirvana, everyone said, staring at him in awe. They filed past him in reverence which he never saw. They brought him food that he never ate. They adorned his feet with flowers that he never smelled. They chanted his praise that he never heard. They sought his blessings that he never gave. Years passed. He stood on the very tips of his toes and froze for years and then some more, chanting the name of the Power that be.

Finally, happy with his dedication, Power that be appeared and asked, “Valiant monk, what would you like as a boon before you swoon? Very pleased I am with your invocation”.

“O’ Powerful One! I beseech thee! In return for my piety, grant the human race immortality.”

“Thats not possible.” Said the Power that be, “Immortality is limited to me. I shall grant you anything else you ask, unquestioningly.”

So then the clever ascetic replied “May we never be destroyed by anything we can see, no bomb no meteor…no floods, no tsunami, neither earth quakes nor hot global bakes, no alien invasion, no symptomatic disease (He still wanted his probiotics, you see, so he let the asymptomatic be). May we not be destroyed by the living or non-living!” And then he screamed, “MAY WE FORGET WE ARE MORTAL FOR AS LONG AS CAN BE!!!!

“So let it be” said the Power that be, smiling stealthily. And that’s how it all came to be.

And so they forgot they were mortal, you see.

Buildings were built to scrape the skies, markets brimmed with rice and produce. People travelled to Nice and Venice. Parties were thrown, elections were fraught, rumors were spread, and in mirth they lived.

They forgot they were mortal, you see.

They obsessed with looks and spent on goods. They thought this life was all there was. Of the before and after, they never gave a thought. Wealth defined all and intellect took a lower rung. Life ebbed on, emotionally strung. So engrossed were they in their own saga, that naught did they see the upcoming drama.

They forgot they were mortal, you see.

And then came the jolt of mortality, rather inevitably.

Not in a bomb or a meteor. Not in a global bake or news that was fake. No earthquake, no tsunami, not a bacteria or a parasite, or even an alien might. Just a virus, on the fringe of life and non-life, it crept in asymptomatically, you see. It landed unliving on the unsuspecting living, replicating without interrupting. Shedding its coat, outside the door, it inserted its core and of itself made many many more. The unsuspecting human went mirthing on, with nary a cough or even a fever on. And while some lamented death of generosity, the virus multiplied copiously, spreading into young, old and all.

And yet, they forgot they were mortal, you see.

And they partied on. Let the old die, they first said and the infirm as well. And then crashed a tsunami on the economy. Markets crashed, firms closed. Produce ran out, hunger got a foothold. The young starved along with the old. Doors closed.

Fear took hold.

They are still mortal after all, you see.

The brain is numb. The brain is alive. Numb to the ebb of emotions within.. pulsing with sizzling electricity to delve beneath. Lifeless to the eye but dissecting out life itself. Can the utterly materialistic and the utterly metaphysical coexist? Can one contemplate the futility of emotion driven angst while in the throes of it?

What is life? Is life defined in our incessant efforts to feed and clothe and luxuriate oneself? Or in the pursuit of a higher purpose such as altruism when in effect all altruism is but the ego crowning itself? Or an amalgamation of the two, with wealth enough to disperse and earn the sash of nobility.

Or perhaps the high drama of a tumultuous relationship between lovers, siblings, friends or even fanatically held views on religion or politics. Whether it’s one or another or a blend thereof, that’s the bread and butter of life as we know it. Like the ocean, always in motion, always crashing onto the shore high tide or low.

Life is in essence a battlefield of desire vs ethics, of self vs communal, of being vs nothingness. What better place to contemplate the irrelevance of being alive or dead than amidst the battlefield of life itself, with one’s very life at stake. Trying to hold on to life while fully aware it doesn’t mean a damn once dead. Why do we eschew death and not life when death has ironically more meaning than this drama we call life. After all nothing is certain in life but for death.

By design or by chance, by the divine or by default, life isn’t particularly amenable to being pried open and it’s workings demystified. We chisel on at the surface thinking we are sculpting a life out for ourselves when in essence the bulk of it remains unknown and unknowable. We may decide what clothes to wear or what emotions to express or even pretend to meditate on it but rarely do we get a say in what genes our very own cells express or the path of a hurricane. In any case, to those who live at the surface of it all, merely but merrily mired in everyday dos and don’ts, ethos and ethics, children and professions, going beneath the surface seems to be a wasteful exercise.

Afterall, the realization that our everyday ups and lows, desires and disappointments have utterly no meaning in the grand scheme of being, may very well detonate the very life we try to make sense of – as we know it. It would take the zing out of lovers pangs, the bling out of every deal. So you can surely choose to let it be, not sift through to the bottom of it all, losing the heap in the process. Live. Love. Suffer. Happy. Sad. Such is life.

If meaning and the very purpose of a meaning cease to exist outside the confines of the here and now, is it even worth contemplating?

However to realize the meaninglessness of the life and yet decide what the heck, let’s live anyway, in full pursuit of happiness, love, wealth and the entire repertoire of worldly pleasures as they are called, now that is true detachment – detachment from the very need for a purpose. An hermit in essence and a pebble in paradise. Nirvana.

(A sequel to https://thenakedsoul.org/2018/07/12/the-humble-pebble-the-lofty-hermit )

To be free!!

As free as a bubble, floating in the air, tethered to nothing, nothing but…air!

But the bubbles aren’t free for they but dance to the whims of the ever flowing, diabolical wind!

Ah, to flow like the wind, around the earth and over oceans. Blowing trees and leaves, and sundry plastic across streets, wrapping itself around vertices with terrifying forces. But the wind isn’t free, for it but blows to the whims of the earth moving its heat!

Heat – now that must be free – oh no, it is but a function of the burning sun…

The sun! Our ever dependable, everyday, brilliant sun! Lighting up the solar system, the king thereof! But the sun isn’t free, for it is but a delusional constant, slowly burning into obscurity at the whims of it’s fissions, fusions, nutrinos, and their bombardments.

Neutrons, protons,  electrons, electric charges spinning and zipping around, forever choreographed, chained to their orbitals, never free to roam away …until they pulsate into energy…

Energy! Pure singular unifying energy! The only entity that is truly FREE!?

That which depends on nothing, gives birth to everything, the one that manifests as many.

Entangling itself in its own creations, the constant dialog of creation and destruction.

To be, is to never be free.

We are obsessed with reliving lives, over and over.

Not necessarily our own, but any life.

We re-live life scenarios in movies, in books, in gossip, even in our dreams.

We find it incredibly interesting to watch a series of events unfold in a character’s life be it one’s own, a girlfriend’s or one digitized. The suspense of what happens next grips us and keeps us clinging to our seats.

Yes, this stretch of time from when we are born to when we die enthralls and enchants us. We lament the woes in our own while relishing those in others, fictional or otherwise. We get entrapped in plots and schemes, hatch dreams and follow subversive themes.

And our minds get so braided with the events until there is no distinction between one and the other. Our thoughts get entrapped within the lives we follow, the life events to be precise.

If only, even for a minute,  we could look away from the book, take out eyes away from the movie, wake up from our dream… If only…we could take our thoughts away from the so called events playing out in time. Events, that lack relevance before or after.

Before and after – the stillness jarred by the infinite loop within the finite in-between.

“An·thro·po·cen·tric  (anTHrəpəˈsentrik/adjective) : Considering human beings as the most significant entity of the universe; interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences.”

A pervasive term that pretty much sums up the way we live, the way we think.

A majority of the religions that have a mass following are built on the very same idea – that the world was created for humans, or that humans have a self imposed responsibility to ‘save’ it. That taking birth as a human is a high achievement. From depicting gods in human form to instilling survivalistic lingo in holy books.

Altruism is but an exalted off shoot of the very same anthropocentrism. The need the do good for humanity- not just so humans can survive and procreate. but also to achieve a more exalted  state of feeling ‘noble’. I work for the good of humanity and therefore I am good!! Norms and morals, created around the benefit of greater good – aka humankind. Is this mass self-obsession any better or worse than  a obsession about just the self?

The morality bandwagon. Everyone is on it these days. Everyone is running for causes, standing up for a belief or two, raising money for charity, sharing pictures of the down trodden. It is indeed fashionable for a child to donate half his coveted birthday monies to ‘charity’.  Schools trumpet their community service programs. High school kids feverishly volunteer at soup kitchens, sew care blankets, shelve books at the library and log in hours.

As if this were not enough, one could get onto a higher plateau of ‘righteousness’ by proclaiming an undying loyalty to the being green, by buying organic, by touting a reverence for ‘environmentally friendly’ products. We stand on our plastic soapboxes on our carefully manicured and weed free lawns or the local park and espouse the need to denounce the very things we are enveloped with in our lives. Yes, please stop spewing carbon dioxide into the room with your respiratory processes, you are increasing your carbon footprint!

One could also possibly attain the next level by standing up for the soon to be extinct animals, for the poor creatures used for science and cosmetic research and pulling a puppy or two from certain death in some railroad track. All the while chomping on your favorite grilled chicken.

Yes, it is fashionable to be on this morality bandwagon. The more vocal you are on twitter and Facebook and other assorted media on these and other carefully selected ‘issues’, the higher you morality index. You can demand to be revered and clock yourself with a ‘Look how noble(er) I am’ shroud.

Yet, truth is, that is exactly what all this is . A shroud. Whom are we kidding?

It is the basic survivalist ego in humans that propels us to “save” the earth and to elevate those who proclaim to do so on a elevated, nobler plane.

All these moralistic stand-ins, die-ins and hand outs are but basically but an attempt by humanity to save….humanity itself. If it were not for the belief  that the environmental changes caused by our overconsumption, would in effect obliterate us in the near or far future, would we even bother? Or would we continue to over consume and pollute if, hypothetically speaking we remained unaffected by it all but everything else were to die? Seriously? If it were not for the abject horror that our grandchildren ten generations down may not recognize a tiger if one were staring at them, would we bother to ‘save’ them?

Altruism obviously evolved with the evolution of the multicellular or colonial life forms. As long as there was a lone bacteria, a lone amoeba, fending for itself, it did not need to worry about its fellow brethren. But once the cells realized the advantages of living in a colony, or even as a multi-cellular organism, altruism was necessary to keep the organization running. Team work can only be accomplished with give and take. For any advantage living together gave the cells, they had to also give up some of their individualism for the common good. This they did, without much aplomb, in the early sponges and even the early amphibian. What the heck, cells even had to completely specialize and commit to one function such as the kidney or the heart for the entire organism to survive optimally.

So when did this simple survivalistic phenomenon take on a nobler aura? With the evolution of consciousness perhaps? When the thinking brain had to rationalize the individual’s sacrifice for communal good. With the evolution of the consciously thinking brain, there was a danger of the individual reverting to well, individualism. For thinking brain is not clairvoyant (yet) and is often shortsighted. Hence the evolution of morals to safeguard communal good. In recent times, this seems to be going towards its peak with altruism sparking off glossy headlines and rather pompous facebook posts with guaranteed likes.

This anthropocentric altruism has taken roots deep within our very survilvaistic genes. People jump to judge those in apparent odds with this supposedly divine nature. They do not realize that it is but a survivalistic trait of the race. Of course there is nothing wrong in being anthropocentric. Every species has an orb of adaptive behaviors, that have become so genetically ingrained that survival is not possible outside this realm. So within this orb for humans are all such morals, such as nobility, holier than thou, help your needy neighbor, save the little lame duck…lets survive as a species and lets help the earth survive so we may. Altruism has indeed an exalted status within this orb of morals.

Simply put, altruism is but a higher form of selfishness.  A majority  of altruists would claim that they are helping  humans in need so that humankind as a whole could benefit from their action. True, but then that itself is a selfish desire for one’s own species to survive. If not that, then for a desire to keep life the way it is. To preserve animals from extinction, to save the earth so life ( our lives and other lives that support our life) does not become extinct. There is hence always a selfish purpose behind altruism. Is that bad? Not at all. However, remove that element of higher level of selfishness and all altruism would perhaps disappear.

Altruism stems from an innate desire for nobility, attention and in extreme cases, fame.  In some religions, altruism promises a better afterlife or rebirth in better circumstances. All altruistic behavior has an innate purpose that is not so altruistic. 

Why then is altruism so revered? The altruists so venerated? The circle of survival. What if humans did become extinct? So be it. Life renewed. A single individual set out to (pre)serving himself or herself is deemed selfish. However, an entire species striving to preserve itself is deemed noble.

The naked thought makes no distinction between good and vile, a single human and humankind, between the living and non living between that which exists and that which does not. Nothing more venerated than the other, nothing more worthy of saving than the other. Within the opera of the living, emotions, morals, ethos, are all but theatrical effects while life plays itself out on the stage.

There was a time when everyone believed that the earth was flat. That the world was created by a judgmental humanoid superpower at a singular point in time. That there is a place called heaven and a place called hell. They built temples and shrines, wrote verses and chimed, appeased the gods and prayed for afterlife.

There was a time when everyone believed that the sun and planets revolved around the earth. And then for a while they believed the planets went around the sun. They believed in black holes and worm holes, in inertia and the laws of physics. They looked for forces and particles, for numbers prime and a unifying force. They chipped away at the blocks hoping to find the cause.

There was a time when everyone believed humans had to live eternal. They cured the plague, curbed the epidemic and saved every child. They studied the cells, the brain, the spleen, and made 3-D printed organs to prolong life. They killed the chicken, enshrined the dolphin, poached the elephant and protected the walrus. They swayed to the whims of survivalistic fads, and held on to their science.

There was a time when everyone believed that there was a right way and a wrong way. And that life had to be led a certain way. They formed rules, imposed laws. There were traffic rules, marriage laws, building codes and tax laws. There were dress codes, grammar rules and social norms. They believed all men were equal but some were not, that women didn’t matter until they said not. Then all were equal but animals were not. Every two score and one, the mores changed, the laws changed but beliefs stayed.

There’s always a time when everyone believes.

In one thing or another.

Does it matter? Does it not matter? 

If the world is just a darn simulation, and we are merely playing our parts, a darn show on a stage that has no other relevance than that of being, does anything even matter?

Or does it not matter?

If all is one, then one is none. It does not matter. Nope.

Wait, it does matter! 

Because after all it is all matter!!

As long as it is matter, it matters!

Matter matters since matter is the system. Within the bubble of the material simulation, all matter therein matters. Every little bit playing its part, the rules, norms, systems within systems, within the mega system, working seamlessly as a cosmic gear box.

Within this world, a micro-system of pulleys for instance follows the principles of levers and fulcrums. An airplane operates on the principles of aerodynamics and laws of motion. A chemical system works on the principles of thermodynamics and electron transfer. A cellular system works within the confines of biochemistry and genetics.

A ecosystem runs on the principle of predator and prey, of procreation and survival.The more abstract and complex systems of civilizations run on emotional conflicts, drive and desire, morals and norms. And then the overall systems overlap and unite them all. So, much like a gigantic set of gears, the systems within existence run their own machines and prod on others as well.

As the fractal of systems develops along, adding more and more mini worlds within, the system gets more and more complex, until the little units lose their identity, becoming part of the whole.

And in this gigantic system we call the cosmos, existence, the world, the universe, and so on, every little matter matters, every little pulley has to pull, every little plane has to fly and every little actor has to play her part. 

Norms and ethos, religion and science, rules and regulations, are the glue that keep the simulation alive. Good and bad, evil and noble, morals and laws, all essential attributes that oil the machine, but have no other significance outside of the system. But within the system they are paramount to its very survival. So fix the creaky door, feed the poor, amass your riches wisely, watch the Kardashians, read the holy book, berate your enemy, love your child, live your life per your jewish heart, your hindu dharma, your christian virtues, your atheistic ethics, your personal zen. The play must go on. You are in the system, you are the system.

Outside of this orb, none of this matters. Dissolve the system, disregard the ties, then nothing matters. Neither the pulleys, nor the planes, neither the actors, nor their plays. There is no good, no bad, nothing noble, nothing humble. No exalted life after death, no heaven no hell, no god, no demon. For you have left that orbit into the void of voids.

Then nothing matters. But then nothing exists.

Your choice. Are you matter? Are you energy?

Does it matter? Does it not?

Are you or are you not?

Toggle.

Glassy insignificants, contained in space…reflections, illusions..the splendor of kaleidoscope.

Kaleidoscopic minds, contained in time…drama and emotion, the splendor of life.

Life and the hunt for its metaphors, finding the metaphor = finding life? Meaning shrouded in complexity.

Complexity gushing out of every singularity, in a rush to obscure the obvious.

The obvious hidden under layers of evolution, mutations and discrete manifestations.

Manifestation of energy, as matter  – yes, thats what started it all.

All that exists but a singular energy.

Energy that insists on manifesting.

Manifesting as an another, to itself.

Itself blinded by its own.

Own, a kaleidescope.

Kaleidoscope. Insignificant pieces, contained in space…reflections, illusions..the splendor of glass!

Our brains are like VHS tapes. No, not in that they are obsolete (yet), but in that they are capable of working only in a linear fashion. Even if the data is all in there, all wound up in its entirety,  it has to be consumed one frame after another, in a linear fashion and cannot be read in its totality at a singular point.

When we look at a multi-step math problem, the answer is not immediately obvious to us – we have to solve it one step at a time. Say a child is given a problem 2x+1=5. She first calculates 5-1 and then divides to get the answer. It is almost as if there is only one enclosed channel in our brain available to us and we have to walk along its confines to find the solution.

However, it is not just our computing ability, but all our decision making and actions in general that follow linear multi step processes. And since the process is linear, the need for “Time” to solve problems.

‘Forward’ flowing, irreversible, illusory, Time.

What if we had multiple intersecting channels? How would that change our world view?

For starters, we would then be faster decision makers. We would be able to run multiple scenarios in our heads and arrive at the best possible outcome in far less time or maybe even instantly. This would then change everything. There would be no more ‘mistakes’. Think stock market – it would not even be categorized as speculation any more. Would that make us more robotic? Perhaps. For then there would be far less drama and emotional roller coasters. Life as we know it will not exist. All the drama, the emotions which arise due to illogical decision making would downright disappear. We would, in a split second or rather instantaneously be running multiple what if scenarios in our heads and come up or rather instantly realize the right choice – be it the choice of a mate or the answer to the fundamental questions of nature.

We would just in effect ‘Know”. Know processes in their entirety. There would be no more questions for there would be no quest, only a knowing.  No more Time!

Time! Time is what impedes us from being that all knowing!

Would then life even exist, as we know it? For life but exists in our minds as a sequence of events, some perceived to have been in the past, some experienced in the present and others to be relinquished to the future. But a sequence it certainly is. A sequence braided into Time.

No Time, no Life! Time is the culprit!

Ever flowing, irreversible, insidious, Time!

Trump is a convenient caricature. He is an easy target to mock, to proselytize to, and also to make oneself feel morally superior to. He is good for the collective ego.
However, in spite of the media portraying him otherwise, he isn’t racist, sexist or any -ist for that matter. Men, women, his kids, his wives, girlfriends, customers, clients, and more importantly his voters are all but commodities. He did not set out to be amoral, sexist or racist, he just set out to make money and garner power.

When the survival of a species depended on and still does on its social construct and its very evolution has been defined by the connected civilizations it fosters, it is indeed difficult and, nearly  impossible for an individual of the said species to be, well, an individual. A introvertive, introspective, deeply contemplative, individual, a loner if you will.

It is hard to shake the shackles of such carefully constructed social bonds and norms. The mind, even if it does come up with a quasi original thought, immediately rushes to get some form of validation from the herd. If not instantly available as likes on fb, it searches through the yellowed books of yore, looking for validation. Not seeking such validation is viewed at times as fool-hardy, and more often as arrogance. But such adjectives are immaterial when the quest is nothing material.

Getting to the core of things is a one way, one-foot-wide path. Nothing that has been said before, nothing that is being said around matters. You cut the thorns and grass directly ahead, or trample on them if you will, and forge ahead. It does not matter in the very least if there is a vast forest fringed with a vast ocean around you. All that is immaterial. For all that is around you is but an extension of what is ahead of you, an extension of the fractal of the core of things.

The knowledge of the core of things is already within us, even if not consciously so. It is our awareness of it that lags behind. We flounder looking for it outside, while the outside is by design, but a complex metaphor. Not everyone’s thought processes lead on to the next step and then to the next and then the next. Some stop at the very beginning, accepting some pre-constructed paradigm, some venture out a bit more, but then give up and settle on some hybrid philosophy.

It is only the loner  who forges on – and even if the loner’s goal is not at hand yet, every rest stop has a sense of contentment, of a part accomplished by the self and self alone. For in this journey in search of the self, what matters is but the self. Everything else, needs to be shelved.

Be a Roman.

While living this life, live. Live as your genes, your environs, your instincts mandate. Live as your dogmas, your notions, your religions dictate. You may break free and run away, but you will not go far. You may free yourself from shackles of one kind, only to find yourself chained onto another.

You may flee but you cannot hide.

While living this life, in this body, in this world,

You have to bow down to your genes, deal with the occasional disease, wear the customary clothes, say the polite hello, work the wage paying job. You have to eat after all, and navigate the social mores. You have to go to the town to buy your grocery, raise your kid, feed your pet. You have to live this life after all.

And when your body is ravaged by a disease, when your coffers run low, when your cellar runs dry, and your enemies run amok, you have to seek solace and comfort. A religion, a god, a ritual, an abject belief, a magical penny. Yes, you have to seek comfort, for you do have to live this life after all.

And seek solace, you will, in myriad ways, theism, atheism, nihilism, altruism, capitalism. No one ‘ism’ better or worse than the other, but better or worse just for you, so you seek those that comfort you the most. Rest assured, yours is the best way, in fact the only way for you, for it is your life and you have to live your life after all.

So, while living this life, live. Live as your genes, your environs, your instincts mandate. Live as your dogmas, your notions, your religions dictate. You may break free and run away, but you will not go far.

Unless…

You break free from this very life that you lead, stand atop the peak of your thoughts and take a peek.

When this life that you lead no longer matters, your progeny, your job, your angst no longer matters.

Nothing matters then. Your genes, your environ, the rituals, the religions, the dogmas, the ‘isms’ all irrelevant, for then, and only then it’s no longer about this life that you lead after all.

Artists and philosophers abhor that which they merely see, or merely hear, or merely feel. In abject denial of things as they seem to be, the artist and the philosopher both strive to re-interpret, to repaint, to redefine reality in their eternal quest to re-create if you will.

While the artist takes recourse in imagination, the philosopher rides on her intellect. Intellect and imagination – there is no intellect without imagination and no imagination without intellect. The artist and the philosopher are one and the same.

Neither accepts without re-interpretation, why stare at a beautiful sunset, when you can paint it, why just live when you can ponder on the why nots. Why walk when you can dance? Why talk when you can sing.

To recreate the sunset as a splash of dots, maybe purples and magentas instead of reds and yellows, vibrant mashups instead of the serene, to paint as it moves the core, not as it hits the retina, to speak not a sentence but to sing with highs and lows, to walk not with your legs but track a trajectory with your body… now all that is art.

To break sacred old norms, to question beliefs, scientific or religious, to explore, to reinvent, to rethink life as it affects the conscious thought, not as it hits the senses but as it hits the soul, now that is philosophy.

Rethink. Relive.

A thinking, evolving mind can take either of two paths.

Why? or How?

It can wonder why? The why of life, of the world, the why of  ‘I’.

Or it could think how? How does life work, how does the world work, therefore how do ‘I’ work?

The ‘Why’ is way harder to figure out than the ‘How’. We know as much about the why of life now as we did thousands of years ago when we first started thinking. No more, no less.

But the ‘How’ of things, we know a lot more about. And we have come a long way using the knowledge of the how of things to make more things we can find the how of.

Deciphering the ‘How’ of things has brought us to this convoluted complicated world of cities and concrete jungles, gizmos and gadgets.

The ‘Why’ lies dormant, getting buried deeper and deeper in the ‘How’ of things. Buried under cities, concrete jungles, gizmos and gadgets.

But then it is the ‘Why’ that holds the secret to the ‘I’.

Think why.

We are all cataloged. And cross cataloged. Like books in a library. We are men or women or in-betweens, we are Hindus or Christians or Jews. We are doctors or philosophers. We are good or bad. We are petite or fat. Rich or poor. We are atheists or religious.  We are insane or intellectual. All tagged and cataloged, into neat little pigeon holes.

And under the tangled strings of all the tags that supposedly define who we are, we lose our real identity.

Can my thoughts break free of my tags? After all, thoughts arise from the body, first shaped by the belief I am born into, honed by experiences of my status, and molded by the books I read and words I hear. However, thoughts also have this strangely ethereal quality that jettison them beyond their roots into yonder, and into impossible realms.

I am and I am not. I am neither man nor woman. I am undefined by riches. Not boxed into a belief, neither am I defined by my body. I am insane and intellectual.  I am materialistic and esoteric. I am defined by my mind, by my thoughts. A breaker of tags, I am abstract.

I carry the tag of the untagged.

Yes, we are all tagged. One way or another.

In the catalog of the damned.

It is time to give religion a well deserved rest. The kind of organized, tradition enriched, communal religion with its set repertoire of mores and ethos that fragments society rather than enlightens it. We need to give it a rest.

What was the original point of religion anyway? As I have mentioned in a previous post, it originally evolved as human consciousness evolved and as set group of people geographically isolated, ascribed to the same set of prefabricated ‘beliefs’ and inculcated them into everyday life, not just philosophically, but into the mundane as well. It served well, for few hundreds of years, as it created a moral framework of ‘right’ actions and threat of consequences for ‘wrong’ ones that sort of kept the society in harmony, albeit at the cost of intellectual freedom.

Religions, as they stand now, do for the most part, foster beliefs and ethos, that go against simple logic. Yet, people stick to them in the name of tradition or for a fear of peer or moralistic rebuttal. Is it necessary to hang to antediluvian religions that claim that there is a super ‘man’ somewhere ‘up there’ who one day decided to create man and then everything else for his benefit including women , or that women need to shroud themselves head to toe so as to not allure men, just to give a few examples? Yet, we hang on to these, or parts thereof, as a child who clings to his blanket and pacifier.

More dangerous than innocuous beliefs that are merely illogical, are the off shoots of these religions that cultivate hatred, fanaticism and cults. Kids brainwashed from a young age, their thoughts so molded that they lose their capacity for independent thought.

Religion as a spiritual outlet does not have to be communal, neither does it have to be shrouded in superstition and irrelevant mores. Religion can be a personal philosophical journey, each to his or her own. Neither impinging on nor decreeing what others should think. Laws, independent of religions, already exist, as a safeguard against self destruction in the saner societies. Religions if they do have to exist, should not decree laws of the land as in the pre-dark ages era. Religion should merely be one’s personal spiritual journey, if you will, and free of intellectual restrictions.

What can be more dangerous to human survival than loss of independent thinking? As human consciousness evolved so did thought and premeditated actions. Natural selection as an evolutionary safety net is being over-ridden. Humans now decree, independent of biological processes, as to which life forms including which humans survive and which do not. We cannot take this evolutionary responsibility lightly. And to base those decisions on religions, old and jaded, is pure self-destruction.