Step back

I understand now...

That to take a step forward I need to take a step back.

To understand what is being said, I need to understand where it is coming from.

I cannot console a grieving soul if I am myself crying.

I cannot appreciate this painting called life if my nose is pressed to the canvas.

The best place to enjoy a river is standing on the bank.

Let's take a step back.

Blank screen

When I was still in Muscat, one day I was sitting with my boss while he was indulging in his favourite pasttime - checking his investments online.

"Tell me," I asked him, "What would you do if one day all the screens showed up blank?"

He stared at me for some time, then laughed, as if I had cracked a joke. But I had not. 

I had always believed wealth to be fictional and economics an intellectual convenience of ours. A couple of books that I read recently, written by Israeli historian Harare, confimed and crystallised my thoughts that 80% of the time, we are all living in fictional realities, eg that of wealth. The plus side of this belief in fictional realities is that it is these common beliefs  that have enabled mankind to co-operate and develop so rapidly; and the minus side is - that it is fiction. If we do not take a reality check, we will be leading unreal lives, without realising that we are doing so.

Consider wealth, my favourite subject. Belief in this fiction is based on faith. Faith that the bankers' screens won't go blank. Faith that the piece of paper in my purse will be accepted in a shop (demonitisation made us realise how fictional money is). Faith that the car and house that I supposedly own, legalised (another fiction) by a stamp paper, won't be suddenly used by someone else, forcing me to take judicial help (another fiction).

What is my real wealth? What is it that stays with me throughout my mortal life and grows or suffers with every action of mine? One is, of course, my body, so integrally is it tied to my mortal existence. The other is my mind, which is linked to my body and gives it the direction to act. So if at all there is something that can make me irreversibily wealthy, it is a healthier body and a mind that takes decisions in its favour and in favour of those we come in contact with.

For me, the lockdown provided a much-needed reality check. This was a time when wealth, even if present in its fictional avatar, showed its limitations in adding to my happiness, through the usual means of consumption - like dining out, PVRs, foreign travel and parties. The lockdown made me free to take a look at my real personal wealth - a disease-free body and a prejudice-free mind. That's all one needs.

Stay healthy. Stay humble. Every other aim only serves common fictional realities.

The Course

There is a course in some semester in our life called the Knowledge Course. This covers what we are made of, the principles of our existence, the composition of the cosmos, our relationship to it, and how it all came into being.

The course has theory credits and lab credits. The theory covers the principles while the lab encourages experimentation and practices that establish the theory. The theory is available in books and talks. The lab happens to be our own body and mind.

There are some people who study only the theory. They do not test the theory in practice. They are Philosophers.

The are some people who only do the practices, just for the credits,  without wondering what are the theorems that they are testing out. They are the Religious people.

There are some who address both - learn the theory, ask questions and try to validate the same through practical living. They are Spiritual Seekers.

Styles of teaching

I was listening to a talk recently where the speaker was elaborating on the distinction between spiritualism and religion. He said that spiritualism is about seeking. The practitioner realises that he does not know the answers to many questions and he seeks those answers, expanding knowledge through direct experience. Religion is about believing. The practitioner does not know, but accepts a set of answers and believes in them without direct experience of them.

While the definitions can be debated, it struck me that these apply to the styles of education as well. There is one type of teaching style that inculcates seeking in students, giving them the questions and encouraging them to find out the answers on their own, with a little guidance. There is another type of teaching style that gives the answers along with the questions, in tutorial style, making them practice the steps over and over with limited focus on the reasoning and core logic, thus making believers out of students.

In that context, spiritual style will possibly produce more enlightened students. Unfortunately, that is a style not so common in India, the land of spiritualism.

God's kaleidoscope

The purpose of my existence is experiencing. Not doing.

I, on the other hand, am obsessed with doing and focus very little on experiencing.

God experiences through me. That was all he was really interested in. To experience himself, his self-creation, through the experiencing tool of the anandamaya kosha.

Doing is the secondary purpose of my (or any other jiva's) existence. Doing modifies the state of creation, so that there is a variety, a movement, a gradual sophistication and complexity in the state of creation. This makes the experiencing more interesting.

All my other koshas are designed for doing. The annamaya kosha physically touches the world, the pranamaya kosha energises the movements, the manamaya kosha tells what to do at this point, the vigyanmaya kosha defines long-term goals of action.

But these are all tools of change.The primary purpose of existence is experiencing.

Our sensual experience, however, is forever modified - embellished or sterilised - by our mind, before it is presented to the creator. Is this the experience he wanted? Did he want the pure input or the modified mental imaged input, for his enjoyment? I feel that he wanted the pure input, but by the sheer design constraints of the jiva, the inputs are always channelised through the mind and distorted. The inputs can reach the anadamaya kosha without distortion only if the mind is tranquil. And this is the only reason why I have to make so much effort to still my mind by going through the regimens of sadhana - simply in order to ensure that the pure sensual inputs pass through to the creator and he can enjoy the beauty of his creation in its purest form, undistorted.

Enlightened beings provide this clear path and are the instruments of God. Instruments of PERFECT PERCEPTION, mind you. That they do great good to the world by their actions is just a corollary.

Problems are not the problem

There are many events or situations around us that are not favourable to us. Only a few of them we tag as "problems". For example, my pick-up to airport, if late, is a problem. The latest space shuttle, launched a few minutes late, is not a troublesome problem although it probably involves rework or corrections worth a lot more money and effort.

What do we call a problem? Firstly, the event should affect my well-being. And secondly, it should be within my scope of correction. This second point is a very subtle one. If I am told I have incurable cancer with a month to live, after the anguish, it will not be a problem. Problem involves the invoking of a state of doership. I feel I can handle it, or I am expected to handle it, and I am tense about whether I will actually be able to handle it, and to me that issue is then a PROBLEM.

Problems do not come into our lives. Situations come, and a few of them, the handlable ones, we call Problems.

Therefore when we say that every problem has a solution, it is a tautology. Only because it is in our power to resolve, do we decide to call it a problem.

Vision

We learnt in physics and biology that an inverted image of what is in front of us falls on the retina. And the brain, very smartly, turns it upside down and sees it.

Seriously? That retina is the last point where the object exists as a light pattern. The rods and cones in the retina are energised, the photovoltaic pulses travel to the optic nerve and stream to the brain where..... what happens? Well, the optic centre in the brain is receiving only pulses, like dots and dashes of morse, and the mind simply CONSTRUCTS a reality inside the mind itself. In that sense what we "see" is not really what is falling as an inverted image on the retina. Who knows what that shape and form and colour is actually.

No wonder the scriptures call this world mithya. This is one of the reasons or angles through which the world is so called, the perceived being probably quite different from the actual. There are other philosophical reasons for calling it maya as well, but even at this simplistic level, I find the above thought mind-boggling.

What do you think?