“Beyond desires remains the true meaning of life.”
The mind plays the role of the constructor of life and the architect of the world that we live in, through the senses and through the intellect. But we choose to remain within this constructed world throughout our years spent toiling for an understanding of why we are here. There is a definitive purpose for all our actions from the moment of birth till the last breath taken, and yet somehow this purpose lies forgotten and buried under the seemingly endless tirade of actions based on motive and pursuits of the desire based journey that we live through. Why is this so?
The difference between animal based life forms and that of a human is the complex entity of intelligence. An animal life is purely sensory and intuitive such that a response mechanism guides the life pattern in all its activities, be it eating and drinking, territorial conquests and procreation, killing based on self survival and ultimately death due to physical deterioration. Take the average human life and all these animal patterns exist but the intelligence quotient separates them significantly. We think in a similar way as animals do, but refinement elevates the human life to a plane of inquiry into the unknown. We are singularly aware of this unknown dimension in all of us, and yet we prefer to ignore the call of inquiry by putting layers and layers of animal functionality and habitual pleasure seeking that by the time we are finished with all these diversions it is too late in the evening of life and we are sapped of our energy to make any form of useful inquiry.
Animals do not reason with their worldly interactions and life situations, simply for the reason that they do not have the intellectual capability to rise above simple intuitive survival and question the motive of life; they live and they just die. Man on the other hand is able to question, regardless of whether the answers are available to the intellectual entity. And so starts the process of knowledge gathering through sensory data and eventually the need to reason with this data becomes inevitable as certain answers are impossible to be gained through simple sensory perception. To reason is the highest form of intellectual activity because here we are dealing with a realm of thought that has no direct contact with the subject matter that is being analyzed. For any philosopher, the only instrument of power is this ability to reason. On several occasions we have disparate sensory information being simultaneously processed that most people completely ignore any attempts to understand the phenomenon of life, instead replacing such attempts with ritualistic actions and repetitive social conventions and traditions so that they needn’t feel inadequate to perform the primary requisite of human life that is inquiry, which is also why philosophers and thinkers form a minute fraction of the total human populace.
It is rather strange how man can get caught in the hypnotic syndrome of staunchly adhering to society and its illusory appearance of security that the only difference between man and animal, being questioning and reasoning, is conveniently forgotten and buried under the burden of fears and complexes of repercussions from the very society that was intended to provide safety. As long as we assume the protection of this safety net called Society, we shall never progress from our animal nature to that of a human being, and ironically life shall never make any sense because what we were born to do shall forever remain undone. And why this is so, is a question that still remains.
The human mind shall never rid itself of desires, so why not transcend every other desire with the urge to inquire? To restrict any urge without properly understanding the reason for restraint is to create conflict and this being the sole cause for all forms of stress and tension in our temporal lives cannot be overcome by what is known as the personal will. In fact what is known as the will is but a figment of our imagination as the cause-effect theory proves: every action of ours, including thoughts is the direct result of a causative action or thought, and so by the principle of regression ad infinitum the sum total of all our activities is predetermined. The concept of free-will is applicable only when we view life within the interval between our individual births and deaths, but without taking into consideration the effects of other individuals such as parents, relatives, members of society and such. But this is a sheer impossibility as the inter-connectedness of every aspect of the universe is scientifically and rationally proven by the Theory of Relativity. Therefore coming back to the question of transcending desires is not within our control, or for that matter nothing is. But what is within our functionality is the capacity to be aware of all mental constructs, thereby being aware of the whole world and life in general. By being aware, which is to say by simply observing, we shall have the power to change as well.
What is observation, or the capacity of awareness? How does this simple yet effective awareness grant us the power to change? When we realize that what we really are is not this mind-body complex, ruled by the duality of causation and reaction, but inherently the very entity that keeps in motion the entire construct of life and thereby the creation of the whole world being perceived through the mind-body complex of each and every imagined individual, then the awareness is simply a matter of pure existence. Like the camera which projects the image, and yet has nothing to do with the images projected like a silent observer, the real ‘I’ in us can be aware of the mind and its games. And as Heisenberg asserted in his celebrated Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Theory, the very act of observation alters that which is being observed. So in reality, the moment we realize who we are and our ignorance that so far kept us from understanding our separateness from the mind, in the same way we realize that ‘I and my leg are not the same,’ that everything we see, feel and perceive is a product of this ignorance, including the very instruments used for this perception, only then do we suddenly discover awareness or true objective observation of the great and absolute truth. In that very instant we transcend space and time, cause and effect and ultimately the very cause of all our ignorance, the mind.
But all this is irrelevant if we only intellectualize about it, for it is the comprehensive realization that can grant us the power to change. Otherwise we are still kept running within the hamster-wheel which is our mind. Reasoning helps to break the cycle, to rid ourselves of our fears and misapprehensions and become free. But even reasoning can happen only to one who is totally aware, even if it is only of the hedonism of our lives and the sheer helplessness of it all. As Socrates put it wisely, ‘scio me nihil scire’ meaning ‘I know that I know nothing,’ implies that the moment we realize all our mental constructs and conditioning, our knowledge and knack of living is completely insignificant shall bring us into the pristine purity of tabula rasa or ‘a clean slate’ on which the highest truth of our existence, the Eternal Wisdom of Life, can be clearly etched. And once realized, the Truth shall set us free.
So the purpose of our life, the only question that we as humans were born to answer is this: do we continue treading the path we walked so far, or are we ready for the final quest, the conquest of reason...
The mind plays the role of the constructor of life and the architect of the world that we live in, through the senses and through the intellect. But we choose to remain within this constructed world throughout our years spent toiling for an understanding of why we are here. There is a definitive purpose for all our actions from the moment of birth till the last breath taken, and yet somehow this purpose lies forgotten and buried under the seemingly endless tirade of actions based on motive and pursuits of the desire based journey that we live through. Why is this so?
The difference between animal based life forms and that of a human is the complex entity of intelligence. An animal life is purely sensory and intuitive such that a response mechanism guides the life pattern in all its activities, be it eating and drinking, territorial conquests and procreation, killing based on self survival and ultimately death due to physical deterioration. Take the average human life and all these animal patterns exist but the intelligence quotient separates them significantly. We think in a similar way as animals do, but refinement elevates the human life to a plane of inquiry into the unknown. We are singularly aware of this unknown dimension in all of us, and yet we prefer to ignore the call of inquiry by putting layers and layers of animal functionality and habitual pleasure seeking that by the time we are finished with all these diversions it is too late in the evening of life and we are sapped of our energy to make any form of useful inquiry.
Animals do not reason with their worldly interactions and life situations, simply for the reason that they do not have the intellectual capability to rise above simple intuitive survival and question the motive of life; they live and they just die. Man on the other hand is able to question, regardless of whether the answers are available to the intellectual entity. And so starts the process of knowledge gathering through sensory data and eventually the need to reason with this data becomes inevitable as certain answers are impossible to be gained through simple sensory perception. To reason is the highest form of intellectual activity because here we are dealing with a realm of thought that has no direct contact with the subject matter that is being analyzed. For any philosopher, the only instrument of power is this ability to reason. On several occasions we have disparate sensory information being simultaneously processed that most people completely ignore any attempts to understand the phenomenon of life, instead replacing such attempts with ritualistic actions and repetitive social conventions and traditions so that they needn’t feel inadequate to perform the primary requisite of human life that is inquiry, which is also why philosophers and thinkers form a minute fraction of the total human populace.
It is rather strange how man can get caught in the hypnotic syndrome of staunchly adhering to society and its illusory appearance of security that the only difference between man and animal, being questioning and reasoning, is conveniently forgotten and buried under the burden of fears and complexes of repercussions from the very society that was intended to provide safety. As long as we assume the protection of this safety net called Society, we shall never progress from our animal nature to that of a human being, and ironically life shall never make any sense because what we were born to do shall forever remain undone. And why this is so, is a question that still remains.
The human mind shall never rid itself of desires, so why not transcend every other desire with the urge to inquire? To restrict any urge without properly understanding the reason for restraint is to create conflict and this being the sole cause for all forms of stress and tension in our temporal lives cannot be overcome by what is known as the personal will. In fact what is known as the will is but a figment of our imagination as the cause-effect theory proves: every action of ours, including thoughts is the direct result of a causative action or thought, and so by the principle of regression ad infinitum the sum total of all our activities is predetermined. The concept of free-will is applicable only when we view life within the interval between our individual births and deaths, but without taking into consideration the effects of other individuals such as parents, relatives, members of society and such. But this is a sheer impossibility as the inter-connectedness of every aspect of the universe is scientifically and rationally proven by the Theory of Relativity. Therefore coming back to the question of transcending desires is not within our control, or for that matter nothing is. But what is within our functionality is the capacity to be aware of all mental constructs, thereby being aware of the whole world and life in general. By being aware, which is to say by simply observing, we shall have the power to change as well.
What is observation, or the capacity of awareness? How does this simple yet effective awareness grant us the power to change? When we realize that what we really are is not this mind-body complex, ruled by the duality of causation and reaction, but inherently the very entity that keeps in motion the entire construct of life and thereby the creation of the whole world being perceived through the mind-body complex of each and every imagined individual, then the awareness is simply a matter of pure existence. Like the camera which projects the image, and yet has nothing to do with the images projected like a silent observer, the real ‘I’ in us can be aware of the mind and its games. And as Heisenberg asserted in his celebrated Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Theory, the very act of observation alters that which is being observed. So in reality, the moment we realize who we are and our ignorance that so far kept us from understanding our separateness from the mind, in the same way we realize that ‘I and my leg are not the same,’ that everything we see, feel and perceive is a product of this ignorance, including the very instruments used for this perception, only then do we suddenly discover awareness or true objective observation of the great and absolute truth. In that very instant we transcend space and time, cause and effect and ultimately the very cause of all our ignorance, the mind.
But all this is irrelevant if we only intellectualize about it, for it is the comprehensive realization that can grant us the power to change. Otherwise we are still kept running within the hamster-wheel which is our mind. Reasoning helps to break the cycle, to rid ourselves of our fears and misapprehensions and become free. But even reasoning can happen only to one who is totally aware, even if it is only of the hedonism of our lives and the sheer helplessness of it all. As Socrates put it wisely, ‘scio me nihil scire’ meaning ‘I know that I know nothing,’ implies that the moment we realize all our mental constructs and conditioning, our knowledge and knack of living is completely insignificant shall bring us into the pristine purity of tabula rasa or ‘a clean slate’ on which the highest truth of our existence, the Eternal Wisdom of Life, can be clearly etched. And once realized, the Truth shall set us free.
So the purpose of our life, the only question that we as humans were born to answer is this: do we continue treading the path we walked so far, or are we ready for the final quest, the conquest of reason...
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