Another Republic Day gone by...

Sixty one years have gone by since India as an independent republic chartered its own Constitution. Yet, what have we got to show for ourselves, besides the endless political tirades and the tyranny of a corrupt regime pretending to be an honourable system pertaining to the need of the masses.

Over the years, so many people including myself have become tired of the circus parade held on this very day, simply because so many crucial issues lie unnoticed and hidden to the public eye, and so the Government’s efforts to sideline these by putting up a massive show to entertain one of the largest democracies in the world is nothing short of an insult to the people’s intelligence. One of the things I abhor the most is the blatant display of the nation’s defence prowess in the various parades held, which clearly show us in detail of the level of expenditure involved in maintaining the several wings. This expenditure is needed more for improving the social wellbeing of India’s children, not in a capitalistic or business oriented manner, but in helping at the grass-root level and bringing ourselves to a stage of self-reliance; definitely, buying more guns and developing bombs and shells is not the approach to building a stable society.

Why is it that we choose to ignore the glorious past of India, for if we were aware of her phenomenal history we would understand that the civilizations that bred and evolved here had a strong basis of peace and harmony, simply through tolerance and acceptance. For thousands of years we persevered against the continual attacks from outside, from various battle hungry empires that chose to plunder us and plague us with their inane ideas, but did we ever give up surviving? Never have we gone on the offensive and attacked another for the sake of profits. Yes, we did fight when the attacks got severe, but never ever did we have an organized approach to defend ourselves, simply for the fact that we knew that in the end peace would prevail no matter what. We gave into the ideas and attributes of others, we included their beliefs and embraced their theologies as our own, but we never stooped so low as to delineate our children on the basis of geography or elitism. Regardless of the differences, we considered ourselves and our ‘guests’ to be one in spirit, and this is the attitude that got us so far. We never showed off, we never proclaimed superiority and we never ever considered ourselves different from anybody or any place on earth, because of which the children of the Indus Valley always pioneered in every aspect of the pure life; we were trailblazers in social living, ploughing ahead in any adversity and laying the road for others to follow. All this without even the slightest shadow of egotism. Why are we then so far removed from our original attributes today?

Firstly, because we are still slaves and we might remain that way forever. We are maybe under the illusion that the Empire was driven off in ’47 and that we are free in our own land, but this so far from the truth. When the West left us, they carefully engineered a system which they had skilfully developed over the centuries of Industrial Revolution and the Age of Reason, a system so deviant in thought and application to corrupt every pure human being into thinking that his or her purpose in life is nothing more fundamental than base enjoyment. The system which abrogates the motto of Indian living which is ‘Existence through High Thinking and Plain Living’ and replaces all our social theories and evolutionary paradigms with the darkest designs of materialism. The system that I refer to is the capitalistic regime that we are all slaves of today.

Capitalism is the new Empire. That which has taken over from the Queen’s rule and has silently been guiding India and her children into the worst nightmare that humanity has faced in its evolutionary journey. Competition, an artificial sense of security and paranoia of being deceived are all derivatives of capitalism, and we are foolish enough to preach and educate the same to our children in the system of education that exists today. According to Maslow, human beings evolve through levels of needs, the basic being our pychophysical needs like food, water, clothing and shelter to higher levels like security, belongingness, esteem and the highest level being self-actualization where a human being tries to understand who he or she really is and what is their true potential. What capitalism does is fix our attention on esteem-based needs and here we are living in a social setup of show and tell. Neighbours’ envy, owners pride, live life kingsize, just do it and for everything else there is mastercard, these are the commandments that kids grow up listening to today. No wonder then that we have to spend ridiculous amounts on protecting our ridiculous way of life. This is definitely not what the children of Indus Valley had in mind, for their inscribed and inherited knowledge is much more profound and advanced than the shit that we learn today. As the Zeitgeist Movement puts it, THE SHIT HAS GOT TO GO!!!

Secondly, because no matter what we do, we have to face these issues. This is our evolutionary journey, to deal with the issues that Nature throws along our way and see if we can pick our way through the maze. We have enough evidence corroborating the fact that Nature and human consciousness is interconnected at all levels of the gross, subtle and causal reality. We create the world as we know it, and so the problems that confront us are not external entities, but reflections of our mental maladies. The world is facing a grave identity crisis, for no one really knows today who they are and why they were born into such a phenomenal reality. As children, we are asked not to question but to accept the fate of the world as it is. This is probably the worst advice ever given and if we do not change our perspective, we may end up as fossils of an extinct species like the dinosaurs. True awareness of our mistakes, our limitations and our negativities are what is needed to correct the deviation from our original path, and kids need to be told about all of this. There is no hiding from them, for sooner or later the more inquisitive ones will come to realize what we have done, and so it is our responsibility to increase awareness and also our potential to become what we are truly meant to be.

This 26th is not a Republic Day or a day when rules were formulated; today is a day of awareness that we are not silly people who once fought for freedom, we are not Kashmiris or Keralites or Indians or Non-Indians, we are not rich, or poor, the down-trodden, urban-rural-metro-cosmo dwellers, the gold-diggers and shit-pickers, the elite, literate, upper-caste or scheduled tribes, south, north, east or west; we are human beings, just like the rest of them on this planet, we are alive and that too for a reason, we have certain innate talents and powers, skills and knowledge not to make a better world, but to better ourselves. Nature is perfect as she is, and she will provide plentiful to the one who cares for her, loves one another and propagates the warmth of life everywhere and in everything. Love is the currency that we seek, not money; love is abundant and there is more than enough for everyone, but only if we give up our bloodthirstiness and profit mongering, our capitalistic strategies and our ideas of war.

The 26th of January 2011 is not different from any other day, and so let us make everyday worthwhile in our transient lives. We don’t need parades and political tirades, what we need are unity in love, in any place and among any people regardless of what differences or diversities may exist. It is these differences which make the canvas of our world brilliant, and the painting that we paint every day, a masterpiece!

Neo-Human

I love by letting go

Therefore I am free

I believe with conviction

Therefore I do not judge

I accept without conditions

Therefore I have patience

I experience without questions

Therefore I am able to learn

I live from moment to moment

Therefore I know eternity

I seek the essence of life

Therefore I feel sentient

I am what I really am

I am the neo-human

Hopelessly in Thought

“What have we learned when we were told that instinctively draws them irresistible, such as the extravagant idea that they can dominate without realizing it, and whatever they do to get rid of it, that their thoughts come and go, mingle, mingle with uncontrollable rapidity, they see objects, hear noises, voices that exist, as is commonly said that in their imagination? ... We do not see, of course, that area of things we cannot penetrate further, probing the causes, the sequence of mental abnormalities which we speak. Is not none of the acts of the intellect, affections, especially as the sensations it is impossible to know and judge other than yourself? To get an idea of any pain, it must have felt, to know how crazy nonsense, there must be nonsense yourself, but be unreasonable without losing consciousness of our delirium, without stopping to judge the changes occurred in our mental faculties.”

- By Jacques-Joseph Moreau (de Tours)

In Hashish and Mental Alienation, 1845

To experience, is the essence of all life! To experience the vagaries and variances, the divinities and depths of utter realization, and be lost in the sea of life, where we drink in the strong and hard of possibilities, all the while drowning slower and slower as the waves of time rush by. To experience, is to transcend existence into non-existence.

We live through each day knowing fully that it is but a pattern we follow, and yet we believe in a reason for this fallacy, that this is meant to be. To live as though nothing matters and to live with the conviction that everything does, comprehending the significance of every small detail, are two entirely different experiences. One need not be a prerequisite to the other, even though the intricacies of their interactions are far subtler than what meets the general eye. Why must one think of either when wallowing in the mud of existence, all that keeps the simple mind occupied is the primal urge to be satisfied? In various ways and forms, through the infinite network of means and ends we live a very determinate life, forever entangled in the links of cause and effect. To live in such fashion without ever taking a look at the finer mechanisms of thought bringing forth existence and how the world continuously regenerates thought is akin to the meaningless drudgery of slaves. ‘Why’ and ‘what for’ are a luxury of questions never meant for slaves!

To deny the right to question, to evict from ourselves the finer aspects of being a human, such as the study of designs and patterns without ever conceding to the idea of coincidence, and bringing thought to the level of transparent contemplation of itself to reveal its nothingness, without these explorations life is nothing but a swamp of incoherent happenings, where every struggle to escape results in deeper entrenchment. As we are immersed in thought from waking moment to moment, we do not understand how it is from thought that our world is framed and being born into this ignorance is not a justification for continuing in the same pattern. Evolution is not just a betterment of our physical attributes according to the strength of the surrounding environment, but more importantly an awakening of our psychophysical capabilities and thereby adapting to our own changing thought process, understanding its mechanism and ultimately controlling its sycophancies.

Where has this inherent capacity to question disappeared in the neo-human? Questioning does exist in our social system, but in an imposed, standardized and bastardized format that serves no purpose other than to exhort the enquirer to conform to these social phenomena, subjugating free will and freedom of thought to the so called higher pathways of society building and maintenance of harmony. The irony is that all the reasons for structuring the complex interactions of our species into a well-defined mechanism of social progress have devolved into excuses and silly justifications for the widespread disharmony and degeneration we see around us in the world today. What this means is that we must rethink our objectives for all the social experiments, review our current position with respect to the various attitudes we incorporate into our daily lives and eventually have the guts to accept where we went wrong, instead of putting in stop-gap measures to hide the consequences of our early mistakes and continuing with this destructive agenda formulated by our forefathers day after day, year after year and generation after generation.

To think, defines our very essence of being human and is the foundation of what we have made and where we have reached so far. Thought as an entity, is the single most revolutionary device that isolates us as the highest evolved system in the universe today, until such counter-evidence can be brought to light proving the existence of another system anywhere else. It pains me then, to see so many of my own species going through life as an automated system does, programmed with so many ideas and methodologies to deal with issues; these issues being created by the very social machine that programmed them in the first place. Because of this tyrannical process of programming, these auto-beings living and struggling in my world have forsaken the power of thought and cognitive analysis, crudely replaced with following dictums and demented social ideologies simply for the pursuit of base pleasures and for the avoidance of silly illusory pains. Do they deserve to be called human beings, I do not know; it is not in my infinite wisdom gained through lifetimes of experience and error to classify and judge another. All I can reveal is that if humanity does not reassign its priorities as soon as possible, we are all headed towards a major catastrophe in terms of our journey of evolution and there is no saying what the consequences of our actions would be, for at that point of time no stop-gap measures would exist to save us from our follies.

My meanderings in thought would seem inconsequential to most of my fellow human beings, and to many these may reflect the insanity of a mind unoccupied by what they deem is important to daily life survival; nevertheless, I agree this is insanity, but it is the insanity of an evolving mind which has torn itself away from the mechanisms of social compulsions and which is trying to see the bigger picture. This mind may not function as per the whims and fancies of the society and will not obey the rules and constructs governing its workings, but because it is removed from this stage, it observes unbiased and understands where the errors lie. By placing thought at the summit of our personal endeavours towards sustaining linearity in our path of evolution and by revoking all attempts of society to condition us and program our activities and thereby branching away from our sole purpose which is to become the epitome of intelligent design, we can address our current issues in a succinct manner and become who we really are. I must reinforce this idea again and again; that what we are today is not the real entity that lies hidden within us but only a pale shadow of the glorious self that we shall eventually become. This is the gist of our evolutionary framework, and all our efforts lie in the realm of thought and mental expansion, which is the next stage of progress and metamorphosis.

We have already passed the stage of animal evolution, of physical fitness and adaptation to natural challenges and checkpoints, of redefining our environment to better assist in the succeeding stages of innovation of thought and intelligence. We are almost at the brink of completing the social evolution stage, where civilization and systems of interaction have been perfected to such a degree that the world seems a lot smaller and lot more connected than what it was a thousand years ago, all of which happened in the last hundred or so years. But somewhere along the way we dissipated our efforts into many ineffective strategies that a paradox exists – technologically and scientifically we are way ahead of our times, but in social principle we are degenerates, never assuming responsibility for the development of our social mechanisms and worsening the situation by reacting to the issues in a haphazard fashion. Either we pull the plug now and discover alternative methods of adaptation, or it is clear that the point of no return will present us with a situation where all existing systems will crash and a new framework will emerge. But the latter will come at a cost, so hard to bear but bear we shall for we have no choice when it comes to evolution; as Darwin so beautifully put it, ‘only the fittest shall survive.’

So to summarize, we live a life which is a continuity of experiences, from birth to death, nothing more and nothing less. It is these experiences which guide us from lower to higher stages of our own evolution, and to forget this is tantamount to forgetting ourselves. Which in theory, and almost in all practical applications of society is what we end up doing; forgetting who we are, why we are and the significance of this journey called life. Simply because the family we were born into, the people we interact with to build the various networks and the systems that keep our daily processes going, all of them keep us from realizing these simple truths. Why? Because for their survival, we must forget all about ours – this is the way of our world! And in order to keep us from realizing this, prolific systems are in place to engage our thought, our most powerful evolutionary tool in mundane trivialities of daily living. Is it possible for us to be aware of this deceit and escape the trap we were born into? Maybe, and then again maybe not – only time can tell!

In conclusion, it is only fitting to quote Nietzsche, one of our foremost thinkers who was way ahead of his time, and who was persecuted by the very society he tried to redefine: The only seeing we have is seeing from a perspective; the only knowledge we have is knowledge from a perspective. The more emotional affects we allow to be expressed in words concerning something, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to train on the same thing, the more complete our "idea" of this thing, our "objectivity," will be. But to eliminate the will in general, to suspend all our emotions without exception—even if we were capable of that—what would that be? Wouldn't we call that castrating the intellect?

Hopelessly in thought, this is how I would define my transient life!

Dealing with Life's Problems

After spending generally a lifetime in this world of ours, the years varying from sixty to eighty on an average according to popular human statistics, not many people actually find the time or relevance to ask the all important question, “What then, is the definition of Life?” For most of them, it is just a passing in time from one situation to another, from one problem to the next and slowly, without even realizing the fact that their days are numbered, the purpose or objective of life is totally lost on them. Eventuality is the most common excuse for this oversight and in most cases fatality is blamed upon to cover for their lack of inquisitiveness. Now this wouldn’t have been much of a problem if our intelligence had remained at the animal level of evolution, but at our level of thought and reason we just cannot afford to lose out on the chance to experience and understand the key aspects of living and the inherent truth of our existence, or simply put – Enlightenment!

If I were to list out the various difficult situations and problems faced in life, there would be no end to them and there is not much of a difference between the specifics found in mine, to those making up the lives of others. Right from youth till the age when adolescence disappears into the formative perambulations of maturity, there is no dearth of opportunities to study the schema of life; however, it is the prejudiced proclamations of other’s experiences that limited my earnest process of understanding and forming a thesis of my own experiences. According the famous essay by Immanuel Kant, “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!" - that is the motto of enlightenment.” (What is Enlightenment?,1784). ‘As long as one makes no mistakes, one never learns to succeed and this is the very verse of life to be kept in mind by anyone entering the arena of life’s battles.

It is all very easy to state the need for reason and understanding to deal with troubles, but the difficulty lies in the fact that we forget the basis of all human error and folly in judgment, which is emotional dependency. As long as the fundamental decisions at the various turns in our journey of enlightenment, which is exactly what life is, are made on the rationale of feelings, then we would discover the inevitability of one tight situation leading into another and problems mutating into ones of greater complexities. The concept of learning the underlying lessons that this journey is trying to teach us escapes us completely, naturally due to the blinding effects of emotions. If we can disentangle ourselves from the emotional cobwebs and look at every situation from the perspective of an outsider or an unbiased observer to the story of our lives, then the instrument of control lies firmly within our hands, or specifically our mind. Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked that “one ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.” (Krieger 55) After a decade of societal incarceration and then some more juvenile years of emotional phantasmagoria, when the fire of passion guides the intellect into jeopardizing situations, experimenting into the wilder phases of life mainly under the influence of peer pressure and insistent disregard for the voices of parental authority, the show of independence must be made. Parental authority is probably the most popularly despised counsel throughout the adolescent species, the impudence of which in most cases leads to dire consequences and yet lasting entire lifetimes as seen in the memoirs of Robinson Crusoe, “As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the Nature of the Thing admitted; and thus I cast my self down again into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the world.” (Defoe 29)

Several instances of wrong turns in my journey of enlightenment could be stated as examples of this blatant show of independence. However the most interesting of these and probably a characteristic of the cross section of the population sharing the same instincts and intuition as mine, and most generally found in every age and civilization till date, is the problem of addiction. In today’s world, addiction has become a composite part of the lifestyle, and as long as we are living in a dimension of consumerism and total materialism with regards to ethics and morality, this complement to our very nature is and will remain our one way ticket to extinction. Addiction can take the form of several different objective or usage criteria, and though in my case it started with psychedelic drugs, in most other cases it can range from eating, shopping, alcoholism, sadism and sometimes something as unobtrusive as the common nagging of the spouse in a marital relationship. And the degree of addiction varies too, depending on the Kantian maturity level and to an extent the ontological awareness of the subject. Whatever is the object of addiction, what most people forget and what I had the good fortune to discover is that everything in life, including the addiction is based on a simple system of decisions.

One paragraph, a few words and maybe a mighty revelation from the very controversial pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces towards the end of my sojourn, is probably what brought me to my senses: “Addiction is a decision. An individual wants something, whatever that something is, and makes a decision to get it. Once they have it, they make a decision to take it. If they take it too often, that process of decision making gets out of control, and if it gets far out of control, it becomes an addiction. At that point the decision is a difficult one to make, but it is still a decision. Do I or don't I. Am I going to take or am I not going to waste my life or am I going to say no and try and stay sober and be a decent Person. It is a decision. Each and every time. A decision. String enough of those decisions together and you set a course and you set a standard of living. Addict or human. Genetics do not make that call. They are just an excuse. They allow people to say it wasn't my fault I am genetically predisposed. It wasn't my fault I was programmed from day one. It wasn't my fault I didn't have any say in the matter. Bullshit. Fuck that bullshit. There is always a decision. Take responsibility for it. Addict or human. It's a fucking decision. Each and every time.” (Frey 291). Yet the decision for me did not come instantaneously, because whatever lessons had to be learnt from this situation were not completely understood.

There is a reason why Kant insisted that maturity is when one understands the implied lesson in any given situation, without acting upon the guidance of another. Regardless of the consequences arising from the unguided action, be it success or failure, the ownership lies with the doer and this makes all the difference in the process of education or growing up. Even though I had several downfalls and habitual corrections along the way, I have complete ownership on all of these and the lessons learnt are immensely valuable, when I observe from where I stand today. With respect to addictions, what people need is awareness and not prohibitive support, and maybe the people around them need to respect and understand the value of each and every individual’s decision, that goes towards shaping lives. Decisions are meant to be induced and not influenced by personal biases.

Even though the decision was finally made, I guess the lesson I learnt from my tryst with psychedelics was to protect my freedom of thought and respect every situation in life as an opportunity to understand better my place in this world. That being said, life is no easy roller-coaster ride for most people and maybe this is so because each and everyone’s path to enlightenment is different and bizarre in their own respective ways; coping with difficulties along the way depends on the structural constitution of the mind, which is repeatedly and consistently altered by a wonderful auto-feedback mechanism built into our cognitive system, that responds to the consequences arising out of every situation. It is quite clear that nature has endowed us with every possible means to constantly analyze, improvise and incorporate changes, by which we may enter into the next phase of evolution, that of consciousness.

Life is only a continuous form of education, and as the famous poet Tagore rightly said, “The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” (Personality 116). So if the question arises as to how I dealt with any particular situation in life, or for that matter all of them put together till now and all that may arise in the future, my answer would be: ‘to keep myself aware of the fact that every situation is only a process of self-evaluation and an event in itself, by which realization occurs that I am not an isolated island, but an indivisible part of a singular body that goes by the name of humanity.’

Science of Thought

What is thought and why does it happen to us? Does this question seem absurd to you? It is because we as an organic species endowed with higher intellectual capabilities than the other animal forms believe with such constitution that to think is a natural state of the human mind. This is so engrained in our system of life, which is enunciated by the aphorism ‘I think, therefore I am.’ The truth cannot be farther than this deception.

Thoughts are in a sense, the channeling of the mental energy into concepts that can be understood within the logic that we were taught, and the frame of reference we live in. In simple terms, this frame of reference is nothing but what society dictates. Everything we see, hear and feel are unknowingly or unconsciously analyzed by our mental faculties according to the benchmark set and governed by the society that we inhabit, or that which inhabits us. All rights and wrongs, good and evil concepts are engineered as per the majority ruling, and any exception to this is generally labeled as heresy, because society uses the disguise of misconstrued scriptural knowledge. So unless we are aware these concepts would lead to a constant barrage of thoughts that pass over the substratum of life, the same way as a movie runs non-stop on a silver screen. Thoughts are something external to our being, for the elimination of thoughts does not lead to our disappearance as an entity, which is clearly proved by meditation. But the moment it ceases to be, the enactment of falsities ceases to be on the life substratum and only the light of consciousness prevails.

What is a Mother?

For ages we have had a profound interest in the concept of Motherhood, as something or someone who is intrinsically linked to our life, tied to our existence with emotional and constitutional value, and for varied reasons the very basis and foundation of our true self. We have always, and may even for all time to come, looked upon a mother as “the beginning” and maybe even the source of all love. Even though in a philosophical sense there could be a shred of emotional logic in this, nothing could have been farther from the truth than this description. However let us try to look at the reasons for this in an ascetic manner, without any intention of degrading or downplaying the importance of mothers in the traditional mode of living.

Before we try to understand the concept of motherhood, let us analyze the roots of parentage and the differences in parity between the parental halves, namely the mother and the father. Of course, the two being intrinsic necessities for a new birth is a given fact, even if the results of cloning technology are increasingly proving otherwise in the current and future ages of genetic modification and revolution. The father is responsible for providing the ‘seed’ which has one half of the genetic information and the mother provides the other half as well as the necessary conditions like nutrition, environment and atmosphere for the fused halves to combine into a suitable ‘whole.’ Even the ratios for survival between male and female gametes are a million to one or thereof. Therefore it is clearly seen that right from the initial stages, the mother has a distinct importance in all viviparous interactions. And then throughout the gestation period till a few months after birth the mother is of great need to the proper development of the infant’s health and social conditioning. It is a common fact that many a times, it is the person indicated by the mother who assumes the role of a father without the need for actual genetic identification and verification, which goes to show the relative unimportance of the patriarchal half in the parental equation.

But considering all these facts, the mother character is of importance only in the conditioning years of the person growing up from the infant conceived. For what has been declared as the social importance of motherly love is nothing but a myth, cleverly conditioned into the infant’s education during the formative years’. If the child were to grow up in an environment of love from all persons involved in the conditioning process, there wouldn’t be a need felt for a personal motherly affection, and what is most interesting is that in very many cases it is the unnatural smothering of the mother to keep the child away from painful situaltions and hardships, the biased approach where a mother’s own conditioning interferes with the child’s formative study that influences him/her to grow up into a particular psyche. No doubt that the character of a mother is of immense value due to her sacrifice of her own body and mind for the growth of the child, and this is what needs to be reciprocated as love towards that kind and compassionate entity, yet there is no reason why the child should be taught to love in different ways. It is this difference in love that provokes a feeling of difference among the various interactions with people around.

So therefore the character of a mother is actually a function, of supplication of honest conditioning without bias, a rendering of help in such a way that self-reliance is taught, a formative shaping of the reflexes by utilizing the child’s inborn tendencies and talents and a generation of universal love without any degrees. This function would eventually give way to another relationship of friendship and support without emotional entanglements that would then be sustained; otherwise the earlier personal feelings that generated love would degenerate as time goes by into invasive dependency on the impersonal freedom that is very essential for the complete evolution of a human being into higher levels of consciousness. In most cases of relationships based on love and not sensuality, the degeneration occurs due to emotional attachment that tries to objectify the subjective reality. The moment we start seeing something or someone as an object and try to impose our conditions, restraints or compulsions we lose out on the experience and thereby whatever love or joy we feel in a relationship is quantified and not qualified. The moment the function exceeds its usage, the need for denunciation or replacement comes up and then the quality of original love would be lost forever. This is what happens in most cases when the function of the mother tries to invoke its importance on all other relationships in the person’s life, the relationship of the mother then ceases to be.

In Aldous Huxley’s Island, he writes: “'Mother' is strictly the name of a function. When the function has been duly fulfilled, the title lapses; the ex-child and the woman who used to be called 'Mother' establish a new kind of relationship. If they get on well together, they continue to see a lot of one another. If they don't, they drift apart. Nobody expects them to cling, and clinging isn't equated with loving.” Of course in certain societies, like in India, the position of the mother is given an unnatural importance, and in many families the mother is seen to be a domineering character who tries to influence the lives of all her children without regard for the damage caused to their lives’ and since this importance is part of a social structure, the children are unable to forsake this domination and any attempt to do so is seen as a social stigma automatically attracting the voices, comments and wrath of the moral police.

What we can learn from nature is that of the mother bird sacrificing herself for the growth and well being of her children till a certain point in their lives when her importance is pushed to the background and she forces them to fly away and live an independent, free life on their own. And as human beings it is our responsibility to be free, think independently and to evolve to the heights of consciousness and love one another, just like how we would love our mother!

Insanity

The question arises as to whether I am insane or not. And this question has struck me as quite queer for the simple reason that no matter how hard I try to define sanity, the ground does slip away beneath my feet. How do we define sanity or decide who on earth is sane? Is there a thumb rule or point of inflection that can be measured to classify people accordingly? And if there does exist some mechanism, how do we judge the measurer who performs analysis, for the person would be subjected to the same criticism and that my friend, would result in the failure of the entire system.

Sanity is relative and this is the simple truth, by which it becomes increasingly difficult for us to conclusively label someone or some situation as sane or insane. What lies in the mind of the subject is the sole constituent of this sanity factor, and once the relevance of the mind has been negated where does the concept of sanity arise? The mind is a cosmic illusion as seen and experienced by the age old seekers of truth, and it is this illusion which forces us to label and define every known and unknown element of creation, of which we are undoubtedly a part. So if we identify ourselves with our mind then we definitely are prone to conclusions of madness. Because what the mind cannot define or understand within its standard set of operating procedures, it tends to debunk as nonsensical, abstract or outright insane. And then starts a constant, obsessively compulsive analysis program to try to define the indefinable by splitting the whole into fractions of previously known logic and then recombining these understandable fractions into a reengineered synthetic totality that can be grasped by our mental faculties.

Most people in their lives tend to do this and are subjected to a bondage to this procedure of definition because they are unconsciously slaves to their mind, and they never realize this autonomous labeling by which they reduce the world they live in into a secure habitat of logic. Little do they know that what they believe to be secure and real is in fact literally the opposite, that the whole of reality and the world that beholds them and surrounds them is in effect a mental construct so cleverly arranged to hide the underlying lies in a framework of logical definitions based on imperfect knowledge gained from past experiences. A mere spark of awareness can bring down this construct like a house of cards and then the resultant life would be another insanity in the eyes of one who is still bound by the illusion, because for the shackled ones the labeling process is on auto-pilot.

The next question would be if there is a way out of this malady of the mind, and the answer is yes and no. If the control of our biosystem is integrated in the logic circuits of our mind then no, but if we have the basic awareness required to transcend the realm of materialistic tendencies then yes, we have what it takes to be free of this delusional labeling inherent in our day-to-day life. All fear is propounded by the mental system as a reactionary measure to unknowingness, and by being aware of our true self we can rid our biosystem of this disease. Fear has never amounted to anything useful in life and has always prevented us from advancing steadily on the path of evolution, which is evident in the fact that Darwin never wrote the theory of ‘Survival of the cowards’. Being afraid of something is when we hold on to the partial knowledge of who we really are, and that whom when attached to the body or the mind which is subject to decay and annihilation respectively brings forth a block in the stream of awareness. To experience the knowledge of our true Self results in the instant cessation of the mind and its limiting adjuncts, thereby all its consequent by-products like fear, sloth, anger, lust, avarice, jealousy and greed which by the way has been ‘labeled’ by our very mind as the seven cardinal sins.

Keeping this in mind, if we take a look around the world and its inhabitants with sublime awareness, we would automatically recognize the levels of insanity present in all thinking beings. There are varying degrees of delusion in the material plane similar to the varying degrees of freedom as expressed in our mental, vital and spiritual planes. Somehow this delusion is part of the operational aspects of the material plane and therefore any play in this realm calls on the various routines coded by the insanity of it. Which means it is not possible for us to live, breathe and survive here in this dimension without being crazy, ranging from slightly cuckoo to psychotically deranged to criminally insane. The sole solution to the problem is to understand this truth and rise above to higher planes of love and light.

Having said this much I have stopped wondering as to what people think about me nowadays, for I myself claim to have completely flipped it, so that I can save other people the trouble of labeling me and defining me. It is better to believe in the delusion of this illusion and call myself crazy than to define the sanity of every situation by pretending to be what I am not.

Now tell me: Am I insane or what??!!

extase matérielle

Yves-Alain Favre writes in the French literary review SUD (No. 85/86): “The first impression that comes from the reading of Le Clézio is not one of incitement to rejoice, because man is in a state of permanent conflict with the world and often a victim of its multiple aggressions. Salvation exists, however. We must reach the state of 'material ecstasy', which consists in abolishing the borderlines between the self and the universe. From this experience issue forth a new language and a host of new forms. Writing becomes a mystic operation where the human being merges with the whole.”

J M G Le Clézio, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, maintains the view that every serious writer is only attempting to solve the riddle of man and nature through his or her own literary capabilities. The elements of nature are aggressive and threaten to destroy human happiness but man can mollify nature by attempting to fusion with it, by getting into a state Le Clézio calls ‘extase matérielle’ or material ecstasy. It is true that nature has an inherent characteristic of posing obstacles for mankind, which are nevertheless within the realm of human solution. This cannot be termed as a cruelty or hardheartedness but a necessary requisite for evolution. By working to overcome these obstacles, we ensure our own path to perfection; that is, if we are sure of what perfection is.

Literature has been a very important tool for this evolutionary process, and this is visible in the great works that are available to us over the history of mankind. They are an attempt at trying to understand the workings of nature, and how the human being reacts to these situations and events, sometimes converting the obstacles into benefits and most other times tragically, when nature is at her worst behavior. Take Milton, Blake, Wordsworth and Shakespeare to quote a few names, clearly resonate in their works the ideology of man fighting an evolutionary battle against nature’s tyrannies. Sri Aurobindo in his philosophical works paints a magnificent shape of things, and also provides us with such remarkable solutions that reflect the theory of Le Clézio’s ‘extase matérielle’ or material ecstasy.

So what is it then? Material ecstasy sounds quite exotic as a phrase can get, but it is one of the simplest concepts to be understood. Over the ages our scriptures have grounded in us a very rigid idea of materialism, that the world we see and experience around us is an extension of our mental imagery and this is to be renounced, for only then can the domain of spirituality can be entered. Sri Aurobindo’s purna yoga or path of integrality refutes this as hogwash, because what we see, sense and experience all around is very much another dimension to the Divinity that exists within us, that which we are. Nature is one of the twin aspects of the Ultimate Truth, the other being Absolute Consciousness or Brahman. Putting it in lower scientific terms, Nature is the kinetic aspect of the Divine Energy and Consciousness the potential aspect. Being the two sides of the same coin, each is inherently important to creation and existence as a whole. The oriental scriptures call it the Yin and the Yang, and the vedic puranas call it the Purusha and Prakriti aspects of Brahman. So one cannot be excluded or ignored for the benefit of the other, but respected and worshipped as divine aspects of the integral whole. Every being and form that we see in our world is a combination of these static and dynamic aspects, and as human beings our responsibility it is, to know and understand this integrality and rise above the limitations posed by our lower nature, of ignorance and instability, of resistance to the opening of consciousness and freedom from thought, thereby entering into a higher reality of bliss, absolute bliss.

This discovery of bliss by accepting and entry into the totality of matter is the gist of ‘extase matérielle.’ The great writers of yore experienced this symphony of the highest bliss in their immediate surroundings, their body and their mind, and hence could lucidly bring forth this transcendental beauty into the form of words. Various forms of art, music and other expressions of humanity are more or less the objectifying of this profound truth into something that we, our lower nature can understand and comprehend. Because the truth of our existence, the divinity and the Ultimate Reality cannot be expressed as such in our mental frame. But these tools of literature, of art and music et al give us methodologies of higher meaning and significance as compared to those of the lower human mental structure.

The knowledge that our state of consciousness can be opened up to higher degrees, is the first step of evolution from where we currently stand. Our scriptures are evidential proof of our forefathers opening their beings to higher states, and thereby becoming the first of our historical literary giants. Along the evolutionary path then came so many other martyrs like Socrates and Plato, Coleridge and Keats, Michelangelo and Picasso and their like who could experience the spirit within and could express their divine experience through their respective tools. And I call them martyrs because they died for a just cause; they were fighters for the freedom of thought, nay, freedom from thought. For the awareness of consciousness starts when the stream of thought ceases to be. These great masters of creativity stopped their quantified thought from interfering with the flow of consciousness into matter, the fusion of the creative energy and potentiality into an integral whole which was their great works that we now enjoy. They were able to bring forth the material ecstasy.

Each and every one of us is born with such a tool of expression, be it creative or in the form of effective leadership. And what we generally do is to ignore these tools and keep them dormant, sometimes for an infinitely long period of time, spanning several lives until one day the importance of these tools dawn on us. If at all you are aware of such a tool lying within you, but you are afraid to invoke its capability for some reason or the other, then do not fear. For there is nothing in this world that can stop you from expressing. If that were the case, then we would never have had a ‘Paradise Lost’ from Milton, or a ‘Mona Lisa’ from da Vinci or ‘A Life Divine’ from Sri Aurobindo.

Go ahead, seek the ‘extase matérielle’ within and live the life divine!

My Way of the Light

Whatever happens, happens for a reason! However it is not our aim as a human to question the reasons for all the happenings, but to understand the futility of such questioning and realize the higher potential that exists within each of us. The majority of the human populace is concerned with trivialities that cloud their better judgment, and eventually hide the truth from the clearer view. Therefore all we ever see is the ugliness of material complexities and emotional confusion, and not the simple elegance of the consciousness that is our very basis, the very basis of all creation.

My journey began with an insignificant road accident, which was somewhat disastrous in the eyes of this so called 'general human populace', bestowing a profound understanding on myself that nothing is what seems to be. A simple truth that immediately became visible, and that which formed the cornerstone of my analysis into the human psyche and the hunger for a still clearer understanding of itself. Since I had immediate access to ancient indian mysticism and the scriptures, I drank to my hearts content and from there was taken further in depth into the Vedic period, branched into Buddhism, Taoism with a smattering of western mysticism and sufism.

But the more I read, the more I felt that these words were just a reflection of the eternal knowledge gained by all the great masters of thought and perception. Why then can't I tap directly into this infinite Source? For doing so, I had to wipe myself clean of all the conditioning that I had gone through at the hands of the society, all the pre-conceived notions and opinions. So I started studying about the human biosystem, its psychophysical constitution and various levels of metaprogramming this biosystem. I have currently reached a stage where I'm at the threshold of the 'doors of perception' waiting to cross over after certain preparatory processes to be completed. A few more days at the most..

Why am I telling you all this? I don't know.. I'm surrounded by the authorities of this Society, deeming myself to be insane and my thoughts ridiculous according to their grandiose perspective of how life should be traditionally lived, while I clearly know that their world is in shambles and that nothing is nor ever will be done to correct their mistakes. But nothing can persuade me to step back from my chosen path, the way of the Light. For it is better to live a meaningful life of insanity, than to pretend awareness of logic in the myriad conceptualizations of delusion.

Location of Mind in the Human Biosystem

The human brain is just another organ like your kidney or liver, the sole mechanism of which is to coordinate the activities of all the other organs of perception and action. The mind is very much an organ with respect to the human biosystem, but it is non-localized (which means no scanning system like an Xray or a CT etc is gonna pinpoint the location of it). Some ancient spiritual texts like the Hindu Vedanta declare the location of the mind to be in a thumb sized region within the heart, somewhat near the left ventricle. This is why the heart is referred to most in spiritual definitions instead of the brain. Another fact is that the ego-consciousness of human beings which is the basis of all "I own this..." "I love you..." "I am..." statements is made with a actual pointing towards the subject's chest which is the location of the heart. It is a stated fact that ego-consciousness is a formulative of the mind. In the waking state or the dream state the mind is active so there is a consciousness of 'I' or the ego-consciousness but in the deep sleep state where there is no presence of mind, there is no ego-consciousness. Another theory is that the mind is non-localized as an energy field spread throughout the human biossystem. This energy field can in turn interact with energy fields of other biosystems forming a massive spread spectrum energy transfer mechanism leading to the well known theory that consciousness is a singular homogeneous system throughout the universe.

There are eleven organs in the human biosystem: five organs of perception (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin) and five organs of action(hands, legs, tongue, genitals and organ for excretion) and the eleventh being the mind because none of the other ten hold good without an active mind (in the case of a comatose patient); similarly the mind has no value without the action of the ten other organs (as in the case of paralysis). But the mind has a distinct advantage of being closest to consciousness, the modification of which can lead to higher states of consciousness. This is where psychedelics come into the picture.

The theory is that by rechanneling the energy given to the ten organs of perception and action, to the mind it can actively start a modification process. Psychedelics do exactly this by cutting off certain neurotransmitters which are supposed to 'awaken' either one of the organs of perception or action which leaves only the eleventh organ to take effect. Thus the explanation for most of the psychophysical phenomena encountered during a 'trip'.

However at a later stage psychedelics are not necessary, as the human biosystem can actively modify the mind by itself. The human biosystem is capable of producing psychedilcs like tryptamines and entheogens by itself. The pineal gland produces a chemical very similar to DMT and the serotonin neurotransmitter closely resembles the LSD molecule. Which goes to show that the mind is capable of transforming into higher modes of consciousness and it is not just a capability but an inherent characteristic which needs to be used by every human being to evolve. Because our evolutionary graph has peaked for the physical form, the next level is in the need for evolution of consciousness.