A little Epiphany

There'se this one thing that suddenly flashed in my mind as it might have to many others...

What if what we perceive as time is actually space and space is actually time?

What if when man looks out to the stars, what he sees is not what exists or existed in that direction, billions of miles away?

What if space isnt actually unbounded, and we are in but a small bubble, and around us what we see is the reflection of that bubble in time? What if the star we see somewhere in the night sky is actually our own sun, but in some other time? What if we receive a message from an unknown civilization, only to find out it was someone like us, on earth eons ago who tossed a tablet skywards and it fell back in our time?

Food for crazy thought ...

An(other) Aryan Theory

the purpose of this time's textual struggle is another attempt to kill time while I travel.

the last time i posted, Mayur raised a very good point, a point of view, actually, that of a skeptic.

He might have not intended it that way, but that did trigger a chain of thoughts, a debate/bout if you will,

on one side lies the faith of men, faith in destiny, faith in faith itself.On the other is the juncture of acitons governing events and the doer being responsible rather than "the divnie", which in a more concentrated form evolves into atheism, 

Its an interesting comncept, this. humanity has been struggling with it right since the day it was born. What man did not understand, he called divine and revered it.

We still continue to do the same, and there will always be some trace of humanity that will cling on to it till the very end. And there will always be the antagpnists, so to speak who will question this divinity and seek to enlighten themselves. some wll go to the extreme, and denounce all divinity, proclaiming humanity an in turn, themselves to be the ones in control.

"Science" as we know it has evolved through this stuggle itself.Its basic motive is to explain what is hiterto inexplicable. Technology is its offshoot, its the dreamweaver and the tool to fulfill dreams.

But since the inception of all rational thought, there is one question our race has repeatedly asked of whatever we imagined could answer us: "How did it all start?"

How did it all start?

The big bang? was it the beginning of all? but to bang together, there must have been something that could bang! how did that come into being?

Even if there was something, what made it bang together? what force caused it? why did it happen at the exact time it happened? why not earlier? why not later?

Why do we assume there was only one such bang? what if there were many? what is the eact nature of this universe?

you start asking yourself thes questoins, and you rea;llse, the list of possibilities, and the subsequent questions they raise jsut goes on getting more and more enormos and complex.the best supercomouter, the mind itself, in its untrained form cannot comprehend the immsense flows of information required to be gathered, analysed, generated while trying to solve even one of these questions.and we in this age do not really know what the limits of the mind are when trained to realise its potential.

people of yesteryear did that.the very quest for enlightement formed the base of the ancient religion. ancient deities were often symbolic representations of the elements. then the forces of creation and destruction, then as civilisation evolved, and the range of tasks possible to be performed evolved, the kind of obstacles faced grew, and with them, grew the number and nature of deities

one way to look at this is, man , given a task needs an incentive to want to do the task. What better incentive than the Blessings of an all-powerful entity, maybe even some of the power itself!

this gave rise to the system of the common man's deities, and the rituals associated with each social task. What a masterstroke!

what a way to keep a full social order busy! give everyone things to do, give them methods, and give them incentives to follow those methods, and exploit the fear of failure to make sure they do not deviate from teh said methods.

But, its impossible to progress without improvisations, and improvisation requries the freedom to think out of hte box.if fea of one power prohibits this, instate a higher power that endorses improvisation.Instate a "scientist's God". Another masterstroke! The religious order retains control and maintains structure, at teh same time ensuring progress and evolution!

But there will always be those who would see past this system.those who would again ask the Original questions, for that is the insatiable nature of the mind's thirst.They would need to sharpen their minds in order to start looking for the answers, and in doing som they will invariably unciver more and more truths, facts that might dethrone some of the earlier instated deities.

How these people should be dealt with brings us to a forking point.

different societies dealt with this situation differently.thise smart enough to perceive the benefits of acknowledging and using the works of such "ahead of their time" people gave them a degree of freedom, encouraged people to adopt that approach, knowing fully well that very few will actually do it, Christianity abhorred them to begin with, as the dark ages and the middle ages, inquisitons and abolishments of great minds of those ears would testify. Hinduism assimilated these people and revered them in almost an equal pedestal as their Gods. the Greeks had great respect for their philosophers and thinkers.

i'll talk particularly of the aryan hindu society, as thats the one i believe to know a little about.

they realised the importance of each cog fitting well and doing its job perfectly in a machine to attain optimum output.Thus, the values of  equating work to worship, projecting the end objective of every endeavour as attainment of salvation, and recognising breakthroughs took deep roots in the flourishing agrarian order of the aryans.

the thinkers, scientists and researchers of those days were called sages.anyone could attain the status of a sage by accomplishing something extraordinary in their field of work.

Thats why "rishi"s wer of some many "types", rajarshis, maharshis, brahmarshis, karmayogis, these were people who acheived greatness on their spheres, and in doing so ascended from a mere mortal to an enlightened soul. It was through the work of these poeple that mathematics, astrology, geography, art, surgery, medicine, study of social orders, advancements in technologies, came about.

I personally beleive the stories narrated in the vedas and puranas and upanishadas are not mere fantasies.they arent even verbatim accounts, but poetic accounts of real events. their true meaning lost in translation.they are all scientific journals,encoded and composed in a supposedly easier form to memorise and store, since back then, the mind was traiend as a part of education, and it was neither necessary nor possible to represent all the acquired knowledge in literal form.language always tends to add distortion to information. These journals and the events that seem magical to the reader now, actually allude to some phenomenon too well known to the contemporaries, so much so that they just thought it worthless to state it, and assumed that knowledge implicit.

The base of this system was the quest for knowledge, and salvation was supposed to be the state of complete enlightenment.

But the way it was implemented, though genius, was flawed.It assumed all participating in the control system would be strong, resistant to corruption, and resistant to the temptation of the illusion of power.

It made attemtpts to work around this, once the condition was hit by referring to the balance of good and evil, and that in the end, evil cannot be sustained.

What it did not bargain for was the time that evil did sustain.

Men gave in to temptaion, power and lost the vision which had bound people to their "work" as worship, and the system degenerated into a caste divided society, where work was bno longer worship, no longer the path to salvation, but an imposed task, and one that brought, or took away rights and priviledges. the first order had used incentives to get the society to function, the degenerated order used fear and oppression.

The illusion of power boosted egos, and where there used to be symbiotic fubctioningm there came to be friction.the social order degenerated into a caste system, and the populace forgot the true purpose of the religion, the quest for enlightenment was forgotten.and the quest for power replaced it. with it, went the realisation of the importance of training the mind. advances of old technologies were forgotten, and came to be either tabooed or used asblack-boxes, the true work of the great minds of yesteryear lost in the sea of time. methods with scientific backing degenerated into rituals, advancement of science and philosophy came to a grinding halt as the main objective of the common man's life shifted from supporting a flourishing, evolving social order, to that of survival and guarding himself and his own.

The timespan was too ling to be recoverable, and the aryan civilisation fell into gradual decay, the glory days forgotten, rememberd only in song, we, the desendants of this civilsation are relearning the secrets our abcestors had explored, from the western civilisatiob, and the saddest thing is that we now look to the west for approval of the brilliance and soundness of our heritage.

word limit.

Analogies . . .

Since Childhood, all of us have at some point of time (or many points) been asked to write an essay on "importance of sports". At times we have wondered why is it that we like to hear/read.see stories..Why is it that performing arts are so appreciated?

To me, these past few months of semi-solitary exisatance have been a tme of a revelation, a coming of age of sorts.I find myself revisiting a lot of things taught at school, at home, which as children, we couldn't quite appreciate for what hey meant. Here, now, I see them through a completely different looking-glass and they suddenly seem to have a 3rd dimension to them, a depth, menaing, cimplexity I hadnt been able to see before.And I find myself drawing parallels between each one of these things and the concept of one;s Lifespan itself.

You pick up a book, a story. it starts with an introduction of its characters & their circumstances. It goes on explring their interactions, creating new situations, but all with an eye on the climax. The writer's attempt is to set things up during the ciurse of the story such that everything is falling into its rightful place by th etime te plot reaches a logical conclusion. You retrace this effort of his, expriencing the emotions in the manner the writer wants him to, as the story unfolds from its introduction through to the end. You put the book down, satisfied, if the pieces are all in their places by the end.

Pick a sport, any sport, or rather, any sporting contest. The whole event has a well defined objective. The players and spectatores are all a bit aware of the skills involved, but none knows exactly ow much each player has brought to the table on that day. And so the contest begins, invariably, with the players testing this out in their own ways. Then, a time comes when they are sure of their situations, and the next phase - the struggle for ascendancy beigns. Each player tries to leverage his skill and the situation to get to a position from wher he can exercise the full p[otential of his game to gain a decisive advantage. This leads to the end-game, often a frenzied battle, where in the winner is he who has utilised his skill and available situations better.

Now you look at a man's life. We start unaware of ourselves, our surroundings, the characters of our story and the charateristics tat will shape us. Our childhood, our eduxation is "the introduction". Its our chance to explore our potential & limits. We then enter the second phase, we try to set ourselves up for a good life when we have grown old, and spend the middle phase of our lives setting pieces up so that the puzzle solves itself by the time its time to lie down. At the end of all the frenzy of planing, saving, spending, all the rat races, he who has used his skills and circumstances better, finds himself at an advantage. He calls himself a "winner" in the game of life. His life is termed a "success story" ...

But all said and done, there's the question : who wrote the story? who judged the contest?

It is HIm. It is his stories we are living out as our lives. Each one of us has a different version of the story, was He trying to create on prefect story, and decided to experiment with all different versions He could come up with, or is all this just a RPG for Him.. I dont know. He has laid out hte path for us, and given us the means to walk it through. He has given us all a chance to play this game of life, and played another trick.. the illusion of control .... it is He who controls us all, yet makes us beleive we are the actors. He plays on our behalf, even though the instruments are in our hands.

His is the will that shall be done.

So, the next time you find someone talking about "the game of life" or somebody's " life-story",  you know better ... ;)

Thoughts...

Once during my frequent train sojourns, there was a little thought in my mind ... about, well, "thoughts"...what are they? How do they form? how do you know that one is forming in your mind, because, by the time you are aware of it, its already there! You sensing it is merely your brain transforming it into a verbal form. Do we think in sentences? or words acting as "keys"? or just are they visions? shapes? forms? or a shapeless, formless flash.. an enigma...

Pay a little attention and you'll realise that a thought originate as a formless entity (acknowledging thoughts as entities). You'll find that those you sense, but can not visualise , can not render into solid images that can be related to, are actually the ones you feel very intensely... we call these - "Emotions". The closer something is to your heart, more intense is the emotional response invoked, purer is the experience. More intense the emotions, more formless the imprint on the mind... tougher to bind it in words, and deeper its influence on you.

Could that be why when we are taught to concentrate, we are asked to start by picturing a still object? like a blank, unwrinkled piece of paper ... as that needs your mind to let the calmer emotions, the peaceful thoughts to come to the fore. The "omkar" chant takes this one step further. What is the Omkar? a word? a syllable? a sound? An entity..an enigma..a connecting piece... Its synonymous with you, the world pulled over your eyes, the life force that flows through this world, the comic fore that binds the universe in this form, and yet, sets it free in many more ways... IT i beyond the realm of physics, metaphysics, theology, religion, itself. A parallel may be drawn with the Hebrew symbol "Yahweh", supposed to be the name of The One True God. They say, it cannot be pronounced by us mortals. Warning bells aside, one can think of it as a manifestation of he divine, or a human attempt to bind divinity in something comprehensible. Both, this and the Omkar are attempts to capture the true meaning of everything that is, was and ever will be, That which has neither beginning nor end. Which is omnipotent, omnipresent, That which just IS.

When you focus your thought on it, you open your self to the cosmic divine. You, in your own capacity, knowingly or unknowingly are calling out to the absolute glorious truth ...It's your own purity that determines the how aware you'll become of it.

Try, for once, to follow the process of how a thought emerges in your mind...and, each time you will see that you are always just a little too slow to acknowledge when it began, but in reality, the instantaneous knowledge is there, its the translation to acknowledgement that takes time. If you pay close attention, you can feel an impulse blossoming into colors, shapes, words, and what you'd recognise as a full-fledged thought. But try to express the means of this transformation, and our means of expression sow us their extreme inadequacy, for this process is is singular, absolute, and that which is absolute cannot be bound into words. Our ability for expression is thus curbed by the limitations of what we have shackled ourselves in ... Language.

Tell me, would a child, even if it grasps all language on the first day f its birth, be able to express its very first thought? Or for that matter, can you express whats in your mind the very first waking moment of any day?

you cant. because the level of consciousness that is active at those times is beyond the consciousness we limit ourselves to when we use language. The purpose of creating language was to mould abstract thoughts into concrete words, so that one mind may relay them to another. But as any communication system has a loss factor, this one does, too, and quite a heavy one. A direct linkage of minds would be the ideal way to exchange thoughts, but indirection induces discrepancies, confusion and in due course, corruption.

But there is one medium which transcends the realms of language, that of emotion.... and the purest of which is love. Hearts given to love do not need words to understand their counterparts. They are liberated from the bounds of the lower level of consciousness the mind inhibits itself to. That is why all saints preach love, love towards the Almighty, towards all His creations. It is the only bond that does not bind the participants, but liberates them, because the bond itself is absolute, true, and omnipotent. It is God's highest creation.

Hats Off

Once upon a time, there was a boy in a normal, yet extraordinary, marathi family.His outlook towards life was very simple : He was just "in it to win it"

The almighty had blessed this child with an athlete's build, and a scholar's mind. He just left it upto him to figure out how to use both of them together. The boy was brilliant, good at any sport he took interest in, mischevious to the limit, and always ready with the perfect 
excuse... As he grew up, another aspect of his personality developed, his imagination, and his 
ability to put his thoughts in words, and his words into action.

The child became a young man, his influence grew stronger each day on all whose lives he touched. He learnt of friendship, and gave it a meaning of his own. He learnt of persevereance 
and made it a part of his own, but that didn't come easy.

There came a point where life became a big party. "he lost his way," some people might have said, but how untrue was that!Throughout college, this guy worked twice as hard, but partied ten times harder.Any group outing was just unimaginable without him, and so was any evening "debate" on the "playground"...

Everyone had alomsot written him off at the end of 4 years of college , but all this time,  through all the ups and downs that life threw at him, this lad had nurtured a dream.He had taken a couple of shots at it, and reached further and further close to his goal each time. And then came the ultimate opportunity, Third time lucky they say, and he certainly was!

Last year, after we all had settled for our fates, he strode out to make his, and he earned his dream, he earned  uniform, he earned the right to call himself a part of the Indian Army, and today he stands with us, not simply as our beloved friend Abhishek, but as Lt. Abhishek Lakhey.

Leave it to him, to make a regular Dinshaws Sundae seem like a treat from Heaven.Leave it to him to justify the most blatant cheat pulled off on a playing field ... (and later on in "other" dsicussion topics as well)

Leave it to him to sleep off full days at a stretch, just for the heck of it...

Leave it to him to invent the most outrageous cricket shots ... the paddle over the 'keeper while sitting cross-legged, the reverse pulls to name a few...

Leave it to him to come up with the most creative abuses in verbal quarrels...Leave it to him to spin a tale of a weekely holiday at his coaching classes, just because he found it boring...

Leave it to him to poke a prof's tummy and ask him to explain wt the experiment is all about (ofcourse, having mistaken the prof for a student)...

Leave it to him to never miss a chance to take a dig at Mayur...Leave it to him to play Computer games like a man possessed...

Leave it to him to be the most stubborn SOB on this planet...Leave it to him to be the most responsible and lionhearted friend...

Just leave it to him to demonstrate exactly what the hell will-power means.

This one's for you Abhi... Rock On!!

Truth

This is the product of 4 years of VNIt, and a few more on my part, and a lot more on the part of my friend, Rahul (now doin even more thinking in IIT Powai)

Its a tribute to all those "discussions" in the hostel corridors, classrooms, mess halls, labs over the campus that we "compsci"s ever had .....

And this one just happens to be a favorite subject for a few of us.

Pardon the "level of abstraction" .... this is 2 compscis goin at it afteral l...

Thaks in advance to Rahul for this absolutely wonderful conversation ... I enjoyed while talking, as also wihle revisiting it each time ....

$h0unak: hows the tree of wisdom?

Sent at 2:09 PM on Tuesday

Rahul: it never ceases to blossom.

$h0unak: and the lateest flower yo plucked off it is : ?

Rahul: ah..but the flower is precious to me. How do i trust it with you?

$h0unak: valid concern....

justified,too

Rahul: in any case....here it goes...

i dont suppose u know the meaning of the word non-causal....

$h0unak: enlighten me

Rahul: ok...can u think of something being non-causal or let me put it this way...u can imagine 

a causal thing right? i.e one that has a cause?

$h0unak: i guess

causality as put forth by the marovingian is pretty clear in my head

Sent at 2:14 PM on Tuesday

Rahul: for some time let go off all the definitions that u know of.....ya.u can think of it in 

terms of the merovingian i.e something that has a cause i.e beginnig point......note that if 

something has a beginning point all i have to do to destroy that thing is to back in time and 

destroy the cause..

assume for a moment that u can go back in time

u thr?

$h0unak: as in travel faster than light?

jst had a look at a guy torchin his fart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRoYoExRMnU

Rahul: dont worry about the way to do it....just assume that u can go back in time and change 

whatever u want to...

$h0unak: ok

Rahul: the point here is causality

$h0unak: yeah

i remember

my attention span has lessened somewat , of late

Rahul: that means a causal thing can in principle be destroyed simply by moving back in 

time..now comes the million dollar question....

can u even imagine something noncausal...

?????

$h0unak: everything that happens has to have a beginning, but everything that is supposed to 

happen will happen.

you can change the starting point, maybe, but then you are just creating a new set of 

variables, another universe, maybe ...

something on the lines of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox

Rahul: nono...that aint the point...its far from it...what i talk of is something much much 

more subtle..more mysterious and hence more unreachable....

$h0unak: subtlety?

Rahul: u say everything that happens MUST have a cause....?? right?? keep answering in yes or 

no

$h0unak: um.....

ok..lets go along wth this line of thought..

YES

Rahul: all right....now what seperates something that happens and something that is GOING to 

happen?

$h0unak: the occurence of the trigger

or the cause

Rahul: exactly.....which means it is the placement of cause and effect at two seperate times 

that we call causality..note that cause and effect can never occur at the same time

..

now tell me this

$h0unak: by definition, the cause induces the effect

Rahul: suppose..just suppose there was something that was noncausal....firstly can u EVEN 

imagine such a thing????? jsut can u imagine..just answer that...

$h0unak: ok. i assume a noncausal event

Rahul: let me ask u the above question in a totally differnet(but equivalent) way.....do u 

think that IF there is a god , he can think??

$h0unak: exactly (almost) wt the event i had in mind

ws

i rather had the existence or inception of the divine itself as the evet

Rahul: nonono...whatever i am saying does not in any way say there is or there is no god...all 

i am asking is this subtle and a very difficult question..do u think that god can think??

$h0unak: now that is tricky

indeed

he can

Rahul: i wont tell u whether u r right or wrong....because a man must realize the answer on his 

own....all i wl say is this....

the answer to the above question has taken me 22 years to figure out and it has something to do 

with the following question:

IF there is a god WHY would u want to go to him? and if u did go to him and achieve him what 

would u do after that????

$h0unak: but how do you know that what you have figured out is the answer or the complete 

answer and not a part of the answer?

its a question i would say, more of beleif, which you can call causal.

bt it may not be strictly causal

i beleive its our purpose to seek divinity

for we have energy to give back to this universe

and when we reach Him

we shall not have to ask him for anything

as then, we will have served our purpose

and that shall be the end of this journey

Rahul: i shall not justify myself on this point anymore because the nature of the answer is 

like that....and believe me, all the questions that u have now i have had some years back...all 

i wl say is..trust me..whatever u r saying..all this energy thing..all this can be 

refuted..they are not causes or purpose at all..and as much as this might seem unbelievable...i 

hope its atleast reachable

$h0unak: since our purpose ends there

we need not be concerned with what lies beyond

Rahul: and remember my friend...if the mind can think of something beyong god then it is 

necessarily concerned with it....and this point is subtle....

let me give u another hint(i know i sound condescending but i cant help it)....would u get 

bored if u could live forever???

$h0unak: :)

Rahul: or let me ask u another equivalent question

why the :) ?

$h0unak: wts the point of living forever if there is no purpose to drive us?

Rahul: ah....that my friend is an argument that cannot be refuted

$h0unak: it either means we are incapable of fulfilling our purpose even if we are granted all 

eternity

Rahul: but the flaw is that the argument is infallible

$h0unak: or that we have an existence that is beyond obligations

Rahul: nono......i used to think like this about 3 years back

but since then i have "realized" the truth

$h0unak: its infallibiliy is a flaw beacause nothing can be perfect?

Rahul: nono...

more subtle

ok..answer this

whatever is the truth..whatever it is..do u think u can express it in a language??? justify ur 

answer...(very very imp question)

$h0unak: no

Rahul: why not?

$h0unak: language is a medium that is not yet perfect

Rahul: nonononononon

$h0unak: even the simplest of thoughts may not be fully and properly conveyed in words

Rahul: language is perfect...only problem is it is not suited to expressing truth..and why do u 

think is that

$h0unak: and to express something, you must understand it through and through

ambiguity?

Rahul: not exactly ambiguity...something close....

think abou tthe nature of the truth

whatveer is the truth,,what must it be like

$h0unak: :)

Rahul: why the truth CANNOT be expressed using logic??

why

a very finite reason exists

$h0unak: cnat fnd words rt nw itself.....

bcz logic requires a premise

and a predicate

Rahul: u r almost close....let me help u refine ur argument and state it with a little more 

subtelty...

$h0unak: logic takes a cause and an effect and tries to verify if the effect was triggered by 

the cause

Rahul: again almost close but not yet ther..not getting the most imp point

listen to me....

$h0unak: so when it encounters something that is a standalone, it finds o matching cause

Rahul: again very very close...but still one very very imp thing missing..

here it is

....

$h0unak: ...........

Rahul: i dont know much about the truth...but one thing i can tell u abou t it..whatever it 

is..it must be irrefutable....that is there is no way to refute it.....because it is the 

truth..u just cannot refute it...u should not be ABLE to refute it.....

that is u should not be able to challenge it

the word 'ABLE' is very imp here...

$h0unak: right...

Rahul: now...

any language u design

must necessarily have

the means to negate every sentence built into it

that is the nature of logic and language

whatever u can think of ..u can think of negating it

a language is defined like that

and hence if u could express truth in a language u can negate it...

$h0unak: that makes the mind inherently incapbale of thinking anything irrefutable, does it 

not?

Rahul: u have spoken the words of god my friend......

i wish i was with u face to face right now

$h0unak: whoa

Rahul: we could have had a much better conversation

$h0unak: seriously

that day may not be far, if things go a particular way ...

Rahul: i hope so too..

so either the mind must be made to think

without a language

OR

if the mind CAN only thionk in a language

then it is impossible to perceive the truth using the mind

or a nlanguage for that matter

$h0unak: exactly

so when you feel something that you know is special,that you know is there, but you find 

yourself simply incapable of articulating it

you should realisre that what you felt was pure

Rahul: ah....wisdom of the ages....very very pure are the words u speak my friend....i hope u 

continue to think like this for a good part of ur life

$h0unak: i hope everyone gets to feel and realise this sometime in their stay on this earth as 

an intelligent being

Rahul: now the point is this.....if a noncausal entity wanted to communicate with you...can he 

succeed in doing it especially given that u r causal??? if yes how??? if no then what do we do 

then??

$h0unak: interesting...hang on a sec

Rahul: all right

hey listen if u r busy then i dont wanna bea pain in ur ass....u just say the word and i'll be 

out of ur hair...

Sent at 2:59 PM on Tuesday

$h0unak: yeah ..back again

if a noncausal entity were to communicate with us, then

we would miss its signals

or misinterpret them

Rahul: now u just hang on a sec....i'll be back in a moment....but in the meanwhile ponder over 

this....

do u think it wl try to communicate using something causal such as signals or for that matter

DO U THINK IT CAN EVEN PRODUCE SIGNALS???

$h0unak: signal was just a term here

Rahul: do u think it can produce ANYTHING causal??

$h0unak: short for its means of communications

Rahul: just give me a moment ...i'll be back

$h0unak: hang on

lets continue this some other time

ive got a meeting to sleep thru...

btw, im saving this conversation text

Rahul: all right..until the next time or as they say ..until the next flower blooms

$h0unak: :)

Rahul: ur wish my friend

$h0unak: c ya soon. ...

Rahul: i hope so too..

still waiting for the next flower to bloom, but that will happen if and when its destined to

......