Thursday, January 1, 2009

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.

5 comments:

  1. would like to share this short story that i came across the other day..

    there were 2 boys walking along a stream and they all of a sudden saw many people helplessly being moved by the stream some of them getting drowned. Their number never seemed to end. One of the boys thought he has to save all those he can. The other boy started walking upstream. The first boy cried out, "Hey won't you help all these people they need our help". The second said,"I am going upstream to find what is causing this. If I can fix it or understand it, it has to be at the upstream. I can save very very few if I stay here and chances are that even I will get drowned"


    I have been working on thoughts lately.. to be precise the "first" though. Hope i get a chance to know your views on it soon.

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  2. Its a matter of impulse, instinct and one's mastery over his impulses...
    He who knows himself through and through has full command of his instincts, and will always get the right impulse, as his subconscious will do the thinking for him.

    Both the boys are doing the right thing, just that one's a bit "righter".

    Its our impulse to salvage what we can once the flow starts, but it needs conditioning of one's mind to look beyond that, and patch the leak itself.

    Does that answer you, my friend?

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  3. the interesting possibility is that the stream might be infinite.. there is no origin or end of such a stream. Same is the case with this world. We dont know the beginning or the end..

    With this idea I think we must try to concentrate on the first "thought"..

    First thought of our system would definitely be a thought that set the causal thougts in motion. This thought might be "explore the point space(which was somehow existing initially)". In order to explore space we need time. The intermingling of space and time was then followed by a series of thoughts..
    The series of thoughts == desire.

    I hope you remember the Barber's paradox. We cannot answer questions about how the first thought was initiated. We must however aim at breaking the space time continuum. The only way to crack this would be to think about space and time continuum..ie by directing our thoughts/desires in this direction.

    I need to work on this theory in greater depth. what are your views?

    The other posts are very interesting.. What do you think about "generating a random number" as a non causal event? Who is rahul(:-P)?

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  4. The Rahul is none other than Rahul Suresh, my batchmate.

    By the nature of argument, there is always a counter-argument to whatever one states. And mine is this:
    For any event, there can be infinite "what if"s. One's honed skill of perceiving as many "what if"s as possible before reaching conclusions determines the efficacy of the conclusions drawn.

    Sometimes, salvaging is the only alternative, but that cannot be the thumb rule.

    And all this, as you rightly put it, is subject to the assumption of linear time, which is the base of causality.

    What if we do manage to break free of the linearity of time. Assuming we do so without affecting the universe, we would then be above cause and effect, as "cause" and "effect", by definition, involve a sequence in time, which we have already liberated ourselves from.

    What happens of us then?
    Are we immortal, so to speak?
    Do we become omniscient?
    Do we become one with HIM?

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