Eidolon's Dilemma

Wraiths of darkness surround, taunting, waiting,

Beckoning with their aura, to bestow their dark gift.

Consume or Be Consumed, the choices they offer,

Power, Hubris, names of their abyss.

Curse of their mark, imprinted on my self,

I walk the dark path.

Ghouls, demons become my slaves,

Waiting for a weak moment, to engorge my light.

Will I succumb, or Will I bring forth?

The will to survive, the might of this dark?

For this burden shall one day yield,

The strength to fight, the courage to die.

Introspection Woes

The human mind is a double-edged sword. It's perhaps the best thing which has happened to our species or the worst depending on how you choose to look at it. But, despite all the things it has helped us discover and invent, it has very craftily evaded revealing details about itself.
Though we claim to understand the human mind, through sciences like psychology, the truth of the matter is that we've barely scratched the surface.

Let's take for example the origin of how thoughts come to us. Are they always triggered by external stimuli? If so, how come we end up thinking random nonsense even when we are sitting idle, when we close our eyes etc.. The vagaries of the mind excite and depress us, make us have mood swings, enslave us by their constant chaotic dance of thoughts and ideas in a never- ending stream.

I think the ability to introspect is one of the craziest capabilities given to the mind. It's somewhat akin to studying light using light. And because of this it remains one of the toughest things to do. Because, when some object of intellect studies itself, however distant and aloof it may remain, cannot be 100 % objective. And the mind of each person is unique, hence no one can really claim to know completely the mind of someone else or his own for that matter.

The funny thing about introspection is when the mind decides to engage in it. The most common occurrence being at the time of one's Death. The mind forces you to ask questions about all the things that you've done in your life and whether they were really worth doing. Some actions of the past which one would have been proud of seem inane at the hands of the mind introspecting. So does it mean that introspection always manages to show us the correct actions? Not really. The thing that sucks about this whole process of introspection is that at the end of it, it leaves behind a big question mark to which no answer really exists. Probably this is how a processor feels when it's stuck in a never ending loop.

But the real kicker's this. Though most often introspection ends up getting people depressed, the mind somehow enjoys it. It's like any other stimulants. After a session of introspection the person feels heady and light. It's like getting a high where you're able to overcome the usual thralldom of thoughts and control them to think like you want them to. For example this post is also a result of introspection wherein I'm ridiculing the concept but my mind's having the last laugh. So next time, when you introspect, think about this : Are you figuring out your mind? Or are you figuring out what your mind wants you to figure out?

Until next time,
Au Revoir.

Tale of Torpor

"It is a singsong dawn
but we think of night alone
already pierced by dark"

-Japanese Haiku.

A dark chasm,
A haunting, deep silence,
In perfect stillness, an abyss.

A sound strikes a resonance,
A thought gets thought,
The quiescence stops.

Thought begets thought,
Thoughts spawn a thread,
Thread weaves patterns;Torpor ends.

As points of randomness gather,
Memory joins the dots,
A dream begins.

Colors of memory,
Dance a strange dance,
Contorting,twisting, the ignis fatuus.

Time flies, the dreamer dreams,
Dawn brings in light,
Shattering the reverie.

The Cosmic Dance

In the beginning was One,
In that one did they dwell,
Undifferentiated, unbroken,
Total bliss was their shell.

" Oh! I wish to play", she said,
And He acquiesced.
"But don't complain of loneliness", he warned,
" For I shall only be the witness."

In her gaiety, as she bloomed,
The void began to cease,
And then it began, the cosmic play,
As the flower called her bees.

Universes sprang up, galaxies arose,
The elements mingled,
The planets rose.

Zillions of lives,actors became,
And with them came their form,
With them came their name.

He became time, the grim witness,
Musing at the play,
Of his beloved mistress.

As eons rolled on,Darkness descended,
The life forms corrupted,
The happiness ended.

Misery ensued, sadness prevailed,
The unjust became mighty,
In this chaos she quailed.

"This isn't what I wanted, this isn't why I played,
Oh! won't you come and end this? ",
To her beloved she prayed.

From his quiescence he woke,
Smiling at her sorrow,
Time stood still,as he danced aloft,
His moves destroying the morrow.

She rose from the chasm,
In reply to his call,
Together they danced,
The fetters began to fall.

As the two danced as one,
Duality disappeared,
The knower became the known,
The seen merged with the seer.

In the end there remained one,
Their bliss becoming a death-knell,
Eternity merged into Unity,
And united did they dwell.

Understanding Infinity [Part-2]

“I'm only a four-dimensional creature. Haven't got a clue how to visualize infinity. Even Einstein hadn't. I know because I asked him.”

--Patrick Moore.

The last post on infinity was about getting to know at least on the surface what infinity is and what it means to different people at different levels. This one discusses the grand vision of our very own Indian philosophers. The Sanskrit verse purnamadah..purnamidam tells us exactly this:

That is whole, this is whole

From the whole, the whole arises

When the whole is taken from the whole

The whole still will remain.

As stated in the last post, if one observes in-depth, the motion from point a to b [Zeno' s paradox] or the large sets of aleph numbers, the concept of infinity stands out as an incomprehensible entity which cannot be touched by the senses, visualized through the mind's eye or understood by the intellect. It can only be defined as: It is or it exists. This is what Vedanta has been trying to say. This as we know is referred as God by some, the primal force by some and infinity by the others. The vedantins however, argue that all this is the self alone and nothing else. They say that this which defies understanding can be understood. However, they also add that neither through intelligence nor senses can this be understood but by direct experience alone.

Let us try and define what direct experience means. It is that knowledge which comes from within i.e it is not conditioned. This knowledge is not got by reading books, nor by listening to others but is got only through by going through it. Perhaps the reader may be confused, but the English language has yet to come up with a word that encompasses in whole what direct experience means. The word which could be used is intuitive knowledge. Once a person undergoes this direct experience the knowledge which comes out of it becomes irrefutable. Try asking a mathematician about the beauty of numbers. Then tell him that it is nonsense and numbers are mere symbols with no quality about them. The poor mathematician is bewildered because he doesn't understand why others cannot see the beauty that he does. He will tell you that numbers give him infinite joy. Similarly, an artist will talk about his art, an architect about his building and so on...

Our philosophers say that this happiness, the ineffable joy has but one source: the infinite. They call it self and thus the term Aham brahmasmi. They say that the joy which one gets when one plunges into the source of things is just the surface of what really exists beyond. Taking the mathematician's joy which though is wonderful, but is sadly limited in time. Once the numbers are taken away, he goes through the same dull process of life we all do with all its ups and downs. But the concept of infinity goes beyond the constraints of time and space. Our sages say that once the source of all sources is realised, the microcosm and macrocosm appear as one. This is what we refer to as 'self-realisation' or nirvana.

Often people have asked why self realised men seem so blissful and in joy always. Because they in one sense experience a mathematician's joy, but this one being boundless, infinite. That is why they have answers to all questions. Once someone understands the source of all sources, nothing is new or old, all are but ripples in the realm of the infinite. So , infinity stands out there as a challenge to all mankind urging us to understand it, to feel it to become it. But how many will be successful in this endeavour is again a paradox in itself...

With infinite love,
Adios.

Continuous Discrete Continuum!!

"The law of continuity ... consists of ... that each quantity, in experiencing a transition from one magnitude into another, must pass through all the intermediary quantities of the same sort. This is usually expressed by stating that the transition occurs through intermediate stages. Maupertuis considered these stages to be a number of minute additions occurring in a moment of time. He thought that the law must be violated at the same time for it is violated equally by the smallest leap or the greatest leap, since the concepts of small and great are quite relative. He was right if the term 'stage' denotes an instantaneous increment in any quantity. Really, it should be so conceived that particular states correspond to particular instants, whereas increases or decreases correspond exclusively to very small continuous intervals of time"
--- Geometry, time and the law of continuity.


Continuity. A term which many of us use everyday. But few among us realize the enormous complexities in this concept called continuity. What is this state of being continuous after all... the dictionary defines continuous as : Uninterrupted in time, sequence, substance, or extent. Lets set aside the mathematical part of continuity for a while and examine thoughts and their continuity.

I, for one, have found that the thought process can be described as a sort of convoluted continuity i.e lets say that my first thought occurs from seeing an image or a thing for e.g. a tree. My attention probably goes towards the leaves, their vibrancy in that particular season which might spring in the thought of vibrancy of life followed by a sudden thought about art or a painting with green undertones or a green dress worn by one of my friend. The point I'm trying to make is even in these so called vague or unconnected thoughts there is a sense of continuity. The best part is that this whole thought is like a tree structure. Depending on the direction the thought moves, it spans out this huge tree consisting of our memories, experiences and these thoughts which try to re-live or reminisce about them. Perhaps, that's why it's called a train of thoughts. The funny thing though is that if you interrupt a person during this and later ask him to re-construct the whole chain it'll almost seem impossible . More often than not, he'll end up constructing a new tree of thoughts though they've arisen from the same root!!

Evolution is another fascinating phenomenon where continuity comes into place. Right from the oldest creatures called trilobites to the so-called superior species of homo sapiens, we've all evolved and continue to evolve against the time-graph.But, if everything is continuum, where on earth does the concept of discreteness come into play? I guess , the best example to elucidate this would be the structure(if i may call that) of light. The physicists after centuries of experimentation have concluded that light nothing but a continuous emission of photons of discrete energy levels. So i guess what they mean is light has the qualities of both continuous-ness and discreteness at the same time(Bravo!!). Continuing in the same vein, that would mean that as evolutionary species, all the species which have evolved and continue to evolve have discrete energies does it not? Similarly, the thoughts of these discrete creatures are continuously discrete wherein the links between the discrete thoughts are what provide their continuity...

So these concepts of continuity are like the light and dark. The existence of one gives the meaning to the existence of the other. it is wonderful once you start realizing the enormity of this whole connectedness throughout this universe. The main question though, is that if both these continuity and discrete are relative, then what is real? Human mind refuses to accept anything that is relative as an absolute. So does that mean life, with it's discrete continuity is just an illusion? Or perhaps, the very word illusion is an illusion since it's nothing else but a play of light and dark? The best pictorial description of this question is the famous Yin-Yang wherein the light and dark are separate, yet they stay in one another and go on giving the purpose for the other to exist in a continuous vortex called time...forever and ever... So try shedding some light on this and let me know if you've found the answer.

Until next time,
Au Revoir.

Unconventional Reality

"Ridicule is the treat paid to the genius by mediocrity"
- Oscar Wilde.

It is commonly believed that exceptionally intelligent people or the people whom we consider geniuses have eccentricities. And just like all other things this subject of the treatment of people who are unconventional also has a pattern. The pattern most often than not results in chaos in the lives of these 'gifted' people and only a handful have been able to claim a sort of 'normalcy' in their later lives

The pattern is often like this: If the subject in question is a child prodigy, it's always seen that in the beginning, the child is praised to the skies and his achievements slashed across all the front pages of newspapers. And due to the child's natural ability, he/she progresses way faster than a conventional child in our society. Few realize the emotional trauma which the child undergoes during this stage. The child will not only have to deal with all the unwanted attention but also the ridicule and antagonism of his fellow mates in college who're a good ten years or so older than him. This sort of treatment often results in behavior which has been termed eccentricities primarily because society doesn't know why the behavior occurs since, it doesn't fit the conventional ones they've been exposed to. This very 'gifted child' is later called a freak because our so called society fails to understand why the genius in this person behaves the way he /she does. [Interested readers may look up William James Sidis' page on wiki] The same pattern with a little variation is what follows in case of people who deviate from the trodden path of the masses.

The question now is why this happens? To understand this we must go to the roots i.e what is a society. A society is a framework or a construct which has been agreed upon by individuals sharing common behavioral patterns for them to co-exist harmoniously and lead to their betterment as a whole by fixing certain laws to which all belonging to this framework must adhere to.[the definition is mine] . Now in comes a person defying all the conventional laws and is a living proof to the society that there is a possibility that these behavioral patterns which were till then considered normal might just be a generality describing the behavior of people who are less gifted. If the society agrees to this, then it'll mean that it's existence is nothing but a bunch of mediocre people who have a reached a consensus. Now just how many of us would like calling ourselves mediocre? Though, on the surface we might agree that this so called genius is exceptional, but inwardly we hate him/her for being what he/she is. Their very attribute like their extraordinary intellect becomes their grave enemy. At this juncture, chaos begins.

When a person is denied the right to express something which is natural to him/her it leads to a forcible suppression of these qualities for the fear of non-acceptance by the society. This in turn might manifest itself as behaviors for which the word eccentricity has already been coined( This is quite clever on the part of the society since it's managed to give the word eccentricity a negative feeling). One must understand though, that it is not this uncommon behavior which leads to the downfall of such geniuses but the failure on the part of the society to accept them as their own. And when a person feels that he has nowhere to go where he feels at home, he' s shattered.

Time and again this has happened and a lot of contributions that these people might have made have never seen the light. It is quite unfortunate that being just like everybody else[of course with a few extra qualities which is OK as long as they are 'normal '] is considered a sign of individuality. Till the time comes when such people find acceptance, the world's a sa dplace for these geniuses to exist in...

Till next time,
Sayonara.