WHY I WRITE – A CONTINUATION

WHY  I WRITE – A CONTINUATION

A few days ago, much after I had made my posting ‘Why do I Write?’, I came across George Orwell’s book ‘Why I write’ and naturally I was thrilled and curious as to what he had to say. I shall  summarise here some of the points that he has made, for it has made me introspect further on what I wrote.

Orwell says that one cannot assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. If he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Orwell thinks that there are four great motives for writing and they exist in each writer in varying degrees. They are:

1. Sheer egoism. A desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc, etc.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. A perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.

3. Historical impulse. A desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose. A desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that should strive after.

He adds that all writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Orwell’s words are not gospel but he indeed writes good prose. Being himself a writer he says that writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness and that one would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Though I may to a certain extent agree with the motives listed out by him, I cannot accept the statement that writing a book is like a long bout of some painful illness. In fact I feel that it is a cure for the demons that have been haunting you, to be let out. Writers may be vain but they are not lazy and who is not selfish. Regarding motives, I still ask my self why I write. Despite all that I have written it still is a mystery.

I remember I first started writing years ago and I did it because I wanted to express the feelings that were swelling up inside me. Certain events in life are life changers and one is not equipped when the change takes place. My only motive at that time was to place on record what I felt. There was no question of egoism or any of the other motives listed above. Maybe now if you ask me I would answer yes that my writing now is a combination of all those factors. I have two diaries filled with what I wrote years ago, that was when we all actually wrote on paper with a pen, of course when I am writing all this now I am on the computer. I wrote in different colours of inks, green, red, black and purple. My handwriting was very good and I took care to write down whatever I wanted to properly, so there you can say that the aesthetic enthusiasm was reflected, but for ego I had not developed enough of it. These diaries were very private and were never shared with anyone, but now I go back to them to understand my journey and to put those feelings in a more intelligible manner, which means that I am getting ready to share them and may be that is where my ego comes into play. It seeks a tacit approval of its existence

My first thought was that I should write an autobiography for I was under a mistaken notion that it is easiest to write one’s own story. But that’s where my problem lay for I found it very difficult put down the truth as it is. It requires a lot of courage to accept one’s own weaknesses and transgressions for you were going to share this and it is not easy to tear away the mask that one has got used to. Also what you write could have an impact on other people’s lives. So that’s where deception starts. I write every night after the others have gone to sleep and I retreat into my world. I pick up the pieces of my journey one by one and write them down. It is not a chronicle or a history of my life but it helps me to understand myself better. Since one has to have a goal, I decided that I shall name it as ‘An Autobiography of an Ordinary Man’. Whether it shall ever see the light of day or stay hidden only time can tell. May be Orwell was right when he said that one of the motives for writing, was to be talked about and to be remembered after death.

When someone tells you that they have started writing because they have felt the need to communicate with their innermost feelings, I believe them. But when they tell me they have torn away what they have written, for they do not want others to see, I do not understand. It is like taking back all that you have poured out, so where is the question of unburdening yourself. I would say keep it to yourself for it is a chronicle of the journey you have undertaken and that is the reality. How does it matter whether someone sees it? What do you have to hide? Of course it is very easily said than done for who would want to disturb their present state of existence and tear away the mask. My diaries are still with me and they are on my shelf, the pages are now yellow in colour but I open them, feel them and read what I had written. It is there and I do not know whether anyone has bothered to read them. It is most difficult to accept yourself as you are. But I have found that the more I accept myself the lesser burden I carry. It is as we grow older that we start shedding of the outer coverings. It is easy now since you have already lived a large part of your life and come to a realisation that most of the things that you have lived your life with are no more of any consequence.

Now when I write I do try to take care of the way I put down my words and also that I get my facts right. So I can say that I have catered to my aesthetic enthusiasm and my historical impulse. Where is the question of egoism here? Do we say that all the great works of literature have been products of the writer’s egotistic impulses? What about all the fantasy that is woven around books like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and science fiction novels, leave aside all those books which cater to our own fantasies? May be they have their own commercial value. But does it not show the fertile imagination that inhabits the minds of these people?

Orwell says that ‘Animal Farm’ was the first book in which he tried with full consciousness of what he was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

Putting aside all the motives that Orwell has outlined, I would say that writing is a journey in to our inner world and every writer in the end tries to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is his own life.  

FREEWILL

FREEWILL

On the subject of free will, a friend of mine whose interests lie in the field of quantum physics has put forward his doubts and views on the nature of ‘free will’ -

“The ability of species to make choices based on consequences could be simply called as free will. Is this free will really a choice that we make or is it simply an illusion? There is no way to know. Free will to me seems like a deterministic approach to reality. But there are quantum uncertainties that are present at every nook and corner of the universe. We as humans, I think can be sure that the free will is simply a decision that originates in our brains. We also know that the brain consists of several neurons that are ultimately made of electrons. After all, every entity in the observable universe is made up of electrons or quarks to be more precise. Let us for now take electron as the elemental particle. From quantum mechanics, we deduce that these particles are highly uncertain and it is impossible to pinpoint their path. To put it simply they are random and unpredictable which makes them non-deterministic. When the most elemental process of making decisions is based on such uncertainty, why is it that we think free will as deterministic? This aspect of reality really confuses me because it seems like the very act of decision making is completely random. If this is the case, the universe by itself is completely random”.

As I stood at the edge of the cliff looking down at the chasm below, I was faced with three options – i) throw myself of the cliff to plunge down ii)  take off  from the edge and try to fly and soar into the skies iii) retrace my path and walk away. You can see that there are really only two options for I cannot take off and fly away. I do not have wings and so it is physically impossible to do so. My physical limitations ensure that my choices are limited and that’s all my free will can do. I am therefore faced with the existential dilemma that Hamlet faced “To be or not to be” when the remaining two options confront me. As an individual, at that point in time I have to decide whether or not it is worthwhile to live. Going by my natural instincts of survival I would therefore retrace my steps and walk away despite the fact that life contains so many hardships. The main reason people stay alive is due to a fear of death and uncertainty at what lies beyond life. You may ask what about a man who has decided to commit suicide, well that is his choice. Overcome with the absurdity of his existence when reason has deserted him, he takes the final fling.

The minute a choice is made, free will ceases to exist. A student of physics will be able to correlate this statement with the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ thought experiment - a cat is placed inside a sealed box with a flask of poison and a radioactive source. As the radioactive material decays the flask is shattered releasing the poison which will kill the cat. For the observer outside, the cat is alive and dead at the same moment both possibilities existing till the moment he takes the decision to open the jar and look inside.

So free will, does exist till the point a choice is made. Therefore it is choice that is deterministic here. Schopenhauer in his ‘On the Freedom of the Will’ claimed that as phenomenal objects appearing to a viewer, humans have absolutely no free will. They are completely determined by the way that their bodies react to stimuli and causes, and their characters react to motives. As things that exist apart from appearances to observers, however humans have free will.

The fact that we make a choice is because there is a freedom to do so. Where does this freedom come from? You have the freedom to choose and what you choose becomes your reality. On the question of reality itself, isn’t it a subjective view. We have seen the uncertainty that exists at the quantum level. There is nothing deterministic about the basic building blocks of matter itself. At the quantum level we talk in terms of probabilities and that matter itself is interweaving of probabilities. Then isn’t what you see itself an illusion. The reality that you see is an illusion. That brings us back to ‘Maya’.

Will by its very definition is the power of choosing one’s actions, it is the power of control the mind has over its own actions. This is the freedom of the will. Where does ‘Will’ originate and what is it that exercises it is a question that takes us into the metaphysical domain.

However the exercise of free will has its own boundaries whether it is physical, intellectual or moral, and in that sense it is deterministic. On an individual level we are limited by our physical abilities – I may want to fly but it is not physically possible to do so. So also is our limitation on the intellectual level. We cannot choose our parents, our appearance or the environment we are born in. Our genes and the upbringing we have been subjected to, play a large part in shaping our personalities. So to that extent our life is preordained. Since no one knows the future, we can freely choose within the limitations we are bound by. We may ask whether what we ultimately choose is also preordained. In which case, we may draw the conclusion that free will is an illusion.

Einstein said that “God does not play dice”, suggesting that there is no randomness in this world. His view was that Quantum Physics does not present the entire picture of how this universe works. We have now moved away from the deterministic universe of Newtonian physics to the uncertainties of the quantum world and the existence of alternate universes in the cosmic world.

In a deterministic world everything is preordained in which case the very choices that you make are also preordained and so where is the question of free will.

A preordained world would fall within the law of Karma or simply put we may say that Karma is an extension of Newton’s laws of action and reaction – what we are today is the result of our past actions and hence we are caught up in an endless spiral of action and reaction. We talk of good karma and bad karma, reincarnation and transmigration of souls. We are born again to reap the benefits of our good karma or suffer the consequences of our bad karma. So where does free will come in to all this? It appears in such a deterministic world every action of the individual itself is preordained. Then how can we talk about liberation itself and how does the individual move towards it.

On the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna is faced with the dilemma of whether or not to take part in the battle that was to follow. His dilemma is that he would have to fight against his brethren, friends and guru and the unnecessary bloodshed that would follow. This is his agony and left to himself he would have walked away, this would have been his choice. It was Krishna who makes him realise that above all the free choices that he had was his duty to perform his actions as per his dharma or bounden duty and that as a kshatriya it was his duty to fight for righteousness. The very first stanza of the Bhagavad Gita indicates that the battle of Kurukshetra is a battle of righteousness against wrong doing. In a deeper sense it implies that the battle is also the inner warfare of dharma against adharma that each man has to fight. So we may say that free choice or the exercise of free will would depend on the self determination and accountability of the individual.

Since freedom or the ultimate liberation of the soul or the individual is a possibility, it would imply that within all the constraints that the preordained world imposes on us, exercise of free will is possible. Radhakrishnan in his book ‘The Hindu View of Life’ says that the cards in the game of life are dealt to us and it is up to us how we play with it.

On the randomness that we are faced with in the quantum world or otherwise in our life it is because we are at any point of time faced with inadequate knowledge. Our knowledge is never complete, can never be complete. Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ says “Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the developments of methods for dealing with our ignorance”.

Though we plan our lives exercising free will as we understand it, we are never free of the randomness of certain events in our lives, like Taleb says in his other book ‘The Black Swan’ “Black swans, those rare and unexpected events, can be good and bad events”.

REMEMBERING MY FATHER

REMEMBERING MY FATHER

As I sit in the shadows with only the computer and the desk lamp on, I look at the date clock it is past midnight and the date 28^th March 2013. My father died on 28^th March 1963 and today is the fiftieth anniversary of his death. A strange coincidence both the days are Thursdays. I have never forgotten this date for it changed the course of my life. I was pushed suddenly from the carefree joys of boyhood into the hard ground of reality. The images are still vivid in my mind – I watched my father collapse in front me while he was listening to a discourse on the Ramayana in the temple. Later while offering their condolences, friends and relations consoled my mother saying that he had attained eternal peace as he had been absorbed by the lord in the precincts of the temple and while listening to the Ramayana and they said ‘what a way to go!’. But was it the time to go? He was only fifty three years old when he went.

He was a simple man, well qualified and could have risen much higher in his professional life if he had wanted to. The fact that he did not was because he was a contented man. He was well liked by all those who came into contact with him and he was ever ready to help out anyone who came to him. There was a certain serenity on his face that he retained even in his death, the serenity of a simple soul, one that did not cling on to the allurements around. There is so much that I want to write about him, but I have reserved that for my private space. He introduced me to the world of books and that has sustained me through my life.

He was a deeply religious man, but was in no sense an orthodox disciplinarian. He followed what was best for him. He never tried to impose or assert his beliefs over others, even on his children. I was never forced to recite a thousand slokas and believe that salvation was only through them. He was a humanist and taught me as to how important relationships are.

I have always wondered as to how he perceived life, and what his personal philosophy was. I was too young to understand then. It is only now, when I reflect, I feel that he was detached to the extent that he did not want anything for himself but was fully aware of his remaining responsibility and that was me, my brother and sister having already married and settled down. That is why I believe he was not ready to cut himself off, when he was summoned so abruptly to make his exit from this phase of existence.

When I was twenty six years old I wrote a few lines ‘on a father’s death’ which I am reproducing below:

on a father’s death

A decade and three have now passed,

Call it nostalgia or what you will,

My mind wanders back to probe,

Those pictures that persist still.

A brief contortion of the face,

Then, in sublime serenity,

His face set in rigor mortis,

As discolouration worked its way,

In an hour he was a ghostly grey.

Now clothed in white,

As incense filled the room,

Of whispers and monotones,

He lay oblivious of all this gloom.

I had never known what death was like,

Till I saw it on my mother’s face,

But her initial despair soon petered out,

And new resolve took its place.

As I watched this transformation,

Her tears ran out,

And as she clutched me,

I sought refuge in her lap

A decade and three was I then,

A decade and three have now passed,

And my mother smiles,

As she sees my father in my face.

This posting of mine is a way of saying ‘Father I remember you. You still live within me’.

A SURREAL SUN

A SURREAL SUN

Yesterday I finished a painting and posted it on my facebook wall. This is nothing new for now I treat my wall as a gallery as I do not think that I have reached a level to exhibit my paintings in an art gallery. This painting was special for it was the first time that I painted, not from a picture or photograph, but from my dreams literally. Some people say you cannot dream in colour, I do not know. But I had been seeing a red sun with brilliant yellow skies as a backdrop. Though I do not remember coming across a similar painting I do as a hindsight feel that may be the brilliant reds and yellows in some of Turner’s landscapes or Van Gogh paintings have had an effect on me. The red sun had been haunting me for sometime now and yesterday I finally managed to translate it on to paper.

The painting does not represent the reality as we see it and that is why I titled the painting as ‘Surreal Sun’. Surreal is defined as something that is disorienting and has the hallucinatory quality of a dream, something unreal. For me it was not a question of feeling happy at having finished a painting but one of fulfilment, one of having a translated a dream. The vision no longer occupies my mind.

A number of my friends have liked it and some have commented on it and they are my art critics. A number of them may have genuinely liked it, some may have done it as an acknowledgement of my effort and a few have felt something was missing. It comes back to the way we look at art.

In my posting ‘On Quality in Art’ sometime ago I have stated that -

“Our mind functions in two different ways while trying to understand a work of art. One is the through the direct experience of the external world, i.e the immediate perception of an image and through symbolic representation i.e the image plus its mental associations”.

Some look for the details and how close a painting is to the actual subject, some look for symbols and try to fathom the artist’s mind and some are simply overwhelmed by the colours. The evolution of art has moved away from the technical finesse and religious themes to subjective interpretations and impressions. An artist as technically equipped as Picasso slowly moved towards Cubism, his way of looking at the world. Art has moved from Realism to Impressionism to Expressionism to Surrealism and so on. At one point of time it was the patrons be it the church or the monarchy, who were largely responsible for the furtherance of art. As the paintings became more subjective it was the art critic who played a major role and still does for the selling of art to the extent that it has become a commodity.

Ultimately it is you who may or may not like it, for each one has is own perceptions, like the artist himself.

WHY I WRITE – A CELEBRATION OF MY 100TH POSTING

WHY  I WRITE – A CELEBRATION OF MY 100^TH POSTING

When I was on the forty fifth posting in my blog, I suddenly realised that I would soon reach that figure of fifty. Why did that have to make a difference? I felt like a batsman racing towards his half century in the match. It is of course a landmark. Though I had opened my blog in the latter part of 2009 and made a few postings, I spent a silent year during 2010. May be I was busy preparing for my retirement and my second daughter’s marriage which took place in December 2010. Thereafter the events took their own course and I underwent my heart surgery in July 2011. It was only then, after my recuperation and subsequent visit to the US, where I spent a quite six months that I really became active. In fact it was while I was there that I found I could start writing again, and it was there I did write my fiftieth posting. At that time my immediate goal was to reach that figure. You may ask whether that really matters, I would have said no then. But now reflecting on that, I feel it was necessary, I had set myself a goal and I had to achieve it. Of course this does not mean that I had to sacrifice my credibility in doing so. I continued as my thought process was active, it was as if I was writing at a retreat far away from the madding crowd. It was winter and very cold outside and given that I was recovering I did not go out much. I spent most of my time there playing with my grandson, a delightful phase seeing the child grow up and seeing the child within me resurface. My writing was done mostly late into the night, even now it is like that. But I had the luxury of getting up late in the mornings.

It is important setting a goal for oneself, for that is what makes you move forward. It is on the way, on that journey, that we start seeing and experiencing things which we have never really understood before. You see things with a new perspective, a perspective that has been sharpened by the experiences on the way. As we travel, the goals keep shifting as new ones are formed when you reach the earlier ones and ultimately that’s what life is about. Isn’t it? I had written quite a bit over the years which I had recorded in my diaries. As I read them now, I know the path that I have travelled and look at them and know that they have been an essential part of my growing up. Now when I write, it has been the result of all that experiencing and an enhanced understanding of life.

Initially when I became active on my blog it was more an inward journey and more for myself. But a few inputs from some of my well wishers made me realise that when I write something which I place on the public domain, it has to have a certain interest to the reader. I was and am interested that people read what I write. Why, I shall come to later. My elder daughter was the first critic with whom I spent those six months. She said “Appa, you write very well but most of it goes over my head”. She used to diligently read them after all she was my daughter. Another valuable input came from one of my senior colleagues in the bank, quite senior in fact, who had retired long before, a person whose views I value a lot. He said nearly the same thing but in a different way, he said “Subbu you write well but most of it are philosophical excursions, the only thing I can say is that I like them by way of comments but that does not really mean anything. With your varied interests you should be able to write on things which the reader can connect with”. I took him seriously and changed my approach. I found in the process that I could explore all those things that I have been passionately interested in like art – painting and music. I found that slowly the number of page views increased and knew that I was now connecting. Now I record my introspections separately elsewhere.

I write in the only way I know. I write what comes to my mind with words that appear spontaneously, there is no thought behind what word I put down. I go through it for fine tuning to ensure its readability. I find that more often than not, we loose ourselves in the labyrinth of words and in the process loose the authenticity of the feeling that we are trying to record. This happens more in poetry. Like painting, poetry has also become so subjective that the reader is not able to understand what is meant to be conveyed, the images become so obscured. One cannot be a judge for ultimately it comes to the point whether the artist or the poet wants to be understood or is satisfied trying to understand his own self. The point I want to make here is that your inner emotions can be made intelligible to the reader or the viewer through whichever medium you have preferred. There is a joy in sharing, a satisfaction of a need to be understood and a need for adulation. This is especially true of any creation that is put up on the public domain for consumption.

The basic question is “Why do I write?” however there are two other important questions as to how and when do I write. There is this excellent article ‘Writing, Typing and Economics’ by John Kenneth Galbraith undoubtedly one of the finest writers on Economics and who was at one time US ambassador to India. From his vast experience as a writer he offers some tips to the average aspiring writer who may find it to be immediately practical. When he talks about inspiration, he says that all writers wait for those golden moments when they feel themselves on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. He says that he has also experienced these moments and continues to say that their lesson is simple – it’s a total illusion. They end up doing nothing because they are waiting for that inspiration. If you want to continue to write, do not wait for these so called golden moments. Galbraith adds “The best place to write is by yourself, because writing becomes an escape from the terrible boredom of your own personality. Writing is not easy and all first drafts are deeply flawed by the need to combine composition with thought. The gains from brevity are obvious; in most efforts to achieve brevity, it is the worst and dullest that goes. It is the worst and dullest that spoils the rest.” As per him “Complexity and obscurity have professional value—they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class”.

The first two points may be misunderstood, but what Galbraith is trying to get at is that the danger in these illusions is that you spend your time waiting for these moments before you sit down to write, till then you end up doing nothing. Instead he says that one better go to his typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. Do not wait for the golden moment. The lesson is simple make it a habit, set a time for yourself for your writing and sit down before your computer and things will take their course. I found the truth of this observation, for once I decided that I wanted to write I found I could do so by making it a habit of sitting in front of the computer all by myself every night. Inspirational moments occur day in and day out if you care to look around you. You cannot plan for such moments. Most of my thoughts occur while I take my evening walks along the seashore and I end up translating these in to words later at night. The result can be seen in the increase in the postings on my blog since I adopted this process. It is a ‘subject’ I explore when I sit down to write and the inspiration comes as I delve deeper into it. Galbraith also advises “My advice to all young writers is to stick to research and reporting with only a minimum of interpretation. And especially this is my advice to all older writers, particularly to columnists. As the feet give out, they seek to have the mind take their place”.

Now comes the question of why do I write. I have asked myself this question many times and have not been able to truthfully answer it. Is it because I want to get across to others so that I am understood as to what I am or because I am trying to understand more about myself. Is it because, I am seeking recognition and adulation or want to be a commercial success. It could be a combination of all these. But I know one thing, I write because I like it. I also like it when someone says that they like what I write.

I have always been fascinated by the word ‘Sublime’. For me it meant merging with greatness, an expanse beyond compare, beyond beauty, transcendental and ‘Sublimation’, the process of becoming sublime. So did I hope to achieve this through the expression of my thoughts, feelings, reactions and relationships? Was it going to be a mirror reflecting the distortions that I have failed to see, recognise and accept? That is why I named my blog ‘Sublimation’.

When I wrote my fiftieth blog I called it a celebration, a term I had borrowed from my friend Nandu who said the same thing when he wrote his fiftieth posting on his blog. My fiftieth posting was ‘A Dedication to Friendship’ addressed to all my friends who have made a significant contribution in my life. I did give the link in my Facebook page as well as in my email groups. There were not many responses or page views. Only a handful did go through it. I was naturally disappointed. I guess there were other interesting things they were occupied with. But I was happy that I got to say what I felt.

Now when I am writing this 100^th posting, I want to celebrate again and share with my friends the joy that they have given me, a joy of connection, a joy of being understood and a joy of knowing them as they are. In fact I have connected with people I have never met and now feel that I have known them for a long time. The responses that I get on my blog have helped me understand and appreciate contrarian viewpoints and have contributed to an enhanced awareness of my own inner world.

In conclusion what can I say? Though there have been few responses, I know that my friends are reading what I write from the increasing number of page views of my posts and that gives me immense satisfaction and happiness. Thank you my friends, I know that you are always there to push me on to newer goals. 

SPIRITUALITY 4 – CONVERSATIONS

Last week has been very satisfying for I have been having continuous conversations with my friends regarding my earlier posts on the subject. I could gain further insight into how each individual looks at the concept of God and religion. Each one charts out a philosophy of life to guide him through his living. What would matter ultimately is whether one has found happiness and fulfilment on this chosen path. More often than not one finds himself under a compulsion to change paths as he finds the goal receding further and further and as he understands more and more about the world he lives in from the experiences he has undergone. After all I guess the ultimate goal in life is to find peace. When you find it, there would be no more need for a God or religion.

To maintain continuity I am listing down some of the comments my friends have made on ‘Spirituality’. I wish to share it with a wider audience so that it rings a bell in their own thought processes. I know a discussion on this subject can be expected to go on and on and there will be as many opinions as there are individuals:

“Most people need the name of God, as it gives rise to hope. Hope is what makes all of us move on from one day to another”.

“God is everything that is pure and infinite. Self realization is just removing the cobwebs of Maya and dig deeper into that pure self”. 

Further there are two comments which I shall reproduce in full below because they look at it from the standpoint of scientists. It is interesting because belonging to the same fraternity of rational thinkers (I would like to believe all scientists are rationalists) they have expressed contrarian views on the subject. One is a biologist and the other a physicist,

1) "...all religions offer ‘hope’ in the form of God. That is not bad at all for that is what has bound the social fabric through the centuries." - Yes, it did, for the lack of anything better. By the same logic, we could say Ayurveda worked in curing diseases for centuries too; but this is not an argument against its near ineffectiveness in the present world, in comparison to Allopathy. In the past, we have had religions to 'explain' (not really anyway!) the unexplainable, but now, when we have science explaining so much more in a mere 4-5 centuries, so what need do we have for them anymore? 

And when I say 'false hope' I mean that it is a hope that is unlikely to help in a tangible way. Would you prefer that a person suffering from disease rest their hope in God and prayer? We know that this does not help, which is why we consult a doctor first and not a deity, when we are sick. Is it not right that I wish my fellows do the same too, that they choose an option that is most likely to help them? (And if you say, it's not necessarily a choice between one and the other, that a person can consult a doctor and pray, well, where do we draw the line then? I am not trying to make the Slippery slope argument here; all I am saying is, at what point do we say, 'X belief is okay' or 'Y belief is detrimental to a person or society'? The only consistent way to approach this is using the scientific method: Is there evidence to justify belief X or Y? If yes, we take the belief as fact, and if not, we take it as falsehood for all practical purposes.) Ultimately, we all have to strive for a more rational world because reason and logic (as embodied in science) are the only principles that have succeeded in explaining how the world works and therefore helped in bettering the human condition. Religion on the other hand, personal or otherwise, is an antithesis to scientific thought by its very nature, and consequently detrimental to humanity. 

And lastly, I agree in general with your contention that we label God. (Although I would go further and say that wecreate God!) But I think your definition of God, as someone within all of us, renders the whole concept of a deity so inconsequential as to make both of our positions indistinguishable for all practical purposes. I will accept your definition and say, what need do we have of a concept of God then, when all we need is respect and love for fellow humans!”

2) “I have been following the discussion on spirituality keenly. I am of the opinion that the idea that science can replace religious beliefs is based on the assumption that man is a purely rational being. But unfortunately the rationality of man is only an outer shell. Inside the shell he is a completely irrational being pushed around by emotional upsurges which can be traced to his animal ancestry. The modern man, in spite of his great scientific achievements is emotionally quite often at the same level as the street dogs. Evolution has mucked the human condition. Imagine the street dogs quarreling with each other with nuclear bombs and biological weapons. We are coming to a critical stage where the very existence of mankind is threatened by the scientific discoveries. 
The problem can be solved only if mankind can evolve emotionally in tune with his intellectual advancement. It is here where the concept of God and spirituality plays its role. The idea of God as the unifying supreme force brings harmony and emotional solace to man which science at no stage could provide. People who deny the need for God are people who do not have any understanding of the duality of the human psyche.

Unfortunately we are having competing concepts of God which in itself is generating strife and disharmony. But I think this will be a passing phase and synthesis of these religious concepts will take place after a crisis. I am an optimist.”

Interesting isn’t it? Though I know both of them, I am in a position to talk more about the second person who I term as a physicist. He is a very close friend of mine, a fellow banker who quit his job years ago to pursue his passion for physics. At present he has submitted his papers for a Phd in the field of quantum field theory. He has also done work in the field of Relativity.

Very significant discoveries have been made by human kind over the last few centuries, very true. As stated by me earlier the more one finds the more there is to discover whether at the macro level or at the micro level, whether it is the Big Bang or the Boson.

Years ago I read ‘The Tao of Physics” by Fritzof Capra, where he tries to reconcile the parallels between theoretical physics and eastern mysticism. Though science has advanced tremendously over the last few years, the book has still retained the interest of the readers. When one delves into the quantum world it is always an uncertainty and a probability. Fritzof Capra’s book has come in for criticism from a portion of the scientific community while there has also been appreciation. But there is one telling statement of Capra that is worth a mention here “Science does not need mysticism nor does mysticism require science, but man needs both”.

Carl Jung who is considered as one of the greatest explorers of the human mind, while he was writing of his personal experience of his youthful rebellion against the church said “At that time I realised that God - for me, at least – was one of the most immediate experiences”. In his scientific works Jung seldom speaks of God; there he is at pains to use “the God image in the human psyche.” This is no contradiction. In the one case his language is subjective, based upon inner experience; in the other it is the objective language of scientific inquiry. In the first case he is speaking as an individual, whose thoughts are influenced by passionate powerful feelings, intuitions, and experiences of a long and unusually rich life; in the second, he is speaking as the scientist who consciously restricts himself to what may be demonstrated and supported by evidence. His subjective statement will be acceptable only to those who have had similar experiences – or, to put it another way, to those in whose psyche the God-image bears the same or similar features. – This is reproduced from the introduction to Jung’s autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’.

I repeat what I said about hope that it is never false or true. So there is no question of  “ a false hope that is unlikely to help in a tangible way”. Next is the question of whether we would prefer a person suffering from a disease to look to God and prayer for a cure or go to a doctor. The answer is – of course he will go to a doctor. But that does not stop him from seeking solace from God and prayer. What happens when the doctor throws up his hands and says it is not possible to do anything further?

I guess this discussion can go on and on but contrarian views are essential for us to have a more complete understanding of the world we live in and the world within us. Science makes us understand the world we live in, what about the world inside? I agree with my physicist friend when he says “The problem can be solved only if mankind can evolve emotionally in tune with his intellectual advancement”.

SPIRITUALITY 3 – MY FAVOURITE GOD – RESPONSES TO OBSERVATIONS

SPIRITUALITY 3 – MY FAVOURITE GOD – RESPONSES TO OBSERVATIONS

I am happy that my previous posting ‘My Favourite God’ has evoked some interesting observations and I thought it would require a separate posting by itself to give my responses. The summary of the observations is as below:

1)Does it still matter if it is false hope? Does objective truth not matter at all?

2. Ignorance can be confused with courage; more knowledge in almost all cases leads to more worries (which is what God was essentially telling us in the Bible, it seems to me). Does that mean we give up trying to know stuff and 'embrace the mystery' of the universe?
3. something that cannot be defined or within the comprehension of the human mind - Yet(if, by this, you mean the universe in general, for which I presume I could say God is a stand-in)!

4) Even if I were ever to accept that there is a God, the idea that He/She/It is fundamentally unknowable seems a tad defeatist about humanity in general and contrary to the principle of a benevolent God. Surely, a compassionate God who condescends enough to bother with human affairs would also make it so that He is easily comprehensible with a minimum of effort.

I have tried to respond as per my own understanding of life, not that I am writing this as a disclaimer but because I sincerely believe that everyone has his own view of life and a code of ethics he follows to ensure a comfortable conduct of his life.

First let us tackle the question of false hope. Hope is hope, it cannot be false or true. This question can only arise only after the event you were hoping for happens. So we can never be judgemental where ‘Hope” is concerned, for once the event happens hope vanishes.

Nowhere is it said that ignorance can be confused with courage. Knowledge is without boundaries. It has always been the quest of the human to know more and more in the ‘Hope’ that he will understand the mysteries of life. He has discovered through the centuries, through thousands of years, that there is still more to discover. Whatever knowledge he gains there will always be more to be gained. I do not think that we can ever envisage the end of knowledge. If it so happens then that will be the end of the world and that is what I believe. That is why I have given the analogy of infinity. For me God is infinity and so incomprehensible in that sense.

I have stated above that man’s quest has always been to know more and more about the mysteries of the universe. The question I am faced with at this juncture is why should man at all be interested in unravelling the mysteries of the world in which he is living. He could have simply lived like other animals – hunted for food and procreated as a natural impulse. It was when he felt threatened by the furies of nature that he devised means of shielding himself from the elements and that was when he started to think of better and better ways of protecting himself. And that’s where the key word lies ‘protecting’. That is his fear of extermination. I may sound dramatic but the truth is every human being is filled with the anxiety of non existence whether he outwardly shows this or not. There comes a time when he sits down and contemplates on the futility of his existence and this happens when he is faced with a crisis – the loss of a loved one or stricken by a life threatening disease. This anxiety is recognised in the entire journey of western philosophy from Socrates to Sartre. Like you said that there is nothing wrong with labelling oneself, I agree with that and the fact that it will give rise to a discourse between groups. This is required because contrarian views are necessary for arriving at some understanding of the problem on hand. I said that I do not believe in attaching a label to myself because God for me is a subjective experience and very personal.

I believe that all religions offer ‘hope’ in the form of God. That is not bad at all for that is what has bound the social fabric through the centuries. You will agree that every individual is unique in the sense that they differ in their realisation of the potential within them, in our parlance some are more intelligent than others, so your statement that ‘more knowledge leads to more worries in almost all cases’ will be applicable to the lesser fortunate among us, let them be happy in a God that gives them hope. If we try telling them that ‘life is absurd’ and there is no such thing as God what will happen to them? That’s where religion comes in to play. Even the existentialists who believe this do give a hope by saying that we should live an authentic life. You and I will understand this as leaving something behind to make our life meaningful and authentic. Even this viewpoint, that though there is nothing beyond death, still there is an inherent wish to eternalise oneself.

That is where I talked about the Gita, because apart from trying to make us understand that the Supreme Being or Brahman, which we label as God is an all encompassing concept, it provides a code of ethics and a way to live an authentic life and it gives hope through the concept of Karma. Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in Karma or not, man’s quest has been to eternalise himself. It is only because of this urge that he creates, he discovers.

The day I discover God I shall cease to exist in this external world for I will not have anything more to understand. May be that’s what happened to the Buddha and all the other saints chronicled in the course of the history of man. Not that they stopped interacting with the world around them but set about helping others to cope with the miseries of existence in a better way. They showed the way to salvation – by this I mean a freedom from the bondage that each individual is bound by. I find no dichotomy in this and the view of the existentialists notably Sartre who says “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does”. I believe that the Buddha says something similar. For Sartre “Existence precedes essence – that is man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards”. I believe the Gita also shows the way to define ourselves.

Compassionate, benevolent or a condescending God are all labels we have given. As I understand God is as compassionate, or malevolent as we ourselves are. That is because he is within ourselves and we cannot stop believing ourselves.