Wednesday, November 16, 2011

dreams - random verse

When I lived for a year near the mountains of south Japan, mostly being, and teaching a group of schoolchildren on weekends, a friend told me that I was living out a life that was her dream. (Actually she was living a part of one of my high school dreams (we were studying German) - (to excel at the German language maybe complete a PhD and live a quiet life near a lake, teaching German to the people in Germany.))

My life, it seems,
a dream,
for someone else,
I seek out, my own.
Is what is,
is what it seems,
or by me, it is being shown.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Spirituality is perhaps not a choice.

Question from a friend:
I read your blog,
but they are increasingly spiritual, so tell me whats up

Response:
Spirituality is perhaps not a choice. :-D But both of them are tricky words.

Words can be gooey things, slippery, vague and nebulous - but sometimes strong, each being stuck with a whole cloud of ideas, meanings and intentions. The subtler and more generic the word - usually the stronger it is. But we must work with what we have. Hacking (reality hacking?) through the layers of shabda - artha - rasa - bhaava (spoken word or even lower, written word - meaning - emotion - intention) to identify the spirit/identify with the spirit.

For a photograph to exist, light is not a choice.


-email thread with an old friend




Sunday, September 04, 2011

to the (most probably very very few) readers of this log

I have not been writing much.

I am obsessed with that, which I believe I do not possess.

(I have been obsessed with creation, timelessness and seminality, systematically eliminating the time-bound and trivial.)


I experience that, which I believe is not a part of my being.

I know that, which I believe I have no experience of.

I express that, which I believe I have still some doubt about. (this reminds me of a sentence in ZATAOMM (zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - R. Pirsig -- "No one is running around yelling that the sun is going to rise today! " To express something fanatically, there -must- be an element of doubt. )

I talk about that, which I believe I do not entirely know.

I have found myself talking too much, and have started noticing sometimes that it reminds me faintly of my ignorance.

Hence the desire to integrate - being, possesion, knowledge, experience, intent, desire, meaning, and finally expression. 

All this is perhaps just a play of words.

Perhaps ... hence the silence



Saturday, September 03, 2011

A million new romances

If I am alone, and must be a part of this world
I will become the sun
and I will marry the earth
I'll love every single one
person, animal and thing,
caressing them with my rays
impregnating them with my vitality
creating new life
with just a few glances,
every day - a million new romances.
 - yearning, from miquelrius journal late 2007

Sunday, August 07, 2011

dear 'kaahi bolaayche aahe'

Dearest "kaahi bolaayche aahe" (On speech - http://www.blogger.com/profile/00580929730887756405),
Ataa bolNyaachi shakti parat aali aahe. :-)
You seem to have closed down your blog.

If your're still reading this - I know -very- few people do, perhaps only the few people I have shared my copy of the patanjali yoga sutras with some time or the other.

Ye na bolaaylaa aataa :)
mail id: aalhad@acm.org

Monday, June 06, 2011

Prime mover memes. Principles.

Yesterday night, I asked my father some questions -
  • Why has 'God' (even evolution - if that happens to be your God. Social evolution(?)) created both, forces like fundamentalist terrorists, as well as Mahatma Gandhi ? 
  • Is it possible to act truly as an instrument of a God meme? I will not now act of my own will. I dare the creator of this space time dimension-space I find myself in, to enter 'me' and act directly; a stubborn child, I refuse to now act on 'my' own.
  • How does one differentiate between 'Gods' will and one's individual will?
  • What are the biggest gears, the prime movers that lie at the root of this space-time complex? 
Possible answers that struck me while I was sleeping. In reverse order:
We must first define the framework for what we are trying to understand.

The prime movers - the big gears that drive this space-time complex

This power to effect change is proportional to the extent of alignment one has with the memes that lie at the root of this space-time complex. To summarize my understanding (backed by intuition and experimental verification to varying degrees, of the Yogasutras of Patanjali - beginning with my reading of a photocopy of a study of the sutras by IK Taimini, sometime during my student days during engineering school and my stay in Alandi.)

To summarize:

Meme a: Satya - Truth
What alignment confers: realization, materialization of one's intent
Extreme alignment: utterance or thought that is out of sync with this space-time complex or reality is impossible. What one speaks, thinks, conceives -must- come true, for not only is that being incapable of thinking or conceiving or dreaming of a falsehood, it is verily truth itself that continually speaks, acts and sees through him.

Meme b: Asteya or abstention from theft
What alignment confers: freedom from a sense of lack of anything. Wealth flows.
Extreme alignment: Nature cannot let such a being experience a 'lack' of anything. The whole universe is at ones disposal.

Meme c: Aparigraha or non-possesion and abstention from greed
What alignment confers: Freedom from ties in this space-time complex - things, ideas, thought, belief... knowledge and action is possible across larger and larger expanses of time and space.
Extreme alignment:  Knowledge of the past, present and future, of the seeds of desire that flower into manifestation through threads of matter woven across time. Patanjali posits that one may gain knowledge of the past, present and future lives of one's self. (I guess, self as a function of (x, time, space) for larger and larger and larger values of x, time and space as the self of sense expands.)

Meme d: Ahimsa - non violence
What alignment confers: There is no obstruction. Action will progress without hindrance from any force/any one.
Extreme alignment: The being starts creating an atmosphere around self, (self(x,space,time) for larger and larger values of x,space,time) where violence and enmity must cease to exist. All beings, even animals are sensitive to such an atmosphere - as many trainers would testify - the animals 'know' they won't be hurt.

Meme e: Brahmacharya - continence. Of speech, thought, action, being and also of the most refined, the most seminal representation of our essence, the ability to create and procreate.
What alignment confers: creative force is available at one's disposal.
Extreme alignment: Tremendous creative force - to create anything in this spacetime fabric. create(x, space, time, matter, thought) for larger and larger values of x, space, time, matter and thought. At the very extreme, create new 'seed meme complexes' like this one.

See and create, unhindered, across unlimited expanses of time and space, using every or anything - in this space-time complex, with a guarantee of materialization of intent. This may perhaps be a good definition for 'God' hood.


Some side-notes on the prime-movers:
These memes are vehicles.
One starts by aligning oneself with them, by 'boarding' these meme vehicles.
Once this direction is fixed, one witnesses the beginning of a 'transcendence engine'. 


One must know where to get on and get off and when to press the accelerator, when to stop, rest or just enjoy the view.
And either discover newer, more fundamental meme-vehicles, or create them.
This is where 'the middle path' is important. As you start nearing the destination, and hit a point where you need to get off (transcend?), the duality of the vehicle becomes apparent. Mahatma Gandhiji rode the vehicle of non-violence to a point where his very existence was the highest form of violence for people who believed in violence as a vehicle of change. Summary: The middle path is safe. Skill is needed. Your mileage may vary. 


The vehicle becomes the driver. The driver becomes the vehicle.
After a point, no conscious driving is necessary. The vehicles or principal memes take charge, embed themselves further and start driving the person. One need not try to, or 'speak' the truth. One becomes truth. Truth starts using the person as a vehicle for expression. 
 
 God's will, individual will

These large forces drive smaller forces,
all lying within them,
and they in turn have smaller still,
and so on ad infinitum

All these memes have dual kinds,
For consciousness they dance,
Riding vehicles of matter, Desires in their arms.
The strongest memes are what we call God
This massive dance is Mind
(But -why- the heck all this goes on,
I am yet to find.)

These meme-dancers will go out of Time,
without non-dual love to bind 'em,
their matter-vehicles will sink into primeval slime,
with no consciousness to find 'em.
(adapted the Siphonaptera for the first verse.)

By this definition everybody is God(x), to an extent. And these memes and their duals(for it is a matter of degree - not of quality - like in the last statement in this post.) may be considered as 'God's' will. This might be the basis of a statement often heard in India  'सब ईश्वर की इच्छा है'.

Fanatic fundamentalists - follow what they see as truth strictly, believe strongly in a code of ethics and are thus 'driven' and have varying degrees of power.  Sometimes they ride the dual-meme-opposite of non-violence and thus are bound to face varying degrees of opposition and are limited in the amount of change they can effect. Only if terrorists would -experiment- with riding the vehicle of non-violence, I wonder what could be possible. But then when that happens, when the + and the - start seeming, becoming alike, we would perhaps be close to the beginning of a new space-time complex, a new set of prime-mover-gears-meme-set.


Further questions:
  • What is it that makes these prime-mover-constructs so powerful and seminal?
  • How is a sustainable, emergent value system and a desire system engineered?
  • How does one engineer such a system, a new set of prime-mover-gears, like the yamas outlined by Patanjali are for -this- space time complex.
i.e. How does one play God(x,self) for sufficiently large values of x and self.
 (a very small value of self - would be for instance, expanding ones self when starting a new family.)

:-D

Usual Caveat Lector applies.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Optimal learning

After a long break, I have come back to using words.
:-)
 If one masters the ability to enter a state of single pointed focus, the ability to focus ones desire to a laser sharp point and the ability to see what needs to be done i.e. vision - I used to believe that the purpose of formal education has been served.


Learning is an interesting and fascinating phenomenon.


One of the questions I had was - how does one achieve this one pointed focus at will?

The Patanjali yogasutras offer hints as to how this process occurs.

shraddhaa veerya smriti samaadhi pradnyaa poorvak itareshaam.
Patanjali's yogasutras (1-20).

Shraddhaa - loosely translated as faith. It begins with belief - with faith. Faith in the teacher, in the subject, in the process of learning. Faith provides the "wetness" necessary for union. (between teacher and student, between student and subject) In a teacher-student situation, without faith, there is dryness - resulting in "dry dis-course" that is a painful boring 'one-way' process. 


Veerya - this can also be translated as utsaah or enthusiasm. Faith leads to enthusiasm - (enthusiasm comes from en+theos from Greek - literal meaning - to be filled with God) and the being of the student is ready for union with the subject, for learning.

Smriti - Enthusiasm leads to past experience and knowledge being brought up into the memory cache, ready to be recalled at will, thus providing a firm foundation for learning to occur.

Next is samaadhi - or union with the subject of study, a state where one pointed focus is achieved. Nothing else except the subject exists.

This leads to the awakening of pradnya - a state where after the subject is assimilated into ones being, the blossoming of wisdom results.



( 'poorvak itaresham' - this sutra is referring to most normal people, and not those who have been talked about in the earlier sutras - those who have already achieved the ability to enter 'samaadhi' at will.)

shraddhaa->veerya->smriti is one of the pre-conditions for achieving one pointed focus. Hmm.

Wherever there are gaps in this chain, sub-optimal union with the subject at hand and thus learning might occur.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Refinement ... food

This desire to go beyond what is, slowly morphs itself into the desire to live the best life possible, a search for best practices. A process of continuous refinement. This process of refinement reflects itself in various ways. Including diet.

In Japan there is a special kind of diet called shoujin ryouri. If you are a vegetarian in Japan, then you'll be glad to know that you can enjoy shoujin ryouri at most Buddhist temples and some onsen (hot water spring bath inns)


The word shoujin is made of two characters. Shou - "refine, essence, spirit".
Jin - "advance, progress".

The word ryouri - loosely translated in English as "cooking" is composed of two characters "ryou" means material. And "ri" means "logic, arrangement, principles of right and wrong. 

There is a tacit recognition of the fact that all matter, everything that exists, is 'food' for some force or the other. All material is food. Cooking is the process of arrangement of material according to logical principles of right and wrong.

However, material may be arranged to reflect refinement, so as to bring out the essence and to progressively aid the advancement of that refinement. The principles for doing so have been identified and are embodied in "shoujin ryouri".

-miquelrius journal, end of 2008