note to self

Dear Mr. Saraf,
Whenever you speak, write, or think - anything with the word 'I' or 'me' in it,
pause, pause, pause,
briefly, subtly, gently but firmly,
perceive,
what that word means, implies, feels like
and from where, how, when and why it comes.

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.

Consumption - Production game, who's who?

Thinking about true cost and the story of a one rupee coin - had gotten me thinking about the dual meme nature of production and consumption.
Trying to get down to the essence of this dual meme led me to this -

The desire to desire is the consumer.

That which believes it exists is the consumed. 



To clarify - that which believes it exists is - basically everything that 'is'. I use the word 'belief' for want of a closer word - for example, if you believe 'you' exist, you are binding this concept of self with space and time, and will thus be subject to the consumption process - if by nothing else then by time (which is to say - desire operates in time-space co-ordinates - and desire being the urge for something other than what is, what is - must be consumed.) Yoga enables 'one' to free 'oneself' perhaps, by neatly transcending this dual-meme.  
What this implies in space-time terms, may be understood by trying to practice the Yogasutras.

(from somewhere in early 2008)

Existence. Science. Flavor. Manifestation. Shit.

The food we eat, derives its flavor from the by products generated during the process of its growth. Meat derives its flavor perhaps from the subtle salty compounds that were formed as it was being metabolized. Uric acid like stuff and so on. It goes the same way for plants and fruits. Existence is thus perhaps a guarantee of imperfection, as it is a waste product of a process - the leap from byproduct to waste-product being a subtle and easy one, if purity is defined in terms of pure energy that is unbound by time. Although ayurveda makes a good distinction between 'mala' and 'dhaatu'; from the perspective of yoga, anything that is not pure energy is 'mala' like or actually perhaps non-existent. Not just meat and plants ... but I too derive my flavor, my 'fragrance' or 'vaasanaa' so to speak, from how I transform all the food (sights, sounds, thoughts ... plants...) I consume.

So ... manifestation is impurity(in the strictest sense of the word).

Manifestation as we see it is the result, a by product, of a manufacturing process.
Where the pure is separated from the impure. The essential is separated from the non-essential.
Which also brings to mind the word 'science' - that field of human endeavor that is enamored with classifying and separating ... the word root is the verb sciere (L. to cut) which came from proto indo european, perhaps skt. - skheid- from whence scissor, schism, schizo- also come. And also shit.

shit (v.)

O.E. scitan, from P.Gmc. *skit-, from PIE *skheid- "split, divide, separate." Related to shed (v.) on the notion of "separation" from the body (cf. L. excrementum, from excernere "to separate"). It is thus a cousin to science and conscience. The noun is O.E. scitte "purging;" sense of "excrement" dates from 1585, from the verb.

(from etymonline.com)

This holds true even for the manifestation (also in the sense of avatara) of some of the very highest principles known to Hindustani people. Vishnu had to be incarnated (to be born in the flesh) again as Rama, as a result of a curse (as given in the first chapter of the yoga vasishta)

This is perhaps also the origin of the concept that we are all born in 'sin' i.e. we are a W.I.P (work in progress) ;)

Manifestation is shit. At some level. ;)
So is science.
And so is flavor.


(as always, standard disclaimer applies - all words are lies to some extent or the other on the index of reality.)

you may think that I'm religious ...

... but what do you think religion is ?

Religion is a set of metastable answers to important, difficult problems ... that help hold things together. (re+ligare: ligare = to bind together, also the root of 'ligament' etc.) The THINGS that these answers hold together may be the body, the mind, family, society, hell - even a company, a team within a company or a software architecture for that matter. Religion is a metastable supported version of an OS ... to ensure sustainability. This is a word bog though - but that is as close as I can come right now.

I have not accepted any ready-made answers at face value. Some of my most pressing concerns aren't addressed by religion - our scriptures come very close (the newest release being done by Gautama Buddha perhaps.) But words have limits. It was my intent to take a sabbatical from IBM last year, to try and discover the nature of sustainability by studying the ancient Indian scriptures - for this has been a thoroughly researched concept - and apply the essence to modern, current problem sets.

This was just before unsustainability hit unexpecting me - at all possible levels.
More on unsustainability and my findings in a later post.

Adding the comments to the main post - since they are really a part of the post and don't show up by default.

Transcending Reality said...

A belief system which can prove to be a binding factor. A means for peaceful co-existence. Its not an answer, rather means to find an answer. Its good as long as its followed in moderation. I guess its something which you do when in solitary. It has to be truly personal. Seeing the turns, religions take in today's world, I am better off without it. I find it redundant anyway. Causes more problems than it should solve. Whats worth a try would be to stuff like what the 'secular' Turkish government had done..ban sporting hijab in public. haha Ask me the same question a decade later and the answer would be: "I would regard it as a disease born out of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." - Russell - Lucretius ~chetan

July 06, 2008 12:34 PM

mojibake - previously kilocoder said...

actually not a system of beliefs. But a set of principles responsible for binding. Peaceful or not. Like a set of principles that govern a system. If your body exists right now, it is because the system obeys certain principles. If your university exists as an entity - that is because there is an implicit framework that is responsible for it's existence. Religion is almost a synonym for existence - sustainability of any meme complex is necessary for existence to continue. What we see in the world is a massive dissociation between words and what they originally meant - this is exactly what I was talking about in the post where I said I lost my belief in words. You have a religion whether you believe it or not. You may not know what it is. The fact that you exist still - is proof enough of the fact that there is something holding you together. By the time Lucretius and Co. decided to see it as a disease - they had already gone far far away from what religion means. The religion I have in mind is not a set of imperatives to be followed by people. Yoga is personal. Although, yes - it is admittedly easy for a yogi to 'get' the 'cepts of sustainability. (Everything in this world has a timestamp.) Not to be confused with Dharma - 'iti dhaaraytee sa dharmaha'. Dharma is pervasive. Where anything is held together - dharma is responsible. And the principles that govern it are not personal. Where dharma is not - there will automatically be dissolution. Be it a body, a company, a family ... If you can abstract out the essence of sustainability - then you may begin to consciously apply it. (It is of course possible to do it without understanding and being conscious of it - just as great artists don't know WHY they are great artists) Now - the application of the principles of sustainability cannot be done by force, by edicts, by rules. We all know how that fails - bad managers, dictators ... To be able to manipulate the data structures in the human mind - requires a great deal more juice and subtlety than that. To establish a 'dharma' is no mean feat - if you ever see - in a small company - a person - perhaps the owner - with a great deal of 'juice' ... you will see a person who can and is in the process of establishing the dharma of his company. This is admittedly easy in a small group. When the company grows - it is not too much of a wonder when the values of the company can't be passed on the the last guy in the chain by the CEO. It just ends up being some files somewhere - or a mission statement on a desk - easy and boiler-plate enough to be forgotten. To transmit dharma - is almost like transmitting heat or light - through a physical medium. It does not happen through symbols alone, although they help.

July 06, 2008 4:11 PM

the story of a one rupee coin ... true cost ... and why I am not a financial analyst.

True cost.
What is the true cost of me working in a large company ?
My salary ? My time ? My health ?

Suppose I earn just one rupee a day. Just one coin.
Now I spend that coin on buying what I like, or on a cause that I think is worthwhile - say I feel that people who write and search for knowledge and truth should be supported. So I buy good books. With that one rupee coin. That same one rupee coin now goes to the fellow who wrote that book. What does he do - he does a similar thing. Say, he likes music - he buys a CD with that one
rupee. The same coin - the same one rupee coin moves a million times. Everybody gets what they want. And thus wealth is created. So says economics. Money moves. People get what they want. Everybody is rich. WAIT. One coin moves a million times.

One million things are made. consumed. production and consumption. A million times - the raw material is .... the earth?

energy that comes from the sun? The earth is a largely sustainable meme complex by itself. But one coin moving around a million times introduces changes a million times in that meme complex .... changes which people like you and me, people who

create technology and consume it can only begin to faintly comprehend ... the earth is not INTEREST. It is CAPITAL. (If at all it can be talked about in such simple words.) So ... do we SPEND CAPITAL in order to become wealthy, or do we re-invest a part of the interest (if there is such a thing) back into the capital and consume the rest, and in this case - CAN WE ? wicked loop ? yes?
just one rupee moving around a million times!
For a moment ... forget the ecological implications and the wealth creation aspect.
Say ... I spend one rupee on buying books (or something that you currently deem worthwhile) and then, say the next one million minus one people use that coin to gamble, smoke, drink ... or basically on destroying sustainable memes
(because I CURRENTLY feel that one of the best ways to be human is to participate in and create sustainable meme patterns and complexes - fight entropy (and a new child is just the default apex of what we are hard coded to 'create' ... an anti-entropy genetic construct, a family is the social anti-entropy construct ... and so on) ... but my mental model seems to be constantly refined and altered. And the edge ... the END of what thought as a system is capable of doing, as a tool is capable of creating is almost visible... that is another story)
so ... then what is the true ethical cost of moving one rupee through the 'market' a million times ?

It is possible to consider this as an academic question, and it is possible to be HIT IN THE CEREBRAL GUT by it.

In my case it was the latter.
And ... I closed my CFA books.

A subconscious understanding of the above was the reason I asked girls who wanted to marry me in the year 2005 - 'Will you be okay with the idea of us living only on say a couple of thousand rupees a month?' Most of them gave me funny looks - if this fellow can and probably is earning close to 30 or 40 times that amount ... why would he think of this! :)

We truly no longer know the true cost of anything. And neither do we really know what we really need. :) So ... shinier, stronger, bigger, faster ? more, more, more ? WHAT ? WHY ? The greatest of corporations, the best of our scientists don't seem to have an answer to what we SHOULD need. In the absence of that answer, they just compromise and seem to accept the easier convergent problems. Dangerous. Even more dangerous - they persuade everyone that the problems that they work on - the convergent ones - amenable to the tools of technology and science and rationality are the MOST IMPORTANT problems, and people who don't become scientists or engineers are generally not intelligent (this at least, seems to be the case in my hometown in Pune, India ... and all the most refined brains are sucked in by the Engineering profession)

This post is history. Last year. I have some answers to the difficult questions posed now. Not very easily expressible through words. Words are too mechanical.

If you don't 'get' me - you will call my words 'psychobabble'.

(ever wonder WHY many things speak louder than words? MUSIC ? and silence ? and silence backed with LOVE - even louder? Actually there are even more powerful methods of meme transfer than words and direct action. Parable that comes to mind -
when Ramana Maharshi was asked by a person - 'Why do you live here in the Arunachala mountains - when you could be down in the villages DOING SOMETHING!' - and he replied something to the effect of 'What in HEAVENS name makes you think that direct action is the most effective method of creating change, and what makes you think it is necessary!!!!')