Practicing Universal Love

 

Gentleness in speech gives you self-assurance. Kindness in thoughts makes you insightful. Benevolence in your actions copiously produces love.

Your near and dear ones constitute the first step in your journey on the path of love. They are there to make you taste its fragrance. Your passion, commitments, responsibilities and duties to the immediate people in your life are the tangible proofs of the unseen, innermost core of your compassionate being. The journey from particular love to the universal love is your destiny. And of course just like any other goal, it can be practiced methodically.

Rumi says we are born of love; love is our mother. Definitely we are! We just need to remind ourselves of this ultimate truth as much as we can. This fundamental existential fact is most prone to be forgotten under the impulsive, incidental, circumstantial and instinctual insinuations of life’s spin-offs in our day-to-day tumbles. It simply helps to remember it. Try it for some time even in the most testing areas of your life, where you find yourself surrounded by biting dogs and hungry wolves. You will see the results earlier than you expect.

Albert Camus took it a further and found love to be his sole duty: just to love. Well, long before we start taking love as our duty, we start taking it as our right since childhood. But then the momentum continues late into our lives. Little do we realize that it makes the life system too lop-sided. So balance it out. Learn to accept love as a duty also. And love and duties pooled together make it a huge sea of humanity.   

Martin Luther King, Jr. decided to stick with love finding hate too great a burden to bear. It’s time for we lesser mortals to take to love. In any case, we have got too used to set targets and go after them systematically. Practicing love is no exception. Setting up a goal and persevering to achieve it is almost the primary aim of the modern man. So there is no harm in appearing to achieve a stage that is always there inside all of us. Well, if that makes us feel like achievers, nothing wrong with that. It makes us feel proud. It’s better than so many other vanities of life. 

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. cautions us never to forget the three powerful resources we always have available to us: love, prayer and forgiveness. Believe me brothers and sisters, these are the most potent faculties in human personality. Name a thing that they cannot achieve? There is a subtle and diligent art of keeping love, prayer and forgiveness by your side.

The Fallacy of the Ultimate Truth

 

All of us have felt the heat of the very same age-old nagging clash between religion and science, both sniggering at each other, claiming to represent the absolute truth in their own ways. The religion finds it to be a formless and attributeless experience. The science, on the other hand, goes into a direction, where everything has to be logically qualified and calculated to build up hypothesis, and take us to the inviolable, flawless and irrefutable knowledge, the final frontier of logical understanding, i.e., the ultimate truth.

The problem here is that there is no fundamental entity to define the absolute truth. Whatever you think is your own invention. All we have is the cyclical transformation of multidimensional interplay of matter/energy transformations. It has infinite possibility for the things and phenomenon to be interpreted the way one wants, provided one takes orderly, sequential steps in a specific direction to invent a temporary truth, a little halt, on the energy highway. It’s a multidimensional infinite canvas, on which the scientist can draw the lines with the brushstrokes of logic and reasoning to invent a picture, just like a painter does on a two dimensional canvas. Now, just because the scientist builds a hypothesis, it doesn’t mean that he has arrived at something that was already there, existing in an abstract form to be explored exactly in the shape and form it has been found now.

The scientists are driven by a dream to reach a know-all stage. However, the more they try to know, the more they realize that the sea of the unknown has in fact expanded instead of appearing to shrink. It is just because there is no limit, no fundamental confines that will help them to gauze the extent of their reach, and feel happy about the extent covered and congratulate themselves over the less remaining domains to be covered.

There is no such thing as absolute knowledge. All we have is an approximation of the apparent facts, gathered on the basis of the level the researches we have attained. However, these attempts to understand the reality enable us to build laws, hypothesis, theories and calculations that help in channelizing the flow of energy in a closed set to ease our survival. It is mere resource utilization, just like any other species is doing at their level.

In the absence of a fundamental entity, the only recourse left is the mystical way of experiencing it. In the absence of any entity like the absolute truth, you cannot know it. If you cannot know it, you cannot say or express it, and consequently you cannot prove it. The endeavor to prove something draws on the presumption of some fixed entity. Therefore, the only truth is that there is no fundamental, absolute truth against which we can measure, evaluate something in the terminology of right/wrong. If at all there is any reality beyond all supposed truths, all our versions of approximations, it is there to be felt and experienced in totality. One pale version of truth can be the experience of that totality in which nothing is permanent and everything is getting transformed into a self-evolving pattern. In this cyclical transformation, there is an infinite possibility for things to be visualized and interpreted logically as well as illogically.

Now they say that Newton is proved wrong because his gravitational laws don’t hold in case of black holes. Einstein is holding for the time being. However, in future Einstein will have Newton’s fate because the platform of understanding and approximation will take a shape where you need more than what Einstein has offered. It only proves that Newton is not wrong. At his level, he perceived and interpreted the evolution of things and phenomenon around us. It had its practical uses and brought us to Einstein. How can you reach the right destination, i.e., Einstein, following the wrong path, i.e., Newton? Therefore, it’s beyond the concept of right and wrong because there is no ultimately fundamental law to prove one right and the other wrong.

It’s a cosmic pool of infinite possibilities, where you create your reality, your truth that practically holds on a little stage to help you and serve you like your mother serves you dinner. You systematically move in one direction on the basis of certain presumption, and even expectation, because the genesis of scientific theories lies in certain assumptions and acceptance. It is the seed of scientific approach, like a banyan seed, out of which the freshly minted version of self-forged truth sprouts forth. In fact, it’s just a fluid and expanding pool of approximate knowledge and information. There is no such a thing as truth. The set of knowledge that serves us the most, and consequently, turns dearest to our heart becomes our ‘truth’.

As the transformation of this energy is going around, we use our logical portion of brain to create a ladder on which we first fix one step then another and then still another. You reach a conclusion. This is your own self-derived knowledge, which you accept as truth. It gives a satisfaction that you have arrived home. We humans need to have fixed targets and hence this obsession of taking transient knowledge as truth, or at least the path to the final truth. So, on the highest step on your ladder that you have built so far, you proudly look around and reach a conclusion to view your knowledge as truth. All this is your own invention, not that it was something existing in abstract for someone to come and find it. You have created a little hatchling of truth from the open-ended possibility impregnated in the cosmic womb. The problem arises when we take our efforts as the nearest representative of the last truth possible.

Someone, moving from the same point, but in other direction, can have a different approximation of knowledge, leading to a different version of truth. And mind you, even that would have served us, differently though, thus giving rise to a totally different picture of reality from what we see it now. So it proves, it is not necessary that only this picture was possible where we have reached. We have this picture because the best brains visualized it to be this way. Those who proposed otherwise somehow fell short in painting or forging their version to be accepted as a hatchling of suitable truth.

It is thus an infinite cosmic river having the multidimensional interchanges of energy transformations. We are just like a kid sitting on the riverbank, scooping out a bit of water on the palm, and thinking I have captured the seed of the ultimate essence of things. We use our scientific inventions to scoop out a bit of energy from the ever-flowing river of energy for our transitory purpose on the basis of certain parameters in a closed system, which holds like our house weathers against a storm, and use it for individual and collective comfort and convenience. These little pieces of forged truths, basically knowledge packets holding for the time being, are the mere means of convenience.

Absolute truth doesn’t lie in a corner in the cosmos to be reached by building specific linearity in the flow pattern on the basis of little portion that we can see. An ant sees a far less fraction of this world than a human being. So in case there is a far more evolved intelligence, having multiples of senses than we have, it will definitely have a broader view of the flow and the consequent usage of it. Their forged set of knowledge, leading to their truth, will be different from ours.

Our attempts to define the ultimate reality are simply like drawing tiniest straight lines on the periphery of a circle having infinite diameter. Now, a straight line is an attempt to simplify the path, to understand, to have a view from this horizon to that. It may be convenient, but it cannot replace the total essence of the infinite arc of which it’s a mere part. The straight line bears a direct corollary to our scientific pursuits. You just create a specific linearity on the basis of self-observed, in fact, self-created laws—not that they exist as such in neutrality; these could have been interpreted some other way also. For example, you may have a night-centric civilization. On our planet earth, the nocturnal world is a minority; who knows, under a separate set of self-created knowledge and understanding, you may have a busily buzzing nocturnal world, where during the day you have just some exceptions hitting the ground to play their role.

All we have is an ever-pregnant possibility for things to adopt shape on the basis of concerted efforts that go systematically. There are all the elements that can be picked up, like Humanoids in case of earth, to reshape the channelization of this energy in a particular direction that later on establishes itself as truth in that little corner. It’s futile to treat this tiny endeavor at approximation of knowledge as the path to the ultimate facts about the laws of existence. It is beyond right or wrong. It is only about at what level a particular set of conscious beings harnesses the waters of that cosmic pool, which is ever getting recharged by matter/energy cyclical transformations.

The nature has provided us two spheres in the brain: the left portion for logic and the right one for emotions and aesthetics. Just because a scientist channelizes his logical creativity to hypothesize a picture, it should not be accepted as having a copyright to hold the beacon to understand the ultimate truth. The scientists say that they have to prove everything. How can you say that the aesthetic part used in creating something is off the mark? There is hardly any fundamental difference between the left and right approach. In one case, you want to hurtle on the cemented highway to reach the destination, while in the other you take a slow-paced recourse on foot across the countryside. A painter in using his aesthetical tools to paint a picture is just like a scientist using her logic to build up steps to understand a bit more about the cosmic web. The canvas in the latter case has infinite dimensions, out of which one can draw, with focused pursuit, x, y, z dimensions to paint a picture of practical reality.

On the other hand, the aesthetic creator of a different reality formulates her visualization using a softer version of reality that is pliable without any hard boundaries. Here also there is hardly any criterion of right or wrong. The best portrait born of an utmost concentration and a mindless scribble have their own standing in existence. Just because we find one better than the other doesn’t, in any way, mean that it is nearer to the absolute truth. But yes, it may be closer to a human face and that qualifies it to be a more acceptable version of truth. The art forms have changed from mesmerizing natural portraits to the contemporary abstract art. Can we define each other according to their relative terms to praise one as right and the other as wrong? Similarly, the pursuit of science cannot also be termed in a language like Newton was wrong and Einstein is right. The simple fact is that now we see a bit more from the self-created ladder to look at the interplay around.

The quantum physicists now accept that at the tiniest levels deep inside the apparent things and shapes around, the basic building blocks of this overall transformation aren’t permanent, fundamental entities. These basically don’t exist as they appear on the superficial level. Lot many realities surface once you have the onlooker on the scene. It gets defined in a way, more or less, where either they have convinced themselves to be, or where, on the basis of the ‘perception platform’ they stand upon, they are able to take out a little sip of meaning from the hubble-bubble fluid having many more possibilities of being logically defined, just like these set of people are doing. Just like a painter using the aesthetic energy with the help of her artistic sense, the scientists also create a different version of painting with the brushstrokes of logic and calculations. This picture is always open-ended. It is never closed and framed to contain the nutshell of truth. Its one end is always open to include the reframed shots later on. It’s a book of endless canvas sheets. There is infinite possibility to draw your portrait as per your knowledge and understanding and, of course, the systematic and institutional support.

Other intelligent forms elsewhere in cosmos must have contrived their own set of knowledge, not necessarily matching with our calculations. We create knowledge, not that it exists there to be explored and retrieved. This is the beauty of this ultimate law, that you can contrive smaller self-sustaining laws. The research is only about building the pool of knowledge and information, not discovering something that abstractly existed, waiting to be explored. It’s just one set of apparent reality fabricated with the help of individual and joint abilities to project their understanding on the screen full of infinite potential.

This basically is an infinite screen, where we can project our own set of realities. The one that gets maximum acceptance to serve the highest of the lot comes near to shake hands with the so-called truth. And there is no limit to this filming. It can go forever. We can hardly afford the luxury of having this feeling that OK this is the final point and beyond this, there is no possibility of creating more viewpoints out of this cosmic fluidity. This fluidity has infinite dimensions where you can, propelled by the best brains among us, create a picture, a set of knowledge that we treat in terms of being near to truth or otherwise. It holds as long as it serves us. It allows that incessant flow to be molded and channelized in a way so that it takes a suitable form. So the mystics just emphasize on ‘experience’ instead of ‘knowing’. The best way of using logical creativity lies in the use of resources, instead of seeking the final frontier of truth.

Aren’t we merely a bit more sophisticated apes in our language and contrivances to use resources to survive? They do khee-khee; we have a bit more distinct, sophisticated khee-khee. They use resources within a clump of trees; we do the same over a bit broader stage. There is hardly any qualitative difference. So truth as such is not human-centric, just like this existence isn’t. It simply cannot be. All the species have their own truth forged by the best brains and brawn across their generations. So all the debates and words, books and scriptures fall flat when it comes to represent the ultimate truth. Simply because there isn’t any. All we have is an ever-shifting stage. We try to gather foothold on this shaking stage and that momentary stronghold, enabling us to stand and survive, appears like an imprint of the ultimate reality. Words can get anything under the sun except conveying the so-called ever-sought ultimate truth. These can pacify ego, bestow commendable oratory, can help you build an impressive career in corporate, politics or as a social reformer, but they hit off the mark when they claim to have a copyright on the ultimate truth. Simply because there isn’t any. This statement itself might come nearest to the biggest truth.

Now, we have lot of issues about global warming, destruction of flora and fauna, forest fires, and more and more problems. We are scared that earth may not remain suitable for humans anymore. Existence is not bothered about such issues. However, we are entitled to be anxious about it because we have created it. It’s natural for us to hold this wish to stay at the level where we have evolved to. It’s a pleasant nostalgia. Dinosaurs are no more by the way. During their time, they also ruled this planet. Hope you get my point!

When the mother planet no longer remains suitable for maintaining our current physiognomy, the primordial flow of energy will take recourse to introducing artificialities into the human system so that it copes with the changed climate. When it becomes totally unsuitable for the mankind to survive here, it will take recourse, with the help of the further use of this interplaying energy in the infinite pool of resources, to further building on all the groundwork that has been done to paint a still bigger picture of reality, enabling the humanoids to settle on other planets. To mother existence, it hardly matters that in this little corner of the cosmos, where some particular, incidental cyclical transformations have resulted in this type of temporary screen on which the mankind is playing his self-created picture of approximate knowledge.

Even if earth gets blasted suddenly, simply its matter/energy will be sucked into the cosmos. It will spread across the quantum field. It may get clumped with other celestial bodies. Will it even make an iota of difference to the biggest picture in the cosmos? To us, of course, it matters, as it means a sudden swipe at our reality that has been forged over millions of years generally, and particularly during the last few thousand years when the mankind took more concerted efforts to forge a truth that is humanoid-centric only. However, on the cosmic scale, even now many stars are breaking and new ones are getting formed. Does it concern us?

You move methodically, you build your hypothesis, use logic, equations and calculations, all this while moving on a ladder that you have created. It’s not that this is the only path that could have been chosen. Just because you are moving in that direction, it doesn’t prove that it is the only path. You can reach the summit from all around. Some channel appears more convenient, the pre-existing suitability leading to a momentum building up, some initial steps walking over the grass, leaving foot-tracks that later turn into paved broad highways of our advancement. Nonetheless, there are adventurists also. There truth lies in scaling the peak from the most treacherous and risky path. So just that a sense of safety helps you arrive through the so-called conventional path, a commonly accepted approximation of knowledge passing off as truth, it cannot deny the existence of titillating paths for many whose priority isn’t merely the safest path. They paint their picture in totally different colors. It means that the present picture, as we see it, wasn’t waiting for us to come and make it what it inevitably was supposed to be. This transient energy could have been molded into other realities also. The selected brains, who can forge the picture ahead, will continue doing so from the platform of the already done work. But all this has nothing to do with the absolute knowledge, the self-sustaining, self-surviving, self-holding and ever-shifting ultimate picture. Somewhere in the ever-pregnant womb, we just cash on the tendency to paint a stable picture, carrying the genes of the ultimate law, to create tiny field channels to water our fields to survive. So this mere fight to survive ought to be avoided from being termed as the path leading to the absolute truth.

The mystics feel these traces of intuitive wisdom and emphasize to sense and experience it. The scientists say, no we have to understand it using our logic. But logic needs words, and words are incomplete, contrived by us only to convey what we see and perceive, so the debate turns endless, and will remain open-ended. It only proves that there is no final point to be reached. 

Finally, of all the humanoid churn-outs from the infinite broth, the emotions bordering on positivity, love, care and compassion are the brightest gems. They define the soul of our entire endeavors to paint a better picture. Hold you paintbrush confidently. You owe it to mother existence to contribute in forging a better truth. 

 

 

A Peek into the Misty Fluidity of Life

 

It’s a small book, this world of ours, having still smaller layers after layers of canvas and each one having the potential to give a glimpse of the ultimate truth. There is a glance of the ultimate truth at this dawn in my village. On the infinite canvas in the sky, He, the ever-creative artist, paints one mural after the other, gives a fleeting vision of the ultimate truth, of transience, of ever-transforming shades. The creator does not hold onto the fleeting shades. He allows these to dissolve into newer and newer frescoes.

The marvelous fluidity keeps on unfolding unmindful of the Angry President thousands of kilometers away. Like a pissed off kid raising a ruckus about going to school, an angry Trump skipping lunch and cancelling his Denmark holiday. Not being able to purchase Greenland, the future's prime location and the present's last hideout for mother nature, to change its status from nature's estate to real estate, I hope there aren't broken windows in the White House. An angry businessman is scary man! It's understandable, there can't be a bigger loss for a businessman. My sympathies with him for his mood getting spoiled. And God save the dining set, bedside mirror, housekeeping staff and even officials in the office. All of us are mother earth's kids. But the tantrums of the fattest bully among the famished mass of we poorlings can be very testing. I pray to almighty that there is a surge in President's business to make him forget about the loss!

Well, all this happens to be inside the mightiest place on earth, the White House. Let us come down to smaller places. A somber dawn of faded blue, grey, dark, pale orange and rusted silver opens up new vistas of agonies and ecstasies. Nature holds the ultimate copyright on colors, shapes and phenomenon. The lanky lad/lass—Parijat—stands with elegant pride. Well, with painful pruning, which hurt my conscience and his/her body as my pruner did its job, my friend will at least won't blame me too much after looking at himself/herself. A fantastic tree model he/she appears. A gorgeous adolescent! The nutrition of monsoon season and my jimmying instructions have put it on the path of developing a well-chiseled tree body. He/she appears like a tautly proud and confident NCC cadet. All the best! Grow to be a firm soldier against pollution and ecological degradation!

A few yards away, there blooms the story of love between a thorn and a rose, a sort of monsoon wedding. The husband, a prickly, stern, hard-wooded acacia; the wife, a mellow, soft, delicate, juicy, attired in heart-shaped leaves embracer Giloy (Tinospora Cordifolia). She covers her beau's hardy ruggedness. He spreads his tough self for her soft, supine creepy love notes to climb high and kiss airy swirls of the monsoon season. All of us are just parts of a larger beauty, mere contributors to a bigger picture. No life stands in isolation. All are contributing characters on the largest canvas where colors, shapes and panorama keep moving in a circulatory fluidity, giving rise to stories, anecdotes and episodes. Feel the mammoth river of life flowing around your apparently distinct self. Spread your wings. Enlarge your vision. Broaden your heart. Embrace more of life and living. It gets you freedom from the chained self imprisoned in narrow confines of illusions and ignorance. It melts the block in the smooth flow of life and living. Claim your liberty!

Among the excited nuptial ceremonies, on the same tree, a little story of an abandoned nest tugs at the time’s sleeve to catch attention. An abandoned home waiting for mother nature to dissolve it into a different shape. A masterwork of tailoring by the tiny tailorbird by stitching three heart-shaped leaves of the climber wife to make a cozy home. The interiors have strong webby framework of buffalo hair and cotton. How do I know these are buffalo hair? Haaa haaa! I do! We know them with more familiarity than even our own crop on our head. Grew as we wallowing in the village pond where buffaloes swam, defecated and urinated with an utmost sovereign ease. Haaa haaa! I can even recall the taste on my skin, including the tongue part—sorry to disturb too polished tongues—as we played in our aqua playground. Well, leave it, coming back to the little abandoned home. A little sugary sweet lump of love and care arranged this texture. A new life flew out successfully, as I myself bear witness to at least one hatchling taking on to its first flight out of the tiny cluster of trees. So the sweet home will be dissolved, recycled and change to a new pattern. It's a long and winding story to the ultimate home dotted with little, little temporary shelters where love coos in finest, delicate most tunes.

An abandoned nest cannot steal the entire show. A few inches away, the time stands struck to the ultimate cocoon of the penultimate camouflage caterpillar. A case moth, a camouflage caterpillar, is on its leaf-eating sortie. This chap makes a silken cocoon around it and attaches tiny twigs around it. It then moves like a little cylindrical wagon of firewood. Amazing! But, of course, the poor leaves have a different tale to tell. Well, he should not be deprived of such hardworked breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner all put on the same plate. The noisy babblers though happen to have this feaster on their own lunch table. The cantankerous kings of the quarrelsome birdie world make lot of noise while undoing the protective wood wagon and gather their own food from something that was gathering from someone else. So, now the case moth has a sorry tale to tell. Ask the babbler. It definitely will have many of the same genres to tell. Well, this sad touch in the story is simply our mental projection created relatively to a so-called happy touch. Beyond our mental projections, there are simply stories in nature, cyclically interweaving their threads to make one singular entity, the ultimate case moth, the final camouflage.

Wait, before you decide to flip over this section, another little character is performing on the ever-busy stage. It is a cool late August morning and a lot many hominids are having hasty breakfasts before catching onto the bandwagon of survival through the day. This little Indian yellow wasp, unfortunately maligned with a pinching adjective ‘stinging’, is not breakfasting on the dry bark of this dead Marwa plant.  With the unhurried ease of an artist, it’s scratching away little bark crumbs to use these in making its paper carton galleries to lay eggs and start the process of life from its end. In the slow-paced, unhurried smaller world, they use pollen crumbs and dead bark pieces to build their umbrella-shaped nesting hives, the little galleries to shelter eggs.

Well, it’s a sad tale from colonies to couple; from booming, buzzing colonies to sad, solitary couples. Earlier, during the times when they stood a chance to freely stand and play their part smartly, or when the mankind was not too imposing, they thrived in colonies and valiantly defended their citadels. The days are gone. The human heart has shrunk and his pest control arm has expanded well beyond his home and hearth. It now covers every nook corner of earth. So the colonies are out of question these days. All you have is just a wasp couple sneaking like thieves and set up a little nest in some inaccessible part somewhere around overhangs, porches, eaves, attic corner, barn, porch shed, some abandoned ceiling, railings or doorframes. More than the artistry, it is about the theft of temporarily stealing a little space somewhere. Just a tiny bulb of nest and a few eggs. All that is left of the maligned stinging nest. A little unbecoming projection at the risk of being swatted out by the gentlest touch of a cobweb cleaner.

There will be many who feel like rapping my knuckles for speaking for the stinging wasps. Well, do they sting for pleasure? Let somebody come barging uninvited into your bedroom and then watch your own sting. Just because you hold man-made papers of the property, it doesn’t justify your sting, just like it doesn’t the biggest wars for land and resources on earth.

Nature has a place for them. They pollinate flowers and control many insect species. Now don’t look at the insect species controlled by the wasps as the primary villains. They in turn must be controlling something else. In the two-way scheme of things, every species receives something in lieu of what it gives back. We have but turned the tables. We have re-calibrated the natural instinct to give back also. It’s a mad rush to take as much as possible, without the willingness to give back anything. No wonder, we have raped mother earth. With newer and newer techniques to plunder resources, we are giving back long, long tragic tales of ecological degradation, extinction of species, wars, diseases, strife and unrest. Well, the list of our give-aways is endless on the negative side.

The Mother

 

Vivian Richards: “Test father, One Day mother and T20 their children.” One of the greatest cricket players of all times has a big point here. I but beg to differ a bit slightly, or may be not so slightly. My common man’s corrected version would be: “Test mother, One Day father and T20 their children.”

Test is the genesis, the prolonged furnace in which the real cricketing destiny is forged. So shouldn’t Test be called the mother? Given her soulful contribution, bordering on the most selfless version of love seen in nature, in formulating a new life, involving selfless emotional and physical donation before the conception, and later in the form of irrigating the new seed with her own blood, and still later with 24 by 7 care and concern, when her own individuality melts and takes the shape of that little vulnerable life, doesn’t she stand closer to the prolonged cricketing game of agonies and ecstasies spread over the five day version of the game? So Test definitely is the mother! I have no doubts. Ask mother earth, how much of divine stillness and poise is needed to allow a new seed to sprout from its earthy womb!

Father is the One Day version, definitely. He is moderately rash, adventurist and huffs and puffs for a day. No wonder, his contribution might seriously come close to only one fifth of what a mother does for her children. No insults meant for all the fathers out there. Kindly have a close look at the story of your children’s rearing up, and you will realize the mothers have been out there like slowly smoldering warmth, keeping the tiny shapes alive with the prolonged glow of her care and forever-existing duties. Fathers have a privilege of playing, tiring though, swashbuckling one-day innings and hot blizzards of fiery spells of bowling and rolling dives in the field. It has but its concurrent fun, this play of brawn and show of spirit. But the classic contours of a mother’s travails are spread out over a broad time and space continuum, like some elegant tussle at the Lord’s on some autumn evening. Her efforts touch the horizons and mix with misty insignia of godliness.  

Well, no issues about the children being the vagrant, rampaging, arrogant, disobedient, running off the line T20. Effervescent, unorthodox, fiery, revolting, as many mishits as hits during the funny adolescent idiosyncrasies. We can spare our words from elaborating on the evident jocularity.

Life: A Virtual Bubble of Consciousness born of Matter/Energy Transformations

 

As per the classical mechanistic model of physics, they assumed this universe to comprise matter and empty space beyond. This approach was basically born of looking at things in exclusivity, strictly defined by separate boundaries, i.e., end of one and the start of the other. But if things were so exclusive, how would the lumps of matter scattered in the universe interact, and get into a transformative process, across the barriers of empty space in between?

Further researches convinced the scientists of the existence of a zone of interaction, the buffer zone floating between matter and emptiness (as they visualized space then) in the form of electromagnetic and gravitational forces in the empty space. The latter were taken as mere ripples (or effects) of the matter floating in the emptiness of space.

Then the quantum scientists went ‘within’ and more and more ‘within’ into the supposed solid, indestructible wombs of particles. Layers after layers of the once solid particles were peeled off, only to land at flashes of energy at the far end. The solid matter turned out to be mere clumps of energy. More importantly, the empty space, hitherto supposed to be the medium for electromagnetic radiation and force of gravity (presumed mere effects of matter) turned out to be the same extension of the quantum field, which manifests as matter in the areas of high energy clumps. So it leaves us with one entity: a quantum field where energy is getting transformed cyclically.

So now it’s accepted that it’s just singular energy field involving infinite lot of virtual interchanges of subatomic particles giving rise to cosmic blizzards. An infinite potentiality of transformations and cyclical handovers from one state to another, just change, no give, no take, no loss, no gain. It’s merely a recurring makeover of energy in the universe in which the apparent matter (in the form of dense cluster of energy) simply happens to be a transitory stage. The present cycle of the universe began with the big bang to continue expanding till the big implosion, the cosmic crunch, only to go round and round like an endless journey along a circle. Simply a cosmic heart beat, with the beat interval of billions of years.

Like an infinite circle is composed of little series of straight lines, similarly this cosmic multidimensionality also comprises definite patterns of linearity, not in the strict sense of straight lines but in the definiteness and specificity of patterns. A circle is merely a clump of numerous straight lines across its periphery. Similarly, the cyclical transformation of energy in this mammoth circle cannot just go randomly. Its basic building blocks have linear patterns in the directions of evolution.

Suppose there is rainfall on the slopes of a mountain. Under the law of gravitation, the water has to flow down. It cannot move up or stay where it lands. So gravity is the superior law defining this particular process. It has to flow down or at least retain its tendency to flow down if there is some obstruction. In that case, the tendency takes the form of potential energy. So each and every ounce of this existence is simply a manifestation of one energy transforming into the other. The moment water moves down, the potential energy changes to kinetic energy, which goes into changing into many types of actions that are a result of the movement of water.

Now raindrops fall randomly. However, the process later on cannot remain on the same scale of arbitrariness. Here things acquire a shape. The water coming down acquires stability over a period of time after the initial moments of chance and arbitrariness handed over by the falling rain. It stops at obstructions, takes recourse and very soon, without any choice and prejudice, as per the supreme law of self-sustained spontaneity, establishes a little water channel. Many such individual channels make a rivulet, and many rivulets go into making a mainstream, which cuts its valley where its initial turbulence is changed into an effortless flow in a broad winding stream during the mature and old age.

Same is the course of flow of energy streams in the forms of apparent matter (clumps of energy at specific frequencies). The supreme law is that the net energy is zero, and to have zero you can have countless, infinite plus and minus components, balancing out each other for a zero net result, like at each stage you add and subtract the same amount. You are at liberty to have infinite interplays. So under the supreme law, it has to flow in cyclical transformations. Visualize a circle and try moving your finger on its periphery. There is a journey without end till you get tired. However, your getting tired or losing interest in continuing with the job is no benchmark to set up an ‘end’ to the journey. The path still stays with its potential for infinite movement.

With our limited sense perception, we have a linear, fragmented view of things and phenomena. To make things tangible to us, we need to have a straight line of cause and effect, a simplifying linearity, which presents a convenience to help us in running our tiny world. However, in a cyclical transformation, the movement is endless without net loss or gain. It’s the same set of energy moving on and on. The apparent diversity of the matter is simply due to the existence of different frequencies on the path of transformation.

Now this energy also cannot transform randomly. It has to develop a pattern over a period of time, just like water falling as raindrops over a slope cannot flow randomly forever and finally acquires suitable channels given the geography. Its freedom to flow under the force of gravity also gives it a duty to acquire a definite pattern over a period of time, so that it adapts to the platform of its action, that is, the terrain, and becomes one of the parts in the holistic scheme of self-sustaining ecosystem. Similarly, the energy transforming itself under the supreme law of cyclical transformation acquires a shape, a pattern, a design, a specificity, or a definiteness with the passage of time. Like the random drops acquire an order in the form of stable channel over a period of time, this consciousness evolving through matter/energy transformations in a particular direction turns into a recognizable entity, a flow, a spontaneity.

The flow of matter/energy in one particular direction gets a distinct shape in the form of individual species of animals, trees, birds, reptiles and much more. Take for example Homo-sapiens. It’s merely a flow of matter/energy in this precise direction that has acquired a particularity after cutting down its path through the choiceless spadework on the terrain of creation. The choicelessness itself hands over the reward, where it appears like there is some freedom of flow in a well set course.

In the case of humans, the flow of this matter/energy over the path of its passage has ingrained certain characteristics, just like it has for any other species. That repetition, that linear ease for a smooth passage, gets imbibed as the genetic pool in the DNA to give rise to a species, a temporary but tangible part in the passage. The milestone but stands notified as a species. Most importantly, selfless love is the propelling force behind the emergence of this species-specific distinct course. If you have and doubts, kindly closely study the extent of parental care undertaken by each and every living being to ensure the survival of their little ones on this planet. You will understand what I mean!

These millions and millions of distinct courses in the form of manifestations of energy, apparently linear, are the constituents of the big circle of nothingness. However, in this ever-shifting play, the evolution of a definiteness, the cementing of its course, facilitated by the so called gene pool, is tangible as a species- or genre-specific collective consciousness primarily. It defines broad identities like humans, birds, animals, reptiles, etc. The simple fact is that in one particular direction, the flow of matter/energy allows the pathway, like the water channel does for the random drops of rain, for the propagation of a particular species. The overall, tendency that allows this choiceless emergence of such patterns is the cosmic consciousness. The supreme awareness facilitating the establishment of patterns in continuous flow is the ultimate law.

Now just like water in the collective consciousness of an established course, i.e., river, comprises many water molecules, the collective consciousness of a particular species also comprises numerous, individual particles of consciousness. Again under the simple law: the whole is just an assortment of parts; the part is merely a miniature of the whole. So the individual consciousness also ingrains its identifiable characteristics within the collective pool of that particular stream. In humans we call it the karmic imprint. It’s an assortment of the processes and stages passed in the early stages of the journey experienced by one individual consciousness.

Like a well-established river course is not inclined to take a sudden recourse, the divine momentum in an individual consciousness also makes it inclined to retain its course. Particular consciousness is just the set of an individual course within the collective course of a particular species, the latter itself being an individual consciousness within the super-sea of cosmic consciousness. It’s the self-evolving program running the hardware of energy transformation processes.

These countless strands of individual and collective consciousness, comprising the overall cosmic consciousness, are mere virtual fuel-tanks facilitating the cyclical transformations of energy. Where does the feeling of being human, the set of our seven sins and the set of so called positives at the levels of emotions, stand in these energy transformations? Take a small example. A neighborhood woman has very nice emotions for my mother. She sees my mother outside the house and as usual having a good feeling for my mother shows concern for the wild growth there. She has seen a snake there, she tells. This information is born of her concern for my mother’s safety.

I catch the notes of care, concern and fear. I decide to go out once their chat is over. Yea, there is wild growth. The snake must also have been there. But where will poor snakes go if not in wild growth? This earth itself was a big clump of wild growth. However, we have turned it into a well-managed house. Where is the place for lesser species in mankind’s well-decorated house?

Anyway, there is something more important here as I cast an apprehensive look. I have been thinking of planting peepal and banyan plants for some time. I have even sown seeds for it. No germination. A huge disappointment. What comes most easily to nature becomes almost an impossible project for us. Lo, I see a small peepal there. My day is made, I feel so happy. A beautiful emotion born of care and concern in a woman triggers my little walk to the place and I see the most holy plant in Hindu and Buddhist system of belief.

A bird ate a fruit somewhere and dropped its bird-drop and there grows the uncared peepal, which won’t grow despite best of my efforts with the help of internet research. Her good emotion for my mother sets in motion a chain of events that will help in a story that started with a bird eating a fruit to the planned replanting of a nice tree and my emotions born of my individual consciousness involved in between. Isn’t the so called ‘individual consciousness’ merely a virtual fuel to facilitate the cyclical transformation of energy around us? 

Like I have hit a jackpot, I retrieve the gems from an abandoned, broken flower pot in a mossy corner overgrown with wild grass and weeds. With the rascally muse of a treasure hunter, I salvage these two tiny Peepal tree saplings from the disused flower pot overgrown with bunch grass and weeds. Here I scurry like a squirrel to plant them safely in separate sapling containers to nurture them till they become boys from infants and then give them the freedom to grow wild and manly.

You try your level best to grow Peepal from seeds. The odds are always against success, at least to an amateur gardener like me. I have experienced it to a salty taste on my tongue, the taste of failure. However, a bird eats some fruit somewhere and eases its bird-drop here in the flower pot. By the way, it must have been attracted by the little patch of wilderness. Guys, here I am going to claim my share in the scheme of things because my proneness to let things take their course, without poking my nose too much into it, must have played a big part in the evolution of this untidiness here. The birdie adventurer must have come to eat grass seed or some little insect lost in the deep forest. Then finding it a safe corner, eases itself also. That's how mother existence creates its pathways for its march.

How does our individual consciousness become a channel for this pattern's evolution? As we have already discussed that the streamlined awareness across a particular trail lays down the path for the evolution of species, phenomenon and various forms of matter. Most of the times, our emotions, born of the interplay of our consciousness and the external world around, become facilitator for this evolving pattern.

I like gardening, so I create a bit of space for the expansion of universe in my little corner. I am also prone to see things going on their free way. It thus creates the space for a small circle of wilderness in a corner where it won't be otherwise. Further, this little space of wilderness gives a pathway to mother existence to sow a seed of potentiality, which is filled up by a bird's dropping. The prospect grows within the small confines of a disused flower pot. Now from this point, it's someone's emotion that will help it in moving towards the next hierarchy of evolution. Like I take the saplings from the abandoned pot and replant them separately. They need tending like little infants. Again awareness and emotions fuel that care and prospects. These will be then replanted in the wild.

The beauty of being humans is that we can consciously create positive pathways for mother existence to move forward on its march. Guys, choose to be aware and conscious of creating a positive pathway for the bigger benefit of all. That is why we have been given this ability of being aware of our consciousness by mother existence. Create space for universe to expand positively. Love is the ladder to the destination!