Journey to the Abstract

After intense probing on different questions, it sometimes appears to me that, if you strongly look for a particular pattern in reality, you end up finding it. And this applies to almost anything. That is why it is probably said, for psychic powers to function, belief that it is possible and that you can achieve it, is the foundation. Almost anything I examine, for example greatness, light, brightness, sound intensity, intensity of emotion or feelings, state of mind etc. all of them derive meaning from their opposite which means opposites such as evil, death, darkness, silence etc are equally significant. Every event’s meaning is equally intertwined it its opposite. So you can find significance in almost everything. In absolute terms, every event is equally significant. It is just society that has created this game or dream.

Even in quantum mechanics, a lot of phenomena are related to the observer observing them. The whole physical world itself is an illusion and it is said that even our bodies are actually a condensation of our thoughts, emotions, spiritual condition. The movie “Peaceful Warrior” is an awesome movie for the purpose of insight. No moment is insignificant or every moment is a manifestation of divine intelligence.

A strange thing is happening. The more awareness and equanimity im bringing in from moment to moment, the more im feeling I do not know anything. My thought process itself is continually warped by my moods, diet, situation and environment. I seem to be more objective at times and subjective at the others. Even in those sporadic objective moments, I can see that I have a lot of beliefs that are still holding me back and that there is room for even more of it. I feel the wall of my ego in the forehead and middle chest that is protecting me in some way. It seems to serve a deep purpose, something which I cannot fathom yet. My chest feels like a huge pit that wants to be filled. Whenever I long for things, the pit gets even deeper and begs me to do actions that fill it.

What do I trust now? I cannot trust my senses, feelings, thoughts, beliefs. All I can do is be open, vulnerable, helpless – maintaining equanimity and observe. The only thing that seems to be constant is me observing. Not the pleasant/unpleasant moods, feelings, sensations etc. Everything else seems to be highly dynamic and fast. Too fast for me to hold on to, process in my working memory and understand. Its like a flowing river on which we impose this illusion of control. I used to believe that insight would make permanent changes. In a way they do, but these changes are usually subtle just like when you just hit the gym, your muscles pump up and then come back to their original size. So insight itself might be a state of mind which I cannot hold on for too long in this flowing river.

There is this illusion of significance in society and standards for defining yourself. If you do not conform you stand to lose A LOT w/o identification. Without people to relate to, the energy level drops by a huge amount and you just start feeling lifeless and purposeless. Why cant every moment, action be equally significant if that is the truth? The irony is that you simply cannot make people think that way since it is just too ingrained. I’m fortunate to have explored this aspect and unfortunate because I cannot amplify and grow those feelings with society. Society is like a bonfire and I’m like a single candle. I need much much more energy. I need to create and need to be heard. I want to identify and amplify. This is lonely and low, I don’t feel alive or important. My behavior and feelings are manipulated by the my perception of the people around me. I don’t seem to have much control. Its like the feelings work at a more fundamental level which I wish to tap or control. I think the problem is something at the belief level. I believe that other people are somehow right no matter how many intellectual games I play with myself. It seems like I derive my formula for survival from other people. At some level, I’m simply overwhelmed by the expectations of society and I want to rise above it. I find ways to escape and to preserve my sanity by exploring topics that are extremely broad in the clouds. I live in the clouds for a while and then I’m dragged back down to the ground where I get disoriented among all the other settlers. I need to master survival at ground level and then only i can move up to the clouds w/o worry.

Something feels like these problems which I faced in childhood are simply not going away. The exact same problems are festering me in different problems. I was under the impression that they would go away as I grow up but they seem persistent. I need to really observe harder and extract the blueprint that is causing these problems. With awareness I can clearly see, patterns repeating themselves. The completely different situations just masquerade the same underlying problems. Along with identifying them, I need to simultaneously work on them because I could spend a whole lifetime just understanding. Deep understanding itself would eliminate almost all the problems but maybe I could work on the ones that impact me the most first and then actualize it.

I want to be heard, understood, respected, revered, loved. I want to inspire, motivate, energize people. I want to belong at least somewhere. I want to be instrumental in helping myself and others reach their true potential in the purest sense. I want to understand things truly and pass it on. I want to help others and be part of win-win situations and get out of this scarcity mentality.

I think the reason for all the forms of communication we have today is because of this subjective reality each one of us lives in. That is probably the origin of art too, which tries to express things and feelings that are beyond verbal and mathematical languages. We are deeply interested in knowing what it feels like to be another person. We innately want to be one with everything. Sex probably comes the closest to feeling one with another human and imagining what it feels like to be them.

Verbal and written languages were created for this purpose. There are probably around 6000-7000 known languages in the world. Then we have art which always supplemented these to express the more elusive. A day might come when technology can recreate the mental/emotional states we experience. I wonder if language would even be necessary in that case. Maybe as shown in the TV series “doctor who”, satellite 5 episode, we could just access a portal of all shared experiences logged.

1. Casio CT 636 – for 1yr – 4th Std – (1996)

2. Yamaha PSR 510 – for 1.5yrs – 5th Std – (1997)

3. Yamaha PSR 630 – for 12yrs – 6,1/2th std – (1997 to 2011)

4. Korg PA500 – for 1 year – 2012

The smell and sounds from these keyboards contain a deep element of nostalgia for me. I wonder what would give me the same sense of wonderment and excitement today. Since it was purely instrumental, the sounds directly induced a mood in me with no verbal thinking. A direct translation from music to feeling. The sounds from these instruments had incredible variety and though I’ve heard over 15000 songs by artists in the market, the sounds from these are still totally unique.

While watching movies etc., I cannot seem to generate a “feeling” of attraction towards all the typical idols people have in their minds. For e.g..: Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox etc. My thinking mind would look at their proportions, skin texture, facial features and conclude that they are beautiful. But surprisingly, I would get no accompanying feeling of sexual attraction. In other words, I just believe that they are sexually attractive but do not feel the sensation. I can appreciate white women aesthetically, but I just don’t get the tingle of sexual attraction. Considering the fact that I usually feel attraction only when I see girls face to face, I thought if I saw them in real life things might be different.

Now, I am here in US. Everyday, I see people from different races, Asians, Americans, Mexicans and Europeans who have almost perfect bodies, but I do not feel the attraction. Its almost like I’m looking at aliens/wax dolls. I feel absolutely no connection. I haven’t been able to relate to anyone here beyond a superficial level, be it emotionally/physically, this could probably be one of the reasons. The boners seem to have minds of their own, driven by biology.

I even wondered if I’m racist, but then I guess sexual attraction has nothing to do with racism. As long as we don’t consider our choice to be objectively more beautiful than everything else, it would not be racism.

Firstly the term ‘highest’ is vague by itself. Highest in what aspect is the first question that comes to mind.
The different forms might be:
1. Painting/Visual art
2. Music
3. Mathematics
4. Verbal
5. Body language
6. Communication through our energy fields(maybe involuntary)
7. Love

The more I look at the nature etc. it looks like there is nothing such as good/bad etc. Each person actually lives to the best of his knowledge and understanding at every moment. The problem is not of morality etc., it is simply ignorance and the state of consciousness.

For example: Take the case of a man killing another man in society. People call it murder and probably place it as something that is supposed to invoke the most guilt.

• What if we study the neurobiology of the person who murders? 
• What would you do if you have to choose between killing yourself and another human? 
• What is you are brainwashed from childhood in a way that your goal is to kill people from the neighboring nation and that is the greatest thing you can ever do? 
• We kill all kinds of insects, is that not murder? Just because society doesn’t consider it wrong?
• Hunting is legal for people who have license and its a crime for those who do not. Isn’t that killing too?
• If a man kills someone, he is executed by society, isn’t that a counter murder? 
• When war is launched against some country the military is authorized to kill the soldiers from another nation, isn’t that killing?

The more I analyze it, the more I feel, morality is just a construct of society. Society has a law system to get rid of outliers who do not fit into the system and challenge its values such as security. Society I guess was primarily created for humans to live together in harmony. But while defining your own morality and to gain deep understanding, this is something you need to aware of.

Suppose you see the color red. What exact happens in your mental state. Maybe, to understand this, we may need to look into many fields such as Neuro-biology, science of perception etc. Now supposing you concentrate on this feeling of looking at red strongly, you can augment and enhance the feeling (neurological activity increase shown in the diagram). Maybe consuming a hallucinogen drug would do this w/o any effort from your side. So understanding the mental state change and holding on to it to understand it may be a part of meditation.

I sometimes wonder, to solve any problem or to really satisfy a desire, we need to rise one level above it. We need to work towards a higher goal where the desire becomes a subset of it. That makes the accomplishment feel more effortless and you usually get more than what you even asked for.

For E.g.:
Desire: Want to be a helpful person and appear that way
Higher Goal: The goal would be that I would help any person who comes by to the best of my ability, taking into account the situation and myself, expecting no reward. The only reward being the intrinsic one i.e. the mental state in the moments of doing the help.

Desire: Want to move up the corporate ladder and gain respect.
Higher Goal: See the company’s higher mission and see its principles find any resonance in you. Do the work to the best of your ability w/o expecting immediate reward. The reward should be intrinsic i.e. the fact that you are doing the work with the most attention possible using the best of your ability is the reward. Whatever may be the work, there is infinite scope for improvement at greater levels of subtlety.

Desire: I want people to read this blog and appreciate me and find a new found respect for me.
Higher Goal: This blog is for inspire people to explore new ways of thinking and find new freedom and directions.
Even Higher Goal: I am writing this blog to share the evolution of my thinking w/o any judgment of right/wrong/good/bad. I want to share my life’s journey of this form of contemplative thinking. It is for this intrinsic desire to share my thoughts. Rest of the benefits are just added luxuries.

In colloquial terms, a man of principles is operating at a higher level in terms of his goals. If you notice, as one goes higher up in the goal ladder, the goal becomes less time oriented and more related to a state of mind. The goals also moves more towards permanency. It starts of with the external world and then the higher you go in terms of goals you reach the internal. Usually, as you move towards intrinsic, the external becomes more of a luxury. Its like you would get 70% satisfied just by the intrinsic reward. The remaining 30% can come from others’ appreciation and respect and its more like a luxury.

Look at all the great people like Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vince. Their level of thinking and goals were fundamentally different from what we can imagine. That is why they say, if your goal is only to win a Nobel prize, its unlikely you will because a goal like that simply does not have have that much energy.

Extending that logic, as you get move towards intrinsic, your energy to accomplish the goal becomes tremendously higher. I think the highest goal might be complete self knowledge, a permanent state from “moment to moment” and the goal may just simply be “self actualization at every moment” (maybe words cannot really convey this, just an attempt). This also explains the other proverb “Higher the goal, higher the energy”.

As you take up higher goals, the number of people available to identify with would decrease. For most people, their goals are mostly from getting from point A to B and they don’t really care about “Why”, they just know it at an extremely superficial level.

In other words, you shift your reward feedback from external to internal. Ultimately external reward is an illusion. All reward comes from within. The external system is just a catalyst. The problem is that, we don’t know how our internal system works. Its more like a black box. So we depend on external systems because they are tangible and more directly understandable. All drugs work on already existing chemicals/mechanisms in your brain and create those unique states.

Why do most children enjoy playing games? Even plenty of grown ups enjoy this. However I’ve often noticed that people in their mid-career quote “Ohh gone are those days when I used to play games. Now I’ve far too mature and developed to enjoy those things. I am embroiled in real life issues now. No more games”. This answer amuses me. Life itself is a gigantic 4-D simulator. The game of life and PC/console games mainly differ in their level of abstraction (to put it mildly). Even when we move from 2-D to 3-D space, the amount of complexity added is unbelievable. Just think a 2D plane consists of infinite lines in all directions. A 3-D space consists of infinite 2-D planes in all 3-axes and in infinite angles etc. The level of complexity added at each dimension is just mind boggling. That’s why probably the game of life is so compelling, its unusually difficult to identify that it is a game. I think the reason is the attachments we have to things that prevent us from seeing the real picture. That’s why detachment always helps in uncovering more and more objectivity in things and maybe reach a state where you are able to spot this illusion. Like a fish which slowly gets itself out of the water into air and when it gets back it realizes that “IT IS IN WATER”. The other fish would simply think nothing else exists besides water because everywhere they go, that’s all they find. I think that is probably the moment of enlightenment when you perceive that all the things that you think are so different are probably all from the same source. The formless, shapeless, nameless.

It is like an ontology where relationships are figured out between seemingly unconnected entities. The whole evolution of the semantic web basically tries to link everything together in some way as a web and add meaning to all the information floating in the internet.

I think identification with form is the illusion. Our subconscious minds think in images and our conscious mind thinks verbally. Both of these need to be transcended to break the illusion. At a more micro level, all we seek are mental states. We are attached to a lot of them and we spend our lives constantly trying to recreate them.

This ‘source’ may be impossible to explain in words since words are just an abstraction. The entire human language is just a system of abstractions of the real thing and it is still evolving. There is great scope. The next leap could be telepathic communication and even in that, to what depth it is possible etc. leaves huge potential.

Thus, once the source is discovered, everything emanates from that and therefore nothing is unconnected and you can truly understanding anything. You would know the a level of subtlety far far beyond norm taking you into another world. “Nothing in the world is absolute”, because the very instruments (our senses and mind) we use to observe can only uncover a tiny part of reality.

Look at these ontology diagrams for an analogy of what I me:

Can you ever really understand the relationship between A and B in the external reality(red portion) without understanding the internal part of it(blue portion)?. If you look only at the external side you might think they are very distinct entities totally unconnected. This could create strong dualities. For eg: (Good, evil), (pleasant, unpleasant) etc.
Would you call that true knowledge of A and B?

The total connecting paths are:
A to B = ACFDB, ACIEB

From the source, all these connections become visible. They may look completely unconnected in the external reality. That is why it is called true knowledge. It is the highest goal.

Culture has infused the belief that gold is really valuable. It is rare and difficult to obtain therefore high in value. Surprisingly, almost all over the world its considered valuable. It is true that as a metal it has some great properties but are we really seeing value those those properties intuitively?. Can we perceive its inherent value outside of cultural conditioning?.

I was wondering, some people are as valuable as gold or even diamonds. The metaphor seems to perfectly fit in metaphysically. Some people so perfectly fit our archetype of a perfect person, subjectively they are really as rare as gold or even a diamond. What is the chance you would meet someone at that level again in your lifetime?