The memory of evolution

Today morning, I chanced upon a thought experiment with a friend. It has been so long since one of those happened. The years of college, and then work, all cluttered the table with thoughts and discussions which felt quite removed from exploration of the unreasonable to stumble upon bits of peculiar realities. 

The experiment started with a whim, and even I didn’t know it would continue to become what it is. I proposed that I am living for centuries and that all humans have fairly long lives. Yet they get a choice of readjusting their memories in a special way that could tamper with their understanding of time. Assuming that I chose otherwise, I was able to continue a conversation with someone who chose to tamper with their memory, creating the perfect A vs. B situation.

The question was how it could happen. So, we started laying the groundwork for it to make living across centuries a reality. First of all, adjusting the memory wouldn’t be a wipe-it-all event. It would be more like slicing or kneading the memory to play with elasticity, and here’s how it would look.

Person B who has been living for twenty decades would feel like he has only lived for two. For example, everything that you can remember, the memories of growing up, of last year, and of yesterday, have spanned over 200 years and you have aged very slowly. But you think it’s only been 20 years because of memory contraction. You think your body is changing yearly whereas it’s changing by the decade.

Another stark example would be supposing that yesterday happened over ten years but your memory got contracted and you thought it was one day. Your body and brain, even though feels like it aged by one day only, actually aged over ten years and still looks a day older because you have a long life span.

Then, came the question of surroundings. What happens to the things, buildings, plants, and trees around us? And what about clocks? Are they also ageing so slowly?

We can solve the problem of clocks through relativity. Since what appears like a day is actually spanned over ten years, the clock also moves slowly and only appears like a day to us. And to solve for all things, which also have to age slowly to sync with the readjusted memory, we have to make it so that only an observer outside this universe would be able to see the slowness of this Universe.

At this stage in the discussion, it changed the premise for memory readjustment. If everything around us was moving as per a slow timeline, we wouldn’t need re-adjusted memories. We would naturally move slowly and appear to have a really long life to an entity outside our Universe. But to continue the thought experiment, let’s assume that we do shorten our memories to perceive time as faster than it actually is in our Universe.

So, everybody on this planet is very old, but only those that choose to remember the knowledge of time and the complete set of memories are actually mentally old. Because if you forget what your mind learned and experienced, you are only a baby. Like a blank slate.

That led to an epiphany that we are only as old as the experiences we have. More experiences we choose to accumulate during our lifetimes and the more we learn from them, the wiser and mentally older we are. 

Person B then said, what’s so special about it and it’s more like a curse if most people are opting out of having the memory of slower time perception. My counter-statement was that I never said it was special and that B assumed it because of the concept’s similarity with immortality which is often assumed to be special.

Immortality is mostly considered to be a curse on deeper analysis. That’s a whole other subject, but let’s keep going by considering that immortality is indeed unfavourable, traumatic, and against our best interests.

Perhaps that’s why animals evolved to die. In the bigger picture, everything might have an end date because it's the best solution for stability. Like suns dying makes the universe stable, and the universe dying makes something larger, that we don’t know of yet, more stable. 

Now, it can be said that having the option to re-adjust memories is like the ability to choose mortality even while you are immortal. Considering humanity cannot remember when it began and dropped into this universe one day and chose to erase or re-write memories, it will be like comparing really long lives with immortal lives. This makes it a comparison between two infinities, making the two concepts of long life and immortal life ultimately behave the same way.

Now consider the parallel with evolution. It is true that humanity cannot remember where it began because it never had a clear beginning. We have evolved across time through different shapes and sizes, and most strikingly, we have actually evolved from things we consider to be lifeless. Like water and air. Like hydrogen and helium.

Now comes the parallel with memories. The button of erasing memories from one life is triggered when the life chooses to create a new life. The choice to create a new generation is essentially triggering the choice to erase an active memory that cannot be passed to the next-gen. But what happens to the passive memory? We can still find in ourselves the instinct that we inherited from that one-celled organism to divide itself and create more cells like itself. That’s one giant passive memory.

So, here it is. Evolution: A parallel of immortality.

At this point, while talking about the perception of time, I was reminded of another theory that I revisited in a recent newsletter. Consider that this is actually some year in the future. Probably 4189 AD, and a kid is running an old timeline on his computer and we are just existing in the present year of 4189 as if it were 2022. It is definitely possible given that over two thousand years ago we found how to look across time. In the next two thousand years, it could become a possibility that humans could generate old timelines and not just look at them through numbers. This is the infamous simulation theory.

Person B didn’t want to be Mario in a futuristic kid’s game and neither did I. So naturally, I thought and wrote back that the sim theory is perhaps like a parallel to suggest the fragility of reality. That whatever our mind receives after it has filtered our limited senses is our version of the truth. And if we attached new senses through chords, we might be able to perceive larger realities and see where we stand in the big picture. 

There is a book called ‘A Thousand Brains’ where the author writes that all parts of our neocortex (most of the brain that we can see and which evolved at a much later stage) are all mostly the same and have a similar structure. The only thing that makes the different parts of our brains interpret different things like sound or light is what device is connected to a particular section. 

If you interchange the connections carefully, the sessions that interpret light and sound can change too. Meaning that the mind that has evolved is only limited by its senes.

What if the reality is different or larger than what our devices can understand or communicate?

At this point, we discussed the book a bit more and then B shared a short film. It’s called “The Egg” and it ran a gorgeous thought experiment on the Universe, more inclined towards morality than logical conclusions, but it put forward some really good points. I wouldn’t spoil it for you and recommend that you watch it.

But two lines from the film really struck me.

“You have all the experiences and wisdom of your past lives” and another part which went something like “the human mind can only hold/remember so much”.

Even though it was speaking of past lives, if you think about it on an evolutionary timeline, it is true. It is like saying we have the wisdom of the whole evolution in our DNA. We act based on all the knowledge acquired by organisms from single-celled algae to apes while wielding the best ways to continue life. We are born to innately select the best choices that led to natural selection and resulted in humans as one of the present-day results. And we are another generation of species that keeps refining the wisdom of choices by making a new set of mistakes.

But our active memory doesn’t remember any of it because the human mind can only remember so much. It only remembers the new experiences after the great erasing point of birth.

Yet our passive memory seems to clearly remember matters that feels quite trivial to us. Our instincts, our fear of unknowns, the feeling of pain, our urge to protect, replicate, and fight, and so much more. All inborn, innate, retained through memories as old as millions of years.

It’s like we are the living breathing memory of evolution.

Einstein's Sound of Wisdom

Just a  moment ago, I came across a letter written sixty seven years before this day, by Albert Einstein. It was dated 24th June, 1951, addressed to Jesuit institution. The contents of the letter were for the students of Colegio Anchieta and its main motive was to inspire and encourage the future of that age and the past of our's.

On opening the letter on the screen, a picture with strange characters popped up. It was German which I later realized with all the "fur"s and "ien"s. When I went through a translation of the same letter, I realized that, that letter, which once appeared to be so blank and empty, was brimming with beauty and profoundness.

It said, "He who knows the happiness of understanding, has gained an infallible friend for life. Thinking is to man as flying is to birds. Don't follow the example of a chicken when you could be a lark." I was inspired at the moment by a man who lived ages and miles away from my being...and all through that one image full of strange figures.

Courtesy: The Telegraph

The fact that intrigued me more than the words themselves was that the same words were so empty and so full at the same time. Before knowing the meaning, I was reading the words out loud in order to get the essence. Honestly, it felt like I was chanting like a baby, making random sounds (that too with great difficulty...German can really twist your tongue)...and just then, an abstract thought struck me...

Those random sounds meant so much for one set of people and nothing for another. Similarly, my mother tongue must sound as abstract, meaningless and confusing to the Germans.

Its amazing how humans have created language. They have inserted thoughts and feelings into random sounds, and they have further classified these sounds into different languages and expressions, demonstrating with panache how sounds have evolved into a mode of communication.

When I say "a cake", you immediately think of a cake, or at least understand what I am trying to convey. However, the ground fact is, I have simply emitted a sound with the help of my oral organs. Only because we are taught that this word is supposed to point to an edible mass of flour and sugar, we hard wire our brain to think of the sound and object to be synonymous.

We were taught about Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning experiment in middle school. It is a mirror of our sound-to-meaning technique. In the experiment, a dog came to believe that the ringing of a bell was synonymous to food. We are no different from beasts, except for the fact that we possess a higher intellectual threshold, which might one day cease to be enough.

One will understand the sound transition better if he/she is learning a new language. At first, the words seem so random and absolutely devoid of meaning. Eventually though, the sounds develop a personality. They become pointers and direct us to the real aim of understanding.

The ability to grasp a mode of communication might seem ordinary to a lot, but I will humbly remind you that humans are the only beasts who have found such diversity in sounds and have honored them with thoughts and feelings. We can play with these sounds for a more creative communicating approach. Imagine if only we could use music to talk. The conversation will go something like this:
A: ♩♫♪

B: 𝄞♫𝄫

Translation:

A: I really like your tea Sir.

B: Thank you miss!

In fact, people do communicate through music on a more abstract level. When low notes along with a few minor ones are played, it conveys the sensation of thrill and mystery. Higher and major notes convey happiness. Slow music tries to foster passion and sadness, and so on and so forth.

Notes, tempo and pitch always carry a surge of emotions and thoughts. Often a musical piece will take you back to a moment of nostalgia. A pointer again. Do you not think it will be great if we consciously learn to communicate through rhythm and music?  

This idea, however abstract it may sound, fascinates me so much that I want to start at it right away. But men stick to what has deep foundations. The mind, over the ages, has become such that it does not feel the urge to fly, but feels the necessity to sit on highly built walls of civilization. A change is not welcomed, unless it is absolutely necessary.

Do you not like changing the colors of the sunsets and oceans on odd days?

Nonetheless, I feel most grateful to be present here consciously as a human for the beauty and power of words and language, and my ability to grasp it unlike any other creature. It is a pleasure to hear, perceive and understand it, without even speaking it. It is a massive treasure which every human consciousness has been bestowed with.

So, men may remember that treasure does not always mean gold, it can mean much more.

Breaking Down Love

I saw two pigeons today. The female did not share a care with the world. She twirled and ducked her way through random routes on a distant terrace. Her stare was not directed at anything in particular. Perhaps, she did not bother to honour any object of the world by the courtesy of observation and saw a hazy blur of it all, preferring it that way.

Most unusual was the behaviour of the male. He seemed to care about the reality surrounding him. He seemed to be wary of the stones and stairs on that terrace of dangerous possibilities. He was the rational realist of the two, as rational and real as a pigeon can be.

In spite of his sense of the hard reality, he seemed to follow the female in her aimless pursuit through the mysteries of the terrace. He followed her not only in her wandering, but also in her gesture and poise. My cousin followed my glance and exclaimed in a tone of ecstasy, "the follies of young love!".

I agreed with my silence, and we stared for a while at yet another phenomenal event of this world.

After a while the female almost jumped off the terrace and took her flight, and as we confidently predicted, the male hesitated for a while at the edge and then followed her to another wandering on another mystic terrace.

Even the simplest creatures felt the violent urge for love and longing, which I believe is a way to reach a higher string of existence with the right partner. This extremely complex event of pairing in humans, I realized, is quite simple in other creatures of this planet. We exactly behave like these simple beings but like to believe in the grandeur of our emotions and physical needs, thinking that simplicity cannot be at par with greatness. I cannot quote anybody stating this, but simplicity is grand. Simplicity is the crux of complexity. Break down a terribly complex structure and you will find very simple elements which add up to the grandness we so desperately cling to.

In the pigeons it was indeed the simple impulse of the moment, a simple thing, but it was triggered by the urge to live on in this planet even after their inevitable demise. It is a beautiful story of genetic longing to find a match to preserve the genes for generations to come. It is poetic to admire the signature features of one's partner but if only one knew how our subconscious, stacked with information from distant ages, play a significant role in admiring them. We are so wakeful and ignorant that it is beautiful.

We gravitate towards a certain person, get conscious of features which stand out to us and wonder how the world can be blind to those very elements which intoxicates our mind during odd hours. They say love is a matter of the soul, but then the soul must be contriving with the body, because one cannot deny that genetic memory helps us identify the key elements of the one who will put our genetic anxiety of a sudden stop to a peaceful death.

It is this simplicity, carried over from our farthest ancestors, that shape the unrecognizable and confusing emotional state of the present. We stay up nights, losing sleep over the WHYs and HOWs of love, solving the riddle of the heart which ignites us to the bones.

Only if we had payed heed to the profound words of Descartes;
Only if we knew how to break, in order to build.

Love is grand and it is quite simple, but only if we allow it to be.

The Mysterious Guardian

It has been almost 4 years since I wrote my first letter to a non- existent being summing all the thoughts a week’s time could permit. It will feel more like a diary entry if one reads it, but as far as I remember, when I wrote it, I addressed it to somebody in particular in my mind, hoping that one day someone will lay their eyes on it and walk by the same muse as mine.

During my school days, never even one tiny thought of grabbing the pen escaped my mind. I used to run and obscure myself from the pangs of pulling out words from the imagination. Especially when we were given assignments to write long essays I was absolutely clueless about. More appropriately, all those essays I was not keen to exercise my imagination for. This continued year after year, and I merely touched the average grade in all my English exams.

Until of course this gorgeous day came along. It was my grammar exam, and we were supposed to come up with a story which began with, “On that day..” or something along that line. That was a pure opportunity. For maybe the first time I saw such an independent question which allowed a student to let their imagination run free. Anything could happen on that day, anything…and that became a weapon. I scribbled my way across two pages and ended up sketching a heartfelt story about the attack on 26/11, Mumbai. It was my brother’s story, a brother I never had in real life, and one who did not escape the story alive.

I remember I had a tear escape my eye while concluding the piece. I was moved beyond measure by what I had just written. And to be completely honest, to this day, I do not believe that the story was drafted by my mortal self. Because can a person’s own imagination kill them?

That was a question which changed my life.

When the results were out, my teacher called me and asked me to participate in the National Essay Competition. I was glad of course and did not need to feign a beaming face, even though I knew that the words did not arrive at any random call. When I was about to leave, my teacher pressed her lips together before she asked me with a suddenly guarded voice, “Were you there?”.

“No mam.”

She smiled without any expression but looked straight at me with peering eyes and I dawdled to my class feeling a shiver down my spine.

Was it possible that I caught a glimpse of what actually happened that day and made the brother in my dreams the crux of the terrible events which followed? Was it even likely that I spoke someone else’s mind?

Ha! Maybe not. This is what happens when the imagination runs free and becomes a separate entity in itself, and maybe, just maybe we think that this Imagination’s voice is not our own.

The essay I was told to write for the National Essay Competition, no doubt, turned out to be pure trash. I have blamed several elements including myself for that failure. One of the elements was the essay topic itself to begin with. Then there was the word limit, and then the time limit. I know those are too many demands from a competitive arena but the truth is, Imagination cannot be enslaved by the limitations of mere numbers.

My teacher was unmistakably disappointed.

Another year went by, I stayed utterly undisturbed by the agony of creativity. There were of course moments when thoughts thundered through me in a flash, and often during inappropriate moments like when I was crossing the road or was under the shower or was waiting on the bus. And as soon as I let myself cross a threshold, the thoughts escaped me, or rotted away owing to no immediate action. I am guilty of not taking the aid of ink and parchment to jot down the strange events of a plain human mind, a guilt which I’m sure has agonized us all on random days.

But of course, on another glorious day I came by a milestone, and as far as my experiences suggest, a day… rather a moment, changes the outcome of all our creative energy, it changes our future to be precise.

So, on November 14^th, 2014, I wrote down the first letter, addressed to no one in particular. Hoping that some curious eye finds it and wonders about the possibilities of the questions left unanswered.

That letter, as already mentioned, was the result of a week’s curiosity of the unhinged mind.

And then, there was no stopping. A letter was a rare occasion, but at least it kept going. I wrote about two to three letters a month, and sometimes nothing for two straight months. Even though I was just falling in love with this craft, there was the heartbreaking knowledge that this was not to be my bread and butter. I could go from writing ten letters a day, to years without writing a single word, and I did not wish to starve my mind of the physical needs of mortality.

So, I kept going with what I thought I was moderately good at.

Logic. A rational element of the human mind.

And as Andrew Stanton put it, we cannot let one element of our brain struggle for hours at a stretch and expect it to perform with shinning brilliance. No, of course not. We need to fluctuate the elements. Maintain the balance. And I knew, my profession, as long as it was about the elements of rationalism, was to be the savior of my unrealistic ventures to the realm of surrealism.

During all these years of nurturing this craft, until the present day, I was so unsure of the ‘How’. I confessed to my mother and to certain close friends on very rare occasions, that I did not know ‘how’ the words came to me. That there was someone else speaking through the pen I held in my grip. I was ordinary, but the thought which distilled on paper were things I could not think of in my wildest dreams, or things I could not portray so perfectly, just as they were. I was after all, the one below the threshold of average when it came to Language exams in all my schools.

The ‘How’ was a question asked to me on unlikely days by rational minds and coarse tongues, and I did not answer them, afraid that they will not understand, or simply consider it a whim of the fanciful mind.

But this was until I found real evidence which matched my ‘fanciful’ understanding of Creativity. It wasn’t actually evidence, it was a witness. Another person narrating the exact same events to a crowd of enthusiasts. Elizabeth Gilbert, an undoubtedly charming writer in her forties, wrapped in graceful divinity.

She not only elaborated her own experiences with a humor beaming in raw originality, but she also conveyed the stories of ancients who believed that the “spirits of creativity” lived outside the vessel or the body of a mortal. Often called ‘Daemons’ or ‘Genius’, these were the mystical creatures of the surreal world. Unlike today, they believed that an artist ‘had’ a Genius and was not ‘the’ Genius. Quoting her on post Renaissance, “people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual. And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius, rather than having a genius. And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error.”

When I wrote something, which impressed well on my mind, I knew, as Elizabeth Gilbert puts it, “the Elusive One showed up”, and when I wrote something ultra-close to gibberish, there was the consolation that my partner was probably off to some vacation, bothering Jake Shimabukuro in Hawaii.

And this was it, the exceptional answer to the questions which have left artists Divine one night and robbed them of all the jewels the next morning, leaving them clueless about how to meet their own standards once the aid of Divinity was set afire and reduced to mere dust, converting the creative sections of this world to “alcoholic manic-depressives”. Mortals cannot beat the divinity of a Superior, and every time they do, it renders their time post-creation wrapped in nothing but chaos. However, the key, as Elizabeth so perfectly embodies in her words, is to have the “sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up” for your part of the job.

I suggest you hear the words straight from the one who conveyed them:

Elizabeth Gilbert Ted Talk

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Date: 22nd July, 2018

Hyderabad, India

Picture Credits: Google Images

How I Fell for the Words

As a child I seldom touched novels. To be more specific, I ran away from them, as if those innocent pages had the ability to burn my skin. I wonder whether I will ever be able to jot down the reasons adding to my apathy against reading during those early days. It has been years, yet I cannot stop thinking about those days, about all those times I did not lay my eyes upon the sacred texts which opened the portals to new dimensions of our Universe, opened the doors to our very own world sometimes, a world which otherwise is very good at wrapping up its secrets. Perhaps I was too lazy to run my eyes along the lines or perhaps assumed the task of processing meaning from words to be too exhausting. Well, whatsoever the reason was, I miserably regret that specific apathy I had.

However, being raised by parents who were avid readers, as good as book worshippers, I never suffered from the lack of a good read. During middle school, when I talked about books, which was very rare, I remember how my classmates were often taken by surprise when it came to their understanding that every other book they mentioned, had a copy securely hibernating in one of the shelves in my home. That was how I realized that books were not as common as table salt or pepper. They could have been however, if the world was not as ignorant as I was. That was the time during which I started valuing books. Not because I wanted to read them, but because I wanted to capture that rare essence, under the influence of the knowledge that very few were fortunate enough to be surrounded by the yellowing pages of wisdom.

I did not love them, I knew that very well. In fact, it marked the beginning of my lust for books. I often confided my feelings in them by momentarily visiting the racks. I spent hours turning pages, not reading, but skimming. Not one book at a time, but maybe ten at one go. I turned to random pages, selected random paragraphs, read until it failed to enrapture me with its spell, and of course, it was not long before I abandoned that page for another. While walking through the chaos of random sentences, I seldom took to smelling the wary books. They smelled of old pages, and as days passed, it became my smoke of ecstasy. When I got wary of not finding enough magic in the sentences, the fragrance became my rescue, and oddly enough, I used to feel that even that strange smell restored wisdom in me, as if through osmosis.

Perhaps it was my personal way of making up for the years lost in running away from the goblet of pure knowledge, or at least, believing that I was making up.

It was a matter of years, and then, even though it should have been sooner, I realized that I had the potential to love. I did not just mingle with the pages for their ecstatic smell or for the selfish motive of quick wisdom, but for the very first time, I wanted to know what that page had to say. I read.

That was when I was taken aback by the power a book could carry. I was astonished to feel my mind under the influence of simple ink on parchment. The words stayed with me, and it was as I had lived a hundred years at a very ripe age. To put it in simple terms, I realized that a book could carry me beyond ages and places without any restraint in time or space, essentially because of the naïve mind. If you have studied your biology well, you will know that most of our senses report to our mind and then the mind processes that particular feeling or stimuli. Well, a book becomes our senses when we readers indulge in one. It directly feeds the stimuli to our mind, and our mind helps us get carried away to worlds far beyond our very own.

My love for books was complicated. Once I started with one of their pages, I couldn’t stop. I could read until my eyes hurt or my mind got exhausted with the extensive travel. I knew this was insane, and quite risky, given my role as a student in this world. I had to get back to tasks, which was of course, a mountain of struggles. But I managed to get back, because “it does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live”.

There was a problem though. Once I exited my fantasies, I found it very difficult to go back, knowing very well that it will take me a solid effort to pull out of one as soon as the reality ushers me again. After months on end I stayed away from my books. Not because I did not want to read one, but because I had to sort out my priorities, and the list was not very often headed by very pleasing tasks. But I would come back when I could and spend days on end completing rows of books at one go.

I was like a soldier fighting against the daily calls of duty, coming back home after months to express my love to those closest to the heart. Books were my family, they were my home. Perhaps that is why they advise us to be avid readers, because books have the power to keep our homesick hearts at bay. They are like tiny blocks of our home which has its foundation in a parallel Universe. They are a part of ourselves living apart, in another world and in another time.

With a book, every day is a hundred days crammed in one. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once.”. It is our ticket to a sunrise amid the stars.

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16th June, 2018

Pictures: Google Images

Why I have No Religion?

No one has seen me pray truly...but there are innumerable prayers I have prayed in the shadows of solitude.

These prayers haunt the corners where no eye can find them and where no ear can hear them.

The reason for this intimacy is my controversial methods of seeking God, the one true I have ever known.

All this while I have feared that if I reveal how I truly seek The One, perhaps there will be a breach of trust with my imaginary friend. Sometimes I’ve even feared that my people will be prejudiced against my habits because we were all taught to fear controversies.

However, I suddenly have the urge to let people know that there are no boundaries beyond their so called wall...and I want them to realize what it is to be off the grid.

***

To begin, my ways of revering Him was developed due to different courses my childhood embarked upon.

Being under the influence of convents and churches from the very beginning, I learned the words of the Catholics. “The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” never failed to fascinate me with the power in magical words. Their words became the light to find the holiness and there has been no other language which has successfully helped me draw the energy closer when I was in need of it.

Also, brought up by a bourgeoisie Bengali family, the only true faces of God I have known and believed in belonged mostly to the Hindu Goddesses. From Durga and Kali to Lakshmi and Saraswati, I have felt the presence of power only in female resorts of vacant souls. It is only when I picture those very faces looking over with their watchful eyes and a faint holistic smile, that I feel secure even in the foggiest moments. I have seen that face frown, seen it unhappy and I have seen it merry like no other! I refer to him as him, yet I see him as her.

I’ve known God in the most unrealistic ways, yet there has been no other face which has successfully helped me seek the one true power better.

Talking of gestures, my influences have been diverse. From television commercials and motion pictures, to books and impressive acquaintances, I have always been bewitched by the way their hands curve when followers of Islam ask for the company of God. The slightest touch of either hands on one another and the sphere it protectively creates for the face charms me every single time without fail.

With a crescent moon within the palms, Islam shall never fail to mesmerize the ones who desire to identify with its meaning.

Thus conclusively, I pray with the words of a Catholic to a Hindu deity through the gestures of a Muslim,
and my religion is God.

Our blood cannot define our Gods. 

There is not one religious path I can really follow, and hereby, I give up being on one.

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Picture Courtesy: bahaiteachings.org

Beyond the Screen

A few months ago, I started uploading my letters to a blog, and I’ve been promoting it ever since. The best part about being engaged in promoting it was, I came across a lot of opinions from people all over the world. I came across several blogs and communities and discovered that there were thousands of blogs and each had a new perspective. It was overwhelming to know that there were so many people out there who embraced the power of words with such fierce passion and that they still cared to voice their opinions.


There were still those who made the effort of discovering strange and distant minds...and all through the platform of the revolutionizing internet. Its simply magic. A person from a certain region gets to be inside the deepest caves of a mind sitting far far away looking at a whole new world through a little screen. Its a brilliant platform where only the minds interact, keeping our physical selves aside for a while.

I’m a believer of the theory that the core of our souls rest in our mind...so in a dramatic sense, this makes the web an interface for souls...an interface for the inner being which rests within our mind...irrespective of how we look, speak or walk.

Its nothing short of magic.

Perhaps we are finally getting used to decoding and using the magic that surround all of us every moment...and very very soon there will be life-changing revelations about this world.


We humans have a very powerful mind and more we come to know of it, the more we respect and fear it. We hear, see, feel and think with our minds, and every differing opinion and perception we have, has its root in the mind. We think and act differently just because our brains are structured differently and its this difference which makes the human race as bright as it is...it is this difference which we are so eager to voice...and we have successfully discovered millions of ways to do the same, one of the ways being the Web.

Ranging from videos, social media and music to blogs, apps and e-books...people have come to know of the power and ecstasy the internet can provide them. People have found a pleasure in going “viral” and the initial goal has evolved from 'expressing views' to 'expressing views and making it popular'.

Its a different world out there...inside the screen. Sitting behind one, we no longer need to hide, which of course makes the expression of self much more easy and smooth. Its a whole new world which promises a very unexpected future. I'm glad that this world gave me a wide range of opportunities and pulled me out of the cocoon I once was so comfortable in.

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Date: 26th May, 2015

Time: 11:45 AM

Kolkata

Image courtesy:

substanceforyou.com

ohmygodd.com

tricksforums.com

Eternal Life - Live for as long as you want.

I feel really blank today...sitting with a pen and a paper just for the sake of it.

Usually I write only when my mind is overflowing with thoughts...but today I'm just hopelessly blank...so I guess I'll just summarize few of my past experiences...

Recently, I visited Bangalore and Bhubaneshwar for exam and admission purpose...so naturally, I got to explore and tour a lot...and the most interesting part of this whole journey was that every little thing felt so extravagantly beautiful. From sky scraping buildings to old men at coffee shops....from flightless little birds to the endless cacophony of the traffic. Every passing moment was personified for some reason...and it made me feel like life was finally being lived.

I kept linking this unnatural experience to something I heard in the distant past. "We all live a little longer as a kid." Time is stretched for the younger souls. As a child, everything our senses touch upon, is new. We put more focus into everything that surrounds us, we are awestruck by the simplest of events just...just because they are new. All our senses remain alert for us to intensely experience every moment. We live the most.

On growing, our alertness to everything around us diminish...and we get the illusion that time is flying away, at tremendous speed. This piece of theory intrigued me...affected me deeply. As I've mentioned previously, I already feel that my time is limited, so, when I heard about this theory,  I sort of realized that there's a way to live way beyond the years that Time allot to each and everyone of us.

It is the simple act of observation. I am a witness myself. When I really observe something, I get connected with it, which helps me to understand the true nature of the object. It can be anything and everything...mountains, bottles, cats, clouds...absolutely anything. When we are observing something, we are actually sparing a thought or two for that object. This is a very quick process, but as we are thinking...and we know that thinking is a very complicated process, we have the illusion that time is being stretched.

And this really works...when we wonder like a child at everything we  see, every moment elongates itself, making us live a longer life in our mind.

The only obstacle to this illusory long life is that most of us don't bother to wonder at the simplest thing our life gifts us. We just don't give a damn about the common everyday stuff...which can very smoothly be turned into a rare piece of admiration. The key ingredient is imagination...with a hint of rationalism. This mix acts like a magical potion which connects the internal and external world. Every other time one sees an object, he must view it with a different perception...view it from varying angles. Flexibility of the mind is very important. Once we see an object, we form opinions about it...but the next time we see it, our minds must be powerful enough to go past those opinions...and...and look beyond!

This multi-angled view sometimes makes us lose faith in our own decision making skills...because every angle which used to be wrong, seems legit from another angle...Having a different set of opinions for different perceptions will cause internal conflict, but only then can one understand the beauty of the bigger picture and the pleasure of conflict...and ultimately, the decisions grow firmer, better.

So, when we'll view things from varying angles, every other time, we'll be amazed by the discovery of a new potential the object traps in itself. The more we'll observe, more alert will be our senses, the more we'll live in our minds.

Its really that simple. The key to eternal life is mere observation.

...and I'm grateful for having realized this.

So, coming back to the link between the tourist spots and the theory, I think all those places...the monuments, the lighted streets, the strangers from the new city...everyone and everything, opened my senses a tad bit more! I wanted to take it all in at once..everything was new and fascinating. Perhaps that was the reason I felt so rich mentally.

There's a high possibility that this theory edges on not being accurate, but I believe in it, because my experiences tell me to do so. It has made me live longer than I would have usually lived in a given time span.

It is a major illusion...or may be not
...but most things are...
And sometimes...just sometimes...
Illusions are better than reality.

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Date: 22nd May, 2015

Time: 4:20 PM

Picture courtesy: en.wikipedia.org

The Certainty of Randomness

                           All these years, I've observed one thing...we humans have been structured in such a way that we have a strange faith in 'randomness'...a term which we often confuse with 'luck'. We have the faith yet we prevent its true meaning to seep through us. Defining 'faith', 'randomness' or 'luck' isn't an easy task...and it'll perhaps take years to define and understand their true meaning.


                          Presently, I'm on a train, heading to Bangalore, and however strange it may sound..the simplest landscapes are attempting to make me weep...the simplest thing like a quirky curved banyan tree or the ups and downs of the little hills passing by...the curves of these mounds are beautiful...more fascinating than anything I've come across before.

...and all they are, are just shabby brown rocks...and I don't know why they are having this strange effect...


                          Maybe its not the beauty of it which induces the emotions. Perhaps its the strange apparent sensation of time and space being curved...and this train of thought occurred to me recently. In fact, I think I just realized that I've been living in such a relative span of time and space all along! I say "relative" since it appears as if everything that's happening or will happen are relative to one reference point....which is my everyday life.


                          Its like we live everyday in a given region, balance everything we do on the to-and-fro motion of a moving pendulum...then suddenly one day...we are miles away from that given region within hours...the same hours we would have probably used up to scroll through a silly random site. Suddenly we see people of whose existence we could've only thought of...or not even that.

                          Its all a matter of chance and randomness...how suddenly any point in space (us), which has a pattern of traversing through time....suddenly speeds up and moves way beyond the region it used to be in...and it all happens quite suddenly...this point goes to places so similar and so different....


                           Now imagine a seed of a tree carried by a bird from a far away land to another far away land. That seed is cared for by the water from rain which comes from yet another land...and then you, from another far away land, meet that grown up tree through the window of a train which carries you to another land! Such a rare occasion with minimal possibilities, yet so less wonder or curiosity to ignite minds.



                           If seen the other way around...space and time made an effort just to make this unique possibility a reality. I'm so sure its magical...otherwise how can such a uniquely beautiful phenomenon occur to each and every one of us! This magic is so common that it has become a part of us...we don't take notice of it anymore...we are taught not to.



                         Well, all of it is just another perspective...but in a way it is also kind of a reality...and in a way this very perspective enhances the essence of travelling by a ton!



                        All these faces here...so lost and drained out...they take no notice of the magic of uniqueness and randomness that surround each of them. They ignore the very fact that its not just a bland train journey...its so much more!



                       There's so much to thank for...yet complains never end and miseries never die.



                       People ask and people thank...but by the end of it all, hopefully they'll realize the value and beauty of randomness...and the very importance of it.
After all, they have been chosen randomly by every dawn, to be the ones who get to keep their lives...they are the ones chosen by dusk to still keep breathing...
Still...
..and that's so much more than we can ask for...

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Date: 7th May, 2015

Time: 8:55 AM

Image courtesy: givey.com

What's Your Story?

                           

                                    Lately, I’ve been realizing many things. These realizations tend to give my life a new meaning and a new perspective. I’ve written about it previously, but I’ll mention it again. This is that realization which says that every human is as important as the other. Its a very common thing to say perhaps, but its highly difficult to realize. I talk about this often as this fact strikes me everyday. 

I get up every morning, thinking about my own day and everything that can go wrong with it...but when I step out of the door and face the world and its faces, I can’t stop myself from imagining their stories and realizing again, that at that very moment, all those faces have a reason to live....not because they are an “extra” in my story or a supporting actor perhaps...but because they are the lead of their own amazing story. They live with the knowledge that their story must go on...because its important...in their own minds. 

I go to sleep thinking about the faces and how I no longer am the protagonist of my own story. My mind gives way to million other stories, which are so gloriously beautiful, that it no longer feels like concentrating on one trickling story...which is my own. Every night I cease to be the protagonist because I choose to...but also there is no other protagonist...my mind becomes a book of short stories. 

However, again when I wake up the next morning, perhaps because of natural human instinct, I go back to how my day will proceed, how she will react to what I say, what impression I’ll have on him and so on...but realizing everyday, that its not all about I, me or myself, just by observing random faces of people I may never know, is strange indeed...

                            Coming to the second observation, I feel I’m losing the power of youth. There was a point in time when I strongly believed that I had no limits...that I can’t perish under any circumstance...but sadly, I suddenly have come to realize that I actually have my limits, which were previously blurred by the illusion of youth. I’ve found that I’m neither perfect nor the best but I’ve found joy in this very fact. 

My mind has lost most of its power...things are draining out and I do not know why. They say...a mind can never cease to grow...and I do hope earnestly that they are right. I can’t remember things...things which are supposed to be remembered forever...they are lost in the maze of my memories. Sometimes, I feel that its a gift...to forget...and sometimes I feel that its a curse. I think I owe my lack of emotions and inability to cry truly, to this power of forgetfulness. 

The best part is that I’ve learned to control my memories. I can choose to forget and remember at will, which is another drawback of draining youth (and I'm not as old as this sentence suggests. 17. In fact, I'm supposed to be gaining youth instead of seeing it drained). Dark lanes of my past are still hidden somewhere in my mind...but when I choose to remember them I simultaneously choose to not remember the feelings and my association with that moment. This is perhaps why recently, moments of nostalgia get me into an utter state of confusion...because nostalgia brings back feelings, without my permission,...and I’ve been living all along thinking that I’ve forgotten how to feel. 

...and well, when the happy moments get in the way, all I can gift it, is a moment of gratefulness...because I’ve forgotten how to cherish memories...I can only live the moments now (another excuse to click tons of groupfies).

          

                          Third. I’ve also realized that its a sin to stop dreaming. Its never too late to be someone we have always dreamed to be. For instance, I’ve always wanted to be someone who’s above the crowd, someone different, someone who is known for having done something worth doing. This is also why I do not regret becoming the protagonist every morning...after all, its not so bad to think about our own selves. 

I’ve always wanted fame, knowledge and prosperity...and I believe that its not only my dream...this dream belongs to all those random faces in the crowd who get up thinking about themselves and end up trapped in another story which isn’t their own. I want to live their dream and follow my own too in the pursuit of finding a reality better than all our dreams. I know, its too much to ask for...but I don’t expect anything miraculous to happen...and neither do they. All those faces who stare blankly at the stars thinking of red carpets, lush gardens and abundant love from all who can acknowledge the same stars, are the ones who truly know what it is to live a dream within a dream...and honestly, sometimes, just sometimes, dreaming is way better than realizing that very dream. 

"I have a dream."

...and I suggest you do too. 

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Date: 3rd March, 2015

Time: 10:03 AM

Magic to Decode Magic

                                 

                                    Sometimes, it feels like magic is the most awesome thing that can ever be! I do not speak of the "magic" which humans would generally associate with the word...Here, I speak of the magic which we are used to in our day to day life. The definition of magic is highly relative...and here's what I think of it...

                                    Think about our very own universe and world...Where else can someone find twinkling objects floating around for billions of years? Where else can someone find awesome looking creatures with 'legs', 'arms', two 'ear'-like things sticking out from what these creatures call 'face'? Where else can someone find life being carved out from the lifeless? 

                                     Think of those curvy thread like objects peeking out from the dormant looking soil...they call these things 'trees' and I am fascinated just to see how these 'trees' are so similar to our veins and nerves. Perhaps they are the veins and nerves. The earth is as full of life as we are. 'Trees' show us why. Its a magical place...a magical place to be in.

                                     Things like the invisible sheet of what they call 'air', a beautiful liquid which they call 'life' and sometimes 'water', a granular soil or a mix of the dead, which is walked upon by the living...everything...everything that's there has become 'us', a part of our minds. Its "magical" be 'us'...a magical thing to be.

                                     As I grew up, I was always told, "magic" is an illusion, it never was and never will be. Whatever was or is, is supposed to be normal stuff...things which we are supposed to get used to. They told me, its not magic, its science...its logic. I wish they only knew, science is another kind of magic, and the scientists, they are the grand magicians, illusionists! Science is the magic to decode magic like a program created to verify and judge another program.

                                     We ourselves are magical creatures, more magical than unicorns and satyrs, or maybe just the same...coz' if we go into the superficial details, most creatures are made of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen...which I believe are the magical ingredients. The universe can be the great cauldron to stir the magical potions...I wonder who's the wizard then? Is it the cauldron itself?...or something beyond or inside the cauldron? Assuming that magical 'someone' to be the 'creator', why does it (not sure of the gender) create stuff which aim at seeking the creator itself? Why does this creator create magic to decode and sense its own magic?...Does it need an audience?...or is it just experimenting?

                                    Also, sometimes I wonder who created the creator?...and who created the creator who created the creator? How can something exist from nothing? Why are we existing at all? Are we an experiment gone wrong? Then in that case, the magician must be the greatest magician ever, coz' even the wrong seems so right! Maybe this 'creation' thing is like those infinite images in two consecutive mirrors. The image of the ultimate creator is so small and so hard to perceive, but the creator stands right in between the two mirrors...which is the sole reason for the existence of the image.

                                   If we humans print some form of micro life from a 3D printer (if possible at all...actually its almost at the verge of becoming possible in the near future!) and leave that life in a distant habitable planet, evolution can kick in and give those creatures the power to think and decode the magic that's around them. Then they'll ask the same questions perhaps..."who created us?", "who created the creator who created us?", "why are we here at all?". If the 'humans' are fortunate enough to survive for so long, perhaps they'll (we'll) send satellites and spying devices just to monitor the 'experiment'. Then those creatures may notice one or two unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and think of us as aliens or whatever word they use to describe what we call 'aliens'. Then their search for other life forms and the creator will begin....and then one fine day, they may also decide to plant life somewhere else...and so on and so forth. Creation will continue as long as the magical ingredients keep themselves from getting exhausted.

                                 However, the obvious question is- What happens next? After every life-forming and magic-forming ingredient is exhausted? Is our cauldron, our very own universe, discarded?...to be replaced by a new one?...but if the creator is itself inside the cauldron (assumption), will it like to put an end to itself? Maybe in the creator's terms, 'life' and 'death' exchange roles, even though they are mostly same everywhere. It dies or it may want to die to make place for something new.

                                 With the end of everything that's there, everything magical...time will stop too, because time is a by-product of magic. The presence of matter generates time. Without matter, there'll be no time. I believe time does not age us or any form of matter. We get old because we create time, and if we want to stop getting old, we have to stop creating time, which is highly impossible because time will exist as soon as an object comes into existence.

"Time does not wrinkle us, 
As age is the mother of time.

Wrinkles are just the scars
One gets after the birth of time."                                     

~Creation of Time by Mr. X

                                 Is it possible to become absolutely invincible? We may develop stuff to reverse our growing and ageing process (imitating the process of life cycle from Japanese jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii), but can we ever stop time?

Its the property of matter- to generate time. 

                            Now, imagine a really empty space. Without even one single molecule, wave, dark matter, or anything that can exist. Now suppose I put a human there. Four things are likely to happen. First, humans on earth will praise me for having found such a place. Second, they'll turn me into a villain instantly for putting the lad in there (a completely different scenario if I were to put an animal). Third, the man will face death. Fourth, the instant I put the person in there (without being there- hypothetical stuff), at that very instant, time will begin in the space which is no longer empty. The body will age, compounds and elements will get scattered, and there'll be so much generation of time, that there'll suddenly be a lot of time in that empty space. Time will touch a place which was once only surrounded by time. 

                           Time...just a by-product, yet so intriguing! Now, imagine how intriguing we ourselves are...life...the main product of every process...or may be not. Everything around us has so much potential...but we are yet to discover it. By now, we have only reached the by-products, and I hope that soon enough, we'll reach the core of magic that we are surrounded with, that we are ourselves. 

                           However, today we prefer to be ignorant of the spell that's all around us. Our world is more magical than that of Harry Potter's, Percy Jackson's or even Frodo Baggins'. All one needs is the right pair of eyes. Harry uses a wand to create magic but you don't need to. You are a walking and talking pack of magic. They call the 'unusual' stuff magic. I think its most of us...we are intrigued by a magic which is just a representation of the magic that's real. Reality is an amusing thing, it takes years for someone to understand it, and then just a few seconds maybe, to again lose track of it.   

                            I don't know why we've chosen flying horses to be better than our running ones, or winged people to be more virtuous than our earthly featherless men. They are "magical" because they are unusual and rare...and I believe its a property of life, or maybe just humans, to preserve and protect the rare and the unusual. Whether it is an object, a human trait, or an idea, rare and unusual items will always find preference. 

                           To feel and observe the true magic, all we need to do is look closer, look past what is visible, look beyond time, look deeper and deeper. Most magicians will warn that the closer one looks, the easier it is to trick...but this ain't the magic which most magicians are used to perform. Do not look at the far and way too small image in the infinite-image-forming mirrors. Look right where you stand- right between the two mirrors...coz' I hope you didn't forget, we are magic. With the power to decode magic.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

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Date: 18th April 2015

Time: 8:30 PM

                               

                                   
Image from: youtube.com