God and I

Last night I attended a seminar on coincidences and life’s intelligence at the New Acropolis - https://www.facebook.com/events/289969364347144/

It was a beautiful and learning experience – as usual. New Acropolis did not disappoint me event this time. The seminar was about an inquiry on the nature of coincidences. Ran – the teacher – brought in front of us many perspectives on coincidences from various fields – from Carl Jung’s  and Pauli’s research on Synchronicity, to Einstein’s take on the subject, to esoteric philosophies of ancient wisdom, to Mathematics and statistics. The talk ended with an invitation to contemplate on the nature of coincidences for ourselves.

I have read Carl Jung and Deepak Chopra on Synchronicity. This seminar reminded me of their works, and also brought to life that dormant understanding of God, in me.
Beautifully said by Einstein –
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous”

Another nice musing from the author Paul Auster –
“…I like to explore the cracks of our organized world, cause there, the real interesting things are happening…”
(I borrowed these from the class)

There is this interesting book by Deepak Chopra – Synchrodestiny on the same topic.  It is an interesting read.

In the seminar I met Manjunath Shivshankaran. An interesting person to speak to. He immediately caught my attention on his take on the matter. He said about knowing thyself. For him it was about understand who I am from within, to entirety. “I” am a subject of exploration, and by knowing myself, I know the world. It is an awareness, a mindfulness of inner self, that connects us to Carl Jung’s archetypal dimension. One’s inner self is the gateway. Taking it further, I am never alone. I have my inner self to go into, and explore, and tune to that universal consciousness (Jung’s archetype). In this process, the self enlarges, and encompasses the other individuals, earth, sky, moon, and the entire cosmos! Lovely idea!
A relevant thought from madam Blavatsky –
“The biggest illusion of all is the illusion of separation” – (from her book - Voice of Silence)

Ran – my teacher – always stresses on the fact of being, over having and doing. He invites me to be in the place of total being, sowing the seed and nurturing that seed of possibility. He repeatedly reminds me to be patient, and not get allured to the world of doing and having. Synthesizing this with the writings of Erich Fromm in his book – “To Have or To Be”, I magically had this beautiful coincidence this morning.

 I get these weekly newsletters from Deepak Chopra. This morning’s newsletter pointed me to this beautiful audio track - http://www.chopra.com/2012vip#  which says the following –

I am Space.
I am the Sun.
I am the directions – above and below.
I am the Gods.
I am the Demons.
I am all beings.
I am darkness.
I am the Earth.
I am the ocean.
I am the dust, the wind, the fire, and all this world.
I am omnipresent.
How can there be anything,
But me , me - The Spirit.
You will rise beyond joy and sorrow

The world exists in me,
The Self - the Infinite Consciousness -
Even there is a reflection that exist in the mirror.
I am the fragrance in the flower,
I am the light and radiance
And even in that light, I am the experience.

Whatever mobile and immobile beings exists in this world
I am their supreme truth or consciousness – free from conceptualization.
I am the very essence in all things in the universe.
Just as butter exists in milk, and liquidity in water,
Even so as the energy of consciousness I exist in all, That exists.

When we are established in the being
Mind, body and senses are playthings.
Purity, total fulfillment of all desires
The Absence of cravings
Friendliness to all
Truthfulness
Wisdom
Tranquility and blissfulness
Sweetness of speech
Supreme magnanimity
Lustrousness
One pointed-ness
Realization of cosmic events
Fearlessness
Absence of divided  consciousness
These are the constant experiences of one
Who is established in Being.


A beautiful mosaic of coincidences all around. It is really magical! It makes me feel closer to God – in those cracks of the organized world – into those recesses of coincidences – lie the mystery – God’s own heart!

I had written an article on my experience of God in the month of September 2011 - http://criativ-mind.blogspot.com/2011/09/sacred-journey.html

Today, I am able to feel another dimension of God, which is more sublime and magical; an experience of God from the invisible world of Jung’s archetypal universal dimension, which can be realized only through the eyes of the heart, from within.  Coincidence is that tip of the otherwise hidden magnanimous form of divinity. It feels at peace, to be in touch with that Spirit!
______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

The darker side of capitalism

The gradual evolution of the society since the middle ages to the renaissance has witnessed a stark change in the character of the society, from a more connected, secure and related community to a society with an increased amount of individual freedom, but at the same time an increased sense of insecurity, loneliness, and fear. In his book – “The Fear of Freedom”, Erich Fromm articulates this dual aspect of the new gained freedom, out of the modernization of society, in a beautiful and elaborative fashion. Following excerpt from the book, tries to touch upon the new found vulnerability of mankind, as a result of increasing capitalistic outlook on life. It gives a better perspective on our work life situations. At this season of performance appraisals, I found this part of the book pretty relevant.

..But although man has reached a remarkable degree of mastery of nature, society is not in control of the very forces it has created. The rationality of the system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production in its social aspects. Economic crises, unemployment, war, govern man’s fate. Man has built his world; he has built factories and houses, he produces cars and clothes, he grows grain and fruit. But he has become estranged from the product of his own hands, he is not really the master any more of the world he has built; on contrary, this man-made world has become his master, before whom he bows down, whom he tries to placate or to manipulate as best he can. The work of his own hands has become his God. He seems to be driven by self-interest, but in reality his total self with all its concrete potentialities has become an instrument for the purposes of the very machine his hands have built. He keeps up the illusion of being the center of the world, and yet he is pervaded by an intense sense of insignificance and powerlessness which his ancestors once consciously felt towards God.

Modern man’s feeling of isolation and powerlessness is increased still further by the character which all his human relationships have assumed. The concrete relationship of one individual to another has lost its direct and human character and has assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality. In all social and personal relations the laws of market are the rule. It is obvious that the relationship between competitors has to be based on mutual human indifference. Otherwise one of them would be paralyzed in the fulfilment of his economic tasks – to fight each other and not to refrain from actual economic destruction of each other if necessary.

The relationship between employer and employee is permeated by the same spirit of indifference. The word “employer” contains the whole story: the owner of the capital employs another human being as he “employs” a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationships is one in which both are mans to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of two human beings who have any interest in others outside of this mutual usefulness. The same instrumentality is the rule in relationship between the business man and his customer. The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person who0se aims the business man is interested to satisfy. The attitude towards work has the quality of instrumentality; in contrast to a medieval artisan the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment, and what he produces depends essentially on the market which promises that the investment of capital in a certain branch will prove to be profitable.

Not only the economic, but also the personal relations between men have this character of alienation; instead of relations between human beings, they assume the character of relations between things. But perhaps the most important and the most devastating instance of this spirit of instrumentality and alienation is the individual’s relationship to his own self. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. The manual laborer sells his physical energy; the business man, the physician, the clerical employee, sell their “personality”. This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should meet a number of their requirements: he should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other, as his particular position may require. As with any other commodity it is the market which decides the value of these human qualities, yes, even their very existence. If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he “has” none; just as an unsalable commodity is valueless though it might have its use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the “feeling of self”, is merely an indication of what others think of the person. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody. This dependence of self esteem on the success of “personality” is the reason why for modern man popularity has this tremendous importance. On it depends not only whether or not one goes ahead in practical matters, but also whether one can keep up one’s self-esteem or whether one falls into the abyss of inferiority feelings.

There are factors to help him overcome the overt manifestations of this underlying insecurity. In the first place his self is backed up by the possession of property. “He” as a person and the property he owns cannot be separated. A man’s clothes or his house are parts of his self just as much as his body. The less he feels he is being somebody, more he needs to have possessions. If the individual has no property or lost it, he is lacking an important part to his “self” and to a certain extent is not considered to be full-fledged person, either by others of by himself. Other things backing up the self is the prestige and power.

Such is the petty state of the so called modern civilization with all its advances. Most of these aspects are interestingly hidden from conscious realm of humanity, and the society behaves as a herd of sheep, intoxicated with such capitalistic propensities.

______________________________________________

Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

Selfishness Vs Self Love

The assumption underlying the thinking of Luther and Calvin and also that of Kant and Freud, is: Selfishness is identical with self-love. To love others is a virtue, to love oneself is a sin. Furthermore, love for others and love for oneself are mutually exclusive.

Theoretically we meet here with a fallacy concerning the nature of love. Love is not primarily “caused” by a specific object, but a lingering quality in a person which is only actualized by a certain “object”. Hatred is a passionate wish for destruction; love is a passionate affirmation of an “object” : it is not an “affect” but an active striving and inner relatedness, then aim of which is the happiness, growth, and freedom of its object. It is a readiness which, in principle, can turn to any person and object including ourselves. Exclusive love is a contradiction in itself. To be sure, it is not accidental that a certain person becomes the “object” of manifest love. The love for a particular “object” is only the actualization and concentration of lingering love with regard to one person; it is not, as the idea of romantic love would have it, that there is only one person in the world whom one can love, that it is the great chance of one’s life to find that person, and that love for him results in a withdrawal from all others. The kind of love which can only be experienced with regard to just one person demonstrates by this very fact that it is not love but a sado-masochistic attachment. The basic affirmation contained in love is directed towards the beloved person as an incarnation of essentially human qualities. Love for one person implies love for man as such. Love for man as such is not, as it is frequently supposed to be, an abstraction coming “after” the love for a specific person, or an enlargement of the experience with a specific “object”; it is its premise, although, genetically, it is acquired in the contact with concrete individuals.

From this it follows that one’s own self, in principle, i9s as much an object of one’s love as another person. The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in the presence of the basic readiness of and ability for such an affirmation. If an individual has this readiness, he has it also towards himself; if he can only “love” others, he cannot love at all.

Selfishness is not identical with self love but with it is very opposite. Selfishness is one kind of greediness. Like all greediness it contains insatiability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without reaching satisfaction. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with the fear of not getting enough, of mission something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself.

Selfishness is rooted in this very lack of fondness of oneself. The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant anxiety concerning his own self. He has not the inner security which can exist only on the basis of genuine fondness and affirmation. He must be concerned about himself, greedy to get everything for himself, since basically he lacks security and satisfaction. The same holds true with the so called narcissistic person, who is not so much concerned with getting things for himself as with admiring himself. Though on the surface it seems that these persons are very much in love with themselves, they actually are not fond of themselves, and their narcissism – like selfishness -  is overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love. Freud has pointed out that the narcissistic person has withdrawn his love from others and turned it towards his own person. Although the first part of this statement is true, the second is a fallacy. He loves neither others nor himself. 

______________________________________________

PS - This excerpt is taken from the book - "The fear of freedom" by Erich Fromm.

On Socrates

Socrates is the saint and martyr of philosophy. No other great philosopher has been so obsessed with righteous living. According to Plato, who was there at the time, Socrates told the judges at his trial that, “you are mistaken..if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action – that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly.”

Socrates was poor, had no conventional achievements to his name and was of humble birth – his father was stonemason and his mother midwife. The fact that he nevertheless had an entrée to Athenian high society attests to his remarkable powers of conversation.

The trial of Socrates took place in 399 BC when he was nearly seventy. The charges were that he refused to recognize the official gods of the state, that he introduced new gods and that he corrupted the young. There was a vivid political background to the trial. In 404 BC, five years before the trial, a twenty seven year war between Athens and Sparta had ended with the defeat of Athens. The Athenian democracy was overthrown and replaced by a group of men, subsequently know as the Thirty Tyrants, who were installed by Sparta. In the course of earning their name, the Tyrants murdered so many people that they lasted for only a year, though it was not until 401 BC that democracy was fully restored. Understandably, the democrats were still feeling rather insecure in 399 BC. There were plenty of reasons to be uneasy about the presence of Socrates in the city. The condition was worsened when a few of Socrates disciples got involved in tyranny.

Socrates never charged any fee for his teachings. The superior wisdom of Socrates lies in the fact that he alone is aware of how little he knows. Of course, there is a little more to Socrates’ wisdom than just that, as he claims, “the arguments never come out of me; they always come from the person I am talking with”, he acknowledge that he is “at a slight advantage in having the skill to get some account of the matter from another’s wisdom and entertain it with fair treatment.” He aptly described himself as an intellectual midwife, whose questioning delivers the thoughts of others into the light today. But his sill in education and debate, which he obviously had in abundance, is not a form of real wisdom so far Socrates is concerned. Real wisdom is perfect knowledge about ethical subjects, about how to live. When Socrates claims ignorance, he means ignorance about the foundations of morality. The pedagogy Socrates always followed was the art of dialectics. He was against preaching, and always advocated argumentative philosophy.

In all his dialogues he talked about his ignorance. He used to insist he merely acted as a midwife for ideas of others. He used to say, philosophy is an intimate and collaborative activity. It is a matter for discussion among small groups of people who argue together in order that each might find the truth for himself.

Plato and Aristotle were two main witnesses of the Socrates. Plato was the direct disciple of Socrates, and he revered his teacher a lot. Aristotle never heard Socrates’ opinions first hand, he studied for some twenty years in Plato’s Academy and had plenty of opportunity to hear Plato’s views from Plato himself. He was therefore in a position to disentangle the thinking of the two men. To a considerable extent, Aristotle’s testimony lets one subtract Plato from his own dialogues and see the Socratic remainder. Aristotle was also much less in awe than Plato was, and therefore managed to take a more dispassionate approach to his teachings.

At first Plato largely limited himself to recreating the conversations of his revered teacher. Gradually, Pythagorean and other mystical glosses were put on Socrates’ ideas as Plato came increasingly under the influence of Italian Pythagoreans. And eventually Plato reached a point where he invoked the name of Socrates to expound on all sorts of subjects.

The important discussions of the real Socrates were exclusively concerned with how one ought to live. They were mostly about the virtues, of which there were conventionally held to be five –
1.    Courage
2.    Moderation
3.    Piety
4.    Wisdom
5.    Justice

His mission was to urge people to care for their souls by trying to understand and acquire these qualities. This task was enough to keep Socrates busy, but Plato was much more ambitious. He had one eye fixed on to the invisible – the divine – the perfect – a Pythagorean impact.
Socrates pursued the virtues because he felt morally obliged to, here and now. Earthly life imposed its own duties, brought its own blessings and was not simply a preparation of something else. Plato’s motives were less straight forward because he had latest one eye fixed on something beyond. One belief about virtue that the two men held in common is the pursuit of goodness is not only a matter of acting in certain ways but also an intellectual project. Yet they saw this project differently. Socrates believed that coming to understand the virtues was necessary precondition for possessing them. A man could not be truly virtuous unless he knew what virtue was, and the only way he might be able to get this knowledge was by examining accounts of particular virtues. That is why Socrates went around questioning people and arguing with them. Plato believed in this argumentative search too, but he also interpreted it as something almost mystical. While Socrates saw the search for definitions as a means to an end, namely the exercise of virtue, Plato saw the search as an end in itself. While Socrates saw the search for definitions as a means to an end, namely the exercise of virtue, Plato saw the search as an end in itself. To look for a definition was, for Plato, to seek the ideal, eternal, unchanging Form of whatever was under discussion; the contemplation of such Forms was itself f the highest good. That is what he thought Socrates’s questioning really amounted to and what it ought to aim at.

For Plato, philosophy was the ladder to this elevated world of Forms, but not everyone could climb it. Its higher rungs were reserved for those who were especially talented in dialectical argument, an elite, like the initiates of cult religions, of the followers of Pythagoras who had been privy to the master’s secrets. Socrates had a more egalitarian approach to knowledge and virtue. The unexamined life, as he famously said in his defense-speech, is not worth living, and this is not a fate to which he meant to condemn all but a chosen few. Socrates would happily question, and argue with anybody, cobbler of king, and for him this was all that philosophy was. He would have had little use for Plato’s Forms or the rare skills needed to find them.
One thing that led Plato to the mysterious Forms was his fascination with mathematics, again a Pythagorean matter and again a point of difference between him and Socrates. Above its gates, Plato’s Academy was said to have had the words “No one ignorant of geometry admitted here”. What stuck Plato about the objects dealt with  in mathematics, such as number and triangles, is that they are ideal, eternal, unchanging and pleasingly independent of earthly, visible things. Plainly one cannot see or touch the number four: it therefore exists in a different sort of realm, according to Plato. And the lines, triangles and others sorts of objects that figure in mathematical proofs cannot be identified with anything physical either. Particular physical lines and triangles are nothing more than approximations to ideal mathematical ones. A perfect line, for example would have no thickness; but any visible line, or rim of a physical object, always will. Given the impressiveness of mathematics, Plato reasoned, others sorts of knowledge ought to copy it and be about ideal and incorporeal objects too. These objects of knowledge were the Forms.

One striking aspect of Socrates’ teaching was that he firmly believed people fail to be virtuous simply because they had not yet learned  enough about virtue. According to him, a complete reflection, contemplation and knowledge about any virtue automatically leads the person to be virtuous, on its own accord. Socrates saw human action and emotion in largely rational or intellectual terms; he ignores impulses and willful irrationality. He used to say, “No one acts against what he believes best – people act so only by reason of ignorance.” This explains the exaggerated importance that Socrates attached t inquiries about virtue. If the only reason why people fail to do whatever is best is that they are ignorant, then the cure for immortality would indeed be more knowledge.

 On this subject, Plato seems for once to have been more down to earth and realistic than Socrates. He recognized an irrational part of the soul and saw it as often in conflict with the rational part. He taught virtuous living has to be developed by careful training and discipline of the young and close attention to their early environment – event of the sort of music they listened to and the sort of stories they were allowed to hear.

Socrates’ theory starts and ends with the soul; in the Apology, he says that the most important thing in life is to look to its welfare. The soul, he says elsewhere, is that which is mutilated by wrong actions and benefited by right ones. To do good is to benefit one’s own soul and to do wrong is to harm it. Since the soul’s welfare is paramount, no other sort of harm is so important. Nothing that other people can do to you can harm you enough to cancel out the benefit you bestow on yourself by acting rightly. It follows that bad people ultimately harm only themselves.

This conflicts with old Greeks moral conventions, according to which it is acceptable to harm one’s enemies. Though not one’s friends and especially not one’s family. The rigorous ethics of Socrates removes such distinctions between people and enjoins a universal morality instead. One striking thing about it is that it does so by appealing to self-interest, not to the sort of altruistic feelings that are usually thought of as the main motive for moral behavior. Doing good is a matter of looking after the part of yourself which matters most, namely your soul. Neither does this unusual ethics rest on any hope of heavenly reward or fear of its opposite. The benefits of virtue are reaped more or less immediately, for “to live well means the same thing as to live honorably and man is happy and the unjust miserable”. In Socrates’ view, happiness and virtue are linked, which is why it is in peoples’ own interests to be moral.

It turns out that among the aspects of the good life which is subtly and surprising linked are virtues themselves. Socrates argues that they come as a package-deal or not at all. His arguments typically proceed by trying to show that some particular virtue cannot work properly unless another is present as well. Courage for instance, requires wisdom. It is not good being darling if we are foolish for such would be courage will degenerate into mere rashness. And all the other virtues are intertwined in similar ways.

One of the virtues – wisdom, plays a special part in the teachings of Socrates. For without any degree of wisdom, people will be too bad to seeing the consequences of actions to be able to tell what is right and what is wrong, which is fundamental prerequisite for virtuous living. Without wisdom they will be unable to be rarely happy  either, because every benefit that has the potential to make one happy also has the potential to be misused and thus to do the opposite. One therefore needs wisdom both to reap the benefits of good things and to be virtuous.  

______________________________________________ 

PS - Most part of the above article is taken from the book - The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance - by Anthony Gottlieb

Winter Solstice and the Psychology of Death

Hunter and Gatherer to Agriculturist – A quantum jump in human evolution

Agriculture was developed atleast 10,000 years ago. As civilizations slowly moved out of the usual mode of hunting and gathering, to agriculture, there was a cultural threshold mankind was crossing – from a primitive race, which was struggling to survive, to a culturally advanced race which was thriving to create memetic innovations. In 1960, Robert Braidwood, a University of Chicago archaeologist, depicted agriculture’s advent as, “culmination of an ever increasing cultural differentiation and specialization of human communities.” The deep seated basic instinct in man – the urge to impress, started getting shape as society evolved to higher levels of complexity. The evolution of agriculture went hand in hand with the increasing differentiation of the community. Man started to live not for bread alone – but also for status, art, entertainment, communication, social interaction. All these enabled mankind to play bigger games, uniting into bigger communities of diverse men, creating a never before fraternity in the society.

This new formed fraternity and an continuous increase in its scale has been appropriately articulated by Charles Darwin as follows –

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

This gradual evolution of the human civilization to bigger and bigger groups played a very important role in the development of culture, traditions, symbolisms, and religious practices. The advent of agriculture was the radical innovation which was giving this unique character to the human civilizations, giving it a character which is more close to the culturally evolved modern man.

Winter Solstice

Festivals in ancient societies occurred in accordance with agricultural practices. Winter time was a period of leisure, crops having already been harvested, and some livestock slaughtered so there were fewer mouths to feed. After the harvest, alcohol was made from dried grains left to ferment. This combination of leisure, fresh meat, harvested crops and alcohol, made winter time the perfect occasion for exuberant parties

The longest night of the year is honored by many traditions as a sacred and rich time. In the past, it's been a night to gather around the fire, or set out candles to call back the Sun. The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the winter solstice usually occurs on December 21 to 23 each year in the Northern Hemisphere, and June 20 to 23 in the Southern Hemisphere.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.

Symbolism

Death of Darkness

In Latin, solstice means sun set still and Winter Solstice is the great stillness before the Sun's strength builds, and days grow longer. It can be a time to rest and reflect. It's the fruitful dark out of which new life can eventually emerge. In ancient times and for some today, the darkness itself is the spiritual cradle into which the Sun is reborn. Everything lies dormant in the silent night, a sacred time of rest before the awakening, and the slow build toward longer days.

The longest night is a fruitful time for setting intentions, to be birthed with the newborn Sun. What you conceive now can grow with the Sun, and gain momentum in Spring. You might start a tradition of setting Winter Solstice intentions, and in one year, see how many have come into being. Put them in a special tin or box that has meaning for you. The dark before the dawn, just like new Moons, can be a powerful moment of magic, drawing in what you'd like to see happen in the new year.

Hence this time of the year is associated with the death of the evil and darkness, and ushering of the light of enlightenment and goodness. To celebrate this aspect various civilizations have different festivities during this time. Requiems for the dead were held and Manzai and Shishimai were performed throughout the night, awaiting the sunrise.

Re-birth

The cosmic event of the end of the longest night, and the emergence of the Sun, ushering an gradual increase of the day henceforward, has been adopted symbolically by almost all the ancient civilizations as heralding of a new life, after death. This aspect has been celebrated in many forms in different cultures.

Various forms of faith

Judaism

This time of year is associated with light -- string lights, sparklers and of course, candles. Hanukkah in the Jewish tradition is the Festival of Lights, with 8 days of ritual illumination of the menorah. There's the advent wreath of the Christian faith and the all-night bonfire for the burning of the Yule log, a tradition with roots in Northern European pre-Christian times. The lights are reminders of the inner light, and hope for the return of sunny days.

Christians

In the 4^th century Rome and 11^th century England, Christmas or Christ's Mass is one of the most popular Christian celebrations as well as one of the most globally recognized mid-winter celebrations in the Northern hemisphere. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, called the "Son of God," the second entity of the Holy Trinity, as well as "Savior of the World." The birth is observed on December 25, which was the Roman winter solstice upon establishment of the Julian Calendar.

Zorastrian

Since the days are getting longer and the nights shorter, this day marks the victory of Sun over the darkness. The occasion was celebrated in the ancient Persian Deygan Festival dedicated to Ahura Mazda, and Mithra on the first day of the month Dey.

Hindu

In Punjab, the winter solstice is celebrated as Lohri. Lohri is of Punjabi folk religion origin. It finds no mention in the Hindu Puranas but has over time been twinned with the Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti which is celebrated a day after Lohri and is known as Maghi. For this reason, Lohri is not actually celebrated on the winter solstice but at the end of the month, Paush

Viking age

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule-time") is a winter festival that was initially celebrated by the historical Germanic people as a pagan religious festival, though it was later absorbed into, and equated with, the Christian festival of Christmas. The festival was originally celebrated from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar. The festival was placed on December 25 when the Christian calendar (Julian calendar) was adopted. Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt.

Ancient Greece

Winter solstice celebrations often include two activities related to the failing sun: producing light and enjoying the cover the darkness provides. Thus, it is common for winter solstice celebrations to include candle lighting, bonfire creation, and drunken debauchery.

While it may be mostly Pagans and Wiccans who celebrate the Yule holiday, nearly all cultures and faiths have some sort of winter solstice celebration or festival. Because of the theme of endless birth, life, death, and rebirth, the time of the solstice is often associated with deity and other legendary figures. No matter which path you follow, chances are good that one of your gods or goddesses has a winter solstice connection.

The Psychology of death

The fear of death

Humans, alone among animals, are capable of fearing death. It is a frightening territory of complete psychic extinction – the absence of memory, personality, knowledge, skills – which follows death. This constant fear of death has been beautifully expressed in the following lines of Milan Kundera –

“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life - and herein lies its secret - takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch”

Overcoming the fear of death

Treating this subject of overcoming fear of death from a psychological angle, Prof. Nicholas Humphrey nicely puts the following theory in his book – Soul Dust. He says that man had evolutionary taken up the following three strategies to overcome this fear of death –

1.       Discount the future – and live for the present

2.       Disindividuate – and identify yourself with culture entities that will survive you.

3.       Deny the finality of bodily death – and believe the individual self to be immortal.

Betrand Russel as he entered old age, wrote:

The best way to overcome [the fear of death]...is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within its bank, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the water flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue.

This gradual shift from an individual consciousness to a universal consciousness has been articulated in various ancient philosophies starting from African Ubuntu philosophy to the Hindu Upanishads. The same them is reverberated in the words of Pythagoras, and later by Plato and neo-Platonists. Plotinus very succinctly expresses the same as follows –

“I am striving to elevate what is divine in me to what is divine in the Universe.”

Plotinus is seen to contemplate on similar idea in his book Enneads –

“What then is our course, what the manner of our flight asks Plotinus and answers: This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see; you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is it be waked within you, a vision, the birthright of all, which few turn to use.”

It is pretty interesting to see how the fear of death and the complete extinction of the self has been beautifully transmuted by the philosophies of most of the ancients to an increased ardor to live. This meme has enabled civilizations to enter into positive and productive enterprises to further the evolution of mankind to higher frontiers.

Upanishads put the concept of eternal life in an interesting way. It says the fact that the individual consciousness has for its essential reality the Universal Self implies the possibility that every human being can rend the veil of separateness and gain recognition of his true nature and oneness with all beings.

David Galin, a psychiatrist with a special interest in Buddhism, has explained:

“The Buddhist tradition holds that Ordinary Man’s inborn erroneous view of self as an enduring entity is the cause of his suffering because he tries to hold on to that which is in constant flux and has no existence outside of shifting contexts. Therefore a new corrective experience of self is needed. Buddhism takes great interest in how people experience their self, rather than just their abstract concept of it, because Buddhist practices are designed to lead to new (correct) experience. It takes arduous training to modify or overcome the natural state of experiencing the self as persisting and unchanging.”

Mind over Matter

In an effort to reconcile the mortality of physical state of man, most of the ancient civilizations have given much of focus on the non-form. Since conceptualizing an invisible aspect of that non-form becomes strenuous through shallow logical reasoning, there is an effort to go beyond the unidirectional logic and rational, and stick on something beyond – an active faith, through contemplation.

In ancient Greek thought, theory meant not hypothesis but contemplation, the act not of a speculator but of a spectator. It is not the result of investigation as that of the process of investigating, the beholding itself. Theory provides the necessary basis of effective realization. The Greek usage brings out that no realization can be attempted without an adequate theoretical preparation.

Meditation is considered not an argument. It is just holding oneself steadily in front of the truth. Here the process of abstraction, isolating the self from the objective is employed. Concentration is the condition of prayer. The Upanishads asks us to return to a field or a forest where the world and its noise are out of sight and far away, where the sun and the sky, the earth and the water all speak the same language, reminding the seeker that he is here to develop like the things that grow all around him. The truth can be taught only up to a point. It has to be assimilated by personal effort, by self-discipline. It is said that the highest stage is attained when the five senses, mind and intellect are at rest.

This aspect of resting the five sense, is put by Confucius as follows –

“Cultivate unity. You do your hearing, not with your ears, but with your mind. Not with your mind, but with your very soul. But let the hearing stop with ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And that negative state is fasting of the heart.”

Kabir puts it more succinctly –

“When I was there, He not. When He was, I not.”

Conclusion

We are heirs of a richer heritage than most of us are aware of. If we cut ourselves away from rich treasury of wisdom about man’s aspirations on this earth which is available to us from our own past, or if we are satisfied with our own inadequate tradition and fail to seek for ourselves the gifts of other traditions, we will gravely misconceive the spirit of religion.

This winter solstice with all its symbolism from various ancient schools of wisdom yet again ponders on the aspect of death and re-birth, of perishing away and rejuvenating again. This brings into a perspective of an eternal cycle of birth, nourishment, destruction and then re-birth.

The winter season naturally makes us go inward to stillness and contemplation, reserving our vital energy, cutting ourselves from the distraction (cold) of the outside world (Maya). This spirit of the season has been celebrated through thousands of rituals since ages.
______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

On this special day...

[Dedicated to my better half - my eternal love - Manisha - on her birthday today]

On this special day
I still remember, Long past
Those excruciating anxious moments,
Which snailed liked never passing years –

Waiting for that one glimpse,
Bathing my heart with bliss,
For that charming smile,
Nourishing my soul with immortalizing nectar.
For that nightingale voice,
A sacrament to my inner self!

And then there was that special moment!
When you would alight
As a crowning glory to my life,
Making me feel so special, so unique, so loved!
Never had I felt ever,
So much with meaning,
So much conspicuous,
So very important!

And then, when you were there with me,
Time would fly in a jiffy – uncaring, unheeded!

And then the most beautiful thing happened to me,
The day when you were mine!
Life’s all splendors; all wealth was at my feet!
For you were mine, and I yours!

Today, I reminiscence that special day,
When you came in this world,
From the heavens far away,
Just for me – o fairy queen,
Continuing our journey
Of eternal togetherness,
Births after births,
We are yet again together!

Strung together in strong bond of love,
Interwoven are we,
Our soul, spirit and self!
We are one, complementing each other,
You are my better half,
I your lovelorn boy!

Wishing you all bests of life,
All that is good and bright!
Meaning of my existence has been
Decorated with the shiniest jewel –
Your happiness and wellbeing!

In the dreary dry desert,
Of everyday life,
With an indifferent universe,
And impersonal society,
When parched with melancholy,
Of bitter reality,
Your presence is like
A divine quench to the soul!
An understanding that –
Yes there is something so beautiful,
So loving, and so caring!
An understanding that God is present,
Right here, right now,
In your closeness with me!

In my journey of life,
Each time I am reduced,
With criticism, hatred,
Rudeness, and mockery.
Each time I bleed by the thorns,
Hidden in the rose,
Each time I am stabbed,
With the dagger of the cold
World out there,
I cherish having re-birth,
Like the Phoenix from the ashes,
When I come back to you,
At the end of the day.

In your embrace,
How real is my goodness to me!
How strongly I get a reason to go on,
Un-tired, un-scathed, by the perils of
The life’s reality!
I cave in the all embracing,
Understanding, loving and protective spell,
Of your love,
Still determined to be what I am,
What I stand for.

More than just a friend,
A life partner,
My better half, dear Paku,
You are my shelter,
You are my blessings,
You are my faith,
You are my meaning!
 You are the reason behind my smile,
You are reason of each beat of my heart!

Seasons come, and seasons go.
In all their splendor,
They teach, they caress through,
With all their splendor,
They go as they had come.
Through all those seasons,
From the sweaty summer,
To the freezing winter,
From the abandon of the fall,
And Bountifulness of Autumn,
From the fragrance of the spring,
To the humid rain.
All wax and wane,
Transiently passing over
To their own finalities.
It is you and I,
And what we create together,
Live forever held tight,
In the warmth and peace,
Of our un-faltering love,
Continue we both in our journey,
Of the eternal togetherness.

The grandeur of the sky,
The glory of the Sun,
The bliss of the moon,
The passion of the ocean,
The resoluteness of the Everest,
All stand in ovation,
To our eternal love!
For that is the most beautiful,
More beautiful than any other creation,
Ever conceived by God!

In gratitude to you,
And the almighty,
For decorating my life,
With your loving
Presence of solace,
I celebrate this special day,
Contemplating together,
In each others arms.

Happy Birthday Paku.
______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

Life’s Philosophy

What is life’s philosophy, for my little self?
Was a question I was contemplating on.
Searching was I answer for none other, Just for my self,
Answer which works for me, and just for me.
You might laugh Or might find it irrelevant.
Might be that you call me a fool.
May be I am one.
But this is what I feel right,
Just for me, and my little self.

Life for me is working hard to earn my living.
With care and concentration carrying out my duties,
Enjoying and contemplating on simple things in my little life –
The job, the books, music, art, my poems,
The city life in public bus, my family and friends,
The characters of my poems, the open blue sky,
The changing seasons, the blossoming flowers.
All make me feel, part of one big family.
A family encompassing all flora and fauna!
A family containing all of humanity!
Where, I am at home,
At every moment, every day, with every person,
And every circumstance!

Life for me is giving understanding and compassion,
Even on the face of hatred and rudeness.
Being so, is not about being righteous and grand.
Rather it is about giving space, freedom and respect
To the other, who has a different point of view.
Being so, is more about exercising the choice out of “hatred for hatred” and “tit for tat”,
As it is a heavy burden to carry, and tough maths to tally,
 That too in a transitory and short journey of life.
It is a decision more out of self-love,
To be free and happy. To love and care.

Life for me is actively creating the relatedness
With people, institutions, things and circumstances around.
A relatedness that is born from the womb of affection and compassion.
A relatedness that is born out of the desire to increase one’s awareness and mindfulness.
A relatedness which is more focused on productively and creatively
Bring out an aspect of beauty, over the debate of who was right.

Life for me is being relevant to others,
Either with a caring gesture, or a helping hand.
It is about being of some use,
In bringing happiness and beauty around.

You are not separate from me.
You create who I am, in your thoughts, in your judgments, in your biases.
You make me realize who I am, and who I am not.
You are my extended self.
For without you,
How would I ever have discovered what I stand for?

Life for me is not being moved by adversity,
Brought by my little self,
Giving into the crass basic instincts of
Judgments, hatred, anger and ego.
It is about being victorious over them,
Overpowering the darkness with the light of
Love, peace, understanding, respect, compassion and concern.
This light is sometimes not visible with the eyes.
But is visible only through heart.
It is about being present not to the absence of love.
But to the presence of barriers within my little self,
Hindering the radiance of love ushering in.

Yes. It is a choice – simple, but stern.
Not giving into what the eye sees, and the mind thinks.
But to let heart overpower all that is shallow,
With the embrace of positivism and love.
Yes. Positivism is the essence of the aesthetics of life.
It might appear to be an illusion to many.
But I remind myself,
An illusion is an illusion till it is discovered that it was not so.
And that discovery should be given a chance.
The chance gives space and respect to the other – a person or circumstance,
To be who they are, and what they stand for,
And allows creation of a world which is really diverse and mutually respectful.
For every such an instance, creates an opportunity to learn, to grow, to evolve.


Life for me is enjoying every moment of my life,
Lost in my own tune – a tune consciously created, every moment.
The unending symphony of
Goodness, service, contemplation, devotion, and ethics.
Consciously unheeding to the endless drone
Of hatred, generalization, meanness, fear, prejudices and self-importance.
It is going beyond what is obvious,
Consciously creating what is desired.
It is an active war,
Defeating the passiveness of cynicism to
The Vigor of bright and happy positivity!

Life for me is overcoming the desire to have more,
Trying to live with the least,
Being a giver instead of a snatcher.
It is about overpowering the natural urge to expect,
With the beautiful gesture of giving!

The real fortune of life for me,
Is not the number of friends I make.
Neither it is the amount of wealth and reputation I garner,
Neither it is about the respect and understanding and support,
I get from others.
Rather it is about how close to nature I am.
It is about how transfixed I am at the Ethics, the Perfect, the Truth.
The truth that stands for responsibility, meaning, solidarity, objectivity,
Service, love, compassion, respect, creativity, honesty, active faith, aesthetics,
(some give them the name of God)
Beneath the transience of emotions, human rattling, and narcissist propensities.

Being steadfast in that Invisible, that central axis,
It is about being able to contribute meaningfully
To my little world studded with the precious gifts –
Family, friends, society, institutions, causes, humanity, fraternity, ethics, and ideals.

To me life is about knowing from where I have come,
The thousands of years of human civilizations,
Contemplating on the teachings of the ancients,
Observing how mankind has evolved,
The mystical way history has repeated itself,
The beautiful relevance of mythologies,
Since millennia, increasing in relevance,
With all their symbolism and profundity,
To the contemporary and the future.

Life for me is to stand in awe,
At the magnanimous spirit of being human,
Manifested by the greatest works of mankind,
From the pyramids of the Giza,
The ethereal veneration of the Stonehenge,
To the grandeur of the Coliseum,
To the marvels of the Pantheon and tower of Pisa!

Life for me is standing in ovation,
At the greatness of men in flesh and blood,
But with the spirit of the Gods!
Men like Homer, Pythagoras, Buddha, Socrates, Plato.
Men like Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, and their guild.
Men like Tagore, Milton, Blake, Tolstoy, Thoreau, Shakespeare.
Men like Bhaskara, Copernicus, Archimedes, Newton.
Men like Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg.
Men like Subhas, Gandhi, Martin Luther, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela.
Grateful I feel when I look back
At the rich legacy of human souls,
Who made a meaning out of their lives,
Enabled humanity to think in a way,
It was never able to otherwise.
They inspire me. They make me pause and think –
 What I am upto?

What I am upto. I do not know.
I am not a visionary, nor a genius.
Neither am I a revolutionary, and an intellectual.
I have made a fool of myself, times many.
But, just know I one thing for sure.
Life for me is being the possibility of Love and Peace.
No matter what, No matter when.
______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

Against Anthropocentrism

 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is a society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more...
- Lord Byron

In the early 19th century, it did not take long for Byron, otherwise notorious for numerous love affairs, huge debts and scandalous incestuous liaisons, to appreciate an important aspect beyond his love for women.
In the post industrial era, when most parts of the world are governed by democracy and capitalism, there is an unconscious shift of humanity towards anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism describes the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective. Time and again there have been movements started and sustained in raising the dignity, importance and relevance of humanity. Every man lives in a society cocooned by human relationships, man-made institutions, working towards ends benefiting humanity. The recent advances in the neuroscience, biology, genetics, psychology and anthropology, have made this point even stronger. Certainly we live in an era where only what is important is “Man” – to a large extent.
There is an urgent need for the society to start accommodating the thoughts on other very important and even bigger and more crucial aspect – the universe itself – its flora and fauna.
The famous American hitchhiker Christopher Johnson McCandless have been aptly shown in the book – “Into the Wild” as saying –
“...but you are wrong if you think the joy of life primarily comes from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It’s in everything and anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at those things”.

The book ends with a deep reflection by the dying Christopher all alone in the wilderness –
“What if I were smiling and running into your arms.
Would you see then, what I see now?”

Pretty profound! Yes, what he saw in his solitary deathly journey in the Alaska was much grander and more beautiful than what he would have seen doing his Harvard law degree and becoming a rich lawyer in Washington, driving a Ferrari, although the trek took his life.

How many among us working as so called professionals are even aware of the passing solstices and equinoxes to start with, leaving aside the Alaskan pristine beauty.  Our project schedules are run through calendar dates. We do not even know about the passing seasons; not to say in the cities like Bangalore, where the climate is almost the same throughout the year. Many among us are not even aware of dawn and dusks, being absolutely busy trapped inside our air-conditioned cubicles. Whatever time is left after working as automatons for the multinational companies, that are either spent watching TV, reading escapist novels, visiting malls, shopping, and trying to resolve complex predicaments in interpersonal relationships. Naturally, flora and fauna does not come into the scheme of things of the modern man.

This constricted way of being, hinders people to live life fully, to be aware of the grand beauty of nature. This separation of man from nature causes deep seated neurosis when dealt psychoanalytically. It is not a luxury today to re-establish the connection of man with nature. It is a necessity. Evolutionarily man has emerged from the lap of nature. If he does not re-establish this lost connection of his with nature, he will be unable to reach his full potential as a human. He will be stunted to live a constricted potentiality of his, in his journey of life.

Creativity, human ingenuity, novelty, and out of the box thinking, have all become such a clichéd today. I feel these are just accidental outcomes, out of addressing other totally orthogonal needs of mankind. One of those symbiotic needs is re-establishment of his connection with nature. The first step would be to start thinking out of the box of anthropocentrism.

______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

Standing in Love - Essence of being Creative

What is love? Shakespeare mused. The great bard was not the first to ask this. 

To most of the humanity love is something which “just happens”. People “fall” in love. It is considered something which is out of one’s control. Since ancient times, we have tons and tons of literature revering this casual numbing idea about love. It is considered as a powerful trance, when man loses his power to reason. Neuroscientists say love a neural itch. Evolutionary Biologists call it a powerful genetic urge. Psychoanalysts call it an expression of repressed drives. For poets it is an ecstatic state of being. For spiritualists it is communion with God. Since ages poets have gone in full length weaving a tapestry of magic around this thing known as love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley in his usual passionate style of writing beautifully sings about this magical feeling of love in the following lines of his famous poem – “Love’s Philosophy” –

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

There is an inherent passiveness in this paradigm of love; a mode of being a victim, a parasite. Love for most is tightly coupled with finding the right “object of love”. Love then, “just happens”. The trance continues till the object is able to fulfill one’s psychological needs. When that ceases, again the lover is in search of the next object of love. Or rather, is “stuck” by the cupid’s arrow, on the sight of another object. Love most of the times is considered as a reactive emotion, which is instigated by an outside agent – “an object of love”.

This traditional paradigm forces me to reflect about the ancient Egyptians in the 700 BC till a century hence. They took their thoughts and emotions to be the work of spirits and gods. Also the Mesopotamian cuneiform texts form 2000 B.C., for instance, refer repeatedly to the “commands” of the gods – literally heard as utterances by the rulers of society. Most of the ancient western world believed that the thoughts are something which is not created by man in his mind, but is put by an external God.

It was in 600BC when man for the first time started contemplating that thoughts are not casted by an external entity, but is created from within the mind. In India, Buddha attributed human thoughts to our sensations and perceptions, which, he said, gradually and automatically combine into ideas. In China, Confucius stressed the power of thought and decision that lay within each person. The signs of change were even stronger in Greece, where poets and sages began to view their thoughts and emotions in wholly new terms. The locus of control of the thoughts thus started shifting from outside to inside.

Unfortunately the emotion of love is still considered by most of the contemporary world from the archaic perception of the ancient Egyptians. It is the “object of love” - the beloved - who controls the button of the wellbeing for a man. Not only in romantic love, but also in other forms of love, it is assumed that if the object of love is worth, love happens automatically. Love is considered as a passive state, in which a person is seduced into with a magical spell, where he is powerless and tranced. This spell originates from the object of love. This spell continues till the object of loves behaves in a particular way. And then it ceases to exist, when the object of love fails to behave in that pattern. Slowly the emotion of love transmutes into hate. All the while man is paralyzed in the emotion of love and hate.

The state of love had been a subject of immense contemplation and research in the field of psychology. There have been many enlightening discoveries done by many modern psychologists on this subject, which is generally un-known to common man. In general parlance, still the world stays in the outdated superstitions on what love occurs to them.

Victor Frankl in his book – Man’s Search for Meaning, had given a powerful and thought provoking definition of love, based on his research on Logotherapy. He says –

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true”

Erich Fromm in his book – The Art of Loving, goes ahead and clarifies; love is not a passive state, where people “fall”. It is not about “falling in love”, but about “standing in love”. He says love is an active process, where a person chooses to think and act in a certain way. He says –

“Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. It is not an affect in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one’s own capacity to love. To love somebody is the actualization and concentration of the power to love.”

He continues, “Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one object of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism”

Now, that is interesting! The contemporary developments in psychology has a different outlook towards love. Love is considered as an art. The attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. In the words of Fromm, “If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, I love you, I must be able to say, I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

Saying that love is an orientation which refers to all and not to one does not imply, however, the idea that there is no differences between various types of love, which ofcourse depends on the object which is loved. But the important thing is although nature of the love differs with respect to the object of love, but the essence of the state of being in love is the same. It is independent of the object of love. If by any chance it is being directed by the object of love, it is not love, but narcissism.

This realization of love is crucial in the contemporary world. It is important not just in the interpersonal relationships, but in the whole context of life. Being in love with life, its opportunities, its challenges, work, play etc, is at core of this realization. If this attitude is carried forward in our everyday thoughts and actions, it enables to bring about lots of creativity and harmony. Being in love is difficult, so is being an artist difficult. It needs patience, knowledge, creativity, understanding and above all, a zest to evolve and increase the sum total beauty in the world.

It is high time for humanity to wake up to the realization that it creativity and novelty does not come through a linear process of following one step to the other. But they are the fall outs of an attitude of being in love – an “active love” – “standing in love”. One has to keep in mind the following pillars of genuine love postulated by Erich Fromm - care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. I feel they are the essence of being creative. Only when you are genuinely in love, can you be genuinely creative.

______________________________________________ 

Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

Being an Artist

An artist, whether a poet, a painter, a photographer, a singer, or anyone who is involved in a creative endeavor, shares a very special place in this world. She is involved in an activity (her work of art) which attempts to create something beautiful. In that effort, she tries to bring perfection to the physical world, which otherwise is non-existent. That perfect beauty, that divinity, that Godliness, that perfection which is otherwise invisible to the world of mortals, comes up in its full grandeur through the creativity of the artist, either in form of that beautifully written poem, or an impeccably carved out sculpture. An artist enjoys that very unique opportunity to be able to attract the divinity to the world of mortals. She contributes to increase the sum total of beauty in this world. Life becomes a beautiful journey, not only for the artist, but also for others who happen to observe and appreciate her art.

Certainly it is about creation of novelty, which gives a good feeling to humanity. Yes, it even has a utilitarian applicability. Yes it adds up to the aesthetics of existence. It definitely increases the happiness quotient and well being for the people who are surrounded by beauty and magnificent works of art. It for sure adds lots of meaning to the life of the artist even. But there is another more profound relevance of a work of art. Keats had beautifully put it in his famous poem     Endymion:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams and health, and quiet breathing.

Yes, beauty is eternal.

There is another very interesting aspect of beauty and art. It is fundamentally non-physical in nature. It belongs to the realm of non-form. For example the beauty of a flower does not belong to the flower, or the plant, or the petal or its color. It is a holistic arrangement of the petals in that golden ratio, which in its entirety conjures up a sense of awe and appreciation in the heart of the beholder. If the petals are taken up separately and analyzed under the microscope to look for the source of the beauty, nothing physical will be realized. The beauty of a well made painting cannot be analyzed and the individual aspects separated which gives the immense aesthetics to the painting. The work of art in its entirety is much more than its individual constituent parts. The process that went in creating the art, the inspiration involved in conceiving the art, the intercourse of the emotions, thoughts, skills and expertise of the artist and the materials involved, holistically creating the work of art in synergy, certainly belongs to a non-physical realm. All these go beyond the artifact of art itself. It is correct to infer that an artist cannot be judged just based on her work of art. There are aspects beyond the artifact.

It appears that this ethereal nature of a work of art was known to mankind since the earliest artwork excavated, which dates back to earlier than 30,000 BC!!! These were in forms of cave paintings. The later artworks from the Egyptians, the Greeks, and then those of the Renaissance, have time and again tried to bring forth this unique and special aspect of art. Art had always been an expression of perfection in this otherwise imperfect world, and artists – the bridge between that celestial perfection and the physical world. Aristotle has succinctly expressed this as –
“…All the arts always have in view some good that we desire to achieve.”

The concept of God is also something that belongs to the realm of non-form. Through a work of art, which tries to portray perfection, God can be experienced. There is no way to really touch, see or experience God through the human senses. It solely belongs to the domain of experiencing that bliss indirectly though a vehicle of art and creativity. It might not be incorrect to conclude that the only way to appreciate, understand and know God, is through the eyes of an artist. Creativity and imagination appears to me the first step to know God. Being a psychological zombie, being drugged by material pursuits, being solely busy in the transactional chores of every day existence, lost in the world of sensual gratification, a person loses his opportunity to know God. It is simple. Having a limited psychic energy (attention) that we are endowed with as humans, and given the limited time we have in a day, when we allow ourselves to be totally occupied with things which are gross, we lose out the opportunity to experience something which is higher, finer and more beautiful. It is just that we have limited resource of time and energy.

When I call for being an artist, it does not necessarily mean that the person is occupied in a profession or a hobby particularly into fine arts. A person can be an artist doing what he does for his living. Einstein was a clerk in a patent office. He chose to be creative at his work being a clerk, which led to creation of things as profound as the Theory of Relativity. Same was the case with Pythagoras, Archimedes, Kepler, Euclid, and later Newton, and series of scientific creators of the modern world, who apparently did not have any creative vocation to start with. But they scooped out being artists in their own respect. Art and aesthetics was part of their everyday life, even when they were apparently involved in things which appear so very dry and “scientific” on surface. The problem is that, most of the post industrial society today feels art as a prerogative of poets and painters. If you want to do something to earn your living, and something meaningful or worthwhile, you have to give away being artistic, and start putting on the hat of analysis, rationality, scientific investigation, and a well defined sequential process to achieve something material. There is not much place left for imagination and creativity. The state of affairs appears more farcical when we see those “consultants” who come up with their superficial weekend workshops on “creativity and innovation.” It is similar to the new age hypocrite gurus, who promise you enlightenment if you attend their week long workshop, shelling out a big share of your hard earned money.

As society flocks more and more into instant gratifications, sensory adventures, one night stands, weekend nirvanas, more is the need to remind oneself of art and being an artist. 

______________________________________________ 

Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

In the sound of the Chisel

In this poem I have tried to express one important mystery of life. There are aspects of nature, which are hidden from its appearance. For example, the mathematical relationship between the integers and harmonics is invisible. The melody and that blissful feeling of listening to the Mozart’s symphony, is beyond the details of the musical instruments involved. There is a complete invisible essence which makes the symphony so divine.

For example, if you connect four dots, you get a square. Connecting another three dots, will give you a cuboid. See, we are creating 6 different planes out of those extra 3 dots. Now, the comprehension of those 6 new plains in the 3D model, is beyond those 3 extra dots those were used.

The idea is that the essence of everyday life is beyond the transactional realities that are appreciated by our 5 senses apparently. The physical world is just a partial truth. There is always a confluence between the physical and the divine, to create anything worthwhile. The physical perishes away. It just transiently tries to hold that divine essence. And after some time, that essence flows to some other physical form.

To explain this better, it was Pythagoras in 570BC who tried to investigate the nature of the solar system, and had postulated with his rudimentary means that earth is NOT the center of universe, and it just rotates around a ball of fire, along with all the other planets. See, this theory of Pythagoras was not visible to him directly. He investigated, and mathematically analyzed the cosmos, and came up with this idea. One thousand years later, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was the first man to make a serious attempt to apply mathematics to find laws of celestial motion. His faith that heavens must be arranged in a harmonious pattern that reveals itself in simple mathematical relationships led him to formulate several generalizations about the planets. Today most of the formulations of Kepler are regarded as landmarks of fundamental Physics. Now see, the idea is beyond the invisibility part. There another beautiful aspect. That is the aspect of continuum and immortality. The beautiful idea of Pythagoras lived beyond his life. 1000 years later the idea was re-evaluated by Kepler and Copernicus to formulate a new paradigm of solar system, which was till then being dogmatically believed as having Earth as the center point (Thanks to the influence of Roman Catholic Church, misguiding the world, in the name of their own personalized idea of God and His creation). Notice that the meme – the idea- was greater than the physical form of either Pythagoras, Kepler of Copernicus. It was something beyond – divine, omnipotent, omnipresent, and perfect! Is that not God?

The following story is about Angella Rizabella Grace – Michel Simoni’s Love. When the entire universe is head over heels with the beauty of this lady in form, what Simoni sees is the essence of her beauty beyond her form. She is being described as beautiful means of expression of that ethereal and celestial beauty being condensed on her form, for a limited time, brought about by the sound of the Simoni’s chisel and his profound and unshakable love for her.

In the sound of the Chisel

Merged the infinite with the limited,

Comprehendible was the immortal,

In the garb of the perishable!

A profound Confluence was on show,

Of the divine and the earthly,

The form and the non-form!

For busy was Simoni,

Chipping out those extra bits,

Out of the perfection he was creating,

The sculpture of the angel

With the Most Beautiful Eyes –

 Angella Rizabella Grace!

The gasping Divine Beauty,

Magically had descended

Far from the heavens un-seen,

Invisible and unfathomed,

To the worlds of the mortals!

With every sound of the Chisel,

Embracing was that invisible and hidden,

Perfect Beauty in its form pristine,

Through contours on the surface of the

White and cold marble!

Stunned and intoxicated all the

Bees and insects and the birds,

The flora and fauna at large,

The sky, ocean and the entire cosmos,

Expectant of an ounce of nectar,

Like restless hummingbirds,

All of them flocked to her,

Surrounding Angella!

Frenzied in delirium,

Love soaked hearts of the entire creation,

Desperate all were

To contain the profound beauty,

In their small life and even smaller heart –

Owning for themselves, forever –

The cold, white marble,

Of the fragile and aging,

But the perfect mannequin!

Handicapped was the universe,

Trapped inside the bondage of its ignorace,

And even shorter attention and whims,

Could see just that was just a mirage –

The transient and temporal,

The only the partial truth,

The incomplete beauty!

It was just Simoni and the silent oak tree in his garden,

Who had the glimpse of the beauty profound and complete!

Through the sound of the chisel,

They were the only ones,

To feel the perfection beneath

The stone, the curves and contours!

The beauty did not belong to the mannequin,

Nor did it belong to the throbbing restless delirium of the lovers.

Beneath all the humdrum of the sameness of forms,

Was that invisible beauty that was perfect and novel!

That was the glimpse of God!

The pure Godliness of those Most Beautiful Eyes!

Simoni in the flow of his handiwork,

Was meditating at the beauty beneath the form.

The eternal shower of grandeur, of elegance and grace,

Was coming from faraway heavens invisible,

Through the channel of the chisel’s sound,

Surrendering to the bondage of his ardent love!

Through Simoni’s ardor, and his finesse,

The intangible gave a peek of itself,

In the form of Angella Rizabella Grace!

Through his art, work, and passion,

Was Simoni able to be attuned to the source -

The genesis of the eternal flow

Of love, beauty, harmony and perfection!

He knew it was through him,

And the symphony of his chisel,

Did the profound intoxication of love,

Flow to the cold and white stone!

Also he knew the beauty was not his,

And so it was of none!

Beyond the realities –

Hard and Cold,

Of the physical world,

Simoni and the oak tree,

Was able to establish their link

With that invisible, impersonal and infinite!

They knew it was the gaps between their thoughts,

In the stillness was the potential bud,

Of all that was beautiful and divine!

That infinite creative sap,

Connected Simoni with the Gods!

For Gods could express themselves,

On the people and things of the mortal world,

Through the art of Simoni!

Either hidden or destroyed,

By the different finalities of the senses,

The Mortal world had lost its connection,

To the ever nourishing nectar!

But, in the hours of silence,

Simoni and the oak tree,

Could redeem their lost link!

It was just about being in the love with the Truth,

With passion and silence,

Investigating the profundity of life,

Discovering the mystery invisible

Beyond the distractions of appearance!

For more poems on Michel Simoni refer - http://criativ-mind.blogspot.com/search/label/SIMONI%20SERIES
______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar