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!
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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.

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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. 

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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.  

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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.
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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.
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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.
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