Sky above, Earth below, Fire Within

What an opportunity it is with,

Sky above, Earth below, and Fire Within!

And glowing in that fire,

you see anything is possible

You see opportunity when others see impossibility

You take risks. You are focussed. 

You hustle, you are restless,

You  know that nothing is unrealistic

And glowing in that fire,

You feel overwhelming love!

You embrace your childlike wonder and curiosity

You take flying leaps into the unknown

You  contribute to something bigger than yourself

And glowing in that fire,

You create. You learn. You grow. You do. You be.

You believe it's never too late to start living a dream.

And glowing in that fire,

You reclaim your humanity 

______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

The Idea of Right Action

Bhagavad Gita gives reference to "karma" - action, aligned with "dharma" - the laws of nature, at multiple places. The idea of "action" and then the "right action" as postulated in the Bhagavad Gita is pretty interesting and profound. In this article I discuss different dimensions of this philosophy.

A) Action without attachment to the Goal.
In this Krishna says, "You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty"
In simple terms it means: Keep on performing your duties without expecting any reward in return, leading a selfless life.
Most of us today have forgotten about this part and always take things as business deals. Be it friendship, love or even marriage. We always impose conditions before doing anything so that we benefit from it in the end. Here the suggestion is to do away with the greed of the result of any action.
In this level, one can logically arrive to the efficacy of this formulation. Obviously, when you are not distracted by the future result that your action will take you to, and focus all your energy and attention to your task at hand, you would be able to be more organized and efficient at your task. This will by itself lead you to successful result.

B) Action - the only path to true wisdom.
In the next level, we are told that "the path of knowledge is the same as the path of action." What this means is that "the path of action," i.e, of what is called Right Action, when it is attained, merges with the path of knowledge. At this point, they become one and the same; but this is  because that action is no longer action, as we normally understand it, but something quite different: it is wisdom in activity and, ultimately, just wisdom. So we can see that in order to reach this path of wisdom, a man cannot be bound to the action he is carrying out, but must be immersed in the Law, and act from there. Right action is not an attitude of giving in order to receive, of sowing in order to reap. To understand this we have to break down our mental structure which is unable to conceive the reality of something for that "something" in it. If we take a certain path, we feel we have to get somewhere; if we make a sacrifice, we have to gain a reward; it we give, we feel that sooner or later we must receive something in return. This is the way we tend to think. But the Bhagavad Gita has totally a different formulation. It says that right action would put an end to the chain of exchanges, with cause and effect. It leads one to a kind of freedom, where one is closer to the truth, to the wisdom. There is nothing that action shall take to, which is any way near to the profundity of wisdom that action itself nurtures the person. It is the journey the person undertakes doing an action that beautifies his character with added insights and wisdom. The result of the action is just another outcome - a bonus, if you would. There many grander aspects of entering into an action per se. Attaining knowledge, wisdom, understanding, maturity, insight, etc are various other dimensions that linger from the process of entering into a right action. It is further said that without action, no wisdom is possible.
To explain this tenet, let me take up a small example. If I am to explain to my daughter what love is, I might explain all the definitions, theoretical frameworks, aspects, nature and ramification of this word. My child might be able to get a fair idea of the concept in a mental level. But it will be still be in the superficial level of just another intellectual concept, a shallow mental picture. It is only through her personal experience of what is love, by entering into an activity engaging her entire personality, experiencing the bliss of being in  love in relating to it, or experiencing the pain of not in love, from the level of mind, heart, body and soul, she will be able to for the first time taste what real love is all about. You might agree that this voluntary or involuntary engagement into an activity to really experience love is a necessity in the part of my daughter to really understand what love is, in its totality. Not just a partial understanding in the level of mental models. Same thing holds good in any aspect of life. An understanding which is based on borrowed ideas, without entering into self-action, remains superficial in the level of just mental models. That is just a partial view. That is by itself powerless and sterile. There is no potency, vitality or life in it. Life has to be lived, entering into activity, to experience and understand life, in its various aspects. One who has not seen, felt and trekked the Himalayas, will never even come close to what is known as the grandeur of the Himalayas.
In today's world of rampant commoditization, people think that they can buy anything and everything off the shelf. If one wants to have a good dinner, one immediately buys oneself an expensive dinner in a restaurant. But the person totally misses out the pleasure of growing the vegetables, washing and cutting them, cooking them, and really cherishes the profundity of the pleasure of eating and sharing the food, after ente ring into all these activities. One would be able to appreciate the difference in the quality of pleasure one derives in the second way, when compared to the first.
One has to really understand that even in the realm of interpersonal relationships this holds good. If one does not take deep interest into the other, and really enter into an internal activity to understand a person, his point of view, his pains and fears, his personality needs, his background, his interests, one will never even be able to relate to what the other is even trying to say. Most of the way we relate to others is very superficial. We never feel for the other. We relate to the other just in the mental and logical level, most of the times superimposing our own autobiography on the other person. Relating to another person in such superficial realm, we end up either loving, or hating him. One has to understand that such a stance is just an illusion. By this, one has to understand that he is not dealing with another individual, but just a projection of one's own self.

C) Being-ness over Having-ness - 
In the journey from "action" to the "right action", Krishna proposes the aspect of Being over Having. The state of being is prescribed to search for the "right action" for one own self. This right action for an individual is suited to the uniqueness of the individual. It helps the individual to express himself fully and bring the full expression of his unique individuality. In Sanskrit, the term used to denote this is "Swadharma". In the state of being, which precedes the state of doing, a person is asked to contemplate on his self, and use his reason, experience, understanding and other human faculties to break through the illusions both within and outside, and search for himself the right action - the right way of being. Only after this phase, one is asked to venture into the world of action. This phase of being-ness does not end when a person is in the domain of doing. He continues in this state, being centered in his "Swadharma", and keeps taking action. He is always centered and grounded.
The state of Being has two fold purpose. One is it allows the person to select which action to take, and which not to. This is a sense of discrimination one develops within. The second is that the person grounded in the state of being, even when performing the action, does not get distracted by the storm of the distractions of "having" from all the directions of the material world. He is tuned to the internal compass of "Swadharma".
This can be appreciated in the way Mother Earth manifests herself. Mother Earth or as she is known by the ancient Greeks as Gaia, is always in a state of tranquil inaction, in an outward realm. But she is always quietly serving thousands of seeds to nourish them in her womb, holding in her immense embrace the sparkle of the diamonds, the sheen of gold, the passion of throbbing geysers and hot springs, and innumerable life forms. Mother Earth does not enter into these activities to "have" something. She even does not proclaim for her actions to the universe.  Please note that the state of being-ness as is not about lethargy, in-action, and a dejected state of hopelessness. Rather it is a state of immense internal activity. The activity might not be visible to the material world. But there are lots of upheavals being crossed, battles being won, obstacles being overcome, in the is-ness of one's own inner self. This builds up the psychological capital which provides the strength and direction to oneself to relate to the world outside. Mother Earth in this case, always is in a state of "is-ness". This state of "is-ness" from outside looks like a life-less inertia. But in reality, from within, she is in endless activity grounded deep into love, concern and compassion. She does not have anything. She is just "IS". This awareness and appreciation of "Being-ness" brings into one's consciousness new depth of being alive, which would have otherwise fizzled out when man is vexed in the race of having and having. A person will be able to see the hidden beauty of life, which is camouflaged by the apparent commotion, dis-integration, contradictions and ugliness all prevalent on surface. This opens up avenues to appreciate and observe divinity from the everyday chores of one's existence. Being-ness attaches meaning to an action. This meaning crops from one's capacity of love, concern, passion, vitality and potency. In the state of "Being", one starts to recognize that, in spite of abominable ugliness of the world around, there is an undercurrent of beauty and melody and a serene composure joyously gurgling. The more he recognizes the harmony in which the life is woven, more he goes deeper - between the ridges of the tapestry and dives into the beauty gushing out from each deep pore of the fabric of life. He realizes that the true bliss is not having something or somebody. That pleasure of having is just momentarily. Eventually what one has, rusts, decays and die. Only what stays is what "is" 

______________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

The discovery of my real self – Creative Spontaneous Activity

The following article is inspired from the book – “The Fear of Freedom” by Erich Fromm.

In the quest of the truth, this is another threshold I am crossing, while I am continuing my research, contemplation and synthesis of the ideas of Erich Fromm. Most of his ideas related to social psychology are captured in his following books – The Art of Loving, The Fear of Freedom, The Sane Society, Man for himself, an enquiry into the psychology of ethics, To have or to be. 

In the book – “The Fear of Freedom”, Fromm delves into the post industrialized world, and analyses the overwhelming impact of the rising capitalism, modernization and materialism on human psyche.  He explains in detail how with rise of freedom and individuality in the post modern world, there has been an increase of loneliness, separateness and split in human nature. He shows that freedom from the traditional bonds of medieval society, though giving the individual a new feeling of independence, at the same time made him feel alone and isolated, filled him with doubt and anxiety, and drove him into new submission and into a compulsive and irrational activity. This compulsive and irrational activity to which man has been driven into out of this feeling of fear, separateness and discontent, take the form of either sado-masochism, or a total submission.

Sadism is a form of being which is totally authoritative. A sadist kills the individuality of others, and forces his thoughts and ideas on the other. This way he overcomes the separateness he has with the other. An example might be an old fashioned father, who in the name of love for his child, decides what is best for the child, and does not allow the child to grow and realize her real self.

Masochist is a person who is totally submissive to an authority. By being so, the person succeeds in resolving the separateness, by discarding his real self. A masochist derives pervert pleasure out of being in pain, being mutilated by the Sadist. A typical example might be one’s masochistic relationship to his idea of God, as an all powerful entity, punishing him when he behaves against His will, and loving when he behaves as per His will. In this relationship, God takes the place of the Sadist individual, and the follower becomes a masochist.

In the case of total submission, the person forgoes his real, authentic self, and submits to the pseudo thoughts and philosophies from external sources. For example, if a person who does not have any training and interest in visual arts, visits a world famous museum, and looks at a classic painting, he appreciates it. But the appreciation is a pseudo one. He neither has the authentic appreciation of the painting, nor is interested in it. He appreciates it just because he should appreciate that. This certainly is different from one’s intellectual quest to learn more and experience more, from outside sources; in which case the person learns, reflects, contemplates and synthesizes the truth for himself. That is more about discovering one’s own real self, being informed from the works from the exponents in the past, in the related domain. But an in-authentic submission is about just aping outside ideologies superficially. Submission helps the person to be a part of the crowd, and hence resolve his separateness.

But most of these mechanisms – sado-masochistic cravings, and submission to the external world, are in-authentic and temporary methods to cover up that fear. Modern man is starved for life. But since, being an automaton, he cannot experience life in the sense of spontaneous activity he takes a surrogate any kind of excitement and thrill: the thrill of drinking, of sports, of vicariously living the excitements of fictitious persons on the screen. Fromm goes ahead to investigate the real solution to overcome the fear.  He terms it as freedom and spontaneity.
Fromm says that man can be free and yet not alone, critical and yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an integral part of mankind. This freedom, man can attain by the realization of his self, by being himself. He continues -

Idealistic philosophers of the guild of Plato and the neo-Platonists, have believed that self-realization can be achieved by intellectuality, so that man’s nature may be suppressed and guarded by his reason. The result of this split however has been that not only the emotional life of man but also his intellectual faculties have been crippled. Reason, by becoming a guard set to watch its prisoner, nature, has become a prisoner itself; and thus both sides of human potentiality, reason and emotion, were crippled. From says that he believes that the realization of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking but also by the realization of man’s total personality, by an active expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities. These potentialities are present in everybody; they become real only to the extent to which they are expressed. In other words, positive freedom consists in spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.

While spontaneity is a relatively rare phenomenon in our culture, we are not entirely devoid of it. In the first place, we know of individuals who are or have been spontaneous, whose thinking, feeling, and acting were the expression of their selves and not of an automaton. These individuals are mostly known to us as artists. As a matter of fact, the artist can be defined as an individual who can express himself spontaneously.

Spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world – with man, nature and himself. Love is the foremost component of such spontaneity; not love as the dissolution of the self in another person (masochism), not love as the possession of another person (sadism), but love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity: that it springs from the need to overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness – and yet that individuality is not eliminated. Work is the other component; not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the very products of man’s hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation. What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community. It affirms the individuality of the self and at the same time it unites the self with man and nature. The basic dichotomy that is inherent in freedom – the birth of individuality and the pain of aloneness – is dissolved on higher plane of man’s spontaneous action.

In all spontaneous activity the individual embraces the world. Not only does his individual self remain intact; it becomes stronger and more solidified - for the self is as strong as it is active. There is no genuine strength in possessions as such, neither in material property nor in mental qualities like emotions or thoughts. There are also no strength in use and manipulation of objects; what we use is not ours simply because we use it. Ours is only that to which we are genuinely related by our creative activity, be it a person or an inanimate object. Only those qualities that result from our spontaneous activity give strength to the self and thereby from the basis of its integrity. The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing  of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us grater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours.
This implies that what matters is the activity as such, the process and not the result. In our culture the emphasis is just the reverse. We produce not for a concrete satisfaction but for the abstract purpose of selling our commodity; we feel that we can acquire everything material or immaterial by buying it, and thus things become ours independently of any creative effort of our own in relation to them. In the same way we regard our personal qualities and result of our efforts as commodities that can be sold for money, prestige and power. The emphasis thus shifts from the present satisfaction of creative activity to the value of the finished product. There by man misses the only satisfaction that can give him real happiness – the experience of the activity of the present moment – and chases after a phantom that leaves him disappointed as soon as he believes he has caught it – the illusory happiness called success.

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself. This way he gains strength as an individual and he gains security.

The idea of spontaneous activity needs more explanation. It is not the mindless act of giving up to one’s irrational whims and fancies. I feel Fromm should have qualified his spontaneous activity as Creative Spontaneous Activity. By adding the extra qualifier – creative, I would want to stress on Fromm’s idea of originality, constructive and positive aspect of one’s own action. Through his spontaneity man has to realize his real self, engaging into an activity which affirms goodness – both within and outside. It is not enough just being spontaneous in certain private and spiritual matters, but above all in the activity fundamental to every man’s existence, his work. It is about engaging in a creative enterprise, which not only helps the person to express his real self, but also that activity should uplift humanity per se.

The Creative Spontaneous Activity should come from the place of love, compassion, dignity, respect, beauty, positivity, growth, freedom, joy, courage, decency and kindness. It should be firmly grounded in the belief of human equality and individual uniqueness. At the same time, there has to be the perspective of general good – that insight of positively impacting people and institutions.  The only criterion for realization of freedom is whether or not the individual actively participates in determining his life and that of society, and this not only by the formal act of voting but in his daily activity, in his work, and in his relations to others. Modern political democracy, if it restricts itself to the purely political sphere, cannot sufficiently counteract the results of the economic insignificance of the average individual.

I have tried to express this philosophy using the following diagram -
http://criativ-mind.blogspot.com/2012/01/copy-right-all-rights-reserved-samrat.html

______________________________________________ 

Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar

On Truth and original thinking

I was reading the book - The fear of freedom, by Erich Fromm. The following excerpt on truth and its nature, and the way human relate to truth, was eye catching. As usual, Fromm forces the reader to contemplate into dimensions he has always ignored - 

"..Another closely related way of discouraging original thinking is to regard all truth as relative. Truth is made out to be a metaphysical concept, and if anyone speaks about wanting to discover the truth he is thought backward by the "progressive" thinkers of our age. Truth is declared to be an entirely subjective matter, almost a matter of taste.

Scientific endeavor must be detached from subject factors, and its aim is to look at world without passion and interest. The scientists has to approach facts with sterilized hands as a surgeon approaches his patient.

The result of this relativism, which often presents itself by the name of empiricism or positivism or which recommends itself by its concern for the correct usage of words, is that thinking loses its essential stimulus - the wishes and interests of the person who thins; instead it becomes a machine to register "facts". Actually, just as thinking in general has developed out of the need for mastery of material life, so the quest for truth is rooted in the interests and needs of individuals and social groups. Without such interest the stimulus of seeking the truth would be lacking.

There are always groups whose interest is furthered by truth, and their representatives have been the pioneers of human thought; there are other groups whose interests are furthered by concealing truth. Only in the latter case does interest prove harmful to the cause of truth. The problem, therefore, is not that there is an interest at stake, but what kind of interest is at stake. I might say that inasmuch as there is some longing for truth in every human being, it is because every human being has some need for it.

As a child, every human being passes through a state of powerlessness, and truth is one of the strongest weapons of those who have no power. But the truth is in the individual's interest not only with regard to his orientation to the outer world; his own strength depends to a great extent on his knowing the truth about himself. Illusions about oneself can  become crutches useful to those who are not able to walk alone; but they increase a person's weakness. The individual's greatest strength is based on the maximum of transparency to himself. "Know Thyself" is one of the fundamental commands that aim at human strength and happiness.

...with regard to all basic questions of individual and social life, with regard to psychological, economic, political, and moral problems, a great sector of our culture has just one function - to before the issues. One kind of smokescreen is the assertion that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary, it would seem that many of the basic issues of individual and social life are very simple, so simple, in fact, that everyone should be expected to understand them. To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a "specialist" can understand them, and he only in hi sown limited field, actually - and often intentionally - tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter. The individual feels helplessly caught in a chaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the specialists have found out what to do and where to go.
The result of this kind of influence is twofold: one is a skepticism and cynicism towards everything which is said or printed, while the other is a childish belief in anything that a person is told with authority. This combination of cynicism and naivete is very typical of the modern individual. Its essential result is to discourage him from doing his own thinking and deciding."

From the above passage this is what I synthesize -

1. Truth is absolute, and can be obtained not just be accumulation of facts, but rather synthesizing, analyzing, contemplating, and really "thinking". Having said that it does not go to under-estimate facts. Rather it emphasizes the need of complementing facts with original thinking of the student, the need of relating the facts with the experience, emotions and interests of the student. It is about simmering the thoughts and facts in the moments of deep contemplation.

2. Quest of truth is rooted in the interest of individuals and social groups. Without such interest the stimulus of seeking the truth would be lacking. One has to be aware of the nature of interest involved. Following are the nature of the interests involved -

i) There are always groups whose interest is furthered by truth, and their representative have been pioneers of human thought. For this group truth is the means, and the end to itself. It works like a exploration of an uncharted land. More a person explores, more he is filled with awe, and more he is motivated to explore. It is the truth which he finds, and that fuels his search for truth to the next level.

ii) There are other groups whose interests are furthered by concealing the truth, either in the name of faith, harmony, status-quo, solidarity, etc. This nature of interest forces a pseudo thinking and in-authentic act on the person involved.

3. Every human longs for truth. This gives him power. As a child, every human passes through a state of powerlessness, and truth is one of the strongest weapon of those who have no power. Truth is in the individual's interest not only with regard to his orientation in the outer world; his own strength depends to a great extent on his knowing the truth about himself. Illusions about oneself can become crutches useful to those who are not able to walk alone; but they increase person's weakness. For example an illusion on how a person relates his inner self with say God, or love or his inner model of reality, might give him comfort, but will make him weak, if he does not remove the illusions and bring out the light of truth. This action requires immense discipline, patience and courage. This act of lightening up of one's inner self, with truth, has been termed as varied as "self-realization", "enlightenment", "nirvana", etc. So aptly is the inscription at the entrance of the temple of Delphi of the ancient Greeks - "Know thyself".

4. There is a need to develop a critical thinking faculty. One has to go beyond naivete and skepticism. The root of this what Fromm says about smokescreening the otherwise easy truth in the name of over-specialization.

Creativity is a fallout of original thinking. At its core it is much more involved with the human nature, than is popularly even acknowledged by the masses.

______________________________________________

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