the truth

If you [are] a real seeker after truth, [you must,] at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
-Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

I recently met a few people who used to doubt the existence of God and then turned to Him. I have also met people who used to believe in God (or at least believe in the belief in God) and then started doubting it. It is often these issues around which debates on doubts revolve. Thankfully not many doubt the scientific methodology though they do doubt its being able to grasp all truths. Quoting Godel's logic to extend to non-formal systems, the reachability of truth is put beyond not just logic, but also thought.

The ancient Indian cosmology, as opposed to most other western religious cosmologies (for instance the ones that claim that the universe, or the earth is 6000 years old) was aware of the vastness of space and time and had become aware that to understand the hierarchy is a rather daunting task. They decided that until telescopes are invented we better turn to nuclear physics. As a result, they turned their attention inward and discovered the vastness inside. It should be possible to gaze at the truth by getting closer to zero than to infinity, they concluded.

The Greek philosophers (and then western in general) shot down the sometimes imaginative but often more holistic stuff of older philosophies replacing it with hard logic that is slow in moving outward (as also inward). But, combined with other branches of the sometimes stuttering, sometimes rocked by fraud, science, it does make definite progress throwing out everything that is not really needed. Scientists are often like horses tied to a cart, with their eyes seeing only what is in front of them. But if there are enough of them, one ends up covering all directions.

Descartes belonged to the rationalist school (in fact he was one of the founders) as against the empiricist school that included philosophers like Hobbes whose thoughts, to an extent, paralleled Indian philosophy. It is Descartes' Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) that tells us if we do really exist (or rather how do we know we do exist).

The confusion often is about the purpose of life. Why do we exist? Or even, why do we need to exist? THAT is what sends people scampering off in search for truth, or Truth, or even truths. This generally gets entangled with Right and Wrong (ethics, morality and all that) too. Along that path people doubt many things, including the reality of it all. Descartes would have been partially proud. Unfortunately, they do not heed him to the T. They forget that they should also doubt that there has to be a, some, definite truth. May be there isn't any.


If you are a real seeker, you must, at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, that a specific truth or purposefulness can be ascribed to the universe. The creativity that will then flow will really be your own.

hellish perspectives

Hell is full of musical amateurs
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The Nobel winner Shaw was a critic and dramatist (not necessarily in that order) among other things. He was not a musician of note, but he did criticize, or favour, certain musicians in his column. His view of hell would be a good indication of what he treated as good music.

Yesterday I watched an episode of the original star trek where Kirk and co. go to a planet which is like paradise except that the humanoids are under complete control of a machine living peacefully. Spock even remarks how serene their lives are without the human envy, anger etc. But when threatened, they end up destroying the machine and causing the humanoids to start living like humans. Back on the ship, Spock semi-accuses the captain of giving them the knowledge of the apple and thus destroying Eden. The captain is quick to remark that before calling him Satan Spock should take a look at himself.

People do create hell and heaven in their image of bad and good. That is part of the drive of seeing things in black and white. Once you label things, life becomes easier to cope with. Squash complex dimensions by making projections on to familiar ones and keep treading there. Life is simpler and stays in a rut. Helps make one a kupmanduk.

On the other hand, if you attach new connotations to the old, you can get to higher dimensions. See the world in a whole new light, different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Get a wing, so to speak.


Rather than defining hell and heaven, how about converting the Earth in to the best it can be?

Involved writing?

Recognize the fly, even love it if you want, but don't marry it.
-Natalie Goldberg, in Writing down the Bones

Natalie is describing how a writer, in a restaurant scene, can mention a fly, even the particular sandwich it walks over, name its species, but if she digresses too much in discussing the patterns of its wings and a mathematical discussion of its trajectory and such details unconnected to the scene where the reader is expecting the waiter to arrive or something else related to happen, how it can be a put-off.

While I believe that digressing is a fine art that is not very well explored yet - at least to my knowledge - let us leave it to another time.

The reason I thought of bringing in the fly in the ointment is its inappropriateness elsewhere. It is analogous to the mindless use of analogies. Suppose a great unnamed spiritual leader - or one treated as such - is describing the theory of unity of souls and how there is one big soul and all our souls merge with it once we die (or may be are one even when we are alive). A typical example he would take (I am giving up my political correctness by not saying she here. Howmuchever I would like to see the equality of sexes in the arena of priesthood, the males have unabashedly taken control over it, and the women should really do something abut it. But they should replace some rather than add to them) is to say that JUST LIKE sugar dissolves in to water and becomes invisible, unidentifiable, so also our soul becomes one with the ultimate one. This is an analogy. The sugar and water are tangible substances and have nothing whatsoever to do with the souls. Their physical properties in this case are based on the intermolecular spaces as well as the structure, composition of the molecules. But in one stroke that is equated with the soul which can otherwise not be decomposed in to any structure. When others seem to believe it, the guru starts believing it himself (in case he did not earlier), and all this has a very positive effect and it becomes a fact (just like ganesh idols drinking milk is a fact). Oh, the power of analogy. Poor Einstein, he once said: Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. If only he could use analogies, everything would so much simpler.

Love the analogies, even marry them, so long as you know how to evaporate the water and reclaim the sugar.

PS: budding authors may find some good pointers in Natalie Goldberg's book.
Her website is: http://www.nataliegoldberg.com