What's on my mind? "Garbage"!

Some Golden Garbage for the needy! Unlearn this... There is no such thing as 'moment' - 'meaning' is your brain's pattern recognition and nothing more. Questions like 'Who am I?', Why am I here for? What is life?' - there is no 'I' (where is it even when you are sleeping and what a living brain knows of death or its own shutdown - has it ever attempted it? Or is it even capable of it? Or does such a possibility of mind shutting down itself exists?), there is no reason for 'you' to be here as it implies 'I'; life, like thoughts, is but garbage created as a by product. So do not be a lettered person of Gitas and sustras - you read them only to throw them away. If you do not recognize the grammar (or like it) there is no point in the letters. Instead of all that highfi stuff focus on what happen in sleep (a good starting point), the limitation of an organic brain, the difference between the chemical and neural pattern recognizers (what is being repeatedly called as intelligence). Do not talk about things that can not be "construed" easily in a normal 'living' brain (like atma, paramatma, etc. etc. - they are just but names except may be for a countable few [hope!!!]). Violence and corruption verily are natural in a society of beings that starts and lives its life by killing other living beings - your body is a death house of millions of lives. The grains you eat!!! ha - you only should see how each cell of the grain is torn and blown apart by your bodily cells in stealing what the grain cells have painstakingly stored for their own propagation. And these bodily cells keep your brain cells alive, which keeps going in random paths that you call 'thoughts' that are usually unworthy of so many living beings life! Generally the talk is about humans alone or (sic) a society of them! Isn't that imperious to other life forms and the universe as such...? The usual modality is: First 'I', then 'you' and then ‘society’ (even there, classes! as society implies it), then 'humans' - in that order!(?) - where in this list will something so absolute that keeps popping up now and then come in? The only truth is in the seeking and not anything beyond it. But the act of seeking needs a goal and hence the many ways, like the many parables. Like the snake and the rope, the presence of "I" excludes all else - and the 'all else' can be there only when "I" is not there. Without the "I" to whom the "all else" matters? Cyclic, catch 22 and what not. When someone tells you about the ultimate in half a line, let the mind see it as a rare gift!

Take Gayathri for instance. boor buva suvaha (night, firelight and sunlight -meaning in the sleeping state, dream state and waking state), tat sa viturvarenyam burgodevasya demahi (all the world/universe light giving gifted [mahimai - cannot find a good word for translation] one) meaning the light/center/background/focal (in our mind) that makes it possible to perceive the universe and all the things in it (by our mind - like the saying, 'throwing light on a subject') deyoyona prasodayadu (that mind, brighten it up) meaning enlighten that mind. This is still only a near enough translation providing an intended meaning (I still could not yet get 100% accurate one after all these years of musing it), but the author is so good in playing with light and the different words for it and that itself is baffling (even just as a verse). The first level kind of interpretation is like praying to the sun god, etc. etc. But at a different level (note that I did not concoct some arbitrary and out-of-world meaning for the words as they usually do in this side of the world - but by careful identification of similar words/roots in the current languages to provide a hint on to the meaning of the words used - even though I am not a linguist, I have a good flair for the root sounds and what they generally mean), the author asks /the center of consciousness in our mind /or the crux /or the one closely resembling it/ as the light thrower - meaning essentially the driver of the working mind (whatever it is), as light again, now using it akin to illumination (devasya - the shining one). He uses again light as in enlightenment.  And does he pray to something/someone outside? No. he is asking the mind or its crux (which is not the mind - law of entangled systems; a system that includes, or that can describe itself, will have contradictions (Godel?). So a mind that knows itself is contradictory and a fine working mind does not know anything about its own working) to brighten itself. Wow! kudos to that mind that came up with this single line. Unlike Zen, which relies on contradictions to get out of the system, this tells us that harmony between the crux (out of system) and the mind (system) could also be a way to get out of the system...

Well, it is a mess above with all the parenthesis for a line of verse. Without that braces, the centrality (central thought) of the each line will be lost. Best way is to first ignore the braces and read only the bold font - and again re-read with the braces. Do kick me if it any of this makes any sense!

Do read about the 'commonality of understanding' stuff. Those great minds living among the monkeys (do we now live among apes?) have no way to pass on their own recognized patterns (knowledge?) to the other minds around, except in the way the other minds worked. In a village full of naked entities there is a need to be naked to learn harmony and to be another entity among them - but then being among them means that only nakedness and nothing beyond is all that can be offered. An mind is a set of ideas - an huge ocean of patterns, an idea a set of words - a large sea of patterns, and a word is a lager set of patterns; and what is more, the existing patterns decide how a new input is pattern-ised. So knowing something does not always mean that it can be conveyed - and the knowing of pattern far ahead of time; ahead of the ripe time for the overall set of beings to recognize and cognize the pattern can often happen and had happened like in those verses or in zen koans.

Why this?

What is going to be attempted here is musings of what had been going on in the mind for quite some time - right from the early teens... It could be called spirituality, psychology, philosophy, the physic of the mind, common living, the meaning of life, the question of god or any other fanciful phrase that can be thought off.

Much has been written and thought of this through the ages. So the question arises as to why another and that too as a blog? Most of the material written down till now seems to be by people who actually have not experienced the reality, and they wrote for their own ends, probably looking for fame, recognition or for their living or even out of foolishness in believing something so strongly. A few of the works are by people who definitely have crossed the border, either because of their own search or their brain structured in such a way because of a rare expression of a gene - 'expression of gene' means that not all properties and coding in the gene gets expressed, but as the gene propagates a particular characteristic, such as, say a particular structure of the brain might show in a particular human. But having crossed they do not remember or take the pains to express all the struggles that they might have crossed. They put it down in quite a crisp way - actually the entire content could be written in a Para. But how to get there or how they have got there had never been clear.

This then is the purpose - to record all that had happened/happens in the process of getting there; thoughts, actions, happenings, techniques, failures, visions, enlightenment and what not... Not to analyze and not to interpret, but to put down the recordings (collected from the past and as well as those of the future) of these. Hoping that the others who go through this common problem might find some use - at least in knowing the wrong turns. At times this narration will touch physics, Vedanta, cosmology, biology, psychology and all that garbage that has been accumulated, whether through learning from what others have already done or through his own insights...

So not as a book, not as a lecture, not as a preaching but simply as a record is the way this is presented. The contents are neither edited nor revised and is simply free-flow writing and hence are prone to errors in structuring.

Again, in a fanciful language, the vision is to share the struggle... not for leading others who too might be groping in the dark and struggling, but simply as a record where they might find things useful. So, not to be a guru charging a ransom for initiation but in reveling what happens in the process and to enable others to have a less resistant path.

Commonality of Understanding

What is ‘rational’? By that is it meant that there is hundred percent commonality of understanding between any two humans? Take for example a mathematical or logical statement… How is it arrived at? The starting point or the assumptions A. B, C being given a set of steps leads to or implies D. Such a construct is universal in that any human mind can follow these and arrive at the same fact. So, by rational we also mean that another human can follow the process and arrive at the same result or conclusion that we had arrived at.

But is all science rational? Have we thought about what the inventors and discoverers do or thought during the process of their invention or discovery? They probably had the ‘notion’ – many a times not in terms of words even but only a ‘notion’. But doesn’t every person have that? Then what is that a scientist does? From that ‘notion’ he or she has to connect it to the known words and concepts and starting from these known things ‘rationally’ arrive at the ‘notion’ so that other human minds can verify it. This very process is what is called ‘Science’ – not that actual moment a discovery or invention is made. The brain is definitely not thinking along the rational lines at that moment. We are not talking about the normal scientific works here which are mere extension of a given idea; such as what happens if one changes this or that in a basic idea. We are talking about those breakthroughs that have reshaped a concept and which are the key milestones.

Now consider an area where there are not even adequate words to communicate the idea to another human – forget about the mathematics required or the logic required; the very words doesn’t exist and forming a new word (especially if it is abstract) it is very difficult to define the words with eulogies, metaphors and examples. So scientific advancement is only near the fringe of what is already known and can never be a thing that is drastically new. The reader might think of relativity or quantum mechanics – but these too are only reinterpretation of mathematical equations that are already known. Lorentz and other much before has worked out the transformations involved and the idea was to move from constancy of time between frames to constancy of the velocity of light. Also motion of a charged particle in an electric field was already known – what was required was an idea that during accelerated motion the charged particle need not radiate at all times contrary to the dictates of classical electromagnetism. The parallel to the planetary motion was also there.

Consider an isolated tribe living in the middle of a vast desert and near an oasis with a small body of water. The tribe has been living there generation after generation and knows only that place. Now one of the tribesmen, on a fine day might think that there is a possibility of existence of a place where like the water in the small pond, the water is so large like the sand around. This new thought excites him, but is he communicates this to his fellow tribesman. He does give it a try and talks to various people in the tribe – and begins to do this day after day; till he is probably called a madman and ignored by the tribe. But some among the tribe had at least understood the idea that there is a possibility of a large body of water. Now generations pass by and this becomes a story that is told by the elders to the youngsters initially as a joke and generations move by the large body of water becomes a definite idea. In the process, one of the tribesmen has thought of a name as ‘sea’ for the idea. The word ‘sea’ would get rooted in the sense that within the tribe if ‘sea’ is mentioned the idea that it is a large body of water would become common. May be at this point someone in the tribe might take it serious enough and set out to find it… But still it should be noted that as long as the word ‘Sea’ as a large body of water remains abstract – that is no one has really seen it still, the actual sensations produced in the individual minds will vary slightly. Each has a common understanding that it is a ‘large body of water’ but still one might think of it as blue, another as calm and yet another as undulating and yet another green and so on… The commonality of an abstract concept that is not derived ‘rationally’ will never be at hundred percent.

The narration above is to show that how an idea needs time to get established in the minds of the people and the time taken before shorter words are formed and the time required for the word to generate a common enough understanding. To push it a little further the narrator might know how the galaxy is formed and how it works… but it might be impossible to communicate that to another human as the time is not ripe with the required base concepts or math or even words. What the narrator has then is a ‘notion’ or perception that cannot be made rational enough for another human mind to get an identical understanding. In such a case what could be done? May be one could seed a near enough thought and hope that it matures over the generations to come when it could be made ‘rational’ for all minds to have the same understanding and hence as a science. But even before that is incorporation of words and symbols to the idea which form the basis of any language. Hence language that is made of words as such in itself does not have hundred percent commonality. Hence our difficulty in communicating to other humans over abstract concepts as the perception of the abstract concept is different for different minds.

Now the subject we are talking about lacks this commonality of understanding. A realized person does not have the words to communicate what he knows or the realization. Any parallels that he may tell will mean one thing to him but might mean very different thing to other human minds.

Brain - Functional Aspects

Every of these things that we will be talking about are dependent on the brain which hosts the mind and the intellect and what not... While a lot of attempts are being made to understand the working of the brain there are very few functional models that exists. What is required here is not a detailed functional model but the basis on which many of the perceptions and what we call understanding depends. What is given here is neither a theory nor an experimentally verified fact, but is rather only a hypothesis. Any human being, can, from his own experience see that what is told below is more or less fine and any functional theory of the brain should have this as an essential ingredient.

Humans could be classified based on the way the brain functions into 'logic' based and 'memory' based. This is not to be taken as a black and white classification but any human would be a shade of grey in-between.

At one extreme is the 'logic' based functioning that could be variously called as 'logical', 'rational', etc. which works primarily in terms of logic with very little memory. Most neurons might be involved in making circuits for the logic and in the formulation of patterns. Such a person would be apt at logic. At this extreme, even memory is through logic - say a number like 248 is remembered as a rule to construct the number like it is 3 digit number with each digit twice the previous digit and all digits being even. The rule rather than the number itself is what is remembered. Rules taking less space are optimal way to utilize the lesser memory. To be a little bit more advanced and be technical, such person has a more active auditory functionality - not in hearing but in making words and abstractions that consists of words with no visualization. They remember and recollect fewer images and images with less detail but keep talking to themselves.

At another extreme is the 'memory' based functioning that could be called 'emotional', 'photographic', etc. A person with such a brain 'remembers' directly what is seen or heard or felt. Any logic is broken into steps and the steps are remembered rather than the pattern that they make. Such brains also have vivid remembrances and are linked to being emotional. The neurons in such a brain probably work as storage devices with minimal circuits. The technical side would be that these people recollect and remember images too well and has a low level of internal or self chattering. They are good at real things and with pictorial representations.
While these are the extremes, the average human brain is probably somewhere in-between. Any thought of either efficient utilization of the brain or any observation, perception or shaping of the mind depends on this classification.

The numerous older texts that refer to mental techniques written by various people seem to address one kind of brain or the other. Thus the techniques and methods that apply for one kind of brain need not necessarily work for the other. It would be beneficial if other works in this area are read with this classification in mind.