Rimpo and the Sparrow

The mind is a labyrinth of mirrors. For Rimpo, this labyrinth is long and narrow - a straight line of a path that betrays no twists. On this path he marches everyday, towards the same point of no becoming. Measured thus against eternity, Rimpo became small and shrunk by the side of everyday objects. The axe he uses to cut wood became larger and heavier. The piece of land he tills became wider. The roof of his hut stood higher and the screeches of the birds above became more distant. And the mighty Himalayas next to his farm, he dares not even raise his eye to.

Rimpo has been living alone ever since his mother died. He has always been considered a dullard in the village, and possessing no great property, he has never received attention from any of the girls. He had his heart broken a few times in his boyhood and then he learnt how to not make similar mistakes in judgement. Life is a slow process of learning how to avoid the traps and the temptations. Along the journey, Rimpo grew hard in his eye and sure in his step. Now that his dear parents are dead, he hardly meets the villagers. They consider his farm at the end of the village as a vestigial organ, a reminder of a time where it was a part of the social life but which has far outlived its usefulness. From beside the farm stretches the thick Himalayan jungle and down below roars the torrent from the mountains. Rimpo and his farm are transparent to the villagers, they belong neither to the village nor to the jungle.

Rimpo knows every sound and color that invade the privacy of his mind. He knows their rhythm just as well as he knows the rhythm of his heart. The roar of the torrent below has a rhythm. The screeches of the birds above have a rhythm. The morning light that shines into his hut has a rhythm, and so does the breeze that comes by nightfall. Into this rhythm, he constructed his life; and into this, he weighs in his every step.

Years passed by without counting, and Rimpo shrank smaller and smaller. Days became seasons and minutes became days. Like an ant that lived for an eternity, Rimpo achieved a patient and non-judgemental gaze over the world, over himself, and over the insignificance of one towards the other. In the labyrinth of his mind, the color of the seasons blended harmoniously into a gray monotone - where yesterday meets tomorrow and where sound meets silence.

One day, this harmony is disturbed by a sparrow. Rimpo watched as it barged in indignantly through the window and started pecking on the pile of paddy grains that lay on the floor. Those pile of grains are his labor over the whole year, as he tilled his harsh land by the stony look of the Himalayas. He needs every grain in that pile for himself, to bear the winters to come. Rimpo knows the rhythm by which he shoos the bird away : how his hand raises up and swats the floor below, how his lips open and a sharp hiss of air whistles through his tongue. But now, he just waits and watches the sparrow. It pecks at the rice, grain by grain, as few as are needed to sate its tiny hunger. It then flaps its wings and flies away.

The sparrow comes again the next day, at the very same time. Rimpo watches it peck the grains and then fly away. He now knows the rhythm, how and when this would happen again. But he cannot let this happen. So when the sparrow comes, Rimpo stands there waiting and addresses it thus.

"Dear friend, I am honored by your visit to my humble abode. But I am afraid I cannot offer you enough space and succor for another day. I cannot shield you from the infinity of the world. I am a shrinking man, and soon I will be smaller than yourself. The span of your wings shall soon be greater than the stretch of my arms. Go find a bigger man for your friend, and a warmer hut to bide your winters in."

Then the sparrow replies, "Rimpo, Though you have not seen me much before, know that I am your friend. I am fickle as a sparrow and I do not step into the same door twice. Many people have found me walk in but never paid me attention. But I am as much their friend as I am yours. I hop from garden to garden, from hut to hut and over streams and meadows. I stay not in the same place for long, as I love this whole infinite world. My world is not to be feared. But you do not live in the same world as mine."

"What do you mean ?"

"Often man hears nothing but echoes of his own voice from the past, reverberating from the walls of his memories. Man sees nothing but the reflections of his own character, breaking from the prism of his mind. And man feels nothing but the cold of his loneliness, in the vastness of existence. Every thought that he weaves is a thread to cover himself from this cold. These threads knit together into a shroud that envelopes one's mind. Through this shroud, man cannot see the world for what it is. He cannot hear the world for what it is. And he cannot smell. When was the last time you smelt something, Rimpo ?"

Rimpo tries to protest. He definitely can smell, but does he care for smells ? When was the last time he cared for smells ? He answers, " I do not want to know."

"Smell is the basest and the most wicked of the senses. It is how nature tells man that he is her subject, that he cannot break free from her. Would you like to see the world of smells ?"

Rimpo puts on his shoes and trails the sparrow. As he comes out, he sees that spring is the season and that the Himalayan forest is full of its smells. A million shades of green lay basking in the rays of gold. Through these colors, Rimpo detects a smell that unearths a long forgotten memory from his childhood. Thread by thread, his thoughts get unravelled by the smells, exposing the core of his being to the mercy of nature. The sparrow flies above and guides him through trails that he has never taken in his life.

Rimpo asks, "How big is the world that a man can experience in a moment ? "

"Each man knows for himself. For the most part, a man has but four or five thoughts. They shape his goals and they mould his actions. The long threads of memories that a man weaves laboriously over his life are only felt for their weight, but never experienced in totality. But even this entire weight of memories is mocked for its finiteness by the infinity that is offered by the very moment of now. The mind is a labyrinth of mirrors, and rarely ever does one get to peer outside."

For the first time in his long journey of life, Rimpo sees himself in this labyrinth. And he sees it to be not straight, but spiraling into a thousand loops.

The sparrow continues, "Man becomes a slave for his own habit. Each loop creates an illusion of eternity, masking the finiteness of experience. True freedom is indeed freedom from one's own thoughts and habits. "

Rimpo finds himself now in a forest of Rhododendrons. The trees are in full bloom with colors of rose, white and red. The air is also lighter, the sparrow has led him up a mountain trail into a meadow. Rimpo asks, "Why do you bother yourself with me sparrow ? What makes you love me ?"

"Love is but a realization that each moment in a finite existence has a window towards infinity. When I realize thus, I cannot but feel love for everything in the world. But I should leave you here, my friend. I am but a sparrow and I cannot fly any higher. Beyond this meadow, you need no friend. I bring you here so that you can see what I cannot."

Thus saying, the sparrow flies back into the valley below. In that moment of clarity, Rimpo sees neither the sparrow nor the tortuous path that they have climbed together. Instead he sees a different person that has pored out of his own self - a person bigger than the mountains, and for whose step nothing is large. The labyrinth of his mind is dissolved. He sees nothing but the sun that is shining through his eyes. No mountain blocks his path nor his view. In that tiny window of time where he is truly himself, he sees that he is immortal.

Catching the bubbles of happiness

Happiness is a substance that has some strange chemical properties. For one, it is an extremely short lived substance and disintegrates quickly into the surrounding atmosphere. It cannot be stored in a sealed container either, as it decomposes spontaneously in the absence of light. It has neither a distinctive odour nor a distinctive color. Due to its whimsical and short-lived nature, many physicists have long doubted its existence. A fringe few do so even today.

But owing to its indirect effects on other substances in controlled lab experiments, which are carefully studied, and to its numerous sightings in the wild, the existence of happiness is now established beyond doubt. What still remain controversial, however, are procedures to synthesize happiness and its effects on human beings.

Despite numerous failures in synthesizing it in a lab setting, it appears that happiness forms quite readily in nature and seems drawn towards life forms in general, and human beings in particular. The age of a person seems to be a critical factor in attracting happiness, with young children being particularly susceptible towards catching large doses of happiness when they are outdoors.

The most common form of happiness is that of tiny bubbles that drift in the air. These bubbles are transparent, but they sometimes shimmer brightly in the sunlight due to certain optical properties. The human eye seems to be partially capable of detecting these shimmers, with young children reporting that they see such bubbles drifting and dancing wildly at the corners of their eyes. One is supposed to see these bubbles sideways, as a direct gaze would rend them transparent. A more successful method for catching happiness is by listening.

Since the bubbles of happiness form and dissolve spontaneously, they make a curious crackling sound as they pop. A carefully trained ear can latch on to these popping sounds, and thus lead a person to the source of a large concentration of happiness. People have thus been led to happiness in very unsuspecting and nondescript places - such as the top of a crossroads, or next to a puddle in a stream. Sometimes happiness hangs in a thick cloud around a man carrying a big luggage and sweating profusely. Sometimes it trails the scent of a woman walking tip-toe on a quiet street. Sometimes it lurks behind a group of quarreling kids. And sometimes it flutters around two lovers who are lost in each other. These are by no means an exhaustive list of places where one might bump into happiness, indeed such a list would be impossible to make. With every passing day as the sun lights up the world, huge clouds of happiness condense in the atmosphere and drift around the place. Whether they do so with a pattern or just aimlessly is still open to debate.

When one comes within hearing distance of happiness, a curious manoeuvre can be followed to make the happiness descend directly onto oneself. The efficacy of this manoeuvre has been known in the popular culture, but the scientific reasons behind it are still under study. One is supposed to smile widely and look sideways towards the source of happiness. A simple lip-smile will not do - it should be accompanied by an eye-smile where the eyes glint in the shimmer of the bubbles. And lo, the cloud of happiness swooshes down to one's face and runs up one's nose. The after-effects are reported as widely varied, ranging from a sudden swing in one's step to one sobbing silently. The only common effect seems to be that of a general exhilaration.

It is also hypothesized that happiness is a fundamental ingredient of life, as essential as Oxygen. But the whimsical nature of its interaction with life-forms prompts many scientists to question such a strong hypothesis. If all life-forms need happiness to survive, how would they find their daily dose of happiness ?

We cannot say anything about this yet. But it is generally accepted that happiness is very good for the health of human beings. So we conclude this article by giving some tips for the interested reader on how to spot happiness.

• Memory seems to be bad for happiness. Most people have bad memories that inhibit them from perceiving the fullness of the world around. This prevents them from spotting happiness even when it is lurking quite nearby.
• Happiness appears to be contagious. The more the people one infects with happiness, the likelier that one gets a new dose when all of one's bubbles of happiness pop out.
• As a converse, selfishness is quite bad for happiness. One's happiness won't last for long when one is alone.
• This can be extended to also one's thoughts and actions. The more isolated one becomes, and the more sure in this isolation one becomes, the lesser the happiness that comes one's way.
• Smiles seem to be particularly good at attracting happiness, even when it is several kilometers away.
• Early morning by the sunrise and the early evening by the sunset are the best times to catch happiness.

Reducing Facebook : Increasing Attention

After a long pondering over the problem, I decided today to reduce my time on Facebook - to a visit per every 3 days. Facebook now commands a lion's share of my time spent on the internet. This is natural since I, like any other person, value updates from my friends a lot more than other events. However, unlike a physical visit to my friends that always makes me feel better, a visit to Facebook often ends up making me feel worse and confused. Part of this is due to the inadequacy of virtual communication. But I believe part of this is also due to how stupidly Facebook is structured; and how that constrains meaningful engagement. In the rest of this blog, the reader can substitute Facebook for any social networking website; the problem is similar.

To understand this, we first have to go to the earlier times of the web when Yahoo was the dominant search engine. In those days, the home page of the search was cluttered with thousands of news snippets and gadgets. This distraction of attention was clearly annoying when the user had a definite purpose - to search for something. Then Google came along and introduced the clean search page that has become the standard for all search engines today. With Facebook, we face a similar problem today, but which is deeper and more menacing. The culprit is the destruction of one's attention.

I have blogged earlier about how the very nature of the internet (the hyperlink) shatters one's attention. This problem is manifest at a higher order on Facebook, which requires the user to post status updates in 420 characters or less. "What's on your mind ?" Facebook asks. Either you have something interesting on your mind which is often impossible to convey within the character limit, or you say something uninteresting and reaffirm to yourself that your life is boring. The end result is frustration. The replies from your friends, and your replies in return are necessarily shallow, owing to the character limit. But even if it is scarce, you do enjoy the positive feedback when it comes. Mostly, this comes from your friends clicking the Like button on your status updates or on photos. This marks the high point of your Facebook experience, and you get addicted to it like one gets addicted to coffee. The day is not long when neuroscientists shove people into an fMRI machine with an iPad in their hands, and measure their neurotransmitter levels when their friends click the Like button, and thus proving the obvious and getting their paper accepted in Science. But I digress.

The reason for the seemingly inane 420 character limit is simple : the guys at Facebook.com have no better ideas on how to pull updates from your various friends into a single webpage. So they push all and sundry in uniformly sized packets, and clutter them onto your face, knowing well that you will be watching that page several times a day. Thereby, you surrender your most valuable resource - your attention, to Facebook which destroys it completely.

Here, I should write something about attention, a topic few people are aware of. Often, people who talk about it are cognitive psychologists or new-age meditation practitioners. Both the groups outdo each other in scaring an unwitting reader to his wit's end. I will try to introduce the problem in a more straightforward way : imagine that you are shaving to a mirror. If your mind gets distracted for a second, you might end up with a cut on your lip. Luckily it doesn't happen often, since the impulses in your muscles get accustomed to these lapses of attention, but sometimes they cannot cope and you end up with a bloodied lip. As a second example, think of yourself baking something in the oven and taking the dish out. If your mind is distracted, you may end up with a burn on your fingers as you absentmindedly touch the hot grill. Or think of the scenario where you are leaving for work in the morning and keep your keys somewhere - so that you can grab your coat, bag or something else. It can happen that you forget where you left your keys, and spend several minutes frantically searching for them. The problem in all these examples is that you are not fully attentive in your present moment of experience.

These lapses of attention can cause more serious trouble. When you are working, you might miss hearing something very pertinent to the discussion. If you are a researcher like me, you might miss a crucial point in a paper that you are reading. If you are a computer programmer, you might miss a bug in the program. People who are normally competent can underperform because they are not "fully" present.

In eastern religions, especially Buddhism, being present in the "now" is considered a highly virtuous thing. People spend several years trying to improve their standing here, through practicing rigorous meditation. It is said that one whose attention is perfect feels a supreme happiness. I don't know about that, but I think being attentive to your own mind is quite similar to being attentive to the surroundings. A man wearied by fatigue or illness may not appreciate a magnificent natural scenery when it passes before his eyes. Similarly, a man whose palette is ruined by unwise food choices may not later appreciate the sublime taste of a wine. Starting with a clean slate is important for perceiving the fullness of an experience. This is also true for perceiving one's own mind - and for experiencing one's natural creativity. A man with low attention will not be creative and will succumb to the habit of yesterday. At a practical level, this will reflect in him being boring and not funny. At a deeper level, this causes an existential crisis and panic.

I think it is ineffective to speak of attention in the absolute - either there or not. It is better to speak of attention as a finite resource that can be measured. Then it becomes money. It can be invested and greater rewards be earned. Or it can be squandered and the person becomes poorer than before. There is an old saying, "time is money". But I think it is missing the point. One can have plenty of time, but still make nothing out of it. What I think was meant there was that "attention is money". When one is more attent, one saves time; and with the saved time, focuses attention on something more important. Just like with money, one can be rich in attention by cultivating good habits and by investing wisely.

Of all the five senses, hearing is the best friend when it comes to attention. This is because one's mind is completely focused on the incoming sound signal, and steps together along with time. This automatically reinforces the attention of the listener, and the attention-money thus earned can be spent on other things. These days, I listen to radio podcasts when I commute to work. They always make me feel better. When it comes to the sense of vision, distraction is easier. But this becomes a friend when it is coupled with the more stabilizing sense of hearing. So the second tip I have for you is to see things that you hear (either externally or internally in your own mind) for stretches of long periods of time. It does good to follow this in other senses as well : hearing, touching, seeing, tasting and smelling (each reinforced by the earlier one in the order). This rules out flipping channels on TV, browsing without a goal on the internet, or coming back to the topic of the blog - spending time on Facebook.

Facebook is essentially the opposite of meditation. Metaphorically, one is giving all the attention that one earned during the day (and in one's sleep at night) in a bowl to Mark Zuckerberg, who then spills it all over. One's mind is very similar to one's house : it periodically needs cleaning and keeping things in order. It needs open windows so that sunlight and air can pass through. But this shouldn't mean the trash from the entire city should be poured in. So I decided to let this happen just once every 3 days. This is a hard decision for me to take, as I am a single person in a foreign country and do not have many other respites for filling this vacuum. I do crave for the "like"s from my friends, and I am quite worried how long I will stick to this policy of limiting Facebook. But give it a try, I do nonetheless. Here is me hoping for an increased attention. :)

An atheist guy goes to Malta

If you haven't yet seen this video on youtube, please see it. It is one of the funniest jokes I have seen. I see the narrative in this video as a metaphor to how conflicts happen between human beings - often due to misunderstanding.

Human languages are one of the most wonderful things in the universe. The expressive power in them is hardly matched by anything else. However, they still help us only in a limited way to communicate our deepest sensations and emotions. The language that runs in my head is hardly the same as that which runs in yours. To make things worse, these languages evolve rapidly over time. Is it possible to peek into the soul of a 12th century man, and experience the world as he experienced it ? I doubt if it is possible.

Languages have several layers to construct meaning - at the very outset is the vocabulary that maps sounds (words) to activities and ideas. Then there is the layer of syntax that encodes the relationship between these words. Then exists the layer of semantics that gives a specific meaning (amongst many) for a sentence from the words and the relationships between them. Beyond them, lies the layer of pragmatics which understands a given sentence in its broader context, how it is uttered etc. There exists possibilities for confusion in all these layers. And all these layers put together may still not express the very emotions a person felt before speaking.

Let me illustrate this. Imagine that I see colors very differently from how you see them. For example, every time you see "blue" I see "red", and vice-versa. Both of us would agree on how we give labels to these colors, i.e, we call the same set of objects as red. But in whichever language we might use, we will never be able to communicate the discrepancy that exists in our world-views. I first thought about this problem in school, when I heard about color-blindedness. A color-blinded person will see red and green objects similarly, and will get to know about his problem only when somebody else tells him about it. However, if I am suffering from the "color-swap" problem I mentioned above, I will never figure out that there is anything wrong with me. Being a kid that I was, this thought gave me a very cold chill in my spine. Much later in my life, I discovered that this issue is well-studied in philosophy and is called the problem of "qualia". Philosophers discuss (or dismiss) them in a very detached and nonchalant way that I find bemusing.

Considering these many layers in a human language and the endless possibilities in which we can confuse each other up, it is may be no surprise that we humans fight angrily at every other thing. What prodded me to write this post today however, is the growing debate about atheism in our society. Often this debate degenerates into funny conflicts, of the sort where the Italian guy goes to Malta.

Atheist guy : Sir, I think it is a bad thing to f*ck on the table.

Theist guy : But I really want a fork on the table, Sir.

Neither of the parties would agree on what words like consciousness, free-will, freedom or God means. And neither of them would know what they meant thousands of years ago when these words have first entered into our lexicon. I would consider this debate as just nonsensical fun, but for the presence of real evil idiots in our amidst.

Evil Idiot Theist guy : But my religious book has ordered me to indeed f*ck on the table, Sir.

I think as long as there are these evil idiot theists amongst us, I think atheism is the way to go !

** For the nerds amongst you, the color-swap (qualia) problem is actually a problem with a rotation in the color space. This rotation ambiguity (in the perception of H,S or V channels) cannot be recovered by communicating in human languages alone.

Stephen Hawking is reductionist

I haven't heard the reductionist paradigm on consciousness expressed as forcefully as by Dr. Stephen Hawking. In his own words

What do you believe happens to our consciousness after death? —Elliot Giberson, SEATTLE

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2029483,00.html#ixzz14miSAfvu

Dr. Hawking's opinion is that consciousness is nothing but a peculiar sequence of symbols. This gives rise to the same kind of philosophical dilemmas as I have discussed in my post on Kurzweil's horcrux - opening up, amongst other things, the possibility of achieving immortality.

Kabir Project

Ajab Shahar- Kabir Project film/music clip from Ajai Narendran on Vimeo.

This is a set of four great documentaries on the music of Kabir and its influence in India and Pakistan. Filmed by Shabnam Virmani and produced by the Srishti school of design in Bangalore.

Indian folk songs playlist

I am composing a playlist of folk songs and dances from all corners of India. Please check it on youtube and enjoy :)

Please do recommend me more songs if you think of any.

Sliding through Grooves of Time

The biggest questions of physics and of philosophy are one and the same. At the centre of all this is the notion of time. What is time ? Does time flow, does it have a direction ? What does it mean to be sharing a moment with others ? Is there a distinction between the past and the future of time - is there ever a choice for shaping the future ?

Answers to these questions, if they ever come by, would reveal us the true meaning of freedom. Since freedom is the most fundamental yearning for a human being, these questions ultimately define the human experience.

I have been going through Brian Greene's book "The fabric of the cosmos". Though the book is occasionally verbose and indulges in lengthy prose, it explains clearly the scientific underpinnings of those questions. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity are particularly pertinent, as they blur the boundaries between time and space. The book conjures the analogy of a loaf of bread to visualize this space-time fabric, which I found quite captivating.

We can cut the loaf into slices, and these slices of bread are the "moments" of time that we experience passing us by. Each moment is a consummate set of objects in space that one shares existence with. What the theory of special relativity says is that these slices can be cut not just vertically but in any direction. So depending on how a person is cutting the bread, he / she would experience time in a different way. And crucially, the "moments" of time experienced by two persons need not be the same.

According to relativity, there is no distinction between the past and the future. The whole 4D-loaf of space+time may very well be frozen like ice. Visualize a bullet of light (a light-car) driving through this icy block, and that is the conscious experience of a human being. In this fatalistic world, a human being is a mere spectator to the machinations of the future.

Quantum mechanics, however, gives some provision for "choice", and potentially, for acting on free-will (for a human being, animal or any other object in the universe). This choice (or quantum indeterminacy as it is called) is a mysterious thing. We do not know what this actually means - whether it means the freedom to just choose the direction of our light-car through the loaf, or actually the freedom to shape the loaf itself !

Imagine that this 4D-loaf of space time has grooves, each like a slide in a playground or like the rails of a roller coaster. Once you step into a groove, you would slide through that path. If you can recollect your first experience of skiing or roller-skating, you would understand this easily. The path of the groove defines how you experience the ride. There is hardly any control (especially if you are not a skillful skier / skater) that is left for you after you step into the groove.

I think that our conscious experience as human beings is very similar to this. Decisions once taken in life pull us down the chutes of their paths. As we pick up speed along the chute, the conscious experience becomes repetitive - because it gets etched into our habit. We crave for the same kind of opponents, the same kind of building blocks to organize our thoughts. We expect the same kind of pleasures and pains, frustrations and release, boredom and excitement. We cannot afford to look beyond the patterns of repetition, as that scares us out of our wit's end, as we have to face the reality that we are sliding down a chute with no control whatsoever.

The more choices you exercise your will upon, the more bound to them you will be. From big choices such as the occupation of your work, the person you get married to.. down to much simpler choices like the friends that you see regularly, the food that you eat, the news that you read, the political causes that you feel passionate about, the websites that you visit.. With each of these choices exercised, there is lesser and lesser freedom for perceiving, inspiring and creating new ideas. This is possibly why the wise people of the old have said that children are God's beings. They have far greater freedom than adults.

In our modern consumer society, we think of choice as freedom. But they are not at all the same. Choice, when exercised without awareness of where it leads to, actually reduces the freedom of a person. But complete awareness is impossible to obtain, even the wisest human beings cannot see beyond a few days or months of where their choices lead. In a way, most of us people are blind and cannot see beyond a few minutes of our actions. When people make choices in such haste, they cannot but experience chaos and frustration.

In my opinion, the web-browsing experience is symbolic of the frustration that people feel in a larger sense in their lives. Whenever you see a hyperlink, you have to decide whether to shift your attention to a new page. This constant exercising of choice leads to browser fatigue. We human beings criminally waste the most precious resource that we have - our attention. Part of it is not our fault, because each past choice reduces our freedom in making future choices. The fatigue experienced by chaotic web-browsing is similar to the fatigue that experienced in modern life. The lasting aftertaste is that of disappointment, confusion and a distinct lack of freedom.

So what is the solution ? Can we escape sliding through these grooves in time ? Are there any sections in this space-time loaf that let us slow down and look around in serene dignity ? I don't know.. But if you ever find one such place, I suggest you make a habit of visiting it regularly. Because freedom is ultimately just a state of mind. If you visit that state regularly, it might even become a habit.

The Meru Mountains in Thailand

I think the most beautiful renditions of the Meru mountain are not to be found in India, but in Thailand.

The Buddhist stupa was probably the first architectural construction that was consciously moulded over the concept of the Meru mountain (which is of high symbolic importance in Buddhism). The later Hindu temple architecture in India was undoubtedly influenced by the architectural model of the stupa.

As Buddhism spread to East and South East Asia, people there found several brilliant ways to represent this concept. The pagodas of China, Burma and Japan have evolved out of the stupa. In my opinion, the very best of these representations is the Thai temple. One day, I have to go and visit these places myself :) By the way, the traditional Thai headgear itself looks like a Meru.

The devas of Samkhya - natural or supernatural ?

I came across an online text titled the "The Samkhya aphorisms of Kapila". It is an old English translation done in 1885 by one James Ballantyne. It seems pretty interesting, and should be referred if anybody wants to further explore Samkhya philosophy after my introduction in the last blog post.

The very first line of this translated text says : "Well, the complete end of man (liberation) is the complete cessation of pain arising from any of the 3 causes : adhyātmika (self-imposed), adhibhautika (arising from natural elements) and adhidaivika (arising from 'supernatural' elements)."

This line came as a huge surprise to me, as I understood Samkhya to be a very 'naturalist' philosophy. In fact, the classical version of Samkhya forcefully refutes the presence of a God (Ishwara) either external or internal to the universe. So what are the supernatural elements being talked about ? Adhidaivika is a compound word : adhi (from) + devas. So the supposed supernatural beings referred to here are devas. In this post, I will try to provide some background on them. But first, let's understand what supernatural means.

What is supernatural ?

Anything external to nature can be called supernatural. But this is an inadequate definition, because we have to first specify what nature is. From a simplistic perspective, nature can be defined as composed of matter. But then, modern physics talks about fields of potential, mass-energy equivalence etc. So more broadly, nature can be defined as any set of laws that can be observed repeatedly and experimentally validated by measurement. The key words here are observation and measurement.

In my last post, I have explained the division of Kapila on the measurable and unmeasurable parts of the universe. The measurable (maya in Sanskrit) refers to Prakriti in all her 5 layers. The unmeasurable refers to Purusha. In fact, Indian science text books simply use the word prakriti to refer to nature.

If there is anything in Samkhya philosophy that can be considered "supernatural" (beyond scientific measurement), that is Purusha. Do the devas belong to Purusha then ? No. Purusha is beyond all types of action and causation. The devas obviously belong to Prakriti. So why are they called supernatural ?

Reality check : Devas of Hinduism today

The word "deva" is translated in English today as "god" (or "demigod" in order to denote the polytheistic aspect of Hinduism). In fact, "deva" in many Indian languages today simply means "God". People refer to the God of a temple as a deva, and they offer him / her prayers - seeking progeny, promotion in employment, wealth etc. Many customs in Hinduism today can be considered as superstitious, and invoke various devas to act supernaturally on behalf of the devotees - raising back the dead, reversing time (I am not kidding). According to current language, the word "deva" can indeed be supposed to mean supernatural beings made of "woo". But in this post, I would like to discuss the ancient meaning of this word, as apparent in philosophical texts.

Another word from text quoted above "bhuta" is translated (correctly) by Mr. Ballantyne as a natural element. In fact, the word for physics in Indian science text books today is "bhautika". However, in common parlace, the word "bhuta" has come to mean a ghost or an evil spirit ! Languages evolve rapidly, and it would be stupid to use modern meanings to translate ancient texts.

Devas in Samkhya : Evolutes of Prakriti

Samkhya identifies pancha tanmatras or 5 essential properties of Prakriti that evolve in the very beginning of time : sound, touch, form, taste and smell. As described in the earlier blog, every element of nature has a different proportion of 3 qualities (transparence or sattva guna, increasing or rajas guna and intertia or tamas guna). The above tanmatras get manifest in various objects of nature based on the relative composition of the 3 qualities.

The pancha bhutas (5 base elements of nature) arise from the tamas aspect of the tanmatras :

1. akash (sky) possessing only sound
2. vayu (air) possessing sound+touch
3. agni (fire) possessing sound+touch+form
4. apah (water) possessing sound+touch+form+taste
5. prithvi (earth) possessing sound+touch+form+taste+smell

Everything in the physical nature can be represented as one of these. So the word "earth" here doesn't mean to the third planet revolving around the sun, but all the material universe. Similarly, "water" here doesn't mean H2O but all aspects of matter without the property of smell etc. Several modern textbooks continue to misinterpret these words, when reading not only Indian philosophers, but also Greek philosophers who used very similar terms.

The sattva and rajas gunas produce subtler elements of nature, which are as follows.

The pancha jnana indriyas (5 forms of sensing : literally "knowledge sensors") arise from the sattvic aspect, depending on which of the tanmatras they sense. They are hearing, touching, seeing, tasting and smelling.

The pancha karma indriyas (5 forms of acting : literally "action sensors") arise from the rajas aspect, depending on how many tanmatras they act upon. They are speaking, grasping, moving, procreating and excreting.

As you can see, the word for a sense organ in Sanskrit is "Indriya", which is what is used in Indian science textbooks today. The word "Indriya" literally means "that belonging to Indra". and the "Indra" here is the supreme king of devas as mentioned in the Vedic texts. Thus, Indra is basically the lord of senses, and "devas" refer to the various sense and action organs present in any natural object.

Such organs are present in various degrees amongst human beings, animals, plants and inanimate matter. A deva just represents a particular organ in any object present anywhere in the universe. So the correct translation of the word "adhidaivika" would be "that arising out of the process of sensing or acting". Nothing supernatural about it.

The 33 devas in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Samkhya is considered the oldest of all the philosophical systems in India, probably going back to the Indus valley civilization. The Upanishads are philosophical texts which were written several centuries later (around 500 BCE) - they liberally borrowed terminology from Samkhya to explain their ideas. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is one of the largest and most important of these texts, and it contains a very nice discussion between Vidagdha Sakalya (student) and Yajnavalkya (teacher).

Sakalya : How many devas are there in all ?

Yajnavalkya : 3003.

Sakalya : Yes. But how many devas are there in all ?

Yajnavalkya : 303

Sakalya : Yes. But how many devas are there in all ?

Yajnavalkya : 33

Sakalya repeats his question again, and Yajnavalkya replies as 6, 3, 2, 1 and 1/2 and finally 1. Then he explains that the 3003 are a projection or manifestation of the 303, who themselves are a projection of the 33, who are known from the hymn of viswedevah (devas of the universe) in Rig Veda. The 33 devas are as follows.

8 vasus (that in which any natural object is placed) : fire, earth, air, sky, sun, heaven, moon, stars

11 rudras (that which depart from any natural object) : the ten supposed breaths of a person and the mind as the eleventh

12 adityas (that which move carrying all the universe) : the twelve months of a year, literally signifying time

1 indra : who rules over the senses

1 prajapathi : who symbolizes procreation of natural objects

As with earlier philosophical terms, the words "sun", "moon", "sky" etc. carry very different meaning than the modern interpretation. All these 33 devas are a division of space and time in the universe across the 5 layers of complexity in nature. All of them are completely natural beings, and indeed define nature (prakrithi) for what it is. The ancient religious texts of Vedas and Upanishads just considered these elements of nature to be worthy of praise (stuti).

Sakalya then asks to explain how these 33 are described as projections of just 6 devas. Yajnavalkya replies saying that the 6 are : fire, earth, air, sky, sun and heaven. It can be seen that the certain tanmatras and Indriyas of Samkhya are compressed into grander terms - "heaven" and "sun".

Then Yajnavalkya explains that these 6 can be compressed into 3 : the three worlds of inanimate matter, the world of forefathers (signifying culture borrowed from the past) and the world of devas (signifying life, sensing, intelligent action etc).

The higher devas become more esoteric, and one would need a better teacher than me to understand what they mean. Yajnavalkya says that these 3 worlds can be compressed into 2 : "food" and "breath". Obviously these two words don't mean their modern interpretation, but something subtler. The 1 and a 1/2 deva is explained as "this air here that blows". And the 1 deva is explained as "the breath".

These devas are thus the most principal elements of nature, and become subtler as they get reduced in number. As I explained in my earlier blog, these layers of complexity in existence are represented pictorially by the mountain of Meru, which serves as the architectural basis for any Hindu temple. The various devas can be found as statues on the walls of a temple tower. They are to be contrasted with the idol of Ishwara that sits inside the temple, at the very center of the tower. As I argue below, the word Ishwara (and not deva) is the closest in Hinduism that can be rightfully translated as "God".

The Trimurti : the 3 great devas of the Puranas

The Puranas are mythological and philosophical texts, that were written around 300 AD. As compared to the earlier Samkhya, Vedas or Upanishads, they are very theistic and encourage the love and worship of a personal God (Ishwara). The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata have also been edited significantly around this time. Current Hindu religion is defined primarily by the ideas from Puranas. This religion has evolved as a reaction to the complete neutrality (in the philosophical understanding about the Absolute) and equality (in the social relationships amongst people) by Buddhism. Each of the Puranas have created a mega-deva, of infinite wisdom, love and other such good qualities. They also solidified the different social inequalities into a rigid caste system. The several religions that evolved out of the Puranas can be considered monotheistic, and quite comparable to Abrahamic faiths. They usually glorify one deva as Ishwara and delegate all the others as his attendants or angels.

But the Puranas have not been written in a philosophical vacuum. They borrowed intensely from earlier systems, particularly from Samkhya. The various Puranic devas of today (such as Ganesh, Shakti, Lakshi, Vishnu, Shiva etc) are inspired from the devas of Samkhya.

At the core of this hierarchy of devas are the trimurti (literally 3 forms) which are three figureheads to represent the universe in its entirety. These 3 forms are meant to denote the 3 gunas of Samkhya, and are thus known as guna avatars. They can be visualized as the reflections of the infinite Purusha on the finite Prakriti from three angles. In a crude language, they represent the Purusha, and their wives the Prakriti into which they are being reflected. But it should be remembered that they are only the reflections, and not the true Purusha. The male and the female versions of the trimurti are exactly identical : the male gods signify actors and the female goddesses signify the corresponding actions. The two are equivalent ways of understanding the same concept, which is the dynamic evolution of Prakriti.

Brahma : signifies the rajas quality of increasing. Broadly speaking, he represents the intelligent being in any person, who observes nature and communicates by spoken word. This spoken word is represented by his wife Saraswati, as the goddess of speech and knowledge. Upanishads have unanimously stated that the spoken word is not sufficient towards understanding the absolute and essential nature of reality. So Brahma is disparaged in the Puranas, though Saraswati continues to be worshipped today, especially by students.

Vishnu : signifies the paradoxical sattva quality. As explained in my previous blog, this quality is related to the reduction to a zero in counting higher numbers. Thus, Vishnu actively participates in the evolution of this universe (including the human civilization) into forms of higher complexity, as represented by the order of his various avatars : fish (matsya), turtle (koorma), boar (varaha), lion+man (narasimha), pigmy man (vamana), hermit (parashurama), king of early civilization (rama), philosopher king (krishna), philosopher (buddha) and the awaited destroyer of all evil (kalki). Broadly speaking, Vishnu represents life, and his wife Lakshmi denotes the wealth and beauty that accompany life.

Brahma is said to germinate from the navel of Vishnu (just as a new series of numbers germinates at a higher place-holder when every preceding level becomes zero). Brahma, thus germinated, is considered the creator of the universe, which is preserved by the connection to Vishnu and by his constant engagement.

Shiva : signifies the tamas quality of inertia. This quality denotes death and destruction for all finite objects of nature. Hence, Shiva is considered as the destroyer of the universe, but he also represents the essential element that remains. He is symbolized by ashes, that which remain after any object is burnt in fire. This destruction of the relative and finite existence in nature is considered essential to realize the non-dual and infinite existence. Thus, Shiva is considered the most essential of the trimurti, and worshipped devoutly. His wife Shakti (Parvati) denotes the Prakriti in all its potential, and thus becomes the most essential of the female version of Trimurti. The word Shakti literally means energy and is thus used by Indian text books even today ! Broadly speaking, Shiva (or Shakti) can be interpreted as temporally symmetric laws of nature, such as the force-fields of physics.

Thus, at the core, even the devas of the Puranas can be interpreted in a completely naturalist manner. It is very amusing how they give rise to supernatural beliefs amongst the followers of the religion.

So, are the devas natural or supernatural ? I think it depends on how you "look" at them. It is just like asking if a creaking door is natural or supernatural.