On Freedom and Society

On Freedom and Society

                “Man is a social animal and we live in a society. Each one of us is dependent on the other directly or indirectly. For example, the milk man brings the milk to our door step every day, the news paper boy throws the paper in our balcony every morning, the washer man washes our cloths, our cloths are manufactured in factories by the factory employees so on and so forth.” This was what my class second teacher told our class while teaching something about profession of people. I distinctly remember of having felt a deep pain and anger over the idea of my being dependent on so many other people and not being free. It was in that moment that I decided I will study Mathematics for the rest of my life as that was the only subject in which ideas and concepts are built in air and one has to not think of society and various un-freedoms. A man can be truly free only in the realm of Mathematics. Mathematics gives the freedom I valued. My love continues to this date. But I have realised no one can live in vacuum and existence as a man implies there will be certain givens like – inter depended-ness, relatedness, emotional bondages etc. By being ascetic one can practice sacrifice and meditation. One can try to connect to God and be content with the self but that is a though way of living and not all men turn to monkhood. Is freedom, in its true sense, meant for monks only?

                Living in a society why should a man value the value system of the society even if he disagrees with many? For example why should a man not go out naked on street? Why should a woman behave in a certain dignified way only? Why should there be conformity and not chaos? One answer can be chaos leads to destruction and man wants to avoid destruction and look forward for peaceful re-creation or creation of a new world around him. Man feels happy to be alive and develops a love for nature. He learns from the conformity in nature. He sees how plants, flowers, honey bees, butterflies, birds, trees, rivers, clouds etc are dependent on each other and value each others’ existence. They nourish each other and do not burn the earth for petty issues.  I believe my decision to conform is not so much rooted in the fear of persecution by some hard-headed members of the society but is rather in the respect for natural order that I see around me. For, I know that if I find something deeply moving and outrageous in the social fabric, I rise in revolt and opposition. History is full of personalities who rose against oppression, racial discrimination, gender issues, human rights violations etc. against very strong powers. I would like to add another aspect to this by presenting Jermey Betham’s on the reason behind such co-operation between men: He believed that the human beings by nature were hedonists. Each of their actions was motivated by a desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Every human action has a cause and a motive. “Take away all pleasure and all pain and you have no desire and without desire there is no action.” Which probably is in contradiction with the teachings from Bhagwad Geeta that directs men to act without the thought of the fruit.

                 We have judicial system which is loaded with work. People have a sense of being wronged or not being wronged and therefore they seek justice. Because they think there is something like justice. Some way of living which is just. “In this little world, in which children have their existence, nothing is so finely felt and perceived as injustice”, says Pip in “The Great Expectation” by Charles Dickens. Man has a sense of justice and injustice and around such (and similar such) senses social fabric is woven.

                It is widely expected today, that men should be able to enjoy the freedoms they value and they have reason to value (as I might want to have the Taj Mahal but I don’t have a reason to value such a freedom in a country of 1.2 billion people. I can ofcourse have a piece of land and build a house but ownership of the Taj may not be the freedom which I can value). I might want to hoard all the food grain stocks available in the market for export so that I can build a Taj Mahal for myself, but again that would mean everyone will go hungry and therefore here again I have no reason to value such a want or whim. But I certainly can want a freedom of speech, of choosing profession, religion, faith, travelling, political freedoms etc. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights 1948 identified certain Rights which a Human Being should be able to enjoy. Jeremy Bentham found the idea of human rights as non sense. He felt that rights were children of law. Some scholars believe rights are parents of law and laws are made under the light of the rights men should enjoy. I think there is a duality here. In some cases rights can be parents of law for example Right To Information or Right To Education are essentially rights that have now translated into law and find their place in statue books. Also, some countries have laws against abortion. Such laws override the Right To Life. Which shows right can be child of law.

               

                What is the role of State? What is the aim of political setup?

                Kant believed that the aim of Politics not making the subjects happy, but is to provide them with enough freedoms so that they can work forward for their own happiness. It’s to provide an enabling environment where peaceful pursuit of happiness is possible. He was opposed to benevolent despotism. Jeremy Bentham advocated utilitarian ideas. He believed the purpose of a State should be to ensure greatest good for greatest numbers. Amartya Sen critics such a view and says that focus should be on means as well as ends. Greatest good can be achieved through several means. But while achieving such ends the State should ensure that people have freedoms to chose from. “Development”, to Sen, “is fundamentally a aimed at empowerment.” There is a complementarity between freedom and development. If freedom is enhanced the State would develop, if development is done then freedoms (that men can enjoy) will get enhanced. The purpose of State should be in only making the people empowered and let them work for their own set goals. Public debates and reasoning should be given great importance to weed out conflicts and seek solutions in conflicting situations. The society might not be made totally just (no body knows what that is) but it certainly can be made less unjust. And it is the State to take care of such transformation from unjust to less unjust.

               

(...conclusion to be written later)            

Enigma

As the bluish haze started dimming into the pitch darkness of the moonless night in the shivering winter of the town, a baby was heard crying. The city of a hundred and fifty thousand houses with of concrete walls, slept. Gardens slept, flowers slept and the old gardener too. The gates of the ancient churches of the city were closed, and temples and mosques too.

The night passed, and the gates of the churches opened for morning-prayer, and that of the temples and mosques too. People came for morning walk in the garden, and flowers lifted their heads to smell the rising sun. The old gardener kept himself busy humming an old tune and sweeping the pavements. The concrete walls claimed their true colours and were no longer the same. 

A five year old kid came walking to me and asked while I was sitting still and gazing the surface of the lake. “Did you hear someone cry last night oh passerby? I heard and heard till the morning sun and now its gone”, holding my hand he asked. I looked into his eyes and a tear rolled down my bearded cheek. I showed him a pen. He looked and it and said, “Where is the poem?” Since then we both have been here at the sides of this lake, watching.

The day passed and the sun kissed the horizon once again. The gates of churches started closing and that of the temples and mosques too. People went back to their houses and the as so did the old gardener. The kid stood up and said, “The sun has set now, I cannot see it beyond the horizons any more”. I stood up to see for myself and he was right, the sun wasn’t there.

The kid then walked into the lake and I just followed him. There we met an old man playing a long flute with three hands and writing a song with his forth hand. He stopped for a while and took out a small flute from his bag. He gave that flute to the kid and asked him to play. The kid blew and blew into the reed till he got frustrated and threw it away. The old man smiled and continued to play. The kid then asked the old man, about the baby crying the other night and the old man nodded while he played. 

We walked a little longer and we were at a village of hens and pigeons. They were living in mud houses amidst beautiful flowers and green grasses. The kid rushed to a big white hen and told her about the old man we met. The hen convened a meeting in the village hall. All the birds and insects came, and the kid cried while he asked about the baby crying the last night. 

An old pigeon shook its head and made us sit on its back. It then flew to the highest skies and made us see the world and the sun together. As we looked down we saw our town and the sleeping old gardener with his broom. We looked around and we heard no sound, there was no baby no cry no wind. 

We then came down to take rest on a mountain peak. The snow beneath our feet was hard, it was cold and we were hungry. The pigeon flew in search of food and after an hour it came back with a piece of cloud. We took two bites and threw the rest. 

.................and the baby cried.

Science and Mysticism: Are they compatible?

(One of the four topics for essay from UPSC paper 2012)

Sharaabiyon ko akeedat hai tumse, jo tu pilade to paani sharaab ho jaaye

Jisko tu muhabbat se dekhe saaki wo sharaabi ho jaaye...

Sams, had a question which no scholar of his time could answer. Finally he was asked to meet Rumi as only he could answer such a question. It is said that when Sams asked his question Rumi fell down of the ground, some say the book Rumi was holding is his hand caught fire when Sams asked: “How great is my glory, we do not know You as we should?”

Rumi, one of the greatest Sufi poets the world has read, spent a long time in conversation with his friend Sams. When he lost Sams, Rumi went from place to place to search for his friend. Then one day he said:

Why should I seek? I am the same as he.

His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself.

The union became complete. Rumi merged with Sams – fana – is the apt word.

Such is the world of mystic saint, where reality fuses into imagination and imagination becomes reality.

Coming to our times, "Philosophy is dead” claimed Stephen Hawkins in his book The Grand Design. The same author left me deeply confused when I came across another book by the same author whose title was Leopold Kronecker’s famous quote: God Created The Integers. He certainly would have not named a book with such a title if he does not believes in God (or some form of his own God, as we all have our own Gods), then he believes in religion and thus philosophy too. For to me there can be no religion without philosophy.

Though such contemplation, rather confusion over what Stephen Hawkins truly believes to be true, might not appear directly related to the topic of the present article but I found it important to enter the realm of Science through the eyes of one of the greatest scientists of our time, and enter the world mysticism through the eyes of Rumi.

Philosophy is a word derived from a Greek work, philos, which means love of wisdom. Wikipedia defines it as:

“Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language”.

Religion on the other hand is defined as:

“Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to the supernatural, and to spirituality.”

Mysticism:

“Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centres on practices intended to nurture those experiences. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a distinction between the self and the divine, or may be non-dualistic”.

Science:

“Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist.”

At the very start I would like mention, that maintain that scientists are not atheists by rule. Ramanujam, who was a Mathematician, claimed to derive divine insights from the Goddess Namagiri.

Abraham Lincoln  once said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” In History we get several such examples. The French Revolution which gave the went on to give ideas of the upcoming democracies. The politics of tomorrow was defined in the precepts of philosophical schools of yesterday. Gandhi ji said, ‘Those who say religion has to do nothing with politics, do not understand religion’. Connecting the two thoughts, I find, philosophy closely related to politics and religion closely concerned with politics. The inter-marriage of the three is but inevitable. Politics cannot live in vacuum and religion cannot be untouched of philosophy. Religion and philosophy try to answer the eternal questions of mankind about life and its meaning. While politics affects his life as a social animal in all possible ways. A man once born cannot escape the three, such is the trap in which a thinking mind finds itself.

Science, as we know it today, is not as old as religion or philosophy. Surely there were scientists, chemists, biologists in antiquity, but talking about modern Sciences we can say that the power centres were more in the clutches of religious power centres rather than influenced by scientific ideas. Church had a strong hold in the western countries even in the eighteenth century. It was the twentieth century which saw rapid advances in sciences and the two world wars brought tremendous new innovations. Engines were made, flights became common, communication became easier, space explorations began in post second world war period and continue to this day. Our curiosities have taken us to distant lands of Mars as well. We live in a fast world, where ideas fly from one corner of the world to another in no time. A Ghangam style of dance in East Asia becomes common in west overnight. A rock song of west becomes the anthem for the east the moment it gets uploaded on youtube or other such portals. In such an age, it is not very popular to see people sitting in contemplation over philosophic questions of the past.

Religion is strong force even today. Religion has kept itself abreast with the changing world and defined or redefined its precepts in the light of the present situations. People follow many religions. In fact not many religions have died since ancient times. States are run by religions sentiments in many part of the world. Communal strifes are common.

One may say that though, a lot has changed but there is no point writing epitaphs of philosophy or of religion. Both are very much alive.

Compatibility of the two (Science and Mysticism) brings to fore the problem comparing the inputs and outputs of the two. Science starts with questioning physical or natural phenomenon and then skids into the realm of logical reasoning, laboratory experiments, observation, hypothesis, proving and disproving to finally emerge to light with better understanding of the initial problem. Sometimes the searches are accidental as Madam Curie discovered radioactivity. Sometimes it is anxious waiting in the dark as Albert Einstein said one discovering the relationship between energy and mass: The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their intense alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light—only those who have experienced it can understand it. In Budhdhism such a state can be said to be in some be equivalent to attaining Budhdhahood or enlightenment. Looking for something hidden by nature from human perception and being more real than reality, is in some way the aspiration of any seeker of God. The process might be different but the final emergence to light which brings greater understand of life can be said to be common to both the endeavors.

The desire to know God:

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details." - Albert Einstein.

“A naked man jumps in a river, hornets swarming above him. The water is the zikr, remembering. There is no reality but God. There is only God.

The hornets are his sexual remembering, this woman, that woman. Or if a woman, this man, that. The head comes up. They sting.

Breathe water. Become river head to foot. Hornets leave you alone then. Even if you’re far from the river, they pay no attention.

No one looks for stars when the sun’s out. A person blended into God does not disappear. He, or she, is just completely soaked in God’s qualities. Do you need a quote from the Qur’an?

All shall be brought into our Presence.

Join those travellers. The lamps we burn go out, some quickly. Some last till day break. Some are dim, some intense, all fed with fuel.

If a light goes out in one house, that doesn’t affect the next house. This is the story of the animal soul, not the divine soul. The sun shines on every house. When it goes down, all houses get dark.

Light is the image of your teacher. Your enemies love the dark. A spider weaves a web over a light, out of himself, or herself, makes a veil.

Don’t try to control a wild horse by grabbing its leg. Take hold the neck. Use a bridle. Be sensible. Then ride! There is a need for self-denial.

Don’t be contemptuous of old obediences. They help.” – Rumi   (Poem – Zikr)

A mystic a more undisciplined in his flights of imagination. Rumi once wondered:

Who makes these changes?

I shoot an arrow right.

It lands left.

I ride after a deer and find myself

Chased by a hog.

I plot to get what I want

And end up in prison.

I dig pits to trap others

And fall in.

I should be suspicious

Of what I want.

But the fanatic desire to annihilate with the one and be the one who is immanent and yet hidden is something which is same in both scientists and mystics.

As far as compatibility is concerned they don’t seem to complement each other neither do they come in conflict with each other. Science goes on evolving with time. Old theories become obsolete, new ones come up. New understanding takes place of old believes. And the process of knowing more and more through experiments and observations goes on. The maddening distance from the One, pains and eludes the wit of many thinkers. Some commit or attempt to suicide too.

A natural disaster leaves both, the scientist and a mystic perplexed and ask how can the creator take so many lives of innocents. Is there no creator. Voltaire said, if there is no creator, we need to create one. Dostoevsky maintained that is there is no God, then everything is permitted. The chaos, that shall unleash, in absence of the idea of a creator, horrifies one and all. The compatibility or non compatibility of the two rests of the one final question: Do the two seek the same? This is the point where I must admit to the readers that I find the question absurd, not worth answering.

Pale sunlight

Pale the wall

Love moves away

The light changes

I need more grace that I thought. - Rumi

कैसे अब हम भूलें तुम्हें मुश्किल है

कैसे अब हम भूलें तुम्हें मुश्किल है ...

क्या करें बच्चों सा ये अपना दिल है ...

बाद तुम्हारे सूनी लगेंगी सब राहें 

जहाँ अकेले हो जाएँ कैसी मंजिल है .. 

वादा है अब न बोलेंगे दिल की बातें 

यार मेरा देखो तो कितना संघ्दिल है ...

ग़ज़लें भी सब आप की हैं और नग्मे भी 

आप न होंगे तो जीवन का क्या हासिल है

डूब ही जातें आप की आँखों में लेकिन 

सोचते हैं के नाचीज कहाँ इस काबिल है ..

शायर शायर कह के लोग बुलाते हैं
कितनी फीकी देखो तो ये महफ़िल है...

दरिया से तो हो आये हम बच कर के
जान का दुश्मन बन बैठा ये साहिल है ...

I am and I just am

Let me write to you O’ Lord my silence

I haven’t heard a word inside my head for a long time now

I think I have forgotten my own voice

And even if I do, I lend no thought on how it was

For I am sure, I don’t like it anymore

O’ Lord what a fool I was to utter those words with such haste

How foolish was when I outpoured a zillion poems

And still could never know, that it wasn’t me writing

I intend to write to you O’ Lord my silence

I breathe and that’s how I know I am

I am silent and that’s how I know you are

All the scriptures, religions, thinkers and saints have fumed away you see

I know no past no future no pain no joy

I am and I just am

Silence O’ Lord is my continuous prayer and a smile – an instant reward

I smile and thus I know I am

And thus I know you are

I wish to write to you O’ Lord my silence - The golden truth

But alas! I know no words, no art and have no skill

I know no audience I know no identity

I just am

And you are

Here my Lord, I present to you my silent soul like a fresh rose petal in your feet

I present you what I am

I wish to write my silence O’ Lord

Enigma

As the bluish haze started dimming into the pitch darkness of the moonless night in the shivering winter of the town, a baby was heard crying. The city of a hundred and fifty thousand houses with of concrete walls, slept. Gardens slept, flowers slept and the old gardener too. The gates of the ancient churches of the city were closed, and temples and mosques too.

The night passed, and the gates of the churches opened for morning-prayer, and that of the temples and mosques too. People came for morning walk in the garden, and flowers lifted their heads to smell the rising sun. The old gardener kept himself busy humming an old tune and sweeping the pavements. The concrete walls claimed their true colours and were no longer the same. 

A five year old kid came walking to me and asked while I was sitting still and gazing the surface of the lake. “Did you hear someone cry last night oh passerby? I heard and heard till the morning sun and now its gone”, holding my hand he asked. I looked into his eyes and a tear rolled down my bearded cheek. I showed him a pen. He looked and it and said, “Where is the poem?” Since then we both have been here at the sides of this lake, watching.

The day passed and the sun kissed the horizon once again. The gates of churches started closing and that of the temples and mosques too. People went back to their houses and the as so did the old gardener. The kid stood up and said, “The sun has set now, I cannot see it beyond the horizons any more”. I stood up to see for myself and he was right, the sun wasn’t there.

The kid then walked into the lake and I just followed him. There we met an old man playing a long flute with three hands and writing a song with his forth hand. He stopped for a while and took out a small flute from his bag. He gave that flute to the kid and asked him to play. The kid blew and blew into the reed till he got frustrated and threw it away. The old man smiled and continued to play. The kid then asked the old man, about the baby crying the other night and the old man nodded while he played. 

We walked a little longer and we were at a village of hens and pigeons. They were living in mud houses amidst beautiful flowers and green grasses. The kid rushed to a big white hen and told her about the old man we met. The hen convened a meeting in the village hall. All the birds and insects came, and the kid cried while he asked about the baby crying the last night. 

An old pigeon shook its head and made us sit on its back. It then flew to the highest skies and made us see the world and the sun together. As we looked down we saw our town and the sleeping old gardener with his broom. We looked around and we heard no sound, there was no baby no cry no wind. 

We then came down to take rest on a mountain peak. The snow beneath our feet was hard, it was cold and we were hungry. The pigeon flew in search of food and after an hour it came back with a piece of cloud. We took two bites and threw the rest. 

.................and the baby cried.

Brahma

Note: Self is used interchangeably for soul.

Q.            Am I the body?

001.       The body is just a degradable and dynamic entity on the universe. Just like a stone of today that can be mud tomorrow, the body will lose its form.

Q.            How to understand the meaning of life then?

002.       To understand the meaning of life, come out of the mirage where the body is the self and fellow beings are relatives or strangers according to how they look or speak or identify themselves.

Q.            How should I see my body?

003.       See the body as complete stranger and forget it as piece of straw kept nearby.

Q.            What do I do without my body?

004.       Come towards the self and stay with it in silence.

Q.            What is the nature of self?

005.       No logic, no word, no expression can describe the self. It is everything and yet everything is not even a pinch of it. Leave such thoughts as thoughts are faculty of mind and the mind is a part of the body. Leave the body. Leave the mind. Leave the thoughts. Smile. Forget everything.

Q.            Should I wait for the thoughts to die out?

006.       Do not try to destroy the thoughts. You cannot. Forget the body and stop identifying yourself with it. The thoughts will die out and the face will smile in silence.

Q.            What if past haunts me?

007.       Forget the past, as the past is associated with the body only. The self is not bound with time.

Q.            Will I see God in such silence? How does He look like?

008.       Do not expect unnatural or extra ordinary or divine visions. Do not expect anything. Just forget the body and know from within that the body is not you. The body is just holding you.

Q.            Why do I need to be held?

009.       The body holds you because you are always joyous and want to go around the universe experiencing every bit of it. You want to play in the play ground of your father. There is no other reason. There is no afterlife or previous life for the self, as you were never born and never dead. You chose for yourself what and where you want to be in the universe.

Q.            What Should I do in this life?

010.       Enjoy.

Q.            How?

011.       Be with the self and glide through this plain of life always knowing that the body is just holding you. It is not you.

Q.            Is the purpose of life to know the self and seek salvation?

012.       The self is already absolved of all papa-punya as the self was never involved in any karma.  There is nothing like salvation. There is no purpose of life other than the desire of the self to come to the life plain through a body. The self is always content and joyous.

Q.            Why then there is misery?

013.       Because very few men know the self. Men give names to their kids and the kids grow up with an identity which they find impossible to lose even for a moment and see the self in true sense. They become slave of their identity and a slave many a times ends up as a miserably tiered poor person.

Q.            So life is to be lived with joy and jest?

014.       Yes. Laugh, smile, play, work with a detachment for the karma falam, don’t get involved in anything and yet be there. Become a father and yet know that neither the son nor you yourself are the body.

Q.            What kind of living will that be! I am scared and dismayed!

015.       Come back to your body then. Switch the identity. Become a father and a son the way the body says things are. But keep trying to return to the self. This is the spiritual exercise you must keep practicing till you achieve the wisdom that opens the gates of all knowledge and truth.

Q.            And what is that?

016.       It is the understanding that there are few things that are beyond the faculties of the mind to perceive but by steadfast faith and love one can connect to the divine which lies within and without.

Q.            How do you know you are not wrong? What if you are wrong?

017.       What is right can very much be wrong. What is wrong can very much be right. The importance of right and wrong ceases when we transcend the mind. Beyond the confines of the mind, there is only bliss and light.

Q.            If the mind is so bad, why the self enters the body that cannot function without the mind?

018.       The mind is not bad or good. The mind is a slave, who will make food for you if you ask it. But the same slave can kill you and consume you if you become its slave. Enslave your mind do not lose yourself to it. Use it for survival, for seeking excellence in the life plain, seek direction from the self. Create something. Savour it. Destroy it. Remake. And still know that you are not the creator, destroyer or the maker of anything.

Q.            Its all enigmatic utterance of a mystic. Its no knowledge. It does not answer anything. What should I do?

019.       Wait with me. Let the truth unravel itself. It will have to.