charvak

2010-09-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

A spy disguised as a spy,

My mind speaks specious truths,

unknown to me;

an illusion of a deluded saint,

I deceive myself, knowingly.

Cobwebs spin out,

And paint the space,

Nothingness breeds Alice's world,

The 'I' god loses,

A rigged game,

Deliberate beliefs,

Connive and conquer,

I begin to worship,

The shibboleths I create,

My intellect follows,

A faithful slave.

And then it's real,

So complete,

contrived creativity,

amnesically real,

mushrooms, proliferates,

spawns unbridled.

Loves and laws,

Dreams and deaths,

Ideals and dust,

ecstatic, hoodwinked,

run amok,

in a demented dance.

Rainbow on the bubble,

my estranged child,

runs and runs,

Something waits,

But never baits,

a schizophrenic laughter,

of apocalyptic insight.

spirit

2010-04-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

suppose,
just for a moment that you're dead; finally dead.
Difficult to imagine, but just as a little game, do it....
Now you still feel yourself, maybe you're a soul or a spirit or a ghost, which has survived the event of 'your' death.
Hmmm, now what do we do? you don't now need the form you were so accustomed to, nor the breath, neither the constraints of space, and maybe time.
You are finally free, feel your elements dispersing through the space, yet connected to 'you'; you try to remember pain, but you've lost the memory of pain, your bonds already seem distant, faded and vaguely unfamiliar.
No eyes, no ears no speech, but you seem to exist; eternity has set in, so soon and so firmly, you were always here, deja-vu besprinkles and propagates through 'you'.
No self, no 'me', no desires, no time, no space.....nothing to be known... light fills the nothingness, the nether-me radiates.
You're annihilated and infinite, immutable and indefinite;
you're the buddha, you're nirvana....

Chemicals in my brain.

2010-02-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

Entropy is a fundamental property of matter, the arrows of time and disorder point in the same direction, irreversibly. Evolution, a sieve, rushes against this current, organizing matter on its way. Chemical properties, up from valencies, to propensity towards bonding reach a level of criticality, and then, flip..the game changes; physics has passed into chemistry and chemistry into organic chemistry; in this evolutionary ladder all but carbon derivatives have been eliminated. Then this organizing principle of increasing complexity if not order again reaches criticality, or a boundary condition and catapults into the next orbit of biology. Now biology is a bureaucracy of processes, with chemical processes independently running as subroutines of the larger picture--life.
Awareness, self awareness, intellect forms a continuum from reflexes to reflections, and tropisms in plants to meta awareness of humans.
My brain is a bunch of synapses, all my thoughts, beliefs, ideas and ideals...are chemical patterns, the synaptic connections served by the neurotransmitters are the blips, the bits and the bytes of my being.
So religion may form an exemplar of a pattern of connections; if an MRI image of all people praying at a temple/church/mosque be taken, it would definitely show commonalities.The real, unreal and the surreal all reside in these patterns.
Entropy only chips away at base level processes and reactions, but the being survives as a statistical mean over time, a sort of conduit through which matter flows, identity of individual pieces of matter is immaterial, now I drink the water, now it has become part of me, now it has been shed as a tear, me remains me.
Entropy has helped evolution to create consciousness, through the propensity of matter to combine in constrained ways.The attempt of consciousness to fascemilize reality is indeed imperfect, but reliable. All categories of understanding derive from already known entities, features are added to chemical models made of synapses in brain.Thus available reality is contingent upon my senses to be transmogrified into an emergent-organic network of chemical paths.My sanity is a byproduct of accuracy of this very process; ironically when it goes wrong, it denies correction through self awareness, entropy catches up..

2009-05-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

in an unreal numb world,
it happened,
slow unfolding waltz,
beautiful and perfect.

vincent's sunflowers,
unwilting and bright,
lyrical and fragrant,
jesu of Bach.

somewhere a blindworm,
in labrynthine slime,
slithering in melancholy,
in the nether world.

a Faust in quest,
a fiend in cocoon,
immaculate savage,
a venom in bloom.

cataclysm awaits,
as light invades,
expurgating liberating,
sunflowers of the soul.

2009-05-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

they're me, the demons, the demons of my mind, with thousand faces and a single mask, lurking to lead me with love, with love and hope and faith and truth, secretly laugh, and then reassure, and then seduce and devour, me myself my demons, see how they sing, sing and dance, garlanded beasts, yet so gentle, perfume my body and convey me, through grime and blood, through spite and cheer, merry go round and round, my teeth in my heart, a salty taste, a potent thirst, a frozen pain, a distant drum, an alien rythm, compulsive stride of mechanized limbs, all coalesce to bloom and burst, ackwardly in a supernal smile, I gasp and gasp, they fly like swans, diffuse into fading pale stars, I limp and run, with flaming eyes, to search in vain, for demons my demons.

2009-05-18T13:47:00.001-07:00

Bright light, the daze,
the craze, free fall,
the rush to embrace,
BANG .... and peace.

No pain, no touch,
inanimate matter,
all love and hate,
splattered across,
bits in mud,
splashes on the wall.

Like a thirst it came,
spiralled like lust,
mesmerised he walked,
to her outstreched arms,
all solved, all dust,
empty nothingness.

His echoes remain,
for some more time,
submerging in chaos,
sublimating in minds,
dripping away,
in invisible streams.

He fades like smoke,
a gust and gone,
silence prevails,
no angels in tow,
a faint ripple,
he comes to mind...

2009-05-16T04:01:00.000-07:00

faith is an idea,
a butterfly, a rainbow,
seen only by my eyes;
my illusion, my truth.
candles in my heart,
I don't want light,
my vision's nebulous,
my breath dark.

my shreds of light,
my bits of solace,
my placebo, my hope,
my whiff of life,
my essence,
my quintessence.

fragile - contingent,
waiting for a gust,
an icicle, a dewdrop,
stop, don't whisper,
I'll die.

preserve my delirium,
the flame will succumb,
sedate me to a dream,
don't break the iridescent bubble,
till the next twilight..

TRUTH

2009-05-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

I ran with the begging bowl,
at the feet of light,
he had what i sought,
had faith in my heart;

with contentment I received,
held tight to it,
then it began to rot,
faith clutched at the carrion;

orphaned and footloose,
mad free radical,
I gnawed and tasted and spat,
believers watched;

senses my senses,
my only possession,
soaked the world,
in synaptic equations;

hallucinated and betrayed,
cremated the senses,
cocooned and waited,
for enlightenment;

randomness kept breeding,
I waited for enlightenment,
metamorphosis/Armageddon ?
under a bodhi tree...

उड़ान

2009-05-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

थोड़ा और आगे ,
दर्द की परिसीमा के ,
दांत भींच कर घिसट जा ,
अस्ताचल के परे ।

चमकीली आखों के ,
मदमाते स्पर्श के ,
विरह की आहों के ,
सपनों की झालर के ,
रुंधी साँसों के ,
अबूझ इच्छाओं के ,
अनकही बातों के ,
सूनी रातों के ,
अनजान आंसुओं के ,
कचोटती चुप्पी के ,
अधूरे शब्दों के ,
कुचली संवेदनाओं के ,

एक और पड़ाव परे ,

घिसट चल ,
रास्ता तेरा है ,
शास्वत सत्य की तरह ,
अनंत और अमर ,
चल जहाँ कोई चाह नहीं ,
कोई समर नहीं ,
नहीं कोई जिजीविषा ,
नहीं कोई नाम ,
नहीं कोई अस्तित्व ,

एक पग और डाल ,

पार कर समस्त त्रुटियाँ ,
सारे लोभ और भेद ,
तज दे सारे आवरण ,
उड़ जा ,
विमुक्त संचार कर ,
विलुप्त हो जा ,
घुल जा हवाओं में ,
किरणों में बिखर जा ,
भूल जा स्वयं को ,
और मोक्ष पा जा ..

2009-05-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

कभी सांझ के पर्दे पर,
टांग दिया मैने एक मन,
उस में तुम हो, मैं हूं,
हैं और बहुत से रंग,

उडते सुग्गों की हरियाली,
तुम्हारे होने का एह्सास,
दिल में एक हवा का झोंका,
एक अन्छुए स्पर्श की प्यास,

उगते तारों की उबासी,
तुम्हारे आंचल पर वो फूल,
भीनी सी खुश्बू हवा में,
सपनीले सुरों की दस्तक,

अतीत के बक्से से निकली,
धूल सी खाती हुई,
यादों में खोई तुम्हारी,
मन के पर्दे पर वो शाम.

Deliverance

2009-05-05T05:53:00.001-07:00

One fine day,
I decide to run,
from self, desires, bonds,
en-route I meet Buddha,
Freud laughs at me,
I stop and look,
at the web.

I have spawned,
at every node,
watching me with intent eyes,
i shoot at all those
bubbly heads,
they bubble and froth
in people's eyes.

I tug at the ropes,
they start to spin,
39 gods and
a thousand sins,
Demons of scriptures
in a merry go round,
dripping saliva
from comical mouths.

I dive deep,
and deep within,
the sounds follow,
like bees to sting..
then sets the freeze,
and all disappear,
no echoes,
no waits nor wants.

I breathe now,
and see the horizon,
and merrily dance
amongst known unknowns..
I'm reborn, shorn of me;
I embrace the world,
and let it go..

2009-05-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

I renew my bond,
with the abyss,
'twas always there,
never oblivious,
me or not me,
you or not you,
it runs unknown,
like wind through breath,
me an automaton,
running away,
from voids to voids.

anaesthetic sublime,
and transcendent,
it seeks me,
and I let it come,
slowly submerging,
my eyes my mind,
my dreams my love,
silences reverberate,
in a beatific smile.

the silk prints,
the butterfly wings,
the recesses of my brain,
your touch and gaze,
my joy and elan,
tumults and travail,
echo through,
a distant membrane.

unknowingly I waited,
for this deliverance,
more profound than death,
more subtle than soul,
an imploding melt,
my world and me,
spiral and float,
permeating with the yearn,
to be nothing again.

shorn of me,
I freely breathe,
and cut the strings,
of the parachute,
abeyance envelopes,
particles of me,
a nebulous cloud,
beyond the arrow of time.

who are you,
and who am I,
sticky chunks,
coalescing ,
meaning, purpose,
desire and dreams,
conspiring glue,
to keep afloat.

evaporate...self,
go beyond the design,
dissolve dissolve,
in transparent mist,
nothing yonder,
and nothing behind,
on a journey,
to amaranthine now...

back of the tongue

2009-05-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

I clench my teeth,
not let it go,
it's mine, and pure,
smothering, comforting;
warm glow, - in my sinking self;
comes in flashes, endless reruns,
slime on my skin,
taste in my throat,
my world evolves,
in layers of sediment;
an eternal now,
within my eyelids,
volcanoes bloom,
in slow succession,
freeze and flow,
and flicker and dance;
one with matter,
my essence waits,
for not a ripple,
in silent haze;
shame/remorse/hate and fear,
swirl in blobs,
kaleidoscopically play,
I wait to crumble,
and liberate;
dust to dust,
desires to ashes,
the cage opens,
to let in the world;
the mist, the fog,
the chill is me,
crawling numbly,
to eternity.

Flavour of pain

2009-05-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

Insipid, inanimate,
it seeps through,
filling my world,
a silent nausea,
a desire of death,
empty nothingness,
echoes through my hollow head.

It does not rush,
languidly swirls,
through my vision my breath,
a known silence,
an eternal truth,
so willingly I surrender.

It comforts and caresses,
my blunt senses,
taking away desire,
destroying hope,
it flows and ebbs,
it waits and calls.

Thanatos, Thanatos,
I wearily invoke,
my voice frays,
and goes to dust,
I crawl in me,
cocoon and wait.

I's a trance, it's a trance;
something laughs,
the twilight dims,
in a surreal world,
I pinch myself,
and pinch again.

I don't want to go,
I'm still, - apoplexed,
no voices I hear,
from the dream world,
speck by speck I breathe and savour,
the flavour of pain....

chatter

2008-02-01T03:35:00.000-08:00

1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: competition is the feeling good about ourselves by putting someone else down, that is always a choice

(05:29:38 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: we compare when we think we are lacking

(05:29:41 PM) th3v0ic3 : feelings are byproducts

(05:30:26 PM) th3v0ic3 : and tertiary

(05:30:30 PM) th3v0ic3 : to reality

(05:30:36 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: i disagree, i strongly feel that nothing which is inherent to a human being , can be negative

(05:31:05 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: it is when we make a choice to deviate from inhenrent that all complications arise

(05:31:44 PM) th3v0ic3 : humans are inherently the way they are, -ve +ve is an opinion

(05:32:21 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: well since words are such poor communicators try to go beyond my shabdh

(05:32:26 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: and understand the arth

(05:32:42 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: not negative or positive , in the way they imply

(05:32:59 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: but my meaning was to say that everything which is inherent is harmonious

(05:33:16 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: anything that causes disharmony cant be inherent

(05:34:17 PM) th3v0ic3 : have a non partisan neutral plain untainted perspective

(05:34:32 PM) th3v0ic3 : things will lose petty significances

(05:34:57 PM) th3v0ic3 : harmony etc are chance events,

(05:35:11 PM) th3v0ic3 : nothing is positive or negative

(05:35:22 PM) th3v0ic3 : the world is a random place

(05:35:53 PM) th3v0ic3 : all structures of mind and all fundamental truths are provisional

(05:36:15 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: hmm

(05:36:30 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: let me think more on the above statement

(05:37:59 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: :) heavy talk today

(05:38:40 PM) th3v0ic3 : no its quite plain

(05:39:32 PM) th3v0ic3 : we are accidents, deluding ourselves with meaning

(05:40:42 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: gosh

(05:40:43 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: and i have alwazys believed that whatever exists is always because there is meaning to it

(05:42:08 PM) th3v0ic3 : meaning is a derivative of the mind, or its grappling with the physical reality

(05:42:21 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: which also is

(05:42:48 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: i mean " is"

(05:42:53 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: it is

(05:43:09 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: it exist

(05:43:09 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: exists

(05:43:34 PM) th3v0ic3 : what exists?

(05:44:04 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: physical reality

(05:44:07 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: it is an entity

(05:44:20 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: can we ignore it along with its manifestations

(05:45:12 PM) th3v0ic3 : no, why. it is a chaos, we find patterns in it and derive happiness.....so sad......blind

(05:46:26 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: hmm

(05:47:36 PM) th3v0ic3 : the world is a layer of explorations.....of the mind...reality is inaccessible in its entirety

(05:48:43 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: that i agree with

(05:49:05 PM) th3v0ic3 : like spheres of consciousness

(05:50:08 PM) th3v0ic3 : you there?

(05:50:36 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: yes

(05:50:36 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: am here

(05:50:47 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: go on

(05:52:14 PM) th3v0ic3 : so all systems of meaning are contingent, language is like a barcode, there are no real meanings...only resemblances... reflections in an imperfect mirror....

(05:52:50 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: :)P

(05:54:15 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: smiling

(05:54:19 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: because

(05:54:22 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: thinking

(05:54:36 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: as to u would make for a good abstract painter

(05:55:12 PM) th3v0ic3 : see another mirror

(05:55:36 PM) th3v0ic3 : see, another mirror...painting

(05:56:19 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: hmm

(05:57:23 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: so how come u got to sleep today?

(05:57:36 PM) th3v0ic3 : philosophy, science, spirituality, ....all mirrors

(05:58:07 PM) th3v0ic3 : not much wrk pressure

(05:58:11 PM) th3v0ic3 : today

(05:58:46 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: ok

(05:59:01 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: u were bit tensed yesterday?

(05:59:08 PM) th3v0ic3 : bored you today

(05:59:16 PM) th3v0ic3 : nope why?

(05:59:32 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: just, my impression :)

(05:59:38 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: my mirror

(05:59:41 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: i guess

(05:59:53 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: no not bored

(05:59:53 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: but sometimes wonder

(05:59:55 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: that when you think so deep

(06:00:08 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: how do u function with the real world

(06:00:10 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: i mean

(06:01:30 PM) th3v0ic3 : if you see transparently, there is no separation betn any worlds,

(06:01:50 PM) th3v0ic3 : it is just our layer of abstraction/interaction

(06:02:52 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: true

(06:02:52 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: but

(06:03:32 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: see when u think in so many layers then doesnt the superficiality of it sometimes get to you?

(06:11:51 PM) th3v0ic3 : sorry had visitors

(06:12:21 PM) th3v0ic3 : no, nothing is superficial or deep, it is just a function of where we are

(06:14:56 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: oh

(06:14:59 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: ok

(06:17:08 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: just checking out some work details

(06:19:07 PM) th3v0ic3 : k

(06:21:25 PM) th3v0ic3 : c ya l8r bye

(06:22:25 PM) 1i5t3n3r@gmail.com: bye

holy war

2007-11-09T23:37:00.000-08:00

Ah! one life,

So many desires

each desire, a world.

Bemused with realities,

my mind floats

Shoulds & woulds and

a thousand buts

line the map with beacons

Ghosts of desires

lurk and shadow

chisel my thoughts

to a perfect fit

My essence revolts

is stabbed by reason

I weave truths

they rot ;

Meteors run

on predicted paths

mingle with my breath

dreams take flight

with avowed vengeance

the soul begs

for deliverance

the world we Make

Of our own will

defiantly takes

a life of own

battered battered

desires galore

wounded soldiers

Come back to Camp

haunts unknown

colour my vision

I see realities

in shreds of rainbows

I breathe the dust

swallow the ash

as I crawl ahead

into twilight of desires

Everette's worlds

2007-08-23T04:47:00.000-07:00

Somewhere very near, In a parallel world,
Happily ever after.
Unknown to you, the face of dice,
Broke into cubistic laughter.
Worlds spawn, in every blink,
An unbridled bloom.
All dreams and desires, Stars and wind
Secretly live in unknown worlds
Past is Killed, like Schroedinger's Cat
Future explodes in a million rainbows
A thousand 'me's, and million 'you's
Zillion lives in a trillion hues
I Stare in the dark, endlessly search
Only one of the worlds you see!
Exploding rainbows, dead Cats
Hundred 'me's and 73 'you's
Honeycomb mirrors, reverberating reality
All dead flowers are blooming too
Infinite twins, blindfolded runs,
Each alone in a fractal destiny...

Meaning of mEaNInG

2007-07-02T00:59:00.000-07:00

'Meaning', what do i mean by it, I grapple with the unfamiliarity, hack it into chewable morsels, smoothen out its creases, trim it to fit my 'box', bind it to a train of thoughts, anticipate its flow, predict its moods, stamp it in my memory, stack it in a taxonomy, imagine its a kin, diffract its differences into known colours, barcode it, and finally it also becomes a template for further understanding.
All meaning is a map, and symbols are mine, I paint my world, in my own hues; if you share the same dictionary, we see similar things. What is a program for Linux is garbage to Windows; and vice-versa. Any 'language', the stimulus must be creating similar structures across brains, perception at molecular level must be fundamentally similar, being of different tongues, we cannot understand each other. Structures/patterns lie out there, the mind is attuned to 'reflect' and preserve them, linking them, assimilating them into an internal mirror world. The mind as it 'means'(the process of meaning), or goes along meaning, gets altered by its own building blocks - the concepts; i.e. stored meanings constitute the mind in an evolutionary paradigm.
All meaning is a contingency, or all meanings are contingent, they fulfill a need, the need for a map, for a flashlight, for a lodestone. Its utility is in correspondence with reality; this correspondence is a very tricky phenomenon, if reality does not fit my mold, I'll distort it, as my mind hardens into permanent synapses, I replace them for external world. Anyway my contact with the world is through chemical structures in my brain, and an agency of the mind itself keeps doing the reality check; this is the immune system of logic, if this breaks down, a floodgate of distortions right from delusions, to religious fundamentalism, to obsessions ensues. Meaning in this sense is closely associated with the truth value of any proposition.
Language is actually inessential but indispensable, for want of a better means, literally! it is essentially like a compression format, say mp3 or oggvorbis, the 'same' song can be preserved in different formats; play it and it's the same. Thus chemically meanings may reside as similar structures in the brain, mediated by language; ironically language also affects/distorts meaning formation as it is an incomplete measure, it 'mass-produces' and disindividuates individual encryptions, i.e. what we ultimately mean is also affected by the language we speak or think in, apart from the inherent characteristics of the 'thing itself'. Thus the mind has an organizing tendency which makes 'sense' of infinite material around it, after affecting even the choice of what is to be considered significant for the process of meaning to begin.
So then meaning is outside us or inside us, or nowhere, or just in the relationship of inside-outside? It seems that the mind imparts structure to the flow of data, seen Rorschach inkblot tests in psychology, or ever 'made' shapes in clouds? you see what your mind designs; so meaning is only inside us? in the chemical meta-processes which evolve on random-deterministic paths, or is it essentially just in the relation of brain/mind to the world that all the meaning arises and is dead and sterile without this context/background? a computer program is irrelevant outside a computer, a work of art dead without a perceiver, so is this context the only medium and justification, the only rationale of existence of meaning? or is it that a lot and lot lies outside our field of experience or existence like light in the non visible spectrum or sound beyond audible ranges, its only our mind that reflects the world in its distorted mirror and construes it as reality? What a lump of sugar is to me is not the same to a housefly, nor to the bacteria; so I mean to mean what I mean, but what does it mean?
Used T9 on mobile phone keypads? it predicts words as you type, based on a dictionary in the background, this technology exhibits that predictive meta structures can be built-in inside the system and they can be made to learn with interaction, even in inanimate environments. The human mind is an exhibit of the fundamental property of all living matter: of organizing into self evolving agglutinations, self preserving, replicating, and taking a quantum jump of levels of organization at certain thresholds; thus molecules formed carbon compounds, then amino acids, then proteins, then nucleic acids/organelles to cells, to multicellular organisms to reproduction to speciation to trophic levels to community living to colonies to societies to language-culture-technology-philosophy...
The mind does the same, organizes the internal world based on the meta principles inherent in it; catches patterns of energy or mass, filters them, correlates them, passes them through the quality control of logic, extrapolates and interpolates, familiarizes them, transfixes an echo-ic memory of the transient into a snapshot, weights them tests them, names them, plants them, uses/reuses and moulds them in a complex dynamic interplay of competing internal and external worlds.

consciousness ant and god

2007-05-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

consciousness ant and god

The ant is aware of itself and its surroundings, it has various 'senses' including chemical, let us imagine a sphere of consciousness about/around the ant.. sort of an astral projection extending from its ant-self, lets give it a radius both physically and notionally. It now is the 'ant-world' ; all the probabilities of the ant's existence or all the ant-essence lies somewhere about this field. This certainly does not include mount everest or the moon Phobos of Mars; it also doesn't include classical music or taxonomic classification of organisms; it also does not know that it is called an 'ant' by 'humans', not also that this would matter much to it even if was it known.
I also exist, or at least I suppose so, with my own 'ant-world', a sphere of all probabilities about me, as an individual and as an organism, with all my bio-socio-psycho-economic-spiritual selves about me, and my world includes the ant, in a way that the ant's doesn't include mine; nothing to feel superior about, it is just a state of things, as they are, all superstructures of 'understanding' are actually conveniences.
So there are at least two worlds, one of the ant and the other - mine. let us conveniently arrange them in a system, maybe a hierarchy, not necessarily in a qualitative sense; now when the two worlds interact among an infinite possible number of worlds, 'my' world encompasses the ant's, in a way probably the ant cannot reciprocate or replicate, probably!, I can also conceive of yet another world which encompasses mine, the ant is unaware of both, the 'hierarchy' can be extended at both the ends probably infinitely, starting with 'inanimate' things, to 'meta' or what somebody will love to call god.
Now begin with 'me'; on the given scale, 'me' is placed somewhere, where it is defined by its unique qualifications and disqualifications. Thus limitations of 3 perceivable dimensions, along with a unidirectional time, form one of the boundaries, amongst many. Move the slider, laws of physics 'collapse', in the traditional sense, or limitations vanish, boundaries are pushed forward. What is amazing, is that such states are not inconceivable, hence are achievable;
Lets do some mental exercise, close your eyes and start imagining/constructing your 'ant-world', define the possibles and impossibles, chart the boundaries; check on all the senses, consider all inner and external mechanisms, take a dynamic snapshot of your being, like a live MRI, you can now 'touch' the boundaries of your ant-world,; now feel the layer/shell/sphere of consciousness just beyond, foray into it; your consciousness seems to expand, things not in your apparent focus suddenly become alive, all your senses simultaneously delimit themselves, you become aware of (a slice of) your surroundings and beyond, in its entirety(as if). How far can you go?, as far as you can 'see';
All of our discoveries and inventions are, in this 'field', just enveloping our beings; we wade through our consciousness and come up with principles of gravitation, and theories of relativity we get as far as we can see, and more we go 'forward', farther lies the horizon, mapping the abyss, our consciousness and intellect free us of limitations of our world. At the extreme end of this spectrum lie positions, where all the laws, all limitations either do not apply or do not matter, elsewhere is a journey, a struggle of life and consciousness, to travel into the next ant-world, coexisting with ours, like multiple/parallel universes, complete with their own internally consistent systems of laws, bubbles within bubbles.
To be god is achievable; you need to learn, to see, beyond your ant-world, into the abyss; take a plunge, explode yourselves, release your being, bubbles beyond bubbles.........

Who is me?

2007-01-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

In a quantum of what we call time, at different instances you, me and everybody else was in two pieces, one swimming toward the other on an automated path, and after a chemical/biological reaction the preliminary you/me came in existence. Then passing through blastulla, morulla and other stages of foetal development, which mimic evolution and origin of life on earth in a strange way, as they say, 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny', guided by a developmental program, still retaining some aberrations/individuality, was created the ubiquitous 'ME'.
ME (or you, for that matter) then started adding to itself matter from its surrounding, still it was me, and in the bargain it also lost matter, but remained 'me'. The original matter in me was rapidly replaced to a large extent, but simultaneously a centrality was emerging, this was of ideas, emotions, thoughts etc, a kind of identity; this also kept on changing, but was as if self aware of the changes, so could account for them and coalesce/re-gel with itself. It grew in complexity in terms of number, nature and levels of interconnections and interactions with the environment and self. So a code was unfolding, in both predictable and unpredictable ways; changes on the concrete stratum were reflected, transposed and moored at the stratum/level/layer of consciousness, seemingly in an independent manner(?). ME continued to be the mean/median/mode of all this.
Consciousness like a kite, had its string in the hands of the DNA, but was still free to maneuver and soar high.
So who is ME (or YOU), akin to a wave in matter; where identity remains despite change in constituent materials. ME passes through matter in time, matter/substance comes to it and goes away from it, like shed skin, cut hair, clipped nails, excreta etc. The water it takes becomes a part of life, when urinated or evaporated as sweat, it is inanimate again. Once the code (DNA) unfolds ME, me stands like a static wave, unaffected by the transit of matter through it. It's meta component, so as to say, the consciousness, almost goes independent.
Now there's one common factor uniting matter and 'spirit'/consciousness, and that's a kind of inertia or tenacity or viscosity, which resists change and is simultaneously very accommodative; like the colour of my skin or my political views or my value system or my immune response. They all have a centrality which simultaneously and paradoxically is rigid as well as malleable, it also helps maintain consistence and balance amongst its various sub/supra components, thus it fights hard to maintain ME as ME, and simultaneously evolves/accommodates/grows.
The criticality of individuation, built into the probabilistic vagaries of the code, sucks matter in its vortex, creates a meta structure of consciousness, this complex interacts with the social/physical/temporal world(environment), and so passes ME, a wave through matter, time and space, on a 'predestined' but unknown path.....
to be lost forever........

Looking at life

2006-03-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

There is one thing very interesting about religion, almost every religion tries to explain the origin of the universe and (human) life. In fact I have come across some very interesting attempts by certain very religious individuals to refute Darwininian and other scientific theories, by adducing 'scientific' evidence to support their own cosmogonic and Genesis beliefs.
Well then what is life actually? it actually seems to be a configuration or pattern of matter which has achieved a sort of criticality, i.e. has crossed a certain threshold. A threshold of being able to preserve itself in a perpetually changing environment, of being able to replicate itself in a dynamically stable way, of being in some sense 'aware' of the environment around, of being self aware in different degrees, of being able to selectively give and take from the surroundings, of growth, and finally of the fantastic constancy and dynamic flexibility of the whole gamut of things afforementioned.
Also interesting is the fact that life begets life, or in other words such configurations cannot emerge independently other than being seeded by some living form, both in an evolutionary as well as causal sense. Except cloning, efforts of science to dabble with life have not been all that successful. The 'discovery' of the complete human genome has actually complicated issues by peripherally giving rise to 'intelligent design' theories, which are in essence counter-evolutionary.
On the other hand physics has also ended up tangled in its own web of questions of whether 'god' plays dice or not, or if the dice is a 'loaded' dice, and if so who/how/what loaded it? Any answer to the creation/genesis/evolution will also have to go back into the cosmogonic realm, and answer the ultimate question .... and beyond......?
Life is actually a set of great contradictions, a probabilistic nightmare; Paul Davis in his book ARE WE ALONE, draws an analogy of a storm entering an aircraft factory where spares are kept, and a complete aircraft emerging as a result, to be probabilistically equivalent of life emerging out of inert matter. One point of view is that probability does not operate in the reverse direction as assumed by many; many fantastically improbable events keep occuring in day to day happenings, but once they occur, it would be fallacious to retrace the improbability of occurance in the reverse direction. Thus the logic of probability applied to origin of life/beginning of universe, would fail in the reverse direction; see the analogy with the 'arrow of time'/entropy/phase spaces.
Relegion is also one of the arguments, let's not be prejudiced about it, who knows, the truth may be accessible to an entirely different method of questioning. The only 'bug' in the religious argument is that it's method of questioning is not consistent or internally sufficient, presupposes a lot, and using the same method one can prove the existance or otherwise of almost anything!
The 'criticality' of a lump of chemicals becoming life

2006-02-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

Somewhere someone listens,
what always remains unsaid...

Like a cosmic song ,
the unsung tune , fills the sense of being.

Eyes open or a dream,
it flows through ,

The world of meaning,
of will and design, melts as if 'was never there.

'atoms in void' , we clouds of dust,

Rush through our world ,
like toys of will.

Will , destiny , desire , me;
clouds floating on a random wind.

Listen to the song within ,
and learn to laugh, at illusions all

For once breathe pure,
sans fear or will,
let the cosmic song, play unbound.....

shadows

2006-01-16T20:48:00.001-08:00

From deep within my voids,
come dreams so true,
petals so soft, i dare not touch,
or the dream break

the mind sees,
what fills the voids, i smell the air,
with baited breath,
or my mirage fly away

my eyes are shut,
i caress the song, and drift afloat,
on fathomless voids

so pure and bright,
i loose my self ,
more real than real, my visions alive

so the mind plays,
a game with self ,
voids overflow, with colours and smells

a blizzard blows,
and i wake up,
the voids are empty,
the magician dead

i want to sleep,
with sand in my eyes,
i see in the dark,
shadows of my mind

i dare not dream
or the flowers bloom,
and petals swirl,
in my fathomless voids

intellect emotion and irrationality

2006-01-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

The very idea of a lunatic genius is actually romantic, supreme ability with a critical flaw; making the spectrum wide. While conclusive evidence is yet to arrive scientifically, the idea thrives as a truism in people's minds. Supreme ability is indeed a statistical aberration, placed at the very fringes of the 'normal' distribution curve. Does it 'attract' other extreme themes also?..... Well one view can be that this particular way of looking at geniuses is a way of 'getting back at them' by society, a vengeance for it's own mediocrity, afterall anything that's not very familiar seems to be threatening and hence a 'flaw' in it, is very welcome.
Or as Schopenhauer probably believed, the ability to feel or sense pain increases up the evolutionary ladder, correlating positively with intellect across species, within species also this seems to be true. This brings us to the point of extreme sensitivity of a genius, creative throes are coupled with emotional upheavals; even a scientific discovery is not without an emotional component, eureka! eureka! The literary and musical genius can be especially though of to be more prone to 'creative labor pains'.
The relationship between intellect and emotion seems to be very contorted, at one end intellect has to overcome emotion to clear its vision of the fog that surrounds all that is human, on the other hand intellect devoid of emotion would be sterile, it would be nihilistic ; knowing all that is knowable would lead to eventual self destruction. God if it exists, and if is not human would have had surely self destructed......
Einstien's 'Autism', Picasso's tryst with the 'other' side of reality, Van gogh's bouts, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe.... the list is endless; but a mere coincidence of two extremes in some cases does not prove anyting. If we have a close look at the 'generative' process, the process of creation is not a very logical phenomenon, there are gaps, leaps and jumps, islands and unfathomable deeps, murky waters and alien terrains; the 'brew' goes through much fermentation before a clear radiant result surfaces. The emotional component of the generative process is a paradox, irrationality leading to rationality, for extreme emotion is extreme blindness, a fugue, a muse, a delusion....... and it still lights the path of supreme discovery. Every discovery, especially of laws of nature, be it a 'new' particle or a hitherto unknown gene, is a dialogue with nature; patterns are revealed and puzzles solved, as answers come through the haze..... the mist of human emotion.
As a student I used to wonder about statistical extremes, have heated exchanges about how to place Gandhi, Raman Raghav (Indian Jack The Ripper), and 'Messiah'; the messiah has visions like Raman, on messiah's dreams wars have been fought, Gandhi appears to defy logic; my patriotism can be treason for you. Chemicals in brain, do they have similar patterns in statistical anomalies?, and do patterns go together in groups/ or the underlying process is fundamentally unconcerned and free of our labelling it as a lunatic or heroic or 'touched by divine'. Howsoever we attempt, the effort is flawed; only a 'higher' process can comprehend the vicissitudes of supreme intellect, which sadly is unavailable.
The movie 'The Aviator' beautifully potrays a representative sample of an 'anamolous' genius unparalled intellect, unbriddled emotion, combining in an explosive mix. The case is akin to a classical Greek tragedy, wherein the protagonist thrives at the fringes of the normal distribution curve, has an inevitable 'bug' in his design, and spirals toward untold misery and hardship, nearing self destruction, leaving a thick soot of emotions, akin to a stalling aircraft in a predictably unpredictable way................. to be redeemed....maybe by a sea of emotions....
Shakespearan tragedies also follow a similar line, infinite woe befalls upon an exceptional specimen.... It seems that nature favours averages, and is harsh to extremes, so do we and so does 'luck'. Statistical normalcy is a snapshot of our inability to comprehend what is superior, different or extreme. I cannot stand on my own shoulders to see that far.........
Logic, rationality are sterile, impotent- can only describe what already exists, can palely reflect borrowed light, but irrationaliry and emotion are dark yet potent, powerful and raring to take a plunge, in the abyss of the unknown. The struggle between Appollonian and Dionysian forces signifies how serendipity draws us to irrational voyages, in universes unknown. Emotion fuells intellect and are born symphonies, theories, epics, lunar landings, rockets, nuclear bombs, Guernicas and Monalisas.
What flies high is pulled by the earth; it's strange attraction toward self destruction is also abnormal, like itself..........
..............................Does intellect have a 'soul' of itself, to 'be' it needs to cry, to fly, to dance on the edge........ of the dark abyss.......

The penultimate why

2006-01-04T08:21:00.001-08:00

As a student once I was returning home at night, my attention was attracted by the television signal tower in our neighbourhood, it had two lights on it , one blinking and the other steady. The blinking light obviously was catching more attention... why? I thought...because a blinking light sends a new signal every time...why?/how?...... because every time the light/photons impinge the retina, a new chain of impulses is sent through the optic nerve to the brain......why?/how?...... because the retina has pigments called Rhodopsin and Photopsins which undergo soething called cis-trans isomerism to create a chain of impulses....... why?......... because the chemical undergoes reversible bleaching........why?...... because.......why?........and with such iterations I reached the obvious dead end.
So is true of all search for knowledge; if we ask ourselves this series of whys, we will soon reach the limit of our knowledge. So what do we know?, what is knowable?, and how reliable is what we already know?, the model of atom has undergone radical changes, so has our understanding of light, of genetics, of distant galaxies etc, but as you go further, the world of unknown explodes..... into a million new probabilities.Then how do I live, work, eat , punch the keys on the keyboard, if all what I believe to be fundamentally true is just going to collapse tommorow as untrue?
We live in 'working' slices of the world, and our slice works well for us. Our interaction with our slice is in set ways, based upon our model of it; the bacteria has some other, the bird some other and the whale some other. Till the moment my computer works as predicted for me, I'm not concerned about the hardware or the source code of the software.
Thus coming to my theory of 'Levels Of Organisation' ; take for example a simple thing like a bead, the type we use to tie into strings, individually the single bead has some properties... tie 30 in a string.... the string has some properties...... weave strings into a sheet........sheet has some properties....... combine sheets into a solid cube......... the cube has certain properties ( this is way too simplistic... think of Quarks/subatomic particles/atoms/molecules/solids...............galaxies.......), thus the slice withwhich we work, works for us based on the level of abstraction we interact at. Every different 'level' hence exhibits different set of properties.
Quite simply then the world is a very predictable case/place! given the components and level of organisation, it should be easy to predict the state of each and every object in the system with great accuracy. Ironically its not so deterministic; some systems, the nonleniar dynamical systems like the weather are very sensitive to very minute changes in the intial conditions, which can lead to various unpredictable outcomes. Apart from this, I feel the level of organisation/abstraction we deal with interacts with us as a 'unit', and gives us answers relevant to the 'slice'.... thus physics cannot account for all chemistry, and chemistry cannot account for all genetics, and genetics cannot account for all biology, biology cannot account for all sociology, sociology for economics/polity.... polity for human history/psychology ... and psychology for philosophy/religion...... and philosophy for......... coming back to the basic question of limit of knowledge; either within the 'slice' or between slices...
The only difference between me and the other so called inanimate matter is the 'level ' of organisation, the water in the glass is not 'me', but the moment I drink it, its a part of my level of organisation....it will become a part of my blood, bile, saliva, cerebrospinal fluid, vitreous humour in my eye, part of any cell etc;
Thus things which we believe to exist are just 'patterns' organised into 'levels' (level is niether qualitative nor linear/hiererchial here), objects as we know are just these patterns..... you -me-the tree--the flower--the mountain ---the moon ---- the stars......
The penultimate why is the substratum of all our knowledge, the terra firma.....the ultimate why stares in our face... like the 'eye of god'
(photo of Helix planetary nebula by Hubble telescope)

psychoanalysis, poetry and painting

2005-12-31T22:19:00.000-08:00

Freud, I feel has been the grand magician of a theorist. How many times the academecians have written him off as too fanciful, just to realise that the human subconcious is unfathomable and murky beyond comprehension. The visible part of the 'iceberg', a mere about one tenth, has generated many observational theories, which obviously have more scientific rigour and some sort of replicability especially in controlled/laboratory situations.
Psychology and psychotherapy were to change beyond recognition with the advent of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) on the scene, he staged the great coup with his theory of subconscious motivations and drives; the newly 'discovered' subconscious swept through the intellectual sphere and the world of art; from poetry to painting, from drama to fiction; the counter reaction was also daunting, the 'modernized' world found it too difficult that we are somehow still not exorcised of the demons of instinct and biological drives, and the religion brigade was too wary of dethroning man and to equate him with animals; coming to terms with one's own irrationality was very frightening.
Collective human wisdom has always recognised the subconcious and given it its due place; ancient shamans/exorcists/lay counsellors/sooth sayers/fortune tellers/priests and godmen etc all have lived and practiced the art of subconcious. Mandalas, totems and folklore have been a witness to and manifestation of the grand collective subconscious/unconscious of the humankind. A return to pagan origins is one of the deepest fears of the western society, hence the counterreaction.
Poetry, using language and still transcending it, flirting with irratioinality, unbound of syntax grammar and logic, speaks in the words of the subconcious; all that is seething fuming burning molten intense infinite transcendental dark deep decaying cosmic, animal and angelic, beatific and biological, sundry and supreme, inundating and incalculable................. peeps through the window of poetry.............
The swirl of brushes, the dance of colours, the glow of the voids, radiance of countenance, shadows of the forms, darkness of the depths; are they not the subconscious flowing through paint, congealing into snapshots of the molten emotions, frozen in time?.........

math, music and Mandelbrot

2005-12-30T06:31:00.000-08:00

Music,
the greeks thought, is frozen geometry,
and architecture - frozen poetry; the dance of musical notes is essentially mathematical. In Indian classical music, there are no fixed tones corresponding to particular notes and frequencies, it simply is a set of iterations from any reference point. Although the 'SA' (keynote, first note) broadly corresponds to the 'C' of the western scale (which begins with ~260 Hz, 'A' being at 400 hz), it can be of any frequency for the individual singer or instrument; what preserves its identity is its unique mathematical relation to the other notes, broadly x(3/2)=y, where 'y' is the next note gives the relationship.
The musical spectrum of any individual piece, then, is a unique mathematical entity representable in the 'language' of math symbols. The point is that, patterns exist, and maths is PRESENTLY the best way to describe/decipher/demonstrate them; these may be 'translated/transposed/transcribed' in any other language , for example mathematical relations can be expressed visually by co-ordinates. Thus music can be transposed to visual figures through the language of maths.
Coming to the moot point that patterns exist as fundamental structures, as unique interactions of component 'notes', take Fractals for example (figures generated by successive iterations and 'positive feedback' of a unit theme, 'discovered' just two decades ago by Mandelbrot). The living world is full of fractals, be it Broccoli, or Alveoli in lungs, structure of a neuron, or oyster shells, leaves of a tree, or human finger prints etc etc etc..
Music can be rendered into fractals (seen vis. plugins of WINAMP?);
fractals into music?, can I 'hear' the Broccoli, or my finger prints? or the maple leaf, or the orchid sitting in my vase, or colour patterns on the soap bubble?..... think........
Our problem is one of limitation of 'vocabulary', of absence of a comprehensive 'language', like trying to describe a 3D world with 2D geometry, what you get is Escher circle limit diagrams, distortions with you at the centre, see the parallels with our egocentrism, ethnocentrism, bigotry, exclusionism and misplaced confidence in our own beliefs.....
Fractals give us glimpses of the language of patterns, in music, in life, in math.... this language is known to the mind, as if 'a priori', the untrained ear also distinguishes instances of 'illegal' variations in music, in other words can distinguish between good and bad singing of the same unknown song. The pattern is known to the mind but we cannot put it in words of any sort, our apparatus is way too reductionistic to comprehend the elegance of the observed complexity, the beauty will reappear, as Penrose says, when we will be in possesion of yet another 'higher mathematics',
..............................................and the simplicity will be evident.

musings

2005-12-29T11:09:00.001-08:00

The taste of words, the ghost inside,
it's me or is it him?
he colours my passions,and paints my dreams,
stops my breath, boils my blood.
I blink, it disappears,
in my veins...

I feel the struggle,
then who's me?
he baits and laughs, knows who'll win,
runs through my being,
a storm of desires, fire and death, spirit and lust,
no pity he has,
for the poor possesed...
I search for god,
and mirages other, grope in the dark,
of my conscience,..
values and good, self and you, crumble to dust,
before I touch.
the mauled soul,
rises from murk, wades through the heart,
to breathe anew.........
visions appear,
so bright and pure,
cleansing the being, of pain and want,
the tide subsides,
I laugh again, free and light,
it resounds and echoes,
in the hollow of the ghost.........

charvak

2005-12-29T08:07:00.001-08:00

charvak or carvak or 'lokayata' was a school of Indian philosophy, probably even predating the vedas; it was most scientific in orientation, an example of ancient materialism (animism?). As the name suggests 'lok-ayata' was probably the philosophy of common people. There is reason to believe that lokayata was a philosophy or worldview of a more developed people who were already setteled agriculturists at a time when the aryans/aryas were nomads. Some even speculate that the charvaks were related to ancient Sumerians as there is some thread of common ritual of celebration at funerals; this school was later heavily persecuted and its remnants survive in secret sects like Tantramargis/kapalikas or degenerated buddhist sects like Sahajiyas.
Often misquoted to be preaching nihilism and even Machiavellian ideals e.g. "one should take loan and drink ghee", but the school was actually quite modern and it clearly declared that- there is no god, no soul, no afterlife, prayers and rituals are falsehood! etc
It seems that there must have been a single individual called CHARVAK but the name has also been used for a cult or group of people. Ample references to charvak are found in ancient texts like Upanishads and even Mahabharata, where charvaks have been painted in a negative light.
such original piece of philosophy lost in the sands of time........................

my theory of patterns

2005-12-29T07:35:00.000-08:00

The world as it is, is just a conglomerate of patterns, these conglomerates are also patterned/patterns in turn; we experience and know just a slice of it, like the visible spectrum, and that we call reality. The subatomic world has patterns which are repeated at the stellar/cosmic level- one slice; how many such are there? so is the case with life,see evolution being replicated in the development of embryo to a child.
These 'patterns' come from internal constraints of the 'units' or unit patterns, if constraints were not there the world would be a homogenous soup. Constraints 'fit in' to give rise to patterns and the most stable pattern is as if 'selected' (no reference to 'deus ex machina' or god here), and are replicated...... like the DNA...