Now in cricket, you atleast have a score in match to prove your worth, but same is not in sanyaas. Both highest and lowest always have similarity. Parallels can be easily drawn. And this is the biggest problem. For example, the tallest of scientists are always as humble and as simple living as a rookie who is not able to earn a penny because of his unwillingness. There can be any number of analogies.
The essential reason for this similarity is because of the fundamental reason, that you refuse to gather (gather info, gather friends, gather success, gather memories, gather recognition, gather xyz) when your energies crosses a particular threshold, and you also don't gather if your energy level is bellow a particular threshold. Only in middle, you want to gather as much as you can. But a famous sage rightly said, life is slanting for a reason, you can slide down or slide up, but can't stay in middle endlessly.
This definition of up and down is again convoluted social affair. For typical cultured Indian family, sexual arousal is sin, but shopping spree, talking endlessly on nonsensical topics is not sin.
For American family, it is otherway around. Not talking about sex is considered out of league. You don't fit in, unless you have a few girlfriends/boyfriends in present/past, etc.
Nothing is right or wrong, family people have their compulsions of family emotions, scientists have their own compulsions of sounding logical and intellectual, prostitute has his/her own compulsions, a good middle class person has his/her own compulsions. A middle class person will make sure he gets the taste of things, but always fear to go beyond and explore or go beyond and leave it.
Let me attempt to explain society scientifically. If I am thrown into a world where I have only seen people writing with legs, you also start writing with your leg. Now I don't have anything against leg. But lets suppose that someone starts writing with his bare hands, because he discovers that he is more comfortable. First thing is social isolation. People will say, writing with hands is wrong. Our scriptures don't allow it. People will say, writing with hands is not natural, are you trying to grab attention?
Yearning for society and social approval simply means, either you want to make everyone like you, or you want to brainlessly follow a group of people or you want an endorsement of your limitations from a bunch of people who are also suffering from similar limitations. You want a community because you assume that something is great, or something is important emotionally or logically, and now you want to meet more people like you, to add more voices. It is like Multiplication. It feels nice, because it adds power and approval to your lifestyle but it also pulls you back if you want to move either up or down.
It is like this, If you have collected 2 TB movies with crime genre. But after 1 year, you realize that art genre or horror genre movies are better, and crime genre movies are useless, you still won't delete those movies. You will keep watching them(crime genre movies), not because you like them, but because you are used to it. You just get soo much used to it, that doesn't matter what shit is the past, you will romanticize it, you will beg for it, not because it is great, but because you are used to it.
But has it ever happened that if you watch childhood movies, you can't stand it for more than 5 minutes? Does that mean, those movies meant nothing to you when you were child? Does that mean, you don't enjoy and understand those childhood movies anymore? But you move on, don't you?
Let me tell you something about me. I am not as great, but I did had wonderful moments. For me, I had crush on algebra. The beauty of paradoxes, especially time frequency, in terms of hilbert, banach spaces still fascinate me. The ways I had visualized fourier is still fresh in my mind. I had fortune of having Prof. Samaresh Chatterjee as my professor during my BTech. He is descendent of Newton in teacher student chart. Cayley Hamilton came somewhere as his direct/indirect teacher. He had a typical donald duck face with nerdy specs and sweaty body. He was unmarried and had slightly bend spine, with pants slightly above normal waistline. As far as I can recall, his age was above 68 back then and was a fan of beatles. Besides these personality traits, one of the most interesting trait in him was his curiosity and intensity with which he propounded vector spaces or more fundamentally, functional spaces.
His Linear Algebra course was already soo tough with 104 lemmas and proofs, that Advanced Linear Algebra course was out of question for most of the students. Only 3 students took the Advanced Linear Algebra Course, I being one of it.
The course was in early morning and in many classes, I was the only students. More than mere numbers, this guy instigated a spectacular imagination of abstract mathematics is my mind. I was like I could breath algebra back then. I used to skip a beat at times, the way he introduced new topic. The thing with him was that mathematics was larger than life for him, and I could feel that intensity.
Same was the case with Stochastic Random Processes course. At times, I used to get soo involved that I would speak the answer, even before the question is asked, anticipating it. Lectures were like my matinee movies.
Same happened with my anthropology class. When I first heard the concept of chiaroscuro, (light and dark), I was fascinated beyond measure. I asked my teacher is supposed to be one of the torchbearers of Indian animation, why jan svankmajer movies are dark and unclear? She told me something which is mother of all mystery. She asked me "What is more powerful, light or dark? " even as I was contemplating, she told me, "Its the darkness", if this whole room is lit up, there is nothing much to observe for you, but if we switch off the light, and something crawls over your hand, now that's film noir for you.
Lets say you have glass wall separating shop from footpath. On one side there is a mysterious object, and on other side there is a person looking from otherside of glass towards that mysterious object. The task as a cinematographer you are given is to see how you can evoke sense of horror in film. Now, how would you shoot such horror scene?
A good cinematographer will not shoot the object, he/she will rather shoot the eyes of the person looking at that object, the rustling sound of wind, the change in weather, etc. Everything EXCEPT the object. It is the hiding, the darkness that creates curiosity, that sense of mystery. It is not about the object, it is about the sense of mystery that is evoked which is important. Now what has this to do with sanyaas? The thing is that, it made me understand that object of stimulus is not important, it is the experience and intensity that it evokes.
In the glimmering light of everything bright, maybe everything is missed. Thats why the cinema have lights off, so that everything in your life for those two hours is that movie. And you know how much intensity it produces.
Imagine the intensity of your life, if your attention can be stead-first like movies or even more, without lights off, without the intense music, because in meditativeness, without any object there can be hairraising intensity. And then you find your old crushes like algebra or filmmaking worth nothing, because you have found a more efficient and intense yet balanced way of experiencing life.
Balance is essential because the intensity is skyrocking. It is like if you have to walk on rope between two mountain peaks, the intensity is deafening, and balance becomes absolute necessity. Balance is not required , because you want morality or schooling or constipated ideas of right and wrong imbibed, but balance is required so that you can absorb and hold this intensity without breaking down and also without toning down.
Have you seen that when you are in balanced state of breath, you can watch 3 to 4 movies back to back without loss of intensity, but in rush , you can't even enjoy 10 minute clip, you skip through it. Has it not happened?
Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence are undenyably most fascinating developement of this decade. Interesting thing is that I am fortunate enough to see the birth of this wave, which gives me good insights into what is going into it. I was one of few labs in India, who got access to Tesla GPUs for Deep Learning. I remember the setup of Caffe, and power of deep learning unfold. Working into projects involving autonomous agents, music synthesis, modelling visual attention, chatbots and neural machine translation, etc in a span of 2 years in nothing less than a forturne for me. Do note, that it is not just reading papers, but actually working on them! But I still see through the limitations of these powerful possibilities.
It is definitely going to rule the world in this century, but people will get tired with explanations of phenomenon. Longing to experience is bound to grow. Augmented Reality, Drugs, mutated humans with superior genes, etc possibilities are bound to grow.
But just like changing the clothes doesn't make you any better, similarly changing limitations or compulsions from social to antisocial to drugs doesn't make you any better or worse.
Experience has multiple aspects to it. Drugs may give you taste of borderlessness, but can cripple you for life. Intensity without balance can be troublesome. It is like giving knife to child. Only if you can generate this absolute drunkness and abandon from womb of silence, that it can sustain its impact without the crippling. It is like being absolutely aware and sensitive to everything around and still being drunk in meditativeness. But in substance abuse, the drunkness and madness is there but the sensitivity is destroyed. Does that mean you should ban drugs or endorse drugs? No ! It is just that damage by it can be irreparable at times if not within limits. I don't like to see things as good and bad. Good is also bad for me. Good and bad are nothing but different colors. Spiritual quest is to move beyond colors, into the absolute womb of nothingness which holds everything.
Just as I wrote the last line,I realize that again people will make judgement about nothingness. Is silence after earthquake different from silence in the sunday afternoon? Is the silence after breathtaking performance different from silence after having full meal? Yes right? Similarly nothingness is not actually nothing! Intensity of silence is loudest scream you can have. I have seen some glimpses in people , how intense they are in silence. If you observe them , it can flip the world in your head.
My reasons for Sanyaas
1. Why not?
If a child becomes an engineer there is no hassle. Why? Because it is having that sweet spot of clinical cliche where you are becoming serious and earning hard money with mechinical masculine approach. Society loves it ! It is like becoming middleclass godfather.
But sanyaas means, "My baby needs care". This is because concept of sanyaas is fucked up by frauds and charlatans , especially in India where you have disco baba, golden baba, nude baba, xyz baba or baby, who just sap upon the crippled people. Sadly these kind of people are the ones who grab eyeballs of media and come in limelight. If this was not enough, because of current nature of media which is just about pulling everyone down, and this hunger for TRP and cosponsering that condescending tone of reporting of good folks has become inevitable. News has become like a food platter for all angry and frustrated people. But there are wonderful people too. Many in limelight for both right and wrong reasons, many not in limelight at all.
Sanyaas is not a hippy paradise or a dungeons cage, It is the highest pursuit which I can speak unflinching, after collaging different memories and patching bits and peices of little I know. I know, I don't know a hell lot.
2. What is better tool for growth?
Let us say I want to go out of the door in house. One way is to not even try and cry about it. Another ways is to try to hit but not hard enough. Third way is to try to hit the door, but making sure that your hands are not hurt. Forth way is to not even try to open the door, and just look through the window and enjoy. Fifth way is to find the key to door and open it. The fifth way is most efficient.
World you see is different based on how you percieve it. I look at same apple very differently than how my mother looks at it or my brother looks at it. Now If I am really dumb, and people yell at me that you need to bit smart, it doesn't work. If they teach me the ways to be smart, it may work till an extend, but If I learn to be more aware, I will very quickly push through one level of existence.
Tell me, should I work on
A) awareness ?
B) work on peoples advices and improve incrementally ?
C) don't care ?
Answer is obviously option A.
So spirituality is working on roots, Working on awareness is much more efficient and fast. If you want to make fundamental changes in your perception, better work on your physical and mental faculties directly rather than wasting time with unguarenteed methods.
In that sense, yogic practices are super efficient ways of nurturing the roots of perception.
There are many mountaineers who will agree that because of yoga, they could keep their heart rate lower than normal with same efficiency which helped them in surviving harsh climates. Books or physical activity doesn't directly translate into altering of fundamental nature of perception.
You can be good coder after solving tens of thousands of errors and writing millons of lines of codes or you can become good coder after just few hundred of errors and more than a hundred program files, if awareness is worked upon by meditation.
I am not saying meditation is just about awareness, it is much more than that, but the point I am raising is that spirituality is not about getting crippled.
Sanyaas for me is not about leaving everything or gaining everything, it is about doing what is necessary to unfold the clarity of perception bang on rather than beating the bush around. This urgency is because life is limited and we don't know what can happen even this day.
3. Deception of Fulfilment
Fulfilment is a tricky thing, especially if things have not happened your ways and now suddenly you are on fast track, you start thinking, this is the way. The pace of your growth is what determines the destination, rather than the quality of your destination. But ultimately this urge to grow essentially comes from certain longing to exert power in world in different ways. It can be by Artificial Intelligence, or it can be by politics, or anything, which is not bad. It gives you a sense of fulfillment because you are successfully able to position yourself and able to do seemingly difficult tasks with extreme ease. Winning is always delectable. And winning in a race, growing and breaking boundaries is fantastic. But we become like that weaver bird, which is becoming successful, but still in limited sphere of life. And anything limiting before you die doesn't go well for spiritual seeker.
4. Logic or Emotions are never the real reasons for Sanyaas, it is only from the urge to know what is what fundamentally. It is from urge to experience the fundamental source of existence.
If only I could express how I could experience things at certain moments, you would understand me. I think everyone reading blog should atleast meditate for half an hour daily to have some ground truth to compare with.
The dimension which I have just observed , not tasted much, is such that it seems something which is basis of everything, but doesn't even resemble to anything a bit. You may have yogis who are not emotional , you may have yogis who are not logical, because they don't care about any peripherals. If you have harley davidson bike, would you love to drive scooty ?
Many people shed away emotions to be come logical in order to be sucessful , many shed logic to become emotional to add colors to life, making it worth living. But spiritual person can shed everything and still be absolutely blissed out.
5. Helping People : My only hindrance
This rage about things not going well with people has always baffled me. Still, it makes me think, that if million people are hungry in world, how can I be taking such steps? But then I think of methods to address, It became more clear why meditativeness can contribute to society.
If I teach you all the cool stuff in Machine Learning, maybe you will get good job and get a purpose+meaning which is great, but fundamentally you will still be the same. Directly changing the fundamental faculties is what makes spiritual transmission most effective.
It is at times uncomfortable for me, to keep holding on to these symbolisms, these unnecessary dreams of past I had woven to shake the world with curiousity because I know that there are more effective ways.
It may sound crazy, but spirituality has capable of bringing about silent revolution. It may not produce any sound, but it can transform you from within.
I think it is a huge mistake to think that if your dreams are fulfilled, your life will be settled. In the outer dimensions, things only multiply. It is like Fractals in Mathematics. It repeats itself if you zoom in more. But it won't stop. You will only end up gathering more and more, but having no touch with true nature of your existance.
Even after poverty and hunger is gone from world, the world suffers immensely. Suffering is not because of deprevation of anything for a lot of affluent nations.
But at the same time, we have crafted new worlds with comforts and conviniences which are more than a priviledge.
Even a middle class person in an affluent nation can build his/her own home theatre and enjoy all perks of life. Similarly a scientist can roar and collaborate in scientific community like never before. But still, its not fulfilling, why?
Science, Short Films and Exercise
1. Science gives you knowledge, and rational tools to explore outside. Spirituality is science of exploring the inner subjective dimensions of human being. It is about experiential dimension. Plain logic will only give information, but yearning for systematic exploration of experiential dimensions will throb in human heart, when he is done with too much information, but too little richness of experience.
2. Short films and Live lectures for me, were medium, to explore and project the irrational and crazier part of existance. It does touch upon a few drops of experience emotionaly and the a viewer forgets about it. Plus, the projections of a director, are not same as the perception of the projection by the viewer. For example, if I project tiger in film, one person will think fierceness, another may simply be eating popcorn, third may get frightened, fourth may sleep off, fifth may be thinking about some boyfriend named tiger, sixth may become fierce like tiger. It is wonderful gift of nature, that even the same events are perceived with so much diversity in the human firmament of mind.
3. Physical Exercise has some degree of sameness of experience for most of the people but in general it just stays on the surface for physical benifits. Even the mental exercise largely attacks visual memory,abstraction and deductional capability. It still doesnt directly orient you to prepare for a deeper perception of life in general. You may have more colors because of better abstraction, but the colorless which is the basis of all color may get totally missed. This is because we are so busy sharpening the tools we already have that we miss whats beyond it.
These trio had me get even more wondering about what,why,how should I do?
Let me give poetic expression to the fire thats raging in me, because paragraph will definitely not do the justice . . .
The creation soo gripping,
the pleasures soo fleeting,
the love soo intoxicating,
you whisper in my ears,
in a rythm of silence,
always,
but I hear it not,
but sometimes I get close,
This silence I feel is opposite of quiteness,
this silence is loudest scream and much more,
In this never ending chaos of world,
I sometimes have breaks,
but those breaks become stormier than storms,
they become soo strong, that they take form of silence,
To contain a storm forever,
without losing its madness,
and without losing the control,
requires a form of silence,
this sane insanity of having storm,
is just killing me,
but I am not yet killed,
because its tune is silent,
there are different kinds of songs,
we dance, we feel the beats, and go crazy,
but some songs don't even have sound,
cause the intensity of song is beyond words and sounds,
Everything seems to be changing,
at a superfast pace,
but the stillness also growing,
like a tornado creating havoc,
with eye/center of tornado surprisingly still,
for a lot of readers, this poem might be mumbo jumbo,
maybe it is, may be its not
Parting words
Why did I have to write such a long blog, ranting about whats in my head? Its because of two reasons -
1. People think spiritual seekers are some kind of retards, depressed or escapist, which is what I needed to directly address. Even after all the dreams we weave, essentially most of us just end up getting a few ranks in company, publishing a few more research papers, getting a few golden moments of presenting to a serious like-minded/interested community, going for a few party, raising a kid (if married), eating, sleeping. It is soo predictible if you zoom out of your current perception and expand it to your past and future. It seems to me at times, that we are just fooling ourselves most of the time. Hope is lethally making us do the same silly things of past again and again , may be at different scale, and only when death starts kicking in, we suddenly baffle around as to what just happened? Multiplication of past soothes your mind, but hollows your curiosity to know.
2. Second reason is my parents,close friends and family
No matter what, our parents deserve the right to know what we are planning in long run. It may be easy for you to run away like "Into the wild movie", but for parents, it may bring so much of sorrow after you take such drastic steps. It may be difficult to inform and make them understand (atleast a bit) why you are taking such steps, but still it is worthwhile. Societies of past were different, the individual freedom was not ensured. But in todays world, me and my mother+ society can differ in opinion and still co-exist without hassle. Those olden techiques of forceful marriage, intimdation, and forceful return are no longer applicable now. For parents, especially Indian parents, I have a message :
"It is wonderful to having a loving warmth for your child. It is good to have people who genuinely care for you and vise versa in may cases. But caring about someone is one-thing, and forcing your opinions, becoming over-protective, inflated with supernatural emotions is another thing." Parents are like this, the don't mind if you waste your life by "doing the same shitty things of waking up, going to job, achieving a few targets and going to bed daily". In those scenerios they embrace this weakness. But as soon as you muster some courage and start to experiment with your life address the fundamental nature of life, or forget spirituality, even having a startup or becoming researcher with less pay, or becoming adventurer who travels the world risking life a bit, then they get all inflated in emotions. Especially Indian mothers think, it is their fundamental right to decide child's life trajectory , even after you cross 30s and sometimes even at 50s. And if child disagrees, you can push him, coax him, throw tantrums, create a big scene and get away with doing all these stupid things, just because you are a mother. I am not insulting motherhood. It is one of the most intimate and fulfilling gift to be a mother to a child. Indian mothers sacrifice their whole life without even giving single thought about how they should dress, how they should eat, how they should sleep. For them it is like, how should my child eat, how should he/she wake up, how should my child be happy. But this beautiful phenomenon turns ugly when they start thinking that they possess you just because you are born out of them. It is a serious mistake if they think, they have created a child. It is the biological fusion happening which has created the child. Mothers, you have fortune and privilege to be an instrument for a birth. It is fabulous to treat the child as a part of you, but you should also have an awareness that it is not you. Even two identical twins are not similar in traits that they posses. So better not abuse this privilege of nurtering the child in womb that is provided. I know it is easier said than done, but some basic understanding has to sink in, otherwise it will kill all the wonderful possibilities that future generation has to offer.
Even after this thorough reasoning, I am not sure if I will be able to take sanyaas, but one thing is sure, my priorities have definitely toppled. I will keep preparing myself for this possibility. I will keep working on aspects such as balance and energy by meditation and hatha yoga. This is because I don't want to take such step and then return back. But if ever, I know from within that time has come for this step, I will not hesitate. Till then my wish is to bring this curiosity and this possibility to the people I come in touch with , on a day to day basis.
I can only put forth the questions I linger with, the methods I have employed.
If spirituality was as intellectual process, I would have been first to read it. But I get a sense, that it is not so. And so, even if I can share my mind on the blog, it is impossible to replicate my experiences in words. This blog therefore is useless if you were expecting an answer for spiritual quest. Because answers are only words, and words have no significance in certain types of experiential dimensions. But it is still worthwhile, because it can empower this quest to know. Someday you may take a few steps to discover so (which may be of actual significance in your life), which is why I am writing it.
My request to intellect soaked people is, don't judge yoga or meditation by how it is marketed, or how buttery or how bitter it is put forth. Try to take a step, by going for some yoga program (like Inner Engineering), or read this
Inner Enginnering book which comes with some set of simple experiments. Or if you are too sceptical of yoga programmes, then atleast wake up early , stay silent and observe your breath with spine erect with eyes and neck slightly upturn, during the dawn (4 am - 5 am) in morning. If even that is difficult, than atleast experiment with staying silent - mentally and verbally, with eyes closed and spine erect during uber ride. I know an explosion of thoughts and/or emotions will dawn upon initally, but let it come and go, just don't over react, and thats perfectly fine. But try this for at-least 3 months daily. If you can not muster this much courage to transform your life, that means, you are not sincere enough to address the quest within you to discover the more fundamental nature of existence. And yes, don't become too dead serious, otherwise you will definitely miss a few wonderful experiences. I am telling this from my personal experience. However you can disagree with me too, as I still have a partial view.
I still havn't seen the complete picture. And different ways work for different people.
"Never look up to something, never look down at something" - Famous quote
Don't look up to this blog, don't look down at this blog. Similarly, if you experience something, dont try to exagerate it or undermine it. See it as it is. If you eulogize anything, you will distort it, if you undermine , you distort it.
"Never ever make major life decisions blindly relying on someone else or something else. Your decision should be 100% yours. Only then you will be able to face consequences with ownership and make better/worse choices according to your situation. It is like this. A fish, can't imagine to live without water and so it can write blogs about staying in water endlessly, and humans cant imagine to stay in water. But if it blindly follows fish's blog, than he might land up in trouble. Every person has different situation, different make up of qualities and so on. "
PS : Above quotes are not some testiment to be be followed, rather experiments to be done. The above statements like looking up and down are not about drawing inferences, they are ways of keeping yourself observant and not stagnant. Don't become too obidiant and always follow them. Too much goodness is lethal, you better know that. . . . the statements are tools and not rule books to be adhered.
But meanwhile, despite having these intense experiences in meditation, the baffling curious question of what is life, still remains . . .
I am sure that the answer will not come in form of words or explaination, but I hope it does come . . .
