This Is What You've Been Looking For

If you want to see the bottom of the water in a lake from above, the water has to be quite. If the water is turbulent, you can't. If the water has lots of objects, you can't. If the water has any color or turbidity, you can't. It has to be absolutely clear and quite in order to see the bottom best. Anything you do to this water, it will just add extra noise and turbulence. You can not make a turbulent water quite by doing something. Anything you do will go against your goal. You have to learn the technique of letting it just be and wait. Only then it can quite itself so that you can watch what it is.

With this background, now we have to find the best thing to experiment or examine in order to examine the reality. What is the best thing in the universe to examine. There are multitude of options. Atom, subatomic particles, energies, lights or other electromagnetic radiations, elements, molecules, planets, stars, galaxies, minerals, water, seas, plants, animals, man, mind and spirit. Among all of theses what has everything in it? The best candidate is us, the human. What is the most complicated physical structure know to exist in the universe? It's the human brain. What is the most powerful instrument known to exist in the universe? It's human thought and power of imagination. What is most accessible to us? It is again us, the human. Thus the best object in the known universe you can examine and assess is your own body and mind. It is you. Man is the famous allegorical "microcosm" of the "macrocosm" or the whole universe. If you know yourself and know how your body and mind operates and why does it operate the way it does, you will get closer to real mystery of existence. Hence the wise saying goes "Know Thyself". Given you have done your homework and had your thought honed and trained [see the "How valid is your thinking" essay], the universe will open up and reveal its mystery to you. This "you" is not a special you. Anybody who genuinely undertake the quest, will be that "you". In order to understand yourself better, you need to see your inside as clearly as possible. But there is always some noise inside our mind, our thoughts, likings, wantings, opinions, attachments, preference and intellect. All these creates turbulence and obstructing the view to know yourself better. You have to master the techniques to remove all those unoriginal, unnecessary foreign particles to remove turbidity and purify the water of your mind in order to see the beautiful bottom of the Ground.

I will introduce you into the vast universe inside you by giving an example of the source of a common desire. During the process of growing up, all it started from the very first kiss of your mother. You can not remember the kiss, affection and care from your mother during first 6 months of your life but your body and mind still remembers it, although it's not recollectable in your conscious memory. How can you know that your body and mind still has the memory of it? You can find the answer by asking why you want attention, care and support today from your significant others, without any apparent reason. You think you want care and love because you just want it? Think again.We learn things and then forget the learning episode, then that forgotten associative learning becomes our so called "pure" desire. We then believe our desire is genuinely pure, unconditional and not tied with anything. You just want something because you like it or you want it. Oh fool! It is not as simple as you might think. Think again. Think hard. Attention and approval is the prime addiction we have but we do not remember when we got addicted to this attention and approval seeking behavior in first place. Now you know! Although many of the things that we do or want is either because of biologic need or for utilitarian drive but do we do everything for these mundane reason or do we want those for something else? I am not going to give you the answer. You have to find it for yourself.

The end of your fear

From unity came duality,

After the aeons it became anarchy.

Now we are lost in the details,

And the disharmony prevails.

Did you ever ask?

What is the meaning of this task? 

Why did the wise allowed such?

Why there is suffering so much?

Without finding the answer

You cannot cure this cancer.

The more you try to find,

It always stayed one step behind.

Without us he still has everything,

Then why he bothered it to bring.

Such a creature who finds meaning,

Behind everything except for this yearning.

Behind the noise of chaos,

Why I can still feel the logos.

That is the question of the time,

And that makes the human mind sublime.

But The Wise knows it the best,

One day only some will pass the test.

Not those who have decided,

But those, who have submitted.

Empty your thought and listen to the music,

Everything is singing and dancing, except you weak!

Don't think logic will take you anywhere,

It's an inferior creation, be aware!

It takes a lot of courage,

If you want to see his visage.

He showed himself only to those who surrender,

And then you will see his magnificent splendor.

Hiding just behind you as a great unbiased teacher, 

Always supported you as his beloved creature.

Waiting for aeons for you, but you never realized,

And you were looking for him too but got paralyzed.

Look hard, look until you find,

When you find it, you'll see it was always entwined.

You can not believe it, is this so simple!

Oh Fool me! you smile with a dimple!

You have no more questions unanswered,

Everything becomes One, you again feel pampered.

Whatever you do, do it as prayer

Savor the time, love the world, and end your fear.

What is a sin?


Misuse of intellect,

Duality based artifact.

Things that distort,

And when you forcefully extort.

We are all sinners in one sense or another,

But the real sin is misusing your power.

The sheep repents for their sins,

The Master repents for not recognizing their twins.

The constituents that made our body is not the exceptions to the nature. Our body is roughly made of, in the same proportion what is available in the universe. For example, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon these are all commonly found elements in the earth, stars and the universe in general. Thus the compounds that made our body is not the exception to this universe, rather than the usual and expected one. Just like our body came out of the matter in the cosmos, our mind evolved from the physical interactions of those particles and masses. Just like the irregularities of some mass does not mean that we cannot examine the original general properties of the mass and that general properties are not valid. Similarly, just because our thinking can be apparently erroneous sometimes, does not mean that rational, pure, educated, dispassionate thinking process and highly sophisticated intuition is not as valid as science. The only Achilles heel here is to find a valid starting point for the thinking and asking the right questions from that ground (see "reason and intuition" essay). Off course, meanwhile, in order to check how good is your thinking and how well aligned is your thought with the world, you can formulate some hypothesis about some issues for practice without prior knowledge about the outcome and find the data or check the results afterwards to see how well was your thought in recognizing the truth without prior empirical evidence. If you can formulate hypothesis in many different situations based on literature reviews and information available, and find that you accurately predicted the results which you find later to be true then its a good news and your thought is getting trained in right direction. Let's analyze the situation. I am just mentioning the major contributors [ignoring infinity many others for the sake of simplicity]. For example, what is the probability of your existence by random chance in the whole universe? What is the probability of your thinking the way you are doing? What is the probability that some other person with whom you are not connected in thought or time or culture in any conceivable way is also thinking exactly the same conclusion (remember the phrase "wise men think alike"?) and in retrospect you both found out that whatever you guys thought is actually the case confirmed later by empirical data. Now calculate the joint probability of those unimaginably tiny events together. I can use some variables, coefficients and fancy looking equations to look impressive but I will not, because that's not the the point. Even just conceptionally, you can see that you can be as certain as the size universe, if not more. Theoretically, it's bigger than Graham's number when you take all variables in consideration. When you can come to this level repeatedly, then you can put more weight on your own thoughts. Otherwise keep working on your thought training. If you miss, then you have to carefully dissect the whole scenario. You have to find the reason of your wrong conclusion. Is it faulty reasoning or false appreciation of the background information or literature? In what step you missed it? Was it preventable? In what ways? By more meticulous thinking or more data collection or background reading? Was there any problem in the reference material? Was it incomplete? How and where can you have more reliable information? Can you ever get a completely reliable information or literature? You can not typically find these answer from a single source. You have to read extensively from multiple primary documents. Additionally, you have to read the background of the paper like the biography of the author, philosophy of that author, geopolitical and social melieu of that time etc. Not the least, you have to also read between lines. Yes, thought training is that hard and believe me, it still worth it because the reward is bigger than you ever imagined. We are designed to think, remember?

In order to understand hydrogen or heat you don't have to go to and experiment with sun. You can still examine hydrogen and heat found here on earth, even in our body. They are perfectly aligned under the same physical laws. Similarly, we don't have to find an ultra intelligent beings or authorities out there to validate our intuition and thinking process. Its already aligned with the underlying Cosmos's principle if done properly because our true self represents this Cosmos. In fact, our unconscious part has the latent memories of cosmos. I am aware of the fact that our thinking or intuition can lead to awry but like anomalies or irregularities in physical worlds, they are not the most common variety. Even in presence of anomaly and using intuition as the ground for science, science typically is unwilling to accept anything mere intuitive, no matter how genuine they are, unless 'falsified by empirical paradigm". Rather they reject those ideas as a walking dead philosopher's babel and figments of imagination.We should not be dissuaded by these unfortunate scientific dogmas and the anomalies. Sometimes anomalies are the first pointer of some underlying profound laws. Just like anomalies in material or physical world are the exceptions, so does fallacy of thinking. In the same line of reasoning, cognitive biases are the exceptions and luckily can be recognized and eliminated by proper thought trainings. Most of the cognitive fallacy comes from your emotional or personal pre-preference, your past experience or biases. Alternatively, it can be due to incorrect starting assumptions. Most of the time, especially when done carefully, sincerely, honestly, with a completely detached meditation, our thinking is perfectly aligned to principle of cosmos. So don't be shy in using your intuition and thought. Don't listen to those scientist who will reject any idea born in your rational mind as figment of imagination unless "falsifiable by empirical evidence". You can rely on you, your thought and enjoy the journey.

The worst possible things that could happen to the ancient people was the night. At night, it was dark. You cannot see. It is cold. You feel tired and the mysterious thing happens to you, called sleep. The carnivorous vicious nocturnal animals are out there in the dark looking for their dinner. You cannot see and cannot protect yourself. You are just afraid of darkness. On the other hand, during the day, you can see everything clearly. The sun is generously giving us the light. The Sun [not the Son!] is the light of the world. From sun's perspective everybody under the sun are equal. It is always there for you and will come back again to show his love for this world. Sun and its light supports and nurtures all lifeforms on earth and without the sun we are dead. Not only for our physical survival, sun's light is also essential for our soul to understand and to see. We are heavily designed to perceive the light, color, edge, shape, geometry of the things in this world. A big part of our brain (nearly 1/3) is directly involved in visual processing. The most of the rest of the brain is also indirectly involved in further processing and analyzing the details and its meaning. You are comfortable with visual inputs because you can see what's going on, what is safe, what is dangerous, and what is beautiful. We are dominantly visual creatures and hence we need light to see thing the way they are and to understand things as they are. Additionally, there is only one sun which it signified the single underlying reality and truth. No wonder why all ancient people in different cultures started to worship sun. Originally they chose sun as a symbols of underlying concept of light and its role in our life and as a means of understanding the world. The original sun worshipers used sun as a surrogate object because the concept behind it has no object, even today. But like all other human endeavor, truth is always distorted and people tries to overanalyze [over-anal-yze] or eventually trivialize the deep and hidden truth. Subsequent generations took sun symbol literally as "the truth" and started to create sun idols. That was the birth of paganism. If you think original pagan people were stupider than you, then think again. Original sun worshipers were as smart as you are ( if not smarter, plus they had an extra edge ie. they thought for themselves instead of priest or scientist in contrast to today's people). But if you take the words and what they are saying literally (which they themselves most likely did not take literally, especially at the beginning) then you will only see the utter absurdity and you will instantly discredit any merit they had behind the concept. You will treat them just a bunch of stupid and heretic pagans.

We just need metaphoric light for the purpose of vision, understanding, knowledge and wisdom but we don't want light for light's sake. Excessive light will bleach your vision and hence will block it. So you just don't want light for its own sake. Light's utility is also dependent on darkness. Without the darkness, how can you have any light? What we need is to understand, to contrast and to be able to appreciate. That is real meaning behind the metaphors of light. But, unfortunately, many people think god is light [as bible proclaims] and might be a special kind of light. Does this godlight falls into visible electromagnetic range or outside? If the godlight is not the visible then where is he and why is he hiding? Where we can find him out there? If you do a PhD in optics and light and after examining the all possible lights, you will not find any essence or light that you can equate with god's properties. You, rightfully frustrated, will naturally conclude that there is no god after all. This is the way, the poor scientist becomes agnostic or atheist, just by asking one wrong question and taking one biblical teaching without thinking about what that really meant.

Asking right question is approximately ~ 50% achievement towards right answer. Asking a wrong question, even though if you find any genuine answer to it, will take you in wrong direction. As there is only one underlying reality and truth, asking one wrong question is enough to permanently deviate the trajectory of your searchlight of thought away from the truth, no matter how many right questions you will ask after one wrong question. This is the real meaning of the expression of "the path to the truth is very narrow and straight". 

It is very critical to find what is really important and what is the right question out of the superrreal postmodern world. Original truth was encoded with sings and symbols which have now lost their meanings and replaced with similar but not identical imitations. Now the "garden variety" of reality is based on those false imitations, signs and symbols which is totally disconnected with original reality and replaced by more sensational superrrealty. To ask right question on right issues out of these garbage "truths", it needs some intense thought training. Good news is, this part you can cultivate. Do your homework on that, mostly by self-learning and observations. 

Once you have decided what are the things that really matters, then it is time to ask questions about those. Be careful before you ask. You have to treat each questions as important as if your life depends on each questions. Asking 10 consecutive right question, for example, will bring you 99% towards the truth but even then, it will never take you to the truth itself. At the end, you need the gift of intuition. How can you make or train your intuition? Unfortunately, you cannot and fortunately, it's already there. In order to find it and use it, you have open up all options on the table. You have to travel the unknown abyss of yourself and you have to let go. Its like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If you try to catch it, it will only recede. You have to be submissive and humble, not by empty words, but by your whole self, which will be expressed in your acts and deeds. Then it will come to you, if you are sincere and honest enough for knowing. This is the rationale behind disciple, asceticism, sacrifice, chastity and meditation. It gives you the better chance of finding the deep intuition. Then the ultimate powerful intuition will come to you and you will find the answer of everything you ever asked.

When a child first becomes self-aware, he wonders about his surroundings and ponders about the sky. Children start to ask questions without shame and embarrassment about everything from trivial to deep, often inconceivable by the inert, already graduated adults. For children, the world is fresh, nothing is banal. They examine everything in details with awe and wonder with their greatest amusement. Children are born philosophers and scientists. It is the exasperated parents, the teachers and adults, by whom their curiosity is strangulated and sentenced to death. Gradually, the world becomes routine and they there is no question left for them to ask, because for every question, there is a ready-made answers coming from authoritative figures. Don't believe me? Go to the 1st grade classroom and then 10th grade. You will see, who are the real philosophers and scientists. By the time when they are grown up, most of them will not look beyond their day-to-day needs and choirs. Then they are occupied with hustle and bustle of modern life and their curiosity is deeply repressed in their subconscious. There always remains a hidden anxiety but they don't know exactly what it is. Instead they blame the anxiety for life stress, jobs, relationships or failure to achieve socially prescribed goals, although these goals themselves are often stressful too. To overcome this basic drive, they then buy and read self-help books, see priests for salvation or go to the doctors for their head scanned. The self-help book authors claims that they are not reading his book carefully enough. Priest claims that he is possessed by evil spirits. Doctors claim there are some chemical or neurotransmitter imbalance and recommends antidepressant or anti psychotic pills. Nobody sees the obvious problem. The madness is by design, and this madness is not necessarily done by some group of people or governments, intentionally. The blame is ours, collective. When nothing helps then they resort to drugs [illicit] or medications [prescription] to calm them down and to help them stop asking questions. This is the bane of modern or postmodern society. This is how born philosophers or scientists die. Curiosity and wonder of being and the drive to self-actualize is gagged and smothered. Instead, they are given the opium of institutionalized religion and mushroom of dogmatic, commercialized science. When this opium is not achieving satisfactory results in calming down the curiosity then they are given new opium of "Qualified Freedom", "Sexual liberation", Booze and footballs. For resistant and recalcitrant cases, psychedelics and Heroin become the only opium, which is, by definition, the infallible opium. This is how "defective" born philosophers and scientists die [apoptosis] and a regular, "normal citizens" are born.