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Fear makes you blind.

Fear makes you impulsive.

Fear prevents you from thinking logically (or thinking straight).

Off course fear is also protecting you from potential dangers such as of a lion or snake. But those fears are not uniques to human but rather almost universal in animal kingdom. The unique thing for the human is the reason and if you consider yourself wiser than other animals, you have to give credit to your reasoning power over your fears. Or worse, the same fear, if unfounded, will makes you a pathologic case of phobic disorders, instead of solving your problems. You suffer even more by the fear of the fears (phobophobia)! Fear is the exact antithesis of wisdom but paradoxically fear of god was also prescribed by the original authorities as the real wisdom.

How can that be?

Whenever you see a paradox in a sentence, it usually means the sentence is either censored off the critical part or the sentence is not complete. The paradox no longer exist if you know the bigger picture or context, in other words if you see the full sentence (instead of paradoxic fragments). How can there be a situation, where fear is both antithesis* and yet the path** towards wisdom? What are the missing parts of the sentence? Can you see it?

The mother of all fears is DEATH and your inability to control it. Fear of death make you enjoy the life as much as you can (even at the cost of other people's suffering) because life is short and YOLO. Fear of death makes you to conserve time and become efficient. Fear of death makes you to look for shortcuts and loopholes to bypass the obstacles, instead of dealing with issues sincerely. Fear of death makes you insecure and you seek security by marriage (either for partner's support or for a baby as future generation because you know you will not live or be healthy forever), friendship, or property. Fear (biggest fear of all is death) is driving your life, whether you acknowledge it or not. Unless you recognize this, fear will dominate your life, and you will be far away from wisdom.

When a religious preacher bases his argument by intimidating of, or by invoking death / eternal hell, and consequently, if the listener formulates his worldview based only on the fear of death as a model of achieving "true wisdom", they fail to see the other half of it (where fear is antithesis of wisdom) and missing the full picture. They are missing the equally crucial other half (not to fear in pursuit of the Truth). On the contrary, if you based your theology purely based on reason (before you achieved wisdom), it will take you no where and you will be thrown into a full blown existential/nihilistic crisis from you might never recover!

Half of anything cannot be the whole and fear (or death) based theology is bound to be lame and blind, unless you simultaneously see the reason NOT to be fearful in pursuit of the Truth. Only then, these two will complement each other to make the fragmented part into One complete worldview and the paradox will disappear between reason (based on wisdom) vs. faith (based on fear).

Without a body, a mind, (if it is a mind at all) and hypothetically if such “body independent mind” exist, by our realm's definition, is blind, directionless, “smoky” and very prone to be delusional. These hypothetical “minds” include but not limited to, which a man can imagine are the following: mind of the 1) the dreams, 2) deeply unconscious, 3) “out of the body experience” induced by meditations, psychoactive drugs, brain pathologies (epilepsy, strokes etc.) or extreme stress, such as near death experiences 4) collective unconscious (of Jung), or the repressed mind (of Freud), 5) third eye ( of new age), 6) the “heart’s mind” 7) spirit’s mind as envisioned by occultist/alchemist 8) divine mind or soul’s mind of religions, 9) kundalini or tantric mind (of Shiva), 10) mind of Ein Sof. To illustrate the concept you can imagine the following: How many times you had a dream (out of all the dreams that ever had) of which you are completely satisfied with its nature, content, as well as its interpretation and you had a full dose of certainty or “highs” that you can get by doing the same thing in real life? Dreams are vague, inconsistent, self-contradictory, and distorted in terms of natural laws. You cannot have a concrete interpretations out of your dreams to confirm or disconfirm anything. You have only smoky, vague ideas while you are dreaming, but once you are awake, only then you can have a better and concrete ideas about those dreams and their meanings, if there are any. You often need a “professional” dream (pseudo)interpreter to give you a concocted interpretation, which are often a sort of fairy tales that typically incorporates repressed sexuality or fear theories as prescribed by their masters. The bottom line is the fact that your dreams are still tied to your brain, which is still a material, although not fully functional. Now imagine, what will your dream look like, if it is not tied to with any material objects at all, whatsoever. It will be so meaningless (if not horrible) and chaotic that we cannot even imagine it (fortunately). The function of the body and the brain is to eliminate all those delusions and vague dreamlike imageries, except the one, which is a consistent, reliable, reproducible and accurate i.e. a true representation of the reality while you are awake. Your body and brain is a device to pave the way for making the reason to emerge to eradicate the delusions. Only that reason has any hope to offer you any certainty or knowledge and hence peace (or in religious terms, salvation).

Although the source of our knowledge classically categorized as “The Four Ways”, it does not mean that there is only 4 ways of knowledge. But for the purpose of this essay, I will stick with the classicist and that will suffice for now. 1). Sensory perceptions (empiricist), 2). Reason or intellect (rationalist), 3). Intuitive understanding (Idealist) and 4) Revelations (Prophets). Although the original masters never saw any reason to separate the ways you can have a knowledge, but now the existence of those distinct groups only suggests that they failed to see that all four are interconnected and different gradations, originated from the same source, stating from most concrete (the sensory perception) to most abstract (revelation). The first reaction to this statement is the utter denial from the rationalist (because they do not have the equipments to see the connection between reason and sensory perceptions*, see footnote below), from the empiricist (who cannot see the connection between observation or sensory perception and intuition), from the idealist (who cannot see the interdependence of matter and the ideas) and from a theologian (who cannot see the connection between reason, or sensory perception with revelation). Finally, the existentialist or absurdities will deny everything altogether, without giving any clues. But just like a heroin addicted person is in denial that they have an addiction problem, which is obvious to those who are not addicted, I understand the cause of such denial ( i.e. not using the tools correctly that they already have) and will proceed anyway. 

Material objects are a recorder or depository of information. Similarly, your body is a recorder of information that actually happens within it and outside it, not just possible information in “phase-space” field. Body contains what is true out of all delusional ideas that can exist in bodiless mind (see the list above). Body is the witness of Truth. Without the body, mind has a tendency to be delusional, just like the water tends to be shapeless without a grail. Body gives the mind a shape (platonic forms or ideals). And the body and the information it contains are reliable, reproducible, and accurate, but extracting the information is not necessarily easy. The birth of reason (the ability to see the truth out all many scenarios given) is tied to body. Without a body, no reason exists in this world. Without the reason, there is no way to be sure of anything. Without certainty, there is no peace and no happiness in anybody’s mind. How can you see that the reason that you already see existent is tied to your body? This is subtle and often difficult to see unless you have developed a keen perception. How can you see the way by which reason emerges from the body? When you start to observe yourself while you are doing something such as trials and errors. What you call a “cultivated reason” is actually a derivative of your own observation of the outcomes of trials and errors, but those trials and errors are not a formal experiments or experiences hence would have been easily gone unnoticed and forgotten, unless you are not really observant. Your observation power grows when you did something, but that did not work as you wanted to be and now thinking what exactly went wrong. You try it next time more sincerely and more carefully and this time, your are more observant of yourself and started to notice the relations between your actions and your reasoning power. This way, throughout the history, it has been suggested that only a virtuous life can make you happy because with all those actions, your are learning the fact that your body's action is the source of your reason and that opens the door to the next level that has far bigger and grand consequence than you had ever imagined. If you continue your journey and learn from your body, you will see that your body is the source of ALL KNOWLEDGE including revelation, although it comes much later, if ever, and unfortunately, most people, cannot even see the necessary and sufficient connection between sensory perception and reason, including the "elites" such as Hume, Kant etc. Once you started to see those connections learnt from your VIRTUOUS acts, you start to appreciate why your body is your only assets and why you have decided to give up all of your powers for the sake to have a body in order to avoid the inherent tendency of bodiless mind's confused delusions and/or uncertainty and to enjoy the certainty offered by carnality.

Footnotes:
*Reason is a form of semantic memory that is transformed from the episodic memories (failure to see the connections is due to amnesia or blindness or ignorance of that transformative linkage) . The episodic memory is in turn transformed sensory perceptions with innumerable repetition from the sensory organs. You will not and cannot accept this because your mind is not calm and perceptive enough to see the subtle link. But if you focus and sharpen your mind (with discipline), you will begin to see it, only when your mind is free from contaminations. What is a contamination? That which is not real or genuine or original. Where does those contamination come from? From your choice of not doing the right things (failure to hold fast on the smaller truths) and not abstaining from harmful things. In simple words, you have to be "bible good" in order to get rid of those contaminants. Only then you can see the clear linkage and more deeper truths afterwards.

The Zen/Buddhism or Vedanta are nothing new. It is the age old wisdom teachings of the Sages of India, partially preserved by the monks and sannyas. But why now and why in America? The answer is fairly simple. In this era of Utilitarian and Pragmatic/Political Realism (Realpolitik), it must have some beneficial purpose for the establishment of the western civilization, particularly in America. What is that beneficial purpose for which they are being systematically promoted by the Schools, Universities, Popular TV or Media Celebrity, New Age movement or even by the philosophers and politicians? The Tyrannical Owners [Financial/Corporate/Political Masterminds] of the westerners are using it or promoting it as a "false consolation" to tame the intellectuals down that would have been the movers and shakers [not to mention, a true and just revolutionary], who could alleviate the suffering of the sheep imposed by those corporate "Owners". In order to divert the natural tendency to auto-correct the accumulated errors in popular judgments and to tame down any possibilities of significant resistance against the authority, they are distributing repackaged "Eastern Wisdom" to the mass. Their intention is not to educate you but to quell your justified anger, to dilute your personal opinion, to vanquish any opposition to resistance against authority who are perpetually milking and fleecing you out, but in return, not respecting you or taking care of you as they have promised. This is exactly why they are now promoting those repacked eastern "wisdom". The irony is, knowledge/wisdom is power and nobody in authority is generous enough to distribute power (i.e wisdom) freely because Wisdom brings True Freedom and true freedom brings righteous actions which in turn is a threat to the authority. Can you see it, how you have been duped again? 

But the real issue of the current essay is not to show why the repackaged Zen/Buddhism or Vedanta are becoming popular but to discuss the real difficulty in understanding of this so called "modern" Zen/Buddhism or Vedanta. Long before Gautama or even Veda, in India, there were some itinerant, peripatetic ascetic monks and sages who were the de facto religious and political guardians of their tribes or the regions, based on their merits, wisdom and actions. Much later when those indigenous people were introduced with the Veda from the incoming Aryans, it created a profound upheaval amongst the people. In those periods of geopoliticoreligious turmoil the indigenous local Indian were divided into two main groups: 1. The Astika School, Based on the Veda or Brahmins as the Authority, 2. The Charvaka/Sramana or Individualistic (later, mistakenly identified with Nastika School). The Veda based Brahmin priesthood became the orthodox School, later modified, reinterpreted and repackaged as Vedanta. The Sramana School later disappeared and repackaged to become the new School of Jainism and Buddhism. These events are in almost perfect parallel with the events where thousand years of wisdom from Egypt, Sumerian, Babylonian, Phoenician/Canaanite, Greek, Celtic/Druidic, Roman/Stoic were consolidated/encapsulated/encrypted into either 1) Judaism [Equivalent to Brahmin/Veda based Hinduism where Brahmin are the "Chosen People" just like the Jews) or 2) Christianity (Equivalent to Mahayana Buddhism where Buddha is equated with God just like Christ]. But what those schools are saying is noting "new" but rather represents the efforts trying to preserve the rudimentary fragments of Wisdom but unfortunately in Indirect/Encrypted forms. So do not treat the Bible or Veda or Teaching or Buddha or Jesus as the First source of Wisdom. Rather, they represents the later, fragmentary, rudimentary glimpse of Ageless Wisdom but in an indirect/encrypted form. Whatever you see in Veda, or Gautama's teaching, or in Bible, it NOT their own. It comes from an impersonal, ageless Wisdom tradition common to all people around the world. If you take the later, rudimentary, fragmentary, partially degenerated/corrupted and yet encrypted/indirect teaching to be the ultimate, concrete, direct, uncorrupted, pure sources of wisdom or salvation, then you are just fooling yourself and it will take you towards an infinite regress of meaninglessness. You have to appreciate the natural history and origin of those schools of ideas in order to understand the beauty and the truth behind it, even from those fragmentary teachings. You have to inquire and earn it and the good news is, it was never lost completely and it is always available in the environment and everywhere you seek. You just have to recognize it, take it, hold onto it and live it. The Teacher/Guru/Rabi/Priest/Brahmin/Buddha might be helpful but not necessary. Only you and your environment are both simultaneously necessary and sufficient! But it takes time, discipline, and hard work but unfortunately, there is no shortcuts, like having a blind and categorical "Faith" and then home that you are saved. The "Faith" is for those weaklings who cannot find the Truth for themselves despite their honest and sincere efforts so it is okay for them to have faith. But you have to try it first before resorting yourself to the faith. Only then the "faith" is also a good thing because, at least you are in the vicinity of the House of Truth. 

Now let's go back to the real issues or difficulties of modern or western Zen/ Buddhism or Vedanta. Everyone wants to win the crown jewel bypassing any works needed as preparation. Everyone is interested in the fruit but nobody is willing to plant the seed and nurture the tree. They do not even want to go to the shopping malls anymore to buy the fruit. They just order it online and want the fruit to be shipped to their door at the mailing address. If you want the fruit, you can get some version of the fruit by hook or crook but, will you be satisfied perpetually just by one bite? Of course not! You need to cultivate it from the scratch. But again it takes time, effort, dedication, and occasional asceticism. But they think "I have paid in cash or from my credit card, and why this has to be that difficult? I have paid my dues and I want the fruit". Let me assure you, it will not work in that way. But unfortunately this is the way Zen/Buddhism or Vedanta is being practiced in western world. And for the same reason, everyone jumps to grab the fruit at the very beginning of their journey. So they are looking to conquer the Nirvana and Non-Dual Vedic Self as easily as possible, as quickly as possible and as cheap as possible. And this is the problem. There is no shortcuts, but the Western Zen/Buddhist or Vedanta guru are ready to sell the shortcuts of their damaged goods to you. 

The original Buddha had no intention to explain, teach or propagate any doctrine and only began to speak at the request from close and advanced students in the inner circle for their particular and specific questions. When the students wanted to know about the nature about the Nirvana or Enlightenment, he did not answer. Instead he talked in parables to indicate that, before asking those big questions, there are many other immediate questions you need to find the answer. The Big questions should come as the last possible question and the only way you can know those things if you yourself become enlightened. So focus on more immediate issues like: What is happening, what you and the people in general are doing, what are the things bothering you and what are the root causes of those immediate problems or issues, or in other words, the Four Noble Truths. Again, those response came only on request from most advanced or well prepared students, not preemptively. Unfortunately, the western "buddhas" are trying to preach preemptively, for the mass with "generalized" sermons. This is exactly the opposite of the original teaching. No wonder why even the high priests of Tibetan monks are arguing each other to understand how to interpret the Buddha's "emptiness". This in itself, conclusively proves that they themselves do not understand what it is or why it is. Almost everyone thinks, his interpretation of the emptiness is the truth, the rest of them are just illusory. Then he wants to integrate his interpretation into this problem ridden world but they have no idea what, why and how the "problem ridden world" came to be! In other words, the so called buddhas have a solution for a problem that they themselves do not know the "pathogenesis". How foolish is that! By the same token, if you have any predefined or indoctrinated idea of Nirvana based on your ego, greed or covetousness, then it cannot be, by definition, Nirvana. When you try to become empty, by the instructions and the method [the method itself is a "thing" and by definition, cannot be empty] of a teacher/guru and eventually pretend to become somehow "empty", you will be utterly lost about what that emptiness actually means. You will become totally agnostic about the whole thing and your entire efforts will get wasted. It is not about emptying and staying emptied but finding the reason behind it or the true will, hidden behind that emptiness what will animate you with joy and fill you with actions that are aligned perfectly with the nature and the worlds. So, do not want to know or inquire about the Nirvana prematurely. It will only bring more confusion, if you are not well prepared. 

In contrast to Zen Buddhism, who are trying to make you empty and powerless, the western Vedanta is trying to do exactly the opposite. It makes you more egotistic (already extremely prevalent is western world), selfish and devoid of any sense of morality. You might be a criminal and doing all types of felony but “it’s okay dude” and whatever you do, it is right, because you are who you are, i.e. "I am". In fact, this "I am" is the most used and unfortunately misused buzzword for New Age/Vedantic movement that is going on in western world. The question about "I am" -ness should not be the active goal because it is a dead end, especially, if you ask it prematurely. You cannot solve it in ordinary logical, scientific or philosophical ways because people already tried it and instead of making things easier for you, they have created a stumbling block such as Godel's Logical Paradox, Kant's "Things in itself" and Scientific "Objective, empirical verification and falsification" respectively. If you really want to solve it, this question should come as the very last possible question and hopefully by that time you are already enlightened and will not even bother to ask it! Additionally and yes unfortunately, there are two commonly known "I am", one is from the Prince of Darkness, the same side of the river and the other is from the Prince of the Light, the other side of the river. They both do not know the true "I AM" The Most High, The Highest, and hence both of them are still trying to be it or know it or catch it or worse, hunt it. The Real "I AM" is humble enough and hence not interested in saying "I AM", but those who are using this term preemptively, are obviously egotistic and a citizen of the either side of the river (but not the "Living Water" of the river itself). The Real "I AM, The Most High" is Silent, and those who possess it are also silent and hence not available in the market places. There are many social, material, cultural, moral and ethical questions that should come before that big question. But if you are concern primarily with it, it will lead you astray and you will be lost in never ending maze. Do not ask the Last and Big question first and to the teacher in the marketplace, for heaven's sake, do not attempt to teach your students the most advanced concept in the very start. You yourself should know it first, before you can teach it to anyone. If you knew, you will not teach it to begin with! Try not to make the pigs to sing. It will not work eventually. It is your responsibility to guard against any Impurity that can occur in the hand of the Unclean! The only way to keep it Pure is not to touch or talk about it at all. Instead, just Do it, Be it, Live it. If you are really wise, then chose your Student wisely too [be a Teacher only when the Student is fully ready]. Or else, it will create just another egotistic selfish, megalomaniac, tyrannical and hence more damaging Prince, either of the Dark [The Devil/Angra Mainyu/Satan] or the Light [The Christ/Lucifer], and the Havoc for the rest of the sheep.

The word mystery itself derived from Greek "Mysterion", meaning secret knowledge where lips and eyes are closed from the non-initiated. Only the initiated can see the truth, which is hidden from the outsiders. Nothing is sinister about the mystery. The mystery does not mean nonsense, pseudoscientific new age cultic doctrine. It is a simple yet profound truth that the outsider cannot see and hence hidden from them, and hence called a secret or mystery. But it is a truth, nonetheless, for those who are rightfully initiated by self-discipline. For example, in case of a miraculous/(?virgin!) birth of a child, its is a mystery for us to ponder who was the real biological father but for the mother of that child it is not a mystery. She knows who is the real father but her lips are closed, hence it is a mystery for the outsiders. Similarly, the word myth derived from Greek "Mythos", simply means a thought or story delivered by the word of mouth. Myth does not automatically mean something false. It simply means a story, but the real rationale behind the story is not immediately visible. Let's analyze a simple, modern myth that says "Diabetics should not eat sugar". Doctors and educated people would immediately label this statement as a myth, because they will say, even the diabetics need some sugar or carbohydrate in their diet, with or without insulin. The diabetics actually need to take a modest amount of carbohydrate in their diet. The lay people will accept the expert's opinion when they declare "Diabetics should not eat sugar" is simply a myth and hence false. But did you realize what truth you just missed, if you label that statement as just another myth? When people originally discover the disease diabetes mellitus, they came to realize that the diabetics cannot handle the sugars in their diet and excessive sugar is definitely bad for diabetics. In order to alarm the people the danger of diabetes and prevent harm, they overstated the truth as "Diabetics should not eat sugar". They knew that any food you eat, even the vegetables or meat has carbohydrate in them in modest amount, so apparent sugar-free food would be just fine for the diabetics, based on their long observation of diabetic people. Additionally, if you warn the danger of sugar for diabetics lightly, people will take it lightly. So the effective way to communicate the truth of the relation of the diabetes and the sugar for the lay people can be expressed simply by overstating it, in the pithy format of "Diabetics should not eat sugar". This is the real truth behind this myth. But you have to deconstruct the myth and analyze the hermeneutics to see the truth and why the wise people in the past have created the "myth" in first place. This is how myths are always developed around a tiny nidus of truth, but often overstated or embellished. Over time, people's fantasy and cultural garbage that deposits on top of that nidus have become so large that now it is hard to find the underlying core truth that drove the original mythogenesis. In fact, some of the underlying wisdom is so important to communicate and to disseminate that the authors resorted to add even false stories, allegories and fantasy to embellish the message, palatable for the time and culture where it was started. They just want to express the core idea, even at the cost of being obviously fantastic. 

The next word that we need to focus is Mandala. The Mandala is a symbol representing an abstract, profound concept that cannot be expressed in words. The word mandala comes from Sanskrit, which means a geometric construct involving a circle that typically includes one or more squares and triangles to represent the universe in context of macro- and microcosm relations. In the deeper level, it is a way to express an ineffable idea with the help of geometric patterns. Symbols are ubiquitous from ancient to modern time. Even the mathematics, equations, and physics are all full of symbols. There is nothing occult or sinister about the mandala. It is simply a tool to express the idea beyond the words. People will often dismiss a Mandala immediately as a "Woo" or "pseudoscience" but they have no problem in accepting a similar symbolic expression like E = mc^2  as a concrete science. The only difference among them is your level of understanding. Just because, you cannot understand something does not mean that you need to reject them as untrue or utterly bogus. When you really see the meaning behind those Mandala/symbols or the equations, you will perceive the idea what they represent. The next comes the word mathematics, which is derived from Greek "Mathematos", from root *mendh- which means "that which is learnt". So mathematics is a tool for learning, not the knowledge itself. It is a tool to help you think clearly, which will lead you towards learning. So the mathematics is a faithful "tool" or "slave" to do the job of "learning", but not the Master. If you make the "slave" into the Master, everything will go awry. The Numbers and Symbols in mathematics are the Mandala for the Science. So, do not treat the mathematics unduly as the master. Instead, mathematics is just like the tools of a Master Carpenter or a Master Mason, NOT vice versa. A symbol can be a number, an alphabet, a geometric shape, an inanimate object, a living creature or statute of it. Thus, focus on the meaning behind those symbols, not the symbol/mandala per se.

Next comes the concept behind the word itself. The most evolve form of the symbols are the Alphabets/Letters, Phoneme, Morphemes, the Words and the Language, either oral, written or conceptual. Words that carry an abstract idea is the most primordial of all concept that we can imagine. This is why the concept behind the Word has been also been known variously as the "Buddhi/Nous", "Poimandres", "Logos", "Rta/Asa", "Ma'at", "Tao", "Aql/Kalima" etc. But over time, the corrupted minds of the people failed to see the original meaning and hence they started to add additional corruption. If you do an archaeology on any words, even the nouns will show some beautiful meanings. In those times, it was never just a noun or name as we used to think in modern days of nominalism. Originally, every noun represented an idea or a story, composed of subjects, objects, adjective and verbs. The Ancients did not treat a noun as meaningless nominal words as it is today. Actually, at that time there were no nouns or grammars to make the separation of inseparable meanings. We separated those and now blame the ancients for their meaningless "Babel". On the contrary, names or nouns are the most virulent agent in modern English language against understanding. Originally, the ancient people under different kings used different words to convey same meaning or even same deity, but in modern worlds, things gets more confusing. Today, even if you try to change a word instead of another to preserve the original meanings, people will start to protest vehemently, so the "public relation" agents nowadays do not change the words. They just change the meaning, keeping the words the same. This pollutes the original meaning of the words, even further and people even do not know, what are they missing and hence more tamed! And the last and most vicious attack on the words comes from the general public who either by the virtue or vice, start to corrupt the words so much that the original meaning is almost entirely lost. Even if somebody had deciphered the meaning of some words in the past, people will eventually start to call it by a mere name or noun in their own preference, thinking that "what difference does it make". They thought they are just playing an innocent act of naming and calling things according to your own will and preference. Most rampant of those examples are the abbreviations, those are treated as a simple noun like, AIDS for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Or "Yolo" for "You Only Live Once". The outsider will not understand the what the words AIDS or Yolo actually means. Unwittingly, day by day, we are just adding additional layers on words that creates extra burden against understanding the original meaning of those words. We are not aware of how much havoc we are setting up for the posterity. Unless you are very careful, you will not see the fact that almost all nouns, especially before the advent of modern language, were concepts from either adjectives, adverbs, verbs, an event or occurrence. Only a few can see the original, but hidden meanings behind the mystery of Words. For example, the name "Isis" represents the empty throne from where you come to know the real and secret Names of all things. The name "Baal Shem" means the Master of Names. Knowing the real Name of anything [i.e. the concept behind the name] is the Mastery of that Name itself! But the names can be also a trap if you are not extremely careful. If you accept nouns as meaningless names, then you will be lost in the labyrinth of language like the story of the tower of the Babel. Additionally, names can also create the opportunity of playing the "semantic game" by any other people. On the other hand, the same Name/Word can liberate you from ignorance. You are in the driver's seat!

Having discussed the preliminary concepts behind Mystery, Myths, Mandala, Mathematics and the Words, now you can see the fact that, just like myths or mandalas, the higher mathematics and equations are the placeholder or symbols to communicate a concept that does not have a physical representation. A concept that is inexpressible by words can be still expressed with the symbols of mathematics. For example, let's consider the imaginary number i. What a monster it is! We know there cannot be a complex/imaginary plane out there in space-time, but we have no problem in accepting it as if a "real" thing. We consider i as real as an apple or a cow that we can do arithmetics with. But if someone introduces a myth to express the inexpressible in ordinary language, people will automatically and instantly reject it as if they are devoid of any intrinsic scientific value. They forgot, i is a kind of myth just like Zeus. Myths start with some assumptions that cannot be proven. For example, Zeus is the immortal and this assumption you have to accept in toto. Similarly, you have to take the dogma of science and mathematical axioms without questions. The mathematical axioms, like the i, are very narrow, hence, typically their flaws are hidden from unsuspecting eyes, hence more believable, but the Zeus myth, which is broader and blatant but qualitatively they are still assumptions, nonetheless. Myths try to tell you the idea behind the story. Mathematics is also telling you a story behind the equations and numbers. As mythic stories cannot be proven by another story, similarly mathematics cannot prove by mathematics itself. As long as you cannot prove the mathematics, it is still a story, albeit a much sophisticated story, but a story nonetheless. Just as science and equations are trying to improve human conditions, myths were also designed to improve the human conditions because all of the myths have a teaching for the betterment of the individual and the society of that time. In the similar lines of reasoning, myths or the symbol i both are trying to do the same things. They are trying to deal with the paradox, just like we are trying to deal with the paradoxical nature of reality with science. Unfortunately, we think myths are just a bunch of bulls, but equations are the cosmic truths written in stones. Actually, myths are full of the Bulls (Ptah/Osiris, Shiva/Nandi, Rishabha, Vishnu/Prithu/Govinda, Gautama [The Best Ox]/ Buddha, Marduk, Tammuz, El/Elohim/Baal/Yahweh) but those "Bulls" actually mean something far more powerful than any equations that scientists have ever come across. There is no way you can show that the equations are better than myths in expressing the concepts that does not have a physical representation. Both the "Bulls" or Bull slaying has some important meanings. Just because Theseus (Minotaur), Mithras (Tauroctony), or Gilgamesh (Gugalanna) killed the Bull or Moses broke the Golden Calf idol does not automatically mean that the Bull is the Demon. Actually, it means something far deeper. If you train your mind, you will see what those almost ritualistic bull slaying really means.

Finally, let's consider the case of Numbers, the "Sacred Cow" of science and mathematics. Originally, the numbers were introduced as a symbol of certain abstract concepts and their relation to one another. You will see soon that the whole business of numbers are cram filled with mythical relationships between other numbers. For example, every number theorist will appreciate that the number one is the beginning of all numbers and 1 is inside all other numbers. 1 is like the abstract concept of a point in geometry. Dimensionless, non-space consuming, indivisible entity. But, how 1 comes into the existence out of nothing is not explained at all! You have to blindly and obediently accept the creation myth of 1. If you accept this myth, there comes another paradox out of that mythology of 1. If 1 is really dimensionless, non-space consuming, indivisible entity as described, then how can you accept anything less than 1, like 1/2 or 1/4 or 0. But they have made you swallow that unreasonable myth that you never argued against. The next case about number 2 also needs another supernatural/preternatural mythological explanation. How the number 2 came out of 1 as a next number? Nobody explained that miracle to me in my schools or universities. Because they cannot explain how 2 popped out, they proposed that when 1 and another 1 get united it becomes 2. Now where does the other 1 found another identical 1 for the purpose of becoming 2? Did it come from the heaven? How mythic is that?! Now you can appreciate that when you do any math you already swallowed some gigantic creation myth (even worse than Sumerian or Biblical creation myth) but you are going to deny it because you already bought into the myths that created the science. If the First spirit principle is the Purusha of Hinduism, Buddha of Buddhism, Ptah of Egyptian religion, Phanes of the Greek/Orphic tradition, Adam Kadmon of the Jewish Kabbalah, Elohim of Mormonism, and Adam of Abrahamic Monotheism, then in the similar way, the Spirit child of the Religion of Scientism is the Number. If you believe in Purusha etc, you will be considered as just a superstitious dumb, but if you accept the Numbers, you are just smart! How ironic it is! Please, do not give your bull of mathematical equations to people as being superior than the myths of the real "Bull". However, I am not saying that number, mathematics and science in general are not powerful and useful, but I am saying they are not infallible and not particularly superior in expressing "the ineffable" that the words, symbols and myths.  Consequently, instead, one should try to find what is the secret mystery hidden behind in the deepest recess of those words and mythic stories, expressed in symbols, mandala and mathematical numbers.

There exist some fashionable intellectuals who concluded in their final analysis that there is no meaning of life, after all. However, they failed to realize that the proposition they are propagating "Life does not have a meaning" itself convey a meaning [Via Negativa still paradoxically conveys a meaning]. So if you are a Nihilist or Existentialist or Absurdist, and claim that life has no meaning, then you are just trying to escape the fact that you could not find the meaning of life by yourself. Stop fooling yourself and especially stop fooling others. When you start talking about meanings, you already acknowledge that life has a meaning but you are not aware of it. This is because you have forgotten it in the long chain-of-thought processes. Before claiming that life has no meaning, you need to work on your memory skills and recover what are the facts that you have forgotten. As a matter of fact, you cannot escape the need for meanings. The need for meaning is the birth of pattern seeking phenotype of beings which is deeply embedded and entangled to their own existence. The most primitive [if not The Primordial] pattern recognition ability is manifested as mimicking. Mimicking aims to capture what is really happening out there [Mimicry is the first sign of Love, remember?]. In fact, the Effects that we can perceive are just faithfully mirroring the Cause and expressing itself as, what we call, Mimicry. What is happening out there comes to you through the organs of perceptions. When there is a way to represent the external stimuli, as captured, albeit imperfectly by the organs of perceptions, by mimicking with the same kind [i.e. Sound by Sounds, Light/Vision by Light/Vision, Touch/pain with Touch/pain, etc.] which is also recognizable by others, it carries a definite advantage over other modes of communications based on mimicking than those perceptions that has to involve other modalities [i.e. Mimicking sound by vision, mimicking touch/pain by sounds etc.]. In fact, mimicking by the same kind is minimalist, self-contained and more likely to be successful in probabilistic terms because only the minimum numbers of variables involved. The joint probability of successful events involving few participants or variables is always higher than many variables or participants, remember?

What are the sense organs that can assess what is happening outside or inside? Vision is the most obvious organ of perception, but those visual perceptions cannot be directly communicated by the same kind easily. We do not have any organ that can produce light like a projector or hologram generator. So our Light/visual perception cannot be communicated directly by mimicking light that can be recognized by others. You cannot project your imagination on air [like a projector or hologram generator] captured by visual organs! The only way you can communicate your visual perceptions in visual ways is by drawing which is grossly imperfect. Again the other person has to be close by to see your drawing and you have to have a suitable tool and surface to draw it correctly in order for any meaningful communication. Additionally, it takes a lot of time and you cannot do it if there are some considerable distance, or there is some barrier [such as, you are on the other side of a wall or a room] obstructing to display your drawing to others. Time, distance, obstructing barrier, need for drawing tools, your skill of drawing and efficiency for communicating a wide variety or visual perceptions makes the vision of lights not the best of every day mode of communication by mimicry. With skin, you can only partially mimic what is happening to you by skin stimulation to others. Only limited things can be communicated this way. You can express your pain by inflicting pain on others by skin stimulation or in other words hurting others, which your fellow people will not like. The other person has to be physically close enough to you so that you can communicate this by same kind, i.e. mimicking it. The number of situations you can communicate, such as pain, touch, proprioception, vibrations by similar mimicking skin stimulation is extremely limited. Anything outside your body surface, i.e. skin, you cannot communicate with mimicking with same kind. Suppose you need to communicate that you want to go for hunting. Can you mimic that by skin stimulation, especially if someone is located not so close by? Not quite possible. So, touch is not a good way of communication by mimicking the same kind. Smell and taste have very limited value in communication by the same kind because they are mostly chemical signals that does not have any physical representations to be mimicked. You cannot produce a taste of chicken to communicate the taste of chicken to others. You cannot produce a smell of flower from your body to communicate the smell of flower to others. So taste and smell sensations are not designed to communicate with same kind efficiently in the first place. They are just for your own personal [may be some other intimate/sexual] use. They play a very limited role for communication in everyday life.

This leaves us to our last and 5th conventional sense organ, the hearing. Hearing has a unique vantage point for communication by mimicry. In the macroscopic [Non-Quantum] physical world that we live in, is full of mechanical events. Many of them produce vibrations in the medium that can be sensed by hearing apparatus. The Proto-Hominids were bombarded with sounds from all kinds of sources. They listened songs of birds, roaring of lions, the sounds of leaves of trees, distress calls of other animals, mating calls of birds, sounds of thunders, sounds of water drops of rain and so on. Natural sounds that enter through the ears can be easily mimicked by the gift of vocalization. Although this vocalization is no way close to perfect, but this quasi perfect tool of vocalization can mimic to reproduce the sound that they just heard! This is the minimalist approach for communication by same kind which is also inbuilt and self-contained. This is analogous of frying a fish with the oil that fish already has! What a delicious recipe! The inbuilt Hearing-Vocalizing apparatus complex that we have is the unique tool of communication by mimicry that other sense organs [such as vision, touch/pain, smell and taste] lack which I have explained earlier. By the principle of Ockham's Razor and Bayesian probability, this is the best minimum set and self-contained. You perceive things that you can produce with very close approximation, without the need for any external tool. Additionally, it can be used to mimic a wide variety of situations that other organs of perception cannot do. Suppose you want to communicate that you heard a sound of a tiger, which is of utmost importance and time constraints to produce the distress-call is also extremely important. Best way to go is vocalization. You can communicate at a distance, quickly, without any external tool, even against a barrier [like wall/fence/trees] with high fidelity to be understood by others [The fellow people have the receiver of the thing that you can produce!] and everything is in built. This is why hearing and vocalization exerted a potent evolutionary selection pressure to be kept and utilized over other sense organs for communication. This way of reasoning also strongly suggest music and songs are more primitive than language and words. Experiments from neuroscience also corroborate with this view because people with Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) lesions who display impaired memory and word use, as in cases of semantic dementia [all of which are examples or manifestations of language], still retain their ability to understand, recognize, recollect and reproduce music, songs and poetry. Additionally, without hearing ability your vocal ability is also severely impaired, suggesting a strong functional connection between these two systems. This can be illustrated by the fact that congenital or early childhood acquired deafness inhibits the ability to speak naturally and to acquire verbal language, which again validates this concept. Embryologically, Hearing [Middle ear] and Vocalization [Larynx] apparatus, develop from same Foregut and neuroanatomically, Auditory cortex, Wernicke's area and Broca's area in the cerebral cortex [the critical areas for language], are all located in close proximity than any other sensory cortical areas and heavily interconnected by axonal projections. All these evidences strongly point to the fact that the language and thought process itself, in general, is intimately connected with hearing-vocalization apparatus complex. This can be further strengthened by the fact that the distorted thought process of Schizophrenics typically includes auditory hallucinations rather than other sorts of hallucinations. So, it is no surprise that the language is dominantly based on hearing-vocalizing apparatus complex, which in turn have an Evolutionary and Probabilistic selection pressure because of its efficiency and superior utility in communicating about what is happening out there. Your thought and language [i.e. Your Mind] is heavily dependent, composed of, and a derivative of the organs of perceptions at the very root. So when you say “I think, therefore I am", your "I" who is claiming to be independent and superior of your body [i.e. Organs of perceptions] is grossly misleading. The "I" that you know of, cannot exist without your organs of perception or your body. The "thou-ness" that exist prior to this false "I" will not claim anything because at those levels such claiming is meaningless. Hence the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body and superiority of this false "ego" or “I” is unjustified. However, this perception-derived language or "ego" or "I" cannot explain the original need for meaning or pattern seeing behavior in the first place, which is many, many levels or layers before the emergence of language or "ego" or "I". The true nature of the existence of the original need and the ability to seek pattern by mimicking remains "Esoteric" in nature which is beyond the scope of this "Exoteric" Webbook essay.

In summary, what you perceive, you mimic [Monkey See, Monkey Do]. This is the most primitive pattern seeking drive. You continue to mimic and retain the useful and meaningful mimics even without conscious awareness of their meanings. Hearing-Vocalization pair is the minimalist, inbuilt, efficient, quick, wide spectrum, can act-at-distance, can be transmitted against the barrier that other perception cannot, all of these create strong evolutionary and probabilistic selection pressure to make it thrive. Your mimicked sounds that others can understand and can act upon adds additional meanings. Those mimics now have their own meanings and hence retained. Those sounds become words. Words represent encoded information coming from the organs of perceptions. This is the birth of language. This Language engenders self-awareness and "ego", which in turn can produce problems, especially if you do not understand the "why". So even language is not intrinsic [in contradiction to Chomsky's theory], instead it is perception-derived. They just serve a very useful purpose to communicate what you are perceiving which in turn has a survival benefit. So even the Cartesian "I" or Vedantic "Self" is not intrinsic, but what is intrinsic is the need and ability to be aware of pattern recognition. In general, Words, and Language arose out of that need and ability to seek meanings. Words and language evolved out to describe the external world and what is actually happening as captured and encoded imperfectly by the organs of perceptions. Those tools of perception exist not to describe what is unreal or for lying. From the very beginning of your existence, the need and ability to recognize patterns and their meanings, exist. They are as deep as your own existence, long before your so called “ego” emerged. So the formula of existence to seek meaning which in turn created you, cannot have no meanings, i.e. Existential nihilism is a false concept. By the same token, you cannot escape from the need for, either positive or negative, meanings [which is itself a meaning, nonetheless].

But you have the freedom to use your language accordingly or on your own wish or caprice. Just because that you have the ability to lie or deny, doesn't invalidate the power of hearing-vocalizing complex based language to capture and encode the reality. Indeed, pure, unadulterated, pristine, honest perceptions as captured by these sense organs are trying to tell you something useful. They are not there to fool you, as many deluded philosophers or scientists claimed, although there can be some false alarms, but in the majority of cases they are serving you well. Think how you can walk [Propioceptions] most of the time without falling. Think how can you see [Vision] food and can take them [Touch] for your lunch. Think how you used your ear [Hearing] to escape the car behind you. How you avoided some unhealthy place full of putrid and poisonous gas [Smell] because you perceived it. How your taste guided you most of the time about the wholesomeness of the food [Taste]. Your sense organs are your best friends and they are helping you to survive. Just because they are not always perfect, you cannot abandon them altogether, just like the mothers who cannot abandon their babies just because they are crying. That cry might mean something important. Listen patiently and carefully, you will know the meanings of your perceptions. Those are the only tools you have for your mind or thought! A master mason or master carpenter will not complain about their tools. If they feel they are not working properly, they will sharpen it, instead of complaining about them. Only the novice apprentice will complain about their tools. Stop blaming the tools when you chose not to use them according to its original purpose, i.e. to capture the meanings that they can provide. Perceptions and Language exist to help you find the meaning of life, but they will not take you there. You have to go there with their help. When you have found the meaning, discard perception and linguistic intricacy [poetry], bureaucracy [grammar] and their limitations [Wittgenstein’s Limits]. Keep the meaning that you have found so far. Do not allow the tools of perceptions [The Servants] to be the Master and do not allow them to over-analyze the meanings. If you allow, they will distort the meaning and there will be the existential crisis ad absurdum. Remember, you are free to argue over anything, even the obvious truths. Do not misuse your intellect. Try not to be puppets of the perceptions. Be the Master of the puppets. Keep the Meanings, hold onto it, nurture it and it will show you the next Door.

Digital vs. Analog

Why do people like shortcuts?

Are they just some kind of nuts?

Why do they need so many gizmos?

Are they trying to hide their sorrows?

They want something but Time is ticking,

"I have no time" keeps them going.

Breaking things into pieces, taking the least,

This is the birth of shortcuts and their unrest!

Digital are the shortcuts people like the most,

It brings easy success which they can boast.

Analogs are long, tedious, and need much time,

Naturally, nobody is willing for that arduous climb!

How easy is it to count your finger?

Five is the easy and digital way to answer.

Ask the analog the same question,

He finds no finger as a valid starting option! 

Where is the beginning of a circle?

Point A is the digital way to localize the particle.

Analogs will say "where do I start?"

Every starting points can also be the last! 

Science, Number,  Body,  Land, Atom and Logic all are digital,

Separations and fragmentary thinking is putting us to this lull.

Thought, Geometry, Wisdom, Intuition, Ocean, Fields all are analog,

Finding a sweet spot among them is the Master Key to see beyond this fog!

Science starts with observations and studying the empirical results. Observation of the whole thing or any peculiar phenomenon is the initial stimulus for pursuing the particular subject. But the real science typically involves dissecting the problem and examining the parts to have the idea of nature and working of the things of interest. This is the standard approach of science and biology. Although this seems to be very successful, at least on the surface and for the lay people, it has its own limitations. If your experimental design, even in theory, cannot explain the nature of the phenomenon that you are studying then how you can expect that approach of studying will give you the answer. If a particular theory cannot logically proceed towards understanding of the nature of things then what is the point of exploring that field of study based on science which in turn based on logic. Some scientists, seeing the experimental results getting illogical and often self-contradictory, are trying to patch the problems by introducing additional dogmatic assumptions like "Something coming out of nothing principle", "Time contraction or dilatation", "Extra Dimensions", "Dark matter and Dark energy", "Every Biological Phenotype have Genetic or Epigenetic origin", "Only brain has the capacity to think and store memories" and so on. When nothing seems to work, then the resort to probability theory, uncertainty principle and the system of fuzzy logic. And with all those, they claims to know everything, at least in principle. All that remains is to do more experimentation. At the end they gives us some answers based on their theory and experiential results. Finally they think they have solved the problem but there is only one problem. The answers that science so far has provided, have not satisfied our thirst for understanding. It is like drinking a salt rich soda that people think will quench their thirst but after drinking the soda they are even more thirsty than before! Thirst needs pure water, not junk like salt-rich soda. Similarly we are now more perplexed than ever before science took the project of understanding. Our mind and true-self, at the core, yearns for understanding, not just a probabilistic interpretation of relativistic many world multiverse string theory. What we want is Certainty, which is analogous to pure water to quench the thirst of our mind. This is irony of "contemporary" science. It looks like that science itself is a potential trap against the tangled journey for the understanding the nature and its relation with ourselves. This does not mean that science has no value in this journey. In fact, science is the starting point but definitely science is and will not be enough to go to the next level of understanding, i.e. Wisdom.

Let us examine how contemporary science works in practice. Science divides the problems in parts and then they examine and manipulate the parts to see what the parts are doing. Then they induce or deduce the interpretation about the whole, which in turn heavily dependent on logic. So if your experimental results becomes illogical and you use logic to justify your results, then it becomes literally an oxymoronic endeavor. Examining the parts to understand the whole is a tricky business. You might miss the beauty of a flower and its role in nature while you are dissecting the petals and examining the parts! Even those dissections and examinations are fraught with fallacies. First of all, you have to know all the constituents [which you do not know] to understand the function of the whole. Then you have to know the sequence of those known and unknown interactions among the constituents, because uniting Hydrogen and Oxygen before (which makes water, H2O) the third item such as Carbon, it will become unmixable but uniting Hydrogen, Oxygen  and Carbon together in right order creates carbohydrate, which is entirely a different thing! Even in those individual steps of the long long series of events, you do not know what co-factors, facilitators or modifying factors are involved. To make the situation even worse, some of the events are unique and happens only rarely when everything (you do not know what those everything were!) is in right time and proportion. If you dig deeper into the subatomic and quantum realm, you will be utterly lost. Additionally, some of the emerging phenomenon is only clearly measurable at respective level of complexity but not in more basic or lower levels. Even at more macroscopic level such as those are routinely used in neuroscience to study the function of the different parts of the brain, the problem remains. For example, resecting a part of the brain and trying to see what deficit it produced does not give you the real function of that part in situ. There are some studies that have demonstrated that removing some part of brain can impair some forms of memory, recollection, calculation ability, music sense, social appropriateness, and so on. But none of them can tell us why we enjoy the music, why we feel nostalgic about our childhood memories and so on. Examination of the parts can help you understand the whole, only with the aid of reason. That means you are taking absolute reliance of your reason to connect gaps of the understanding the parts with the whole. How do you know that your reason is valid across different levels of complexity? Have you done any experiments to prove that? If yes, then what is the rationale of that new experiments. Have you proved the rationale of the rationale? It is an infinite regress where you have to rely on your reasoning power without any further experimentation or proof, because your reason precedes any experiments that you can devise. So if you just analyze the constituents, do not assume that you know what is happening above the level and below the level. If you do or pretend to understand, then you are fooling yourself (acceptable) and fooling others (not acceptable).

If you believe in the theory of relativity, aren't you saying everything is relative? Then why you are not treating one levels understanding as a relative and hence limited degree of understanding of the next levels? Why are you treating your understanding at one level as infallible evidence for the next level? This is an absolutism of reason, which is itself a paradox. What gives your reliance of reason the absolute validity over the principle of relativism? Why understanding at one level can explain the other levels below or above? Do you really know? In contrast, if you examine the whole then you have a better chance to understand the whole and if you are lucky, may be part of the constituents too, by extension. This is the real reason behind the power of phenomenology and behaviorism. But phenomenology and behaviorism is just the beginning and it is really powerful only for the same level of analysis. It will help you understand what the entire individual organism is doing, but it still fails and will fail to give you the "why". The ability to see why is contingent upon your degree of need and how much you really want. This is the only secret formula of knowing the "why" part. This can be illustrated by the following analogy. For a general audience all the crying of the babies sounds the same and all of you can recognize what is a baby's cry, but only the person who really needs to know and wants to know will know the "why" behind the cry. Hence the mother of the baby can see why the baby is crying. She knows and can distinguish what cry is for hunger, what cry is for diaper change, what cry is for emotional attention and what cry is a danger sign of something else. She not only knows the "what" but also the "why". On the surface it looks like a miracle, or instinct of blind gut feelings from the mother but if you observe carefully you will see the mechanism. The secret is that the mother needs to know and she wants to know. She is not going to compromise on that. When you really want something that genuinely, your ears, eyes, sense organs of perceptions work more sharply than the ordinary situations and you begin to see the subtle differences in the cry, the facial expressions, the tone of the cry, the context, the environment etc., which are otherwise unnoticeable. This the way and there is no other way. You have to have the wanting for knowing the "why" that solemnly even at great cost. Intense wanting, devotion and attention will show you the "why". This is the real meaning and goal of traditional Bhakti Yoga, Buddhist Dhyāna [Zen], Prayer/Ṣalāt in Monotheistic traditions and Meditation in general. It will take you to the next level of understanding, your eyes will be opened and you will begin to see the world better than earlier. Reason and experimentation are good for same level analysis but to understand why at the level above and below, reason and experimentation is powerless because they will take you towards infinite regress which is a no no for science, mathematics and logic (reason). You need something beyond all those "Sciences", such as desire, devotion and attention. This will open the opportunity to understand what is below and what is above which in turn started from the examination of the parts. If you can discover this secrete by yourself then you will not only see what "is" but also the "why" in the below as well as above. Only that perspective gives you the validity of cross-/trans-levels of "Why".