(de?)delineation

I forgot the past with its people to live the present. I live the present hoping that it would soon become the past. My attempts at adaptation to the world ceased when I realized that I was being utopian. Happens! Still, life's good.

The surrender

I opened my eyes and the world seemed a shade darker. I had closed it twenty minutes earlier, the sun had begun to set. It cannot be called meditation, in terms of the people who meditate. But to me this was meditation. I was closing my eyes and listening to this song. Forgive me for my idiocy, everytime I listen to this, I believe it's profoundly mine. It's OM SHIVOGAM from 'Naan kadavul'
I don't understand the lyrics. I can possibly know the meaning of those words but I don't want to. It's the same language I've been relentlessly learning by rote since childhood until a few years ago. Well let's leave the language behind.
It's an intense emotion that I feel when I listen to it. It's been so for over 1 & a 1/2 years, the period over which I've become addicted to it. Never have I tried to categorize the emotion, because 'it felt good' even otherwise. Even now I am afraid if elaborating on the emotion will make it less dear to me.
One of my most rational and honorable teachers said 'the head is born with flexion even in a caesarean section. That implies man has to bow, at least to God and that begins at birth'. I couldn't agree then. I was wondering why someone would want to submit himself to something or somebody.
Never since I became an atheist have I been PARTICULARLY submissive to anything. But everytime I listen to the song I yearn to submit to the 'being' or 'thing' the voice and the music engrave. For once I wished a God that fitted the song existed. But did I say "God"?? The song extols all that is righteous, all that is beautiful, all that is powerful, all that is authentic, all that is rational and all that cannot be controlled by anything except itself. If you call it "God", I may not agree but can empathize.
This submission was overwhelming. I wanted to feel controlled, defined, refined, redefined and composed. I realised I was submitting to myself. Not literally 'myself'. But all the values that made me, that make me and that I make. Life's good yet again.

Not nebulous

I am writing after aeons. Sitting on the terrace, it's supposed to be summer. But never has it seemed like it in weeks now. Well describing weather is something everybody can seem an adept at. Right now there is a huge three dimensional mushroom of a cloud to admire. It coudn't have gotten more beautiful. I am not an ardent nature admirer, but I don't know why admiring it so exhilarating. Is it because I am aware of the ability to admire it, or the fact that I am fortunate to be looking at it?
None of these seem to make sense. Perhaps I assume a bond between myself and these admirable things and as though its broken when I voice the admiration for them. It's just imagination. I imagine that they reciprocate it someway which isn't describable, which of course isn't credible. Credible or not, I shall continue to admire them.The imagination part... lets forget it


http://eamazings.com/index.php/eamazings/amazing-clouds-not-photoshopped-06032010.html

The process of 'standing'

I seem to have been thinking in tons and loads after a really long time.. thankful to Osho. Irrespective of whether I agree or disagree with his ideas, He has made me think. Seems to me like a drastic comeback to introspection after all the crap... I will have to revise what I say now. I can't help agreeing with what he says. When I read him first three years back, I thought his examples were juvenile for the only reason that they were simple and understandable.. The striking appropriateness now makes me feel ashamed of my previous stand. I have been obsessed with reason or still better obsessed with being obsessed with reason. I still am. But having read Osho, I am reconsidering it(Can't believe that I am reading a mystic). Obsession with being obsessed with reason is the most comfortable thing that ever happened. I cannot give up rationality just like that.. That doesn't mean I've been absolutely rational all the while, because rationality doesn't have limits that human knowledge can see. I am still in the process of evaluating my stand with respect to his ideas.. I am very confused. There is a long way to go. So it seems now. If I were to find something utterly irrational I may drop it abruptly. I have to admit the entire process is going to be tedious. Life's good again.

The theory of .........

I was watching the clouds, the lightning and the preparation for the show of rain. now, now... that's histrionic and quite unlike me, but well let it be that way. I was with four other people doing nothing but listening to music and watching the 'preparation'(I don't know why it's better to be alone among people rather than being alone, alone). We were idling in front of our college. Needless to say memories kept flashing, memories of four years that the college owed me. I was forestalling them. Memories aren't worth anything if they can't help you in the present, not to mention the 'affect' changes they bring. The future is raw, the present.....(I don't know what exactly the present is. The present becomes the past before I can spell it). So, the future is raw..raw. If there is something belonging to the future that I am sure of, it's insecurity and if there is something about the present I am sure of, it's uncertainity, though I can convince people around me of the opposite. I am not a determinist, but I do believe that the environment has the potential to manipulate me, especially so because I accept this fact. The 'potential to manipulate ' lends uncertainity to the present. To annul or capacitate this potential lies in my hands. Indeed I am oblivious to my expectations of my future( I wonder if there are any). I cannot decide upon my specialisation. I will let '.........' decide that. (I ll fill in the blank when Iknow what to call it). But irrespective of what my future is going to be one, thing I can do is prepare for the future. At least I am certain of the field of pursuit now.
I told them 'the show starts in another five minutes. We will have to leave' and I had to laugh at myself because I was less uncertain of the rain than my future. I ran hostelwards not to avoid the rain but to 'prepare for the the future'.

Alleged mastery

Played shuttle badminton after a long time. They say exercise releases endorphins. May be that's the reason I feel elated. It's not easy to ignore the love for the game irrespective of whether I win or lose. The love for a skill comes not because it's sophisticated, rational or any other reason I would probably offer for the sake of reason. One likes a skill because he thinks he is an adept at it. I don't like anything I don't master. Its the ugly truth about me and perhaps some others like me. Maybe I will like something that I am in the process of understanding, regardless of the pace and duration of the process, in the belief that 'that something' will be satisfactorily understood some day. Talking about pace, duration...
One is curious only as long as he is in the process of absorbing something. Be it a book or music. Once he is done with the process, then hovers the triumph of having learnt it. He is its master which doesn't mean that he has learnt it completely or that he has learnt it the way that the manufacturer (purposely avoided 'creator' to prevent inadvertent conception that the word refers to God. 'Manufacturer' refers to somebody like you and me in the real world, not in fantasies)thought it ought to be known. It only means that he has grasped it to his satisfaction. And following the triumph of knowing is a persistent nagging restlessness. If the triumph were to last longer he wouldn't learn anything new.
Strangely(?) and equally sadly it applies to relationships too. There is this arduous enhthusiasm until one knows somebody. Then he delves in the comfort of having known somebody in a way that it comforts both. And lo! There it ends. This is the rational pattern in which things are supposed to be. But we know this is't so. And why? because relationships are the embodimentsof irrationality.

Q and A

Ritwik lived with a lot of questions in his mind. Those questions tormented him and needless to say, torments me too.I could relate effortlessly to the person he was, when in school, the discipline he was supposed to comply with at home. He is one character I wished to be in my ambiance. Not many authors do that. The only other protagonist I wanted to be in my times is Prince Mushkin of 'the Idiot'. I probably didn't want to know other characters of Dostoevsky's because they belonged to an entirely different era. Though I loved the in depth analysis of his... nope I shall dedicate another entire post to him not just three or four lines in passing mention.
When Ritwik died he left me his questions. I couldn't sleep with them. When I was done reading the book, I felt empty, hollow and dumb trying to comprehend things. My mind was frantically trying to sort out things. Before I could get some sleep there were these obtrusive thoughts questioning the need for comprehension, the need for answers. I had just terminated the battle of choice between starting to read another novel and going to bed chewing over the questions I just mentioned.
And as usual, abstraction triumphed over reading, I dropped Ritwik's questions and was pondering over mine. Though there were sparks of illumination jumping into my consideration, lightening up my huge, vacuous room of questions, they were just flickers. I made a mental note to transfigure these sparks into lucid convictions and dozed off with the elation of having experienced mental fatigue, something I yearn for everyday.
Why was I desperate to answer Ritwik's questions?(though I call it desperate, it passed off. I didn't answer them then and shall not answer them henceforth). I wanted to remember the fatigue which was exhilaration to my senses and to my mind. I shall rather remember this exhilaration than the answers to Ritwik's questions. I shall let these questions fade away from my memory. That way I guess Neel Mukherjee is similar to Dostoevsky. I am not comparing their styles. I am only referring to my plight at the end of the their books.
Returning to my original question, why was I searching for answers? Its seems simple. More answers= more connection between neurons= positive augmentation of cognition. Intelligence is the ability to form a labyrinth of events in your brain, but an untangled one. So why is it we try to answer questions sometimes and not often do we try to give up and let it fade adopting stupid reasons such as mine?
Is it a "basic drive to improve cognition" or one to "reduce the memory and put the solved questions and answers and save them in a zipped folder such that the hippocampus is not burdened with too much data"? Is the sense of discomfort that accompanies the acknowledgment of incomplete analysis of something, some kind of negative feedback mechanism in the limbic system, that makes us untangle it soon and reduce the burden on the hippocampus?
I have this urge to end this abruptly and run to some place in joy, but I shall not do it. So eventually what is it? Given my vanity I would say its largely the former( the basic drive to augment cognition). The likelihood of the mind controlling something by known mechanisms(explained by basic human behaviour) is simply more plausible than vague theories on feedback and control. Life's Good.