Anuraag.xyz

Category: We

Our collective inter-subjective cultural values; what I observe as a small part of the larger collective. In other words, my thoughts on how and why we think what we think.

  • Beginning, again

    Today marks the resumption of my daily meditation practice.

    It is important for a simple reason: to re-engage with, to remember, the conceptual, symbolic web of interconnections we are all caught within—indeed, what we largely are at that fundamental level. Our very being seems woven from language. ‘Me’ is defined by language and symbol. There appears to be no true ‘escape’.

    This remembrance brings a sense of okayness, a fragile peace that lasts until the forgetting inevitably returns. And we forget because the experience of language is now so all-encompassing. It is the ocean we float in each moment, the clothes we wear, the very air we breathe. It has even infiltrated the realm of sleep. Meditation on pure sensation offers the only remaining glimpse, a way to see through this pervasive medium. Ironically, I find myself crafting this reminder using the very ‘stuff’ I’m trying not to lose myself within.

    Language, it seems, has also claimed sovereignty over our emotional landscape. Our feelings often arise from how deeply we immerse ourselves in its narratives and structures. While a ‘pure’, non-symbolic emotional state might theoretically exist, I suspect it’s now so thoroughly intermingled with language that differentiating it becomes nearly impossible—at least, until one grows accustomed to extended periods of being ‘language-free’ (a state one might also call ‘thoughtlessness’).

    During those brief moments when the language of words pauses or diminishes, a visual symbolic language often takes its place. Interpretation then feels automatic, instantaneous—much like the sounds we hear without conscious effort.

    The idea behind the Vipassana-style abandonment of symbolic processing isn’t to kill the mind. Rather, it’s to generate a sense of utter freedom from the cages of symbolic orientation—a system which, knowingly and unknowingly, operates as the most complex, interconnected mechanism for the control and management of human beings.

    Yet, this glimpse of how utterly free we truly are does not shatter the symbolic order once and for all. It cannot, because our very identity is composed of the same building blocks that function as crucibles of power dynamics and control within the larger, interconnected symbolic fabric. As one might ask: “Can a part of the set, whose whole definition is that it is part of that set, escape the set?”

    And so, this potential for freedom is often framed as destruction—as the death of the idea of self.

    I feel the only way forward is to play with it—to engage in an infinite game that never reaches a final closure, but instead enables a dance that makes one feel profoundly alive. This isn’t about subjugation, but about an acceptance of this symbolic Other, and a realization that we all possess the means to rehash and redefine the language and symbols. Through this play, we can spark countless rebirths of our idea of self, our identities, the very stories that shape who we think we are, how we feel, and how we interact with our fellow symbolic meat puppets.

  • Motivation is hard

    It’s quite likely that my internal mindset is painting over my world view on this topic, but lately it appears to me that a lot of people in my generation are struggling with motivation. Everyone I speak to on this topic starts off with a list of projects that they feel passionate about, an outcome that they do desire to achieve, but in the same breath they drop hints around the lack of sufficient drive and motivation to actually work towards these goals meaningfully.

    I think sometimes our ability to visualize and imagine the end goal in high fidelity is a cause for lower motivation instead of generating it. It feels like the mind is sufficiently satisfied by the imaginary achievement of the goal, and the value of achieving the outcome in reality holds lower meaning in the light of this fiction. Yes, it is a form of existential crisis where the value of achieving anything in particular is put under a sweep of the ‘so what?’ inquiry.

    The only solution that I have come up with (besides abandoning the pursuit of the goal all together, which is a non-solution) is to consciously stop over visualization of what it would feel like to have achieved the goal. I do this by catching myself daydreaming incessantly about the outcome, reminding myself that this is a form of compulsive and addictive behavior, and then turning my mind towards contemplating the act of working towards the goal. Yup, it’s the good old ‘enjoy the journey without worrying about the outcome’ that does the trick.

    The need for motivation reduces significantly in this approach, since you only need enough to get started. And guess what, if you have good discipline built around getting started, a lot of motivation comes along for the ride while you are on the journey.

  • Things that I have not said

    “Time’s a circumference

    Whereof the segment of our station seems

    A long straight line from nothing into naught.

    Therefore we say “progress,” “infinity”

    Dull words whose object

    Hangs in the air of error and delights

    Our boyish minds ahunt for butterflies.

    For aspiration studies not the sky

    But looks for stars; the victories of faith

    Are soldiered none the less with certainties,

    And all the multitudinous armies decked

    With banners blown ahead and flute before

    March not to the desert or th’ Elysian fields,

    But in the track of some discovery,

    The grip and cognizance of something true,

    Which won resolves a better distribution

    Between the dreaming mind and real truth.

    I cannot understand you.

    ‘Tis because

    You lean over my meaning’s edge and feel

    A dizziness of the things I have not said.”

    – Trumbull Stickney’s ‘The Soul of Time’

    I discovered this poem around four years ago, and it did make me feel dizzy from the lack of complete understanding that eluded me. I re-read it recently and let my intuition lean over the edge once again.

    Here is how my mind deconstructed the poem initially:

    • The mind perceives time due to the constantly changing contents of our consciousness. Everything is seemingly changing into something else as seen via this arrow of time, which only points in one direction. This is what Stickney calls the ‘segment of our station’.
    • Based on our conditionings, we classify a certain category of change as ‘progress’. Progress can be only be defined on a finite time scale, as we traverse our segment of time. At an infinite time scale (or a time scale that is beyond our mind’s imagination), life starts from nothing and goes back to ‘naught’.
    • The discrimination of our mind makes us look only at the bright stars of progress, against a sky of ever changing things. Our mind’s ‘aspirations’ make us forget the sky in which these stars shine forth and grab our attention.
    • Certainties declared and promised by various belief systems (logic positivism, science, mathematics, religions, spiritual practices and methodologies) are what champions their faith. All believers are inherently seeking something true, and these belief systems help them march on this journey. All seekers are driven by this deep desire to ‘discover’ the eternal Truth. A Truth that nihilates all their seeking and desires. This final and ultimate desire is the desire to be desire-less.

    ****

    This particular poem reads a lot like an English translation of Upanishads that I’m currently reading. One of the passages that I particularly liked, which is relevant to this poem:

    “You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

    [Brinhdaranyaka Upanishad]

    Stickney was a student of Hindu scriptures and studied Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads in details. From his Wikipedia page:

    He wrote there two dissertations, a Latin one on the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, and the other on Les Sentences dans la Poésie Grecque d’Homère à Euripide. The latter is openly indebted to The Birth of Tragedy and to Stickney’s study of the Bhagavad Gita under the tutelage of Sylvain Lévi.[

    The core structure via which he reaches the final line of the first stanza is quite remarkable. Starting with the passage of time as the root illusion in which we seem to be trapped, he catches hold of other key illusions such as progress, aspirations, victories, certainties and ends by pointing out to the reader that the real ‘grip’ that we are under is our deep, driving desire to realize the ultimate Truth.

    The line about ‘better distribution’ between dreaming mind and real truth is worth lingering on. The reign of mind that human civilization is currently under conjures up all the illusions mentioned above. Most of that reign is concerned with phantom goals and desires that will turn out to be nothing but distractions that mind threw up for you to keep you ignorant of the Truth. But a small set of those same goals will lead to paths such as ‘seeking enlightenment’, where the seeker rejects almost all the distractions, to surrender to this final distraction. This can be called a better distribution from a practical sense of how to lead one’s life, a sort of a truce between your mind and your True nature.

    Stickney knew that a lot of readers will utter in their minds – “I can’t understand you”. In some sense the poem ends with the first stanza. But is it possible to take one last crack at trying to explain what can never be explained with words?

    ****

    Poetry is a great vehicle for spiritual musing, because it can create a negative space from the explicit meaning of the words as they flow together. The juxtaposition teases a range of interpretations and the reader’s creativity fills this negative space. The reader becomes entangled with the poem, and intertwined with the author’s creativity.

    Stickney is trying to point out to the reader that the so called meaning of his words have a natural limit. The medium cannot truly describe the medium in which and out of which it emerges in the first place. A part cannot show you the whole that it is a part of (unless you see the part as a fractal). Language cannot ever describe the place it comes from. One has to go beyond this edge of meaning and feel the Truth experientially, rather than understanding intellectually.

    The negative space of the ‘things I have not said’ is yet another pointer, just like language. It points to the Truth that is beyond words. Once you touch this Truth , albeit for a brief moment, it will leave you feeling dizzy. And once you get comfortable with this dizziness, you will be truly ready to take the leap into the abyss of Truth.

    ###

    [This post originally appeared on my substack]

  • Empty Set

    A root ‘why’ question that you can infinitely regress to is ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’

    One of the most widely accepted ‘answer’ to this question is the Anthropic principle , which in simple terms can be stated as: There is something rather than nothing because only when there is something this question can be asked in the first place. This something has given rise to an intelligence in the universe that can pose such a question. Another way to put this is: we see this something and the so called ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe because life as we know it could not have evolved in any other set of circumstances.

    A lot of philosophers and physicists balk at this answer, since it eradicates any need for further inquiry into the question. Nonduality is also assumed to be, by the mind, a similar ‘cop out’ on trying to really answer the question. I have personally witnessed a lot of people frown when the conversation reaches a point where someone utters:

    ‘Things just are.’

    ‘I am’.

    ‘It all is just a happening.’

    In this post, I’ll try and use a logical structure to basically say the same thing, but hopefully present a more ‘satisfying’ answer to the mind.

    ****

    First up, let’s understand a term called ‘primitive notion’ that is key to the whole body of mathematics. Here is how Wikipedia defines the term:

    A primitive notion is a concept that is not defined in terms of previously-defined concepts. It is often motivated informally, usually by an appeal to intuition and everyday experience.

    For example, in contemporary geometry, point, line, and contains are some primitive notions. Instead of attempting to define them, their interplay is ruled (in Hilbert’s axiom system) by axioms like “For every two points there exists a line that contains them both.

    And here are two key examples of primitive notion that are relevant to the analogy that I’ll be building below:

    Set theory: The concept of the set is an example of a primitive notion. As Mary Tiles writes: [The] ‘definition’ of ‘set’ is less a definition than an attempt at explication of something which is being given the status of a primitive, undefined, term. As evidence, she quotes Felix Hausdorff: “A set is formed by the grouping together of single objects into a whole. A set is a plurality thought of as a unit.”

    Naive set theory: The empty set is a primitive notion. To assert that it exists would be an implicit axiom.

    Now let’s consider a set S of all possible Objects, Processes and Concepts defined as follows:

    S ε  {O, P, C}

    where:

    Objects: Whatever your mind labels as it perceives via the sensory apparatus of the five senses and thought. O ε {sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes, thoughts and the infinite combination of these internal and external perceptions}

    Processes: State changes that appear to be an event in time. P ε  {Bodily and mental functions, aging, sunrise, …}

    Concepts: Laws, theories, explanations, definitions, language, logic. C ε {Laws of thermodynamics and energy conversation, general relativity, evolution, natural selection, Choice, Desire, set and number theory, axioms, primitive notions….}

    Note the inter-relatedness of these three elements of S. Some Concepts are set of Processes that talk about Objects. Some Processes are set of Objects that change and are explained via a Concept. And since both Concepts and Processes have names, and are perceived, labelled and categorised by your mind, they are all Objects as well.

    This inter-relatedness makes the differentiation almost trivial , but the point of defining such a set is to point you to this subtle fact: Your whole experience of consciousness is basically S ε {O,P,C}, whereas consciousness itself  is the raw awareness that contains these. 

    Symbolically, consciousness is the brackets { } that contain everything that can be talked or thought about. These curly brackets of Awareness contain and enable everything that we perceive.

    This empty set of pure Awareness is a primitive notion of everything that is. To assert that it just is, is an implicit axiom of reality.

    Primitive notions are bedrock to all rational and scientific thought. If you believe in mathematics and if you have ‘faith’ in the truth of its primitive notions, how can the primitive notion of consciousness be treated differently?

    ****

    When the bomb of nonduality was first detonated in my mind around a decade ago, the fallout was wide. It look a long time to pick up the pieces and try and see the whole. One of the natural questions that the mind throws up in this journey is:

    “So what should I ‘do’ with this deep realization?”

    Imagine for a moment that ‘you’ have a choice between picking being identified with S ε {O,P, C} OR the the empty set {}. What would you choose?

    The Concept of choice and an individual who is making the choice is of course contained in ‘C’ itself to begin with, so what we are really asking is : Can an element of set ever become aware of the set in which it is contained? To be even more precise – Can a part ever realise the whole that contains it?

    This question is behind the entire enterprise of illusory spiritual seeking that has goals such as enlightenment. The thing that is doing the seeking (the person/mind) is necessarily going to be caught in this act forever.  To be what the seeking is trying to be, it needs to paradoxically stop seeking in the first place.

    Osho talks about the same things from the perspective of effort. He says that in the initial stages of spiritual seeking, a lot of effort will be put by an individual, and it is very much required. Think of it as laying the ground work and foundation for the eventual giving up of all effort. A point will come when no more effort will be required, because the empty set will make itself known when all effort drops away. (We all are this empty set every night during deep sleep, but there is no memory of it for our minds to refer to. Remember, memory is also something that is within the set ‘P’ of Processes).

    So how can one ‘choose’ to be the empty set? By dropping all effort and seeking. Let the entire process of cosmic evolution that is burning like a fire within you reveal itself to your Awareness as an undeniable evidence of your true nature – a cosmic process that is happening on its own.

    Our minds have made us deeply believe that choosing {O,P,C} is the ‘right’ or natural way of being. Of course the mind will choose something that ensures its own survival. It is after all a product of arguably the most complex natural selection process know to itself.

    Falling back to the source, this Great nothingness, is our eventual destiny anyway. The second law of thermodynamics guarantees this state of high disorder and randomness where complex ordered life form will have to expend an energy that is greater than all the available energy to continue existing. That is when the process of evolution comes to a definite end. If you do not like this line of argument, just look at your own life. You will die one day and your body-mind implementation will come to an end. You return to the nothingness and become the empty set. So why not touch it time to time while you are within the set?

    ****

    [This post originally appeared on my substack]