Untitled

Show but Please Tell

I read the Brothers Karamazov again. Published in 1880 it is still great reading. Maybe it will feel like you know much of what he has to say but that is because he said the nearly one hundred fifty years ago. The engineer turned author, philosopher and in a way mystic wrote phenomenal novels exploring the depths of human wretchedness. He does not mince. Nor does he add any sugar topping on the…

The Writer’s Block. Again.

The Block Every person, woman, child or man, who has ever written more than a word in this particular life know with pain the phenomenon called fondly and in fear, the writers block. Words flow from your pen or finger tips onto the computer like water from a broken dam and then suddenly with no warning they stop. Period. You can try anything you like, including self punishment of every…

Writing: the art not the science.

How do you write? What do you write? Where do you begin? Most important of all, why do you write? The How? The when? The where? The Why? Let me begin with the philosophical question first. Why does a sane person write what a few years later they might see as drivel or gems? Much of what we write is, honestly, drivel, not holy text to preserve for all time. It may not seem like drivel Grade X to…

I should have said self first. Because traditionals started as self. Only, they forgot that. I read that about 130 million books have been published to date. Correct me, somebody. 129,864,880 total books according to Google books as taken from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85305/how-many-books-have-ever-been-published. That is still far short of the total population of the world at 7.9…

The gods are listening, my children. They permeate everything, you, me, the stars, the dark matter, everything. To you. Your fears and anxieties. Go without fear.

The Matha, the Mother, was a very special woman for both Prema and Kumar. She, the Matha or Mother, was a devotee of Sri Ram. She had turned to the mystic ways of an ascetic early in her life. As she would say, I do not know any other life. I can understand your problems, my children, but I stand by the side. Observing, as an emissary of our Lord Ram. I am the incarnation of Matha Sabari, sishya…

And he created God in his own image.

There are more religions on this earth than you could count on your fingers. On both hands and I am quite certain both feet as well. I all these multitudes of religions God is the central theme. The edifice of the religion is built around that principal idea. I all but a few of them the theory is that humans are created after the archetype of God himself. There may be many Gods or only one. But…

Billions of years ago a serendipitous flash of lightning hit a biobroth somewhere and a self replicating molecule took life. It divided and over unimaginable length of time became humans. I was taught this and I see no reason yet not to believe in it. This process of evolution is the most basic biological evolution. Like developing lungs and getting rid of the web on a frog leg by apoptosis. A…

Once every hundred years or so a genuinely crazy nut takes birth and changes everything. Leonardo of Vinci was such a creature. I suppose very few of these aberrations survive long enough to reach where their potential would eventually have taken them. And very few of them inhabit a population sufficiently open to new visions, instead of burning them to ashes. But some do. And then we get ideas…

The guy with the big G. God. Quite difficult to get along with, because of his whims and quirks. Not the least of which is that he doesn’t have a feedback mechanism. Like, if something goes wrong you don’t have way to let him know. You cannot even know if he is aware of the mess his investments on earth are in. War, Politcal imbalances, Covid. You name it. As the creator and sustainer of this…

Are humans obsolete ?

The answer is a sad yes. Not immediately perhaps but sooner than later there will be no need for humans except for very specific purposes. It does not require a rogue asteroid to cause an extinction event. With diligence we can extinguish ourselves. We are doing this right now with no thought about it all. Don’t look at the sky and worry about the asteroid. We don’t need it. Considering the…

Seriously, am I real.

My post on the creation of the universe and my role must have sounded presumptuous. It was meant to. I have been reading books and blogs detailing the role of consciousness in reality. I have read that life arose in this universe because life chose to arise and kind of created a universe suitable for itself. Come on! Do independent states of reality for each person? For each animal, bird and…

Did I create the Universe?

How could the universe exist if I close my eyes, shut myself up in a dark room and do not think about anything! The time was when people had debates on the sound of a tree falling in a forest far away from anything with ears. How can there be storms on Jupiter when I know nothing about it. Is the universe the same when I wake up from my sleep. Or does reality change with my wake-sleep rhythm or…

The amazing tale of Publishing

You can write all you want. As much as you want. Until it gets published you might as well never have written it. So what is new. Actually nothing. Publishing has remained steadfastly moored to traditions rather like fossil fuels. The Gutenberg press was the first revolution to hit the hand written word which in turn had dealt a body blow to the oral traditions. Imagine learning the entire vedas…

Yes I know it is a question that had troubled philosophers since ancient times. The answer to this question has been remarkably similar among most cultures. Plato felt it is not possible to tell dreams from reality. Ancient Indian sages said reality is not what you see or experience. Those are the workings of Maya, a camouflage created by god to make us feel live. When you outgrow these…

This is not about the metaphysical self although it could well be. Traditions are meant to be broken. As Bertrand Russel said it is the fate of all revolutionaries to found new orthodoxies. Every traditional publisher started as a beginner if I may say so and some grew up to become the giants we know today. They control publishing. They build reputations and destroy them. Of course, after taking…

Hell as a construct to frighten people has worked very well over the ages. Images of fire burning forever casting baleful reddish hue and images of people burning and screaming in agony forever haunt the collective mind. May be it has served the purpose of keeping law and order in the medieval period in Europe. That was much before the exquisite tortures of modern technology created a no-touch…