The Tell-Tale Brain

                               


I watch this COSMOS series by Carl Sagan whenever I am free and in some curious mood. yesterday I was watching its episode on 'The persistence of memory'. That made me wonder, again, on how our brain works, what is this self, and how, through it, science and spirituality are connected.
He showed the anatomical structure of brain and its evolution and its various parts, and showed what function is associated with each part. Apart from Cerebral cortex other parts of our brain are quite the same as brains of reptiles or lower mammals. He showed how they are associated with tendencies like aggressiveness, territoriality, jealousy etc. so these features are quite deeply ingrained in us. they follow it, so do we. now I wondered what separates us from them. Carl Sagan said its the 'Thought' that's characteristic to us and its produced by cerebral cortex which stores memory, synthesize and analyse it and finally produce something called thought from it.
But I wonder what is thought. in other animals, whatever comes in their brain they immediately act upon it. if due to some outer sensation their part of brain producing aggression activates, then their body will immediately react accordingly i.e. aggressively. they cannot 'think' over this aggressiveness they are feeling; they must act under it...they are bound to act; they are slaves of their brain. But what happens in us? aren't we too slaves? suppose our brain also produce same aggressiveness due to same outer sensation. Now what will we do? In us this aggressive feeling will act on the memory cells of cerebral cortex and those cells which are related to current outer sensation will activate. then these activated cells will be "analysed" by elaborate network of cerebral cortex and this analysis manifests itself as a thought. But then what? who will "see" this thought and act on it? where am "I" in this scene? I wonder what is self. this question must be answered if i am to reach anywhere. A thought is a kind of second action. body is no longer the only way to act now. that aggressiveness  indeed has done its part by producing a thought. its like we are divided into two selfs now - the body and the thought. or you can say that thought is preliminary to body, a kind of its assistant.
But that's not the answer. what is the self that is experiencing that thought, that analysis. who is judging that thought and drawing out future plans based on it. Is it all brains doing? its too complicated, too interconnected. why will brain do so? why, and more importantly how, will it add an extra step in its working i.e. a judger, a self? why don't it simply do the analysis and act accordingly? why bring a judger, a future planner? can't it plan future itself based on that analysis? or do the self simply easy up its task in doing so? you know, I do have its answer but I somehow don't want to accept that (don't know why). V.S. Ramachandran did indeed pointed out in 'the tell-tale brain' that self is an illusion produced by brain so that it can work smoothly. its a kind of imaginary focal point of all the doings of brain. it thinks it is doing everything although in reality brain is doing them independently. but i don't accept it by heart somehow. my own self don't allow me to perhaps :-P. I must work it out before i can step any further or draw out any conclusion.
to be continued....

Decoding Suffering

How can one think rightly if his mind is not free. its a vicious circle, a very dark, violent, hellious, inescapable circle. suppose one's mind has changed somewhat (which keeps happening from time to time). now there will originate conflict b'coz of differences of past and present. this conflict will lead to suffering. he will suffer and will think for ways to get out of this suffering. but nothing will work since the origin of change of mind is not in our hand. and so things won't work out and he will thus suffer more because of this frustration of why am i not getting out of suffering while i am putting this much effort. this will flood his mind with fears and passions and desires. and in this way his mind gets bounded and no longer remains free the way it was before change. now because of these passions filling his mind he won't be able to think rightly.  the more he will think of ways to get out the more he will sink. ah! what pity. what viciousness and violence! Is there no way out? is one doomed to suffer?
for solution we must take a deeper look at its origin. why did his mind change? well, in my experience i have found that here there is no control of me. mind seems to have its own mind. it changes all by itself. perhaps based on some other laws like astrology, or perhaps not. But the change is there, and it can occur anytime. that's for sure. Now why does conflict arise because of this change? here may lie the solution because after conflict suffering is bound to come and with that everything else. why can't one accept change and MOVE ON? if he could do so, perhaps he will never suffer.
How does one suffer? what is this suffering? to tell you frankly, a suffering that can be put in proper names and statement is a very superficial suffering. a very childish, on the surface, Hippocritic suffering. But this is what is visible to us. we can think in words only. so we take it for true and keep working on it. have you ever tried to FEEL your suffering? not to put it in words or its causes but just to  feel suffering alone? here lies its reality. you will find that you are not suffering from this or that, but there is just suffering itself. a cause unto itself. it is a mind filled with trouble, a chaotic mind. that's what suffering is -- a chaos.
Now, how to get out of all this?.. from this suffering? What happened with me this time is what I am going to write now.
My mind is in chaos. I am in chaos because I am this and I want to be that. I am split. I am spending my days in suffering. Thinking ways to get out of all this. but none is working. some may console me for some time or work temporarily for some time but again and again it comes down to suffering. so that's how my days are passing. Now, what if you suddenly one day feel quite at ease. what if you feel like suddenly a load has been removed from your head and you are feeling light after a long time. Has this ever happened to you? maybe you are visiting a new place, or have just finished a light, heartly chit-chat with your loved one or dear friend. have you felt relieved at such occasions...a temporary forgetfulness of a heavy load of daily thinking pattern for some moments? It may happen at such moments. MAY. I am not saying that it WILL happen at such moments or ONLY at such moments. no. I just wanted to give a kind of hint of how it feels when it happens.  In my case I was attending a seminar. there was a kind guy teaching there. very honest and frank kind. so I enjoyed the whole time of seminar, not by its content but by the way he was teaching..his voice and all that. and when I came out (I was alone as none of my friend agreed to wait for it) i was walking down the stairs and then towards the water-cooler. at this time I suddenly reflected on myself. and I found that i was not worried. I was not in any troubled state. before this, my past usually used to come over me to give me all kind of worries and anxieties the moment i used to be alone. but not this time. the past was not over me. I was in present. and i was at ease. and in all my journey of one and half hour through bus i just kept reflecting on myself and comparing my present state with past states. and it lead to a kind of bliss in all over my head and mind. I was feeling very light and happy.
This was personal experience, but what had happened was that I got out of my troubled state. so easily, so in a smooth fashion.
But now, after 2 days or so, I can again see it coming back. all that is again taking branches in my mind. and perhaps I will soon fall back in same old trap and circle. the fiber of net maybe new (or maybe not) but the trap is same. not I, but my mind. but since I am identified with my mind, I will too.

What I learned from all this is that Truth is neither in worrying nor in not worrying, since both are temporary states. Why at one time mind is troubled and in peace at another time? why are its states so temporary? whatever the reason. but its not its temporariness that leads to suffering. its my playing the role, my identification with the state. mind changes, and I gets changed with it. almost immediately I take up the new roles given to me and starts playing again. Don't become the player again. remain detached, don't get carried away. none of your doing matters. it doesn't better things up, at best it only worsens them. guard yourself.

"Be at peace Govinda, Be at peace."      -- from the movie 'Siddharta' 

Beyond Thought

Now I am gonna write it out publicly. Enough is enough.

The case is this:
I was on my holiday trip to Port Blair. We all were ready for the next event - seeing adivasis, cavemen. that day, before sitting in bus, my mood was somewhat (-ve) or sad. so in the initial journey one kind of thoughts were coming in mind ((-ve) type), and I was well applying reason and logic to extend and generalize them further to draw out some conclusions about Truth or Life. those conclusions were looking very right and true at those moments.
Now, as the journey proceeded, we were passing through a jungle. and seeing all the variety of beauty all around me my mood changed in pleasant and joyous..i.e. (+ve). after this (+ve) kind of thoughts started coming in mind; and again I applied logic and reason and drew out different conclusions about life and truth. and again, conclusions were looking very right and true at those moments.
So you see, conclusions about a thing depends mostly on one's mood, or better say, state of mind. You cannot find any fault in the logics applied in drawing out conclusions.  No, logic applied is always right. but still the conclusion is wrong and faulty. that's because its origin was faulty. its origin was impermanent.
the original, the initial thoughts didn't occur independently. they depend on state of mind. the kind of state your mind has, same kind of thoughts will originate from it, bathed in its color, its flavor  they can't be independent or pure. and so, can't be right.

so this is what I want to say: THOUGHTS ARE UNRELIABLE.

the case above is actually a very ordinary case. such a thing happens with everybody many times. that hum jaisa dekhenge jahan he waisa hi, the nature of world depends on how we see it. and this finding too is a very ordinary finding. But even after finding and knowing it conceptually, I somehow always get lost in its net.
Its not the first time I am finding this fact that thoughts are unreliable. I had strongly realized it when my state of mind went through a big change (circle of life). at that time also I saw strongly how all my thoughts, my ideals, my views, my sankalps..all these things which characterizes me and which I think I am, how strongly they depends on my state of mind. and how easily most of them got changed once my state of mind changed. But slowly slowly again new kind of thoughts started coming and new kind of views started becoming. and I was again lost in them, thinking them as so mine, so permanent, so true. And I again started working and efforting in the direction to try to grow and perfectize them, as if they are extremely important in my life. One (I) may easily waste weeks, months, years or even whole life in considering these thoughts as something very important and trying to develop them. these thoughts are very illusory, very mine looking, very close, very true looking.
Also the question comes - what else to believe, what else to follow, what else to seek if not my own thoughts? If my own thoughts are unreliable, what else to rely on? well, i have no answer to this question as per my experience. but in theory i may say that we should seek and rely on growth of our being, the real being, the real 'I'. that maybe of some real use, some real significance.

   

                                                     this is our guiding light!            

Poem of Meditation

Great things
happens in a way you never expect.
somewhere from nowhere
comes everything.
You try & try
but nothing happens,
because you try by mind.
and when it happens
its divine.
you see the foolishness of your trying
all the errors in your trying
and the reasons of non-working of trying.

Was reading Osho since long time
& trying to apply what he said
trying to "do" witnessing.
but it didn't happen
not at all.
correcting here and there,
but no, a big NO.

today, out of nowhere..
read an upanishad
and just after finishing it
trying to contemplate it
and draw out the conclusions
I was lost............
lost somewhere
lost in myself.
and perhaps lost in that which i was trying & trying earlier.
so childishly i was trying, i realized
so wrongly
so through mind.
and today,
it happened from inside.
i could easily see it
that it is happening through inside, not through mind.
& i was still contemplating that upanishad,
seeing the wrongness of my trying,
understanding what Osho meant,
& experiencing this unique, utterly unique experience,
all at the same time.

What was it?
perhaps this is what Osho calls meditation
& being at centre.
i was at my centre,
or atleast i was at a deeper level than mind.
i was experiencing great various feeling going through my head
sometimes rising, sometimes falling.
its still there.

I don't know if it is temporary or permanent
If i am changed temporarily or permanently
If tomorrow i will be the same person or a different person.
how hopely i hope it to be permanent
how lovingly i hope this,
To be atleast a little up from everyday misery
to go above this jewish mind, cunning, selfish mind
to go above fears of future
to go above guilts
to go above bondages of love of family.
i hope it is permanent
but even if it is temporary
i have learnt many things from it now:
that meditating through same mind is not meditating at all.
it will never succeed
because it is not even nearabout the real meditation.
real meditation is when you are at a deeper level than mind
when you are towards centre
when "trying" to witness is not there
because all trying is of mind.
Just sit, close eyes, & dive deep within your being
forget all about "ways" of meditation
dive absolutely suddenly
there are no levels of diving
dive immediately.
don't let mind decide how to witness, what to witness
don't think of anything at all
sit, close eyes and dive deep.
when you are at centre, not mind
you will yourself know it.
otherwise always remember you are at mind.



[ dated:26-10-2012
I actually wrote it all in my diary just after that experience, so that i don't completely forget it & may recall atleast the glimpses of it later in "normal" life. first ofcourse i intended to write in normal way, but found that utterly powerless. so i switched to my old friend - poetry. ]

Circle Of Life - Update

I would like to add some of my recent observations into 'Circle of life' post.
I was wondering why we are in a different mood each day. I mean when we (wherever i use 'we' consider it more 'I' than 'we', b'coz i observed it with myself only) get up in the morning it is like  a new day, a new feeling flows within us, a new mood. and its not always same. it keeps changing with mornings. sometimes we have same mood every morning for a cluster of days and sometimes it changes everyday.
Here I would like to add a recent experience of mine because that will make you understand what i actually want to say.
I have been reading Osho essentially since last 6  months. He talks about Meditation. Actually his core teaching is just meditation, i think. All else is circling around it. So i too started trying it. but couldn't really. i used to get tired; it used to more strain mind than calming it. I wasn't getting it, in short. He calls it a 'knack' to get what meditation is. But some time back, i had experienced something which i may really call meditation, b'coz it matched almost all characteristics Osho talks about of meditation. It was a VERY strange experience, something i had never experienced before. All trivial bodily pains disappeared, and my mind, or I, was on some 'other plane'...how else to define it i don't know b'coz i had never felt something like that before. before that, my back was etching, mosquitoes were irritating me...but during that all such things became unimportant. as if i am something else from the body.
anyways, after that experience i had got some idea what meditation is like. so i started to try it again and again how to get it again...i.e. how to become aware, b'coz meditation is nothing  but awareness (as Osho defines it); How to become aware of body and mind; how to feel separated from these two things and watch them. But now i comes to my point. I felt that I am not the same everyday, because someday i used to feel like that very easily, almost without effort and someday only frustrations was where i used to end even after much trying and efforting. Actually most of the days fall into second case with only some rare days into the first (like today). And second case too had many levels. someday i won't even try even if thought of it comes in mind, someday i would try only half-heartily, and someday i would try with much effort but to no result. Its not that i would try half-heartily because i wanted to; even if i wanted to give it full try it wouldn't come to be full...my full from inside used to prove only half outside.
What i want to say is that everyday we are different. or our states of mind are different. So it seems that the circle of life which i talked about 2 posts earlier applies to everyday level too. That on larger level produces more deeper impact and its time period is more. and this one of smaller level produces relatively smaller impacts of shorter duration. And applying Maths, it may be working on many more larger and smaller levels. Maybe the difference of ours in day and night may also be counted, but i won't apply that b'coz that may also be because of tiredness of whole day work too.
I was also wondering about on what factor these cycles depend. Does it has something to do with grah - planets i.e. astrology? Although I personally don't believe such things, but currently there is no other explanation.

What The *Bleep* Do We Know?

A few updates I today thought of in my universe theory. And this time it didn't came out of the blues; I had to work it out. But that too isn't entirely true. the original source was still outside. Actually today I was watching a science documentary - 'What the bleep do we know?' and its still only half watched, thanks to the Aircel downloading speed. But it was awesome. Exactly something like my own theory i.e. connection of quantum theory with spirituality.
tell you what, I don't know how but these senses and everyday life somehow always got catch me and get hold of me. I know they aren't truth but it seems just knowing is not enough at all. it is almost certainly clear to me now that all these mind things - fear, jealousy, anger, love, beauty.. all these are just temporary things. they aren't truth. one can change one's personality any time and can on and off any of them at will, only if one know that art. so such temporary things can't be truth. it is said that some are mind things and some are heart things. mind things are ones which we think and heart things are our feelings. but still ultimately they all originate from brain. they are not 'divine' characteristics i.e. characteristics of consciousness. but still i live in them almost all the time, gets completely lost in them, and, except times like now, treat them as complete truth. treating illusion as reality. perhaps that's why it is said by all the mystics down the ages - that we are 'asleep'. asleep because we can't see the falseness of all this illusion. we are fully engrossed in it.
But then, what is reality? What is truth?
certainly i don't know. but based on current scientific progresses it is confirm to me that whatever upto now we felt in our daily life, or whatever is told by religions, or by enlightened ones isn't TRUTH. either they are illusions (daily life) or they are ways to reach the truth. here i can realize the meaning of a sentence said by a zen master - 'finger pointing to the moon'. they are just showing us fingers. finger isn't moon itself. Sometimes Osho talks about sex and about how divine it is, and sometimes he himself criticizes it, calling it just a toy. and I think same is the case with what religions have taught down the ages about love towards god, devotion to god, praying, repenting, meditation. These are all ways to the truth. sometimes working sometimes not.
But then i was wondering how can all these ways work at all. Truth is one, so everything other than that must be illusion. look, love is illusion and i am living in illusion. so how can illusion work on illusion to create truth!

Anyway, it seems I have given a whole lecture. and that too unnecessarily. its of no use. I should come to the point worth pointing.
Buddha said I am pure awareness. who is the one sitting inside our head watching all the drama of thoughts and senses? who is that which you call 'I'? when i think about it i feel that it is not just all about the brain. brain is just processing incoming information. Who am I who is still experiencing or observing that processed information? Thus i am taking words of Buddha as granted, that 'I AM AWARENESS'. my real being is awareness. now according to quantum theory, a thing remains in its chaotic state as long as it is not observed by an observer. one can say that before an observer the thing was just not present at all, or the thing was everywhere. just nothing could be said said about it. but the moment observer came, it turned into something. so it is b'coz of the observer that the thing is present. Thus i can say that the observer is God since he is creating the object, or better say that he is giving it LIFE, intrinsic energy to exist. and perhaps that's why it is said in hindu scriptures that 'Tat twam asi'  - you are god, that god is inside you. because i am awareness i am observing things, thus they exist. i am creating the whole universe just by my presence. here i would like to add that although it is not said by science, i think that from its infinite possibilities the thing turns into one of them. but what determines in which one of them it will turn. i think it is determined by what kind of observer is observing it. so it is all observer's choice. he will see whatever he wants to see. so its again the same problem i discussed in my previous post, that there is no way for you to know how the other feels. its because he sees the universe in a different way than you. his whole universe is different from you. the similarities, like same newton's laws for both, arises because of similar evolution. if you have enough will you can change a rabbit into a duck :-P...and perhaps that's why they say that 'you are bounded. free yourself.' how are we bounded? we are bounded by our mind's conditioning, our hardwired prejudices of seeing things only in one way. perhaps through enlightenment we become free even from this bondage. i can't even visualize that!
Another thing i found was the answer to one of my questions i asked in previous post - why only we, the humans, can get enlightened? and the answer, i suspect, is BRAIN. A neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran in his book -'The tell-tale brain' showed that our brain creates an illusion of self. I am referring to a scientist because 'when a scientist proves it, it becomes a fact'. otherwise mystics have always said that the self, the ego is just an illusion...perhaps the biggest. thus our brain creates a false 'I' for us which we think is the true 'I'. now this creates a contrast...a contrast between true 'I' & false 'I'. although i am pure awareness, but I don't know that i am pure awareness. Osho explained it this way - that a fish can never know about the existence of water and that it is living in water, just because it has never known anything other than water. there is no contrast, nothing to compare with. but once you bring it out of the water then it will know about the existence and the importance of water. Thus our brain creates a contrast. although i am awareness, i can know it only when there is something i can compare it with i.e. a false awareness which the brain creates. No other thing in our universe, no other animal has this false sense of self. thus they can never know about the true one either. but we humans have. thus half job is done. by nature. But what about the other half. nature created a false self for us. but now we are so fully engrossed in it that take it for true. that's the whole effort of religions and enlightened ones, to make us aware of the true self.

So these are the two things i wants to add to my universe theory:
1. we are God. we create our own universe.
2. it is our brain that makes us special and puts us at the top of evolutionary table.

                                                  (best pic i could ever get! :-D)

Circle Of Life

It seems my days of "despondency & despair" are over. it also seems that its all controlled by mind and time. sometimes we are above our senses and feels like masters of senses, and sometimes we are below our senses and feels like slaves of senses. the former results in "good times" of our life and latter - "bad times" of our life. also called ups and downs. in bad times, when senses are above us, we (I) think that something is wrong outside or of our inabilities. but its all an interplay of mind and time. we can't do anything. it happens by itself. atleast in my case its all happening by itself.
in my "bad times" i kept on blaming either myself or my surrounding for the bad that was happening and kept on trying and trying and efforting, but in vain. it continued for almost 2 years. and now, since last few weeks, everything is looking fine. same surroundings, same my abilities but everything seems to have become OK by itself. and i am feeling happy and joyous again although i did nothing.


Perhaps we go on moving and running in these ups and downs all our life. it certainly seems better to remain stable rather than moving like a pendulum, if the resultant is same. only if we could achieve that stability.