Spirit. The formless bound in matter.

The spirit quivers like a flame. Formless, changing, moving, dancing. Matter is so solid, a life can hold a spirit if it dances, how can matter ever in its grid??

Sometimes one feels the visceral heart rending pain of the free flowing spirit when bound or tried to be gridded, in matter. Matter seems to snap to grid. Perhaps for matter read the mind. It grasps momentarily but all its efficiency of memory tries again to snap to grid the spirit. And then it cries. Because it is not so. It cannot be grasped in memory, in facts, in language, in matter. It can be just apprehended as ephemerally as life itself, lightly, it can only be lived. It exists only at the point of flow, the fount, the source. Beyond it matter and memory carry it in grids which is simply untrue. It cries and cries and cries. And in perhaps that moment of crying, at the source of living, finds itself again.

Anaximander

At each age our thinking evolves a little bit further. At the earliest times, perhaps an awakening, or dawn of awakening of consciousness, the world taken as given with starry skies above, the roots below, the nature which gave sustenance as well as threats to existence. The mind grapples with the 'known' and understood reality and all the reality that still defies understanding, and tries to put the life amidst all that in some narrative coherence with some meaning, justification and eventual fairness. 

Then came the age of believing the centrality of earth, and the roving heavens around us. Perhaps aided by more observation, a culmination of thinking, a cumulative chain of thoughts and observation reaching a tipping point, trying to fit the known and unknown in a new model of reality.

Then came more observation, more instruments, printing press, a frothing and networking of knowledge, a bigger reality revealed like those squares in minesweeper. And now we have an entirely different model of the universe from a few hundred years ago. 

I just wonder what the next few hundred years will reveal about the known and unknown in our universe.

*

It makes philosophic sense in one way to put the earth/us in the center of the things. We see the world from our heads, the reality exists as a construction of our perception. Time exists because we are here to feel it pass. 

At some point, my personal experience reveals all time as being eternally present. That all that is to be is there already. We just roll through it, live through it. And if you wander down those paths, a huge veil of confusion, clutter and random binds of your own nurturing are thrown at you. As if the mind on reaching some invisible no-go zone reacts against itself. What sets this no-go zone? Knowing the world we do, our matrix, our model of living, and knowing, there'll be little value if everything is known. I do not wish to know. I do not know what leads future to my head in the present. Is it not wishing to know that throws up the resistance with its own sand and soil thrown over its own eyes? My fight against myself because something random has unclipped in this shabby universe.

And I get all emotional. I wouldn't call it shabby, even though nothing seems to respond to my cries of help, I tend to agree with Anaximander and his mercies of time. I am too little, too insignificant a thing to be bothered with. A transient drop of water in the ocean of existence. Gone before the ocean even begins to suspire. Who or what will match my rythm or wavelength. It is not even a message in a bottle which survives time and waves, it is a faint whisper to the stars, a wave or ripple I send out which amidst all the noise of this world and the emotional tugs and messages to heavens will get lost in the crowd. 

So it is momentary, the wave of emotion passes. What stays is this wonder. This wonder at the universe and a sort of frustration with myself. Can deal better with all this. Can write better sentences. Can have better attitude. Can have more patience to hold in tears which come bubbling out given continuouusly scraped heart. Can just decide, as they say, to be like this, and not like anything else - just a good attitude, sunny disposition, and cheerful smile. But where does one put away the tears? By just skipping across the river on the stones of good cheer, ignore the river completely. When completely alone, perhaps dip into it, but leave a part of you outside to pull you out.

*

Anaximander: “Whence things have their origin, thence also their destruction happens according to necessity; for they give justice and recompense to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.”

I love the words the ordering of time. He begins with apeiron, and then one can see him tracing reality arising from eternity and in time, falling back to eternity. The imbalance arises as things separate, try to balance each other, I like to think more as a dance step and merging and flowing into each other that needs to be mastered with restraint rather than any two separate elements separating. It is one, yet it parts with itself, for play perhaps. And meanwhile, for us, in our time scale, we live out a small portion which just happens to be a pixel, never whole that way, but in itself, the reality is whole, and everything is sorted in time. The only problematic factor is the ego, the I, the self, which feels. Perhaps that's why the ancients suggest its abosrption, its dissolution, its assimiliation into something of a bigger scale or its letting go. It is too much to ask the universe to bend itself to a little pixel. the way a human body cannot bow to one atom of its existence, or one quark. Too much. Scale issues, plane issues. So it is simpler to let go of the ego, any expectations, and dance to the rhythm and flow of the universe. Perhaps if any resolution, or wholeness, it lies that way.

As to the narrative resolution, that is just our mind, at this plane of existence. One needs to transcend this plane, and I don't know how, and it cannot be explained in the same grammar of living as this plane, the way one state changes. One is physically different chemically before a workout and after a workout. One's thoughts are different. So perhaps - this, that we do not control ourselves. We can just about help shape our environment, our chemicals to an extent. And they all together play on us and create the internal scenery which lead us to different kinds of actions. 

Sometimes it is words that help shape the environment, and hence hence hence their magic. Like Anaximander opens this in me. I didn't wake up knowing or planning it. It is his magic. And one cannot plan or control with these things. One just about learns to dance. 

Do we ever approach truth?

 Do we ever approach truth? Beholden to moments, we transcribe the moment's truth, meanwhile we change, and reality itself shifts and changes. What then is truth? 

Perhaps it is found only in true dynamism and motion, being true to the moment in front of us, with eye on a distant horizon which perhaps has little chance of shifting in our known experience or the world's history's known experience. The few ideals of excellence, beauty and goodness, and best efforts always. 

It is not a homily but my thoughts are towards the end often directed to a personal action, or a way to be or see the world.

A brief instance of time on this earth

For a brief instance this life, this time on Earth, then it passes. We are born into an established pattern of kingdoms, countries, cities, customs, we live either within these or carving our own spaces in these broader structures, and then we pass. Earth goes on. The cities too keep going on, and countries too for a while, for a few hundred or thousand years, then it too passes. Like sand dunes, forming, reforming this backdrop of life.

Where do we sit? At this wonder at this fleeting period. As Fry says, everything is alive with a fire. That we are here is wondrous. That the world is what it is, it is. That we are given instances to keep beginning ourselves again and again. That in outward circles from self, we try to make sense of the world and per our capacity and understanding, help it along a bit. The world will carry on inspite of us, it lives its own life, of which we are like an individual cell to human body. So as well, while we are here, smile, love, laugh, spread good cheer...

It all passes fairly quickly. This brief candle...

Standing on shoulders

I read about the Nobel prize 2025 in medicine. On immune-system research.

Bit by bit over years scientific knowledge & understanding is built. Every new generation stands on shoulders.

A lifetime is devoted to extend or to gain a few drops of new understanding. Over lifetimes, these drops build up the fountain at which every new generation learns. Slow process this learning but a work across generations. Every new set of people learns what has been understood so far, and then builds on that understanding. Which becomes the new ground to learn.

Guess it is a worthy pursuit to devote oneself to see what the ages have seen over time, and see whether standing on those shoulders, if you can see something else. Perhaps leave it as a note or two for those coming after.

It passes

 

The grammar of reality

The logic of stars

And this human life

It passes, it passes, like froth on the sea-side sand

The sea persists

The stars persist

The sun persists

We pass

Life persists

Yet I pass

And why must it be so

Is not the question that has any answer ever

Perhaps the place of no questions

Is home

Perhaps the place where no answers are sought

Is home

Perhaps in forgetting, in absorption

Is home

Knowing is alien, half, confusing, partial, a process, a step, not home

Home is unknowing, forgetting, dissolving,

Rendered in the grammar of the stars, the logic of reality

This I, which is just a temporary placeholder

It passes, it passes, it passes.

Reading David Chalmers' Reality+

There are two questions. a) Whether we are in a simulation or not? And more importantly, b) does it really matter?

As to the first, that there is any reality at all, is perhaps a question that the simulators, if they are evolved enough, and are seekers of truth ask themselves. And hence by making a simulation, and seeing it evolve in timescales otherwise inaccessible to a life-form, they seek the answers. I think a simualtion is a natural response, a logical way to seek answers for finite life-form facing time-scales beyond the ken of its living scale. 

But, if the simulated wonders about the same question, it perhaps can mean two things – the simulation is not varied enough – coincidences, probability, math, there is perhaps a limitedness of the number of languages that the simulated even wonders about it. Something to do with opening assumptions of simulations, perhaps a few more factors are needed. Or perhaps infinity is the simulator's dream as well. That just points to the obsession of the simulator. 

We perceive the world through our head, we know it only through our insides, be it chemical signals or light and wave signals. We know nothing more. So if we are asking the question, perhaps we are in a simulation. It is anyway a simulated perceived world in the head, never known. As to in whose simulation, perhaps it is a deeper question for them, for the simulators. Our being matters little but our questions are perhaps the same as theirs.

*

The more important question is, does it really matter? From the perspective of a living being, the question about simulation is the question about mechanics of the world, about science, existence, chemistry, astrophysics, quantum. Science itself shows that this is all appearance. But it doesn’t change the basic fact of living. There is no decent exit except what provided in the natural course of birth and death. Meanwhile, my personal take is whatever it is, it is quite wonderful. Yes, it is not always great and there are pains and aches from life sometimes, there is unpleasantness, at times there’s voices, there’s the wonder at the sanctity itself. But still still still, being here is plenty. That we can begin where we are and try to make the best of whatever seems to be on the table in front of us is good enough. Perhaps that is a personal take. Perhaps yes, we are simulated. Either way, it is wonderful that there seems to be this something. It is a brief candle, this life, will pass before you know it. Meanwhile, have fun and do well and good. Take care of yourself and your surrounds, in expanding circles that you can sustain. Be well, do well. Enjoy the wonder of the being when you are quiet enough to do so. There's just this inner flame, the fountain, irrespective of the number of nested simulations there might be. There’s little else.

Some notes on existence

Earth is life’s starship, piggybacking on solar system to ride across the universe. Gathering the momentum of galaxy, the sun moves eons in its dance around the galactic core. Life piggybacks and takes a trip around the universe on this starship called Earth.

*

The individual has such a small scale compared to that of life. And life, that to the universe. It is like sharing context of a microbe with a human being. How long can you hold the attention? Many microbes can come and go meanwhile. Individual there has little value in our context. So we in the context of universe. But to us, our individuality is the whole universe apprehended. So paradoxical. 

*

Detachment of a God. 9 million species, and many more unique instances in each. Each a growing changing being seeing the world through its unique vantage point. An individual universe still. Framing it through reason and logic is perhaps seeing it partially. There is as many levels of reason and then there is a whole. Windows to the world. Perhaps life is God's windows to the world - rippled mirrors, each reflecting a little view of the universe, and in its entirety perhaps a little mroe. Still life itself is of one nature. Perhaps God's nature is a complement. All such wonders. If there be something divine, it is above us, beyond us, yet within us.

*

As to mirror, perhaps a connection with what is perhaps a God, I like to think it is an ongoing conversation, a discovery even for a God, who likes to contemplate. Perhaps they let something hidden, just a little thing and converse with that little thing - they can encompass all the rest of the universe, and that little thing its own little ground, and then they converse. For God, there is all to tell, for the little thing there is a unique pov and all to know...both knowing each other, learning, growing. I like to think, language is that sphere in which things meet, things meet that do not belong to same scale and hence share little, but meet - like we meet people from 2nd century in a book, so perhaps one meets God in thought and language. Beyond that, in the logical world, we are such little specks of dust, however one fits infinity in it, except in thought?

*

Because at the end of the day, what does one monarch over? What do they even do? If you have the entire universe, perhaps you just wish for companionship and conversation and laughter to share it with? A sort of unknowing -learning -knowing - growing interplay between the divine and say, human, or perhaps life itself.

*

And as to the business of living:

I like to think of it as the concept of trinity mentioned in some Hindu cosmology. Three energies of God - creation, preservation and dissolution. I feel one can find oneself anchored in either of these three energies which are reflection of divine. Be it being inspired by something and thus led to action (creation), in preservation (this is the core function - human reflection is care of self and surrounds, in expanding circles), and dissolution (perhaps a dissolving of ego? of self? of absorption in something more than a self). So at the core, still the divine as a companion. And for the living blues, one can find the anchors in these three energies of divine - just tap into it. 

The individuality of art

Each of our likings, our preferences, affinities are so unique. In art too, what we create eventually is very personal. One can learn through the general, the world, the custom, the tradition, but eventually one gravitates to one's own inner sense of harmony wherever it aligns. As if from the depths of our braided genetic code, comes this journey through the generic to yet a very individual braiding with art. Art is perhaps where the genes find their external expression.

Does the gene exist for expression or for propagation? Or the best way to express is perhaps one of its key goals apart from the underlying goal of furthering existence. Existence itself is an expression then, and to express its core function. To further that expression to yet find newer, fuller, more efficient, more beautiful ways of expression, life's function and that becomes its form. Different forms and lives, different drafts of expression. Perhaps that keenest desire or hunger at our core, to give ourselves, to express, to formulate, to drip ourselves drop by drop in language, perhaps it has something to do with the way we are encoded. Doesn't it feel so?

In life that way utility and non-utility, form and function, the beautiful and the useful, art and work (living) thus combine so seamlessly. We, in our lives, keep struggling to find something similar in our created world, this harmony, but the world that the Creator created has found that golden point in life. And perhaps we too find it when we make some art - in making, in becoming, or in one of those creative energy, preservation energy and dissolution of ego functions. Perhaps.

Beyond words, knowing and unknowing

Words of duration and patience. Perhaps enduring is approaching-to, like in calculus, always approaching the perhaps perhaps truth. Everything else is relative, transient, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes appears good, sometimes not as much, yet, all that passes, only the truth endures and remains, and yet always a little beyond, always approaching. 

Given this brief life, hence to consider and be inspired by the best-in-class everywhere or something that can show the path to being better. Perhaps those who have journeyed deep to the most enduring bring back some notes from the source. Perhaps their thoughts. But to approach those too with a sort of mobile, dynamic grace. Believing and not believing. They show their relative notes. Just a directional, ballpark sense. 

Dilution of the word. Can’t hold the truth sometimes. Only some sort of purity can reflect it. And words are so attached at times to a self, to local transience, how to clean them up of all their impurities?

Perhaps that is why salvation is personal. A sort of state where this knowing unknowing can melt and forget each other. Where things are not reachable by word or thought, because then life will become devalued, meaningless. It has to be always beyond, always approaching. 

It happens when it would, in states one cannot design by will. They have a slant, beyond-reason way which cannot be engineered.

*

Meanwhile, for the will: discipline, rigour, renounce (not abandon), keep moving, keep beginning, and at times, just one little thing, and let time judge things rather than words or people. Opinions matter not, irrelevance matter not, brief time this existence, towards the excellent and the enduring, let the light of the best on the path illuminate the path forward.

*

As to words, at their best, as Rilke says, one does justice when one praises. At their best, words open the pathway to elevate the self. Everything else is irrelevant chatter.

History, no history and playing the road

For a long long time, time had no past and no future, no depth as such. The present seemed to extend. Life was same or similar for generations on end. Perhaps before tribes discovered each other, formed nations and a notion of history began. Before that every new day, every new generation perhaps lived similar to the one before. Whatever happened before, myths, legends, history they all belonged to some notion of time before, which was not very different from the time present. Or perhaps they had history, but it was very local. Perhaps a little depth is depth enough to differentiate future from past.

But last few thousand years, and more and more last couple of millennia, and more so last few hundred years, the future has been utterly new, it is easy to see direction, the generation before does not live like the generation next. Things move too rapidly. In such a scenario, what value does a custom hold? A custom, close to visceral perhaps but lasting centuries had or even has a value – but when things change this rapid, custom is like a fish grown in placid waters caught in rapids. Does the way it has been nurtured still hold it in good stead? Or does it improvise and deal with the world it finds itself in, is beyond imagination different from generations before. Good sense says that it is more and more critical to have presence of mind, to have a personal regard of a few lofty values, and then to create the moment anew – to play the road as the road itself seems to twist and curve beyond the straight road of no past, no future difference. That would be practical, and that too given good sense would perhaps lead to aesthetically superior solutions than holding on to non-alive bags and baggage of yesteryears. To keep in the toolkit, the best from the past, the most practical, heroic, courageous and all Nichomachean virtues, but then to have more presence of mind than ever before needed. Perhaps that is what the species needs to get attuned to – more mindfulness. One has to create one’s own path, meet the new reality at one’s own terms. Sometimes all the wisdom of the world has not dealt with what one is supposed to deal with. What keeps one in good stead then, is the same old mindful presence, a few lofty poetic thoughts on existence, and meeting reality thus, as one sees best fit.

(Tangent from Bernard Williams - Essays and Reviews -Why Philosophy Needs History. Yet to read the essay. Aspiration.)

Personal thoughts on language and inspiration

My day is often full of reading, at times looking up things, writing them down. But it is not often that some sentences truly inspire and send me to the blank screen. Sometimes they do. Sometimes one has to wonder about inspiration. Is it an inclination or an opening in self, or is it truly something external, something of its own beauty that creates an answering response in us? I tend to think that it is something beautiful on its own rather than something to do with us. We are truly fortunate when we come across these slices of beauty. For me, often it is with language and its constructions. There is this mystery of the origin of thought, which ties itself up with the origins of consciousness, language, and the difficult beautiful pleasures of tough, disciplined effort. I also get lost in these wanderings, wondering about what kind of effort – of the width, the breadth of thought, and then the depth of thought, its subject matter the entirety of existence. With such lofty subject matter, the mountain peak clear, one’s gaze is held quite well. Little things come up, bother, and at times one is just lost in the woods, but then somewhere in some slice of writing of a beautiful soul, one glimpses it, the mountain peak, the inspiration, and everything is right way up.


*

Often it is the good sense of the thought, the loftiness of ideals, and then a command of language without any frills, how to put it? A simplicity of expression yet depth of thought and profundity and loftiness of what is being said. All this said with good sense perhaps can spell beauty, and perhaps can inspire the reader.

(I have been going through Library book haul – Michael Wood introducing essays and reviews by Bernard Williams – some quotes in intro sent me here.)


*

Often times I may or may not read those authors – it is a long long collection of writings from LRB, NYRB, reviews and essays. It becomes a difficult aspiration and an act of formidable concentration to read through. Esp when I have 20 other open books each with 5 pages marker at times. Daily I seem to switch patterns. I finished a few half-read books recently. Many others are open. The hunger is little about reading, or writing, it is about being with language, thought, its constructs, either through inspiration, here, or through words, reading far and wide. The only reminder I often give myself is read slowly. Perhaps the other reminder needed is while you are reading something, only that for that moment, and it is ok to not have a finished book at the end of the journey. It is difficult to measure inspiration. Like mountain sighting. Ideally the path brings it in your view often and often. So carve the path such that almost unknowingly (because knowing weighs down the whole enterprise with expectations which is just not fun then), you sight the mountain. In short, keep reading the way you do, just slowly and without the weight of finishing books or even writing about them. Inspiration found will send you here hopefully. (Note to self)


*

So this, that the hunger is about words, language, loftiness of thought, the ability of words to move us so, that we be ready to move mountains, the magic inherent in words, and just the joy of beauty found in language. Language that grapples with existence and its mysteries.