Why Do We Exist?

It is a mystery that we exist. It is as though we exist as we are. But what we are and who we are? Where do we come from? And last but not the least, why do we exist? These are mysteries of all mysteries. Mysteries galore all over our universe. And we are here to decipher the codes of all universal mysteries. This way the mysteries of our life, or for that matter, of our whole existence get universalised with the phenomenology of nature as we are of the nature and the nature. Our essences of our existence is imbued with the phenomenology of nature

In the Old Testament the whole idea is embedded in the prophetic concept of the Messiah. Primordial man was supposed to put up a brave front in an undifferentiated and unblemished form of relation with the surroundings while taking a safe refuge in the Garden of Eden. There prevailed no consciousness, no differentiation, no choice or freedom as any unconscious being is supposed to have no discretionary power to any rein over himself. That was pre-individual unity with the nature and there was no diversity in that supposed unity. But that primordial unity came close to disruption when the first act of choice was called for and chosen. The first act of choice was the concerted and conscious disobedience of nature to hoist the flag of freedom.


The emergence of consciousness laid bare the chances to exist freely as a human being of himself and for himself irrespective of the emerging consequences that linger on with the angst of our existence as a being with the freedom of choices and faculties. This freedom is the harbinger of human history and in the annals of history we exist to live. The Latin word 'existere' from which the verb 'to exist' is evolved means to appear, emerge or to stand out. By this semantics it is plausibly construed that human beings are emerged out of the womb of nature, yet they stand out as a separate entity to exist.

This separateness had started since the time of rejection of primordial man from the Garden of Eden in quest of his voyage along a coast of impermanence and divergence. This idea put paid to all his chances of recovery into oneness with the absolute whole and his differentiated world became his one and only world. And in this world human beings are literally thrown into existence without having chosen it. Without having any pre-conceived cognisance of the cause and purpose of their existence, human beings are just thrown into this quagmire and are thus led to the altar of life's consequential predicaments without knowing whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel or whether there is any end to their voyage into this world.

With this void sense of discretion, their 'thrownness' (Heidegger) into the antithetic world happens to be per chance, very sudden and fortuitous. This creates a situational shift as if from one unknown world to another, from the darkness of mother's womb to a highnoon of existentially contingent world where struggle for existence becomes the summum bonum for living through a turbulence of time and space. It is so fortuitous that nothing is deterrent to that existential 'thrownness' which, in other sense, there is no choice left between to-be and not-to-be in the long run of human excellence to struggle through the impediments of existence.

It is such that the motto of 'excel or be perished' becomes essentially the means to that end. That end is living through existing par excellence. That is, human beings at first and foremost have got to exist and then to excel in living. This is the true essence of existence of from being to becoming. That is why the existentialist philosophers are of the opinion that existence precedes essence : "If man...is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be." This metabolic metamorphosis of human beings is what existence's prerogatives are all about.

So, existing and living are two different philosophical paradigms but they are mutually conclusive, not exhaustive. With this inclusivist forte at a greater stake in the fray, it could be conservatively arrived at a speculative inference that human beings exist to live, or, for that matter, we exist, therefore we live. Here the philosophical essence of existence coincides with that of our spiritual beings. The fortuitousness of our existence gives rise to angst which is 'pains and sorrows' in spiritual dilemma due to the impermanence of our existence.

Still the mystery remains a mystery as ever so far as the incidentiality, causality and intentionality of our existence remain an open question to pursue and pursuing that closed secret remains the sacred quest of our life. As if, we exist and we live to know the mysteries of this universe. And what is more to know than to know ourselves and examine ourselves in a true perspective of this universe? Is it not that an unexamined life is not worth living? Is it not that as we think, therefore we are? Is it not that as we think, therefore we ask ourselves why we exist? So, we exist, therefore we are. And as we are, therefore we live in quest of unresolved mysteries of our existential world.

Life is A Journey, Not A Destination

Is life an event? Just like many other events hot and happening but generally ending in themselves? Yes, an event is just an event happening in a consortium of time and eventually ends in a frame of time receding and fizzling out in the repository of memory. Events are just some fleeting memories in human diaspora. They are slices of life, but not life as a whole in existential precedence as life transcends life in a continuum of events. This flux of events constitute world wide web of life.

That is to say that life is not an event in itself. Rather life is eventful in spatio-temporally contextual parameters or, for that matter, life is an endless stream of events contingent one upon another in pursuit of excellence. The pursuit of excellence is embedded in all spheres of life to be achieved through perseverance and diligence and that is the paramount mission of life which prods life on and on. That prodding sets life in a perpetual motion in a frame of time and space.


So, life moves on and on perpetually. At some junctures, there are some hot and happening moments of events of all experiences. But unlike events, it never stops short of taking a breath even for a while as it has got to wander through the wonders of the world. Life itself is the vortex of our cognisable world which knows no bounds to beat a spatio-temporal retreat. And life is such that it is coincided with the phenomenology of the world and as such it is in some way synonymous with the ideoverse of the world.

In Hindu philosophy it is said that what perpetually moves is the world. The attribution of perpetuality to the idea of the world is philosophically oriented to the flight of fancy that life is a journey and not a destination. Can a perpetually moving body have any destination ahead of its endless journey? An electron revolves round the nucleus and it does have nowhere to cast its lapses on any anchor positionally and its positional lapses at best give rise to a phenomenal uncertainty. This kind of uncertainty is a true-blue flagship of the ways of life.

So, life is an odyssey unto uncertainty, a voyage which is not predestined to cast its anchor on any harbour. Its white ship sails along the aisle of hopes and despair, dreams and desire at mid-summer night and at darkness at noon. Nothing deters it in its mission of fulfillment which is achieved in the prime time of death. But death is no destination of life, it is the paramount of fulfillment in life's journey unto death. Death is the beginning of another odyssey of life unto life predestined to take cognizance of the fatality life's unending journey.

In Defence of Socrates

Once Socrates was walking along the Athenian market place. On the way, he came across young Xenophon who was a just a few walks ahead of him. He stopped Xenophon with his walking stick and then asked him whether he knew where good vegetables and fish were available. Xenophon showed him the way. Socrates was less than interested at that and then he asked him pointblank whether he could tell him where good men could be found. Xenophon could not help feeling ashamed at his odd query. Then Socrates told him that if he did not know, he should come with him.

That was Socrates. He struggled all through his life to find goodness of human beings. Goodness of human nature was the summum bonum of his life-long quest through thick and thin. And that was the essence of his philosophy which he carried through the last cup of hemlock of his life. He lived for the conquest of his philosophy and he laid down his life for the conquest of his philosophy. His soul-searching odyssey into human life was the epitome of a true philosopher practicing philosophy as a paramount mission of life - he lived larger than a life to pursue the philosophy of goodness.


The abiding truth of human existence is to think, know and exist. This has essentially been the ecology of philosophy through the ages. But before philosophy was reborn as philosophy, philosophy had been the carpetbagger of natural science. It would not be far from the historical truth if it is said that Socrates (470 BC - 399 AD) acted the midwifery to liberate philosophy from the reins of pseudo-science. That was why Cicero said that Socrates "brought down philosophy from the heaven to the earth". That is, he turned the upside down by turning away from the speculative nature of Ionian cosmology to delve deep into the essence of human nature and soul.

But what to think and know to exist? To know whatness and suchness of things - things as they are and should be and that is the 'goodness'. Goodness is the logical extension of truth and it should be practically known and then should be practiced irrespective of any consequence. The consequential affects of truth bear with the morality or virtue of human existence preceding essence. The moral baggage of human life essentially coheres with the knowledge of soul or self-knowledge. The oracular dictum "know thyself" comes very close to saying that a man's conscience is the sense of knowing himself and judging by himself what is good and what is evil and that is why a man should know what is the suchness of good and evil and what should be cherished and what should be disgraces and forsaken.

Even then such a soul of high moral rectitude was discredited, convicted in democratic Athens. He was supposed to corrupt the youth and bring disgrace and ruins to the democratic premises. But is democracy sans 'demos' democracy? Were the Athenian plebeians gracefully offered the political asylum in democracy? Or, was it a sham democracy in militocracy's clothing? Socrates voiced against that shamness. And he roused the intelligent youths by educating them the philosophical truth of bravery and virtue of politics - the real virtuality of politics. However great it seemed to be, it is an open question Athenian democracy was always contended and was never blessed with moral virtue and political ethics. That was why Socrates took the initiative to deal occasional body blows to the politics of Anytus-Meletus.

And again the accusation of corrupting the youth against him does not hold good so far as the philosophical conviction of him carried him a long way to bridge the chasm amongst the various cross-sections of the Athenian people. The unlettered mass of people played decoy ducks at the hands of the powers-that-be. He motivated the band of youth to rise to the occasion so that some kind of goodness prevails in the long run and they tended to pose a sustained threat to the establishment by their continued association with Socrates. And that way they were treated as if they were 'corrupted' by him.

When there was an erosion of moral values in all walks of Athenian society, Socrates felt unnerved to shore up the cardinal virtues of life with a humane dimension philosophical truth failing which the basic premises of democracy collapse into nothingness. He had to cross swords with his detractors by the admonition "know thyself". His heroics made a martyr of himself. But that was just coincidental and in compatible with his philosophical virtuosity. As he knew himself, he never cared to know by himself how far he could achieve and how far he had achieved. The achievement amounted to nothing to himself. Yet the achievement is all there to see and it is the measure of his success as a philosopher to his successors.

Genetics of Race and Intelligence

Recently there is a newspaper article published in The Times, London regarding Nobel Prize winner genetics scientist James Watson's controversial claim that black people are inferior in intelligence to white people. Dr. Watson is said to have made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times. The 79-year old geneticist remarked on the record that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really." He also claimed that the intellectual proficiency of the black people is everywhere to be seen.

By commenting on intellectual hegemony and superiority, he has stirred up a hornet's nest long after the Sir Cyril Burt scandal. In the late 60's, Sir Burt falsified and tampered data to establish the racist claim of the stupidity of the black people. After that fraud was discovered, the debate was laid to rest. But the remarks of Dr. James Watson proves that the age-old debate has yet not died its natural death. So, let us have quick look at what merit or intellectual capacity really is.

Is human intelligence a genetic phenomenon? Is an intelligent person is just genetically coded or programmed to be just intelligent? Can an intelligent person be called superior to another intelligent person? Or, for that matter, can human intelligence be qualified or quantified in no uncertain terms? No, human intelligence can neither be qualified nor be quantified - it is not as simple 'a thing' as such that it can be empirically judged to settle all scores. Yes, like all other human attributes, intelligence too have some implicitly genetic link but that is not the be-all and end-all of human intelligence. Environmental impacts in the form of nurturing comes into fray in developing it but we never can say how it will develop or how far it will develop.

Moreover, human intelligence and intelligent activities are socially nurtured, socially manifested and socially motivated and as such they are social phenomena not to be set aside for scientific community for their forensic dissection. A person is intelligent only when his/her intellects and activities manage to get a strong social recognition without which the all-too-powerful genetic code is never allowed to come to the fore. So, environmental impact or social nurturing is the main thing for a person to develop as a complete human being in terms of intellectual and moral standards.

In socio-political paradigm, all persons are intelligent in some way or the other. It never depends on the caste, creed or colour. Do the black people get proper nurturing because of their socio-political backwardness? Are all the white people are Einsteins or Shakespeares? So why those people are wont to boast of the white men's superiority? In that regard, I can remember a radio interview of Dr. Har Gobind Khorana after he won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his contribution to interpretation of genetic code. He was asked whether Hitlers are genetically born. He answered that Hitlers are socio-politically born depending on the socio-political environment they live in.

It is rather sad that a scientist of Dr, James Watson's stature could talk in such extremely irresponsible and offensive way. Is that a way that an intelligent person could talk? An intelligent person should be a morally responsible person to the society and the world. If he/she is not morally responsible, he/she should never be called an intelligent person.

60 Years of India's Independence

I am not 60 over and even not yet 60.

So, I have not seen or experienced the rising sun at the stroke of that midnight when the independence of this holy land has crossed the Rubicon to sail across the oceanic times through prosperity and adversity.

And through adversity and prosperity it changes. And changes are the yardsticks of changes whether they are pointers for the better or for the worse. Howbeit, changes are changes. This is rule of the game, the Thumbrule if one likes to say. This thumbrule is predictably in conformity with the laws of nature. Nature too changes and it abhors vacuum. But nature does not change in the strictest senses, it transforms and is just transformed. And it conserves, too. This transformation is not an appreciable change of nature and natural laws.

Change is the prime mover of this world. In the context of Indian philosophy, the true nature of this world is its eternal movement. Loss of mobility is catastrophic death and in mobility lies the root of changes. Nothing can remain unmoved for good.

I too change and have changed appreciably like others. And I have lived through the changes in and around my world. Not only that, I have been seeing and following changes since I have attained the age of discretion. Without attaining the age of discretion, nobody can realise the fathom and depth of changes. Can a child see changes around him/her?

Yes, I have seen a sea-change. The thing is that I am born at a juncture or rather I have attained the age of discretion at a juncture when the old world around me compulsively is giving way to the new one. That is, Toffler's Third Wave begins its intrepid odyssey into the olde' world terrifying everything and everyone to make a colony of the age-old strategic system which has naturally become miasmic and moribund. The Third Wave seized all the initiatives.

The changes were loud and clear at a fast and furious pace.

The frogs stopped croaking in the slimy mud. The birds left their nests for a sojourn to wilderness. The sirens of crickets do not deafen the ears at the dead of night. And how does a fish live out of water if their habitats are constantly bombarded by the Monsanto devils./


The Green Revolution had hoisted the red flags heralding a cautionary signal. Beware of this landmass, water! And Air!

Had all those empty stomachs stopped stoking fire inside? Had the two-square still remained a distant daydream? Where have all those birds gone? Where all those flowers lost their petals in the ensuing battle?

Where is that reality-check? The curve is still dwindling.

The time-capsule ticks all the way. It says everything and nothing. It is in the 60's.

In the 60's itself, the heavy-duty baron and magnates, the harbingers of new political ethology, declared glibly and unequivocally: 'Produce and Flourish'.

On the high crest of the Third Wave, how many people have flourished and how many people have got run over? Sure, a few things and places looked rather awkwardly looked snazzy. Only a few posh people got into rhythm and got their acts together to demarcate the lines between White Collars and Blue Collars. Pen Pushers and Pan Drivers.

Thousands of people were evicted from their homes and hearths. Thousands of people left their home and hearths. Some in quest of fortune and some in quest of destiny. The twain never met in unison. Poverty and pride, side by side.

Juices trickled in and seeped through the fractures.

Yes, these are changes, appreciable in dimension and perspective.

There are changes in many more hues and colours. Appreciable and significant.

Old fossils bit the dust making way for new values.

In politics, economy, culture, technological applications, human values, moral rectitude and so on and so forth.

And how many wars have been fought? And how many nuclear devices have been tested on the off-shores at the cost of public exchequer?

Mafia politics, scam and spam economics, cameo culture, globally purchased and worn-out technology in the name of indigenous application, belying human values and irresponsible moral rectitude - all paid in their own coins and bearing the brunt of over-population. In theoretical mumbo-jumbo, there is silver lining to cherish the politics of developmental changes. Only a select few are the real takers. The common denominators' hope belies hope. That is the bitter truth of reality that speaks eloquent for a strategic developmental change for a common future and common lot.

I have seen many changes from the Green Revolution to Information Technology, from indigenous bard to hybrid and synthetic culture closely and profitably in association and collaboration with the global players. Swadesi Jagaran Mancha has played to the undertricks and has melted into the vase of mixed economy. Promiscuity has become the bottomline of independence. Everything is intended for selling in the global market. So, everything is export-oriented and nothing for public consumption.

And Bhopal still is at pains here and there Union Carbide thrives on. No other Bhopal? So many and so many.

Is democracy has reached the grassroots? If it is just being at hosting years in and years out, then it is strong and stout in stature. But where is the 'demos'?

The detractors say that this ancient land of wise muni-rishis has been mortgaged to the interests of super-powers. Is there anything wrong to play the second fiddle to them?

Yes, I have seen many changes and am still seeing many changes at the 60th. year of the indendence. But I wonder whether these changes are real or superficial, whether these changes are just cosmetic and skin-deep.

I even wonder whether the colonialists too have made some significant contributions to the prosperity of colonial India. Face the truth or face the music. You admit it or not, it remains to be seen in the last 300 years' history of India.

So, why is this hype and hoopla? Is this Jung's collective unconsciousness? Herd mentality propagated by all those honourable statesmen to hoodwink the people?

To-day, nobody rembers Mahatma Gandhi! Only his ghosts haunt one and all. He has been timely exorcicised. He has been an old fossil!

Yeh Azadi Kya Hai : A Political Introspection

The celebration is on and right before the day's mid-night sun.

And there is so much gung-ho as ever. Right in the nick of the moment and in right earnest. With flying colours and mightbe with much fanfare, razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle for nothing.

And with blaring of conchs and mouthful of words.

And with riot of colours it says so many sweet-nothings.

It is 60 years' old but is yet to come of age.

60 years but not come of age?

Actually it is over-aged but yet not come of age. That is, it is aged or over-aged in figures but not in spirits. The spirit is full of beans. And that is all for nothing

What is there if it is still going on all fours?

Going on all fours is the index of its true face, the baby-faced facade of its 60 years' encumbering is all too evident in the annals of its naive amnesia.

How amnesiac its patrons and guardians are!

Yes, they have buried everything into oblivion to salvage their well-earned salvation. They have forgotten the days of 1975 when the holy cow was solemnly sacrificed at the behest of the Almighty and the bleary-eyed ghost-writers kowtowed at the altar of omnipotence to save her face with white hair-line and to reinforce her cathedral by scripting a new manifesto of songs of freedom.

It is witchcraft and witch-hunting.

The sacred river was strewn with skull and bones. The insipid potion gradually turned gray with the tears of Auswisch.

Nobody bombed for the fear of freedom.

And nobody dared to bare his/her presence.

And culture of silence hit the rooftop in cahoots with more somber silence.

All the Goebels fell to talking tongue-in-cheek with open-chested breast-stroke of machismo.

History is to be glossed over, history is to be forsaken in the brown pages of history. The pages are all too tattered. The humbugs say.

But history repeats itself. In both tragedy and comedy.

And comedy of errors emacted repeatedly. By the old campaigners time and again.

Now again the same ghost-writers are acting like animals of the Animal Farm crying themselves hoarse to glorify the songs of freedom for the same fear of freedom. Was '1984' a comedy of blunders? Who dare say?

The songs of freedom are splattered always all over, the dins and bustles are spilling over as usual as though they are racing one against another to show the world who is more equal than the others to be qualified for the olive branch in the Olympiad.

But they have forgotten that the 60 years’ toddler has failed to deliver the goods at the fair-price shop for those millions who are shedding bloods and sweats at the sweat-shops in excruciating diurnal drudgery.

What is that to them?

Nothing and nothing whatsoever to the bootleggers. Or, carpetbaggers?

They only know how to get paid in their own coins.

Moolah, soft doughnut moolah. Very pricey.

Everything dies. Only callous cash nexus remains for good.

The sweat-shoppers do not know how to sing songs of freedom or cry for freedom.

The street-children do not know how to dance in tune with the songs of freedom.

They just ask silently.

They ask violently in deafening silence with cymals in their hands. Reggae it is!

Yeh Ajadi Kya Hai? Jhuta Hai Ya Sach Hai?

Who knows.

Politicians Do Not Know How To Rock and Roll

Once rock star Remo song a sung. It was like this : Politicians don't know how to rock and roll. I also admit that these special breed of buggers do not really know a thing or two. They are just humbugs, humbugs to a faulty extent. You cannot educate them. They are just uneducated. Uneducated? No, they are ill-literate.

And they are humbugs. They are arrogants. Arrogance is their way of life. Arrogance is deeply ingrained into their veins. They are so arrogant that you just cannot ignore them. Their arrogance is such that it brings you to their bandwagon and you learn to bear with it as you just cannot keep shy of their influence.

Arrogance is their main stay. It is their power. It is their power of influencing which overpowers you. You are overpowered and beaten to their kind of arrogance. You never know how to over power them and get the better of their overpowering influence. And you are influenced and get beaten in the fray. Overpowering this way is their sole motive in this game of power.

You are overpowered and you sell your power at a discount in that compelling situation. You get purchased by that compelling situation. Now you are just worthless. You remain worthless as you have already dispensed with your power. Being worthless means being powerless in the process. And you are led by the nose. This is what they want from you.

And you are always wanted. Most wanted in their game of arrogant power politics. Otherwise, they themselves are worthless and powerless. Power pays and pays the worth in real value. This is the zing thing in their games of power politics. The game is never over and the show goes on and on.

All humbugs have assembled.

God Created Man In His Own Image?

We have known it from many sacred books that God has created man in His image. The theologians say it, the preachers preach it. When these people say this, they must be knowing fully well about the true image of god, not that they have seen it. What is it? Pretty or ugly? But I know for sure that man’s true image is not pretty but pretty ugly. I have seen it in so many times and in so many faces. And you know face is the index of mind. That is, man is pretty ugly in both faces and minds or for that matter in body and soul. Does it hurt you? But I just cannot help it. It is etched on my mind and it is evidently vivid in my mind's eye. And again I tell you I cannot help it even it hurts you. It is ugly, one hundred times ugly and even more than it.. Even more ugly thanI imagine.. It is beastly ugly, to say the least. So, what could be the god’s image? Of course, it is ugly. It is not holier than thou as we are led to believe. As we believe and blindly we believe, so we do not see it ugly or rather we do not want it so. But when we see the faces of man? What is it? Beastly ugly as we see it in our naked eyes. So, what can be the faces of God when he created him in his own image? You think and imagine in your mind and in your mind's eye. Mightbe, you will be able to get to the truth. You know truth is where light is.

So, what is the truth. Let us try to explore some truth. Yes, some truth only. As the God created man in his own image, so man created God in his ideas. Without knowing the natural laws of the world, man had no other alternative than to create his own belief system to cope with the situation. Initially man had no idea about the science of cause and effect, he relied mainly on his belief in supernatural power which was supposed to act as the prime mover of the worldly phenomena. He also enjoyed no power to stand on his own leg. So, for all the plights and all the rages he confronted in his life, he prayed for the blessings of that supernatural power. That supernatural power was the be all and end all in his belief system. But who had enjoyed that supernatural power? Who or what was the prime mover? There must be someone who enjoyed that exclusive or absolute power. There must be someone who assumed office of authority for all that. He had no other idea but that idea to believe and blindly believe in all this. He believed that someone was the prime mover. And that prime mover was God whom he created in his idea, in his belief system.

Oh, Alas! the exploration of truth has dragged us into a quagmire. That quagmire is blind belief. But blind belief can never be a scientific truth or any other kind of truth. Truth is no belief or belief is no truth. Truth is truth and belief is belief. The twain sometimes meet each other but that is very rare. If you do not want to know the truth, you live with your belief and belief is almost always blind, stone blind.

So you believe that God created man in His own image. It is your belief but it is not truth. Amen!

Life After Death

I do not believe in life after death. Do you?
There is no heaven and there is no hell either.
Heaven and hell are situated in the realm of your blind faith which is nothing but a superstitious idea. The existence of superstitious belief is only in the chimera of your mind.
What we cannot see in our naked eyes is absolutely non-existent. But if you say that we cannot see air in our naked eyes but we know for sure that air exists. Yes, air exists. We can feel it, we can sense it.
But we cannot feel or sense the existence of heaven or hell. What you cannot see cannot be believed. Believing is a conviction. Conviction is some pragmatic notion about the human world and the nature which we see under our eyes, feel, sense perceptibly and we are led to believe. That belief is our conviction.
After death, neither we get a new shelter in heaven nor we are burnt in the catastrophe of hell. After death, we are simply reduced to dust of nature. Our physical entity or our biological body is simply decomposed into nature.
We are born out of nature and we die into nature. So to speak, we come from nature and go back to the nature in the end. Our birth and death are a natural process. But it is not natural that we would be reborn some day after our death. Rebirth is not natural as our decomposed body after death can never be composed into another biological body.
Life after death is next to impossible. If it so happens, then all our scientific knowledge would be reduced to nothingness. Those who are deficient in scientific knowledge and scientific temper only believe in that impossibility and rarity. That impossibility and rarity is the scientific knowledge of our biological life.
There is life in this world but there is no life in the other world.
The other world is non-existent. No believer or for that matter no preacher can prove this empirically and emphatically as it is not a thing to be proved empirically and emphatically.

Yes, Everyone Is Tensed

Why each and everyone is tensed and stressed? It seems tension is so contagious a disease. Yes, it is a disease. If it is not physical, it is of course a mental disease. The shrinks says this and we feel it. It is so absorbing that you cannot shake of it so easily if you want. How can a disease so easily be shaken off if it is not properly cured. One thing is almost certain that our physical body and spiritual mind are always in intimate connexion with each other. One cannot exist without the support of other. When one is affected, the other too cries out for due attention and help. Admittedly so and each one of us has to experience this through our whole span of life. And we have to live with it.

But mental illness is something different from physical illness. Generally physical illness grows out of the worm cans of our environment around us. And we can very easily exterminate the germs and we get cured after that. But the case of mental illness like, stress, depression are born out of the social vices, the seven deadly sins. The thing is that we are all carriers of these deadly sins and the society has retained them all as it seems that they are the basis of social organisation. As if the society has no virtues of itself on which it could be betterly organised. Had it been organised on virtues or mostly on virtues, the society would have been a heaven of itself and we would have been endowed with heavenly bliss.

But as if there is no safety-valve to get hold of this modern man's dilemma.

Why there is no safety-valve or safety-catch to control one's tension. Everybody has been suffering from it and no one is from its aggressive potency. When I am under tension or I am tensed, you readily tell me to calm down. And again, when you suffer from tension you too tell me the same thing and advise me the same way. This we try to mutually cure ourselves. But still there is no respite for us. Tension is modern man's obstinate disease. As though, it has come to stay with us life long. When we die, only at that time it will go once for all. So what to do? How to get out of it? There is no easy remedy. Rather let us learn to stay with it, live with it amicably. Do not rush. It will be all in vain.Rather take it easy and keep cool. And do whatever you feel like doing.

When you are a modern man, you have to make do with this modern man's intimate malady. There is no other go. You cannot get away with it so easily.

The Missionary Zeal of Life : Collectiveness

We have come a long way. Too far from the verdant splendour of life. And as if we are all lost in the wilderness of life - the life that endows us with the bounty of pain and pleasure, the summum bonum of our being and essence. We have exhausted all our energy in quest of more and more extravaganza of nothingness. And our beings are paying dearly and bearing the brunt of this catastrophical predicament. Is there no light at the end of the tunnel?

Yes, there is light if we are intent on discovering it through hardships and through struggling for getting at the truth. Truth is the essence of sparkling light. A spark of truth can be in a small measure a prairie fire to bring about a sea change in our lives so far as the joy and beauty of life are concerned. Truth is omnipotent, omniscient and ubiquitously existent but always wrapped in mystery. We have to demystify it exploring all its essences to a vantage point so that we can get hold of our creative faculties in a meaningful mission.

This missionary zeal is what is our life should be up to. We have come a long way but we have reached nowhere, we have not achieved anything worthwhile. The time has come to pause for a while to think and act. Think whether we have achieved anything worthwhile. Think why there is so much suffering. Why so much injustice? So much inequality and disparity among the people? Why so much moral degradation? Why so much wastage of natural resources? There are so many why-s and wherefore-s to look back.

And we will look back to look farther forward. With that view in mind, we will talk. We will talk anything and everything under the sun. From anthropology to zoology, from anthem to zither. We will be the message board of our own collective mind. We will think intelligently and sensibly. We will talk intelligently and sensibly. And we will act accordingly. We all think but we really do not know how to think creatively and constructively. We will ask all questions and we will ask for answers.

We will think and act collectively and that is what should be the mission of our lives.

Democracy and the Politics of Power

Power is an overwhelming concept which pervades everything so intricately that it creates web around human existence and essence as well. The normative essence of power caters to the lusty needs of some and snatches the very essence of human lives for the others. The others are led to sacrifice themselves at the altar of the almighty. The almighty are the some who wield their absolute power from within and without over the lesser others to revolve around their orbital space and the others are destined not to escape the centrifugal force of that orbital power.

Bertrand Russel has provided a remarkable perception of power in his book 'Power : A New Social Analysis'. He said, "Power may be defined as the production of intended effects. The fundamental concept of social science is power, in the same sense in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics. Like energy, power has many forms." Russel's 'production of intended effects' is the political ideology of power which is socially reclaimed in all spheres of human psychosis.

That psychosis creates a labyrinth from which grows the fear of freedom. The fear psychosis benumbs the critical consciousness of the feared. The feared bemoans the befallen catastrophe over their existence and essence but fear to challenge the absoluteness of power. Their benumbed souls remain as inert as ever. That inertia is the outcome of the production of intended effects of power and the intended effects loom large over horizontal spheres of the feared human beings who are less powerful or absolutely powerless. But it is not that the powerless has no power to wield. The feared too have the power but not enough to overcome their fear.

When we say power, we generally mean political power. Power is politically distributed among the various cross-sections of people. In that sense power is both vertically and horizontally divided and the vertices culminate in a pyramidical superstructure. On the top of the pyramid rests the fearful and on its base writhe the feared ones at the mercy of the most powerful ones. Those with the absolute power at their disposal are the supreme authority to wield their all ammunitions of political power with indulgence and insistence of violence. And violence is not only the metaphor of political power but also the categorical pronouncement and praxis of politics of power.

And, yes, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. No, it is not just a catchword of Mao's politics. It is the catchword of politics and political power of all hues. Nobody can deny that those who wield the gun, wield the power and vice versa. Power is a manifestation of violence authored and perpetrated perpetually by the authority or that the power-that-be consisting of a handful. It is because that the fearful only have all the power to enthrone themselves to the seat of power, be it democratic or otherwise.

Democracy too does cohere the most fearful and most powerful as democracy without power is like a king without his fangless sceptre. Without power at the base how can the juggernaut of democracy roll on? The powerful are 'the democrat' and the powerless are 'the democratised' in the long course of history of changing hands of power among the most powerful. The democratised have never been democrats and they do not have any affordable power to 'democratise' the democrats in democratic nuances. It is power of democratic politics that eternalises democracy and reserves power for the powerful.

Power is power over the powerless people to dominate over them and to enjoy unbridled authority over them. And ordinary people have got no power to wield the gun, so they have no power of authority and no power over the authority or the powerful power-that-be to dominate over them. Those who do not wield power to dominate are destined to be dominated and be ruled. So, people are ruled, the ruled and people are destined to be the ruled as having no power of wielding gun and wielding power.

Kurosawa's IKIRU

Kurosawa's IKIRU is a lesser known film but never lacking in his strong commitment to handling human issues with immaculate perception. The story is very simple. A simple as it could be, there is not much gimmick nor many twists and turns. Even then it is really a treat to watch and worth sitting through to the end.

Tao is is the Unit Head of a public works department. He was left alone by his parents at an early age. His wife too died leaving behind his only son Tong. He himself brought him up with all too parental care sacrificing his personal happiness and joy.

He served his office for 30 years at a stretch never leaving his job undone lived his life among piles of files which seem to be his home and hearth. But the corruption of bureaucracy and red-tapism has tormented him and alienated him from the fellow employees. He only knew how to dispense with his duties. The fellow workers named him 'mummy' and ridiculed him behind his back.

Not only that, to add insult to the injury, his son Tong and his wife too neglected him shamelessly. There only concern was to get money from him. Tao's life was such a tragically woven life that he got liver cancer which he never disclosed to anybody.

Only a fellow cancer patient knew about this. He stopped attending his office which led many of his office workers and neighbours to resorting dirty gossips about him among themselves. He started visiting hotel, restaurants, bars with that cancer patients to get over the predicaments. One day, a young seductive girl came to visit him and he started loving her company. But that seductive girl too eschewed him. At their last meeting in a restaurant, Tao asked her about what boosted her energy made her so frolicsome and jovial.

That girl presented him a limping toy rabbit. Seeing that toy limping, Tao at last realised the true meaning of life which was to live life to one's full content. He regained his lost energy of sorts. He wanted to enjoy life like others but without forsaking his commitment to dedication.

Next day he started attending his office. Overriding all bureaucratic obstacles he built a public park which was a legitimate and long time demand of the local citizens. In the end, he succumbed to cancer singing "Life is short" while swinging on the cradle of the park all alone.

But his mission mission had not gone abegging. All his fellow workers and his son acknowledged his honesty and integrity. The tragedy ends here but with a message. And the 'mummy' came to life and he was, as it were, resurrected after his tragic death. It never ended in smoke.

Kurosawa used a lot of flashbacks to portray the contradictions Tao's life with the decadent world which has tormented his soul in no uncertain terms. The soulfulness is poignantly displayed in all those flashbacks. Without those flashbacks the contradictions could not be revealed in such a distinctive denouement. Toshiro Miffun has once more proved his mettle here with his wonderful performance.

Elephants and Millions of Ants - III

3.

I do not know many things for which I go to them.

They are The Unknowledgeable marginally living on the fringes of unenlightenment. They are The Unenlightened. Enlightenment has never dawned on their horizon. They are the wretched of the world.

I go to them time and again to know many things which I do not know but they know. They know too many things to let others know.

I return from them always getting enlightened many times over by their common sense of common good. Their common sense for common good is their wisdom which they inherit genealogically. It is their genealogical knowledge passed from one generation to another.

They know many stunning things with no expertise of knowledge to boast over. It is pedagogy of the oppressed vastly expanded in a democratic world. Democracy is inherently ingrained in their customs and cultures. They know and let others know to propagate wisdom through the length and breadth of time and space. It is not a quagmire of lies and pretences, it is a treasure trove of age-old observations, inferences and experiences. Not only that, a unique mechanism of intuitions has gathered some stunningly beautiful knowledge for them which stand them in good stead in times of crisis and damage.

And they do not know many things. But that do not deter them in any way whatsoever to pursue their course of life. High-falutin mumbo-jumbo is not their way of luxury. They only know what they should know and they do not know what they should not know. What they know is their common knowledge to be stored and restored for common good and for common partaking. Their knowledge is participatory and shared knowledge all the way. It is born in community, it prospers in community but never dies in community until and unless better wisdom prevails in the end.

They do not know what they think not wise.

Wisdom is the very basis of their existence. Relying on all assumptions, presumptions, suppositions and intuitions, their wisdom spreads in thousand wings. Shamamism, occultism and magic wizardry have come a long way down the ages and had died in the natural course of civilization. But they have carried their true legacy of sorts in a new paradigm. That is the virtuosity of their wisdom. Who can deny that Socratic wisdom too has passed through many paradigm shifts to stand to the test of time? Had not the Socratic Paradox given a big jolt among the Sophists? But that ultimately broke open the door for dialectical knowledge.

Theirs is the ants' eyeview of knowledge, seeing reality from the bottom. That grassroot reality is the diurnal reality which never gets bogged down into a blackhole. It is myth, mystery, hearsay, intuition, experience and all possible resources gathered from ancient times to post-modernist period that constitute the cornerstone of sub-altern knowledge system and is propagated through interactive and dialogical converses. And from generation to generation it caters to the multi-culture needs of the common people. It is need-based and value-added as ready reference to functional parity of common senses.

(End)

Elephants and Millions of Ants - II

2.

And the experts flourish with their expertise of knowledge.

They know very well on which side the bread is buttered or in which direction the westerly wind blows. This is their expertise, the expertise which knows for them where and when to start and where and when to finish. This is their expertise and that is why they are oft-quoted and self-styled 'experts'. They never partake of the forbidden fruit of knowledge as they very well know what to know and what not to know for supplementing their vested interest. Vested interest is the name of the game. They impart and spread knowledge about everything as though nothing can be challenged and nothing can be called into question. And their expertise will go scot-free.

The wretched of the earth has not the ability to falsify their knowledge which they claim to know. Their arrogance of knowledge foresees that the unknowledgeable will never dare to break the shackles of inertia of the culture of silence they will never ever strike back at the power-hegemony over them. They are the unknowledgeable and the unknowledgeable have had not the right kind of pedagogy to challenge their authority of knowledge. Culture of silence has made them lowdown and has taught them to accept reality lying down so much so that radicalization of their consciousness cannot be an impediment to the experts’ outright authority. But can that authority not be challenged by the pedagogy of the oppressed by proving them false?

Karl Popper propounded the idea of falsification to verify truth of any hypothetical knowledge which the preachers of knowledge claim to espouse so religiously in their attempts to fortify their reign of arrogance of knowledge. Popper’s methodology is that attempts should be made to falsify, rather than verify, the experts’ “scientific” knowledge. He said that if it was impossible in principles to be able to prove any specific idea false, then it was not “science”. Science is said to be a process of conjectures and refutations which razed all claims of arrogance of knowledge to the ground. So-called knowledge and doctrine can never be beyond human foibles. So, the experts themselves are always exposed to the threats of extinction. They and their expertise are vulnerable as vulnerable as they may be.

According to another new approach as propounded by Thomas Kuhn, knowledge of science normally progresses by small increments under a set of prevailing ideas and methods. This set of prevailing ideas and methods are what we know as paradigm. The normative incremental progress of knowledge of science from situational perspective is paradigm shift. From Newtonian science to Einstein’s relativity theory, there has been a continuous threat and challenge to the set pattern of knowledge. From the Kuhnian viewpoint, no knowledge is a stationary truth as claimed by the exponents of arrogance of knowledge and truth is relative in paradigmatic parameter, and truth is just not truth but approximate to truth as professed by Popper.

In this context, George Orwell’s once remarked, “We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts to show that we are right. Intellectually it is possible to carry on the process for an indefinite time : the only check on it is that sooner or later, a false belief bumps against solid reality…” As such, truth is too vulnerable to that extent that it is supposed to be challengeable and it is to be challenged by falsifying it.

So, truth or knowledge of truth, whether be it expert’s knowledge or simply unsullied truth, always holds a dwindling position depending on the value-added custom aided and abetted by its social functions. If the summum bonum of a truth or knowledge is of highest good to the common denominators, then the other fractional entities should be challenged, refuted and forsaken for the common good. And that truth or knowledge universally accepted, democratically and liberally propositioned in an open-ended frame of reference in which reality is set into motion to stand to the test of time.
(Contd.)

elephants and Millions of Ants - I

1.

I do not know many things which I think I should know.

And I do know many things too which I think I should not know at all.

What should I know? And what should I not know as such?

The 'suchness' of things punch reality into the 'suchness of things'. That reality epistemologically is empirical and we take it for granted on a conservative scale of mind. But reality is not such a holy cow that should be worshipped for good without having pertinence to a frame of reference. Reality has its own frame of reference. Hegel says, attitude of thoughts determine the course and identity of reality and it is the prime mover of the dynamicity of history and historical reality. That is, attitude is the main thing and mainstay of dissecting reality to one's choice. And reality pays for it. Then what variant of reality I should know or I should not know?

So, as attitude is the main thing and determinant factor of our way of life, so our attitude only takes the saying power of what we should know and what we should not know at all about reality. We should know what our attitudes determine and what variant of attitude we generally cherish in our way of life so that we can accept reality as a thing-in-itself and as a thing-for-itself too as the case may be. To check reality whether it is a thing-in-itself or a thing-for-itself, we have to crosscheck our basic attitude.

Then, the subjective-objective duality aside, what is our general attitude per se? Attitude grossly is our vested interest and our vested interest is individual and universal as well depending on the objective of our interests. If it is individual, the individualistic attitude will create some closed space wherein lies our one and only ambition to create a set pattern of reality. In that set pattern, one determines the charter of his life. That life is individualistic and seeks for individual knowledge in quest of one's own vested interest in that set pattern. This opens a closed vista of power of knowledge, the knowledge that one knows is to reach him to a closed space allowing no opening for others. That is what individualistic knowledge is. One has the exclusive right over it and with that right he comes to the inference of closely monitoring his vested interest. This is simply regimentation of knowledge.

On the other hand, when the vested interest is universal, it transcends the closed-space reality creating openings for liberal knowledge which is not knowledge-in-itself but a plethora of ideas grounded in ‘suchness’ of reality. That reality is democratically and holistically determined and outsourced in universal objectives to the tenors of time and space. Thus liberal knowledge is positioned diametrically opposite to the individualistic ambition in dimension. When the ambition is universally propositioned, the liberal knowledge becomes more subtle and is disseminated in a wider area of cognitive reflexes. Thus the democracy of knowledge is always in perpetual motion and interactive and dialogical. It is paradigmatically well-behaved and anchored in democratic patterns of thoughts and beliefs.

So, in the case of knowledge being close-spaced, sparsely distributed in discrete particles, it becomes an epicenter of expertise of power, an exclusive power over others, never catering power to others. This is arrogance of knowledge per excellence. It flagrantly violates the democracy of knowledge and that concerned individual, without giving a priority of disseminating knowledge universally to one and all, crowns himself in the Tower of Babel brandishing his well-gotten weaponry to do away with all possible detractors. As a depository of power, knowledge knows no bounds to overcome and overwhelm anything and everything that come its way. Arrogance of knowledge does not tolerate any pothole in its quest of one imperial colony after another. It seemingly becomes an invincible force to reckon with in lust and lustre.

In common parlance, those who wield power of knowledge over others with the sceptre of arrogance of knowledge are the generally oft-quoted 'experts'. They colonise others' mind and enslave them with a purported authority. They do what the colonialists are supposed to do. Colonialists, we know, are the mercantilists. The 'experts' like their predecessors are wont to deal in expertise of their knowledge like any other merchandise. They sell their own brand of merchandise to the unknowledgeable and it pays. It pays them dearly in callous cash nexusas well as in terms of power and prestige But they never know and are never willing to know the feasibility of utility of their wares to universal demands. They just produce, sell and they flourish. And the colonised minds languish as ever like flotsam and jetsam in their own natural habitat, they remain as ever as the wretched of the earth.

(contd.)

An Introspective Views on the 60 Years' of India's Independence

(Written on the eve of India's Independence Day)

The celebration is on and right before the day's mid-night sun.

And there is so much gung-ho as ever. Right in the nick of the moment and in right earnest. With flying colours and mightbe with much fanfare, razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle.And with blaring of conchs and mouthful of words.

It is 60 years' old but is yet to come of age.

60 years but not come of age?

Actually it is over-aged but yet not come of age. That is, it is aged or over-aged in figures but not in spirits. The spirit is full of beans.

What is there if it is still going on all fours?

Going on all fours is the index of its true face, the baby-faced facade of its 60 years' encumbering is all too evident in the annals of its naive amnesia.

How amnesiac its patrons and guardians are!

Yes, they have buried everything into oblivion to salvage their well-earned salvation. They have forgotten the days of 1975 when the holy cow was solemnly sacrificed at the behest of the Almighty and the bleary-eyed ghost-writers kowtowed at the altar of omnipotence to face her face with white hair-line and to reinforce her cathedral by scripting a new manifesto of songs of freedom.

The sacred river was strewn with skull and bones. The insipid potion gradually turned gray with the tears of Auswisch.

Nobody bombed for the fear of freedom.
And culture of silence hit the rooftop in cahoots with more somber silence.

All the Goebels fell to talking tongue-in-cheek with open-chested breast-stroke of machismo.

History is to be glossed over, history is to be forsaken in the brown pages of history. The pages are all too tattered.
But history repeats itself.

Now again the same ghost-writers are acting like animals of the Animal Farm. crying themselves hoarse to glorify the songs of freedom for the same fear of freedom.

The songs of freedom are splattered all over, the dins and bustles are spilling over as usual as though they are racing one against another to show the world who is more equal than the others to be qualified for the olive branch in the Olympiad.

But they have forgotten that the 60 years’ toddler has failed to deliver the goods at the fair-price shop for those millions who are shedding bloods and sweats at the sweat-shops in excruciating diurnal drudgery.

What is that to them?

Nothing and nothing whatsoever.

They only know how to get paid in their own coins.

Everything dies. Only callous cash nexus remains for good.


The sweat-shoppers do not know how to sing songs of freedom.

The street-children do not know how to dance in tune with the songs of freedom.

They just ask silently.

They ask violently in deafening silence.

Yeh Ajadi Kya Hai? Jhuta Hai Na Sach Hai?

Poor Man's Education : Freire's Pedagogy

Is education a one-way traffic? The teacher will gorge out something from his memory or from his notebook and the students will listen to him like some dumb dudes? If this is education practiced in one-way-traffic module, what is destined to happen is happening all over the world and most predictably the so-called educated people have been turned into dumb dudes. They have fallen a victim to 'culture of silence'. This 'culture of silence' is the way of life that the powers-that-be have intelligently instilled into the mindset of the common denominators and that is what they want.

Paul Freire in his seminal book Pedagogy of The Oppressed says that it is not education. Conventional education is mechanical and parroting to the point of being corrupted to the core in so far as it tends to exert pressure on the common people to eat the humble pie of existence. It cannot enlighten the students with new visions and thoughts. According to his opinion, proper education should be dialogical and interactive between the teacher and the students. Only that way education can become pro-active in the sense that proactivity with the existing standard of life would interact with the way we should live.

So, education's sole objective should be to educate the mass of people how to change this world. To change the world, people have to know the actual reality of the world in due perspective and thereby to transcend that reality. If they know it, they will automatically want to change the undesirable societal condition of the world. On that condition, the teacher cannot parrot some methodological ideas which are barren and inefficacious. From the teacher a student will learn something and then he should be prompted to ask questions one after another to get plausible answers themselves with the aiding and abetting with the proper help and guidance from the attending teacher.

That is a two-way traffic and two-way-traffic education is truly dialogical and interactive. And interactive and dialogical education is the only proper way to educate the mass of people who are burning within themselves to change the unjust world. To reiterate it again, first and foremost they should know and be of the firm conviction that the world they live in is utterly an unjust one. Gaining this conviction is not just gaining in knowledge but remould one's mindset with a vision, a vision that shows the new light at the end of the tunnel at the crossroad of life's one and only true mission.

Freire is a Brazilian educator who conducted many educational workshops among the poor and illiterate peasants and factory workers of Latin American countries to lend a hand to their political education so that they could know the world better. And he returned with immense and enthusiastic responses from them. He says in his book, "In the midst of the argument a man who previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out : 'Perhaps I am the only one here of working class origin. I can't say that I've understood everything you've said, but I can say one thing - when I begin this course I was naive, and when I found how naive I was, I started to get critical...' "

And getting critical is the bottomline of Freire's pedagogy as far as the liberating education is concerned. It generates critical consciousness and that "conscientization" then cries for freedom from all shackles of oppression prevalent in the society. Freire says : "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsively. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for the human completion."

Now let us briefly point to the "culture of silence" which shackles the mindset of the wretched of the earth. The oppressors of the world do not like the idea that the wretched people never raise their voice against injustice and cry for their legitimate demand of freedom. It is rather that they remain "dumb dudes" meekly surrendering themselves to their existential fatalism. They should not get critical of their essences of existence reverberating in their political consciousness. And here lies the crux. As long as the oppressed people eschew the "culture of violence", their juggernaut of economic appropriation and political shenanigans will roll on undisturbed and uninterrupted.

So, let them sing the songs of silence!

The World is our Idea, The Idea is Our World

They say, the world is our idea. That is to say that it is a construct of our sensations and perceptions, and memory as well. This is the subjective view of the objective world. The world exists objectively on its own and subjectively as well, nothing comes into fray. But in absence of our perceptions and sensations, does it manifest simply because of its presence and existence? Its being to becoming is rather conditional, conditional in the sense that certain happenings and events in its very existence happen to be the brainwork of our perceptions and sensations. Otherwise, it remains dead as dodo in its very existence. Without our perceptions and cognitive faculty the world exists in way that it does not exist. This is like being-in-itself.

Our mind, on the other hand, remains as usual with or without the pre-existence of the world, remains active and sensitive as ever in our spatio-temporal world, 'more ghostly than a ghost'. But is that really so? If there is no world or no world of physical objects, can our mind exist at all? How will it exist without the world being perceived by it, without anything for its food for reflection? And our mind too cannot survive without its reflective food. This heavenly 'manna' is quintessential for its existence. As if, the world is our mind's one and only 'fodder' and our mind its one and only 'cannon' to burn the Promethean fire of knowledge. This 'canonical' message is very important in establishing the embedded relationship between the world and mind or for that matter the mind.

Mind and matter never exists in virtual duality, rather they both complete an integral whole. They are always comprehensively in elastic relationship with each other. Here, the Cartesian duality does not hold water. In the idealist worldview, this material or the physical world has just been constructed and construed in the mind's view, as it were it has been at the cost of taking the human self to a seventh heaven where only mind can dictate terms without giving a due credit to the world of matter. On the other hand, in Marx's materialist worldview, there had an unqualified preponderance over matter where matter enslaves mind and mind just plays second fiddle to matter. From both of these counts, it can be inferred that mind is out of the world, never a part of it or never with it and both are mutually exhaustive and both the epistemology subscribe to the duality principle of De'Cartes in one way or another.

Let us take a quick look at what Erwin Schrodinger has to say regarding mind and matter duality : "Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with its gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself - withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator." He also said that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic and just for an aid and extension of practical use. So, as per Schrodinger's contention, mind cannot be left behind the body of the natural world so much so that mind is an integral component of the body-world.

Yes, the world is our mind and the mind is our world. In the ideas of the world, our mind is nourished and nurtured, and in the mind's vision and perception the world or for that matter, the matter-world gets life and is born and reborn in this world. Otherwise, it remains dead camouflaged within itself, none and nothing to wake it or none and nothing to conceive its existence. And who is there or what is there to conceive our own existence? It is mind only what reminds us that we live in our ideas and the idea is our world. And whatever we do or think is a reflection of the world, the world that nourishes us both physically and epistemologically.

The Prophet : A Rare Touch of Mysticism

Kahlil Gibran's book of poetry The Prophet is already a widely read book. Its language is ethereal and of celestial beauty. Life is delved deep and explored in all its possibilities, life is celebrated in all its nuances. Here life is passionately in love with life so much so that the pangs of death diminish with life flourishing in all its sublime beauty.

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) from Lebanon is of very humble birth. He immigrated to America to pursue the profession of a painter. He later joined Rodin school in Paris . His surrealistic touch of paintings did earn him a lot of accolades in no time from the connoisseurs of art. Had he been destined it could have created a world of himself and etched his name in the annals of art and painting. But that was not to be. The Prophet has made him all too famous all over the world.

Philosophy is literally littered and splattered in all passions everywhere in this book. What kind of philosophy? Very simple – spiritual and mystic in good measure - it is spiritual philosophy all the way. It is a spiritual odyssey into the human life and it particularly rests on the common people's craving for life. That is why Gibran is called to be the peoples’ philosopher. His philosophy is just situational and is situated within the nitty-gritty elements of life.

It should reiterated that The Prophet is no common book of poetry, rather it is a book of philosophy passionately conveyed in verse and in impeccable simplicity. By the way Al Mustafa, the protagonist of The Prophet, leads us to ultimate destination and to a quest for meaning of life. Here Al Mustafa acts as the exponent of Gibran’s philosophy which he does in a prophetic manner of a sage. He preaches truth and wisdom with prophetic authority. Truth opens the vista to wisdom and wisdom explores the pulsating love for and unflinching adherence to life. That is the true beauty of wisdom. It is mystic in subtle sense. And a kind of mysticism not far removed from spiritualism is explicitly imbued in Gibran’s philosophy and literary works. That is why he is most often referred to mystic poet-painter William Blake (1757-1827). He had religiously carried his legacy to the point of revivalism and reaffirmed it in the faceless world of the 20th. Century.

I think in The prophet, Gibran has embarked on a mission to get to the meaning of death vis-à-vis life itself and to create a niche for death in life and this death instinct is very common with the mystics like Gibran. Like life itself, death has a strong metabolic consonance in life. As we can never disown life, so we cannot disown death either and in death only life becomes full and complete as though death is an open speculum in which life’s whole universe gets reflected in full gaiety so much so that we can do a thorough soul-searching in a trinity of time. The trinity of past, present and future are inflated and deflated simultaneously to give way to a flux of time in temporal space and in the process life is laid bare and at rest to the eternity’s sublime tranquility.

In The Prophet, Al Mustafa is all set to bid adieu to Orphalese to return back to the isle of his birth and for him to return back his ship is coming with the mist. Where will he return back? To the isle of his birth. Then the burning question prompts us to immediately ask that where he had been so long away from his home and hearth. He had been with his people alive with life’s full glory and that is where his home and hearth is. He had seen all and experienced everything of life with a sage’s wisdom. And now he is wise enough to leave a legacy and testimony to life for others to imbibe to life’s content.

He will deliver everything what he has gained all through his life. That ‘everything’ is his wealth of wisdom. Now is the time to depart from this temporal space and to go back to his isle of birth where he will attain salvation. This salvation is a sort of mystical rebirth of his. So, he had had no right to prolong his stay. He had waited too long and at last he had got the call of his vehicle. He will board on that vehicle to carry him on to the path of salvation.

He will live in eternity but he will never be dead. His physical death ends only in spiritual birth, a beginning of a whole saga of life and death in continuity. That was why his beloved Almitra happened to hear him say at the departing moment :

“Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

So, he departs only to come back again and again. He will come back to the whirlwind of life in many lives and deaths. The Prophet cannot be mortal, he is immortal in his wisdom.

Marx and Religion

Marx's idea of religion is somewhat ambiguous. At least the exponents of Marxist ideology have turned the table on him. That is why a clarification is to be sought. Sloganeering Marxists have repeatedly said that religion is the opium of the masses. The question is that had Marx wanted to mean what underlies in this short precept? Had he really wanted religion to be bypassed by the masses?

The truth lies elsewhere. The downtrodden people all over the world down the ages have been pained at the way they have been treated. There is every reason for them to have suffered the angst of existence. In clinical science, we have been offered to go for analgesia for the physical pains we suffer and this way we have found a true remedy for all sorts of our physical pains. With that view in mind Marx said that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature..."

What kind of sigh that is? That sigh arises out of the economic alienation they suffer due to capitalist mode of production. In the capitalist mode of production the mass of producers are totally alienated from their immediate produce as they do not have any possessive control over them and the appropriator class appropriate their labour of pain by political and economical manipulation. This kind of economic alienation is of psychological and spiritual sorts. But Marx's main thrust was on physical sufferings as caused by the economic exploitation. That exploitation leaves them physically wretched all through as they have to lead a life that is most inhuman and threadbare. This threadbare life pushes them back to the wall to wage a bitter struggle simply for mere existence.

And they have nothing and no one to fall back upon in this "heartless world". Where should they get solace? Where should they get respite from the sufferings of domestic drudgery? Where should they get heart to confront this faceless and heartless world of economic exploitation, physical oppression and spiritual alienation? So they have to live under a delusion enforcing them to fall a prey to the make-believe world of religion and heavenly bliss where they find a heart to give vent to their sighs. Whatever fictitious and phantasmagorical that world may be, at least they have a little space of their own there in that chosen world to heave a sigh of relief at the end of their hard days of toil and moil. So, it might be said that Marx's views about religion have some cathartic effects on the religious masses. Who are we to deny them of their world?

Marx also said that "the religious world is but the reflex of the real world." What happens to the suffering people who don't have any way whatsoever to smooth their pains of diurnal hunger, death and disease and pains of existential pain? What they will do in that case? Who will shelter them in their times of misery? Marx too had no answer for them in his time. Rather he opined that suffering people have no other options but to take to religion which like opium can soothe their pains at least for the time being. And there is absolutely nothing wrong of them in their falling prey to religion. Without the benevolent impact of analgesia of religion, there is no way for them to bear with the situation.

So, Marx had never repudiated and spoken ill of religion as such but rather he detected and supported the positive role played by religion in no uncertain terms. Without this prejudice, the oft-quoted fragmented slogan "Religion is opium of the masses" turns out to be vague political jargon not in conformity with the Marx's idea of religion. He knew quite well how to address the issue in true perspective. He is not blame for the ambiguity in his idea of religion. And so many ideas of his have been vulgarised and are still being vulgarised by none other than the diehard Marxists.

Terrorism and Politics of Violence

Is terrorism just ostensible display of violence? Is it just indiscriminate violence perpetrated by some groups of 'wayward people' against the state and its citizens as we are most often led to believe? But is it not a state-sponsored idea that groups of wayward people commonly known as extremists only are reponsible for all those massacres and indiscriminate acts of violence?

In simple terms, it is waging violence on the people and against the people. The objective is to reinforce the status quo or to found a new base of status quo by taking recourse to violence creating fear psychosis by the way among different sections of the people. The terrorists, whoever they may be, are status quoists in some way. Then there are two lines of status quoism, one is diamerically opposite to the other and they are mutually exclusiveand destructive.

One is always trying to reinforce its power base which is already there. And the other tries to subvert the already-there power base to enforce and to build an alternative of its own, be radical or parochial or otherwise. What can be said with a fair amount of certainty is that it is a war of violence between two warring factions with their own respective vested interests and by the way one is always terrorising the other. It is a perpetual war, a powermongering business that finds no end to the length of the tunnel.

This tunnel vision takes us to the points of asking a few questions that demand immediate and forthright answers. Who perpetrates and can perpetrate violence at will? Those who have power at their immediate authority. Who enjoys power? Those only who have the established political authority and thus they have all the powers to do whatever they want to do to garner more power for themselves and to be more powerful in the process. They refuse to accept any reason to whatever they do to perpetuate their undue authority.

Now, who is or what is the most powerful of all. The state and its executives. The people or for that matter 'the wayward people' can never be so to wield so much power. They have not that much authority to to wield power over the power-that-be of the state or its executives. They are always at their mercy and they are always at the receiving end. In difficult times the people take to the street to tear apart the authority of the state. But they hardly succeed. And as they hardly succeed, the reins are grabbed from the people by those socalled 'wayward people' and it seems to appear that they are acting as the supposed saviours of 'the wretched of the earth' by waging a war of violence against the state and its establishment.

Whether they are true-blue messiah of the wretched people or not, it will not be far from the social reality that acts of terrorism and sporadic activities of extremism is a glaring manifestation of popular grievances against all kinds of exploitation and repression. Popular unrests start with much fanfare but they beat a hasty retreat when faced with the state's repressive machinery. And where they end up, the proponents of violent means of political war or acts of terrorism take up the cudgel even if they do not enjoy the massive popular support. But the state has its own brand of political stratagems to combat the subsequent situations.

So, being the supremely powerful, the state only can perpetrate violence and terror to maintain the status quo of its power base and its superstructure. If anyone or anything does come to challenge its exclusive authority, it never stops short of anything by way of crushing the challenge with power and vengeance. It simply is wont to terrorise to maintain its seat of power. It maintains state of terror to create fear psychosis in the minds of its detractors so that they never dare to bare their swords of rebellion.

And one more thing is that the state does not always bare its fangs in ostensible display of violence against the people as it has its many other options to wait and see. As the concept of the state is based on vested interest, power and violence, the state always creates an ambience of violence with its propaganda machinery. That 'ambient violence' of fear psychosis acts like a mass-destructive weapon which deters the people from upstaging an uprising and always keeps them subdued and which in normal times forbids the power-that-be to use direct violence. In times of peace, the sleeping lion generally does not get up on its feet to bare its ugly fangs.

But when that peace is disturbed? The footsoldiers are called to take guard and all hell let loose. And the state-sponsored brand of SS or 'Salwa Judum' takes the law unto themselves to maintain the sacred laws and order of the land and to combat the anti-national anti-people forces of the land. They say that it is not violence or terrorism. They never say that violence breeds violence. Violence breeds violence only when the people strike back and then only the peace is disturbed!

To Be? or Not To Be?

We always suffer from the To-Be-or- Not- To-Be syndrome. This syndrome is the drawing line or a great divider between life and death, so to speak. Sometime when we have got to take some firm decision, we falter this way or that way and we act like a couch-potato becoming an inert soul of sorts. And indecision rules the roost in our mindset. We become dead and deadpan. Nothing can move us as though life has come to a screeching halt.

Actually this To-Be-or- Not- To-Be syndrome is the manifestation of our level of mind. Our life is always confronted and infested with uncertainty and unpredictibility. We are never sure about what is in store for us or what is going to happen to us in this hot and happening world. And our life is poised against all odds. This oddity leaves us simply vacant, forlorn and forsaken and sometimes disgusted with our predicament. We get immersed in a deep quagmire the depth of which further pushes us back to the wall. We just feel helpless.

The more we feel helpless the more we want to fall back on something or someone. This void creates a make-believe world for us where we want to find some solace, some breathing space for ourselves. That breathing space, as it were, is our last resort and our occult world where we pontificate our pettyfoggy ideas and we fall a prey to irrationality by way of believing in religion, God, superstition etc. And we are turned into irrational beings at least for a few moments' respite. But do we get respite at all? Does our life manage to get over the crisis of uncertainty and unpredictibility to decide what to do and what not to do or how to do and how not to do. Or, for that matter, whether or not to do?

Most probably not and never ever. Yet we live and live on. This living seems to be living in a world of purgatory far from the madding crowd. Still we never get taught. To get out of this rut, we decide to take some forthwith decision which again fails us and cannot prompt or force us on an even keel. And we are back to square one. Life has already come to a full circle. But it is already too late. Our being has lost all the power to decide what to do and what not to do or for that matter whether or not to do. And God never stands at this threshold to guide us or stands us in good stead to decide whether to be or not to be.

This is life awaiting death as though death is a great leveler or an omniscient educator. But death cannot draw the dividing line so far as our catastrophe drives us to a further wilderness. We decide but we cannot decide. We cannot decide but we have got to decide. Decision fails again, indecision takes charge.

To be or not to be?

A Layman's Views of Cosmology

The other day only I was talking to a friend about what we know and think about cosmology. We are just laymen not knowing the nitty-gritty things of this branch of science. We only know what comes too easily and visibly in our perceptions. And after a brief deliberation we came to the conclusion that the theories of Big Bang and Steady State propounded by the scientists are just mere hypotheses. At least to laymen like us who believe what they see under the sun.

They say that the universe is continually moving and expanding tending to reach a certain point and thereby creating a situation of implosion which can pave the way for the second Big Bang. But nothing is proved to draw a viable inference for us. And again, when Stephen Hawkins say of the situation during the creation of the universe at the ten to the power minus twenty-ninth of a second, we just get bemused at the idea of that spatio-temporal consequences of the universe of that humanly imperceptible moment. These theories are far from our cognisable perception. We laymen cannot voice our feelings of our befuddled knowledge. We are at a loss and everything is at a stake for us.

We are small people. Big Science never enters our world from the back door. We remain aloof and outsider as ever. Is not it?

We Know Nothing, We Know Something

Every action has its reaction in its wake and every reaction must have some action before that. Nothing happens in this world without any cause. Cause precedes effect. Ascertaining this cause and effect duality is what we call science in our common sense and this is also the basic objective of philosophy. And herein merge the concept of science and philosophy and human knowledge is conceptualized holistically. Whereas science explores the natural world, philosophy delves deep into the truism of human world. Both human world and the natural world are the realms to be explored to ascertain the cause-effect duality of knowledge.
It is not that science has discovered everything or it can discover everything. That is science's apparent limitations. What is not known today can be or may be known some day. But we cannot say that what is hitherto unknown cannot be known and that is absolutely in the realm of mysticism or supernaturalism. So much so that supernaturalism or mysticism will dictate terms to what is unknown or what cannot be known in absolute terms. Has the supernaturalism or mysticism has that kind of power to reckon with? In actual reality there is nothing to be called supernatural or mystic. If we carry the burden of supernaturalism or mysticism, we must say that it is superstition. Superstition is nothing but our dark ignorance which leads us to the realm of blind faith. It blinds our vision in such a way that we cannot see reason in exploring truth.

We know many mysteries of the nature and we do not know many mysteries of nature. What we do not know is generally wrapped in mystery and what is wrapped in mystery can be or may be unwrapped to our knowledge with the development of our inquisitive and cognitive prowess. With that power of empirical knowledge at our disposal we have unraveled many mysteries of the universe and with that power only we can still unravel many mysteries. This is a never-ending process and ever-evolving principle of our knowledge system. Not only that, that process is constituted heuristically so as to find out our desired truth by supposition and assumption standing to the test of our past gains of knowledge and experience. Even then we cannot say that we know the truth or we have absolute knowledge.

Actually what we know as truth is nothing but approximate to truth and the knowledge of the absolute is just but relative. In the history of epistemology we have known many truths or knowledge that had later turned hostile to the new challenges posed by the later development. So, knowledge or truth is evolutionary and is always evolving. In that sense, truth is approximate to truth and the knowledge of the absolute is relative. We always know something of everything but not everything of everything. And if that is so, we never know the truth and we cannot know anything as such. The “suchness” of truth remains elusive to us. This mystery drags us on to an unending odyssey into the mystery of the universe.

The Concept of Powerful Country

Some people always boast of powerful countries. They do not care to think of the implication of powerful countries. America and its allies are powerful countries. There is no denying of the fact. Yes, they are more powerful than the other countries. They are powerful not only in terms of accumulation of gross wealth but also by virtue of their enormous pile-up of destructive arms and ammunition in their possession. On the one hand, with their economic power they can sell and purchase the poorer countries many times more and on the other, with their military power of superiority they keep those countries at bay by creating a war psychosis among them. This is the political hegemony perpetrated by those so-called powerful countries.

The concept of powerful country is actually derogatory to the ordinary people's conscience and sentiment. Why a country or some countries will be more powerful than the rest of the world? When someone is rich or some country is rich, it can be said for sure that that particular man or that particular country has sucked the blood of the poorer people. Without depriving others nobody could be rich, without taking away the sovereignty of other countries no country could be more powerful than the others.

Only economic power conjoined with muscle power, not moral or ideological power, makes someone or something more powerful. When a country is economically powerful, it paves the way for its being politically powerful. And that political power enhances the power of the barrel of the gun. And the power of the barrel of the gun always aims at those who are economically poor. But first of all we should remember that economical power grows out of depriving. The deprived ones are always less powerful. The powerful countries always rob the other countries of their political and economic sovereignty by imposing their all-powerful political hegemony.

Who Outnumbers Whom : The Theists or the Atheists?

Who outnumbers whom? The atheist or the theist?

This is a great contention. It can be said with great amount of certainty that the number of the atheists are gradually on the rise. But the breed of theists is overwhelming and is in absolute majority. And in the long run they will remain so. The atheists will never be in a position to outnumber them. This is no beating about the bush.

Man is a spiritual being by nature. He has spiritual hunger of his own and is always hungry for spiritual food. He can fast on physical food but not on spiritual food without which he cannot survive. That 'manna' is quintessential for his essential being and self. There is no denying of the fact.

To say that man is essentially a spiritual being does in no way mean that it is all the way religiosity or belief in the existence of God is the prime mover of a man's existence, rather it is a way of his secular life and being and it is in no way akin to practising so-called god-fearing religion. And at the same time this spiritualism has no bearing on the pettyfogging spiritualism of the so-called god-men.

Actually man is the only animal who is always fearing of the fury of nature and has some amazing feeling for the beauty of nature or for that matter the mystery and wonder of nature which has in the process given rise to religion and science thereafter. Science has tried its best to demystify the nature by way of exploring deep into the realm of nature and has been successful to some extent to know the rules of law into its system. But science has failed miserably to get to the rock bottom of nature. It is no fault of science, rather it is its limitation. That limitation will always be there. And and that limitation always drags science from far to farther but not to the farthest.

It seems that the absolute rules of law into the very system of nature will remain elusive from the cognizance of human nature or science as such. That has created a void in the cognizance capacity of the human beings. And in that case religion or the concept of God has come to the fore to fill that vacuum. Marx has rightly said that religion is the opium of the masses. This oft-quoted saying of Marx is most oftenly misquoted by the Marxist proponents. What he actually intended to mean as regards religion is that the spiritual verves and flavours of religion allays the worries of uncertainty and existential pangs of the people and as such it brings about analgesia as and when human predicament finds no easy way to cathartic denouement.

Laymen who have generally have got nothing to do with the intricacies of science have managed to grasp the idea of God as an easy recourse and they have remained the theists as ever and taking to theism has come to good stead for them so far as the wonders and mysteries of this universe are concerned and this has its universal appeal. On the other hand, those who are atheists are neither god-fearing nor religious and they are few and far between but they too negotiate the universal mysteries and wonders by way of espousing the verves and flavours of spirituality. It stands to reason that this equation is not going to be changed in the foreseeable future.

It will be another wonder if this equation is ever changed?

Why the Muslims are a Persecuted Community?

Today there are a quite few numbers of absorbing discussions concerning the Muslim community. I first tell you that I am a Muslim by birth but not by faith or practice, I am a non-believer to say the least. Nonetheless I too feel some sort of uncanny ditherings about the community as a whole and that is why I don't have much respect for the community. As I really feel sorry for their poor stature, I feel like giving vent to my accounts of their state of affairs with well-meaning gestures to them.

I have told that they are of poor stature. Why so?

I have noticed that the Muslims are very much Muslims in their overall attitude which is to some extent sickening. Why do they always carry their religion on their shoulder with all too ostensible bag and baggage? Why do this baggage always so ostensible? People belonging to other communities are also religious and god-fearing. They also regularly perform rituals of their own even sometimes more than the Muslims have to do. In spite of all this, they are too afraid to call themselves by names. Generally they don't give a damn to it.

Why do the Muslim community always suffer from identity crisis? Why can't they save themselves? Why do they always suffer from the self-inflicted ethnic minority syndrome? Why do they always uphold religion above everything else? Why are they so wary of imbibing scientific and rational mentality and temperament? Why their terms and conditions are dictated from extraneous pre-conditions and by some self-styled Ulemas? Why do they fear of modernity? Why do they not come out to address their grievances politically? Why are their community and society so regimented and why not so liberal? And so on so forth.

These sorts of questions should be the talking points of the day. Yes, behind all of these vexing issues, there are socio-political and historical backlashes. No one can deny this and there is every reason to accept this. But to come out this rut and to gain a strong foothold in the socio-political culture of the world politics, the Muslims themselves have to come forward to ward off the barriers facing the Muslim community. No one is going to spare an inch of space for them. They have to gain it for themselves. They have to be the lord of themselves.

To this effect, the Muslim community has got to keep shy of religious dogmatism and embrace modern education, scientific and rational culture. They should bear in mind that they are human beings first and they are Muslims after then, only being Muslims will not hold water for them in the long run in this conflicting and competitive universe.

It is often told that the Muslims are a persecuted community. Yes, they are persecuted more often than not by other communities and by the present political setup. But have they ever been prompted to rally themselves against this persecution? It is their own world vision that has kept them down and it is their own frailty that has allowed themselves to fall a victim to persecution by others. If it is to blame anybody, they have to first blame it on themselves. They are persecuted by their own fanatical laxity.

A cat has Nine Lives!

A cat has nine lives, so you say. But does cat live to count nine?

Yes. Once I read that cats can count. They can count seven. And only seven. Whether that is true does not matter but what matters is that animals do have some emotional attachment with the human beings and their own species.

They experience ‘experience’ also. We have all observed this or if we minutely observe, we can experience this. This is particularly true about domestic animals. It might be owing to close association and intimate relation that they manage to learn a few things and they apply this experience if and when the situation demands of them.

They also have joy and sorrow of their own which also they share with their masters and kith and kin. We have also observed the behaviour and mental acumen of the trained animals let alone the pet ones. So animals are just not dullards as we generally believe and so we cannot take them for a ride. Intelligent Quotient (IQ) of theirs might not be high but their Emotional Quotient (EQ) is fairly even.

Is Life Just 'Eat, Drink And Be Merry'?

Is our life just 'eat, drink, and be merry'? If that is so, does it make any sense so far as the depth and vastness of life are concerned. Our life is more meaningful than anything else and life is anything but just 'eat, drink, and be merry'.

What is life as such? Is it just a biological existence like that of any other living being? An animal only lives with its biological existence. But a human being is more than an animal. His living being is also his intelligent being. That is why a man is a man.

A man is a man because he is a man. But on what count he is a man. He is a man on account of his being an intelligent being. And his intelligent being proves to be meaningful in more way than one. But this intelligent being is not merely his so-called intelligence that places him on top of the animals who are more instinctive than intelligent.

Intelligence covers a wide range of human sensibility like experience, discriminative power of judgment, creative faculty, moral virtuosity along with senses of love, courage, bravery, tolerance, fellow-feeling, equality, perseverance etc. And these values constitute the basics of human life and humanity.

When we come to think of humanity, we transcend the conventional idea of way of living like an animal being whose merry-making in life is confined in just eating and drinking. They just live to survive and surviving is their only way of living. Nothing less and nothing more. There is nothing meaningful in this way of living - no goal to reach, no mission to achieve.

But on our part, it is nothing like that. We have many goals to reach, many missions to achieve. This missionary zeal survives us and drives home the point that we are all, we are not selfish giants. Our life is seamlessly embedded with society, nature and the world. And feeling like being seamlessly embedded this way only, we can think of leading a humane life and we can get to the true meaning of humanity.