Just like the Ocean...

An Assyrian clay tablet discovered recently reveals that 4000 years back, people were worried about protecting their loved ones, money, property from rogues and brutal government officials.

A look at history, and 1000 years back, people were worried about the same. All cultures. All socio economic levels.

500 years back - same.

50 years back - same.

Today - same.

There can be no yard stick of progress except quality of life. And on this scale, human progress is non existent.

I've been pondering theories on randomness for a couple of months now...

The basic essence of these theories is that there is no net pattern, no net direction to human life. The patterns, the net movements we see in our environment are nothing but our own imagination.

Life's flow is nothing but random interplay between living trajectories IN THE CURRENT MOMENT......no one trajectory can win the battle.

That life flows in no particular direction. All that rises, falls. All that begins, ends. The day will always melt into darkness. Life will always melt into death.

All of our achievements, struggles, insights, wisdom will melt into nothingness one day.

So, struggling in any particular direction, wanting to gravitate towards some 'meaning', working towards some 'higher goal'...it's all contrary to the random nature of reality...all such plans will therefore lead to nothing but frustration.

Maybe there is some truth to the statement that a human's life is like a leaf blowing in the wind...tiny, inconsequential, temporary flight, in an infinite, incomprehensible cosmos..

Like the ocean..no net movement, no direction...just this moment..
Like the clouds in the sky...no net movement...just this moment...

Darkness and light coexist.
Loss and profit coexist.
The continuous interplay between opposites gives life its definition
The dance between light and shadow gives life its beauty
If only light existed, all would be dark.
There would be no form, no structure.

Just like all colours emerge from white light
Opposites emerge from the same source





Ocean image ctsy Peripateticously

Maya of the Mind

Watch the mind as it tries, in every moment, to co-opt experience by translating it into a story. It tries to draw us away from experience into a mental world that simulates experience. It tries to draw us into an imagined story about the experience. If it succeeds, that story becomes our experience. - Gina Lake.

The mind, it appears, is our biggest enemy. We are hard coded to get fooled easily and there is no limit to the nature, depth and complexity of the illusion that may form in the mind.

As per my understanding of Advaita Vedanta, the biggest illusion could be that events of the human world flow chronologically and are connected by cause and effect.

But how true is this concept - only moments of transcendence of mundane reality could reveal to us.

I don't know if it is true.....

BUT

Have you ever, in your life, looked at something, and found yourself saying...'TIMELESS' or 'AMAZING' or 'WOW'...and found the surroundings dissolving...

Those are, technically speaking, moments of transcendence of human life.

Such temporary transcendence is also known as "Satori". Beautiful things, beautiful concepts, beautiful music, beautiful places, little children, cute puppies, such things can push us into "Satori".

Each experience with Satori is unique. It's like Tea. No two cups of tea can be the same.

Why I am talking of 'Satori' is --- in the moment of 'Satori'...the non chronological nature of the flow of events in the human world could hit you. As per the texts...

PART - II
Carl Jung suggests that memory is merely a dance of archetypes in the transcendental NOW. Everything - the past, the present, and the 'future' - it is all unfolding simultaneously in the transcendental NOW.

Moments of "Satori" could give us a glimpse of this timeless reality. As mentioned previously.

Illusions

The green and the blue spirals are the same colour.

When tomorrow comes, it's the NOW again.

A Tolle lecture on the 'transcendental NOW' in which he points out that careful observation will reveal that audio-visual quality of memory --- whether it is from 10 minutes back or 10 years back or 20 years back - it's the same.

The 5 minute old memory is as fragmented, as disjointed as the 5 year old memory. Or the 10 year old memory. Or the 20 year old memory.

Your transcendental self has been, and is, peacefully watching all moments of your life manifesting simultaneously. These moments contain archetypes, i.e., models of you, not the real you.

The future does not exist, except as a thought, a moment on the above mentioned transcendental fabric. It is also unfolding in the NOW, along with the past.

And here is Carl Jung, talking about the relationship between the past and the present moment.

It appears that Jung is in perfect tune with Tolle.




If indeed the 'transcendental NOW' is all there is, one just might prefer to say -- memory or "movement of archetypes" from 10 minutes below, or 10 years "below", or 20 years "below". -- to use Jung's representation.

One dynamic moment, evolving 'vertically'. Outside of time, which can be looked upon as flowing horizontally.

"One dynamic moment evolving vertically" is also a sensibility that physicist Fritjof Capra ponders in 'The Tao of Physics', when he comments on the experiences reported by eastern mystics who claimed to have transcended, and the odd behaviour of phenomena seen at the sub atomic level, phenomena that do not flow chronologically, and appear to move in complex ways that can be summed up as "distortion of time."


An interesting statement pointed out by Eckhart Tolle that points to temporal distortion in human life:

"Before Abraham was, I am."


Some more examples of temporal distortion:

• You are reading this for the first time, all over again.
  
  
• You have been watching this statement forever.
  
  
• You are visiting this blog for the first time, but you think you have been here before.