Vedanta Rocks -7 > Moment to Moment and the Fractions in between

( part 7 of 46 )


In one millionth of a second, a million things have already happened... another million things are happening and the DNA molecule waits.

‘Know it as that which moves when time stands still’ Katha Upanishad 2-1-13

Half a second — that’s how quickly lovers can embrace. One fifth of a second... that’s all it takes to blink. One tenth of a second... that’s how soon your eyelashes kissed each other as you just blinked. One sixteenth of a second... that’s the time interval between a new pinch and the pain. One twentieth of a second... that’s the crack of a whip from curl to curl. One fiftieth of a second... the flutter of bees wings, so fast you can’t see it happen. One hundredth of a second... that’s all it takes for a Ferrari to zip across a shoulders width. One thousandth of a second… it’s a nice freeze strobe for a falling droplet. Watch as it bounces slowly and breaks into a hundred tiny spheres. One ten thousandth of a second — a sniper’s bullet penetrates a body from the chest and leaves from the back. One millionth of a second — now you are in a different time zone. The only happening place is inside a living cell. In one millionth of a second, a million things have already happened... another million things are happening and the DNA molecule waits impatient. One billionth of a second... you are at the cutting edge of time for life’s workings. If you acquire such eyes you can see the long twirling molecule lazily dancing, grabbing, stitching, weaving an image of itself... telling long funny stories to its twin as they separate, each on a mission of their own.

One trillionth of a second... you are beyond the molecule now... nothing moves, even the super busy DNA looks dead and motionless... The scene is like nothing we can imagine, but regard it if you wish as an idyllic picture. Photons are sauntering lazily by in an otherwise dark universe. The world is stiff like a photograph, the bee hangs frozen in flight, the Ferrari remains motionless, the sniper’s bullet peeps out of the barrel but never leaves, lovers stretch out arms that never meet, and you are at last reaching the known edge of time. One quadrillionth of a second and time no longer exists for life or matter. Yet something mysterious is at work. Some force that choreographs the dance of life, of atoms, of subatomic particles, some force that keeps iron laws that hold a jumping, jiving universe in its place. Enter the Field at last. When everything is frozen, the Field is all that moves.

What is the Field anyway? It is ‘that which moves when time stands still’. It is everywhere all at once and for all time. On its silent command the bee flaps its frozen wing, the Ferrari zips past at breakneck speed, lovers inch closer in embrace, the bullet smokes its way out of the barrel. From the stillness, time wakes up and yawns, chaos suddenly erupts. You check your watch. It is already too late. You are heading for the fast track. No time for Vedanta and its subtleties.

Got to go. Honk-honk. That’s life.

( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 22nd Feb 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -6 > Myths can direct your spiritual awakening

( part 6 of 46 )


There is a time to embrace the myth and a time to rise above it. When you need to merge with your religious group, do it. Rise above myths and re-discover yourself… all gods are nothing before the Source of your Self. - Essence of chapter 3 Kena Upanishad

Never mess with myths people believe in. They can never be proved as true which explains the anger if others ridicule them. Religious tolerance essentially means you go ahead and believe in your incredible myths and I’ll believe in mine.

Myths have an awesome power over us. They were cleverly designed for the unconscious, designed to take deep twisted roots inside the unquestioning mind of dreams. Once they possess the dreaming mind, it is impossible to shake off. Try and discard one, the myth will return as nightmares, portents, signs from the heavens that a deep wrong is being committed.

All religions have embraced myths unto their selves. Hinduism has probably more than the rest put together. Hindu myths are known by the euphemism puraan. Every major God has a puraan. Many popular god men have also wisely acquired puraans for themselves. If you plan to become a god man in the near future, better set a committee right now to churn up an exciting new puraan for your forthcoming avatar. Sure, myths have been a great unifier of nations and cultures. The legend of Lord Ram helped unite India from north to south, kept up its spirit in the worst of medieval times. The legend of Jesus spread across the ends of earth into the largest most powerful religion the world has known. Myths add magic to our lives, take us back to giddy childhood days, unite us through a shared belief.

They are also double-edged swords. The second edge is hidden in the handle, and it slashes the wrists of those who wield it. Whatever the culture race or religion, the message embedded in all myths is the same. He is great, you are insignificant. He is a hero, you are a zero. He made water into wine, He made a bridge of floating stones, you did not. Eventually myths bleed your strength and weaken you into submission. It puts another person, idea or entity way above you and reduces you to a kneeling bowing groveling person.

Vedanta says there is a time to embrace the myth and a time to rise above it. When you need to merge with your religious group, go ahead and cuddle up with all the myths you want. When you want to touch the silence within, it is time to go beyond and look at yourself and nothing else.

You don’t need to discard your faith. Just rise above it, rise above all the gods and demons the human mind has created. Rise above all the god men and prophets who have held sway over the ages.

( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 15th Feb 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -5 > Attempt to Solve the Mystery of Existence

Part 5 of 46


The notion of ‘I’ is like an image on a screen — a hologram created by mil- lions of neurons firing together. So long as we live, the neurons keep firing, the hologram keeps forming, ‘you’ exist. You-are That Chandogya Upanishad 6-8-2

Who are you? This is the unanswered riddle of ages. We all seem to know who we are. We feel securely rooted to ourselves, yet when we dream we are not rooted at all. In dreams we could be anyone, anywhere. In deep sleep we lose even that notion of ‘I’. It is as if we didn’t exist for that duration.

Who are you? Neuroscience is getting there. The notion of ‘I’ is like an image on a screen — a hologram created by hundreds of millions of neurons firing together. So long as we live, the neurons keep firing, the hologram keeps forming and ‘you’ exist. When we die the neurons stop firing, the screen turns blank, and ‘you’ will cease to exist. This is deep. But there is something deeper. ‘You’ are continuously dying and being reborn. ‘You’ are not the same person who started reading this article. In the space of a few seconds, ‘you’ died and were reborn many thousand times.

Neurons create an ever changing ever refreshing field. Think of it as a projector beaming a movie. Movie frames refresh themselves 24 times a second. Each of those frames are a different ‘you’ recreated quickly in smooth continuity.

It is happening so fast you can’t tell the difference. Who are you then? Are you the flickering image on the screen or the projector beaming the images? If you think ‘you’ are the image on the screen, who is the projector? Isn’t that also you? If it is not you who else could it be?

The ‘projectors’ are neuronal cells creating an electrical field. What’s making them create the field? You are already wading in deep waters filled with contradictions. Neuronal cells are made of billions of living molecules. Each atom is intrinsically ‘dead matter’.

The molecule is somehow magically alive. Inside the ‘dead’ atoms there is surprisingly perpetual motion, eternal life. If you dare go deeper, laws of physics will disappear in the quantum domain.

What a strange mind bending zone you pierced searching for yourself — a domain full of extreme puzzles, more mysterious than ‘science can ever imagine’. Back off. You won’t find that answer here.

So what is creating the images? Who are you? No one through the ages has ever had the faintest clue. Vedanta doesn’t even try for an answer. It just calls this mystery as ‘That’. Whatever it is, it is beyond the grasp of mind, but know this, the mind is completely in its grasp. You are That and even if you will never know what ‘That’ is, you can still feel its presence as truth, bliss, consciousness. Its truth is your life, its bliss your joy, its consciousness the music of your existence. You can never ‘know’ it, but you can merge with its mystery… and emerge rejuvenated into your every day self. It is the deepest most luminous layer of your being after all.

Vedanta Rocks. Feel that luminous self now. It is right here looking at you.

( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 8th Feb 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -4 > Vedanta Reformats the Template of Fear

Part 4 of 46

A guy like Bhagat Singh sang and laughed his way to the gallows. In our case a flat tire is enough to bring on a sense of approaching doom.

‘…Shantih, Shantih, Shantih’ Concluding words of the invocation in the Taithiriya Upanishad

The pot is always boiling. It was bubbling away in your sleep last night. When you woke up it just smoothly shifted gears from dream to reality — it never stopped bubbling. The weird unreal things that happened to you in slumber just disappeared and got replaced by a thousand tiny pin pricks called thoughts. Instead of being based on imaginary fears of dreams, these thoughts are now based on waking sources of worry. It’s the same mind at work. We accept thoughts as inevitable simply because we have accepted fear as inevitable. Your job is at stake in the global meltdown, you have a right to fear. You tell yourself you would be stupid not to be afraid. Once you get used to worrying over all that is wrong with your life, you move to an irreversible stage. This is a reason why teenagers find their parents out of sync with life. The attitude of the parent isn’t naturally unafraid and innocent anymore. Life has gifted you material things and seems to have taken away that free happy smile as a return gift. It takes a long time to understand that the fear is just a preferred attitude to a problem and not the problem itself. A guy like Bhagat Singh sang and laughed his way to the gallows. In our case a flat tire is enough to bring on a sense of approaching doom.

That’s the way it has been since millennia. Vedanta came up as a response to human misery and confusion 35 centuries ago. Humans have been busy destroying their cheerfulness for centuries.

How does anyone kick up a decades old bad habit? It always starts with resolve. Say this out loud and slow, breathing out gently, allowing your lungs to empty gradually and release as much apprehension as possible. Shantih… I embrace a peace beyond words… let the fears that have found roots in my waking mind dissolve and disappear.

Breathe deeply again, and say it loud, releasing the vowels slowly.
Shantih. I embrace a peace beyond words… let fears that power my dreams uproot themselves and disappear.

Shantih. I am beyond fear. Beyond death. The world has lost its authority over me. I have the power to choose the way I want to feel.

Let me see the reflection of my true self now in the still waters of my placid mind.

( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad – 1st Feb 2009 )