Knowledge, Lost and Found

 I didn't post anything last weekend because I was completely tied up with the mundane but essential chores of life, which left me no time to catch my breath and reflect. I'm trying to make up for it by attempting to post 2 articles this weekend.

Here I am, having a head-start now on a Friday afternoon. I have at least an hour's time before I start preparing to head downtown for a social gathering. The weather these days is very unpredictable, I'll try to take the train, if possible. That will give me some time to enjoy some audio content on my phone.

I do have a backlog of podcasts, lectures and audiobooks to consume. My regular morning walks recently have given me an opportunity to catch up a bit on them. It's something I look forward to everyday.

Whenever I get to dine alone outside, I'll always bring a book with me. The other day, I was eating at the mamak restaurant nearby and was engrossed in a hardcover book by Bernard Lewis about the history of the Middle-East. When it was time for me to leave, I left it on the empty chair beside me. I only realised it the next morning when I wanted to resume my reading.

It was interesting analysing the emotions that arose in me when the thought of losing the book sank in. The first thought was:  I'm not able to finish reading the book. But then I realised that it could easily be remedied as I can buy another copy from the internet.

Then it also sank in on me that I do have a bit of sentimental attachment to the book as an object. It's a beautiful hardcover book, which I had wrapped with plastic and it has stayed unread in my library for over 18 years! I had the date inscribed on the cover page, with my name on it. 

I did not read it earlier because I had found the author's prose difficult. But I've read many books by the famed historian Bernard Lewis since then, and had thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. So when I reopened this tome again not too long ago, I was sucked into it again. I was about a third through its 450 pages, when I lost it. 

Losing a sentimental object is painful. But as someone who actively practise non-attachment to material things, I understood the momentary pain of the loss and resolved to let it go. I also comforted myself with the thought that, if the book did end up in the hands of someone, it would likely be one who appreciates books, or at least has some curiosity about the history of the Middle East. I'll be doing some good by setting this book free in the universe.

Reading and rereading my old books, and seeing their contents in a new light is one of the greatest pleasures of life. I delight in the fact that I've matured and progressed in my comprehension of topics that were previously beyond my grasp. This Lewis book, is one of those reads.

I decided to try my luck to see if I could still recover it from the mamak place, which is a regular hangout of mine.  During lunchtime the next day, I drove to the place again, and enquired with the cashier about my 'buku' which I had left on table 13.  He was initially surprised but then asked me about the colour of the book. White, of course. And lo and behold, he produced the glorious tome from the shelf behind him! Even my pencil, tucked in an elastic band around the cover is intact!

I was elated to be reunited with my book again, grasping it again in my hand with sheer gratitude. The tactile feel of a hardcover book is one of those indescribable pleasures that bibliophiles like me enjoy. Which is why I'm still hesitant to move to ebooks.

This brief lost-and-found episode has made me reflect on my attachment to things. And I know the pangs of pain that I had felt from the loss was directly proportional to that sense of possession that I have over this book, an object that is impermanent and slowly disintegrating over time. A relationship with a book, is not unlike that with a human being. And I remember many happy years ago, I had written a blog post about how people are like 'interactive books'.  There's so much that one could learn from these relationships, human or otherwise.

Pitfalls of the Path

Today I'm in my study and personal library, slowly nursing my pot of Earl Grey.  It's a moment respite, from the drudgery of my daily and weekly chores. I write to relax, and reflect. Hopefully, some gem of insight would emerge...

 Strangely for the last 2 weeks I find myself writing about God. For someone who professes no religion, it seems rather strange, doesn't it? Have I finally found my true spirituality in the worship of god? Certainly not. And no, it's not because I think it is a path not worth pursuing. It's definitely a legitimate and effective path, practised by millions in the world, epitomised in the Bhagavad Gita as Bhakti Yoga, also known as the path of devotion.

It appears to be an 'easy' path, because it latches on to our natural human tendency to obey an alpha leader. It makes god a conscious being, like us, only more powerful. We can easily imagine such a god, by projecting all the virtuous quality we can find in humans into the superlative realm. The God model is one that anyone can understand. We do not need a lot of deep philosophical knowledge to be able to grasp it. To worship, is an activity as natural to us as eating or sleeping. 

To the more intellectually sophisticated, worshiping a supernatural deity or deities seems like a rather primitive practice--something that borders on superstition. How wrong they are! All forms of devotional worship, if practised correctly are no less effective than any spiritual practise that requires superhuman feats of concentration, self-mortification or a lifetime of scriptural study.

Even though I've been referring to the deity in singular most of the time, my views about devotional practices extends to polytheistic worship too. I know that many monotheist believers tend to think themselves as spirituality superior to those who worship many gods, but I do not see anything wrong with it. The worship of idols and images is simply a natural expression of spiritual devotion, provided that it is practised in the right spirit--as aids and not as ends in themselves.

You see, there's a simple principle in operation in all theistic worship: by simply shifting one's sense of importance from oneself to someOne else--we immediately have a grasping point for tackling the ego. What better way to deflate it than to subjugate it before a more powerful one? A master-slave architecture is employed here, and it is one that is simple and intuitive.

Acknowledge that there's a more powerful being out there--our Creator--who determines everything. The secret of the devotional path is to surrender one's will to a higher one. Submitting to God's will is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. And when done correctly, one is filled with love for the divine. One's ego has no place in the system, because every manifestation of will or desire within one's being is subsumed and aligned with that of the Lord.  

How brilliant is that! The ego is simply put in check by our human biological instinct to submit to an alpha figure. Instead of having to tackle a hardened rock of an ego using the chisel and hammer of meditation, we simply disarm it with a manoeuvre akin to spiritual judo. Everything is the will of God. You simply surrender and worship Him.

What are the pitfalls of this path? Unfortunately, its simplicity is both its strength and its weakness. God worshipers think that because they obediently perform the prescribed rules and rituals of worship, they are immediately protected by some sort of personal mafia. Instead of diminishing the ego, they further inflate it by using God as their symbol of pride and treat it as another cause to fight for.  They think they are superior to others who do not worship the way they do. They succumb to superstition and bicker over the minutiae of religious dogma. 

The path of spirituality is certainly filled with pitfalls. One can easily get sidetracked or be blinded by falsehood. A love of God can easily be inflamed into religious zealotry; spiritual epiphany into intellectual arrogance; the submission to God becomes an excuse for the subjugation of unbelievers. It is a simple and beautiful path to reach heaven, but one wrong turn can also lead to hell.

The Art of Abstraction

Last week I wrote about God as a useful model which anyone can adopt to function in the world as a living individual. By accepting God as part of your ontology, it dictates and necessitates a set of design patterns, rules and conventions which make it possible for a society of believers to function harmoniously. 

It's very much like adopting say the object-oriented paradigm as your programming model. You see, whenever we discuss any subject, we are using words to abstract the reality we perceive. Every word is a model, an approximation of a real-world object, state or event. Computer programmers are familiar with the different layers of abstractions we use to describe the state and dynamics of each level. 

For example, we can have a very high level description of the activity of clicking a link as the browser submitting a 'request' over the network as a client to a server, and expecting a 'response', which contains the HTML code describing the page to be displayed. The browser simply renders this HTML code as a pattern of pixels on the screen. But if you care to look at the signals that go on the wire--voltage pulses and electromagnetic waves, there are only patterns of energy flowing over different mediums. 

There is no such thing as a 'request' or 'response'; nor are there packets or frames--these are abstractions, which allow us to describe phenomena at different levels in the communication architecture easier. The mind cannot perceive individual electrons, but it can understand that, at the highest level, there's something that's "requested by the client and responded to by the server" And if we want to dive deeper, we can analyse the request, which is defined by the HTTP protocol consisting of text headers and a body of content. There you see, headers and body are again abstractions. 

God as an abstraction or model works for us individuals, because we can worship, request and love Him, because, in--Java programming parlance--it implements an interface with methods that we humans are familiar with. The personal God is a good abstraction of the entire universe. We don't have to perceive the world at the level of subatomic particles to be able to interact with it.  

In Advaita Vedanta and Yoga, Ishvara is the personal God, which is an 'abstraction' of Brahman, the ultimate reality. It's difficult to conceptualise Brahman, because it is by definition, non-dual and has no attributes. But once you have an abstraction called Ishvara as God, you can give it attributes that you can relate to, with the help of superlatives--such as the all-powerful, the merciful and compassionate. You can assign it roles such as creator, sustainer and protector.   

Ishvara, is simply Brahman enmeshed in 'maya' or illusion. All abstractions are illusions of the conceptual mind, in a sense that they do not have a real existence. It only exists within a certain conceptual framework and that's good enough for it to work.

Similarly, the concept of a 'soul' is also an abstraction. Atman, the individual soul or self is Brahman in essence but it is the client-side portion, of the client-server interaction, between the individual and God. It also owes its existence through the illusion of maya. 

Do souls exist? Yes and no, depending on which level of abstraction you are talking about. You can have oneness or duality, unity or multiplicity, Nirguna Brahman--the ultimate reality without attributes, or the Saguna Brahman, with its rich array of qualities attributed to Isvara and Atman.  Each has its own language to describe its ontology.

We live and operate in a world of abstractions. A lot of philosophical confusion about religion arise due to the lack of clarity about the level of abstraction which we are referencing. Basically we commit category errors all the time by insisting on the truth of one level of abstraction to another. 

It's simply the consequence of living in the world of maya. The moment we try to articulate concepts using language, we are creating illusions--abstractions that are useful only within a particular context. To gain spiritual insight is to master the art of navigating all these different levels of abstractions. 

The God Model

Feeling rather thirsty after my early morning exercise, I decided to go to a place where I could have a cool beer while I dive into my weekly blogging routine. And so here I am now, seated comfortably outdoors with a pint of Tiger, tapping out these words, figuring out the topic for today's blog.

Part of my reason for blogging is to allow myself to figure out my personal philosophy of life. Being someone with "no religion",  I'm simply devising my own system of values to live by. What are the fundamental beliefs in this personal philosophy of mine?

Fundamental belief number one is that there are no fundamental beliefs. Everything can be challenged. Religious people would say that one must have faith in something, say God, to be a moral person. If one does not believe in a higher authority, a creator whom we have to answer to in our afterlife, wouldn't one end up as a morally degenerate person leading a purposeless life?

I have no problems with the belief in God. If that model works for you, by all means, go ahead and live by the precepts set forth by the religion of your birth or adoption. If it gives you meaning, purpose and joy, all the better. 

I personally learned a lot from all the theistic religions of the world and do enjoy the wisdom of their scriptures and the beauty of their rituals and liturgies. But to ask me to swear allegiance solely to one particular faith is like asking me to declare that Jazz (or any other genre of music) is the one and only true music. No, my life will be a lot less meaningful if I listen only to Jazz and consider Baroque music, keroncong or rap music 'heresies'.  I will continue to listen to all types of music and appreciate the pleasure and insight that comes from them.

Now, if I don't strictly follow the tenets of any religion, how would I know what's good or bad? With no fear of God, wouldn't I degenerate into an evil person? 

Does anyone seriously believe that would happen? Think about it. It takes a lot of skill and hardwork if one were to cheat, rob and kill for a living life. The bulk of humanity has to live together with their fellow humans. A small group of misguided individuals might resort to unethical means to get certain advantages in life, but at what cost? 

If you are a selfish person with no integrity, do you think you would be able to secure a good job for long? You simply ostracise yourself from the society of people. You wouldn't have any friends. Your own family members will despise you. And in extreme cases, you could even run foul of the law.

It is practical to be moral and ethical. You don't need any holy book to tell you that. What holy books do is something more than morality. It attempts to answer deeper philosophical questions about your existence and its purpose. That's the real appeal of religion. If religion exists simply because of a need for a code of ethics, then it is superfluous. 

God created you and the universe. And there are some expectations on how you should act and believe so that you are saved, avoid pain, transcend death and find eternal joy. 

Wouldn't I lose out on that, if I don't belong to a creed that promises those things? Perhaps. It doesn't bother me because I think it is a bit insulting to God (if He exists) to consider him a kind of paternalistic figure who loves his children, gives them free will to choose and then proceeds to punish them by banishing them to the fires of hell if they disobey Him. 

Well, I certainly wouldn't punish you if I were God, because I would understand why you went astray, given your life experiences. Some of your flaws were even genetic, which is God's own handiwork. Why blame the product, when there are factory defects?

In electrical circuit theory where a physical network is modelled using idealised discrete components such as voltage sources, resistors, inductors and capacitors, we understand that these ideal components don't exist in real life but it is a close enough mathematical model that will help us calculate and predict the behaviour of a circuit. Without these 'gods', the human mind will not be able to accomplish all the electrical engineering feats that we all see today.

The mind needs such conceptual models to navigate the real world. There are materials in the world that produce resistance, converting electrical energy to heat but they are not perfectly discrete lumps that are localised in an ideal conductor. In some circumstances, we would need to use calculus and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism to really model the behaviour of networks more accurately but for most practical purposes, we don't. These idealised discrete components are good enough. The God model is good enough too, for most people.

We are life forms perceiving our environment through our finite array of senses and have brains that tend to process information in a very specific way. So we devise models to explain and navigate the world around us. These models of the world arose naturally, almost inevitably.

We like myths and stories, because for some reason, the circuitry of the human brain has a facility for narrative arcs, something with a beginning, middle and end. There must be tension and release; agony and ecstasy; damnation and salvation. Thus we resonate with the eschatology of religion.

We have certain expectations on how the universe should be, because we live in an every day world that has creators, objects and purposes. Our vocabulary is limited to that. So God and gods are true in this very specific view of the universe.

Does God exist? Do resistors exist? Yes, of course. Can we come up with better models? Most certainly. But understand that the human mind can only comprehend things using models, described using a human language that grew out of every day experiences. 

One must be aware of the limitations of every conceptual model. Insisting that your model is the only true one can only be a recipe for disaster. The God model, like any other model has its flaws. But it is an inevitable model which fills a specific psychological need in humans. One thing's for sure: it will be endlessly modified, recast and reframed to meet the changing needs of the times.  

Value with a Vengeance

Is it possible for any one of us to exist as an individual without association to any community, society, tribe or organisation? The moment you are born, you are already a part of an organisation--your family. You don't get to choose that. You are a passive recipient of their love, care, advice and admonitions. The overriding concern is your survival and your role as the progeny of the family line.

You are taught to speak and you learn to express your needs, your likes and dislikes through the medium of language--which you now know as your mother tongue. The words, phrases, idioms, sayings and proverbs that come with that language become a part of you, shaping your thinking and your view of the world.

So, no one is ever born free. You are born with very specific initial conditions, or what I often refer to as boundary conditions, that limit and constraint the way to think and interact with the world. It's like the instruction set of a processor. Your primordial personality is cast in the assembly language of your mother tongue.

As you grow older, you learn more things--specific subjects and life skills that are independent of the language of instruction. But how well you master those skills depends to a large degree on your genetic makeup--in other words, your hardware--and the primitives of your operating system. The skills are like the applications you have on your computer. They are 'installed' through a process called 'education'.

When you go out and work in a company for instance, which is set up with a specific purpose, you become a node in a larger organisation, applying your higher level skills and knowledge to serve a particular role and function demanded by the organisation. The company attempts to impose its values on you too, through its corporate culture.

You also realise that there's an even larger organisation that you belong to--your country of which you are a citizen. It too has its own aspirations, values and culture, imposed upon you through the law and constitution and the public education that it provides you. As a good citizen, you are supposed to express a love and affinity towards these values and be 'patriotic'.

Emotionally however, the temperament and the values that you honour were forged during your upbringing by that default organisation that you were born into. That, is the culture of your family and your tribe, which to a large extent, shapes your personality. Even though genetics do play a big hand in determining who you are, it's the culture that determines which genetic traits get expressed or suppressed.

Your choice or music, religion, food and movies that you watch, and perhaps the political party that you vote for, are determined by these more primitive layers of your psyche. but are the values of your lower layers in congruence with the higher layer ones? 

A lot of the problems of humanity are caused by these differences in value. What you think is self-evident truth to you and your tribe might not be so to another. Are we able to appreciate these differences as 'diversity' which makes an ecosystem thrive and agree to celebrate them? Or are we bent on out-arguing the other party so that you can convince them that your values are greater than theirs?

Some values, especially religious ones, are deal-breakers. There's no compromise, because these values are already embedded in the psyche of the people.  When we can't convert the other party to ours, we resort to doing so by force. That's how humanity has been spending their time throughout history.

Whenever we find ourselves pursuing our cherished values with a vengeance,  let's ask ourselves, how did these values arise in first place? Can we co-create better ones? That is definitely a spirit that I would value.

A Potential Difference

Welcome to this moment. Yes, this moment. Every moment is here, now and eternal. When I connect with this moment, I am awake. Conscious. 

I have an hour to write something today. Let's analyse the previous sentence. It was a thought: I was trying to project into the future when I would have already written my blog entry today. That's the nature of a thought. It's always about the future or the past. When I think of something, I set up a tension in the mind: there's an idea of how things should be and how it is now. This gap is a 'potential difference'--almost like a voltage (V) between two points in a electrical circuit which enables current (I) to flow.

Whenever there is a potential difference, there's energy to do work. Action happens in the world, transforming its state, which then sets up a new potential difference.  Emotionally, this potential difference is often felt as a kind of 'stress'. We could waste all this potential energy in stressing about what we are supposed to do--in my case, what to write.

Stress is like the resistance in a piece of conductor wire. In an ideal conductor, resistance, (R) is zero. But in the real world, every conductor has some finite amount of resistance, which causes energy to be lost as heat (I-squared R) .Stress is like heat--wasted energy. We should try to minimise stress, every time we feel a potential difference in the mind. 

In my case, my task is simply to make use of this potential difference to produce words and sentences as smoothly and efficiently as possible, without worry or hesitancy. Every outpouring from my mind, driven by this potential difference, if I'm focussed and conscious, should be sincere and true.

I have to trust the mind to reveal the truth of things, as nature is the truth. If my words reflect my thoughts which are natural products of nature, then I have nothing to worry about. It is as it should be. Every word produced every moment is precise and accurate. 

But I'm not a perfect conductor. There's obviously some amount of stress, uncertainty and obfuscation due to my imperfections. But that's alright. The whole purpose of this blog is to allow this process to unfold, so that I become a better conductor of thoughts. 

And then there's this thing called the ego. Thoughts change the medium that conducts it.  It's like the conductor becoming oxidised, making it a less efficient conductor. Ego is formed as we interact with the world, congealing around our imperfections, creating impedances which further morph the flow of the truth.

I write to see my own imperfections. I analyse the stresses in my mind and trace them to their roots. Wherever possible, I untangle them. When the mind is quiet, only truth can emerge. This truth is to be savoured, refined and assimilated into the system. When that happens, we call it a moment of insight, an epiphany.

It's such a miracle; I started with a blank page. I had a thought and I wrote it down: I have an hour to write something today. An hour has now passed. That one thought had spawned off a series of neuronal firings, resulting in more thoughts, in physical movements of my fingers and voila, I have a blog article. And who knows, it'll probably trigger thoughts (which it already does, because you've come this far) and set things into motion in your universe. Have I made a difference?

The Curse of Cults

It's mid-afternoon already on a Sunday, when everyone is having this sinking feeling that the weekend is coming to an end already, and soon we'd be back in our daily grind. I'd wanted to blog yesterday but some family chores swallowed up all my time. 

Today, I managed to steal sometime to come here to Cyberjaya to check on my apartment. The sky is dark and cloudy outside as I type these words. I'm not going to linger here long, but hopefully long enough for me to finish writing this blog post, which is going to touch on the topic of...religion (again!).

I reread one of the many articles I've written on this subject, one entitled The Fire of Religion and find myself nodding in agreement with what I wrote in 2019. Do I have anything new to add? Probably not. But since this is my own blog, I make all editorial decisions and religion it is!

Religion is sensitive because it is something a believer holds deeply in the heart, it is its refuge in times of difficulty and it promises salvation in a life which could prove difficult and challenging, not to mention the truth about our mortality, which confronts every one of us. If we ridicule someone's belief, people feel it like a gut punch--being hit at one's most vulnerable spot. 

Religion is couched in rituals and doctrines because these are great intuition pumps (to borrow Daniel Dennett's term). We need drama and stories to induce a particular state of mind in an individual and also a community. I admire religion for its ability to bind communities together and make them embrace a larger purpose. When we have this going as part of human civilisation, we call it culture; when it is systematised and enhanced with a dose of metaphysics, it becomes religion. But when religion is taken more seriously than it should be, we veer into the region of cultism.

There's a certain allure in being a member of a cult, that sense of belonging to a higher cause. And the follower feels 'fortunate' that he or she has been accepted into this 'privileged' group. They feel protected and blessed under the embrace of a cult leader who is charismatic and seemingly wiser than everyone else. Whatever the leader says is taken to be the undisputable truth.  

Cultism is like mob behaviour.  The mob doesn't think--it only acts, sometimes violently, when stirred into a frenzy. When you surround yourself with people who are fanatical about some cause, it is easy to be caught up in the excitement and romance of it all.  Sports fans supporting their favourite team are like that too. As loyal supporters of football clubs like Liverpool or Manchester United, we willingly submit ourselves to a cult, all in the name of good fun. Hopefully that's as far as it'll go.

The Communist parties in every country during and after the WWII were also religious cults. They all had charismatic leaders and members who blindly follow the doctrines of the cult to disastrous consequences. Cults like to think that they are saving themselves and the world from an impending doom. It is us against the ignorant masses and we are privileged enough to see the light. Workers of the world unite!

Cults, led by these self-styled saviour-leaders,  are driven by visions utopia--The Rapture, a Classless Society, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth! It plays on our sense of drama and our love for epic myths. As I've said before, only stories can stir us because our brains are wired that way. Our susceptibility to cults is something that we have to be wary of. It is simply religion veering woefully off-course.