Insights in Plain Sight

I fully intended to blog from the Hom Cafe here at USJ9 today, but some outstanding coding issues pulled me away from my routine task. But here I am at last, at home,  hoping to put my weekly musings in this article.

I was reading up on the subject of steganography while I was in the cafe earlier. What is steganography? It is the art of hiding secrets in plain sight. I suppose we are all familiar with cryptography, which is where different encryption algorithms such as AES-256 are used to convert a plaintext, readable message into gibberish while being transported over the wire. Only the intended recipient who has the decryption key can convert it back into its original plaintext. 

Anyone snooping on these encrypted messages knows that some confidential messages are being exchanged, but they are not readable without the key. Cryptography relies on the strength of its encryption key to hide its secret. Steganography instead goes a step further by hiding the existence of the secret message itself. It is done by embedding it in ordinary-looking objects, such as an image, audio file or even ordinary text. It's like wearing a disguise to elude the attention of bad actors.

Like cryptography, steganography is also an ancient technique for hiding secrets, used by the Greeks. One of the most common techniques is the use of invisible ink to write a secret message inside the margins of an ordinary document. The application of heat or some special chemical by the intended recipient would reveal the secret message.  

I built a steganographic Android app earlier this year for fun. It allows a user to embed some secret text into any PNG image. You can also optionally add a password for further security. The image will look like the original one, sitting alongside other photos you have on your phone. You can also email it or send it as an attachment via WhatsApp to your intended recipient. If he or she has the app and the password, the secret can be extracted.  There are a few such free steganographic apps in the Google Play Store, but they are rather crude and slow. Mine, I believe, is user-friendly and fast. You have two layers of protection--your secret is not only encrypted but also hidden in plain sight!  

It was a casual project, which I embarked upon to test the capabilities of AI coding agents. I have a few other similarly interesting projects currently ongoing. Many are for my personal use, and I do not intend to post them to the app store. While doing these coding experiments, I often gain insights about the nature of the human mind and the self. Just as secrets can be hidden in images, truths can also be hidden in ourselves.

We are often distracted by the allure of our senses and don't see the true nature that's within us all along. We think that Enlightenment is something we have to acquire like some secret treasure that's buried somewhere in the world. There's a famous and rather humorous Advaita Vedanta story that is often told to illustrate how the true Self, or Atman, is not something that we go out and find, but is hidden within. It goes like this:

Ten villagers set off on a journey and at some point had to cross a deep and turbulent river.  All of them had to swim across it. When everyone had apparently swum to the other side, the leader called everyone together to make sure no one was missing. He pointed a finger at each person as he counted everyone he could see: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...". 

He counted again, slightly panicking: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine!  Still believing that he had made a mistake, he asked another villager to count. He too tapped on the shoulder of every person in front of him, counting as he touched each person, starting with the leader: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.  Only nine! It dawned on everyone: surely one of them must have drowned; the tenth man was missing! They all sat on the riverbank and wept in sorrow.  

Another traveller who was passing by asked them what was wrong. The leader told him: "There were ten of us before we swam across the river. And now, there are only nine of us!" The wise traveller immediately saw the obvious mistake, and asked the leader to count again out loud. The leader pointing his finger, started counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...  The traveller, then turned the leader's finger to point back to himself: TEN!

Sometimes the thing that we are seeking is just close by, right in front of us. We are simply looking for our spectacles while we are wearing them. Both steganography and the parable of the tenth man remind us that what we seek is often just hidden in something obvious, waiting to be noticed.