I am reminded of how a little over 7 years ago, just before the September 11th terrorist attacks - maybe a week or ten days prior to that - I had this ominous sense of doom. I still remember where I was sitting - on my bed, back in Calcutta, in my room - and I was looking out of the window. I don't even remember if the day was grey and overcast, but in in my head that's what I saw. A grey, overcast day and it was half-drizzling, visibility was low, and in my head I kept seeing the NYPD folk in their identifiable navy jackets walking around in a city where things had gone somewhat around the bend. I remember too that this cracked image was not a figment of my imagination as many things were/are (or else I later say they are even if I don't entirely believe in my self-confessed disbelief) for I was writing a letter to a very close friend of mine who was living in Boston at that point, and I told her about the unsettling images that I was seeing inside.
I can't say I felt any streak of ominous unsettledness last week when I put up my last blogpost. I was writing my responses to a book in the hope that I wouldn't forget everything about it a year from now - that's all. And I was thinking about violence and nationalism, and identity - that part is true enough. The news about the latest terrorist attacks (when I got to know about them) left me feeling a bit fazed and over the last couple of days I've been reading the news and some blogposts that are connected to the ones that I follow everyday.
This year has got to be one of the most muddled up years in some ways (personally speaking) and somehow I can't get rid of the feeling that it still hasn't shown all its cards. I'm reminded of a couple of blogs that I regularly visit. Early on this year, a friend (Pots) had expressed her sense of doom in a post titled "Two Obits". Being in the middle of a steady roller-coaster high at that point had still not made me completely immune to the creepy scratching fingers in the corner of my bone-head and then there was much more to come through the year, and the year is still not over.
I know sometimes we sense things and sometimes we don't - which is fine (I grunt). Sometimes things happen as we see them and sometimes they don't (which is not fine, I grunt!). I still remember the time that I visualised a blue feather (most people will remember Richard Bach's Illusions). I don't know why I went alongwith a blue feather instead of being a tad more imaginative - but that's what I went with. An intense image of an exceptionally bright blue feather and it had been floating around in my head. And then lo and behold, not a week later I found a real feather. A bright blue feather on the concrete pathway leading out of my parent's apartment complex in Calcutta.
I'm also reminded of dreams for some reason, and there are multiple reasons for this - and not all of them are entirely unpleasant. I'm reminded of a bright bit of an essay titled "Dreams and Daydreams". I'm also reminded of how sometimes, and in fact most of the times my dreams (that is, the "unconscious ones") are terribly mundane or just boring and repetitive. I don't any longer have the recurring nightmare that I used to have as a kid (a red car very much like a Maruti would drop me off at this humongous factory....that's how the nightmare would begin) but sometimes I have been known to have fallen asleep on the lawns dreaming about eating a salad at the school cafeteria. Believe it or not I have woken up and headed straight for the cafe and eaten a salad. Only while consuming the salad I realise with a sense of astonishment that that is exactly what I'd done five minutes ago in a ridiculously boring dream! Talk about deja vu....(chortle-chortle).
Every now and again though I go through a patch when I dream interesting dreams. The nightmares come and go. I don't really remember dreaming explicitly happy dreams. If I do dream happy dreams I don't remember them until later on in the day when something tickles my memory cells and I glint and say "oh, that was nice." (The "that" referring to the dream in question). Sometimes I wake up feeling less dense and heavy and ponderous - and so I assume that I had less stifling dreams. Just recently I had an interesting dream even though it was slightly strange because there were no people in it. But what was contained in the dream was so real and vivid that I woke up looking for it!
I must say that I'm not given to being pessimistic and gloomy - not all the time at any rate. But this year gives me the shivers for some reason, and I'm not so sure why. There are some good things that have happened surely - but it's not about good or bad. There's just something that is peculiar about this year. The whole year seems to be "not-real", strangely suspended in the middle of nowhere. It seems as though it can swing wildly and widely - this way or that. Or maybe that really is my imagination. I can't really see anything "great" coming of it - as long as there is no more negative excitement (as Pots put it...), I think I'd just sigh with relief. That's all.
End of post. Good luck to some who need it....
28 November 2008
25 November 2008
The Identity of Violence?
I finished reading Amartya Sen's book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny last week, and have (and had) been thinking about the issue of identity in relation to fundamentalism, sectarian violence, and also in relation to nationalism and the nation (and of course I like ruminating upon violence anyway). This is not really a review of Sen's book, but some musings related to his book and otherwise. But let me make some observations....
1. Sen's book is wonderfully woven together, and his major thesis is how advocacy of a single identity – including but by no means limited to religious identity – is employed to sometimes initiate and justify continuous instances of violence and how this unique and single identity receives special focus to the exclusion of all other identities that an individual may possess.
2. This advocacy for a “belligerent” identity is not just employed by the religious fundamentalists and the proponents of religious violence – but the curious thing, as Sen points out is that the same religious identity and the same religious component is employed by also those who effectively seek to fight religious extremism/violence/fundamentalism of different kinds – in this instance most specifically that of Islamic fundamentalism, and the content of the particular discourse ranges from either bashing up the said-religion or in trying to find a middle-ground, which consists of locating the “true” voice of the religion (Islam). But as Sen notes why use religion or the religious identity alone to fight against religious fundamentalism? Why harp on this singular identity based on religion? Why not instead concentrate on the many other identities that Muslims have apart from their Islamic faith based identity?
3. Sen also points out how social theories (and I had always imagined that social theories never really get to the public!), which do explicitly divide the world into divided categories of “us” and the “other/s” and claim to have “discovered” pre-existing social boundaries, and therefore the lines of contention and confrontation, have a particularly insalubrious effect in that these reductionist theories are welcomed and used by the extremists to further their own goals of promoting fundamentalism (case in point: Sen points out to the annoying and rather revolting theories of Samuel Huntington and not just his infamous Clash of Civilizations..., where he is considered by many from his own discipline to be at his confrontational best – but also see “Twenty-first Century America: Vulnerability, Religion, and National Identity” in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2004 – where he starts off by talking about extremist Muslims (and I don't really remember how they exactly enter the picture) but then out of nowhere all Muslims are suddenly viewed as harbouring hostile feelings and sentiments of envy and animosity towards the U.S because of the latter's wealth and economic progress).
This is a perfect example of social construction. The social categories are created, defined, and hardened through the said social theory; the social lines of separation are reified through the process, but then these categories, the boundaries, and the lines of confrontation are seen to have a reality of their own. The social theory and its proponents then use the said theory to defend the same categories that are created by the theory in the first place!
Sen's theory is simple and exceptionally elegant. Even if one were to go out and conduct an empirical study and find instances that were to confirm his theory or to locate instances where his theory did not hold good – that would be hardly as interesting or as elegant an operation as the theory itself. But more about this later.
4. The parts that I found particularly enlightening, fascinating, and indeed captivating were the threads that he pulled out of historical “storage spaces” in relation to how non-western societies – including India, The Middle-East, and China have contributed to the very foundations of the European enlightenment, and how the Eastern contributions to what is now known as western science and mathematics have been completely forgotten (scattered bits and pieces I have not been completely unaware of – yet the origins of the term sine was a particularly delightful example among many others in his book), and how “democracy”, if one starts with what it means (“public deliberation and reasoning”) instead of the unbroken linguistic concept or as certain practices related to the concept can be seen to have existed in different countries in the east (such as India and Japan), and how when Akbar was speaking of religious tolerance in India, across Europe heretics were being burned at the stake and The Inquisitions were not making for happy lives....
Sen does not flinch from giving the western world credit where it is due as he takes us through a historical journey tracing the travel of ideas from East to West – and not just spiritual ideas but fundamental ideas and concepts central to mathematics and the sciences, and he cites many more instances related to the same through chapters 3-7 of his book. Yet he does so in an extremely well-balanced, matter-of-fact, and inoffensive way – even when he points out to the complete and utter ignorance of some of the British colonial ideas regarding the Indians or to the more recent instance of provincialism contained in the “blaring” of U.S Lieutenant General William Boykin) – a far cry from the rather belligerent tone adopted by many post-colonial scholars or subaltern study specialists.
5. The above pointer is used by Sen to demonstrate in the main that Muslims have many other identities (mathematician, scholar, poet, artist, scientist...) so there is no reason for either Muslims themselves to view themselves through their Islamic faith based identity nor for the rest of the world to engage in the same although it may jolly well make sense for the extremists themselves to view themselves through this singular identity.
6. Another point that I personally found pertinent is that a secluded cultural community or one that is given the “freedom” to remain sequestered ends up by not providing its members with the freedom to choose (so much for practicing cultural relativism/celebrating multiculturalism!), while the chapter connecting poverty, globalization, identity, and violence was an illuminating and absorbing read.
7. Sen's focus is on the main that of the singularity of religious identity although he does touch upon other instances where a single identity is stressed – he briefly touches upon the clash between the Hutus and Tutsis, but in the main Sen provides a rubric, a general-enough social perspective wherein he decries the advocacy of a single identity, any single identity, given the fact that human beings are a composition of multiple identities. And of course he writes amazingly well, is stunningly lucid, never uses a jarogonized term, and is very witty in a wry and quiet way right from the priceless prologue.
So far so good. Now, it's time for my own musings I guess.
1. As elegant a perspective that it is – I am left wondering about some related and semi-related things. Theoretically it makes sense of course. Being viewed or viewing others in terms of a single identity ends up as being an extremely partial (and also untrue!) view of human beings - in most cases. Even in the simplest terms, an individual, as Erving Goffman said (four decades ago), has as many identities as the roles s/he plays. That identity can and should be seen in contextual terms, even in everyday encounters, has been talked about.
2. Social psychologists have been talking about the hierarchy of identities within our identity pyramids for a while now. The problem is that not many social psychologists write popular books, and many of the frameworks which start out by being interesting are waylaid by academicians who just end up making the focus of concern exceptionally narrow. A neat theoretical idea “introduced” by Sheldon Stryker (who was initially influenced by G.H. Mead’s work on identity) – which started out as neat anyway – was the notion of identity salience, which talked about the importance of taking into account the multiple identities of an individual and of looking into the salience/prominence of an identity depending upon the particular context. Salience was connected to the individual investment in the projection of a particular identity in a given context. In many ways the theory became much more complex than it needed to be (there were some layers that do make sense) and there was the in-built need to make it appear very scientific and it was therefore made messier and very smartly quantitative but in its bare bones this is how it stood. The problem also lay in the fact of how identity salience was measured and what it was used to study. And maybe this is why many social psychological studies (and I can think of at least a couple of really interesting and insightful ones), including the ones on identity never did become as important as they should have and could have been. Although some studies by Henri Tajfel in particular and also by John Turner looked into the relation between discrimination and identity and the construction of in-groups and out-groups based on identity.
Maybe indeed it does take somebody like Amartya Sen to redirect our attention to something that the social psychologists have been working on for years (!) and to explain it in a lucid and meaningful manner.
3. All this said, I somehow feel that Sen seems to refrain from commenting on the rapid and rather scary outbursts of religious intolerance that have been felt over India over the last three decades and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in its current form. Sen points out that India “has produced very few homegrown terrorists acting in the name of Islam” and for this Sen gives thanks to the “nature of Indian democratic politics, and to the wide acceptance in India of the idea, championed by Mahatma Gandhi that there are many identities other than religious ethnicity that are also relevant for a person’s self-understanding and for the religions between citizens of diverse backgrounds within the country” (168). So that explains why we don’t have homegrown Islamic terrorists but I don’t know whether it’s just me who’s left wondering – for he indeed does mention the recent instances of religious riots – how then does he explain the explicit advocacy of the Hindu identity by the Hindu fundamentalists or am I just picking at something that shouldn’t be picked at?
4. In conclusion: I’ll end off with one of my musings in relation to the highlighting of a particular identity: the reason it seems to me that the religious identity/ethnic identity is the specific identity that is invoked is because that this is the identity which becomes the most pertinent and prominent one given the specific context under consideration. And then again it seems to me that in every “social” movement, individuals are and have been categorized both by themselves and also by others by that primary identity, which the social movement is said to “represent” – be that the women’s/feminist movement, the civil rights movement, or even a particular environmental movement or a class-based movement. One cannot of course say that a terrorist movement is a social movement in the same sense but the issue of the primary/prominent identity (or if we want to call it the salient identity) does remain constant across all instances.
It’s not that I don’t think Sen has a point in saying that to invoke a single identity is insular – and more so by the very individuals intent on addressing/resolving the problem, and that they must at least refrain from picking on that one identity - yet the differences that are framed in any movement, (and particularly those that involve violence) are framed around a particular social identity (be that of race, caste, religion, sect, class). If that category and the differences seen to be “contained” within that category were not made explicit then the particular identity would not be invoked – for in some sense it is that particular social identity, which is bringing people together to form a collective identity. So this is true of “peaceful” social movements too. A single identity is resorted to as being the most prominent identity. The fight for certain rights is structured around this primary/prominent identity. However, once violence enters the picture – and systematic violence of any sort is engaged in between one identifiable social category and another then the question is how do so many others “buy” into the notion of a singular identity so much so that they are willing to engage in violence against the other group? I am not even sure that identity and identification with that single identity has much to do with it at this stage – not even by the ones who are engaged in violence. So I’m not really sure whether remembering that an individual is composed of more than just one identity would help curb widespread and intense ethnic/religious violence. There is much good in the sentiment per se, and I’m sure if we adopted a less insular view and stopped pegging people into single identity holes and desisted from stereotyping people based on a social identity much good would come of it otherwise – but I don’t know whether it can help address race/ethnic/religious/nationalistic conflicts and particularly violence….and the violence that we see today is of course not something that emanates out of nowhere. Where then does it come from?.......
I’ll have to end this right here with the above question.
There are many other thoughts that would like to be written and others that are yowling to be written about but the problem for the nonce is that I need to come up with a decent idea for a class that I’m taking on Nation and Nationalism. After all the class readings and the other assortment of stuff that I’ve been reading, skimming through, and whatever and what-not (in my usual way) – I’m still scratching my head to find a lucid, interconnected, and interesting idea. Maybe that’s because for the nth time I’m left thinking that the most important things have been said 97, 7799 times at least, which is not entirely disconnected from something else I read today.
P.S: Incidentally, this book by Amartya Sen has been my favourite one out of the whole pile of academic and related readings....
1. Sen's book is wonderfully woven together, and his major thesis is how advocacy of a single identity – including but by no means limited to religious identity – is employed to sometimes initiate and justify continuous instances of violence and how this unique and single identity receives special focus to the exclusion of all other identities that an individual may possess.
2. This advocacy for a “belligerent” identity is not just employed by the religious fundamentalists and the proponents of religious violence – but the curious thing, as Sen points out is that the same religious identity and the same religious component is employed by also those who effectively seek to fight religious extremism/violence/fundamentalism of different kinds – in this instance most specifically that of Islamic fundamentalism, and the content of the particular discourse ranges from either bashing up the said-religion or in trying to find a middle-ground, which consists of locating the “true” voice of the religion (Islam). But as Sen notes why use religion or the religious identity alone to fight against religious fundamentalism? Why harp on this singular identity based on religion? Why not instead concentrate on the many other identities that Muslims have apart from their Islamic faith based identity?
3. Sen also points out how social theories (and I had always imagined that social theories never really get to the public!), which do explicitly divide the world into divided categories of “us” and the “other/s” and claim to have “discovered” pre-existing social boundaries, and therefore the lines of contention and confrontation, have a particularly insalubrious effect in that these reductionist theories are welcomed and used by the extremists to further their own goals of promoting fundamentalism (case in point: Sen points out to the annoying and rather revolting theories of Samuel Huntington and not just his infamous Clash of Civilizations..., where he is considered by many from his own discipline to be at his confrontational best – but also see “Twenty-first Century America: Vulnerability, Religion, and National Identity” in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2004 – where he starts off by talking about extremist Muslims (and I don't really remember how they exactly enter the picture) but then out of nowhere all Muslims are suddenly viewed as harbouring hostile feelings and sentiments of envy and animosity towards the U.S because of the latter's wealth and economic progress).
This is a perfect example of social construction. The social categories are created, defined, and hardened through the said social theory; the social lines of separation are reified through the process, but then these categories, the boundaries, and the lines of confrontation are seen to have a reality of their own. The social theory and its proponents then use the said theory to defend the same categories that are created by the theory in the first place!
Sen's theory is simple and exceptionally elegant. Even if one were to go out and conduct an empirical study and find instances that were to confirm his theory or to locate instances where his theory did not hold good – that would be hardly as interesting or as elegant an operation as the theory itself. But more about this later.
4. The parts that I found particularly enlightening, fascinating, and indeed captivating were the threads that he pulled out of historical “storage spaces” in relation to how non-western societies – including India, The Middle-East, and China have contributed to the very foundations of the European enlightenment, and how the Eastern contributions to what is now known as western science and mathematics have been completely forgotten (scattered bits and pieces I have not been completely unaware of – yet the origins of the term sine was a particularly delightful example among many others in his book), and how “democracy”, if one starts with what it means (“public deliberation and reasoning”) instead of the unbroken linguistic concept or as certain practices related to the concept can be seen to have existed in different countries in the east (such as India and Japan), and how when Akbar was speaking of religious tolerance in India, across Europe heretics were being burned at the stake and The Inquisitions were not making for happy lives....
Sen does not flinch from giving the western world credit where it is due as he takes us through a historical journey tracing the travel of ideas from East to West – and not just spiritual ideas but fundamental ideas and concepts central to mathematics and the sciences, and he cites many more instances related to the same through chapters 3-7 of his book. Yet he does so in an extremely well-balanced, matter-of-fact, and inoffensive way – even when he points out to the complete and utter ignorance of some of the British colonial ideas regarding the Indians or to the more recent instance of provincialism contained in the “blaring” of U.S Lieutenant General William Boykin) – a far cry from the rather belligerent tone adopted by many post-colonial scholars or subaltern study specialists.
5. The above pointer is used by Sen to demonstrate in the main that Muslims have many other identities (mathematician, scholar, poet, artist, scientist...) so there is no reason for either Muslims themselves to view themselves through their Islamic faith based identity nor for the rest of the world to engage in the same although it may jolly well make sense for the extremists themselves to view themselves through this singular identity.
6. Another point that I personally found pertinent is that a secluded cultural community or one that is given the “freedom” to remain sequestered ends up by not providing its members with the freedom to choose (so much for practicing cultural relativism/celebrating multiculturalism!), while the chapter connecting poverty, globalization, identity, and violence was an illuminating and absorbing read.
7. Sen's focus is on the main that of the singularity of religious identity although he does touch upon other instances where a single identity is stressed – he briefly touches upon the clash between the Hutus and Tutsis, but in the main Sen provides a rubric, a general-enough social perspective wherein he decries the advocacy of a single identity, any single identity, given the fact that human beings are a composition of multiple identities. And of course he writes amazingly well, is stunningly lucid, never uses a jarogonized term, and is very witty in a wry and quiet way right from the priceless prologue.
So far so good. Now, it's time for my own musings I guess.
1. As elegant a perspective that it is – I am left wondering about some related and semi-related things. Theoretically it makes sense of course. Being viewed or viewing others in terms of a single identity ends up as being an extremely partial (and also untrue!) view of human beings - in most cases. Even in the simplest terms, an individual, as Erving Goffman said (four decades ago), has as many identities as the roles s/he plays. That identity can and should be seen in contextual terms, even in everyday encounters, has been talked about.
2. Social psychologists have been talking about the hierarchy of identities within our identity pyramids for a while now. The problem is that not many social psychologists write popular books, and many of the frameworks which start out by being interesting are waylaid by academicians who just end up making the focus of concern exceptionally narrow. A neat theoretical idea “introduced” by Sheldon Stryker (who was initially influenced by G.H. Mead’s work on identity) – which started out as neat anyway – was the notion of identity salience, which talked about the importance of taking into account the multiple identities of an individual and of looking into the salience/prominence of an identity depending upon the particular context. Salience was connected to the individual investment in the projection of a particular identity in a given context. In many ways the theory became much more complex than it needed to be (there were some layers that do make sense) and there was the in-built need to make it appear very scientific and it was therefore made messier and very smartly quantitative but in its bare bones this is how it stood. The problem also lay in the fact of how identity salience was measured and what it was used to study. And maybe this is why many social psychological studies (and I can think of at least a couple of really interesting and insightful ones), including the ones on identity never did become as important as they should have and could have been. Although some studies by Henri Tajfel in particular and also by John Turner looked into the relation between discrimination and identity and the construction of in-groups and out-groups based on identity.
Maybe indeed it does take somebody like Amartya Sen to redirect our attention to something that the social psychologists have been working on for years (!) and to explain it in a lucid and meaningful manner.
3. All this said, I somehow feel that Sen seems to refrain from commenting on the rapid and rather scary outbursts of religious intolerance that have been felt over India over the last three decades and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in its current form. Sen points out that India “has produced very few homegrown terrorists acting in the name of Islam” and for this Sen gives thanks to the “nature of Indian democratic politics, and to the wide acceptance in India of the idea, championed by Mahatma Gandhi that there are many identities other than religious ethnicity that are also relevant for a person’s self-understanding and for the religions between citizens of diverse backgrounds within the country” (168). So that explains why we don’t have homegrown Islamic terrorists but I don’t know whether it’s just me who’s left wondering – for he indeed does mention the recent instances of religious riots – how then does he explain the explicit advocacy of the Hindu identity by the Hindu fundamentalists or am I just picking at something that shouldn’t be picked at?
4. In conclusion: I’ll end off with one of my musings in relation to the highlighting of a particular identity: the reason it seems to me that the religious identity/ethnic identity is the specific identity that is invoked is because that this is the identity which becomes the most pertinent and prominent one given the specific context under consideration. And then again it seems to me that in every “social” movement, individuals are and have been categorized both by themselves and also by others by that primary identity, which the social movement is said to “represent” – be that the women’s/feminist movement, the civil rights movement, or even a particular environmental movement or a class-based movement. One cannot of course say that a terrorist movement is a social movement in the same sense but the issue of the primary/prominent identity (or if we want to call it the salient identity) does remain constant across all instances.
It’s not that I don’t think Sen has a point in saying that to invoke a single identity is insular – and more so by the very individuals intent on addressing/resolving the problem, and that they must at least refrain from picking on that one identity - yet the differences that are framed in any movement, (and particularly those that involve violence) are framed around a particular social identity (be that of race, caste, religion, sect, class). If that category and the differences seen to be “contained” within that category were not made explicit then the particular identity would not be invoked – for in some sense it is that particular social identity, which is bringing people together to form a collective identity. So this is true of “peaceful” social movements too. A single identity is resorted to as being the most prominent identity. The fight for certain rights is structured around this primary/prominent identity. However, once violence enters the picture – and systematic violence of any sort is engaged in between one identifiable social category and another then the question is how do so many others “buy” into the notion of a singular identity so much so that they are willing to engage in violence against the other group? I am not even sure that identity and identification with that single identity has much to do with it at this stage – not even by the ones who are engaged in violence. So I’m not really sure whether remembering that an individual is composed of more than just one identity would help curb widespread and intense ethnic/religious violence. There is much good in the sentiment per se, and I’m sure if we adopted a less insular view and stopped pegging people into single identity holes and desisted from stereotyping people based on a social identity much good would come of it otherwise – but I don’t know whether it can help address race/ethnic/religious/nationalistic conflicts and particularly violence….and the violence that we see today is of course not something that emanates out of nowhere. Where then does it come from?.......
I’ll have to end this right here with the above question.
There are many other thoughts that would like to be written and others that are yowling to be written about but the problem for the nonce is that I need to come up with a decent idea for a class that I’m taking on Nation and Nationalism. After all the class readings and the other assortment of stuff that I’ve been reading, skimming through, and whatever and what-not (in my usual way) – I’m still scratching my head to find a lucid, interconnected, and interesting idea. Maybe that’s because for the nth time I’m left thinking that the most important things have been said 97, 7799 times at least, which is not entirely disconnected from something else I read today.
P.S: Incidentally, this book by Amartya Sen has been my favourite one out of the whole pile of academic and related readings....
21 November 2008
Runners and a cross
I remembered another thing today - and so I'll put it up. It's been coming back every now and again to my head, and so maybe if I write it out here - it'll stop bothering me (you know something like being able to sing a song the whole way through - that way the tune doesn't keep playing in your head. 'Course the problem is that you have to know all the lyrics, and not just two annoying lines which just keep "singing" in your head over and over again!).
Many months ago Hubert - a very interesting friend (who has gone away to Bloomington) - had written on our whiteboard in the computer lab under the heading "Quote for the day": Shilpi says, "This lifetime I may learn Polish. Next lifetime I'll win the 100 metres Gold", in relation to one of our bizarre conversations that we were having. The second part of my "quote" is something that really irritates me.
Right until the time I was 15 - I never did run as fast as I could in any running race. I just wouldn't. I would take part every now and again, but would run very slowly, and that was that. I was petrified that if I did run as fast as I possibly could, even then I would still be the last one or somewhere near the last one to cross the finishing line, and so I never did run my fastest until I was in Class -X. Then in that last running race that we had I ran as fast as I could, and to my immense relief I beat some of the fastest runners in our class.
Now, for some bizarre reason, I'm quite sure that I could have been an Olympic Gold Medalist for India in the 100 metre sprint if I'd started training early enough. I'm not kidding. I've had this feeling for the last three years. Even if I'd started training seven years ago, I might have made it. I know I still run fast - but that's not the point. I don't know why I've been thinking about this over and over again. It's been playing like a stuck recorder in my head, and so I had to get it out.
I don't know why this is one "career choice" that I miss having missed. I can think of many things that I had dreamt of being - but at this age, I can't imagine why it's the missed chance of being a 100 metre sprinter that keeps coming back! If it were something like being an artist or a sketcher or an accomplished writer I would have understood the sentiment. But I can't figure this one out...
The other thought for my 33rd birthday has been:Jesus was nailed to the cross at 33.
I'll end this post here.
Many months ago Hubert - a very interesting friend (who has gone away to Bloomington) - had written on our whiteboard in the computer lab under the heading "Quote for the day": Shilpi says, "This lifetime I may learn Polish. Next lifetime I'll win the 100 metres Gold", in relation to one of our bizarre conversations that we were having. The second part of my "quote" is something that really irritates me.
Right until the time I was 15 - I never did run as fast as I could in any running race. I just wouldn't. I would take part every now and again, but would run very slowly, and that was that. I was petrified that if I did run as fast as I possibly could, even then I would still be the last one or somewhere near the last one to cross the finishing line, and so I never did run my fastest until I was in Class -X. Then in that last running race that we had I ran as fast as I could, and to my immense relief I beat some of the fastest runners in our class.
Now, for some bizarre reason, I'm quite sure that I could have been an Olympic Gold Medalist for India in the 100 metre sprint if I'd started training early enough. I'm not kidding. I've had this feeling for the last three years. Even if I'd started training seven years ago, I might have made it. I know I still run fast - but that's not the point. I don't know why I've been thinking about this over and over again. It's been playing like a stuck recorder in my head, and so I had to get it out.
I don't know why this is one "career choice" that I miss having missed. I can think of many things that I had dreamt of being - but at this age, I can't imagine why it's the missed chance of being a 100 metre sprinter that keeps coming back! If it were something like being an artist or a sketcher or an accomplished writer I would have understood the sentiment. But I can't figure this one out...
The other thought for my 33rd birthday has been:Jesus was nailed to the cross at 33.
I'll end this post here.
18 November 2008
My Master and a Subject
For my Master's at Purdue, my thesis which I rather hastily scrambled together (why it was hastily scrambled together is a different story), was titled “The Madman and the Mystic”. That I ended up doing this study was almost an “accident” and got done “by accident”. My initial idea was to explore creativity and genius. Creativity gets the short end of the stick within sociology (as does genius) and it's not too hard to uncover the reasons, although sociology does remain interested in exemplary leaders and social movement pioneers and in fact leaders of all sorts – even the demagogues, and it has a particular penchant for barmy cult leaders who have engaged in bloody and grisly acts of mayhem and murder (Charles Manson is one of the favourites) – not to mention tyrannical dictators, the more brutal, the better. ....I'm being a tad facetious here.
Creativity though, (and I remember Sulloway did do some work on creativity), and creative geniuses by extension do get sidelined though within sociology. Nothing funny or untrue about this. Creativity is a process which requires solitude and a great degree of "inwardness" and introspection, and probably comes across as too individualistic and too personal and too "elitist" a phenomenon to garner much serious interest, and so maybe that's the reason that sociology neglects it or lets "others" deal with the same. And so that was one of my reasons – to look into creativity because I didn't see why the creative geniuses should get left out of sociology. Of course then the question was creativity, creative genius and what?
The “natural” thing for me was to put in some aspect of “barminess” into the picture.
Why it “was” natural is rather interesting enough, and so I'll make a little observation. The choice of the 13 students who did go on to finish their Master's project would've been an interesting aspect to study in and of itself. Very many of us ended up choosing something deeply (almost embarassingly) personal and most of the students who did a qualitative study did something that they weren't "just" interested in but something that related to a very personal part of their Selves. (My original topic which I let go after pounding it out for a month and three days was of even more of a personal nature. I gave up on it because I was much too attached to the topic and knew that there was no hope of doing something that was balanced and sensible).
One of my friends did her Master's study on children of alcoholic parents; another friend did a study on the nature of memory in relation to participating in a social movement. I ended up studying schizophrenics and spiritual leaders (of course). I've noticed a similar trend in succeeding batches. There is one student who is doing a study on “Fat people”; another student finished dong a Master's thesis on the socialization of African-Americans students by their college student bodies; another very nice and interesting friend did a study on homosexuality among male Polish immigrants; I know of one annoying student who is doing a study on GLBT gatherings; yet another very glamorous and physically stunning British student did a study on (believe it or not) fashion parades in Paris. Finally, to end off with one last example - I also know of a very good friend who is studying violence against women during ethnic riots and the portrayal of violence in Indian literature.
Maybe my sample size is rather biased – for I seem to remember those studies where the personal aspect was so obvious that maybe it's just a matter of selective memory. Yet, whatever it is, in a way I think there are many students working within the social sciences who attempt to “objectively” and academically look at a problem, which is/was a part of themselves in a very obvious way. It's like studying rape if one has been raped or studying violence during war while one has been in the midst of it, or studying boot camps after one has been through some regimented training in some totalitarian institution or studying stigma in relation to some physical characteristic or handicap.....the list is endless.
In some ways - I'm wont to think – at least for some students, the academic poking and prodding at a personal issue helps them to create some emotional distance between themselves and the personal issue or gets them to thinking about something intellectually without emotion and sometimes even helps them to deal with/manage whatever that personal bag contains. Sometimes it helps one to understand the “thing”/ “aspect”/ “process” from different angles and in hopefully a more holistic way. For yet others it might be the knowledge that there are “others” out there like me (maybe there is a sense of companionship).
For yet others I think, studying sociology is simply a waste of time. I cannot and never will be able to see the sociological point of anyone studying fashion parades. But that’s an easy one. Not many would. What about studying fat admirers? Now what’s this all about? It’s studying men who find obese women physically attractive. Hmm. Of course you do bring in a fair bit of gender theory into it, and “ta-da”. How bizarre can things be!
For some students the same feature of the personal and the academic follow through during their Ph.D years as well. For some it shifts completely. For others there's somewhat of a reframing/restructuring/reconstructing if not a complete overhaul. Yet others find/discover other stuff that seem interesting, and others just get bored at the thought of dwelling on the same topic for yet another three straight years and just hurry out (or in) to find something else.
To return to the point regarding my Master's. During the first month, I was getting acquainted with the literature on creativity, and so I was quite sure that there was plenty of space for me to do “something” on creativity and mental health. I remember the first summer I went back home and was talking with a friend up on the terrace, and was rambling about what I was planning to do. My friend's reply was “creativity is linked to being slightly off-kilter, of course...” I nodded and then the conversation went on to other things. I found out later that there were quite a number of interesting studies and some extreme (as is usual) studies which looked into creativity and mental health – especially creativity and what is known as bi-polar disorder/manic-depression.
Some authors loudly attacked others who did not see a link. Other authors loudly protested against any connection between being bi-polar and creativity. One author claimed that the idea that there could be any connection between a deadly disease and creativity was outrageous since the two conditions were absolutely opposed to one another (Albert Rothenberg). One clinical psychologist, who in recent years, explicitly drew a connection between the two, is the very famous (and sort of infamous) Kay Redfield Jamison. She cooked up a veritable storm in the 80s with her theory that bi-polars were more creative than the “normals” (and guess what? Yes of course. She had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder). One of her books Touched by Fire has been cited till kingdom come – and quite frankly I wouldn't mind not hearing her name again. Very many others have critiqued her book till kingdom come saying the usual stuff: that she used a biased sample, that she didn't really have much evidence to carry her argument, that she was completely value-laden in the discussion of her results, and the unusual but not the unexpected: that she was a monster for now putting pressure on the poor folk who were bi-polar by making them feel that they were obliged to be creative! In any case what Jamison said wasn't entirely novel. Some folks had dabbled with similar perspectives – but Kay Redfield Jamison is the one who “made it”.
One study (published in 1992 in the American Journal of Psychotherapy) by Arnold Ludwig, I greatly enjoyed reading (and still remember!): he demonstrated and quite satisfactorily (I thought) that an overwhelming number of people who were bi-polar were to be found within the spaces of the creative arts and related fields where the said individuals had a certain (and greater than usual) degree of freedom in when and how and where and why they worked. Thus, it wasn't so much that creative people were bi-polar or that bi-polar people were creative but that “simply speaking” bi-polars were somehow aware that they weren't fit to work in routine 9-5 jobs, and so found jobs where they could choose their own working hours; or, to see it in funny terms – the bi-polars who did end up surviving and made it in the “real” world made sure that they didn't have 9-5 routine jobs within a tiny cubicle. Soon enough (so many years ago!) I was reading a tidy pile of books by some known and some middling but no-less interesting authors – Laing, and Sasz, Jung and Maslow, Huxley and Timothy Leary, William James,and Foucault, Walsh, Daniel Nettle, Hershman and Lieb, some Benedict and Bourginon, and a bit of Howard Gardner and others. I enjoyed reading most of the literature, and raced through entire books, some of which were outrageously funny (and most of them were actually not strictly sociological textbooks, although they did belong to the broad category of social science) even the halfway medical ones, and plodded through some articles as well. By and by, as enthralled as I was by the process of creativity – and as full as my head already had been with all the information and “knowledge” regarding at least two broad categories of mental illnesses – schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, I hit upon a couple of theses of my own.
1. It seemed that the writers and artists and composers who had been “barmy” were better able to deal with their condition/manage their condition for a certain period of time at any rate (till they dropped dead or walked out of the game of life on their own terms) in comparison to the scientists who had been afflicted by some strains of “barminess”. Yet the creative artists didn't do as well as the spiritual prophets.
2. The spiritual prophets seemed the ones who had been able to deal with their mental states with an unbelievable degree of grace, self-confidence, an absolutely shining "arrogance", and composure (among other things).
3. The spiritual prophets manifested symptoms that were alarmingly close to some of the most marked characteristics of schizophrenia, while the creative artists definitely sounded more manic-depressive than schizophrenic, while the scientists were difficult to peg (small sample size and well-documented instances were fewer for this category) – but seemed, tentatively speaking to display more schizophrenic traits than manic depressive traits.
4. Spiritual prophets wrote the least about their mental journeys (although they wrote volumes on their spiritual philosophy), scientists came a very close second, writers did engage in writing a fair bit, as did musical artists (in the form of letters and memoirs and personal essays); but the maximum number of memoirs/full-fledged books were written by the mad – both, schizophrenics and manic-depressives. The last category had produced an outstanding and bewildering collection of memoirs – some of them notable for no other reason other than the fact that the individual had gone barmy – that was his/her claim to fame; I have no idea “how well” such books did in the regular market.
I realised quickly that my first three theses although they made a great deal of intuitive sense (I still stand by my original hunch that I had for points 1, 2, and 3) – were impossible to study really. Maybe it's not impossible – but I didn't find any ways of really formulating a research study and getting it done. Afterall I couldn't talk with dead people, and the live ones were no good to me. Points 3 and 4 stuck to my head though, and the Masters got done in the end because I was taking a qualitative course that same semester, and I wrote a research paper using bits and pieces of ideas 3 and 4.
In retrospect I realise that I had great fun while writing up my Master's. There was also a tongue-in-the-cheek aspect about the whole study. One of the concluding paragraphs in my completed thesis reads,
"....what can be undeniably accepted is that prophets, saints and true charismatic, spiritual leaders (as defined in the literature review) are definitely creative in that they bring in new ways of understanding life. Also it can be accepted that they are hardly “dysfunctional” or “pathological” – insofar as they can negotiate between their inner insights and external reality. In this they do display the element of “creative self-awareness” which can be differentiated from the schizophrenic’s heightened sensitivity, hyper-reflexivity and keen awareness in that for the mystic these attributes are fully realized and fully manifest; the mystic is able to wield these and employ these in a manner which results in his full potential being realized within different spaces of social reality – even if these "spaces" relate to the philosophical, religious and cosmic dimension....the schizophrenic and the mystic thus while they have similar experiences and even insights, they have radically different means of dealing with the aberrant, the unusual, and the unlikely...."
I should most likely apologise for the above post. I had really wanted it to be more informative and now I realise that I've hardly made it clear as to what schizophrenia is all about or how it has been classified or how I made connections between charismatic spiritual leaders/mystics and schizophrenics or how the study actually got done. Some may wonder about my presumptuousness, my level and degree of absolute self-centredness or even wonder why I bothered doing the study in the first place. Yet others may wonder why I bothered talking about my Master's.
But it's not so much about being presumptuous or being self-obsessed or maybe it is. As I finally get around to going out and collecting my data for my Ph.D I was in the mood to ruminate on some aspects about my Master's and how I zoned in on a subject of my choice. And funnily enough, as I'm reluctantly nearing the end of a beautiful book by Amartya Sen, I'm reminded too of the number of ways that our multiple identities are not just formed but made manifest. For many students and researchers even the specific choice of subject/topic of research is an expression of their "identity" (for some it may be an entirely sub-conscious process, although I doubt it) and for others it's absolutely open and self-claimed (feminist scholars, holocaust/genocide scholars are some examples that immediately come to mind) - and which identity? Most likely the one that is the most salient. (I'm reminded of the game with which I started off my social psychology class a year ago: a game in which the students write 20 points to the question "Who am I?") Given the existence of multiple identities - I somehow feel that there is one identity (at least for some people) which emerges as the "primary identity". Sometimes there is a problem with that - but it really depends on what that primary identity is. Depending on what that primary identity is, I would argue that having a primary identity or a single identity may not be a problem.
I think I'll end this post for now. Some other day I'll write more on identity and identity salience, on choosing of research topics and what choices go out of the window and maybe I'll write something about choices as well.
P.S: I made an egregious mistake in not mentioning three of my professors without whom I could not have finished my Masters. My advisor Professor Eugene C. Jackson, who supported me and allowed me to go around hunting, exploring, and experimenting - and put up with my barminess; Professor Harry Potter who never seemed "too busy" for some long, rambling, and interesting conversations, and Professor Jack Spencer who had and has given me chances when I didn't think I deserved them.
21st November 2008
Creativity though, (and I remember Sulloway did do some work on creativity), and creative geniuses by extension do get sidelined though within sociology. Nothing funny or untrue about this. Creativity is a process which requires solitude and a great degree of "inwardness" and introspection, and probably comes across as too individualistic and too personal and too "elitist" a phenomenon to garner much serious interest, and so maybe that's the reason that sociology neglects it or lets "others" deal with the same. And so that was one of my reasons – to look into creativity because I didn't see why the creative geniuses should get left out of sociology. Of course then the question was creativity, creative genius and what?
The “natural” thing for me was to put in some aspect of “barminess” into the picture.
Why it “was” natural is rather interesting enough, and so I'll make a little observation. The choice of the 13 students who did go on to finish their Master's project would've been an interesting aspect to study in and of itself. Very many of us ended up choosing something deeply (almost embarassingly) personal and most of the students who did a qualitative study did something that they weren't "just" interested in but something that related to a very personal part of their Selves. (My original topic which I let go after pounding it out for a month and three days was of even more of a personal nature. I gave up on it because I was much too attached to the topic and knew that there was no hope of doing something that was balanced and sensible).
One of my friends did her Master's study on children of alcoholic parents; another friend did a study on the nature of memory in relation to participating in a social movement. I ended up studying schizophrenics and spiritual leaders (of course). I've noticed a similar trend in succeeding batches. There is one student who is doing a study on “Fat people”; another student finished dong a Master's thesis on the socialization of African-Americans students by their college student bodies; another very nice and interesting friend did a study on homosexuality among male Polish immigrants; I know of one annoying student who is doing a study on GLBT gatherings; yet another very glamorous and physically stunning British student did a study on (believe it or not) fashion parades in Paris. Finally, to end off with one last example - I also know of a very good friend who is studying violence against women during ethnic riots and the portrayal of violence in Indian literature.
Maybe my sample size is rather biased – for I seem to remember those studies where the personal aspect was so obvious that maybe it's just a matter of selective memory. Yet, whatever it is, in a way I think there are many students working within the social sciences who attempt to “objectively” and academically look at a problem, which is/was a part of themselves in a very obvious way. It's like studying rape if one has been raped or studying violence during war while one has been in the midst of it, or studying boot camps after one has been through some regimented training in some totalitarian institution or studying stigma in relation to some physical characteristic or handicap.....the list is endless.
In some ways - I'm wont to think – at least for some students, the academic poking and prodding at a personal issue helps them to create some emotional distance between themselves and the personal issue or gets them to thinking about something intellectually without emotion and sometimes even helps them to deal with/manage whatever that personal bag contains. Sometimes it helps one to understand the “thing”/ “aspect”/ “process” from different angles and in hopefully a more holistic way. For yet others it might be the knowledge that there are “others” out there like me (maybe there is a sense of companionship).
For yet others I think, studying sociology is simply a waste of time. I cannot and never will be able to see the sociological point of anyone studying fashion parades. But that’s an easy one. Not many would. What about studying fat admirers? Now what’s this all about? It’s studying men who find obese women physically attractive. Hmm. Of course you do bring in a fair bit of gender theory into it, and “ta-da”. How bizarre can things be!
For some students the same feature of the personal and the academic follow through during their Ph.D years as well. For some it shifts completely. For others there's somewhat of a reframing/restructuring/reconstructing if not a complete overhaul. Yet others find/discover other stuff that seem interesting, and others just get bored at the thought of dwelling on the same topic for yet another three straight years and just hurry out (or in) to find something else.
To return to the point regarding my Master's. During the first month, I was getting acquainted with the literature on creativity, and so I was quite sure that there was plenty of space for me to do “something” on creativity and mental health. I remember the first summer I went back home and was talking with a friend up on the terrace, and was rambling about what I was planning to do. My friend's reply was “creativity is linked to being slightly off-kilter, of course...” I nodded and then the conversation went on to other things. I found out later that there were quite a number of interesting studies and some extreme (as is usual) studies which looked into creativity and mental health – especially creativity and what is known as bi-polar disorder/manic-depression.
Some authors loudly attacked others who did not see a link. Other authors loudly protested against any connection between being bi-polar and creativity. One author claimed that the idea that there could be any connection between a deadly disease and creativity was outrageous since the two conditions were absolutely opposed to one another (Albert Rothenberg). One clinical psychologist, who in recent years, explicitly drew a connection between the two, is the very famous (and sort of infamous) Kay Redfield Jamison. She cooked up a veritable storm in the 80s with her theory that bi-polars were more creative than the “normals” (and guess what? Yes of course. She had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder). One of her books Touched by Fire has been cited till kingdom come – and quite frankly I wouldn't mind not hearing her name again. Very many others have critiqued her book till kingdom come saying the usual stuff: that she used a biased sample, that she didn't really have much evidence to carry her argument, that she was completely value-laden in the discussion of her results, and the unusual but not the unexpected: that she was a monster for now putting pressure on the poor folk who were bi-polar by making them feel that they were obliged to be creative! In any case what Jamison said wasn't entirely novel. Some folks had dabbled with similar perspectives – but Kay Redfield Jamison is the one who “made it”.
One study (published in 1992 in the American Journal of Psychotherapy) by Arnold Ludwig, I greatly enjoyed reading (and still remember!): he demonstrated and quite satisfactorily (I thought) that an overwhelming number of people who were bi-polar were to be found within the spaces of the creative arts and related fields where the said individuals had a certain (and greater than usual) degree of freedom in when and how and where and why they worked. Thus, it wasn't so much that creative people were bi-polar or that bi-polar people were creative but that “simply speaking” bi-polars were somehow aware that they weren't fit to work in routine 9-5 jobs, and so found jobs where they could choose their own working hours; or, to see it in funny terms – the bi-polars who did end up surviving and made it in the “real” world made sure that they didn't have 9-5 routine jobs within a tiny cubicle. Soon enough (so many years ago!) I was reading a tidy pile of books by some known and some middling but no-less interesting authors – Laing, and Sasz, Jung and Maslow, Huxley and Timothy Leary, William James,and Foucault, Walsh, Daniel Nettle, Hershman and Lieb, some Benedict and Bourginon, and a bit of Howard Gardner and others. I enjoyed reading most of the literature, and raced through entire books, some of which were outrageously funny (and most of them were actually not strictly sociological textbooks, although they did belong to the broad category of social science) even the halfway medical ones, and plodded through some articles as well. By and by, as enthralled as I was by the process of creativity – and as full as my head already had been with all the information and “knowledge” regarding at least two broad categories of mental illnesses – schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, I hit upon a couple of theses of my own.
1. It seemed that the writers and artists and composers who had been “barmy” were better able to deal with their condition/manage their condition for a certain period of time at any rate (till they dropped dead or walked out of the game of life on their own terms) in comparison to the scientists who had been afflicted by some strains of “barminess”. Yet the creative artists didn't do as well as the spiritual prophets.
2. The spiritual prophets seemed the ones who had been able to deal with their mental states with an unbelievable degree of grace, self-confidence, an absolutely shining "arrogance", and composure (among other things).
3. The spiritual prophets manifested symptoms that were alarmingly close to some of the most marked characteristics of schizophrenia, while the creative artists definitely sounded more manic-depressive than schizophrenic, while the scientists were difficult to peg (small sample size and well-documented instances were fewer for this category) – but seemed, tentatively speaking to display more schizophrenic traits than manic depressive traits.
4. Spiritual prophets wrote the least about their mental journeys (although they wrote volumes on their spiritual philosophy), scientists came a very close second, writers did engage in writing a fair bit, as did musical artists (in the form of letters and memoirs and personal essays); but the maximum number of memoirs/full-fledged books were written by the mad – both, schizophrenics and manic-depressives. The last category had produced an outstanding and bewildering collection of memoirs – some of them notable for no other reason other than the fact that the individual had gone barmy – that was his/her claim to fame; I have no idea “how well” such books did in the regular market.
I realised quickly that my first three theses although they made a great deal of intuitive sense (I still stand by my original hunch that I had for points 1, 2, and 3) – were impossible to study really. Maybe it's not impossible – but I didn't find any ways of really formulating a research study and getting it done. Afterall I couldn't talk with dead people, and the live ones were no good to me. Points 3 and 4 stuck to my head though, and the Masters got done in the end because I was taking a qualitative course that same semester, and I wrote a research paper using bits and pieces of ideas 3 and 4.
In retrospect I realise that I had great fun while writing up my Master's. There was also a tongue-in-the-cheek aspect about the whole study. One of the concluding paragraphs in my completed thesis reads,
"....what can be undeniably accepted is that prophets, saints and true charismatic, spiritual leaders (as defined in the literature review) are definitely creative in that they bring in new ways of understanding life. Also it can be accepted that they are hardly “dysfunctional” or “pathological” – insofar as they can negotiate between their inner insights and external reality. In this they do display the element of “creative self-awareness” which can be differentiated from the schizophrenic’s heightened sensitivity, hyper-reflexivity and keen awareness in that for the mystic these attributes are fully realized and fully manifest; the mystic is able to wield these and employ these in a manner which results in his full potential being realized within different spaces of social reality – even if these "spaces" relate to the philosophical, religious and cosmic dimension....the schizophrenic and the mystic thus while they have similar experiences and even insights, they have radically different means of dealing with the aberrant, the unusual, and the unlikely...."
I should most likely apologise for the above post. I had really wanted it to be more informative and now I realise that I've hardly made it clear as to what schizophrenia is all about or how it has been classified or how I made connections between charismatic spiritual leaders/mystics and schizophrenics or how the study actually got done. Some may wonder about my presumptuousness, my level and degree of absolute self-centredness or even wonder why I bothered doing the study in the first place. Yet others may wonder why I bothered talking about my Master's.
But it's not so much about being presumptuous or being self-obsessed or maybe it is. As I finally get around to going out and collecting my data for my Ph.D I was in the mood to ruminate on some aspects about my Master's and how I zoned in on a subject of my choice. And funnily enough, as I'm reluctantly nearing the end of a beautiful book by Amartya Sen, I'm reminded too of the number of ways that our multiple identities are not just formed but made manifest. For many students and researchers even the specific choice of subject/topic of research is an expression of their "identity" (for some it may be an entirely sub-conscious process, although I doubt it) and for others it's absolutely open and self-claimed (feminist scholars, holocaust/genocide scholars are some examples that immediately come to mind) - and which identity? Most likely the one that is the most salient. (I'm reminded of the game with which I started off my social psychology class a year ago: a game in which the students write 20 points to the question "Who am I?") Given the existence of multiple identities - I somehow feel that there is one identity (at least for some people) which emerges as the "primary identity". Sometimes there is a problem with that - but it really depends on what that primary identity is. Depending on what that primary identity is, I would argue that having a primary identity or a single identity may not be a problem.
I think I'll end this post for now. Some other day I'll write more on identity and identity salience, on choosing of research topics and what choices go out of the window and maybe I'll write something about choices as well.
P.S: I made an egregious mistake in not mentioning three of my professors without whom I could not have finished my Masters. My advisor Professor Eugene C. Jackson, who supported me and allowed me to go around hunting, exploring, and experimenting - and put up with my barminess; Professor Harry Potter who never seemed "too busy" for some long, rambling, and interesting conversations, and Professor Jack Spencer who had and has given me chances when I didn't think I deserved them.
21st November 2008
23 June 2008
Musings on Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a constant state of being. Some of my friends – notably two among them – are quick with their repartees and make priceless puns, and sometimes elegantly witty comments, both barbed and unbarbed, depending upon the requirements of a given context. Of course being witty is one among the many consequences of mindfulness.
Mindfulness means “being present in the moment”. Much has been said about this and much more has been written about it. The first time I ever came across this term was within a Class 5 History textbook, which talked about Buddhism. I had no idea what it meant; indeed I didn’t know how one could not be in the moment. Yet through all these years – I don’t think I’ve gotten any closer to really practicing what this means. I am hardly ever mindful to and of the moment.
Yet, what indeed, does it mean to be in the moment?
Or better still: what does it mean to "not be in the moment"?
My mind wanders. Even when I’m talking to people I love my own mind splutters, jumps the gun, and is leaping over bushes and shrubs, mountains or oceans or skulking in a dark cave with a shroud pulled over its head.
Very rarely am I in the moment. Present with all my senses intact, listening and hearing carefully and mindfully, and looking and being with what is happening and unfurling around me. And the times that I am in the moment – they are – needless to say, the best.
Very natural, easy, gliding, cruising moments.
And as the saying goes, time flies by without me knowing.
Being mindful, being in the moment: the best quote for me comes from a nice movie that I watched recently: “Who are you?” “I am the moment.”
Lately, I’ve noticed I get into this mindful moment when I’m almost finishing a book. Even if the book is halfway decent; I am in that moment racing along with the story as it comes to an artificial end. This used to happen extremely frequently some two decades ago when I’d race back home from school with a good book, and nothing would be better than snuggling into a comfy armchair or getting into bed and reading through the sunny afternoons.
These days this happens less often; even when I’m reading a good book, my mind wanders, and not with the tale – but on its own on exceptionally mundane routes, following trails...of work that needs to be done later, official stuff that needs to be attended to, papers that need to be read, papers which should be written, the tummy that needs to be exercised, the worries that do not have any outlet….and on and on – until my chattering mind makes it impossible for me to read. I realise sometimes to my utter disgust that I have gone through ten pages without anything registering in my head. Sometimes these days, when I drive I get into that “in the moment” state. But since I don’t know all the roads around the city – I can’t really let my mind just be – I’ll most likely be on my way to Milwaukee if I don’t squint and glare at all the roads and routes I’m taking.
Being with some people – sometimes I’m in the moment. When I’m not just-listening without really listening just so that I can speak later. I really listen and really talk, and sometimes the interaction proceeds without any hiccoughs or bumps. It becomes one emerging lovely dance where both become one with the moment. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I listen – and I really am in the moment. Paying attention to what is being said instead of trying to make my own point or leap around with my own silly mind or run away in fear because of what is being said, because my silly inattentive mind just wants to hide away from "what is being said" or because it doesn’t know how to deal with "what is being said" or because it starts spinning scary stories from or is deeply uncomfortable about "what is being said".
The same thing of my “mind running away” happens when there is a situation that my mind doesn’t know how to deal with. It will start spinning tales and stories and make a gigantic universe out of a grain of sand. I start hyperventilating within and the whole “real” world crashes even before seven seconds have come and gone. And of course my mind has paid no attention to what has really been said or to what has really unfurled. Some day I’ll make a list (as honest a list as I possibly can of the moments when I am mindful of the moment, but that’s for later).
The Dalai Lama says that the key to seeing what really “is” – is to cultivate a peaceful mind. Yet my mind no matter how “smart” and “clever” and “knowledgeable” it thinks it is – never really is in the moment as things happen. Nor does it see and hear what really is. It makes a story of things as it wants to, and sometimes it takes me days and years to figure out why I react the way I do; why I am the way I am. So far I realise that I may have grown exceptionally knowledgeable but I’m no more wise than I was when I was 17 (at 5, I was wise), although I have definitely had more experiences.
And how does one become wise? By acting out one’s knowledge.
What is wisdom? Knowledge, which is acted out.
I realise with a sense of bemusement that when I was physically attacked once, I did act with complete mindfulness. I didn’t know that I was acting in and with the moment – but I was. I kept my wits about me, and I was out of a sticky situation, which might have gotten pretty unpleasant if my mind had decided to cower or flee (or if God and my stars hadn’t been with me). But the truth is apart from that one time, and a couple of other times – I can’t really point out to important times in my life where I have "been (or am) in the moment". And it seems to me that the more momentous the occasion, the more crucial the timing, the less likely am I to be in the moment.
I slap my head later.
I kick myself later.
I grin and shake my head sadly later.
I used to get angry earlier – now I am just amazed and even more bemused at how my mind just splutters and stutters and whimps like a pipsqeak, and how sometimes I chatter without really thinking. In some rare important moments I can be myself; I can flow with the moment, be engaged in that moment and all the pretty, beautiful, lovely, and promised elements do come together in one delightful rush. Many times it happens when I’m by myself (or with my fimh - only that I guess, doesn't really count), when it’s vis-Ã -vis other human beings, it happens only when the other has no inhibitions at all about being with me, and is able to draw me away from my chattering mind (and this I have realised happens between some unusual children and me) or when I have had enough time with another to have no fear about anything that comes or may come between the other and me.
“Being in the moment” (ironically enough) happens, both with people I love and with people I don’t give a rat’s ass about.
But what is particularly distressing is that even with people I love dearly, I can very rarely be in the moment. I am always worried about giving offence or hurting the other or else I'm mortally scared about what the other is going to say (no matter how much I say I can be on my own, and I know I can be; I fear the fear of abandonment and sometimes what feels like very real abandonment in a couple of relationships) or else I genuinely fear making the other incurably angry and disgusted with my presumptuousness. Or I imagine that the other is going to think I’m silly or stupid or God-forbid “slow”. I don’t much care what the world or anybody else thinks of me any longer – but the thing is I still do care enormously and terribly about what a couple and more of people “think” of me. I know it doesn’t make sense to play out Cooley’s Looking-glass Self (which says we act the way we do depending upon how we believe other people see us)in my head – but barmily enough it’s almost as if some of the times in life I really am stuck in a moment in time, and I can’t be who-I-want-to-be because my silly mind is defensive, is offensive and is looking for flight, and all at the same time.
It’s very similar to what Eddie Izzard in his once-again priceless act spins on (aggressive) children who tend to lie (because they are "always" on the look-out for something which might leap out and bite them, maybe?)
“Did you…?” comes the shooting question from an adult, and the child goes, “Yes I did. No I didn’t. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know. …err…did I 'what'?"
“Did you brush your teeth?”
"Yes I did. No I didn’t. I was dead at the time. Errr…what’s the right answer?”
So in a way, it all comes back to my previous post: it’s all about fear. Even when I imagine I have nothing to fear about – I fear. I fear because my mind convinces me that if I don’t fear what I don’t fear, what-I-don't-fear will happen! Now as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter at all when I am completely indifferent to people or situations; but when I have any feelings – when I want to whack people hard (because they irritate me or offend my sensibilities every day because I see them everyday) or when I want to hug them – I am not so mindful anymore. I am caught up in the trap of my mind where mindlessness persists and my own silly chattering.
What upsets me is that with all my knowledge gathered quite painstakingly – I must mention, through all these 32 years – I have nothing to show for it! I know I have the necessary knowledge – but for the life of me I cannot imagine what stops this knowledge from being translated into wisdom. I have become no better at my work ethics. I have become no more disciplined in my work habits (or otherwise). I do not seem to have a phenomenal memory all of a sudden (yes, my worries about my memory, although not as acute as before still worry me at a level). I do not seem to have any extraordinary skills that anyone else or I happen to notice or gloat over. I am just as lazy as I ever have been. I lack the patience and concentration and attention span that I had as a 7 year old. After a month and a half of frenetic activity and unfurling, my favourite pastime is once-again, sleeping. And what I know and sense seems almost like a wistful dream at times and sometimes like the starkest piece of truth that has ever hit me. Yet in terms of action – there is nothing that is remotely noteworthy. I can’t even talk for heaven’s sake (with people I genuinely love and care about) without my mind taking a hike or just completely blanking on me, so I realise. I can’t talk but even more than that – I can’t really think straight. So where is all my mindfulness disappearing when I “need” it the most, I wonder.
I could and can talk till Kingdom come about God, and how and what I feel about God. I also know that it doesn’t matter what I say or think or speak about God. For it doesn’t matter in the end, beginning or the middle. It is what-it-is. I feel-what-I-feel. And, my Self smiles as I write this (much to my embarrassment) – it can’t really be “talked about” or written about….
Yet what of life as it is.
If I go through life; and still go through life with knowledge and no wisdom in the way I act, speak and am – then of what use is my prattle-babble and wugga-wugga. I could give lectures and “say” a lot. But to my growing consternation and annoyance, I see that when I have to act and speak and listen carefully to what-is-being said and pay attention to what-is, my mind goes on a chattering rampage or an autistic trail, just the way it always has!
My mind has started sniggering unkindly of late (all over again? – But not as loudly and vociferously as in the past – because it no longer can be that pompous). It tells me if my fears are imaginary – why should I imagine that my love and my God is real. It tells me that I have learnt nothing from life that is “useful” to/for me or to anyone else. It doesn’t make me publish papers by the dozen, and become a bigwig within the field of academics (or a rising star). It doesn’t suddenly make me famous and rich. It doesn’t even – and here it sniggers even more loudly – make me act in more fearless and more honest and more careful and more mindful ways. It doesn’t help me make human beings happier or less confused or relieve another, if even a bit, of his/her misery. It doesn’t help me make the sufferings of anyone in this world a little lighter. It doesn’t help me be both compassionate and wise in my “real” dealings with human beings who cheese me off. It doesn’t help me do good to those more unfortunate. It doesn’t make me always and forever “be in the moment” vis-Ã -vis those whom I loudly claim to love…. And this is where I sigh. I do. For here, if not in any other matter, my mind is “right”.
I have indeed been blessed to have the life I do. Yet vis-Ã -vis people, I’m still as much as the strange un that I always was and have been. Vis-Ã -vis fears and obsessions my mind goes running on the same mad rushing freight train as it always did even when I was a kid, although the fears were different at that point.
I’m reminded again of the love and fear dichotomy. I’m reminded again of the light and darkness dichotomy. I’m reminded again of wisdom and ignorance. I know that all can be without the other. And of course they do not exist as this or that. Creation, destruction, life, death, fear, wisdom, ignorance, love, madness, sanity, Yin and Yang, God and the Devil (?)…all of it is one whole. There is an absolute indestructible unity. And I seem to know this as well. Yet, yet, yet and yet – where is the wisdom in this confounding puzzle? If the illusion breaks and if mindfulness “Is” – shouldn’t mindfulness/clarity of mind be some absolute state of knowing and being, without ever forgetting who-one-is? Letting go of fear is probably the key.
I’m reminded of that one line which is repeated over and over again in Dune, “Fear is the mindkiller…” and it truly is. It makes me mindless.
And it’s fear in one form or the other, which leads to most of what is going on in the world today, and has been for ages. The horrors of our world.
I can’t help but think that Fear should have found its place of glory as one of the seven deadly sins….
Mindfulness means “being present in the moment”. Much has been said about this and much more has been written about it. The first time I ever came across this term was within a Class 5 History textbook, which talked about Buddhism. I had no idea what it meant; indeed I didn’t know how one could not be in the moment. Yet through all these years – I don’t think I’ve gotten any closer to really practicing what this means. I am hardly ever mindful to and of the moment.
Yet, what indeed, does it mean to be in the moment?
Or better still: what does it mean to "not be in the moment"?
My mind wanders. Even when I’m talking to people I love my own mind splutters, jumps the gun, and is leaping over bushes and shrubs, mountains or oceans or skulking in a dark cave with a shroud pulled over its head.
Very rarely am I in the moment. Present with all my senses intact, listening and hearing carefully and mindfully, and looking and being with what is happening and unfurling around me. And the times that I am in the moment – they are – needless to say, the best.
Very natural, easy, gliding, cruising moments.
And as the saying goes, time flies by without me knowing.
Being mindful, being in the moment: the best quote for me comes from a nice movie that I watched recently: “Who are you?” “I am the moment.”
Lately, I’ve noticed I get into this mindful moment when I’m almost finishing a book. Even if the book is halfway decent; I am in that moment racing along with the story as it comes to an artificial end. This used to happen extremely frequently some two decades ago when I’d race back home from school with a good book, and nothing would be better than snuggling into a comfy armchair or getting into bed and reading through the sunny afternoons.
These days this happens less often; even when I’m reading a good book, my mind wanders, and not with the tale – but on its own on exceptionally mundane routes, following trails...of work that needs to be done later, official stuff that needs to be attended to, papers that need to be read, papers which should be written, the tummy that needs to be exercised, the worries that do not have any outlet….and on and on – until my chattering mind makes it impossible for me to read. I realise sometimes to my utter disgust that I have gone through ten pages without anything registering in my head. Sometimes these days, when I drive I get into that “in the moment” state. But since I don’t know all the roads around the city – I can’t really let my mind just be – I’ll most likely be on my way to Milwaukee if I don’t squint and glare at all the roads and routes I’m taking.
Being with some people – sometimes I’m in the moment. When I’m not just-listening without really listening just so that I can speak later. I really listen and really talk, and sometimes the interaction proceeds without any hiccoughs or bumps. It becomes one emerging lovely dance where both become one with the moment. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I listen – and I really am in the moment. Paying attention to what is being said instead of trying to make my own point or leap around with my own silly mind or run away in fear because of what is being said, because my silly inattentive mind just wants to hide away from "what is being said" or because it doesn’t know how to deal with "what is being said" or because it starts spinning scary stories from or is deeply uncomfortable about "what is being said".
The same thing of my “mind running away” happens when there is a situation that my mind doesn’t know how to deal with. It will start spinning tales and stories and make a gigantic universe out of a grain of sand. I start hyperventilating within and the whole “real” world crashes even before seven seconds have come and gone. And of course my mind has paid no attention to what has really been said or to what has really unfurled. Some day I’ll make a list (as honest a list as I possibly can of the moments when I am mindful of the moment, but that’s for later).
The Dalai Lama says that the key to seeing what really “is” – is to cultivate a peaceful mind. Yet my mind no matter how “smart” and “clever” and “knowledgeable” it thinks it is – never really is in the moment as things happen. Nor does it see and hear what really is. It makes a story of things as it wants to, and sometimes it takes me days and years to figure out why I react the way I do; why I am the way I am. So far I realise that I may have grown exceptionally knowledgeable but I’m no more wise than I was when I was 17 (at 5, I was wise), although I have definitely had more experiences.
And how does one become wise? By acting out one’s knowledge.
What is wisdom? Knowledge, which is acted out.
I realise with a sense of bemusement that when I was physically attacked once, I did act with complete mindfulness. I didn’t know that I was acting in and with the moment – but I was. I kept my wits about me, and I was out of a sticky situation, which might have gotten pretty unpleasant if my mind had decided to cower or flee (or if God and my stars hadn’t been with me). But the truth is apart from that one time, and a couple of other times – I can’t really point out to important times in my life where I have "been (or am) in the moment". And it seems to me that the more momentous the occasion, the more crucial the timing, the less likely am I to be in the moment.
I slap my head later.
I kick myself later.
I grin and shake my head sadly later.
I used to get angry earlier – now I am just amazed and even more bemused at how my mind just splutters and stutters and whimps like a pipsqeak, and how sometimes I chatter without really thinking. In some rare important moments I can be myself; I can flow with the moment, be engaged in that moment and all the pretty, beautiful, lovely, and promised elements do come together in one delightful rush. Many times it happens when I’m by myself (or with my fimh - only that I guess, doesn't really count), when it’s vis-Ã -vis other human beings, it happens only when the other has no inhibitions at all about being with me, and is able to draw me away from my chattering mind (and this I have realised happens between some unusual children and me) or when I have had enough time with another to have no fear about anything that comes or may come between the other and me.
“Being in the moment” (ironically enough) happens, both with people I love and with people I don’t give a rat’s ass about.
But what is particularly distressing is that even with people I love dearly, I can very rarely be in the moment. I am always worried about giving offence or hurting the other or else I'm mortally scared about what the other is going to say (no matter how much I say I can be on my own, and I know I can be; I fear the fear of abandonment and sometimes what feels like very real abandonment in a couple of relationships) or else I genuinely fear making the other incurably angry and disgusted with my presumptuousness. Or I imagine that the other is going to think I’m silly or stupid or God-forbid “slow”. I don’t much care what the world or anybody else thinks of me any longer – but the thing is I still do care enormously and terribly about what a couple and more of people “think” of me. I know it doesn’t make sense to play out Cooley’s Looking-glass Self (which says we act the way we do depending upon how we believe other people see us)in my head – but barmily enough it’s almost as if some of the times in life I really am stuck in a moment in time, and I can’t be who-I-want-to-be because my silly mind is defensive, is offensive and is looking for flight, and all at the same time.
It’s very similar to what Eddie Izzard in his once-again priceless act spins on (aggressive) children who tend to lie (because they are "always" on the look-out for something which might leap out and bite them, maybe?)
“Did you…?” comes the shooting question from an adult, and the child goes, “Yes I did. No I didn’t. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know. …err…did I 'what'?"
“Did you brush your teeth?”
"Yes I did. No I didn’t. I was dead at the time. Errr…what’s the right answer?”
So in a way, it all comes back to my previous post: it’s all about fear. Even when I imagine I have nothing to fear about – I fear. I fear because my mind convinces me that if I don’t fear what I don’t fear, what-I-don't-fear will happen! Now as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter at all when I am completely indifferent to people or situations; but when I have any feelings – when I want to whack people hard (because they irritate me or offend my sensibilities every day because I see them everyday) or when I want to hug them – I am not so mindful anymore. I am caught up in the trap of my mind where mindlessness persists and my own silly chattering.
What upsets me is that with all my knowledge gathered quite painstakingly – I must mention, through all these 32 years – I have nothing to show for it! I know I have the necessary knowledge – but for the life of me I cannot imagine what stops this knowledge from being translated into wisdom. I have become no better at my work ethics. I have become no more disciplined in my work habits (or otherwise). I do not seem to have a phenomenal memory all of a sudden (yes, my worries about my memory, although not as acute as before still worry me at a level). I do not seem to have any extraordinary skills that anyone else or I happen to notice or gloat over. I am just as lazy as I ever have been. I lack the patience and concentration and attention span that I had as a 7 year old. After a month and a half of frenetic activity and unfurling, my favourite pastime is once-again, sleeping. And what I know and sense seems almost like a wistful dream at times and sometimes like the starkest piece of truth that has ever hit me. Yet in terms of action – there is nothing that is remotely noteworthy. I can’t even talk for heaven’s sake (with people I genuinely love and care about) without my mind taking a hike or just completely blanking on me, so I realise. I can’t talk but even more than that – I can’t really think straight. So where is all my mindfulness disappearing when I “need” it the most, I wonder.
I could and can talk till Kingdom come about God, and how and what I feel about God. I also know that it doesn’t matter what I say or think or speak about God. For it doesn’t matter in the end, beginning or the middle. It is what-it-is. I feel-what-I-feel. And, my Self smiles as I write this (much to my embarrassment) – it can’t really be “talked about” or written about….
Yet what of life as it is.
If I go through life; and still go through life with knowledge and no wisdom in the way I act, speak and am – then of what use is my prattle-babble and wugga-wugga. I could give lectures and “say” a lot. But to my growing consternation and annoyance, I see that when I have to act and speak and listen carefully to what-is-being said and pay attention to what-is, my mind goes on a chattering rampage or an autistic trail, just the way it always has!
My mind has started sniggering unkindly of late (all over again? – But not as loudly and vociferously as in the past – because it no longer can be that pompous). It tells me if my fears are imaginary – why should I imagine that my love and my God is real. It tells me that I have learnt nothing from life that is “useful” to/for me or to anyone else. It doesn’t make me publish papers by the dozen, and become a bigwig within the field of academics (or a rising star). It doesn’t suddenly make me famous and rich. It doesn’t even – and here it sniggers even more loudly – make me act in more fearless and more honest and more careful and more mindful ways. It doesn’t help me make human beings happier or less confused or relieve another, if even a bit, of his/her misery. It doesn’t help me make the sufferings of anyone in this world a little lighter. It doesn’t help me be both compassionate and wise in my “real” dealings with human beings who cheese me off. It doesn’t help me do good to those more unfortunate. It doesn’t make me always and forever “be in the moment” vis-Ã -vis those whom I loudly claim to love…. And this is where I sigh. I do. For here, if not in any other matter, my mind is “right”.
I have indeed been blessed to have the life I do. Yet vis-Ã -vis people, I’m still as much as the strange un that I always was and have been. Vis-Ã -vis fears and obsessions my mind goes running on the same mad rushing freight train as it always did even when I was a kid, although the fears were different at that point.
I’m reminded again of the love and fear dichotomy. I’m reminded again of the light and darkness dichotomy. I’m reminded again of wisdom and ignorance. I know that all can be without the other. And of course they do not exist as this or that. Creation, destruction, life, death, fear, wisdom, ignorance, love, madness, sanity, Yin and Yang, God and the Devil (?)…all of it is one whole. There is an absolute indestructible unity. And I seem to know this as well. Yet, yet, yet and yet – where is the wisdom in this confounding puzzle? If the illusion breaks and if mindfulness “Is” – shouldn’t mindfulness/clarity of mind be some absolute state of knowing and being, without ever forgetting who-one-is? Letting go of fear is probably the key.
I’m reminded of that one line which is repeated over and over again in Dune, “Fear is the mindkiller…” and it truly is. It makes me mindless.
And it’s fear in one form or the other, which leads to most of what is going on in the world today, and has been for ages. The horrors of our world.
I can’t help but think that Fear should have found its place of glory as one of the seven deadly sins….
11 June 2008
The Fear of Fear: Potter and Ged; Me and some Thoughts
Love and fear are the opposites. It’s not love and hate. I realise this, and it’s been talked about by many, many grand human beings – who were/are far, far wiser than I am. Most of the time I’m too indifferent about things to really “hate” anything or anyone. Things disgust me, irritate me, annoy me; some people disgust me – but there it ends. Nothing – or so I keep telling myself, and have been telling myself for the longest time - deserves or is worth hating.
Not to say that I don't feel violence within. Not to say that I am not a violent person. I am. And I know I can be. Yet even now I believe that there is a time for violence, and that time is when one is faced with violence from elsewhere. If I am threatened - physically threatened; if the ones I love are threatened - physically threatened - I do hope and believe that I can make violence work to prevent the instigator.
Yet this post is not about love nor is it about hate nor about disgust nor about violence. It’s the aspect of fear. I know about fear.
Even more than love – or at least just as much as I have felt love, have I felt the crippling and devastating demons of fear, which have driven me out of myself.
Very few of the fears are really real. Is fear ever real? Maybe, sometimes. I doubt it though. In some sense, and I don’t know how to explain it – fear seems “imaginary” while love feels very, very real.
I am reminded of Harry Potter’s experience with the boggarts in The Prisoner of Azkaban. He conjures up the dementors. And what indeed were boggarts and dementors? Boggarts were virtual representations of our deepest fears. All the other kids saw that which they feared the most, walking out of the closet. Lupin told them exactly how to ward them off: “think of “funny” things. Think of humour. Conjure up something hilarious that makes you laugh. Watch your fear dissipate”.
And it worked. It worked for everyone, but Harry.
Because Harry conjured up the dementors.
And the conjured dementors were real, or contrarily – never seemed really real or imagined. Or more appropriately, the conjured dementors were in fact, as really real as their “real” counterpart.
Dementors, sucking out one’s soul with their death kiss.
As I wonder, and wonder some more – my mind wanders, and gets fuzzy.
I can’t really pinpoint what the dementors really are/were nor can I remember (memory loss plagues me again!), although I’ve written plenty on them and thought about them elsewhere and at other times.
But how indeed are dementors gotten rid of?
(This I do remember, and have had to remember. Rowling has no idea how much I thank her, and how grateful I am for her books).
By thinking of the happiest thoughts that one is able to imagine. That works.
And what about occlumency? Harry in The Order of The Phoenix has images hurtling through his insides.
Ron’s dad being attacked. And it was true.
Dumbledore wanted Potter to be able to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. Snape was given the task.
Potter rebels, Snape reacts.
Harry is in the same boat – reading Voldemort’s thoughts. Reading what Voldemort wants him to read. Sirius dies. Not the way that Harry had seen it – but Sirius dies trying to save Harry.
Ironical indeed. Harry had rushed in to save Sirius because he saw the “image” of Sirius being tortured.
Occlumency and the power to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. A power indeed for those who do see within – to distinguish between one’s fantasies and reality; to distinguish between mind and soul and body crippling fears, and reality as it is – out there in the real world, in the “real” time-space continuum.
Occlumency – the tool that separates madness and clarity. That’s how I see it.
Fear and the chasing shadow that hunts Ged in LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea.
And what does Ged do? He turns around to face it. He hunts the fear. He chases the fear. He chases down that hulking shadow, for Ogion tells him, “Name it. Name the shadow.”
Ged says, “But it doesn’t have a name.”
Ogion replies with his infinite wisdom, “Everything has a name.”
And Ged indeed does name the shadow.
The fear.
The fear of fear is what Ged had been running away from.
“What exactly do you fear but fear itself?” This is what one of my dearest people asked me once. And this has seeped through me through the years.
Yet fear I still do feel. Wild banshees that shriek within. This fear is not something that I can ever hope to express in words or in any human language. And the world as I know it crashes and breaks down all around me.
Images of brutality, rage, anger, torture, savage cruelty, viciousness, and sickening sliminess run around within. The images come unheeded, unasked for, uncalled for, uninvited. But visit they do, and it takes everything I’ve got to deflect them; to show them the door, and many times over they have indeed gotten the better of me; where all I can do myself is shriek and shriek – sometimes silently and wildly within, until I implode.
Two months ago, I watched, and watched, and watched them come in like laughing hobgoblins.
Monstrosities.
And there was nothing else in me as I watched, and I nearly lost all I’ve got in terms of intangibles and incommensurables – but somehow I didn’t……I would have mentioned names - but I know that it would be deeply distressing and embarrassing for those concerned.
The only “thing” that explodes the fear is love.
I know. I know that. I feel that with every bit of me.
For the fear is a feeling that rises from within, and love too is an emotion that rises from within.
Both may, and sometimes indeed do rise from without.
And if the fear is an emotion, which is life crippling, the only element that can save the mind from disintegrating completely is a power that is strong enough to shatter the fear, and that really is love.
The horrors that exist within our world – they do indeed live within the mind. That which-is on the outside lives in no less mighty a form within.
So does the love. That also exists.
Yet love is hard to practice.
Extremely hard to practice, even within.
Some days my energy is spent on chasing out my own fears.
It's all I can do. To "get" enough love inside to chase out the blinding fears and phobias.
"Being and acting with love, compassion, and kindness" is left for later.
I do "try" not to get angry and not to feel violently angry or not to let disgust paralyse my senses and sensibilities.
Sometimes there is no trying. Things simply are what they are.
There is an easy Is-ness.
No disgust. No anger. No violence. No pain. No guilt. No fear. No happiness. No euphoria. No nothingness. A coldly rational, completely non-emotional, completely dull metal like Is-ness. A blue-glacier light that simply Is. That's how I would describe "it".
Clarity is priceless. Clarity of mind. Clarity within. The Dalai Lama stresses the importance of a peaceful mind. "When the mind is peaceful", he says, "it does not distort 'reality'." Yet sometimes when all else fails, and even clarity seems to be a fairy tale, what gets me through is love.
Yet, I also know that when one can see with clarity, all is what-it-is. And fear, I've noticed is the one thing that eclipses clarity.
Sometimes anger does it for me or an intense disgust. Yet most often than not it is a strange unreal fear....even now.
I'm reminded of what Lennon said, "I talk about love because I know I am a violent man."
I’ll conclude this (seemingly random) post with a story about the Dalai Lama, which I found in a book on Environmental Ethics: He was once asked, “You talk about compassion. How would you show compassion to Hitler?” The Dalai Lama responded with a lightning sharp “Show compassion to Hitler? That’s easy. Kill him.”
Not to say that I don't feel violence within. Not to say that I am not a violent person. I am. And I know I can be. Yet even now I believe that there is a time for violence, and that time is when one is faced with violence from elsewhere. If I am threatened - physically threatened; if the ones I love are threatened - physically threatened - I do hope and believe that I can make violence work to prevent the instigator.
Yet this post is not about love nor is it about hate nor about disgust nor about violence. It’s the aspect of fear. I know about fear.
Even more than love – or at least just as much as I have felt love, have I felt the crippling and devastating demons of fear, which have driven me out of myself.
Very few of the fears are really real. Is fear ever real? Maybe, sometimes. I doubt it though. In some sense, and I don’t know how to explain it – fear seems “imaginary” while love feels very, very real.
I am reminded of Harry Potter’s experience with the boggarts in The Prisoner of Azkaban. He conjures up the dementors. And what indeed were boggarts and dementors? Boggarts were virtual representations of our deepest fears. All the other kids saw that which they feared the most, walking out of the closet. Lupin told them exactly how to ward them off: “think of “funny” things. Think of humour. Conjure up something hilarious that makes you laugh. Watch your fear dissipate”.
And it worked. It worked for everyone, but Harry.
Because Harry conjured up the dementors.
And the conjured dementors were real, or contrarily – never seemed really real or imagined. Or more appropriately, the conjured dementors were in fact, as really real as their “real” counterpart.
Dementors, sucking out one’s soul with their death kiss.
As I wonder, and wonder some more – my mind wanders, and gets fuzzy.
I can’t really pinpoint what the dementors really are/were nor can I remember (memory loss plagues me again!), although I’ve written plenty on them and thought about them elsewhere and at other times.
But how indeed are dementors gotten rid of?
(This I do remember, and have had to remember. Rowling has no idea how much I thank her, and how grateful I am for her books).
By thinking of the happiest thoughts that one is able to imagine. That works.
And what about occlumency? Harry in The Order of The Phoenix has images hurtling through his insides.
Ron’s dad being attacked. And it was true.
Dumbledore wanted Potter to be able to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. Snape was given the task.
Potter rebels, Snape reacts.
Harry is in the same boat – reading Voldemort’s thoughts. Reading what Voldemort wants him to read. Sirius dies. Not the way that Harry had seen it – but Sirius dies trying to save Harry.
Ironical indeed. Harry had rushed in to save Sirius because he saw the “image” of Sirius being tortured.
Occlumency and the power to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. A power indeed for those who do see within – to distinguish between one’s fantasies and reality; to distinguish between mind and soul and body crippling fears, and reality as it is – out there in the real world, in the “real” time-space continuum.
Occlumency – the tool that separates madness and clarity. That’s how I see it.
Fear and the chasing shadow that hunts Ged in LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea.
And what does Ged do? He turns around to face it. He hunts the fear. He chases the fear. He chases down that hulking shadow, for Ogion tells him, “Name it. Name the shadow.”
Ged says, “But it doesn’t have a name.”
Ogion replies with his infinite wisdom, “Everything has a name.”
And Ged indeed does name the shadow.
The fear.
The fear of fear is what Ged had been running away from.
“What exactly do you fear but fear itself?” This is what one of my dearest people asked me once. And this has seeped through me through the years.
Yet fear I still do feel. Wild banshees that shriek within. This fear is not something that I can ever hope to express in words or in any human language. And the world as I know it crashes and breaks down all around me.
Images of brutality, rage, anger, torture, savage cruelty, viciousness, and sickening sliminess run around within. The images come unheeded, unasked for, uncalled for, uninvited. But visit they do, and it takes everything I’ve got to deflect them; to show them the door, and many times over they have indeed gotten the better of me; where all I can do myself is shriek and shriek – sometimes silently and wildly within, until I implode.
Two months ago, I watched, and watched, and watched them come in like laughing hobgoblins.
Monstrosities.
And there was nothing else in me as I watched, and I nearly lost all I’ve got in terms of intangibles and incommensurables – but somehow I didn’t……I would have mentioned names - but I know that it would be deeply distressing and embarrassing for those concerned.
The only “thing” that explodes the fear is love.
I know. I know that. I feel that with every bit of me.
For the fear is a feeling that rises from within, and love too is an emotion that rises from within.
Both may, and sometimes indeed do rise from without.
And if the fear is an emotion, which is life crippling, the only element that can save the mind from disintegrating completely is a power that is strong enough to shatter the fear, and that really is love.
The horrors that exist within our world – they do indeed live within the mind. That which-is on the outside lives in no less mighty a form within.
So does the love. That also exists.
Yet love is hard to practice.
Extremely hard to practice, even within.
Some days my energy is spent on chasing out my own fears.
It's all I can do. To "get" enough love inside to chase out the blinding fears and phobias.
"Being and acting with love, compassion, and kindness" is left for later.
I do "try" not to get angry and not to feel violently angry or not to let disgust paralyse my senses and sensibilities.
Sometimes there is no trying. Things simply are what they are.
There is an easy Is-ness.
No disgust. No anger. No violence. No pain. No guilt. No fear. No happiness. No euphoria. No nothingness. A coldly rational, completely non-emotional, completely dull metal like Is-ness. A blue-glacier light that simply Is. That's how I would describe "it".
Clarity is priceless. Clarity of mind. Clarity within. The Dalai Lama stresses the importance of a peaceful mind. "When the mind is peaceful", he says, "it does not distort 'reality'." Yet sometimes when all else fails, and even clarity seems to be a fairy tale, what gets me through is love.
Yet, I also know that when one can see with clarity, all is what-it-is. And fear, I've noticed is the one thing that eclipses clarity.
Sometimes anger does it for me or an intense disgust. Yet most often than not it is a strange unreal fear....even now.
I'm reminded of what Lennon said, "I talk about love because I know I am a violent man."
I’ll conclude this (seemingly random) post with a story about the Dalai Lama, which I found in a book on Environmental Ethics: He was once asked, “You talk about compassion. How would you show compassion to Hitler?” The Dalai Lama responded with a lightning sharp “Show compassion to Hitler? That’s easy. Kill him.”
16 May 2008
God and Love and Spirituality:Through Time and Space
‘At the beginning of my journey, I was naïve. I didn’t yet know that answers vanish as one continues to travel, that there is only further complexity, that there are still more interrelationships and more questions.’ - Kaplan
The above quote came from a qualitative methods book that I don’t own, and something that I’d gone through some five years ago. I don’t think I’d be able to find the quote again. I don’t know whether the above is a good place to start from for what I have in mind. But it’s been put up there, and I’ll take it from there/here/wherever. I’ve been re-reading a chapter titled “Come to God” from an MSS. I’ll sit on the name of the author (for reasons of my own). I’m re-reading it very slowly this time around (having read it once a week for the last three weeks I think it has been) – but there is one bit from the first bit of the chapter, which is eventually going to point out the direction in which this current post is going to travel. In and out the post shall go afterwards, up and down, spirals and chutes – but for now let me root myself and ground myself.
“…it is the most shocking of lies or the very height of ignorance to claim that the concept of God was born only out of fear. Love, overflowing, all-embracing, pure, blissful love that cleanses and exalts the human soul and destroys fear has always been one of the great motivators too, along with man’s vaulting romantic imagination: witness the religious poetry and music and art of any old civilization, ours included.”
So this post is indeed about God, and about spirituality, and about the “is-ness” of “romantic imagination”. I’ve been getting muddled in my head again lately, I’ve been noticing. Muddled not in a bad way or a perverse way or a destructive way, as has happened so often in the past – but in just a vague and distracted way, and have been getting somewhat lost in the mazes of my mind. Getting odd bits of work done. Just the bits that must be done, and letting the rest be swept around by the rains (of which we’ve been having plenty), sun, and wind (both of which have been here in sudden unexpected bursts). But let me get back to what I want to write about today.
I’m feeling quite quiet in my head, even though there’s The Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin and The Who playing on the internet radio. But inside there’s a blue washed tranquility. And I’m wondering where to start from.
“…Down the ages, down the dawn of centuries and the burst of bursting and stillborn stars, I sensed love. Through the stillness, through the cracks of darkness, through infinite zones of light and space, I saw love. A love that shook through wind and water, earth and fire; a love that scared me, thrilled me, drove me down to the pits of earth shattering insanity — shrieking and cruel, and then threw me with wild abandon into worlds, which beat my richest fantasies into pulp, I felt love. And it’s that love, which made me come back to life — the iridescent shade of an eternal romance that never gave up — that gave me life over and over and yet over again…. So is there an end to life or is it all a series of beginnings? Is it the eternal circle, or a series of spirals? Is it the ‘om’, the crescent, the cross, the star, or the sphinx’s riddle? Is it a laugh or is it a game — endless and infinite? Or is it truly love? A love that is fiercely consuming, and even frightening in its obsession; a love so expansive that it stretches the ripples of angst, out and away like a smoothened fresh sheet washed by the first spring sun..”
The above is what God means to me. It's something I wrote, a little over 5 years ago, not really realising what I was writing. Maybe I should end my post here for the funny thing is that I’ve had the sense of God and spirituality, and thought about the two, and argued about the two (with other “real” human beings, with my selves, with my fimhs), been irritated by the two, been befuddled, been indifferent, and just “let them be” – that now after being strangely excited at the prospect of writing about these two elements – I find myself experiencing an absurd peace, and do not really experience any strong urges to even say anything or write anything more. But the “writer” in me is no less stubborn, and insists on clicking away. So I’ll let my “writer self” take the floor…
I was enthralled by the idea of the “Other” as a child. One of my earliest memories of my self is at 3 or thereabouts, and a "longing for the beyond”. I didn’t think in those terms – but what I experienced was a 'certain something" that wasn’t a part of the everyday world as I knew it; an everyday world, which for the most part was comprised of being cuddled and told stories (and very rarely being scolded) by my parents, playing and being taken care of by my brother, and sometimes eating singaras and pantuyas with great relish. I still remember lying in bed on a summer afternoon having the thought that “life” and "some part of me" lay somewhere else – although I greatly enjoyed my everyday life…
I remember at 5 or thereabouts when I first started playing the “Who am I” game. Bits and pieces of my given identity would fall off me. At this point in time, my family and I were living in England, in a sleepy and lovely town called Scunthorpe. I would sit in the garden, and I still remember the intense yet easy concentration with which I would start pondering on who I was. And I would be drawn into this delicious web – a black liquid pool where given bits of my identity would break off me – I wasn’t just my parents’ “daughter”, I wasn’t just my brother’s “sister”, I wasn’t just a “friend" to Manjuri, Guddi, Ratul, and Kingshuk….but who was I? And then just as I would get closer and closer to cracking this amazing puzzle, which kept me entertained for hours – wham – the “real” world would come crashing back in. The wind would be blowing through the sun, the hospital across the road would rise into my vision, a sleepy bus would go hooting by, the flowers would be nodding, and the clouds would go racing overhead. And I would blink, and go inside to bother mum about something or nothing.
At home there was a picture of Goddess Kali on the wall of my dad’s study. The picture was high up on the wall. And I was a midget at four/five (and never really did grow much taller). The picture didn’t seem to be very clear to me. Mum used to pray with an incense stick, every morning in front of that picture on the wall, which had an innocuous brown frame and was probably not more than 10 inches in length and 7inches across. Dad used to pray as well – but I don’t remember him having a specific time for praying. I don’t remember how old I was exactly – but one day I remember standing on top of the bed scrutinizing the painting. Goddess Kali didn’t disturb me much – even though she had her garland of human heads around her neck, even though she had numerous hands with one holding a recently clopped-off head, even though she had her red tongue exposed, even though she was pretty much nude, even though she seemed to be standing with one foot on top of a man who was lying in her path, even though she had what seemed to be a humongous sword in one of her many hands (with what no doubt she had chopped off the human heads left, right, and centre). I don’t remember whether I had asked my parents anything. All I remember is that I was quite comfortable with My own “God” in my head, and of course Jesus I adored – but Goddess Kali and I; while I shook hands with her in my head – I had no intentions of praying to her or talking with her or having running conversations with her in the mirror or otherwise, as I did with all my other "Gods"…all I remember thinking is that “Jesus…she sure does need to calm down a bit…”
At school in England, we had of course regular prayer and “mass” in the morning. I don’t remember any longer whether at St. Augustine we had a short prayer service every day and a longer one every friday or whether it was indeed an elaborate affair every day of the week. But I do remember that some days prayer was a long affair, and I thoroughly loved it – every moment of it. Even at 5, I was a joker. All the Catholic students would drop one round wafer (the “holy bread” substitute) into a big bowl. Later on after service, each student would walk up to the dais to the priest, and the student would either open his mouth to receive the wafer or she would hold out her hand and receive the wafer in her hand. I was fascinated with and by the wafer. Everyday before morning assembly, I would half-joke about dropping one extra wafer into the bowl. I really wanted to try out a wafer, but apparently one didn’t “do” that unless one was a Catholic. Oh well. I never did throw in that extra wafer in all the four and a half years that I went to St. Augustine. But still I loved assembly no less. The best part was singing the choir songs. I knew all the songs, and didn’t really need the book that all students had. Although I had my favourites, I loved each song – now, sadly enough I don’t remember any of the songs. Not even the tune, leave alone the lyrics remain in my head…and then of course there were the Nativity plays that we acted out during Christmas. As I’ve “reported” on another post – I ended up being one of the Wise Men in the last year that I was in St. Augustine, and I had a grand robe of royal Blue, a crown on my pretty head of hair, carried a box (of what I do not remember…)…and followed the Star to Bethlehem. The costumes and the props apparently had been used year after year in the school. The box, as far as I remember was an old, heavy, engraved wooden box…but it jolly well may not have been as grand as I see it being in my head after all these years......
Hmm…but where is this all going? Well, nowhere really. I remember bonding with Jesus very early on. I used to have merry and sometimes solemn conversations with him. God though was more of a distant figure at that point. Someone whom I used to go running to if I were mortally scared of “something” or “really” didn’t understand something or just wanted to be cuddled, and Jesus was just fooling around…or indeed didn’t seem to know much more than I did (or just wasn't telling me what he knew)!Then I would climb into God’s lap (He did indeed sit on a throne, and He did indeed have a purple robe that He’d bring out every now and again – simply because He knew that it amused me and made me happy).
That apart I had merry conversations with Lucifer as well. Lucifer was my “naughty” God. He was a prankster with whom I had fun, and would goof around…and every now and then we would do something wrong and terrible, and both of us would end up feeling horribly guilty, and then promise ourselves that “picking” up something that did not belong to us – “Gulp” – was simply not worth it ever; “snatching” something out of some else’s pocket simply wasn’t “done” (quite apart from the sudden shout that the otherwise calm Someone emitted on finding a nosey little hand making a “grab” at her pocket), that while letting go on a high spinning merry-go-round was great fun, that the fun didn’t last for long. And that “the head” actually hurt once one was thrown onto the concrete after flying through the air, and that knees, elbows, and the face tended to get fairly bloody, while the head didn’t – although the latter seemed to “hurt” more…
So there I was by 8 very happy with Jesus, God, and Lucifer. (It was round about the same time that my family and I returned home to India). I knew JGL were in me, outside me, everywhere I was, and always with me. Yes, sure – my faith, belief, and call-it-whatever-you-will was very much culturally rooted and very much related to what I had experienced while growing up. Although I don’t know why I used to play the “Who Am I” game nor why I had felt an immediate bond with Lucifer (maybe it has something to do with the red birthmark in the shape of a '6' on my right foot!)– a bond that was and is as strong as the one that I have with My God, my current FIMH, and The Absolute, and of course with Jesus, The Buddha, and Krishna, and my old fimhs. And yes indeed. This bond, this connection, this belief, this experience with JGL and The Others – which is deeply personal (as anyone who “believes” will know) – was and is born out of love. An overflowing, overwhelming, and sometimes even a coldly rational and analytical love….it indeed was and is an all-embracing love. Complete and absolute.
I have wondered and wondered why sociologists have forever talked about “fear” as being the prime motivator (and in fact the “only” motivator) of religion, and the belief in God. Emile Durkheim, one of the classical theorists in Sociology said the same in the 1900s – and it seems that the sociologists of the 2000s have not been able to move away from the emotion of “fear”. To me it seems that the Western world is forecefully still much attached to the enticing web of the Enlightenment - the period when religion and science and "other forms of knowing" were split up for pressing reasons. There is a gradual and slow change that I can spot some glimpses of - but only time I guess will tell which way the pendulum will swing. As for the East, as for India - who knows. I have no idea what people believe as a country, as a Land, and as a collective which gave rise to some of the most enlightened philosophies and spiritual teachings since the Birth of Human Civilization. Indeed I don't even think that we "do" believe in anything as a collective.
And then of course, these days we have utterly moronic individuals like Richard Dawkins – who have not the sense nor the imagination nor the sensibility, and therefore go around blaring out the same idea of "Religion stinks", and such people make me cringe with embarrassment. That a human being, any human being (with such a wonderful accent), and a ‘scientist’ at that can be such an absolute fool, so full of prejudice, and be such a disgrace to the human race.
The other associated “progression” that I’ve noticed within sociological circles is that there is much talk today about the “Culture of Fear”, about the aspect of “fear” in our everyday lives. There are tonnes of literature for those interested (within the frameworks of Critical theory in the main). In popular circles there are “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine” – a couple of the most famous "Moore movies", where Michael Moore pokes and prods at the “culture of fear” that’s been promoted over and across the United States through the centuries. While the studies and the articles and the books that I’ve browsed through on “Fear” are no doubt interesting at a level, what I find thoroughly amusing is that social scientists cannot bring themselves to explore the element of “Love”. They have no idea where or how to begin. Why, I wonder is it easier to talk about “fear” or write papers on “fear”, and why I wonder is there the strange reluctance to explore what “Love” means to different people, or what effect “Love” has on "different" worlds or on a Self in interaction with the world? Some odd years ago, the best psychologists and neuro-scientists could do was to carry out some experiments regarding the "biology" of love. As terribly interesting and almost capricious as the series was - and I remember seeing the two part series, which was telecast on National Geographic - it didn't even come close to 'really" exploring the emotion.
And then of course there are the ones who take up some other “religion” like Marxism or Leninism, or Leftism in one form or the other, and who will snootily and gratuitously disparage those who do have a deep spiritual sensitivity in them. And then there are some who are so enchanted and stuck to their own sense of “born-again” Christianity/Hinduism/Any-ism that they foolishly sneer at Others and call these “Others” “inferior” because apparently since these “Others” are in the process of stitching and creating (in some sense) their own quilt of spirituality with carefully gathered "teachings" over ages, and across spaces and more, these “Others” are "too weak” to follow religion as it has been laid down by the word of GOD in The Bible or in some religious text or the other. According to these Born-Agains – religious texts are to be taken whole and un-mutilated and never questioned nor interpreted even (!) by anyone. If I do – then “I just don’t get it”, according to these Sneer-ers. But the Sneer-ers themselves of course do interpret – but they interpret exactly as God wanted of them!
This is all for now. My post is by no means complete or anywhere near completion…but I will write by and by…More shall follow soon – for my stubborn Writer-Self if for No One else!
The above quote came from a qualitative methods book that I don’t own, and something that I’d gone through some five years ago. I don’t think I’d be able to find the quote again. I don’t know whether the above is a good place to start from for what I have in mind. But it’s been put up there, and I’ll take it from there/here/wherever. I’ve been re-reading a chapter titled “Come to God” from an MSS. I’ll sit on the name of the author (for reasons of my own). I’m re-reading it very slowly this time around (having read it once a week for the last three weeks I think it has been) – but there is one bit from the first bit of the chapter, which is eventually going to point out the direction in which this current post is going to travel. In and out the post shall go afterwards, up and down, spirals and chutes – but for now let me root myself and ground myself.
“…it is the most shocking of lies or the very height of ignorance to claim that the concept of God was born only out of fear. Love, overflowing, all-embracing, pure, blissful love that cleanses and exalts the human soul and destroys fear has always been one of the great motivators too, along with man’s vaulting romantic imagination: witness the religious poetry and music and art of any old civilization, ours included.”
So this post is indeed about God, and about spirituality, and about the “is-ness” of “romantic imagination”. I’ve been getting muddled in my head again lately, I’ve been noticing. Muddled not in a bad way or a perverse way or a destructive way, as has happened so often in the past – but in just a vague and distracted way, and have been getting somewhat lost in the mazes of my mind. Getting odd bits of work done. Just the bits that must be done, and letting the rest be swept around by the rains (of which we’ve been having plenty), sun, and wind (both of which have been here in sudden unexpected bursts). But let me get back to what I want to write about today.
I’m feeling quite quiet in my head, even though there’s The Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin and The Who playing on the internet radio. But inside there’s a blue washed tranquility. And I’m wondering where to start from.
“…Down the ages, down the dawn of centuries and the burst of bursting and stillborn stars, I sensed love. Through the stillness, through the cracks of darkness, through infinite zones of light and space, I saw love. A love that shook through wind and water, earth and fire; a love that scared me, thrilled me, drove me down to the pits of earth shattering insanity — shrieking and cruel, and then threw me with wild abandon into worlds, which beat my richest fantasies into pulp, I felt love. And it’s that love, which made me come back to life — the iridescent shade of an eternal romance that never gave up — that gave me life over and over and yet over again…. So is there an end to life or is it all a series of beginnings? Is it the eternal circle, or a series of spirals? Is it the ‘om’, the crescent, the cross, the star, or the sphinx’s riddle? Is it a laugh or is it a game — endless and infinite? Or is it truly love? A love that is fiercely consuming, and even frightening in its obsession; a love so expansive that it stretches the ripples of angst, out and away like a smoothened fresh sheet washed by the first spring sun..”
The above is what God means to me. It's something I wrote, a little over 5 years ago, not really realising what I was writing. Maybe I should end my post here for the funny thing is that I’ve had the sense of God and spirituality, and thought about the two, and argued about the two (with other “real” human beings, with my selves, with my fimhs), been irritated by the two, been befuddled, been indifferent, and just “let them be” – that now after being strangely excited at the prospect of writing about these two elements – I find myself experiencing an absurd peace, and do not really experience any strong urges to even say anything or write anything more. But the “writer” in me is no less stubborn, and insists on clicking away. So I’ll let my “writer self” take the floor…
I was enthralled by the idea of the “Other” as a child. One of my earliest memories of my self is at 3 or thereabouts, and a "longing for the beyond”. I didn’t think in those terms – but what I experienced was a 'certain something" that wasn’t a part of the everyday world as I knew it; an everyday world, which for the most part was comprised of being cuddled and told stories (and very rarely being scolded) by my parents, playing and being taken care of by my brother, and sometimes eating singaras and pantuyas with great relish. I still remember lying in bed on a summer afternoon having the thought that “life” and "some part of me" lay somewhere else – although I greatly enjoyed my everyday life…
I remember at 5 or thereabouts when I first started playing the “Who am I” game. Bits and pieces of my given identity would fall off me. At this point in time, my family and I were living in England, in a sleepy and lovely town called Scunthorpe. I would sit in the garden, and I still remember the intense yet easy concentration with which I would start pondering on who I was. And I would be drawn into this delicious web – a black liquid pool where given bits of my identity would break off me – I wasn’t just my parents’ “daughter”, I wasn’t just my brother’s “sister”, I wasn’t just a “friend" to Manjuri, Guddi, Ratul, and Kingshuk….but who was I? And then just as I would get closer and closer to cracking this amazing puzzle, which kept me entertained for hours – wham – the “real” world would come crashing back in. The wind would be blowing through the sun, the hospital across the road would rise into my vision, a sleepy bus would go hooting by, the flowers would be nodding, and the clouds would go racing overhead. And I would blink, and go inside to bother mum about something or nothing.
At home there was a picture of Goddess Kali on the wall of my dad’s study. The picture was high up on the wall. And I was a midget at four/five (and never really did grow much taller). The picture didn’t seem to be very clear to me. Mum used to pray with an incense stick, every morning in front of that picture on the wall, which had an innocuous brown frame and was probably not more than 10 inches in length and 7inches across. Dad used to pray as well – but I don’t remember him having a specific time for praying. I don’t remember how old I was exactly – but one day I remember standing on top of the bed scrutinizing the painting. Goddess Kali didn’t disturb me much – even though she had her garland of human heads around her neck, even though she had numerous hands with one holding a recently clopped-off head, even though she had her red tongue exposed, even though she was pretty much nude, even though she seemed to be standing with one foot on top of a man who was lying in her path, even though she had what seemed to be a humongous sword in one of her many hands (with what no doubt she had chopped off the human heads left, right, and centre). I don’t remember whether I had asked my parents anything. All I remember is that I was quite comfortable with My own “God” in my head, and of course Jesus I adored – but Goddess Kali and I; while I shook hands with her in my head – I had no intentions of praying to her or talking with her or having running conversations with her in the mirror or otherwise, as I did with all my other "Gods"…all I remember thinking is that “Jesus…she sure does need to calm down a bit…”
At school in England, we had of course regular prayer and “mass” in the morning. I don’t remember any longer whether at St. Augustine we had a short prayer service every day and a longer one every friday or whether it was indeed an elaborate affair every day of the week. But I do remember that some days prayer was a long affair, and I thoroughly loved it – every moment of it. Even at 5, I was a joker. All the Catholic students would drop one round wafer (the “holy bread” substitute) into a big bowl. Later on after service, each student would walk up to the dais to the priest, and the student would either open his mouth to receive the wafer or she would hold out her hand and receive the wafer in her hand. I was fascinated with and by the wafer. Everyday before morning assembly, I would half-joke about dropping one extra wafer into the bowl. I really wanted to try out a wafer, but apparently one didn’t “do” that unless one was a Catholic. Oh well. I never did throw in that extra wafer in all the four and a half years that I went to St. Augustine. But still I loved assembly no less. The best part was singing the choir songs. I knew all the songs, and didn’t really need the book that all students had. Although I had my favourites, I loved each song – now, sadly enough I don’t remember any of the songs. Not even the tune, leave alone the lyrics remain in my head…and then of course there were the Nativity plays that we acted out during Christmas. As I’ve “reported” on another post – I ended up being one of the Wise Men in the last year that I was in St. Augustine, and I had a grand robe of royal Blue, a crown on my pretty head of hair, carried a box (of what I do not remember…)…and followed the Star to Bethlehem. The costumes and the props apparently had been used year after year in the school. The box, as far as I remember was an old, heavy, engraved wooden box…but it jolly well may not have been as grand as I see it being in my head after all these years......
Hmm…but where is this all going? Well, nowhere really. I remember bonding with Jesus very early on. I used to have merry and sometimes solemn conversations with him. God though was more of a distant figure at that point. Someone whom I used to go running to if I were mortally scared of “something” or “really” didn’t understand something or just wanted to be cuddled, and Jesus was just fooling around…or indeed didn’t seem to know much more than I did (or just wasn't telling me what he knew)!Then I would climb into God’s lap (He did indeed sit on a throne, and He did indeed have a purple robe that He’d bring out every now and again – simply because He knew that it amused me and made me happy).
That apart I had merry conversations with Lucifer as well. Lucifer was my “naughty” God. He was a prankster with whom I had fun, and would goof around…and every now and then we would do something wrong and terrible, and both of us would end up feeling horribly guilty, and then promise ourselves that “picking” up something that did not belong to us – “Gulp” – was simply not worth it ever; “snatching” something out of some else’s pocket simply wasn’t “done” (quite apart from the sudden shout that the otherwise calm Someone emitted on finding a nosey little hand making a “grab” at her pocket), that while letting go on a high spinning merry-go-round was great fun, that the fun didn’t last for long. And that “the head” actually hurt once one was thrown onto the concrete after flying through the air, and that knees, elbows, and the face tended to get fairly bloody, while the head didn’t – although the latter seemed to “hurt” more…
So there I was by 8 very happy with Jesus, God, and Lucifer. (It was round about the same time that my family and I returned home to India). I knew JGL were in me, outside me, everywhere I was, and always with me. Yes, sure – my faith, belief, and call-it-whatever-you-will was very much culturally rooted and very much related to what I had experienced while growing up. Although I don’t know why I used to play the “Who Am I” game nor why I had felt an immediate bond with Lucifer (maybe it has something to do with the red birthmark in the shape of a '6' on my right foot!)– a bond that was and is as strong as the one that I have with My God, my current FIMH, and The Absolute, and of course with Jesus, The Buddha, and Krishna, and my old fimhs. And yes indeed. This bond, this connection, this belief, this experience with JGL and The Others – which is deeply personal (as anyone who “believes” will know) – was and is born out of love. An overflowing, overwhelming, and sometimes even a coldly rational and analytical love….it indeed was and is an all-embracing love. Complete and absolute.
I have wondered and wondered why sociologists have forever talked about “fear” as being the prime motivator (and in fact the “only” motivator) of religion, and the belief in God. Emile Durkheim, one of the classical theorists in Sociology said the same in the 1900s – and it seems that the sociologists of the 2000s have not been able to move away from the emotion of “fear”. To me it seems that the Western world is forecefully still much attached to the enticing web of the Enlightenment - the period when religion and science and "other forms of knowing" were split up for pressing reasons. There is a gradual and slow change that I can spot some glimpses of - but only time I guess will tell which way the pendulum will swing. As for the East, as for India - who knows. I have no idea what people believe as a country, as a Land, and as a collective which gave rise to some of the most enlightened philosophies and spiritual teachings since the Birth of Human Civilization. Indeed I don't even think that we "do" believe in anything as a collective.
And then of course, these days we have utterly moronic individuals like Richard Dawkins – who have not the sense nor the imagination nor the sensibility, and therefore go around blaring out the same idea of "Religion stinks", and such people make me cringe with embarrassment. That a human being, any human being (with such a wonderful accent), and a ‘scientist’ at that can be such an absolute fool, so full of prejudice, and be such a disgrace to the human race.
The other associated “progression” that I’ve noticed within sociological circles is that there is much talk today about the “Culture of Fear”, about the aspect of “fear” in our everyday lives. There are tonnes of literature for those interested (within the frameworks of Critical theory in the main). In popular circles there are “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine” – a couple of the most famous "Moore movies", where Michael Moore pokes and prods at the “culture of fear” that’s been promoted over and across the United States through the centuries. While the studies and the articles and the books that I’ve browsed through on “Fear” are no doubt interesting at a level, what I find thoroughly amusing is that social scientists cannot bring themselves to explore the element of “Love”. They have no idea where or how to begin. Why, I wonder is it easier to talk about “fear” or write papers on “fear”, and why I wonder is there the strange reluctance to explore what “Love” means to different people, or what effect “Love” has on "different" worlds or on a Self in interaction with the world? Some odd years ago, the best psychologists and neuro-scientists could do was to carry out some experiments regarding the "biology" of love. As terribly interesting and almost capricious as the series was - and I remember seeing the two part series, which was telecast on National Geographic - it didn't even come close to 'really" exploring the emotion.
And then of course there are the ones who take up some other “religion” like Marxism or Leninism, or Leftism in one form or the other, and who will snootily and gratuitously disparage those who do have a deep spiritual sensitivity in them. And then there are some who are so enchanted and stuck to their own sense of “born-again” Christianity/Hinduism/Any-ism that they foolishly sneer at Others and call these “Others” “inferior” because apparently since these “Others” are in the process of stitching and creating (in some sense) their own quilt of spirituality with carefully gathered "teachings" over ages, and across spaces and more, these “Others” are "too weak” to follow religion as it has been laid down by the word of GOD in The Bible or in some religious text or the other. According to these Born-Agains – religious texts are to be taken whole and un-mutilated and never questioned nor interpreted even (!) by anyone. If I do – then “I just don’t get it”, according to these Sneer-ers. But the Sneer-ers themselves of course do interpret – but they interpret exactly as God wanted of them!
This is all for now. My post is by no means complete or anywhere near completion…but I will write by and by…More shall follow soon – for my stubborn Writer-Self if for No One else!
29 April 2008
DISGRUNTLED. And a bit of whimsy.
Okay, okay - I admit it. I am finally disgruntled. How come people visit my blog but leave no comments? The posts aren't that abstruse or nonsensical, even if I say so myself.
Why won't anyone post some comments? Is there nothing to be said? The last post that received a decent number of comments (of course half of the comments were my own!) was the one on exams!
I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. First just "write for fun and because it's almost like meditation, and so enjoyable anyway." And five days down the line, "Why won't anyone say anything?"
Oh, the irony of it!
Anyway, I'm going back to writing my wugga-wugga Statistics paper. Maybe it might "talk back to me."
-----29th April 2008
Wrote that above bit about a week ago. Today's the 3rd Of May. And I'm still feeling disgruntled. Not as much as before but I was quite smugly convinced that I would reach absolute "equanimity" regarding "non-responses" by this week. What a hope! There'll be more posts in the coming week. Well, at least one fresh one, which is jostling with another one to get "published" first.
Well, cheerio folks. Have a happy weekend….
Here it looks like a travelling tornado might go by any moment now. And yes, we apparently had an earthquake last week, on Friday. Somebody at the bus-stop said it was 6.2 on the Richter scale, and I had looked away embarrassed (in my head I'd said, "We wouldn't be standing here buddy, if that were a 6.2) but held my tongue. I slept through the earthquake though. Didn't feel a thing. Having gone to sleep really, really late - maybe half an hour before the earthquake hit (the ground rumbled and trembled at 5.37 a.m or so I heard, and read) - but I slept like a baby. Heard from Joe that he'd been having frightful dreams, and had been dreaming about a huge rumbling, hooting train, and he shot up awake, and felt the rumbling, and the trembling, and he was struck with horror thinking that a train was coming hurtling through his window (I think that's what he said). Namrata, when she felt the earthquake had greatly desired to go running outside, and feel the earth trembling beneath her feet. Ehren sounded just as excited about the earthquake. In fact he hollered across the road asking me whether I'd felt it, and I'd asked him, "Felt what?" Of course everyone was glad that it hadn’t been a “real” earthquake.
Apparently when I was 11 or 12 there had been an earthquake in Durgapur. But I had slept through that one as well.
As for the tornado warnings. We get them like clockwork every summer and spring. At least once. One thing I've never figured out is why they tell us to run down into the basement and stay there. Well - I get the "practical" side of it. But who's to say that anyone will be found after and if the rubble is ever cleared once a tornado does indeed fly by this sleepy town? Maybe one will be buried under the rubble and have to stay there with no smokes or drinks and no (terror of terrors) loo. Of course I don't know what I'd really do if a tornado did hit - but in the house that I now live (It is the best-est house on the best-est street - and this is the Absolute Truth) - the basement is certainly not a place to stay. The whole house (which is pretty old) will definitely collapse if a serious tornado does a pretty whirldance through our street. My whole street has pretty old houses...and most of them will probably disappear alongwith most of their inmates - because somehow I think almost all the eccentric inmates on our street will probably come charging down into the streets instead of staying down in the basement if indeed a tornado does come flying through. Or we might all get orange cones, and place caution signs all over - so that the tornado decides to leave us alone. I do think some of the inmates on the street might just do that…
I remember some 5 years ago – ‘round about the same time (almost exactly) a tornado warning had come through. I was staying in a delightful studio apartment at that point in time – having moved out of a Black Hole of a Dorm room where I’d spent the second year. My studio apartment was a little “sunken” into the ground, had huge French windows – which I never locked, and a porch. And since it was sunken – I could see the grass, the pretty flowers that erupted from the grass, the trees which had sprung lovely green shoots through the late Spring, and the early summer that had set in. And as I said, the door was always kept ajar when I was in the apartment, and was never locked even when I was out. In fact I had made it into a habit to make my exit and entrance by climbing out of the porch or leaping in. The studio had a bathroom the size of a royal Basket-ball field (well, almost). And a bath-tub (but obviously). And it had a walk-in closet where I did spend a considerable amount of time every now and again. It had a mini kitchen, and all the kitchen paraphernalia. It was a very well-kept apartment, and rent was cheap, and I’d done it up well, and after the previous Fall, and Spring which were rather ghastly – the apartment itself was enough to keep my head out of water, and the greyness which had been sweeping around.
Anyway, to get back to the tornado. So a tornado warning had come through. Outside the weather had really cracked up. Huge gales were blowing and howling. It was hardly past noon, but the sky, if it didn’t look black certainly looked ominous. Rain jets spurted through – but quite obstinately I refused to shut the Glass door. I sat there with my coffee and music and cigarettes, and my notebook – when the thought hit me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go walking near the river. And without wasting another second, I slipped my sneakers on, a long black raincoat (which belonged to my mum, and was some 20 years old – but as good as new. It makes me look like a detective or straight out of The Matrix when I wear it – even now. I always find myself wishing I were a few inches taller when I put that raincoat on), grabbed my packet of cigarettes, and a lighter, and made my way out of the porch.
Off to the river it was!
And the wind blew. And the rains blew into and across my face. Some folks whizzing by in their cars gave me “looks” and I grinned my toothy grin at them or gave them my blank impassive stare or glare as the fancy and mood caught me. I don’t know what scared them more – the grin or the glare. And I walked on. By the time I got to the Walkbridge over the river, I wasn’t really wet but fairly damp and soaking. Every now and again – I had felt that I would be blown away – but that didn’t happen. I, of course poo-poohed the idea of a real tornado ever coming through.
So there I was walking along the overbridge. The river looked nicely swollen. Not too much. And not too little. There were pretty currents whirling around in it, and the banks were covered in fresh, sprightly lime and laughing green grass stalks and shrubs, and the huge trees rose just a couple of feet further along, and completely overtook the landscape. That bridge and the river and the trees and the little train station across – makes this part of my town look almost European. Especially if you look across and catch sight of all the church steeples, and the famously Ugly but Grand County Court House. I surveyed my surroundings – only the rain sprays shooting into my face made it sort of difficult to keep my eyes open. At one point I remember thinking that I’d lost one of my contacts – but it had merely been dislodged with the rain jets. By this time of course my hair was completely plastered all over my head – so at least my hairmop wasn’t obstructing my view.
I lit a cigarette after some moments, and it got rather drenched in barely 17 seconds – but I didn’t care. I still puffed at it valiantly, and it didn’t go out on me. Finally after maybe a little over 33 minutes or so – I got up. The wind was still lashing around. But there really wasn’t much rain, or so I kept telling myself. It was just that the rain sprays were getting swept around in the gales. I walked around on the bridge for another some seconds, and finally walked back home. Not so much walked to be honest as much as forcibly pushed, and prodded, and hastily bumped along by the wind.
So I made it home pretty quick – even though it was uphill from the river.
As soon as I got near my porch to make my entrance – I spotted a head bobbing up and down near the stairway. And it looked like a familiar head. I was just about to go in from the proper entrance – when the head along with the body came out. And there was Beth.
“Where in heaven’s name were you?”
“Taking a walk by the river. Why?”
“Don’t you know a tornado warning has come through!”
“Ah…you don’t say.”
(And of course these were the wonderful days when I didn’t have a phone. I was quite relieved not having one, until my bro’ sent me his old phone through the mail!)
Beth and I walked back into my studio. I dropped in through the porch. I guess she did the same or walked through the proper door, down the stairs, and left turn. I don’t remember. I made some more coffee, and we had some cookies (biscuits. Biscuits – for crying out loud!). I put on some music. The rains were coming down without too much wind whipping around. At least that’s what I remember. I sat right near the Glass Door (French Windows/Glass doors – they’re the same thing) of course , looking outside, and steadily smoking and sipping my coffee. Beth was seated across near the foot of my bed or on a chair. And she gurgled with, “Shilps. It may not be the best thing to be sitting right in front of the window you know…”
“Ha-ha…maybe we should go and hide in the dryers or the washing machines.”
At that we laughed some more. There was some quiet conversation that bounced off the silence, some faint glass-bubble music playing in the background (I have the feeling it was Beth’s Jack Johnson cd), and then some time later Beth made her exit through the proper doorway. I went back to pottering around.
And the tornado went off to sleep.
Why won't anyone post some comments? Is there nothing to be said? The last post that received a decent number of comments (of course half of the comments were my own!) was the one on exams!
I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. First just "write for fun and because it's almost like meditation, and so enjoyable anyway." And five days down the line, "Why won't anyone say anything?"
Oh, the irony of it!
Anyway, I'm going back to writing my wugga-wugga Statistics paper. Maybe it might "talk back to me."
-----29th April 2008
Wrote that above bit about a week ago. Today's the 3rd Of May. And I'm still feeling disgruntled. Not as much as before but I was quite smugly convinced that I would reach absolute "equanimity" regarding "non-responses" by this week. What a hope! There'll be more posts in the coming week. Well, at least one fresh one, which is jostling with another one to get "published" first.
Well, cheerio folks. Have a happy weekend….
Here it looks like a travelling tornado might go by any moment now. And yes, we apparently had an earthquake last week, on Friday. Somebody at the bus-stop said it was 6.2 on the Richter scale, and I had looked away embarrassed (in my head I'd said, "We wouldn't be standing here buddy, if that were a 6.2) but held my tongue. I slept through the earthquake though. Didn't feel a thing. Having gone to sleep really, really late - maybe half an hour before the earthquake hit (the ground rumbled and trembled at 5.37 a.m or so I heard, and read) - but I slept like a baby. Heard from Joe that he'd been having frightful dreams, and had been dreaming about a huge rumbling, hooting train, and he shot up awake, and felt the rumbling, and the trembling, and he was struck with horror thinking that a train was coming hurtling through his window (I think that's what he said). Namrata, when she felt the earthquake had greatly desired to go running outside, and feel the earth trembling beneath her feet. Ehren sounded just as excited about the earthquake. In fact he hollered across the road asking me whether I'd felt it, and I'd asked him, "Felt what?" Of course everyone was glad that it hadn’t been a “real” earthquake.
Apparently when I was 11 or 12 there had been an earthquake in Durgapur. But I had slept through that one as well.
As for the tornado warnings. We get them like clockwork every summer and spring. At least once. One thing I've never figured out is why they tell us to run down into the basement and stay there. Well - I get the "practical" side of it. But who's to say that anyone will be found after and if the rubble is ever cleared once a tornado does indeed fly by this sleepy town? Maybe one will be buried under the rubble and have to stay there with no smokes or drinks and no (terror of terrors) loo. Of course I don't know what I'd really do if a tornado did hit - but in the house that I now live (It is the best-est house on the best-est street - and this is the Absolute Truth) - the basement is certainly not a place to stay. The whole house (which is pretty old) will definitely collapse if a serious tornado does a pretty whirldance through our street. My whole street has pretty old houses...and most of them will probably disappear alongwith most of their inmates - because somehow I think almost all the eccentric inmates on our street will probably come charging down into the streets instead of staying down in the basement if indeed a tornado does come flying through. Or we might all get orange cones, and place caution signs all over - so that the tornado decides to leave us alone. I do think some of the inmates on the street might just do that…
I remember some 5 years ago – ‘round about the same time (almost exactly) a tornado warning had come through. I was staying in a delightful studio apartment at that point in time – having moved out of a Black Hole of a Dorm room where I’d spent the second year. My studio apartment was a little “sunken” into the ground, had huge French windows – which I never locked, and a porch. And since it was sunken – I could see the grass, the pretty flowers that erupted from the grass, the trees which had sprung lovely green shoots through the late Spring, and the early summer that had set in. And as I said, the door was always kept ajar when I was in the apartment, and was never locked even when I was out. In fact I had made it into a habit to make my exit and entrance by climbing out of the porch or leaping in. The studio had a bathroom the size of a royal Basket-ball field (well, almost). And a bath-tub (but obviously). And it had a walk-in closet where I did spend a considerable amount of time every now and again. It had a mini kitchen, and all the kitchen paraphernalia. It was a very well-kept apartment, and rent was cheap, and I’d done it up well, and after the previous Fall, and Spring which were rather ghastly – the apartment itself was enough to keep my head out of water, and the greyness which had been sweeping around.
Anyway, to get back to the tornado. So a tornado warning had come through. Outside the weather had really cracked up. Huge gales were blowing and howling. It was hardly past noon, but the sky, if it didn’t look black certainly looked ominous. Rain jets spurted through – but quite obstinately I refused to shut the Glass door. I sat there with my coffee and music and cigarettes, and my notebook – when the thought hit me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go walking near the river. And without wasting another second, I slipped my sneakers on, a long black raincoat (which belonged to my mum, and was some 20 years old – but as good as new. It makes me look like a detective or straight out of The Matrix when I wear it – even now. I always find myself wishing I were a few inches taller when I put that raincoat on), grabbed my packet of cigarettes, and a lighter, and made my way out of the porch.
Off to the river it was!
And the wind blew. And the rains blew into and across my face. Some folks whizzing by in their cars gave me “looks” and I grinned my toothy grin at them or gave them my blank impassive stare or glare as the fancy and mood caught me. I don’t know what scared them more – the grin or the glare. And I walked on. By the time I got to the Walkbridge over the river, I wasn’t really wet but fairly damp and soaking. Every now and again – I had felt that I would be blown away – but that didn’t happen. I, of course poo-poohed the idea of a real tornado ever coming through.
So there I was walking along the overbridge. The river looked nicely swollen. Not too much. And not too little. There were pretty currents whirling around in it, and the banks were covered in fresh, sprightly lime and laughing green grass stalks and shrubs, and the huge trees rose just a couple of feet further along, and completely overtook the landscape. That bridge and the river and the trees and the little train station across – makes this part of my town look almost European. Especially if you look across and catch sight of all the church steeples, and the famously Ugly but Grand County Court House. I surveyed my surroundings – only the rain sprays shooting into my face made it sort of difficult to keep my eyes open. At one point I remember thinking that I’d lost one of my contacts – but it had merely been dislodged with the rain jets. By this time of course my hair was completely plastered all over my head – so at least my hairmop wasn’t obstructing my view.
I lit a cigarette after some moments, and it got rather drenched in barely 17 seconds – but I didn’t care. I still puffed at it valiantly, and it didn’t go out on me. Finally after maybe a little over 33 minutes or so – I got up. The wind was still lashing around. But there really wasn’t much rain, or so I kept telling myself. It was just that the rain sprays were getting swept around in the gales. I walked around on the bridge for another some seconds, and finally walked back home. Not so much walked to be honest as much as forcibly pushed, and prodded, and hastily bumped along by the wind.
So I made it home pretty quick – even though it was uphill from the river.
As soon as I got near my porch to make my entrance – I spotted a head bobbing up and down near the stairway. And it looked like a familiar head. I was just about to go in from the proper entrance – when the head along with the body came out. And there was Beth.
“Where in heaven’s name were you?”
“Taking a walk by the river. Why?”
“Don’t you know a tornado warning has come through!”
“Ah…you don’t say.”
(And of course these were the wonderful days when I didn’t have a phone. I was quite relieved not having one, until my bro’ sent me his old phone through the mail!)
Beth and I walked back into my studio. I dropped in through the porch. I guess she did the same or walked through the proper door, down the stairs, and left turn. I don’t remember. I made some more coffee, and we had some cookies (biscuits. Biscuits – for crying out loud!). I put on some music. The rains were coming down without too much wind whipping around. At least that’s what I remember. I sat right near the Glass Door (French Windows/Glass doors – they’re the same thing) of course , looking outside, and steadily smoking and sipping my coffee. Beth was seated across near the foot of my bed or on a chair. And she gurgled with, “Shilps. It may not be the best thing to be sitting right in front of the window you know…”
“Ha-ha…maybe we should go and hide in the dryers or the washing machines.”
At that we laughed some more. There was some quiet conversation that bounced off the silence, some faint glass-bubble music playing in the background (I have the feeling it was Beth’s Jack Johnson cd), and then some time later Beth made her exit through the proper doorway. I went back to pottering around.
And the tornado went off to sleep.
27 April 2008
In connection to Magical Teachers
I received some interesting questions from Sayan who took the time to write in his comments for the post "Magical Teachers Through the Centuries". There seems to be some general confusion regarding my post on 'Magical teachers...' While answering Sayan's questions, I went into long explanations - and I think the questions and the comments may as well be another blog-post.
Dear Sayan,
First off, I’ll thank you for taking the time to post such a carefully thought out comment.
I’ll answer your questions as best as I can. And I will say at the onset that this is how I ‘see’ it; this is what I have learned through time and space: given that I’m looking at the world with the lenses that I wear – and my lenses make me see the world in a particular way (the notion of the ‘lenses shape the world that we see’ is from Steven Covey).
In addtion: One point I should clear out is that my focus ultimately was not so much on Teachers and Students as isolated islands but on the interactive and circular nature of certain Teacher-Student relationships. By "Interactive" and "circular" I essentially mean that love, trust, respect, admiration, and much more and beyond are mutual sentiments, experienced by both the Teacher and The Student for each other in these relationships, and these sentiments cannot be categorized by the label of "how much" and "who respects/loves the other more". Thus my focus was on these relationships that are created, these bonds that are co-established, these connections/this communion that is shared - sometimes inarticulate, sometimes inexpressible, and sometimes voiced, but always unique, and inordinately precious between certain "Magical" Teachers and some "Mystical" Students through the centuries.
Having said that, I’ll take up your comments point by point.
1. “This absolute trust for a teacher that you are talking about - does it imply blind trust?”
I am very wary of using the term ‘blind’ trust; although I will call it an ‘intuitive trust’. I do not believe in completely discounting my own experiences and my own lessons – no matter what. I take what comes from a teacher (any teacher) –and I take in the teachings from teachers I respect, love, and trust – with both more and less resistance. I know that sounds contradictory – but that’s the way I work. I swallow a lot of my pride and let my ego rest a bit but at the same time there is an increase in my stubbornness. While I don’t completely discount and throw away ‘my’ own experiences – I still pay and keep on paying close attention to what is coming from My Teacher, and keep weighing out the scales.
In this context I will say that personally, I have in rare encounters experienced Absolute Trust. The funny thing is that I have noticed that Absolute Trust too has qualitatively different textures to it. But about this - some other day. But yes, I have experienced absolute trust, which comes from somewhere very deep inside.
2. “…it seems to me that it ultimately boils down to the honesty of the teacher and the student towards themselves first and then towards each other. But are there not instances when two highly knowledgeable and honest people look at the same thing and see it differently?”
a. It’s not about ‘knowledge’ and honesty alone – although these are definitely important. Knowledge could refer to book-knowledge; it could refer to ‘how much’ an individual knows, it could refer to how much ‘information’ an individual can remember over the years, it can also refer to the interconnections made through one’s readings and experiences.
b. But there are other extremely essential components, which to me are those of wisdom, consciousness, sensitivity, spirituality, and awareness. All these are not identical although interrelated terms, and these terms mean something specific to me. The way for me to sense these in a teacher (or in anyone for that matter) is not through my analytical and logical skills (although these help in certain specific situations) – but come to me in an intuitive flash. I know; I sense, and I feel these although I may not have any ‘rational proof’ of the same in the first instant.
Once again a) and b) are most definitely inter-related – at least for me. Both a) and b) in a teacher brings about balance in my mind.
3. “For instance many great people have been known to be unbalanced and whimsical, sometimes to the point of being destructive and yet, it must be agreed that there is a very close connection between their unbalanced ways and their creative genius.”
I happen to have read (and still read) a fair bit on the interconnections between creativity and genius, and had been extremely intrigued about these interconnections for the longest time. (The substantive area of “Creativity/Genius and what is currently known as ‘Bi-polar’ disorder” made up for awhile my main readings for my Masters). While it is a humongous area to wade through in some ways, and there are seeming contradictions and paradoxes in the understanding of the issue, I can (in brief) for the time being present my understanding of it.
My understanding is that while the ‘whimsical and unbalanced’ geniuses did indeed create fine works of art, and MAY indeed not have produced these had they not been thus; I would say that there is still the higher probability not to mention possibility that had they been able to ‘stabilise’ themselves and ‘balance’ themselves, and ‘integrate’ themselves – they would have lived longer for one thing, (instead of killing themselves or simply dying young through repeated fits of frenzy), and they would’ve kept producing fine pieces.
Also, if you dig a little deeper you will find that the most ‘productive’ geniuses were the ones that were ‘stable’ and ‘balanced’ and ‘integrated’. I can cite the standing example of Tagore. This does not mean that he did not experience enormous highs and lows, nor does it mean that he lacked sensitivity or fineness – it simply means that he did not destruct other lives around him nor did he self-explode in a massive fit of destruction.
Yet another fine example is that of St. Francis of Assisi, who as the ‘story’ goes, had fantastic visions and was hearing the Voice of God. Finally came a day when he was running down the roads stark naked, yelling and bellowing “we must build a church on the end of this road. God told me to…!” He was pelted with stones and driven away.
He left for the forest. Meditated. “Calmed himself down”. Regained/reconnected to his Sense of Balance. Reached “Enlightenment” (or call it what-you-will). He left the forest after re-integrating with His Self, His Spirit, His God, and the rest of course is History.
So personally I have come to the firm conclusion that there is nothing good in being ‘wayward and unbalanced’ (being whimsical in moderate doses is actually fine, at least in my book). Yes, possibly the merit of ‘creative genius’ might do a bit to dampen the pain and the agony that these individuals go through. Yet channelized creative passion is the only form that really ‘works in the long run’.
Also, it needs to be understood that even Van Gogh - emotionally and mentally unbalanced as he was, was certainly not "unbalanced" when he was painting. So one thing is clear: Unbalanced as one may be - in order to DO anything 'well' or in order to be "outstanding" one must be FIRMLY balanced while engaged in that creative act (be that painting, composing, sculpting, what-have-you).
Also, my additional tuppence thoughts on this is that most scholars and practioners (with very few exceptions) who have brought our attention to the interconnections among The (Un)Holy Trinity of "Creativity, Genius and Madness" have not made a clear and important distinction between balance and repression. And THIS according to me has been the problem in our comprehension of the "Mad Artist". The "Mad Artist" too can lead a perfectly balanced, creative, passionate, and fulfilling life. The key is to not "repress" the "Mad Artist" but to lead him/her to a state where s/he can engage in a balanced but no less creative state of being and doing. This is of course a topic, about which much much more can be said, but my ‘relatively' short answer would be the above.
4. “Hence in situations where the student realizes that the teacher, with all his knowledge, honesty and wisdom is strait jacketing him on a front, which he (the student) associates with his very survival; what path must he follow then?”
Ha!Ha!Ha! The student must follow The Path of HIS/HER CHOICE. Where is the dilemma here? But remember there are other aspects apart from knowledge, honesty, and wisdom. Also there is the art and science of balance. But certainly – all said and done it is the student who makes certain choices (if not all of them!). As has been said – even the greatest teachers can only point to The Path(s). The rest is upto the student/disciple.
5. “Lastly, they say that the task of a teacher is to help his student look at things with clarity, cognition and equanimity and learn to trust himself- rather that inner voice within.”
First off ‘cognition’ itself means either ‘the process of knowing’ or the ‘end product of knowing’. So I’d say that a teacher helps his/her students cognize with clarity and equanimity, among other things, and I will say a resounding ‘yes’ in relation to ‘trusting and listening to the Inner Voice.’
6. “But when a student reaches that state he doesn’t need the teacher anymore. Now, when both the teacher and the student have elevated themselves to both moral and intellectual profoundness; is it possible that their ideals won’t match, even be sometimes exactly opposite?”
Insofar as ‘need’ is concerned: possibly, possibly not. This really and fully depends upon how one understands and what one means by the word ‘need’.
I, for one will. As I understand ‘need’. Yet I cannot make generalizations from my own perspective. But true enough – the form and the content of that need changes through any meaningful ‘teacher-student’ interaction.
As for your last question: I can’t give you a pat answer. That is, once again – I can forward my own views and in connection to what I’ve seen around me – but I cannot say ‘yes, of course’, or ‘no, of course not.’
But I will once again stress that ‘intellect’ or even ‘basic goodness’ alone are not what are of absolute importance to me. Intellect at least as I see it – is much too bound and constricted. Even basic ‘good’ morality is not what makes for ‘profound’ spiritual experiences, unique lessons and crucial teachings. Therefore I would have to go back to my tenets of spirituality, awareness, consciousness, sensitivity, and wisdom – which lead to the fine and final balance.
Would Ramkrishna be seen as a man of ‘intellect’, for instance? You see, there is more to being a Teacher (at least the kinds that I am concerned about in my essay) than being ‘honest’ and intellectually gifted.
Thus, I would say that in ‘intellectual’ matters, students and teachers may certainly experience a complete rift. No doubt about that. Jung and Freud, for example had parted ways.
However, in the most profound sense – true teachers and disciples most likely will not be at complete loggerheads regarding the truly cardinal ‘ideals’ (whatever that be: whether it is the belief in Work, Life, and Love as being sacred or whether it be the belief in the Unity of Self or what-have-you).
7. “I couldn’t figure out who was right and who was wrong – it seemed to me that both were right in themselves. So in cases where right and wrong overlap and merge to become obscure (or seem to be so) what is the way out?”
This is a very interesting question (as were all your questions) because there are a couple of ways to answer it. I will answer it in immediate terms. In some ways I’ve already hinted to it. The personal lenses through which I view my world indeed do make a difference.
Not knowing though exactly what the ‘dispute’ between the fictional characters was – I can’t give you a very definite answer.
But no matter. I will still articulate a method that I have found useful in different ways and at different times.
In cases where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ do seemingly merge – one has to ‘see’ the problem. And I can’t stress this enough. One must see it as hard and as long and as intensely as one is able to within one’s mind – if one is serious about getting to the bottom and the top of the answer that satisfies one’s Spirit/Soul/Self. Sometimes the answers may jolly well come across as contradictions or paradoxes. But once one gets beyond that – one is able to ‘see’ a little more clearly than before. The other point to remember is that not each and every ‘problem’ or dichotomy needs to be understood, and ‘seen’. The key is to look for abstractions alongwith specifics. The key is to be able to cluster and divide and then cluster up all the apparently related issues, which one is trying to understand or resolve.
There, I’ve reached the end of your question list. And no, I didn’t for one moment think that you were nit-picking or trying to pose as a ‘know-it-all’. I hope some of my points may be of some help.
Once again: Thank you for raising the questions that you have!
Take care.
Shilpidi
Dear Sayan,
First off, I’ll thank you for taking the time to post such a carefully thought out comment.
I’ll answer your questions as best as I can. And I will say at the onset that this is how I ‘see’ it; this is what I have learned through time and space: given that I’m looking at the world with the lenses that I wear – and my lenses make me see the world in a particular way (the notion of the ‘lenses shape the world that we see’ is from Steven Covey).
In addtion: One point I should clear out is that my focus ultimately was not so much on Teachers and Students as isolated islands but on the interactive and circular nature of certain Teacher-Student relationships. By "Interactive" and "circular" I essentially mean that love, trust, respect, admiration, and much more and beyond are mutual sentiments, experienced by both the Teacher and The Student for each other in these relationships, and these sentiments cannot be categorized by the label of "how much" and "who respects/loves the other more". Thus my focus was on these relationships that are created, these bonds that are co-established, these connections/this communion that is shared - sometimes inarticulate, sometimes inexpressible, and sometimes voiced, but always unique, and inordinately precious between certain "Magical" Teachers and some "Mystical" Students through the centuries.
Having said that, I’ll take up your comments point by point.
1. “This absolute trust for a teacher that you are talking about - does it imply blind trust?”
I am very wary of using the term ‘blind’ trust; although I will call it an ‘intuitive trust’. I do not believe in completely discounting my own experiences and my own lessons – no matter what. I take what comes from a teacher (any teacher) –and I take in the teachings from teachers I respect, love, and trust – with both more and less resistance. I know that sounds contradictory – but that’s the way I work. I swallow a lot of my pride and let my ego rest a bit but at the same time there is an increase in my stubbornness. While I don’t completely discount and throw away ‘my’ own experiences – I still pay and keep on paying close attention to what is coming from My Teacher, and keep weighing out the scales.
In this context I will say that personally, I have in rare encounters experienced Absolute Trust. The funny thing is that I have noticed that Absolute Trust too has qualitatively different textures to it. But about this - some other day. But yes, I have experienced absolute trust, which comes from somewhere very deep inside.
2. “…it seems to me that it ultimately boils down to the honesty of the teacher and the student towards themselves first and then towards each other. But are there not instances when two highly knowledgeable and honest people look at the same thing and see it differently?”
a. It’s not about ‘knowledge’ and honesty alone – although these are definitely important. Knowledge could refer to book-knowledge; it could refer to ‘how much’ an individual knows, it could refer to how much ‘information’ an individual can remember over the years, it can also refer to the interconnections made through one’s readings and experiences.
b. But there are other extremely essential components, which to me are those of wisdom, consciousness, sensitivity, spirituality, and awareness. All these are not identical although interrelated terms, and these terms mean something specific to me. The way for me to sense these in a teacher (or in anyone for that matter) is not through my analytical and logical skills (although these help in certain specific situations) – but come to me in an intuitive flash. I know; I sense, and I feel these although I may not have any ‘rational proof’ of the same in the first instant.
Once again a) and b) are most definitely inter-related – at least for me. Both a) and b) in a teacher brings about balance in my mind.
3. “For instance many great people have been known to be unbalanced and whimsical, sometimes to the point of being destructive and yet, it must be agreed that there is a very close connection between their unbalanced ways and their creative genius.”
I happen to have read (and still read) a fair bit on the interconnections between creativity and genius, and had been extremely intrigued about these interconnections for the longest time. (The substantive area of “Creativity/Genius and what is currently known as ‘Bi-polar’ disorder” made up for awhile my main readings for my Masters). While it is a humongous area to wade through in some ways, and there are seeming contradictions and paradoxes in the understanding of the issue, I can (in brief) for the time being present my understanding of it.
My understanding is that while the ‘whimsical and unbalanced’ geniuses did indeed create fine works of art, and MAY indeed not have produced these had they not been thus; I would say that there is still the higher probability not to mention possibility that had they been able to ‘stabilise’ themselves and ‘balance’ themselves, and ‘integrate’ themselves – they would have lived longer for one thing, (instead of killing themselves or simply dying young through repeated fits of frenzy), and they would’ve kept producing fine pieces.
Also, if you dig a little deeper you will find that the most ‘productive’ geniuses were the ones that were ‘stable’ and ‘balanced’ and ‘integrated’. I can cite the standing example of Tagore. This does not mean that he did not experience enormous highs and lows, nor does it mean that he lacked sensitivity or fineness – it simply means that he did not destruct other lives around him nor did he self-explode in a massive fit of destruction.
Yet another fine example is that of St. Francis of Assisi, who as the ‘story’ goes, had fantastic visions and was hearing the Voice of God. Finally came a day when he was running down the roads stark naked, yelling and bellowing “we must build a church on the end of this road. God told me to…!” He was pelted with stones and driven away.
He left for the forest. Meditated. “Calmed himself down”. Regained/reconnected to his Sense of Balance. Reached “Enlightenment” (or call it what-you-will). He left the forest after re-integrating with His Self, His Spirit, His God, and the rest of course is History.
So personally I have come to the firm conclusion that there is nothing good in being ‘wayward and unbalanced’ (being whimsical in moderate doses is actually fine, at least in my book). Yes, possibly the merit of ‘creative genius’ might do a bit to dampen the pain and the agony that these individuals go through. Yet channelized creative passion is the only form that really ‘works in the long run’.
Also, it needs to be understood that even Van Gogh - emotionally and mentally unbalanced as he was, was certainly not "unbalanced" when he was painting. So one thing is clear: Unbalanced as one may be - in order to DO anything 'well' or in order to be "outstanding" one must be FIRMLY balanced while engaged in that creative act (be that painting, composing, sculpting, what-have-you).
Also, my additional tuppence thoughts on this is that most scholars and practioners (with very few exceptions) who have brought our attention to the interconnections among The (Un)Holy Trinity of "Creativity, Genius and Madness" have not made a clear and important distinction between balance and repression. And THIS according to me has been the problem in our comprehension of the "Mad Artist". The "Mad Artist" too can lead a perfectly balanced, creative, passionate, and fulfilling life. The key is to not "repress" the "Mad Artist" but to lead him/her to a state where s/he can engage in a balanced but no less creative state of being and doing. This is of course a topic, about which much much more can be said, but my ‘relatively' short answer would be the above.
4. “Hence in situations where the student realizes that the teacher, with all his knowledge, honesty and wisdom is strait jacketing him on a front, which he (the student) associates with his very survival; what path must he follow then?”
Ha!Ha!Ha! The student must follow The Path of HIS/HER CHOICE. Where is the dilemma here? But remember there are other aspects apart from knowledge, honesty, and wisdom. Also there is the art and science of balance. But certainly – all said and done it is the student who makes certain choices (if not all of them!). As has been said – even the greatest teachers can only point to The Path(s). The rest is upto the student/disciple.
5. “Lastly, they say that the task of a teacher is to help his student look at things with clarity, cognition and equanimity and learn to trust himself- rather that inner voice within.”
First off ‘cognition’ itself means either ‘the process of knowing’ or the ‘end product of knowing’. So I’d say that a teacher helps his/her students cognize with clarity and equanimity, among other things, and I will say a resounding ‘yes’ in relation to ‘trusting and listening to the Inner Voice.’
6. “But when a student reaches that state he doesn’t need the teacher anymore. Now, when both the teacher and the student have elevated themselves to both moral and intellectual profoundness; is it possible that their ideals won’t match, even be sometimes exactly opposite?”
Insofar as ‘need’ is concerned: possibly, possibly not. This really and fully depends upon how one understands and what one means by the word ‘need’.
I, for one will. As I understand ‘need’. Yet I cannot make generalizations from my own perspective. But true enough – the form and the content of that need changes through any meaningful ‘teacher-student’ interaction.
As for your last question: I can’t give you a pat answer. That is, once again – I can forward my own views and in connection to what I’ve seen around me – but I cannot say ‘yes, of course’, or ‘no, of course not.’
But I will once again stress that ‘intellect’ or even ‘basic goodness’ alone are not what are of absolute importance to me. Intellect at least as I see it – is much too bound and constricted. Even basic ‘good’ morality is not what makes for ‘profound’ spiritual experiences, unique lessons and crucial teachings. Therefore I would have to go back to my tenets of spirituality, awareness, consciousness, sensitivity, and wisdom – which lead to the fine and final balance.
Would Ramkrishna be seen as a man of ‘intellect’, for instance? You see, there is more to being a Teacher (at least the kinds that I am concerned about in my essay) than being ‘honest’ and intellectually gifted.
Thus, I would say that in ‘intellectual’ matters, students and teachers may certainly experience a complete rift. No doubt about that. Jung and Freud, for example had parted ways.
However, in the most profound sense – true teachers and disciples most likely will not be at complete loggerheads regarding the truly cardinal ‘ideals’ (whatever that be: whether it is the belief in Work, Life, and Love as being sacred or whether it be the belief in the Unity of Self or what-have-you).
7. “I couldn’t figure out who was right and who was wrong – it seemed to me that both were right in themselves. So in cases where right and wrong overlap and merge to become obscure (or seem to be so) what is the way out?”
This is a very interesting question (as were all your questions) because there are a couple of ways to answer it. I will answer it in immediate terms. In some ways I’ve already hinted to it. The personal lenses through which I view my world indeed do make a difference.
Not knowing though exactly what the ‘dispute’ between the fictional characters was – I can’t give you a very definite answer.
But no matter. I will still articulate a method that I have found useful in different ways and at different times.
In cases where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ do seemingly merge – one has to ‘see’ the problem. And I can’t stress this enough. One must see it as hard and as long and as intensely as one is able to within one’s mind – if one is serious about getting to the bottom and the top of the answer that satisfies one’s Spirit/Soul/Self. Sometimes the answers may jolly well come across as contradictions or paradoxes. But once one gets beyond that – one is able to ‘see’ a little more clearly than before. The other point to remember is that not each and every ‘problem’ or dichotomy needs to be understood, and ‘seen’. The key is to look for abstractions alongwith specifics. The key is to be able to cluster and divide and then cluster up all the apparently related issues, which one is trying to understand or resolve.
There, I’ve reached the end of your question list. And no, I didn’t for one moment think that you were nit-picking or trying to pose as a ‘know-it-all’. I hope some of my points may be of some help.
Once again: Thank you for raising the questions that you have!
Take care.
Shilpidi
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