The Other's model of life

The following was an email that I typed out after a friend told me to try out typing something in one go without pausing to think too much or worry about the formatting. So, I just typed and hit send.

The world is a fucking absurd place. Absurd not in the sense that I expected it to be ordered and it surprises me that it is random. But that would be a lie, because, I probably subconsciously expect it to conform to some model that I have in my head for the world. When there are conflicts with this model, it suddenly seems like the world is bewildering or confusing.

Why do people need psychological crutches? Is it because we are social creatures that we need to reach out to other people for support? What about people who are perfectly fine with a divine crutch? Does the divine crutch somehow make them less in need of a social support group? How do we end up with these expectations?

Children are shown a fantasy future. They are told that they can make it in life if only they were to complete certain milestones. If they get through school with good grades, they can get into a professional course in some college. If they make good grades there, they can get a well paying job. If they just grit their teeth between 9-5 they can make a good pay and also earn the annual bonus and promotions. They can then be able to buy a house, a car and get married and settle down. They can have children, preferably two. Their children should then be sent to the best schools in the city so that the cycle can perpetuate forever and ever more.

Why?

Who created this fantasy? This model of a perfect life? If our lives were to conform to this model very closely, does that ensure fulfillment? What is fulfillment itself? To be fulfilled, we should be capable of having desires, our own desires, or driving or motive force. The universe is an absurd place, it has no apparent reason for existing. But we always create our purposes. We awake in the morning everyday with a purpose in mind. A raison d'etre . We are purpose creating machines. But most of us are living lives in the pursuit of an ideal, an ideal that is the perfect model from the gaze of the Other, but how the hell are we going to reconcile that with our own desires? To be fulfilled means that we have certain desires of our own. And these desires are necessarily individual and unique. If not, then the ideal model would work for everyone. These individual and unique desires are the ones that make people suddenly quit a high paying job mid career and go off to hitch hike around the world. These are the desires and motive forces that should be encourages within us. These are the passions and ideas or models for our own existence that must be stoked and stoked until the embers are raging fires within us.

Okay, that was rather dramatic. Maybe, we don't need to stoke them into raging fires, but even small embers burn long and give lasting comfort over a long period of time. When we deny the existence of our own desires, we are trying to live our lives for the fulfillment of the Other's model of existence. But the Other does not even exist outside of us! The Other's model is just what we perceive it to be. Different cultures and societies may have different ideal models to live by. The same society may have multiple ideal models to live by. And the model that we choose to fulfill just happens to be our perception of what the ideal model of the Other is. Why go to such huge efforts to fulfill a fantasy that we ourselves create to delude ourselves into thinking that our own desires do not matter?

Critically thinking about something as fundamental as the philosophy or the model by which we live our lives is something that everyone should do often. We probably do do it quite often. I'm sure that most people do think about how their actions or decisions may be viewed by others. The "conscience" is an attempt to view ourselves from outside us, to judge our actions in the context of its effect on others and ourselves. But we take important decisions in our lives with too much weightage being given to the ideal model and too little being given to our own desires or passions. If we consider doing something that would fulfill ourselves and if that something is far from the ideal model, then we immediately dismiss the thought as crazy! As something only fringe elements in society do, the weirdos who throw away all their possessions and go mountain climbing and hitch hiking.

But the cranks have been the ones to give spark to life and society. The cranks have been the ones to make life worth living. Imagine a society with everyone living their lives earnestly attempting to conform to the ideal model. Everyone doing exactly what they should. Where does that leave us with the individual? Where does that leave us with free will? Do people exercise their "free will" to the extent that they are capable of? What if everyone decided to suddenly do so, and do all the crazy things that they have always deeply desired? What would happen to society? Would we be left with utter chaos and anarchy? Is this why we have been naturally selected to maintain an evolutionarily stable ratio of cranks to the conforming people? When viewed in that sense, then cranks are just the lucky few genes which happened to exist because of a happy accident that their fraction of existence is supported by natural selection. Shouldn't cranks then stop giving out clarion calls to the world to stop being blind followers or conformists? Because cranks themselves only exist because the other fraction of conformists also exist, they balance and maintain the equilibrium. Cranks and geniuses should then be thankful of their happy accident of birth. They should then be uninhibitedly crazy. They should without any guilt pursue their dreams and passions and not worry about whether they are contributing to society in a productive way. They should go about their lives without any qualms, simply be as quirky as their happy circumstances (I say circumstances because its obviously not just genes that make you a crank or genius) made them.

High Times-2

“Who runs the show?” asked the man in green, with fledgling limbs. In reply, he hears noise of a strange tongue, of Betelgeuse and Irish it was a mix.

Of greater wisdom the man grew, black and white suits him fine. “Who is bad and who is good?” asked the man in black and white. In reply he hears laughter of cackling disdain. “Black I know not of young one, and neither be I acquainted with White. All I see is a twilight grey, of no man's land be I.”

Upward did rise the man on the scale of life. Of grey whiskers and greyer attire be he now. “What is my purpose?” asked the man in grey, “where does my twisted path lead?”
“Grey be the no man's land where a man's stuff be not made of purpose, of unclear knowledge be he of the grey hue. All I see is the golden path of sacrifice and asceticism.” said the hermit in reply.

Further toward the zenith did rise the man of golden heart and ascetic exterior. Of virtue be now his stuff made, of twisted paths he cares not, with a known but still unknown destination in mind, seeks he the bliss of unknown quality. “Why is everything?” asks the man of gold.
“That be not the question that us the hue-less seek, of lesser words be our question framed.”

Up or down matters not any more, suffice to say, the man progressed, of hue-less quality be his interior and exterior. Of austerity be now his path made, with hurdles of the mind preceding foremost. “What?” asked the man of colourless identity.
“Be you now close to what thou seek”, said the voice of nothing and everything, of the infinitesimal and the infinite.

Of un-followable path did the non-identity take, of everything and nothing did the non-identity learn... of bliss and violence.... of the infinite and the infinitesimal....

High Times-1

A deep dark recess juts right through a huge boulder. As I enter into this, a huge lizard which looks more like a dragon is seen approaching at a tremendous pace with its tail whipping about and tongues of flame licking about its mouth.

I dance around the monster's mouth, stepping in and out of range, when all of a sudden, my vision projects forwards, almost as if my eyes have been moved forward through a long tunnel, straight into the throat of the monster, where I see the source of the flame. An orb of fire much like the sun remains suspended near the base of the throat of the lizard. The orb had a fiery female form dancing at the very core. The lizard reminded me of the frustrating admin of our university, the desires and distractions along my path to gaining the orb of knowledge. The lizard tried its best to close its jaws lined with the sharp and menacing teeth on me.

With a lot of luck, I manage to somehow grab the orb and free her from the grip of the dragon whose jaws prevented her from spreading her light to the whole world. With the orb I race out of the recess which was now flooded in dazzling light. As I exit the crack, I find myself in a thorny valley with green slopes populated with menacing gorillas and other lizards. Hundreds of these creatures surround me as I try to escape with the orb which has now changed form and has taken the shape of a girl with flames dancing around her.

As the creatures closed in on me, the situation started to look dire. However, when I seek a way out of my predicament by consulting the fiery female form besides me, I immediately gain reassurance and my anxiety was replaced by a new found determination.

The flames danced all around me and a fiery circle started expanding from the very centre, repelling all the creatures as it advanced outwards. The surrounding darkness was gradually consumed by the light from the centre of the ever expanding circle. A fiery and flaming tower of manic proportions jets vertically upwards into the sky and the light starts to engulf the entire planet. Many centres of darkness resisted the light, a battle ensued with sometimes the darkness prevailing over the light and sometimes, the other way around. Gradually, the light managed to engulf the entire planet, that was when my vision zoomed outwards at an unimaginable speed and soon I could see entire galaxies going through the same process of the alternating between light and darkness. Whenever an entire galaxy became engulfed with light, a few streaks of light would escape from the galaxy and disappear out of the universe, going to some place which I was unable to imagine.

Whenever an entire galaxy would be lit up completely, there would be a short period during which a few streaks of light would escape out of the known universe. After some time though, small parts of the lit area would start growing dark, cracks would appear, and gradually there would be more and more areas of darkness, and soon, the entire galaxy would be plunged into darkness. This process would go on alternating...

The only thing that I could conclude was that true freedom would be obtained only when we decide to search for that something which we truly require... for me that something is knowledge. In this age of instant gratification seekers, it has become something of a rarity to witness anyone thinking deeper about the realities of life and the universe. A few minutes of self contemplation can go a long way to help a person gain a perspective on their lives.

Welcome to my mind

“Hi, welcome to my head, hope you don’t mind the mess in here. That song that you can hear in the background, try listening to it. It is one of my favorite songs of all time. Its called ‘I’m a Rock’ by Simon and Garfunkel. Sometimes I have felt just like that. Like there is no point in life as we know it. When the feeling overpowers me, I’m left wondering why we are, what we are and why we do the stuff that we do.

Sometimes, I feel like it is all pointless, that there is no point to existence but to live and then die. What else is there? All of us go through life, we have our ups and downs, and we struggle and work and strive until our families are well settled and safe and then what? We just die, all of us. After having led a life full of struggle, no matter how rich or poor you are, regardless of your societal status, you would have had to struggle through some part of your life. Even if you had been a rich kid with all the creature comforts, the mere fact that you had to live a life with no point to it would be reason enough to depress you.

I have been depressed by the fact that there is no point to existence. But on other occasions, I have been awed by existence. On a few occasions, to such an extent that I felt my entire being touched by everything around me.

It happened on the balcony of my hostel. Our campus is quite beautiful and during the evenings, you find flocks of exotic birds flying around. On that day, everything seemed perfect, the setting sun looked like a giant orange laddoo, the birds chirping in the trees seemed to be singing a song and the breeze started dancing to the tune. It was then that I felt this profound feeling, like I was just a small part of this awesome and beautiful universe. I could sort of feel the cosmic dance all around me. It felt like I could sense the entire universe all around me and I felt like an integral part of it all. The strength of the feeling was so intense that I had tears in my eyes.

Moments like this have happened on a few more occasions, and one memorable time was when I was in one of the woods surrounding Nainital from where the Himalayan range was visible. Nature wields such a powerful influence over me that I would even give up the heights of orgasm to be in the beautiful environs of a place like Nainital.
But after having given this subject ample amount of thought, I have come to a conclusion which shall stand until I come across evidence contrary to its implications. You see, life is amazing enough for it to justify its existence without having to give you a point to its existence. You get me? Life need not give you a point or a reason for its existence because the mere amazing, awe inspiring, varied beauty and brutality of life is sufficient without one having to seek out the point to all existence. Though one may still go along that path, I’ve decided to stop treading down that road and instead, simply enjoy the moment and experience everything that life has to offer.

Right, I see that you are getting impatient and are dying to get out of my mind, so here goes, initiating ejection process… Bye!”