A View From the Top : Part 2
Recently on this blog I shared a post titled “ A View from the Top”.
This is a follow up post hence labeling it as Part 2.
Soon after the day when I viewed Khopoli from the top of the ghats and experienced the nostalgia etc I had a conversation over WhatsApp with a friend that started quite unexpectedly when he shared a poem by Dr. Sanjay Upadhye. The poem is titled Jinklo Aise Mhanaa ( Say you won this battle of life). The theme of the poem is to live in the present. Dont brood about the past or live with regrets or remorse over mistakes you made. Simply learn from those mistakes, strive to not repeat them and keep moving holding your head up and a cheerful attitude.
I shared my experience in the ghats. The conversation drifted to concept of time. My friend is mostly a non believer in God etc and views everything from perspective of science/ physics. Our conversation went like this:
Me:
Life often feels like a fast train ride where we are seated facing in the opposite direction of the train movement.
A:
Next stop get off and board a slow moving train on a scenic route.
Me:
I never said the route wasn’t scenic.
I was on my way from Mumbai to Pune yesterday. It was around 8 pm when I passed through the ghat. Khopoli was seen from the top. Shiny lights. The familiar fondness for the place overcame the mind. I realized in that moment that everything related to the place relates to the past. That’s true of everything in life. Everything that holds a place in the heart is rooted in the past. The mind doesn’t know the future. It sees the present but that is fast adding into the past.
That’s what I meant with the train metaphor.
दोन घडीचा डाव
याला जीवन ऐसे नाव
A:
Upadhaye’s kavita was appropriate for that moment.
Me:
That’s why I shared the moment with you.
The poem reminded me of that moment
A:
There is ‘presentism’ philosophy and ‘block universe’ theory in physics. Presentism says, past is memory and future is a prediction so only current moment is real
Block universe is a physics theory that says past present and future all exist at the same time.
Actually not at the same time as time itself does not exist
Me:
I once told you all roads will eventually meet in one place.
Physics will conclude the reality of the universe in the same place as Vedanta.
Other lesser sciences will go round and round for a longer time in the mesh of time and space until they find the highway to truth.
A:
Wish vedantist tell before scientist and physicists do. They would not waste their energy. Eienstein would have been happy playing violin in Berlin orchestra. If vendantist had come up with special and general relativity.
Me: ( I had sensed his cynicism there but chose to ignore it.)
No, that’s the beauty of the universe. Each brain is wired differently and set on a different route to find the truth.
They only start understanding each other’s language, if at all, as they get closer to the truth.
A Vedanta scholar cannot understand theory of relativity. But when Einstein reaches his conclusion they can see the identical finding at the end which matches what Vedanta had been teaching them.
(He went silent after that. It was obvious that my language was Latin to him.)
After almost 2 weeks today I simply wrote to him in response to the scientific theories he had quoted.
Me:
Do they only postulate (the presentism philosophy and block theory) or prove it?
Have you experienced this( that time itself does not exist)?
You don’t have to give me the answer.
I very well know that our brains are wired very differently. As far different from each other as they can be. I don’t understand physics and he has no remote leaning towards religious philosophy. I don’t expect him to read vedanta, leave alone spare any credibility towards it. I do respect physics even though I can’t understand much of it. And I am not a bit surprised if top physicists arrive at the conclusion that time and space are unreal. Because vedanta has taught me to arrive at reality. Whichever approach you take you must arrive at the same destination because reality by definition can’t change. If it changes, it is not reality.
Earlier today I was working in the kitchen. There was considerable amount of yogurt waiting in the fridge. I put it through the blender and it yielded butter and buttermilk. I separated the two, refrigerated the buttermilk, rinsed the butter a few times in water and proceeded with heating it on the stove. The semi solid butter began to melt away forming a cloudy liquid. I simmered it on low heat and watched intently as it continued to bubble. Several minutes later coarser sediment settled at the bottom. The liquid above it began to look clearer and clearer until I could see the bottom of the pot which was previously not visible.
Once it got a golden yellow color I turned the heat off and let it cool until I could filter the clear ghee into a container and dispose off the sediment.
Later in the day I continued reading the book on the ninth chapter of the Bhagwad Gita/ Dnyaaneshwari, this one also by Ranganath Maharaj Parbhanikar, like the book on the 12th chapter I completed recently. In this chapter Krishna starts by telling Arjun that he will now share with him everything he needs to understand about dnyaan ( knowledge of the atma) and vigyaan ( knowledge of the world, commonly referred to as science). Dnyaan cannot be explained directly. What remains after vigyaan is removed out of the way is dnyaan. For that one must first understand vigyaan.
As I was contemplating on this, my mind recalled the morning’s labor of making clarified butter (ghee) starting with the thick creamy yogurt. I could suddenly relate the process with years of studying vedanta. Basically what the study has done is it has gradually separated the impurities rendering more and more transparent consciousness. The transparency sheds light on minute details that includes personal flaws( that were previously unknown to the self) as well as distinguishing between what’s real and unreal. It allows you to better understand what is important and what is not.
Unlike making ghee however this process of purification has no end point. It will and must continue for as long as the body exists and with it, the thinking mind and intellect exist.
So even if you have realized that time and space are not real, at a practical level the body, mind and intellect must be employed for good use while they exist. They must be infused with humility and sense of service towards others. They must strive for new learning and growth where understanding is concerned, and fewer needs where material things are concerned.
My friend may not understand vedanta. He has a very good chance though to reach the same endpoint if he delves deeper and deeper into physics. No matter where on earth you are located, if you start digging from the surface towards the center, there is only one point you will arrive at.
What comes to mind again now is the famous declaration from Eknath Maharaj about the Dnyaaneshwari:
Ek tari ovi anubhavaavi !! ( May we experience at least one verse from it, first hand!)
Philosophy, theories, beliefs, faith, study etc all have a place in the scheme of things. Yet ultimately experience is what matters. And you must not stop until the experience is yours. Just like someone else’s life can’t be your life, someone else’s experience can’t be called yours!!
Comments
Post a Comment