Beauty Path

The world is breathtakingly colorful when we see it through different cultures, languages and believes. Even if the entire world is transformed into some sort of hippie or rainbow culture, at a certain point we will start feeling ho-hum and try to turn back the time wheel and reinvent our made-extinct cultures. No one likes to watch a BW TV once they have watched the color ones.

We lost so many cultures, its followers and their believes in the name of progress and our quest to dominate our own human race. Many of the remaining cultures and their hopes of survival are hanging by the edge of a worn thread. Even if we have the sense of rebuilding them, we prefer sorry-no-time excuse since we are all well set to chase hard every single step of technology and bourses’ ups and lows. And so it goes!

Following words are taken from the album “Ahimsa” by K.J. Yesudas and others. The song “Beauty All Around” in the album is based on the American Indian poetry edited by late George Cronyn.

Adapted from traditional poetry of the Dineh people (Navajo), this composition is dedicated to all the native communities that have vanished in the name of progress, and to all those descendants that are now rebuilding their cultures on the timeless foundations of their ancestors. The Native American’s “Beauty Path” is peace, stewardship, and a reverent awe for life.

Beauty behind me
As I turn,
Beauty before me
Now I learn.
The timeless dance,
The song of wonder,
Oh...
Beauty All Around.
Ageless creation
Below,
Endless horizons
Above,
A shining star,
With it I wander,
Beauty
Above me,
Beauty
Below me,
Oh...
Beauty All Around

Who is god?

You and me are now encapsulated in a very convenient cosmic bubble floating through an imaginary (or really exists?) space called ‘Undom’ which houses numerous cosmoses. Every single cosmos is a home for multiverses, not single 'uni'verse but many universes. Trillions of billions of galaxies float amidst a strange dark matter which fills each universes.

Now our bubble starts moving towards a cosmos and then enters into one of its universes. It seems that it is under the command of some unnatural power which guides it towards a zillions of star studded galaxy called Milky Way. The bubble is attracted towards the habitable zone of a middle aged star called Sun. If planets exist within this zone then they can home evolved life forms. Planets falling under such zone are rare in other stars. But we are fortunate enough. Two planets falling under sun’s habitable zone, a red Mars and a blue Earth, come into our view. We finally realize that the supernatural power is the spell of the blue beauty. Our other friends are directed towards some other planets of unknown cosmoses.

Now where did we see god during our journey? Where he lives actually? Beyond cosmos? Beyond ‘Undom’? Does he have a farm house where he cultivates these cosmoses, or a sort of experimental laboratory, or an aquarium? Who lives with him? His spouse, a gay companion with all his lovely children? How many cohabitants live with him? What is that place called? Under whose command he works? Where his master lives? Question are infinite as our imagination is infinite.

If he lives beyond ‘Undom’ how did we come to know about his very existence. We are not even sure about our own world. In some part of the world some believed that the world was flat. There could be intellectual beings living beneath the unfathomable depths of mighty oceans. Did god show up in the world and gave us some commandments to convert all people to some religion by giving them soups, rice and medicines? Or gave us Veda and ordered us to practice caste and creed. Or created man first and then from his ribs woman next? Or handed over some sacred texts to master slavery to build Pyramids?

Or does he live everywhere? Inside neutrinos, neurons, dust and mist? If yes, that means he is energy. If that is the case, he has to share his power with demons. In other words, god and devil are one and the same since force is made up of energy and anti-energy. Or energy is made up force and anti-force. Like matter and anti-mater or day and night or masculine and feminine. So there is no room for god alone. Who is plus and who is minus is again a question. Why not devil possesses plus and god tries to eliminate him since he got minus? If god rules the world then there should not be male chauvinism (It is terribly pity to know how crooked human minds are, since they dominate their own female counterparts), slavery, color of skin, religion, political borders, and so on. Under demon's reign we cannot even witness a bit of order everywhere in the chaotically complex world. Or god is goddess and demon is god!? And both are man and wife!!!

Does he reside somewhere inside the cosmos? Then he is a mere space traveler from some other planet, an alien, just landed on earth accidentally and tried to reproduce (or experimented) with the species of this planets. So there came people with elephant head and human body (Indian Ganesha), human head with lion body (Egyptian sphinx), eagle or hummingbird head and human body (Aztec’s belief)? One such reproduction turned monkey into apes and then into humans?

This could be more than a mere possibility. While leaving earth they erased all concrete clues of their visit. Or, in the course of time, humans quest to dominate their own race and other species, they destroyed numerous evidences (To prove they are superior. Not you and me). Ask historians, they will lament how just one single religion made vanished so many evidences and how that hurdles their researches.

Or, are we mere chemical process, evolved from membrane protected simple organism to viruses to fishes to mammals to apes from the result of complex random evolution process, and finally achieving higher level consciousness thanks to superior neural evolution? And then, human beings, like other species, are consumed by fear. Fear of nature, of fire, of sun, of lightning, of sea, of earth quake and so on. Our intelligence fueled this fear up to extreme extend. And our power of imagination added heads, hands, legs, bodies and soul to this fear. Our ability to represent imagination in pictorial form finally created god and demon. Another possibility! But, sure something unnatural happened in the remote past. And our fear fueled remaining.

In India, one of oldest worship form is goddess worship (As in most of the ancient world. Later replaced by god worship). Goddess Kâli or Shakti (The very word Shakti literally means energy) is depicted with ten hands holding various weapons, sitting on a lion and the overall setup gives a fierce look. But yet her face and her eyes gives a motherly look. A possible fusion of force and anti-force? Most of the ancient world believed in such figures. Egyptian god with cat head and human body (since cat helped farmers of Nile delta by killing rats) and snake god worship (snakes did similar job as their Nile counterparts) and so on.

So, seeing good in bad or bad in good is up to the individual’s choice. And we know good (no matter it has plus sign or minus sign) means not hurting others, including other species of moving or immobile in nature and contributing to the cosmic harmony. And believe it for sure, every wrongdoing has its own punishment, just like every force has its counterpart anti-force. Sooner or later it is sure imminent.

Slippery steps of science

We don’t know when this turn happened. Or why it happened. We started believing in things if only approved by modern science. We try hard to find equations everywhere to reason things. Why not just trust the good old ancient world? Why the ageless cultures are getting thin and fading? Recently, I happened to hear a hot discussion on astrology by some young college kids who were lavishly commenting on the imbecility of Chinese, Greeks and others.

So, why ancients believed that stars control life? I firmly believe that our forefathers are no stupid as we folks think. We know astrology is pure math. Moreover, in biological point of view, all beings are made up of cells, DNA, etc (primarily proteins, bases and acids). The bonds between proteins, bases and acids are vulnerable to changes due to heat, chemical reactions and chiefly radiation. Any changes in these bonds during cell division are called mutations. Good mutations, say germline, somatic and neural mutations, lead to evolution, from simple being to complex being. Bad mutations cause diseases like cancers. Stars are the main sources of radiation and planets absorb, sometimes modify and then reflect these radiation. So, every day, every nanosecond stars and planets affect each celled organism and thus their behavior. Astrology (True ancient astrology. Whether it exist today is a question) could be considered as a tool to calculate these very changes.

Now, who told our ancestors such things? As an Indian, I always wonder about Indian mythology. Ten incarnations of Vishnu (see Avatar) actually speak about evolution. For us, Kaalachakra (circle of time) is the seed of the cosmos. In modern science time stretches from minus infinity (infinite past) to zero (present) to plus infinity (infinite future). Whereas, in Kaalachakra, time is not regarded as a straight line but a circle and any points can be considered as past, present or future. This is why anything related to time is regarded cyclic in nature: incarnation, musical notes, etc. Also they believed in the existence of many worlds (not a flat earth) and time in these worlds differs accordingly. Some man days is equal to one day in Indra’s (king of gods or angelic people) world, some Indra days is equal to one day in Brahma’s (the creator) world, etc. Today we know massive bodies like planets and stars make shrink not only space but the time as well and thus time varies in these heavenly bodies.

Likewise, other great ideas exist in other venerable cultures like Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, Inuit (the right word for Eskimo, since Eskimo is considered pejorative and even racist) and so on. We cannot simply reject these believes as lunatic thoughts since we cannot explain each and every thing using mathematic formulas with our so very limited knowledge. The main problem is, modern science originated in a place where the good old traditions and cultures are completely made extinct due to war between tribal people, then by invading Romans and then by religions. Even in this scientifically well advanced world we have hard time to understand these notions and other people’s culture (or even our own). This we call as Maya, the illusion, the illusionary world!