On September 11th

I like Bharathi
I like Vivekananda
Today I think of both
Today is linked with both
Today you can remember the poet
Today you can read again the great speech at Chicago
Human kindness
Universal harmony
What else is the ultimate goodness of the planet
The poet
The philosopher
This day is deep.
Srirangam Mohanarangan

Navarathri - what is it?

God is described as The Infinite Existence, Knowledge cum Bliss . Satchidananda. It is in the noumenal and transcendent state. The same God while creating and sustaining this universe is viewed as Divine Mother. Her three aspects of Infinite Existence, Knowledge cum Bliss are worshipped as Sakthi, Lakshmi and Saraswati on the nine nights of Navarathri. Nava - nine rathri - night. Golu is symbolic of the entire universe or creation. From childhood it is taught how to view the whole universe as suffused with Divinity. This Golu is one such ritual to inculcate this awareness. 

Usually it is like this. Typical of various creatures like bipeds, quadrupeds, birds, men, mythical persons, great leaders, wonderful objects like this a wide representation of art and thanks. There is no fixed rule. It is left to the creativity of children esp girls. In the western countries they discovered the kindergarten system only in the 19th ce. But in our country this kindergarten principle is followed from time immemorial. Bharathiar has sung a song signifying all these ideas. You see this is the ancient way of infusing philosophical awareness by child play, ritual, group chanting and so on. In places like Kolkata they chant Divine Mother's glory called Devi Mahatmyam. It is also called Chandi.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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George Eliot and Sri Ramakrishna

Texts and writing are really intriguing. Sometimes you tend to think of them as mysterious, not without sufficient reasons. Whenever January comes, the thought of Swami Vivekananda becomes loud (and don't ask me when it was mild) in recurrence. The combination of December coolness, the expectation of the New Year and afterwards the charm of the newly born are all playing ascending notes to the symphony of the great Hindu standing tall over time. And naturally you begin to think of Dakshineswar, the Ganges and the room of Thakur. What would have Naren seen in that village holy man and what would have made this college boy to take bold decisions and bolder steps! But you will not expect similar sentiments expressed in remote writings, which will concur with you to the letter. Yea I am saying about the writings of George Eliot. Who is she in this context! But why her words are so resonating in this mood? When she writes in her 'Scenes of clerical life' - 

"Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem, and broad leaf, and glowing tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame."
(Scenes from clerical life, George Eliot) 

A drunken man sees twice; a man afraid sees his own fear and what is wrong in a devoted seeing his devotion everywhere?
Srirangam Mohanarangan 

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Mosquito and Consciousness

When you are deep into some work, then the mosquitoes start to rub your skin. The rubbing alerts you and you sway a bat. Mosquitoes are creatures which never connect these two actions. On the range of the moment they begin to interact with their immediate situations. When they find a lazy leg they start playing. But it is inviting their own death sweep is a matter they never connect. May be they learn some alternatives like which way to take flight to escape getting caught, but all such things are based on immediate situations. Whereas some other beings which are more endowed react in different ways and evince different levels, which sometimes are simulative enough for us to read as conscious activities. 

Consciousness is in the essence connecting different points in our time, in our actions, in our surroundings. A big and intricate memory is involved, pattern recognition always being bettered continuously. Deduction, speculation and induction are various items in our toolkit. So we read and so the meaning occurs to us as human beings. In most instances of persons this remains a high possibility and never realised to any justifiable level. Connecting things, connecting means and ends, connecting the immediate and the distanced, connecting today and tomorrow, pattern recognizing with the past, all these constitute what it is being a conscious entity as human beings. Are the various levels we see in other beings just approximations to the level of consciousness which we evince in our living or whether our own level just a more complicated and nuanced and sophisticated version of the same kind basically with other beings is a question. Consciousness is entity in itself. It cannot be explained by nature as objectively read by us. This is one view. Consciousness is only an emergent phenomenon in the ongoing complexity of the structure of beings. What looks mechanical or instinct or mere impulse-response in early evolved beings begins to assume meaning as autonomous consciousness in the level of human beings. This is one view. Whatever may be the benefits of understanding in each view, 'to whom it is meaningful' or 'who reads ultimately the report sheets' is something hard to crack. Only very few scientists even like to face this hard problem and say that they are facing it. Mostly the problem is shirked off by saying 'don't ask questions which should not be asked'. After all tactics of ignorance come handy in trying to escape knowing what is real. 

But on the other hand however much we like to stress that we are unique beings of consciousness, if we patiently check how we interpret the very phenomenon of our being conscious or our fact of knowing, we face another issue. What is our understanding of our being conscious? When we try to explain this to our own selves, we find that we are arriving at the picture of our being conscious only recursively, sharing with all the features of foregone beings in evolution and we begin to doubt whether we can ever attain a unique and autonomous explanation for this question. But right from our Rishis upto Sri Ramana Maharishi, they say that there is a non-dependent core of autonomous consciousness. And Sri Ramana Maharishi will say with a pinch of humour, 'you cannot realise that. Because it is always there. Only you have to stop realising unnecessary things heaping over and above.' 

Whether the slipping mosquito ever understands these things or whether the chasing human being will ever become a total being of pure autonomous consciousness, the swaying bat has no such problems. As long as the charge is there, as long as it connects with the flying, so long it cracks its cruel jokes, of course much to the relief of the owner.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
***

Why do you write what you write

Why are you always writing on religious themes? You are only worldly. do you profess any practice on any faith? - some friend was asking me out of concern. Yea that is right. I do not profess anything except that I am devoted to Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, SriAurobindo, Mother and... Of course I am a simple Hindu and I am interested in various thought-systems and modern science is of such an interest to me. But it is true I do not have anybody's book of instructions for my life including that of Sri Ramakrishna. If he comes out and say that I am not in his list, I will not be having any claim to make one. Why I say this is what the friend was asking is true. Not being fixed to anywhere has its own butter side and also its raw side. But why I like writing about what I do write has no reason I think except I do like writing about something which I like. Sorry I do not mean to confuse you but it stands miserably at that. I can write about many other things, all remote and strange to general interest, like Indo-European linguistics, the commentaries of Syriac, Hebraic and Arabic authors on Aristotle, the subject of praxeology in connection with the treatises of Purva MImamsa, the philosophical developments of Eastern Europe, the poetical traditions of nearly very many lands and so on. In addition I feel I have something to say by way of my own philosophy. I have become poor by my rich interests, which will be boredom to others. Even my close friends have developed strategies of escape due to these interests of mine. Of course poetry does not need anybody to share with. But there also I was lucky in having my Professor of collegiate days as the close sharing party to talk to. Even that chance was snatched away of late. So why do I write what I do is a difficult question for me. What to do? Sometimes answers are difficult, sometimes questions. But in reading and understanding and doing your private study, you need not face anybody's questions, except the eternal questions which the universe is not tired of raising and facing such questions are moments of thick vividness. So the question why I am writing... yea.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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