Written Voice

The human mind on one hand is extremely complex and on the other very simple. Its one of the rare creation or object or phenomenon in Nature. Rather, we ourselves make it complex due to the many psychological compulsions we have or acquire or build during our existence in this material world which causes the conflict and the pain by way of resistance to certain things and the acceptance and acquisition of some. Its difficult for us to observe or watch something without involving our mind. Our mind interferes with the process of our thought for each of our acts.

Lets take an example - lets keep a glass of beer in the middle of a table and ask four guys to look at it and tell us what they think - chances are you will come with four different opinions!

Life was always like a vast sea beach and we strolling across looking and collecting sea-shells… we hold on to some while some we throw away thus creating - happiness and unhappiness.

Throughout our life we acquire knowledge on many aspects - from books, from teachers, from relatives, from circumstances, from experiences, from events, interactions, exchanges. And all this acquired knowledge is used to build only our own self - our own beliefs, our illusions in making us believe that we are all different individuals - making everyone of us a self centered entity - what i mean is all our actions and thoughts act with ‘us’ in the center of it.

Whatever we observe is guided by our desires, our motive our memory our thought. Instead of a beer even if we see a blooming rose - one will think to take a photo, another to draw it, someone to pluck it for his/her friend, someone to simple keep it, someone will ignore it, some will stay away as they may not like the smell ! All these actions happens with the illusive ‘me’ in the center a product of knowledge which help build it. So even being similar we act so differently.

I want this , i don’t want this, i am correct, i want to be a director, i want to an actor, i don’t want a jet, i don’t want to read this crap, i know better, i want sex, i want solitude, i hate liquor, i like guys, i like to show off, i like piercing, i love youtube, to blah blah… knowledge makes us create an image of our own self and others around us in our mind from which our actions take shape… And actions which takes shape from the self-centered knowledge and our selfishness, ego, vanity, greed and aggression is always damaging and will give rise to conflicts - conflicts between man and woman, conflict between societies, nations, institutions, religious groups and all people. And all of these leads us to try and act differently to prove and establish our so called individuality - one of the prime objective of life today is to showcase one as ‘different’ - either by a weird haircut or making a youtube video in the shower or having a tatoo or writing nonsense in a social profile. We ourselves are creating differences between us which have much greater effect on humanity at a macro level.

Observing things or becoming aware of something without our knowledge interfering the observation is difficult - i am not saying unattainable.

The other factor which is important and requires consideration in this context is time. As knowledge is acquired over time - we acquire knowledge over time. But that we will discuss in the next article.

Published with The American Chronicle

What I have found in interacting with a few friends on my last article - its difficult for most of us to act without any reference to thought - thought which is a product of past. I sincerely agree - and one thing I want to tell all of you that this words which I write here are not words to be taken as a theory or as an analysis or as a preaching - never - because whenever you accept authority of  anyone on anything, you will simply close the doors of true awareness and get attached to a fixed path. I want to discuss these observations and also request you to truly ask your own self or try to be aware from where all our action comes.

Its difficult to imagine a blank canvas but not un-attainable. We simple have to get inside everything to truly be aware of the phenomenon. If we are to observe our own actions - we meaning the product of our immoral and evil past - we, meaning the living example of mankind - we need to look at our actions without getting influenced by knowledge. Else - if we just think that this act of ours is violent or that act is an act of hatred then we will be creating a difference between the observer and the action. We are the violent - we are greedy - we are envious - and all these comes from the self which is a product of time and knowledge - where we are conditioned to response hate with hate, violence with violence and be on a continuous chase under the influence of the immoral society which we have build so far.

We normally have a tendency, rather not a tendency but we think that we live in the past, present and also future - we look before and after while living in the present. But is that true ? Human beings as of now have always lived in the Past - the past being his memory.

Even when we are living in the present we try and analyze everything with reference to the past and when we plan or think about the future we use past as a background for all our projections. We are here we want to be there - we always think with the past in mind. Even when we try to understand something new we try to refer it to past theories, facts, formula and then try to put meaning to the new experience. And this is where we become blind to new ideas, concepts, theories etc. Its requires complete shutting off the Past to invent a new use of an electro-magnetism as in a

Imagine some happening in your childhood - say, a school on fire at night with one window falling off after a while. As you age a lot of things gets stored into your memory. So if someone mention you the word “fire” it gives lot many recall, added to that the word “night” also gives quite a few. Now if the word “school” is mentioned or even maybe the word “falling window” then 90% or more chance that you will recall this event in your childhood. In modern day world we call this tags - the human brain also does the same thing unconsciously with every event and whenever we come across these tags in a particular order the mind pulls the event on the visual sketchpad and we recall them.

The strange thing is these also happens unconsciously. How often we come across something beautiful like maybe a warm cup of coffee with some beautiful friend or a good song with romantic words or an evening sun with a cool drink in hand… Our senses don’t have memories but whenever we do something or experience something we have a unconscious tendency to compare with some past experience to measure the feeling and mark it as better or worse or similar. This happens when the tags are repeated.

Our senses really don’t have memories but its our mind which ‘tags’ every sense with some experience and remember them or store them - and that causes this comparison or conflict. If we like something - maybe a song or a book or a food we take it as a good feeling - we become so habituated that we do the tagging unconsciously. the brain stores the sense (in effect it should not have) with that particular image for future reference. So different people come up with different point of view for the same object!

The other interesting thing is that the process of tagging also solves another mystery - dreams. When we sleep the mind still works and reorganizes the memory - short term and long term in different sections ( The part called Hippo-campus in our brain does this function - Ref: Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1991) (Drachman & arbit, 1966; Squire, 1982) (Benjamin, Hopkins, & Nation, 1994, p.284). Now this process is somewhat like the de-fragmentation of your computer hard drive which optimizes space and performance. In our brain each event gets organized and the corresponding tags also. So during the process of transforming memory whenever there a sequence of tags formed in a particular fashion (even partly) the mind visualizes an event on the visual-spatial sketch pad . Now this event can be funny, weird, sad, exciting, absurd anything at random - as there are millions of possible combination of tags into a realistic story-board. Say for example - you can see yourself having a cup of coffee with George Bush while sitting on the third level of Eiffel Tower - anything. Dreams cannot be something which we have not seen ever or experienced ever - sometimes we might think it as new - but basically its a fusion or combination of tags which makes it seem new.

Coming back to the tagging of senses -  a song arouses a feeling of melancholy or a nostalgia simply because it was tagged with some other events. A coffee tastes bad or good not from the taste it delivers but from the silent review by the mind which compares it with some past event based on the same tagging. That’s the reason why instead of enjoying a beautiful sunset we have a feeling of sadness or something missing.

It is very difficult to see something with a clean mind free of prejudice or perceived notions unless we let go of the system of tagging consciously. Its difficult as of now as even though we have made some technical progress we are still in a nascent stage of mental evolution. Humanity stands divided on the basis of notions - notions on race, color, religion, nation, language, economy. So every time we experience something or meet someone in any given circumstance - the brain on the background compares it with something in the past using “Tags” and gives it a different shade. But a child will enjoy anyone’s company as his or her mind is free of any notions and will appreciate every experience - a child is always happy.The past is always within us and takes strong hold of the present and also the future which again creates all the conflict in us.

Our current existence is caught between two worlds - the inner and the outer. The outer world - which we created,- is a world of hatred, misery, greed, envy, brutality - a violent world and the resulting society in which we live. A world where every nation is building their arsenal of arms by either manufacturing or simply buying - where the big ones sell while the poor nations buy - we formed this world - and our ways - our thinking is only to be held responsible for this - you and me.

And the inner world or the self is now getting shaped by the same outer world we developed - responding to it , reacting to it every moment , every second . We want our kids to be great human being - appreciating nature, loving people helping the needy - but no the outer world does not permits us to do so - we are forced them to push in the same technological race - the same race for being a superior human being instead of a good human being ! All our desires, our aspirations our ambitions are being constantly shaped by this outer world - how we dress, what we speak, what we do everything. And both this worlds are related and constantly flows from one to the other.

The other day we were discussing a great topic - what is history - arts or science at blogcatalog only. Some people do think that we all need to know our history. I expressed my views that whatever it is - we should deal very carefully with History - that it should not be included at school level along with a few more subjects. History - should be treated as a research subject and always studied under professional supervision.

Coz history changes a man - A kid will play with any other kid as along as they don’t know history - a kid is always a kid - he is not an Arab kid or a Israeli kid or a Hindu kid or a Russian kid or a Black Kid or a Chinese kid - it is we who make them as such and change their perspective to life.