Love

Many scriptures and other profound writings in the past have been presented in a Dialogue format - most notably the Bhagavat Gita. I too propose to adopt something similar here. Here's an excerpt of a chat between my sister and me. (I think the world of my sister, and I may be excused for it)

21:00 Aritri: love s nt done lik buisness

  neway kp it ur way

21:01 me: i agree

  but love is something that should make u rise

  not fall

  true love increases one's powers

  remember kikio

 Aritri: i noe

  nice :)

21:02 me: she was lost in inu yasha's thoughts

  her rival priestess thought that falling in love made her spiritualy weak

  and attacked her

21:03 but in spite of being lost in thought

  she not only repelled the attack nonchalantly

  but also practically destroyed the enemy priestess

  this example is etched into my mind

21:04 and u must remember it too

  i don't know if m in love

  in fact m trying to find out if m capable of such a thing

  but i care for these ppl

21:05 i think so atleast

  and probably that's something like loove too

  coz it inspired me to apply those fundas

  which i didn't even know properly abt

21:06 that's all

  temme what u think

21:08 Aritri: bravo

  m amazed

  realy

  u inspire me

  pls blog this thingy up

 me: no way

21:09 will be teased to no end

 Aritri: arey

  pls blog it up

  man dis s wat ppl

  die 2 hear read

  dey need dis clearance didi

  do sum social service

So, upon her request, I narrate this excerpt from a famous Japanese Manga storyline.

"Once upon a time, the world was inhabited by humans and demons. The latter came in all shapes and sizes, and like humans, in all personality types. Those who were kind and good sometimes fell in love with humans, and raised mixed families. Those who meant no good to any creature were slain by monks/nuns and priest(esse)s.

We talk of a time when there existed a Sacred Jewel (history and name irrelevant to us now), guarded fiercely by our heroine, a priestess named Kikio. Evil demons and humans sought this artefact with equal enthusiasm, for all the reasons typical to such fairy tales.

But one fine day, an exceptional individual came to seek the stone. Born of a human mother and a demon father, he had had a tough time growing up. Neither the humans nor the demons would accept him, and his mixed blood had unusual properties (not of interest here). Sick of being in no-man's land (no-demon's land, actually), he sought the powers of the Jewel to turn into a fully fledged demon. Meet the hero, Inu Yasha.
Well, needless to say, they met. Also needless to say, it was love at first sight.

Strictly speaking, priestesses differ from nuns (in the Japanese form of Buddhism) in that they are ascetics - they can't get married. So this was, sort of, bad news in a lot of respects.

So, word got out. A rival priestess (name both irrelevant and difficult), who was evil, btw, decided that the time was ripe to wipe Kikio out. Assumption was, since the priestess has fallen in love, her spiritual powers have weakened.

So one evening, when Lady Kikio sat on the riverbank, contemplating her beloved, our villainess struck. Too bad for her though. For the thing is, losing herself in his thought had made Kikio 4 times more alert, and 10 times more powerful, and with a casual flick of her bow (she was always armed), she not only deflected the aforementioned attack, but wiped the villainess out.


fin"


Ignorant as I may be of many things, I do believe that being in love magnifies one's powers, and this tale is one of my favourite examples.

It's only words... Part II - वान्ग्मयम तपः

Words are constituted of two parts - the phonetic, or sound, and the intrinsic meaning. The phonetic part is manifest- it can be heard, recorded in writing/audio, and reproduced. The meaning is unmanifest- it can only be perceived or understood.

One ancient school of thought described God the same way. Divinity was expressed in the manifest form as Creation, and as the Unmanifest form that was the Spirit or Paramatma or whatever one might call it. In fact, so strong was their concept of duality, that their official language had a singular, plural and dual form.

Seeing this similarity in between the nature of God and words, they held words sacred, and professed that  the art of good speech was tantamount to penance - वान्ग्मयम तपः

The school of thought is of course the Shaktha/Shaiva school, whose credo is:

वागर्थविद सम्वृत्तौ, वागर्थः प्रतिपत्तये |

जगतः पितरौ वन्दे, पार्वती परमेश्वरौ ||

Salutations to the parents of all Creation, Parvati and Parameshvara, who are inseparable, just like the sound and the meaning (of a word) are inseparable.

Divinity theories aside, there's no denying that words are powerful tools in the aid of mankind. Wielding them skilfully requires true penance. But using them well is penance too.

Long before Socrates' triple test, our scriptures defined that anything to be said must satisfy three criteria: सत्यम्, प्रियम्, हितम् - It should be true, it should sound good and it should be well intended. Such speech is truly an offering to God, and pleases all who hear it, and never fails to fulfil it's intentions.

So with the best of intents, I pray that this Deepavali, Ganesh, Lakshmi and Sarasvati, bless us with the power to win over the recruiters with our words (and deeds, but mostly words).

It's only words... Part I - Etymology

E PLVRIBVS VNNVM - one, among many. This is one of the two inscriptions on the Great Seal of The United States of America. বিবিধের মাঝে আছে মিলন মহান - among the various, exists this great union. This is a lyric from a Bengali patriotic song, referring to what is technically known as The Union of India or The Indian Union.

There cannot be union without communication. But what happens when the means to communicate becomes the instrument of diversification?

The parable of the tower of Babel tells us of such consequences. In a nutshell, the story goes like this:
Ages and ages ago, the twelve tribes of Israel decided to pool in their technological expertise and build a tower that would take them straight to heaven. Infuriated by this arrogant intent, God created a multitude of languages, making communication between the tribes effectively impossible. Since the tribes couldn't understand each other, they couldn't coordinate and build the tower, and their ambitious plans were laid to waste.


Biblical parables aside, the languages of the world, while being distinct, are definitely not distant. Shown below is a graphic taken from my sister's project

Copyright Aritri Roy

This brings us to another branch of knowledge that is closely related to mythology - we call it etymology - the study of words and their origins.

I'm inclined to quote Prof. Srinivasan, our OB-II prof here - that a language is more than a sum of its grammatical syntax and vocabulary. A foreign speaker, who's an expert on a language can be easily differentiated from a native speaker, because the former would not have the body language, the slang or the attitude of the latter. All this simply because he wasn't brought up in that culture.

Etymology however focuses only on the vocabulary of languages, and can give valuable insights into the history and the mindsets of the speakers of the languages. But again, there is also a matter of perception.

Take for example the words for left - sinistra in Latin and gauche in French. It is clear that they're the origins of the English words sinister and gauche, both with very negative meanings. Dan Brown related the fact that the left side has traditionally been associated with the 'Feminine Principle', to the prevalent male chauvinism of the Dark Ages and thus explained the etymology of these words.

While this theory is plausible, I draw your attention to another very gender-neutral explanation to the same phenomenon. Do you think it is a coincidence that left handed people make only 25% of the human population? Before you point out that left-handedness is a recessive trait, let me assure you that it's not the cause for the actual demographics.

Maybe, just maybe the low survival rates of left-handed people caused a stigma to be attached to the phenomenon of left-handedness, and anything related to the left side. Hence the origins.

The point in mind was that etymology, like mythology, has tremendous powers of revelation, if used carefully. With this short piece, I leave you to ponder on the true meaning of 'It's only words...'

... to be continued

XL Suuktani

I wrote these shlokas in the Crederity PPT. I'd be happy to know if anyone could translate them before I post their meanings. I'll add more shlokas and their translations soon. (Plz excuse the lack of halantas, and Kudos to the Google people for developing such an awesome transliterating interface)
आकर्ण्य यस्य सुस्वरं, द्रष्ट्वा यस्य वदनं |
त्रिश्णाम नाशयते येन, तस्मै सद्बांधावे नमः ||


कोमलं हृदयं यस्य, शोकनिवारने रुचिः |
मतिमान बलवन्तश्च, तस्मै वल्लभाय नमः ||  

My OB PLP

In this personal learning paper, I intend to discuss not the content of the course, but what I learnt by attending the classes – both about myself and about the subject.

In the very beginning, the subject of Organizational Behaviour seemed to me an attempt to formalize, through theory and jargon, what is commonly known as ‘common sense’. It was a bad attitude, because it prevented me from learning anything at all.

The only life I’ve known so far is that of a student, and I’ve learnt to trust my teachers completely. So when encountered with a subject that seemed wholly unworthy of study, and that too by so respectable a teacher, in an institution of such calibre, was rather disconcerting. Even my father, who’s an MBA in finance, spoke highly of the subject. All of this compelled me to reconsider my view.

I commenced my soul searching by trying to relate what I learnt to subjects I was more familiar with, i.e. the pure sciences. The very backbone of this viewpoint is that there exists a chain of things in nature, and various levels in this scale come under the purview of various sciences. The very fact that this hierarchy exists, justifies the study of all hierarchies. In fact I recalled that one of the things that motivated me to do an MBA was to understand the hierarchy in the artificial chain of things – the economy, for example.

One of the first pillars of OB is that people will inevitably form groups. Thus, even though in OB-1 we focus on the individual, experiments like the Hawthorne one and the various theories of learning and motivation prove the power and influence of groups on people. In that way people are like atoms. A silver atom, for example, has the power to kill the highly dangerous MRSA bacteria when in isolation, but loses that property when it is part of a wire. Similarly, copper loses its superior conducting powers when made into nanotubes.

As a student of Biology, I had the opportunity to get to learn about the basics of this subject under the head of Ecology and Behaviour. We learnt that all behaviour in the wild originated from one motive – the preservation of one’s genetic makeup, even if it meant reducing or destroying the chances of another creature of the same species i.e. the object of all behaviour was to ensure that the creature left viable offspring. And that all other needs and motives could be traced back to this one.

Take the case of the butterfly, for example. Upon hatching, the caterpillar does nothing but eat, so it can pupate properly and become a butterfly. This creature spends its time pollinating flowers of the plants that it knows will be food for its future generations, mates, lays eggs (if female) and then dies.

The behaviour of solitary, selfish herd and colonial animals (other kingdoms as well) could be equally explained by this one need. In a true colonial situation, for example naked mole rats or ants or bees, each member is practically a genetic clone of the other, so it doesn’t hurt to have only one reproducing member.

Students of ecology and behaviour rarely venture into the domain of Human Behaviour, even if they do realize that there is an inevitable linkage. I realized that Freud, who didn’t sound like an ecologist to me, was probably also referring to this same point of view in his notions of infantile sexuality.

Exceptions in this theory, of course, are grouped under altruistic behaviour, and are more difficult to explain. For example, emperor penguins fight over the adoption of an orphaned chick, which is not genetically close to either prospective parent.

Humans are by no means wholly altruistic, but do seem to display a component in their behaviour that doesn’t comply with the prevalent theory. And I am glad that I got the opportunity to study theories of need and motivation that capture that component. With each passing day, I understood the relevance of the subject.

But perhaps the strongest link I perceived was that between models of perception and Optics. I mean Rayleigh’s criteria for resolvability of images is exactly what is implied by the perceptual grouping models.

At the end of it, I realized that the fundamental premise on which this field is based is not just that Human behaviour is explainable and predictable, but that it can and should be managed to the advantage of the organisation. OB isn’t just about knowing others, it is about knowing myself.

The opiate of the masses

For any algorithm to run, some minimum input data is required. Now imagine an algorithm that can fetch for itself the data that it requires in order to run. Stressed by the exercise? No problem, just think of the lowliest creature you can think of - maybe a virus.

A virus is essentially a strand (single or double) of nucleic acid - which is basically the algorithm with the purpose of replicating itself - enclosed in a protein coat. When it comes in contact with a suitable host cell, it injects its genes into the host where it is transcripted and translated into the proteins and replicated - basically, copies are made. these are assembled into new viruses, which flood the host cell till it bursts, and then are sent out. When not in contact with anything alive, it simply lies there, doing nothing.

This was life, from the virus' point of view. I draw your attention to the way it spends its lifetime.

If you're of the view that creatures can be grouped from least evolved to the most evolved, then consider a ceature from the middle of that ranking - a butterfly, maybe.

Upon hatching, the caterpillar does nothing but eat, so it can pupate properly and become a butterfly. This creature spends its time pollinating flowers of the plants that it knows will be food for its future generations, mates, lays eggs (if female) and then dies.

Notice again how it spends its lifetime.

Look now at a lion. A highly evolved creature. The leader of the pride, in fact. He doesn't hunt, but gets the biggest share of the spoils. He defends his territory and his position in his pride, and mates when his lionesses are 'on heat'. Apart from that he only sleeps.

What a waste of talent, isn't it?

Idea is, at both extremes of lifeforms, we've creatures with a lot of 'free time'. I'd define free time as any amount of time not spent in doing survival tasks. Basically, free time seems to follow an inverse bell curve.

The difference is, can this free time be utilized?

____________________________________________________________________

Back to our algorithm. It needs minimum input data to run. So does every lifeform, to survive.

A sapling needs to find water, sunlight and nutrients - therefore it has a rudimentary sensory and motor system that attracts its shoot to light and away from gravity and its root towards water and gravity.

The more things a creature needs in order to survive, the better sense and locomotory systems it has.

It so happens, the more evolved a creature is, the more things it needs to survive, and hence, we have the creatures with the most 'free time' also having the best sense and locomotory systems.

Somewhere along the evolutionary ladder, this double convergence of time and resource turns into a triple convergence. A creature with highly developed sensory processing centre with time to spare from tasks of survival. How does it engage the idle yet powerful system? Simple, by probing into things apparently unconnected to its survival. And thus are generated the first probing questions and their first attempts at answers.

Sometimes, the business of Q & A seemed more interesting than survival itself. So here was Homo sapiens neanderthalis, a social animal, with an ice age to survive, and abstract questions to answer. What did he do?

Simple, he invented religion. An institution that had the following functions:

• Define socio-political relationships and hierarchies
• Define the ways and means to subsistence i.e. the processes of hunting, farming, etc.
• Define the judicial system
• Provide the answers to abstract questions, such as about genesis and destruction
• Provide spiritual and psychological guidance

These were the functions of the institution of religion, as concieved by our close cousins the neanderthals, and adopted/propagated by our own ancestors.

The ages passed by, each time stripping religion of one of its functions till at long last only the last listed function was relevant to it.

Religion has been a very useful tool, as well as a potent weapon. Which of these conflicting roles it will predominantly play in the future, will depend on the practitioners of the religion.

Meanwhile, the wealth of answers constituted from all religions of the world (living and extinct), and the customs that stem from them, create the massive corpus of knowledge known as Mythology.

On this pensive note, I leave you dear reader, to attend my OB project meeting.

All in good time

No matter who we are, where we are, the one thing that we are never seperated from, is our past. While some of us confine ourselves to cribbing or raving about our own little lifetimes, some others feel incomplete if they cannot make an attempt atleast to delve into the mysteries of genesis itself.

The fact is, people of the latter kind have always formed the majority of the human race. Which is what led to the most ingenious of our inventions - religion; and the most essential of our discoveries - the scientific method. Certain people, among which the Theosophists are the most prominent, believe also in the exixtence of another method - the occult method. But more on that later.

What I wish to say is, that in studying either theology, science or theosophy, we essentially study the same subject - our past - our History.

History as an independent subject also exists, and follows certain methods. It relies upon a body of evidences, i.e. records and the ingenuity of scholars to reconstruct the events past based on them.

Biology, for example, is natural history, and relies on fossil records as well as the DNA of living creatures.

The starry sky, is a picture of the universe that many years ago, whence the light that we see actually left the respective celestial bodies.

The same can be said of rock strata, which to a Geologist, speak volumes of the history of our planet.

In searching for Theories of Everything (TOE's) and Grand Unification Theories (GUT's), physicists try and unravel the mysteries of the big bang itself.

But not all records are tangible, and most are ambiguous. In my opinion however, there are two types of records.

One type of records is photographic. The other is holographic.

A photograph records the intensities of light falling on the film. It captures the scene instantly and can be accessed instantly - by the unaided eye.

A hologram records the phase difference between the two LASER sources that are made to fall on the scene to be captured, and can be accessed again only with the aid of a LASER source.

Most records used for formal purposes are photographic, like the fossil records. They are usually unambiguous, i.e. they do not require any interpretation.

The holographic records, which require decoding, constitute a body of knowledge called Mythology.

Being of a, let's say curious mindset, I sought to unravel the mysteries of creation since a very early age. Indeed, it is this thirst for knowledge which led me to pursue the pure sciences to a level as serious as graduation - I am a Physics major.

But I've had an equal measure of exposure to mythology as well. At an age when the elders of the family indoctrinate the young ones in their prevalent religion, I was taught to enjoy the stories without being compelled to believe them to be true.

This was how I became a mytho junkie and this is what I feel mythology means to mankind. As for more details, all I can say is that they'll come, all in good time.