Profound Truths and Powerful Illusions
By JIRARA
© JIRARA, September 2020
Published by JIRARA on matrubharti.com
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Disclaimer: This is the work of fiction as far as all the characters, their names and the names of all the events are concerned and all these are imaginary and hence any resemblance to the persons (and their lives) dead or alive, and any places are coincidental. Even if a few events might look realistic/’real’, these are fictionalised and the associated names are changed in order to maintain their privacy, honour, and security. No intention whatsoever is meant to hurt any feelings of whosoever, irrespective of their personal/cultural beliefs, social or political inclinations, religion-orientations/practicing/philosophy, life styles, and work/business. The ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ (if any used) do not necessarily mean the author of this book, and these and other such pronouns: her, hers, his, he, she, him, you, your, yours, ours, theirs…; are used for effective personification and dramatization, and the readers should not take these on their ‘own persons’. The readers should take these stories/verses/thoughts with/in good spirit. The presented ideas and material are based, where feasible, on readings and (thought-) analyses of scientific/other open literature (which seemed most profound and trustworthy), with as much care as possibly taken. The readers are requested to verify these notions on their own, and use their own discretion. However, these stories/verses/thoughts/ideas (mostly original) are expressed here with an intention of increasing awareness of the readers with a hope that in an overall sense, their (and ours) consciousness would be heightened (in all and multiple directions), so that we all can live our lives on this planet with true happiness, ever-lasting peace and real joy (irrespective of our orientations). The author and the publisher will not be responsible for any negative effects/situations arising as a result of reading these stories/verses and/or following the suggestions if any. No discussions/dispute of any kind will be entertained at any time and in any way, manner, and/or forum. JIRARA.
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Profound Truths and Powerful Illusions
-only a very brief exposition is given here.
As we all know, our lives have or our life has (the word life is such a simple as well a complex terminology, that it can be used in singular or plural manner and even in the mixed way as I often do) relatively limited span (maximum 100 or at the most 120 year) on this planet, the Earth. Nature’s evolutionary spans are millions of years wide or long (according to the well-established/authenticated world’s literature on science and evolution, the latter is the historical account as well science of all the biological species). Even our technological developmental life cycles are much longer, in some cases, than our own life/lives spans (here, I use life and lives without any grammar).
Imagine a situation that is, let us do a thought-experiment (TE): For a while let us say for some reason human birth is stopped for say 101 years from this very moment. Assume that the maximum life span of any individual born just one second ago and earlier is only 100 hundred years. Then, in that last one year, just after the end of the 100th year, i.e. in the 101st year, there would not be any individual on this planet. The entire plant will be devoid of humans for at least one full year. This means you or I will not be there, and hence we then are not running the world, in fact there would not be anybody to see or run the world.
So, if this foregoing restriction is removed, then the world is run by the people who are continuously born, in a daisy chain manner. It means there would be a time when those who all are running this world for some decades, will not be at all there one day, and this will continue for ever, hopefully. This means that the millions of people are trained to run the world, and these then manage the affairs of the world, in absence of their masters, mentors and trainers.
The major implication of the foregoing TE is that, we the present generation should impart proper, correct, and adequate training so that the next generations can manage their affairs without much difficulties and can concentrate on their new issues and problems arising from their current/future situations. Hence, our present educational/social/political/S&T/health/environmental/business programs should be based on ‘inclusive’ principle and should be such that, in addition to giving training, all these programs should have an element of ‘compassion’ toward our fellow humans; otherwise people will not live in harmony, and the world would not be run in the correct manner, this in itself will adversely affect the lives of our own children.
Let us do another TE: You have two parents; a father and a mother. Let us take for example time being of a father. Your father had/has a father of his own, and his father had a father of his own. So, if we go back in time, then the link goes far behind the present time, and then surely you have an n-th order (level) great great great…grandfather (NGGG…G), and it continues like that in/on the backward time line. At that moment in the remote past, you do not know, whom would you have encountered, you should further explore this possibility and face the surprise; in most likelihood, that individual might have been some animal, if you go far in the backward time some millions and millions of years. However, you need not worry right now, be happy that in the present times we are a highly evolved and the most intelligent species with thousands of things to explore around.
Now, supplement this with another TE: Take a picture of yourself, and keep aside, and then take picture of your father and put above your picture. In many sense it will be similar, but some differences would be there. Now, do the same by keeping your grandfather’s picture, and then imagine you had a picture of your NGGG…G. I am sure you would have by now realized that your picture does not resemble at all to your NGGG…G (which is far back in time, some thousands & thousands of years ago), of course in term of anatomy, he would have got similar features, but, still if you did not know that he was your NGGG…G, then you would not have agreed with the fact that he was your NGGG…G. In all probability, your almost last (in the sense of the previous times) NGGG…G, or say nearly the first NGGG…G would have existed some millions & millions years ago. Then, it is a matter of further study (which is also well established in the domain of science) to figure out who could have/had been that first (your) NGGG…G.
Now we can further supplement the above two/three thought experiments: You know, that most of us always look into mirror, almost every morning at least once. Now, imagine that you are doing this every day for last 60 years, may be say from the time you were just 11 years old, and thus now at the present time you are 70 years old. When you are looking every day you might have noticed, that there is not much of a significant change in your face, from the previous day, and then there was no such change on your yesterday’s face from the previous third day, and so on, in the backward times. However, assume that you were taking pictures of your daily face from last 60 years, but were never looking at these pictures. Now, access your pictures taken, and compare your present one with the one taken 5 years ago, and so on, every 5 years’ intervals. You will realize there would be marked differences in the pictures that are say of 5 years’ intervals, starting from your 11th year age; and so on. When we daily see our face, it looks almost similar to the previous day’s face and so back in the time; but with a larger gap, we find that we have changed considerably; though we can decipher certain sharp features that might have changed a little.
When we put our own actually and factually carried out these three/four thought experiments together we can definitely ascertain that:
i) the process in evolutionary-nature (EN) is slow and gradual, this is very much a fact as observed by us (and our predecessors) for several years, and in most cases things do not happen suddenly or spontaneously (there are a few events, though happen in this way and we can discuss these happenings and the reasons of it, later on, may be in future),
ii) our origin might have been far and much far back in time (millions & millions years back/ago), and
iii) the physical-visual shape, anatomy-structure (external and internal), and colour/s of our ancestor/s (in faraway times in the past) might have been much different from our present forms; whether we like it or not, and believe it or not; this seems to be a very basic fact, and it is better we accept it (of course it is up to you); you may on your own think about this further. This seems to be a factual truth, a profound truth and this leads to a study of some more profound truths.
Profound Truths and Powerful Illusions
With the foregoing background, we can then highlight some very interesting truths that exist in EN. First, let us make ourselves clear about the definition of several types/aspects of truths. Many believe there is only one truth in this Universe. For our sake, we call this as an absolute truth, unitary absolute being, and/or the supreme truth (in one eastern philosophy, it is called ‘Paramatma (-n’), as a cause of this existing Universe, and ourselves, including all the biological species, and all the objects in the Universe; here again it is also called a ‘sanatan dharm’, i.e. eternal duty/responsibility). Ironically, only a few in the human world claim that they have had experienced the existence of this truth and that they cannot show it ever or display; and it can be experienced by an individual him/herself, after following certain procedures, which in fact seem to be very difficult to be practiced by a common-layman. However, in such cases there are no practical proofs, just we go by our faith and accept that such individuals might have existed and exists and they might have attained that state of the consciousness so that we can regard them having achieved the perfect understanding of the absolute truth; or might have experienced the absolute bliss. There are several books on these procedures and philosophies, which provide a very interesting reading and study.
Then there are certain factual and actual things and events which we can observer ourselves, or these have had been seen and observed by others (in near past times, or very far away in the past), in whose descriptions/writings, and statements we have trust. We can call these as profound truths that are exhibited in the nature. If we have reasonable time and can put some efforts, we can ourselves verify these truths, provided we have certain specific gadgets available to us, in most circumstance we don’t have, since they are too big or too costly. In this process the observations, and analyses of the data/information generated are a crucial aspect.
Observations: We can easily surmise that we need to observe many things around us in order to get nearly complete or even partial knowledge of what is happening in our vicinity, and we need to use one or more senses of ours (human sense organs) working towards accomplishing this knowledge. We can use our eyes directly or we can use microscopes, and telescopes for these observations. After collecting sufficient amount of data, we need to analyse these data/information to derive some useful knowledge (by scientific methods) about the object under observation and test, this is called knowledge discovery. There are many objects, events, and phenomena that we cannot observe, because we, as a layman, do not have access to the gadgets required to do this special kind of observation, and hence we have to depend upon the open literature available on the observations already made by others, who we then have to trust, because they might have used sophisticated (and lab-calibrated) tools and procedures (methods of data/signal analysis) to derive some useful knowledge. This entire process can be termed as ODIK (observations-data/information-knowledge). The ODIK technology is in the modern times far advanced, and we can always rely upon (its conclusions), even if we ourselves have not used this process.
Based on some ODIK, scientists (who have/had interests in physics, chemistry, botany, biology, and/or zoology, geology, archaeology) have deciphered certain truths, which we call here as profound truths (PFs). Of course there are several such profound truths in the physical world and the world of chemistry. Some of these (and not all of them) are collected here as only a few items. These truths are so well known (and well accepted by now) that we generally do not spend much time to discuss or ascertain them.
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PT 1 (in the physical world):
i) the Earth is rotating around the Sun and at the same time it is revolving around its own axis; former is in one year; and the latter is in one day, nearly 24 hours;
ii) The natural satellite of the Earth, the moon (popularly known as Chandamama in our children’s world, especially in India) rotates exactly once (on its own axis) every time it circles the Earth; and hence we see its same side always; this is just the coincidence.
iii) the Sun with its entire solar systems constituting its planets (9, or more) also revolves around some centre in our galaxy;
iv) the planets in the orbits near Sun are hot, and the ones beyond the Earth are cold;
v) it so happened that the Earth was not that hot and not that cold, and the life evolved on it some billions years ago;
vi) first, the physical world/celestial objects, i.e. the matter, evolved, and then biological world evolved on our Earth;
vii) mainly there are three types of material objects/aspects: a) solid, b) liquid, and c) gaseous; a fourth state is that of plasma.
And so on…
PT 2 (in the chemistry world):
i) our daily observation is that the water when overheated, gets boiling, this is of course a physical phenomenon, and the boiling temperature for water is 100 deg. Celsius (centigrade);
ii) we might have observed that when, say milk is put for heating, and if we forget to switch of the stove, it would get evaporated, and the residue will turn stark black, because at the fundamental level it is made of carbon molecules, and the carbon is black.
And so on…
PT 3 (in the biological and other spheres):
i) the biological species originated some millions and millions years ago on the Earth,
ii) most (in fact almost all) need for their survival on Earth: a) oxygen, b) water, and c) energy;
iii) this energy comes mainly from the Sun, and the plants we eat (vegetables, fruits, and grains), which in turn ‘cook’ food for us by absorbing Sun’s rays into them;
iv) all carnivorous animals eat other animals, which in turn might have gathered and stored energy by eating plants and leaves; meaning these latter are herbivorous animals; and the predators get readymade supply of food and nutrients, of course in a compact energy-package, and still they have to digest and assimilate these nutrients in their blood streams.
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These and many such profound truths create a powerful illusion that there is somebody sitting somewhere away from these things and creating all these phenomena and events. In fact, according to authenticated science there may not be anybody like that.
What we the humans do and plan and come out with procedures/processes are called as the designs, and what looks like a design in the nature is called designoid. In fact, in most cases these designoids are much better, compact, and robust than our own designs. Of course, vice versa is also true, but most of these designs have life cycles that are very shorter than many designoids; and many are as robust as the related designoids. This aspect is also very fascinating, and requires further study and analysis.
We can illustrate two more interesting examples of the profound truths here, and associated powerful illusion:
1. The bats either don’t have good eyesight or it is almost nil; and they have evolved to use sonar signals for hunting for foods. They emit this signal continually to their surroundings, and based on the received signals they traverse the path. That is if the signal comes back to them after rebounding from an object, or an obstruction, the bats easily avoid this path where the obstruction is lying. Their ‘eyes’ are acoustic signals.
This gives us a strong feeling that the bat’s sonar ‘radar’ system is designed by somebody, and we in most probable case attribute it to ‘God’, a creator, an intentional designer, etc., in fact there is no reason to believe in this design, it had evolved over a period of long cycles of evolution in the process of adaptation of the bats in several generation, as a step by step strategy to combat their poor or nil eyesight.
2. The moths during the onset of monsoon, in our homes’ living room keep circulating around, say a lighted candle, and most probably, they will ram into the hot flame and die. In fact, for the moth this is an evolutionary misfiring; since when there were no such lamps/candles/bulbs/light, etc. the moths had evolved to traverse the path at an angle to the parallel lights emanating from distant moon/stars, etc.; and since the present day lights are not so parallel emanating from a concentrated/concentric source, and the moths still use the same angle (learned for thousands of years in their evolutionary cycles), they get entrapped in the rays of the light making/using the same old angle, and in the process, they converge to the very source of light, and get burnt.
The poets derive a pleasure of relating these sacrifices of the moths to lovers, without understanding the real cause of the moths having wrongly traversed towards the hot flame or bulb.
3. A complete human baby is made in mother’s womb in just nine months, step by step, by following only the so called ‘local’ rules. In fact the mother ‘manufactures’ the baby automatically.
There are thousands of such and more simple and complicated profound truths in the nature that give us a strong feeling and notion that there is designer and ‘creator’, who does all these things.
There are several back and forth (for and against) arguments on the subject of ‘creation’/’God’, and the subject of slow, definite and profusely/overwhelmingly scientific process of evolution (including the happening of the cosmos/universe, and subsequent evolution of all the biological species and the origin of humans). The subject is deeper, and at this moment of the time we cannot go in depth for the sake of brevity.
The literatures on both the topics are very interesting to study, and it would require a life time of extracurricular study, and analysis. One needs to keep her/his mind open to these new notions/ideas/information in order to derive benefits from both the studies for his/her own good; with the dictum that the awareness is better than shear ignorance.
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More on these PFs and powerful illusion later…
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