CHAPTER 6
There is this specific need to mention and reiterate that nothing external to us has any meaning, utility and worth for us; we can attain something for which we have mechanism and processes already innately ingrained in our body-mind system. Therefore, when we say, there is a possibility of sanity at personal levels, it is because we have the mechanism and process within us to launch it and successfully preserve it. And why do we say this?
Science has proved it beyond reasonable doubts that our mind mechanism, with all its trillions of neural plexuses, is neutral. It is not preloaded and preoccupied with any inclination for anything good or bad. Brain states are least bothered about how we program neural networks. Universe does not have a ready and deterministic agenda for anything good or bad. It is for we humans as what we feed into our brains, what good or bad we condition our brain states to and which way we shape our behavior and actions for whichever goals. As the brain states and neural plexuses are neutral, we humans at personal levels have the potential to attain mastery of the artistry of shaping and conditioning our own lofty and specific goals for life-living behaviors and actions. This is some basic framework, which works in favor of possibility of sanity.
Therefore, the primary question at this stage of our deliberations is –
We have already discussed in details about how even our consciousness, the ‘I’ or self is not the protagonist, Karta or subject but just a media. Therefore, for all practical purposes, even the ‘Higher Consciousness’, which we can say does the ‘un-shaping’ and ‘shaping’ exercise of our mind consciousness layers is a media. However, this higher consciousness Media is an evolved, objective, holistic and detached one, which has the discipline and dexterity of controlling and managing all communication that the body-mind media expresses in terms of behavior and actions.
The average self or normal mind consciousness must first rise to the evolved state of ‘Higher Consciousness Media’ and there is a process to it. Evolution of ‘I’ or self to higher consciousness primarily has cognitive aspect and therefore, external initiatives do not weigh in, rather it is predominantly an internal enterprise. Evolution to higher consciousness is primarily about how we accept reality in a novel and holistic way, which makes the enterprise purely cognitive, intangible and perceptional. It is all about internalizing Reality in holistic way.
In the eBook titled, ‘Optimality Of I Potentiality: Consciousness, Cognition, Causality And Criticality Of Communication’ by this author, we have deliberated in all possible details about this issue of attainment of Higher Consciousness. That is why we are not repeating it here to avoid this eBook being unnecessarily bulky. Like all the eBooks of this author, it is also available for unrestricted download. Therefore, we shall proceed to our next level deliberation here, humbly inviting you to kindly refer to the aforesaid eBook if you wish to have details about higher consciousness media of body and mind.
When we talk about how to construct a personal model of sanity, we shall divide the whole enterprise into two distinct stages –
Essentially, first stage works as ‘Un-Shaping’ of old and existing consciousness and then the second stage belongs to ‘Shaping’ the new and emergent consciousness for finality of the possibility of sanity in personal life-living and one’s own personal cognitive world. As we have deliberated on the problem of insanity of life-living and human world in every possible detail, we do not need to go into much detailing of ideas, when we talk of the issue of personal sanity. Why? Because, as we have already mentioned, problem and solution are not two mutually exclusive things, rather they are just two sides of the same coin. We have already understood that solution of a problem is just an alternative arrangement and positioning of the same elements, which create a problem or trouble. As we have understood the elements of potentials and probabilities of insanity in detail in earlier chapters, we shall have ease in understanding the elements of solutions as they are the same. What we are doing in the next paragraphs as deliberation of solution is talking about the alternative arrangement, situationing and positioning of the same elements, which we have already known and understood in our detailed talks about the problem of insanity.
So, here we go…
Stage 1
Acceptance One: It probably has to be accepted that we must not still remain lingering with the primary question of life and living, even when we are in 21st century. The question, Who Am I or to say what is ‘self’, needs finality of answer as without this, there probably cannot be any movement towards personal sanity. The singular answer to this question cannot be ever arrived at and accepted, this we all know. We have already discussed as why there cannot be a singular reality and that is why no possibility of any singular answer of questions that is at the core of our life-living. However, what we all need to accept that there probably is a possibility of an easy and singular acceptance of something, which is broadly tangible or tangibility-driven and therefore secularly and singularly objective for we all to accept.
There shall always be dualism about origins and purpose of universe and all lives around us, including humans. But we all can and should ideally accept that now in 21st century, there is little confusion or disagreement about the mechanism and processes of human body and mind. It does not matter whether God created humans or humans created God! It is also irrelevant whether evolution designed us or not. What matters is that we have a certain and common design of body and mind and that does not anyway change irrespective of who created or designed us. The ‘design’ and ‘creation’ is well there. Let the debate as who created the design remain be endless. It does not matter. What actually matters is what we do next, after the design is there.
This is something, modern contemporary scientific wisdom can and does tell us with little dualism and confusion. True that we haven’t yet understood fully the entire mechanisms and processes of human body and brain but yes, we know for sure that we have moved in right direction to know quite a lot about how our body and mind works and the journey of understanding more is heading in right direction. Like, may be scientists shall find some new particle or new element that shall make understanding of matter better in future but it is for sure that it shall not change the current reality about what we so far have understood about different particles and constitution of matter. At this stage of contemporary knowledge, we sure shall get better but miniscule chances that we shall find something that shall reverse or dump our current wisdom about reality and body-mind mechanism.
This acceptance of the secularly and objectively singular knowledge and reality of ‘I’, self or subjective sense of ‘me’ is indispensable for any headway towards personal sanity. We surely cannot reach out to the very process of arriving at personal sanity if we do not accept the mechanism and process of our body and brain. This contemporary knowledge of ‘I-Mechanism’ itself displays and defines as how sanity can be a possibility only at personal level. If ever, collective and societal sanity is to happen, it shall be possible only through the route of aggregation and summation of personal sanities of individuals constituting a society and other collectivities.
As we have talked earlier, it does not matter much as what Reality is and how it plays out in the universe. What matters is what is our own body-mind design, mechanisms and processes that make Reality play out for us, as it does. It is the reality that a person has to handle that matters most. And, as an individual, we all must have this secularly singular acceptance about these body-mind designs, mechanisms and processes to install personal sanity. This aspect of ‘I-Centric Reality’ as singular and secular tool for launching personal sanity has to be instituted as universal cultural requirement, if humanity is to survive and excel in long run.
Reality has situational utility and worth only at a contextual level of life. Reality matters only as there are lives that have a context within the Reality. If there is no context, does it anyway matter what reality is? After all, Reality was always there before life happened and shall always be there even after life is no more there to present a ‘context’!
Every individual can realize this and it is a must to understand, realize and internalize it, even when at the face value, it may seem to be the worst possible realization for any human being. Somehow, the basic hypothesis is that personal sanity may never be attained if an individual does not muster up the courage and option-less enterprise of unlearning and shedding loads of hypocrisies that one is surrounded with and lives up. Hypocrisies may never be dealt a ‘Death Blow’ if an individual fails to accept this singular secular realism that the individual himself or herself is the only practically ‘Real’ context for the Reality to happen, collapse and play out.
It needs to be internalized very consciously. I am alive and in good knowledge of everything that happened to this universe and all lives on Earth in the past 14 billion years. So, I am aware of Reality of everything but it happened because I was born and I happened to have a body and mind. Billions of lives and deaths happened, trillions of things happened and infinite events happened but I didn’t see, experience and remember anything. I saw and experienced everything only in the last few years as ‘I’ happened, my body-mind happened. Also, billions of lives and deaths shall happen, trillions of things shall happen and infinite events shall take place after my death and I shall not see, experience and know them. Reality, whatever it may be, is continuous and non-contextual in its holism, only ‘I’ happen in between at some tiny ‘dot’ in the infinite continuation as some ‘media’ and contextualize the reality, as per the design of my body-mind media.
Reality had and shall play out infinite shades of things but ‘I’ as a temporary ‘Media’ come and go, without having any substantial role in past and future of the cosmic Reality. Almost infinite aspects of the Reality of universe and lives in it are now available for me and they exist. As they exist now, I am aware of the past 14 billion years and can also imagine about next 14 billion years. However, as ‘I’ die, all realities disappear. Nothing ‘exists’ anymore. Realities end! It is because the ‘Media’ of ‘I’, which was the ‘context’ of the Reality to play out and express itself, is dead, disappears and is not there.
Realities are infinite as ‘I’ as media is alive. Realities are zero as ‘I’ as media is dead! Realities as it is or as it might be, exists and still plays out in infinite shades but only through different ‘Media’ of individual ‘Is’, presenting ‘context’ to Reality. Therefore, for all practical purposes, only the individualistic and personal reality exists and as we have talked earlier that even the collective reality stands as the summation of assimilation of all personal realities, there shall always be 3Cs – Chaos, Confusion and Conflict in all collective domains. This also is the primary basis and validation of the hypothesis that sanity of collectivity is actually a misnomer; it does not exist as some entity on its own. Only the possibility of sanity of individual and personal exists and this is something all men and women must strive for.
Reality may look like a continuous and singular entity, irrespective of whether ‘I’ am or other ‘Is’ are alive or dead but, this seems so only because of the continuity in ‘Media’ and ‘context’ of ‘I’, which have a common body-mind mechanism. Therefore, if Reality is ever a singular and continuous realism, it is not because what it is but because of what ‘I’ is and because the commonality of mechanisms and processes of all ‘Is’. This is the singular secular Reality and everything else is variegated mix of hypocrisies.
Unfortunately, very few individuals accept and more importantly ‘internalize’ this Reality. If we realize and internalize this calamitous but singularly secular Reality, we can easily and surely accept that ‘Reality’ is what the ‘Media’ observes and therefore, ‘I’ or self or ‘Myself’ as body-mind Media can only reach out to ‘My Own’ tiny and insignificantly miniscule fragment of Reality. This shall lead to the inevitability of all our focus and energy being assigned and aligned to nothing else but ‘Personal Sanity’.
The universe has no meaning and destined purpose. Lives on Earth or if elsewhere too have no purpose and meaning. Reality itself is nothing and unworthy of any utility. All meanings, all purposes, all Realities start and end with ‘I’ or self. The universe, the Earth, the lives have only those meanings, purposes, utility and worth what ‘I’ or self assigns and accepts. Therefore, if ‘I’ is in Sanity, System, Order, Righteousness, Goodness and Wellness, then only the universe, the Earth, the lives have. It is ‘I’, the self that matters and has any utility. This is the singular notion installed and elaborated 3000 years back in ancient Indian philosophical traditions of ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ (I Am God). The author has elaborated this theme in eBook titled, ‘I Am God’, available for unrestricted download.
This acceptance is the first primary requirement for installation of personal sanity. It can be said with all possible humility and sincerity of consciousness that contemporary humanity must see, understand, accept and internalize that in our civilizational and cultural march to modernity of institutional and organizational life-living, we have almost dumped the primary reality of human life-living. This primary reality, which thinking minds and philosophers of early humanity listed out with strong conviction, is that the individual, the person, an average man or woman is the everythingness of all somethingness that social and collective living can design and execute for sanity of system.
It is tragic and decisively the biggest and worst hypocrisy of humanity that now this individual or person is nowhere in picture in scheme of things of society, culture, economy, markets, politics and even scientific and technological advancements. Rather, personal sanity gets more degraded and emaciated as collective efforts for so-called ‘betterment’ of life-living of common men and women go up. The most glaring example of this worst hypocrisy is how globally, human education system is being majorly shaped, designed and devised to generate ‘Efficient Workers’ for economic activities, which in turn create handful of billionaires and reduce the majority of average men and women as ‘machines’ and slaves. Human education is no more designed for enhancing and improving personal sanity and system of individual because, as we have discussed earlier, it shall create men and women with a strong sense of liberty, purpose and direction. This shall be trouble for politics, governments and businesses!
An individual must see and accept this ‘causality’ of chaos in his or her life and living. As and when a person sees and accepts this hypothesis that sanity is a possibility only at personal levels, he or she shall easily accept that it is now incumbent only upon him and her to begin a personal enterprise for his or her own sanity as the world and its human institution is primarily against personal sanity. If an individual is the sole media of all reality, if ‘I Is God’, none and nothing else can be of any help for the Reality he or she accepts. This acceptance is option-less!
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Acceptance Two: From the first acceptance follows the second acceptance as it is just the extension of the same Reality. The second acceptance, which follows the primary acceptance of the Reality of ‘I’ or self and its mechanism and process, is about the notion and realism of causality, context and relativity. This shall lead an individual to the very crucial and critical realism of Holism. This holism shall then unleash a magic that shall do wonders for the sanity of a person and his or her overall wellness and excellence in life and living.
The aspect of this second acceptance is not difficult to understand as we have already discussed before as how Reality is always contextual and relational. We have talked about how causalities are infinite and omnipresent all around us in different milieus we move in and out in our life and living. These causalities are essentially the Karta, the protagonist and the real and true subject of all actions and behaviors. The causalities themselves are created as contexts and relativity is presented as position and situation in milieus. It is only natural that the ‘Media’ of a person’s body and mind shall play true and real to the causalities fed to it.
As an individual stops, drops his or her reactionary-mode behavior and actions, he or she can lead the reception-mode consciousness to decipher the ‘causality’ that is prompting and designing a possible action or behavior. As and when as individual is able to clearly see and realize the ‘causality’, it shall have ease in further unraveling the ‘context’ or ‘relativity’ that are behind the causality. This is what the ancient Yogic philosophy and Buddha wisdom called for. When the Buddha says, ‘There are pains and there are causes for it’, it actually asks an individual to stop, be in receptive mode consciousness and decipher the ‘causality’ and the ‘context’ that creates it.
Once an individual is able to do so, he has attained the status of a Buddha – The Enlightened One! By the very process of baring and making naked the common, core and critical elements constituting a causality, an individual potentials the probability of all the answers of all the questions and all solutions of all problems.
There is a very famous story about Buddha, which probably exemplifies this entire process of being enlightened by deciphering the causality and its elements of contexts. There is a story that a young woman came crying to Buddha. Her small child had died and she was inconsolable. She told Buddha in a mix of grief and anger that he would have to make her dead child alive by using his powers as she had heard that Buddha was a great saint. The angry woman also threatened Buddha that if her dead child is not brought back to life, she would spread the news to everyone that he was a fake saint with no powers.
Buddha kept a smiling face and told the woman that he would certainly bring her dead child back to life but for that she would be expected to do a small thing. The woman happily agreed to do anything for her child. Buddha told her to bring a small cup of water from a household, where no one had died. The woman rushed back to village and kept asking every household but could not find a family where no one had died. After many hours she came back to Buddha and fell on his feet. She apologized for her behavior and thanked Buddha. She took the dead child in her lap, hugged the child and took her back to village with no tears in her eyes.
The story simply points out at two crucial things. Certain causality, a specific context that creates a causality, makes us ‘reactionary’, which is how our body-mind Media and its mechanism and process is designed for. This reactionary mode consciousness blinds us to the causality, which we fail to see and accept. When we stop, recall our receptive mode consciousness and settle down to see the causality and its context, we can and we do see, understand and accept the Reality with better sanity and poise. The woman had to react the way she did as the causality and its context no way could have elicited other response from her body-mind media. However, when Buddha made her see and accept that mortality is a common, inevitable and generalistic causality, which is not specific to her and her child in any biased or designed way, she arrived at her personal sanity and poise. The woman could see and accept the Holism of Reality and that alone could help her personal sanity. Buddha did nothing; he could not, not anyone else! It was the woman, who did the magic – internalizing the holism of reality of causality and context.
What we all need to do, at our individualistic and personal level is wait and stop, let the reaction of any causality settle down and play out its tenure. All during its onset and playing out tenure, we must consciously call upon our higher consciousness to look for causality and its context. It is always there as no reality is possible without a causality and no causality happens without a context. The whole purpose of seeing, accepting and then internalizing a causality is to arrive at the Holism of the Reality, which a causality suddenly or otherwise presents before us.
The moment this Holism is arrived at, we shall hit the sanity and poise. The reactionary behavior and action shall be automatically subtracted out of the probabilities a causality presents before us. This is definitive recipe for personal wellness, empowerment and excellence.
It is however very critical to go beyond the idea of causality and holism and understand the details of the causality as it is what seeds the tree of sanity for a person. If we wish to decipher causality for it to seed our sanity, we first need to understand the seeding of causality itself. As we have understood before, the genesis of all solutions is in deciphering the genetics of the problem itself. Therefore, understanding the genetics of causality is a must.
It seems, for most practical purposes, there shall always be core element of physicality in any causality and even intangible elements of causality shall sustain its life from the tangible element. Often, there is an element of causality and it naturally and automatically aligns with related causalities. This somehow alters the ‘specificity’ of the expression of that causality. We may say that an element of physicality either on its own or its expression may align with related element or its expression and jointly, they create a specificity that shall play out differently. Therefore, it is relevant to understand that when we look out for a causality that leads or shapes our cognition and resultant behavior/action, we look for the ‘specificity’ or what we may call the ‘exactness’ of the core and primary element of the causality as well as other elements it has aligned with.
The best example of this all can be the most common and transcendental causality of Love in human life-living. Love is a hugely powerful ‘causality’ and we all know from our experiences as well as from vast inventory of love’s historicity and literature that the singular causality of love plays out and expresses itself differently for people, milieus and also in different time and space dimensions. Unraveling the causality of love shall make us understand how we need to look for the ‘seed’ element or elements of a singular causality as well as the other aligned elements, which affect its specificity, playing out and expressions.
There is a famous triangular theory of love, which somehow beautifully describes how causalities work in our lives. The theory says that love is a holism of three different parts or elements. This means – Love as an intangibility or non-physical emergent realism constitutes of three elements. They are – Intimacy, Passion and Commitment.
Now let us decipher and unravel love as a causality and its expressions. The first thing to notice and explain is that at face value, not only love but also all its three constituent elements seem intangibles with no physicality attached to them. However, it is just the opposite. Intimacy and passion are deeply seeded in physicality. There is a bio-chemical or neural basis to all possible shades of intimacy and passion. Science has shown us that how emotions and feelings are two different expressions of a seemingly singular realism. Emotions have a physical basis in bio-chemical and neural circuitry and it is a result of tangible sensory inputting of our five senses. Every emotion has a physical basis wired and genetically embedded in our brain states. The reaction that emotions engender is feelings, which may seem like an intangibility but feelings too have neural basis of expression.
The modern contemporary scientific headways in brain researches have shown us how damage of some part of brain, affecting neural circuitry affects empathetic behavior. The latest brain scanning technology at least tells us as how human behavior and actions are expressions of complex and cooperative processing of sensory and other inputs of information by different parts of our brain. If any part is damaged or affected, the emergent cooperative property of information processing is altered, affecting the resultant behavior and actions.
This issue need not be elaborated here as what we are concerned is to make a logically appropriate hypothesis that it is always the brain states and body’s hugely complex neural and bio-chemical media plexus that processes the elements of a causality. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that any causality that we are looking for has a physical basis in our tangible body-mind media plexus. Therefore, the elements of intimacy, passion and even commitment has tangible basis in our brain states and body media. Naturally this hugely powerful and critical causality of love too has a tangible basis, even as when it plays out as a holism of the three elements, it may seem like an intangibility. That is why love is globally accepted with 3Ms – Magic, Mystery and Marvel.
The triangular theory of love describes eight shades of love, depending upon which of the three elements are present, missing or dominant and not dominant. Therefore, it is safe and seemingly logical and even corroborative by our own practical experiences that causality of love is an emergent and evolving causality playing out in intangible space, having physical elements or constituents with discernible pattern of their expression of specificities. This very hypothesis makes it easy for us to decipher and unravel a causality, discover its distinct constituent elements and have perfect understanding of how a causality plays out and expresses itself, which way affecting our subconscious or even conscious behavior and actions. This surely allows us the latitude and skill to consciously decide, how we accept a causality in our life-living and how we allow it to play out it our life and living.
When an individual sees and accepts a causality in this light, it shall be easy to maintain sanity when this causality plays out for us. For example, a woman must not see and accept that she is in love with a man. It is better to see and accept that this man, I am in relationship with, has intimacy for me but seems to have no or little passion and commitment for me. Therefore, it shall be ideal for the woman’s personal sanity to say and accept that she may have intimacy, passion and commitment for the man but the man is responding to only one of the three elements of intimacy and not passion and commitment. This acceptance has better sanity prospects than the usual and populist perception and perspective that ‘she loves him but he loves her not’. This holism of seeing and accepting causalities helps us to arrive at the ‘specificity’ of its expressions and playing out its effects on us, making us more skilled in holding our sanity in place.
When a causality plays out, the reality it presents to us, always has many elements and different contextual points. Holism means, every individual is aware of them and accept their presence in his or her cognition of reality. In above example, ‘she loves him’ is very true but ‘he loves her not’ is also equally very untrue. The man’s love is also love but it is a shade of love that has only one part of the singular causality of love, even while the woman who loves him has love with all three elements. But both man’s and woman’s situation is the singular causality of love. This arriving of mind consciousness to ‘specificity’ of how the causality of love plays out differently for the man and woman, is definite basis of better prospect of personal sanity, both for man and woman.
This is what we have talked earlier. Reality is always contextual and relativistic. What supplies ‘context’ and ‘relativity’ is the different ways elements constituting a causality plays out or expresses itself differently to different body-mind media. The body-mind media of the man and woman are playing out and expressing the three elements constituting the causality of Love differently and therefore, the Reality of Love stands differentiated for the two. Acceptance of this contextual and relativistic holism of the Reality is perfect artistry to arrive at and install personal sanity. And, this happens as we decipher and decode the ‘Seed-Level’ constitution of causality. This acceptance however is not automatic for an individual. It is the artistry of higher consciousness, which an individual evolves and empowers through a determined process.
To emphasize the importance of our hypothesis about causality and its decoding, let us continue this idea with another very powerful causality that hugely affects human life-living and majorly affects personal sanity. This causality is Fear and Anxiety. This causality is even more critical than love in its potential and propensity to affect human life-living and sanity. Let us see how this causality too can be decoded and deciphered to ensure sanity in our lives.
We begin by accepting the above hypothesis again that all causalities have a physical and tangible basis. Like love and all other emotions, Fear and Anxiety also are seeded in the vast and complex bio-chemical and neural plexus of the body-mind media, working in a cooperative process. Fear and anxiety become a reality not because there are elements or factors outside in physical milieus that are repositories of fear and anxiety. It is because the assigned brain states processes the received info about them through inputting of our sensory organs. Fear and anxiety are seeded in brain states within and not outside in milieus. Therefore, when we decode and decipher the constituent elements of fear and anxiety and accept them, we perfectly change the way the causality of fear and anxiety plays out Reality for us and expresses itself. How?