Preface.
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About This Book
A few decades of living in the modern age accumulates a great deal of information about our own selves! Quite a bit tends to be borrowed: from books, from people, from work, from culture, from algorithms. Information, even if it be about our own self, feels like power while it is being collected, but is found to be less helpful when a real life situation arrives. What helps though is a real life question, a question that refuses to be answered with the borrowed material, but which acts as a searchlight in the deep fog before our eyes caused by the life challenge, with our own deep contemplation guided by this light paving the way to clarity and a slow but sure resolution of the situation.
Fifty-two such questions are the architecture of this book. They are not intellectual puzzles. They have been chosen, over many years, for one quality, that they cannot be answered casually, but anyone who sits with them honestly, will find them interesting, challenging and urging the person to rethink his understanding about it.
I believe that in the modern age, almost defined by but also consumed by high speed, technology, virtuality, wealth, enjoyments and thrills, the one path left to intelligent humans who wish to progress in life is questioning, questioning your own beliefs.
These are also the days of exposure to a barrage of mostly incomplete knowledge of all kinds available on the web, as well as pounding on us by a deluge of social media. We too are after self-statements. How much exposure of myself to the world is healthy? Where is truly my space? Only you can answer that, in response to an honest and unequivocal question.
Some of us may be hitting or are past mid-life. Do we feel we should ask ourselves what we have truly achieved so far? We may have an inkling of the answer, but what other than a ruthless question can ferret it out from us?
The rise of woman is a significant phenomenon of our times. Can we trace exactly the complex web of social thought about woman’s liberty that has gone on for centuries to where this has reached now? What is the impact of this phenomenon in human society the world over? Do you think that anything else but a probing question to yourself can answer this?
Finally, there is the harrowing question of identity that has paralysed us both within and without. Each one of us is experiencing himself or herself, despite all our riches and powers, somewhat as a dried leaf flitting about in the winds of change that have been set today, both in society as well as the world. We are in no position to answer the question with clarity: ‘who are you’ — from within or from without. Do we not think we have avoided this question long enough?
Such is the mosaic within which the questions shall appear. The questions are not gentle. They are also not unkind. They cannot be approached or resolved with what is already known, that’s all.
On borrowed jargon
Borrowed jargon and terminology block curiosity and rational thinking. Hence an effort has been made to keep this book free from it. Special effort was made to present the content in our day-to-day language without stepping out of the limits of rationality. Effort also has been made in bringing the values of the uncommon areas of human thought into common daily parlance, all in the spirit of breaking the barriers of the special and the common.
Also, we shall use neither hypothesis nor theory. We shall learn from life with our usual powers of observation and rational analysis, build our own framework and even our own glossary, and then see how we can put it into practice, step at a time. A completely self-reliant method toward life question resolution is suggested here.
That is the basis of this book. I am sure that you, the reader, with your capacity and insight for understanding life truths, will be able to simplify the deep complexities of life, and then present them succinctly, without theorising, as a self-sufficient expression for each question.
Who Benefits from This Book
This book is more like a chisel.
It is for those who are willing to question their beliefs. For those who understand that human progress is not a destination but an endless, joyful, painful, magnificent march into the unknown. For those who are ready to become what may be called a Life Warrior.
Introduction.
Also free.
Introduction.
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The Four Words That Carry This Book
A few terms recur in these pages with a precise meaning, slightly different from the way ordinary conversation uses them. The whole book stands on four such terms. They are introduced briefly here. Each is taken up at proper length shortly.
The PVM-Structure
What we usually call the Body is, in fact, a Physical-Vital-Mental structure, a PVM-Structure. The Physical is the body in its entire biochemical sweep, which is fairly well understood due to advances in science. The Vital is the senses, the breath, the life-force, and these are less understood as of today. The Mental is thought, sentiment and emotion, and these are even less understood currently. These three are convenient labels for description, but the PVM is one monolithic unit, not three parts added together. Every atom of a person is an integrated PVM atom (the word atom being chosen for its dictionary meaning of indivisible).
The PVM-Structure is the foundational unit of existence, co-existence and human progress. Everything that is real about a person is the PVM. The chapter titled The PVM-Structure spells out the details.
The Fictitious I
The Fictitious I is the identity that one creates out of imagination, conceptualisation and false perception. It is the “I” that gets installed in a child by the age of two, slowly takes over the PVM-Structure, and goes on building its kingdom of people, events, things and desires.
The single most important fact about the “I” is that it does not stand to testing an entity for its reality. On the other hand, the PVM is the existent unit; the “I” is a memory, hammered into the system over decades by society and then maintained by mechanical repetition. Erased in deep sleep, re-installed at waking — that is its whole life. The chapters on The PVM-Structure and the Rational Analysis of the Fictitious I talk more about this.
Important Note to Reader
In this book, I have made a conscious effort not to borrow terminology from existing philosophical or spiritual traditions. My intention is that you approach this work without pre-existing assumptions, and instead engage with it as a fresh expression to be examined, questioned, and understood on its own terms.
This also applies to my use of the term “the Fictitious I.” I have not used this phrase merely as a substitute for the commonly used word “ego” whether in philosophy, spirituality, psychology, or everyday conversation. In fact, I do not accept the assumption that an ego, as described in psychoanalytic theory, necessarily exists as a real entity within the human psyche.
The approach of this book is different. Rather than beginning with the assumption that an “I” exists, it investigates whether any such “I” is real in the first place. This investigation is carried out through twelve dimensions of observation. Through this analysis, I have found the “I” to be non-existent, and have therefore referred to it as a fictitious entity.
It is important for the reader to recognize this subtle but essential distinction: there may be an experience or feeling of “I,” but that does not mean the “I” has an actual, independent existence. This book asks you to examine that difference carefully.
It is also best if the reader remains ambivalent to the connotation of the Fictitious I. The effect of the word fictitious is expected to carry through to the reader exactly what its dictionary meaning is: fabricated, imaginary, false. It’s suggested that the reader not superimpose a further shade of imagination, of an already imaginary entity, of it being good, bad, or a variety of other shades of feelings in between these two. It shall be best if the reader keeps the attention on resolving or dismissing an imagination rather than on what that imagination feels like.
Life and Lifestyle
These two words are used here with strict meaning. Lifestyle is the interaction of the Fictitious I with the outside world — the visible surface of meetings, money, schedule, social standing, the body, the calendar. Life is the interaction of the Fictitious I with its own PVM, the inside world — the subconscious of thought, emotion and sensation, and the unconscious of dream, sleep, deep desires and seeds of action.
People are usually fluent about what their lifestyle is but find it challenging to verbalize clearly what their own life is. The chapter titled Life and Lifestyle unpacks how the two interact, how they get separated, and what it takes for them to come back into rhythm.
Cosmic Will and Intellect
There are at least two forces acting upon every PVM-Structure: The Intellect, the executive force for existence, co-existence and human progress; and Will, the motive and directive force, for these same three processes. The unusual honesty of this book is its unequivocal statement that these two forces are not, in their full form, ours. They are cosmic, pervasive, external, and most of the time out of our grip. They visit the PVM in brief flashes. In those flashes a decision is made, an understanding happens, a resolve is kept. Then they retire.
We are not their owners. We are their occasional vessels. The chapter titled Cosmic Will and Intellect takes this further, what the brevity of the touch means, how the PVM is made lens-like for it, and why the Fictitious I is the only real resistance to its flow.
The PVM in Its Planes
Depending on the Will and Intellect operating inside a PVM structure, the PVM can exist in one or more of three known planes, and beyond these, in yet unknown planes due to a human’s capacity for progress.
The Mineral plane is inertia, inaction, deep sleep, deep ignorance, and the domination of false bliss, false peace and false truth.
The Animal plane is hunger, insecurity, procreation and boredom needs fulfilled by educated or uneducated means.
The Human plane is very lightly touched by us. It carries at least the following capabilities — each used here in a strict sense, not as ordinary conversation uses them:
- awareness — a realisation that the PVM existence is separate from, yet unified with, the Cosmos
- inspiration — a realisation of vaster and deeper truths with a diminishing fictitiousness
- consciousness — a realisation that a cosmic intellect and will is acting upon the PVM
- ambition — a power of the PVM to make a resolve to increase its capacity, capability and competence
- love — a realisation of increasing oneness of existence of PVM with other entities
- sexuality — a power to powerfully express the maleness or femaleness of PVM-Structure
- eros — a power of nullifying sexuality through unification of sexes
- learning — a power of the PVM to consciously reduce its fictitiousness to allow entry of newer knowledge
- transformation — a power to change the PVM-Structure significantly
- beauty — a power of the PVM to express the harmony existing inside it
- peace — a power to properly visualise the world with clarity and neither with bias nor indifference
- revolution — a power to accelerate the transformation of the PVM-Structure
- bliss — a power to realize the enormous capacity of the PVM
- silence — a power to erase the boundary of a mere unit PVM existence with the larger existence around
A human being moves through all these three planes through the day. The mineral plane often appears purely; the animal and human are usually mixed; and most of waking life, in honesty, is almost fully in the animal.
How to approach this book
It shall be best if you have a Work in Progress relation with the book, more like a workbook or a progression diary if you will. Take a page or two out from it, go for a stroll or to the beach with just these pages with you, and allow the content to have a conversation with you. Without forsaking rationality but also allowing teachings of real life experience an equal space, let your thought process start building around it. Record your thoughts on your device or paper, and leave it there. Some days later when your own thoughts urge you to go deeper in it, cull out a few more related pages from the book and treat yourself to another such Thought Walk!
Research, from wherever you wish in the near infinite digital world, things about both the book’s content that you’re currently interested in as well as your own thoughts that grew around it. See what all you can take from this effort and start building a systematic framework of understanding or clarity about your unique universe of people, possessions, events, memories — by including in it the truths of life that are evident and valuable to you as well as certain forces that act in life upon which you may not have control.
Now the real thing: when events start happening in life, test out the distilled framework of sorts that you created for yourself earlier in the face of these events and observe your own actions, reactions and decisions. Feed this back into your framework and see if you would want to modify it a bit. Such a relation with the book which is based on inquiry, self conversation, research, recording, formulating a framework, testing it in real life, feeding back the observations back into the framework — such an iterative approach shall give the best results is my suggestion. Try it out.
How to Address These Questions
Address the questions with just the virgin self. Try not to approach them with the accumulated knowledge or learnedness. That shall not resolve the question.
The reason being, these questions concern life or truth, and either of these is nearer or more related to us than all accumulated knowledge. Knowledge that we hold dear is usually a baggage of impressions or facts collected so as to mould the thinking to constantly seek a return on some form of investment however magnanimous. And as such, these cannot help address life.
So address these questions with a sincere and unconditioned rational thought process. That shall actually help you resolve the truth, and not by merely putting forth an argument for its own sake.
Question, Musing, Expression, Going Deeper
Many of the 52 inquiries in this book are presented in a four-part shape, and a word on each part will help you find your rhythm.
The Question is the inquiry itself — almost always more than a single sentence, often a stack of related sub-questions. They are searchlights. The intent is that you sit with the question first, before reading anything else, until something inside you stirs.
The Musing is my thinking aloud that may have motivated the particular question. The language, tone and tenor of every musing is purposely kept utterly simple and true to how it first appears in the mind: merely as words, phrases, half sentences. I believe that this shall help the reader find it friendly as he or she first approaches the question.
The Expression is my own response, set beneath the question. It is not “the answer”. It is the expression that has emerged from my own brush with life over many years. Yours will not be mine and it should not be. Treat my expression as just one voice in the room.
Yours is the one that matters.
Going Deeper is a bit of a follow-up on some of the Expressions. Where two or more questions share common ground, their Going Deeper spread is grouped under a single heading; where the question and the Expression are already sufficient, there is no Going Deeper at all.
Before You Begin
In the beginning, this book carries seven chapters, one each on the Analysis of the Fictitiousness of I, the PVM-Structure, Life and Lifestyle, Cosmic Will and Intellect, the Human Plane, Pain Navigation and Time-Space-Causality. These seven ideas are the pillars of the book’s content. A deep understanding of these is very much necessary before attempting the questions.
The 52 questions begin after the chapters explaining the seven pillars. They are arranged in a sequence — Life and Lifestyle first, then Success, then the Self, then Man, Woman and Love, then Education, Science, Art, Knowledge, Faith, Clarity, Peace, and so on through Joy, Action, Sleep, Awareness, Existence, Evolution and Work. The sequence has been chosen so that a story unfolds. If you read in order, the story will be felt.
If at any point a question’s Expression sends you searching for more depth, these seven pieces are available — the chapters on the PVM-Structure, the Fictitious I, Life and Lifestyle, Cosmic Will and Intellect, Human Plane, Pain Navigation and Time-Space-Causality.
The reader who arrives at the last of the 52 questions and finds that something has shifted, not because of any answer I have given, but because of an expression they have written down for themselves, has done what this book is for.
The Seven Pillars of Understanding the Book
The seven longer chapters that follow take each of these threads up at depth. They can be read in order, or selectively, when a question sends you searching.
- Rational Analysis of the Fictitious I
- The PVM Structure
- The Cosmic Will and Intellect
- The Human Plane
- Life and Lifestyle
- Time, Space and Causality
- Pain Navigation
The Introduction ends here. The seven pillar chapters follow, and then the fifty-two questions.
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