Twisted thoughts

Few years back I started reading a book, don’t exactly remember the name of the book or the author, but it starts with a guy who goes to this wierd place where someone (something) talks to him. The whole beauty of the book lies in the perception, I admired the perception and deeply moved by it.

People believe that Matrix(movie) is a nice and innovative perception, or is it...? We all have questions like that in our mind, When I was in my school, I too used to think that if everything is electrical signal, then what we see is not necessarily what it is. It is just our perception, One of my childhood question(And still ponders me) is what is red to me might not be the red to my friend, he would see a green color for red, and still he will call it red and no one is right or wrong. How will I ever come to know...?

I had a friend who asked his parents that if they can know what he thinks and got grounded, we all have this question when we are young. When we do something wrong we think that our parents can just know what we are thinking or some people might know what we are thinking (obviously at a very young age). I also used to think that the world as such might be some one’s dream, or may be our own dream and sometimes wish that this dream should end immediately. As I grew up, with the knowledge (not exactly mastery) of Quantum physics and thermodynamics and working of the universe, my mind played the same dice.

There are theories which says that every possibility creates a universe with each universe having one of those possibilities, like if there were a possibility of me proposing a girl this valentine was 30% (actual possibility is almost negligible though and this law is still applicable) that would still create a universe where I will be proposing a girl. Again this universe will create infinite number of universes with the possibilities like the way of proposal or the girl I propose or the reaction of the girl etc. Now no one can verify this theory experimentally(correct me if they have verified) because no information can be transferred from one universe to the other. The chances of me being a murderer is low, but still the chance is there... so theoretically in some universe I am a murderer.

Infact there is also a possibility that our universe has just been created a few minutes ago(hours after writing this post) and everything just come into the present form in atomic level. And our brains are so formed that we think that we have experienced so many years, but it may not be necessarily true. How will you know that what you think you have experienced is not actually been experienced but materialised in your brain. Isn’t this the basic concept of the movie MATRIX.

Coming to the perception of book’s author I was talking about, He says that in the wierd place our character goes, there are no names. The reason being, when we give a name to things we are limiting it. When we call a chair, a chair, we are limiting it in our universe. It lives as a chair whereas without a name it just has the infinite possibility of being anything without actually being any of those things. Identity limits our existence. We are humans and are restricted to be humans, whereas without identity we are... just are.... we just exist. On similar notes I feel that when we give names to emotions we are reducing its intensity, when we love someone or something and use the word love for that emotion, we restrict the scope of the emotion. If you feel bad about something and you say that you are angry you have reduced the intensity of the emotion, you are just angry a feeling which everyone gets its not your personal emotion. We all know that not two depressed people will feel that their level of depression is same, then why the same word depression for that state.

So from where did this concept come, this is the concept of god for me. People ask me if I am an atheist or theist. I am neither that nor this(not even agnostic) (neti-neti). I don’t want to be branded I just want to be beyond this classification because I don’t come under any of this classification. If at all there is something(it can just be the intention itself) which created the universe, then it should not be named, and if we are naming it, we are degrading it and bringing it to our level of understanding, which most probably is wrong. For instance which ever thing created the universe cannot be good, because it is the same thing which created evil.

Iblis - Shaitani Jinn

We all know about the devil in Christianity, the Lucifer or the fallen angel. In Islam the fallen angel is Iblis. According to Islamic belief Allah created three classes of creatures, the angels, the djinn and the humans. The Angels can be grouped in 14 categories with 4 archangels, though we will not get into that now, I would like to mention that Gabriel (Jibrayil) is the greatest of all and he is the messenger who revealed Quran to Muhammad. Djinn or the jinn are lesser creature than angels, and higher than humans in the hierarchy of power and closeness to Allah, this can be seen in the creation theory of Islam. Allah created Angels with light, Djinns with Fire and humans with clay.

Djinn and Humans are given the freewill, to choose and to differentiate between the good and evil. Angels do not have the privilege to think on their own, they are loyal servants to god. In the beginning, there was a djinn named IBLIS who was made of fire without smoke and was god’s favourite and was very proud about that. He was a loyal servant, once god said to his creations that one of them will turn against him. On hearing this, the angels came to Iblis, Iblis prayed to god to not let any of the angels be the one to turn against Allah and he granted his plea. In this plea, Iblis did not add himself, because he thought he was high in god’s eyes.

God created Adam and ordered the angels and djinns to prostrate to Adam as god considered Adam to be the best of creation. Angels did as was said to them obediently, but Iblis didn’t, he considered himself superior to Adam.

And we created you (humans), then fashioned you, then told the angels: Fall ye prostrate before Adam! And they fell prostrate, all save Iblis, who was not of those who made prostration.

He said: "What hindered thee that thou didst not fall prostrate when I bade thee?" (Iblis) said: "I am better than him. Thou createdst me of fire while him Thou didst create of clay".

It is seen here that Iblis was proud of his being created by smokeless fire and Adam a being of clay. God cursed Iblis to hell till the judgement day, however Iblis who wanted his revenge from Adam (human) got permission that he will lead men and women astray to hell. From here on Iblis was called Shaitan (the root word for Satan). After this Iblis misleads Adam and eve, who later repent to god. God forgives them and warns them about the plans of Iblis.

Iblis or shaitan as such does not have any power over reality. They can create arrogance in humans and can mislead them to self-destruction. Iblis is also referred to as the sneaking whisperer, that is he would only whisper into the humans, which is considered as the root of all sin. On the day of resurrection (yaum-ul-qiyama) or qayamat(judgement day) , everyone who were deceived by Iblis and gave into their arrogance and deception of senses will be burned in the fires of hell. So we humans are to fight (jihad) against the temptations from shaitan. Those who fight this temptation and be righteous in the life time are promised a place in jannath (paradise).

The word Iblis could mean the one who causes despair. It is also believed that it is a variant of Diabolos (Greek for devil). For more about the Christian Devil (Lucifer) read my previous post
http://troolyunbelievable.blogspot.com/2008/02/lucifer-fallen-angel.html

Blessed be.

108 and its Significance

I have always been fascinated by people obsessed with few numbers and letting those numbers dominate their life. I remember one of the richest guy in my locality was obsessed with the number 9, he had fleet of car and some vans and buses all had the same number 9999 or something which sums up to 9. May be I am fascinated with the number themselves than the obsessed people, this fascination guided me into Numerology and related things.

There are few Numbers we come across very often, like 786,666,108, and so on...

I already have dedicated 2 of my posts for 666(Antichrist and Beast and its beauty) , so thought of writing about something else, Number 108, very popular in Oriental religions, like Hinduism , Buddhism, Jainism, etc.

This number as such is mainly cardinal count of Upanishads, or the count of rosary beads in the japamala. Today we will look into the other things regarding this mysterious oriental number.

In Hinduism there are(were actually) two major divisions, shaivism and vaishnavism, this number has been of importance in both the partitions equally. In shaivism, Lord Nataraja(shiva) is the cosmic dancer and according to Natyashastra there are about 108 karanas (karanas are dance units) we can find this relation in the popular Chidambaram temple in TN. For Vaishnavas it is the number of gopis lord Krishna danced with.

It is said that there are 108 marmas (energy points) where the nadis passes through and gives prana, a person is alive because prana flows through these marmas. Marmas can also be imagined as the intersection of ethereal body and the physical body where the prana flows into the living beings. This is in line with the practice of acupuncture, which also talks about 108 pressure points. There are 108 energy lines passing through the Anahata (heart chakra).

Mathematical beauty

1*2*2*3*3*3 = 108

Also

2 sin(108/2) = golden ratio

6*6+6*6+6*6 = 108

108 is said to be the distance between ourself to the inner god and that is the reason yogis do 108 surya namaskara. This is the same reason why mantras are chanted 108 times. For the same reason, the rosary has 108 beads, with each bead we move one step closer to god.

There are 108 pithas (pilgrim centres) in india, just like the 108 energy centres in our body.

There are 108 sacred stars in Chinese astrology. In Indian astrology there are 27 nakshatra which when multiplied with 4 padas (quarters) gives 108. One more interesting thing is there are 12 houses in astrology and 9 planets travel through these houses, the product of these two numbers is also 108.

There are said to be 108 desires and delusions humans have to overcome to have self-realization. There are 54 alphabets in Sanskrit, each having sakthi and shiva part (male and female part with them) which comes to 108. In similar lines there are 54 intersecting points on sri yantra, which again represent male and female, so which again gets the count as 108, after doubling the number 54.

In Indian numerology 1 represents the supreme one, the god etc... 0 represents emptiness and 8 represents infinity or eternal. So 108 represents the universe completely. The diameter of the sun multiplied by the sacred number 108 gives the distance between the sun and earth. This could also be the reason for 108 surya namaskara.

According to Tantra, there are about 21,600 breaths per day, of which 10800 are solar breaths and 10800 are lunar breaths.

In Jainism there are 5 categories of holy men , they have the following numbers of virtues, 12, 8, 36, 25, 27, which sum up to again 108.

So these are some of the places where we find the number 108 in eastern civilization.