I got a comment from VT, for not being, in the face with spirituality in my earlier blog. I thought that is being too nice to me. So I wanted to post something that is more in the face, just to make it public that I too like all of us, am full of contradictions and have a right to be so ;-) So here comes an extreme leftist view for a question one of my friends asked me in a casual discussion – “Is it that everything is predestined in this world?”  It is a question that lot of us answer in ways that convince us and suit our thought process and belief systems.

An extreme individualist will say – “No, everything around me is what I choose it to be and brought about by my decisions!” and an extreme spiritualist – “Yes, someone from somewhere up there decides why you do what you do!” I stick to the first view but with a slight difference, the difference that we don’t make too many decisions, really. We only make one decision – “Will I realize and learn or not?” For, this entire life seems to be a sequence of situations cleverly arranged for you to learn something (My take on what it is follows later!). And it is your decision, your free will, whether you want to learn or not! That is the only decision that we make, with our free will, whatever that might be!

Warning: If you are running out of time, you can leave now! For I want to make that short story long just out of intellectual curiosity. The views expressed are purely personal and you can vehemently agree or disagree.

How did we human beings come about?

While scientists, astronomers and every one figure it out through equations and astral dust, I believe the world started from a Single Point – a concentration of tremendous energy and an active mind for itself. (See the beautiful posts by Aham, “God, The Enigma” and “The Cosmic Dance”, one of my favorite ilanders who is no longer active) Regarding the nature of Single Point and the behavior of objects in Singularity as in Black Holes, you can refer any research on Wikipedia or for simpler language read Sarath’s blogs at http://probabilityisgod.rediffiland.com

So that the single point in its deep sleep/meditation/idle-state had a question of what it will be like if I was not I and if I were to look as something else. Will I still be I? I have no idea who knows why he had that question and what triggered that. My thinking process has not answered that yet. And when HE ‘materialized’ – He/It, by definition, lost a degree of freedom. Singularity loses (gains, from a matter perspective?) degrees of freedom as it manifests as matter. So now that he saw himself as matter, he had two choices- to go back to singularity from that single degree of freedom or multiply and increase the degrees of freedom (from a matter perspective!)

A‘separate’ matter always has its free will as defined by the degrees of freedom gained and a connection to singularity. One degree of freedom is the lowest number of degrees – like probably in minerals– very little freewill and most actions still decided by Singularity or matter of higher degrees of freedom (like Plants, Animals & Humans). But there the connection to Singularity then is the Strongest. (No Wonder, Animals and Plants work as Nature asks them to and Coals/Petrol takes its own sweet time to manifest!)

That brings us to higher degrees of freedom:  Why did matter choose evolve into  higher degrees of freedom from one? Single Point had a choice and he loves challenges. Who does not love challenges when you have no one else to lose to but yourself? So he challenged himself and said “Can I still retain my memory and come back to singularity even if I had more degrees of freedom?” So he evolved in to further degrees of freedom. With increasing degrees of freedom, the free will component of matter increased and its distance from Singularity increased too. So much so that the ‘Smriti’ (Popular Hindu Jargon to specify remembrance!) is almost lost or shrouded by the increasing power of freedom that got bestowed with every step.

So Singularity evolved till He became Human Being – matter with highest amount of free will. Free will gives choices – just like Singularity had in the beginning (To multiply or not to?). These choices are available to any human who knows of the power of free will. Lot of us don’t remember that we have absolute Free Will – we use it in the narrowest use of that term – Free Will to not go to a movie or free will to smoke or paint nudes ;-) Who is anyone to tell us what to do? But in this, we forgot what it means by real freedom of will and the power that it bestows. We have Free Will to choose and become whatever we want to be- even Singularity again. With our degrees of freedom, we can challenge everything around us that we see in this world because everything else really is, technically, inferior to us with lesser degrees of freedom.  We, as humans, do realize this to an extent and (mis)use this power in the way you see today, all around us(Remember – “With great power comes great responsibility” – says your friendly neighborhood SpiderMan’s grand mom). But as I emphasized earlier we are not using our free will to solve the real problems, we are just perennially creating mess and working on cleaning it up!

Anyway,so Human Being is an entity standing at the exact opposite side of Singularity with maximum free will and enough capability to challenge the Singularity – IF he remembers what he truly is!  I think, Human Being, when he realizes the true path of evolution that he has taken, can stand opposite to Singularity and say that I want to exist as an independent entity or he can say– I want to close this cycle and get back to Singularity. Singularity has to give enough reason to the Human Being to cajole him to come back – in that sense, Singularity should plead the ‘realized’ Human to return. It is here that Singularity (popularly termed God) becomes a slave to the Human (Devotee!) Because Singularity needs that part of Him (Human!) to desperately become a part of His again as much as the Human being wants to be, if not more!

All the Gods and Gurus around us are a level below Singularity. A human being, who knows that he really is free to do whatever he wants and exercises that free will, becomes God and surpasses him too. So what is a boss in office to tell you what you should be doing and what you should not, only if you have not submitted your free will at his feet in return for a daily meal and a house? Remember, quitting a job here is not exercising free will, even though it appears to be so. You are just changing your masters.

Strong willed people are those who realize/awake to their true degrees of freedom. That is the reason why strong willed people cannot see why someone says a job is impossible. Our knowledge of these degrees of freedom is clouded by our own
actions and our own submission. Who can take it away? We ourselves submit our knowledge of these degrees of freedom in return for trinkets, everyday.

So how do we truly realize our entire degrees of freedom? First by believing the seemingly improbable - Firstly, that you are already as powerful as the singularity itself, if you want to realize it.  Secondly, there can be no other way for the Singularity to split and rejoin without each of the pieces having a logical connection with every other piece to make the whole again (Just like pieces of jigsaw puzzle!). We feel the immediate connections (courtesy our beliefs), that a son is born because of previous
life’s bondage etc etc. But deep down, ALL of us are connected, every individual in this world. That is what makes the job easier for the events to be conspired and planned which involves someone else totally unrelated to us. So neither you, nor he has free will to that extent. You cannot be happy, when even if one other person on this earth is unhappy – wherever you are, howmuchever you feel you are not touched.

So much for free will. Then there is the BIGGEST decision in the life of an Independent Singularity, which parted from the Single Point Singularity – to merge into Singularity or retain its independent existence. Toughest and the most painful too, because to reject the offer is to go back willingly into the state of forgetfulness, to get back willingly to experience the pain and suffering (albeit of other human beings). So imagine the sacrifice Buddha made when he took that call!  I think people all around us, the true gurus and every other helpful soul around along with the nature, are shouting everyday in different ways the same thing – “Wake up and realize!” But we are lost with stuff on the periphery (either with blind admiration of these gurus or sheer ridicule of their language/methods) and we refuse to see beyond; we have submitted our
belief in ourselves totally. So it takes time to believe that you really are all powerful – howmuchever we say, we already believe – we believe in ourselves only when we can, other times we give up.

Theseshouts around to wake us up are always there, you will only hear tentatively at first, skeptically later, with mild belief after a while till one day, you just wake up. And after that, everything seems cacophony. (Like it seemed to UG Krishnamurthi)

I summarize: We only make one decision – “Will I realize that I am all powerful, a Singularity with maximum degrees of freedom or not?” For, this entire life seems to be a sequence of situations cleverly arranged for you to learn something. And it is your decision, your free will, whether you want to learn or not! That is the only decision that we make, with our free will, whatever that means!