Maya And Leela: Utility In Life’s Futility by Santosh Jha (christmas read aloud .txt) 📖

The huge benefit now humanity has that all wisdom, value-systems, cultural-requirements and collective-mechanisms can be tested on the singular basis of the proven, measurable and objective facts of science, which are also what core religion and philosophy say. We have now begun to know our body and brain well even though there is an unending knowledge.

We now have the technology and wherewithal to alter the genetic troubles of human bodies and minds through eugenics techniques. We are now empowered to create not only sure survival of humanity but also its excellence to spread to the universe.

It has been observed that even most fundamentally religious people of all religions are in favor of introducing ‘technology’ in their traditional societies and even in academics but they refuse to accept ‘science’ as they fear, science would erode the values that religion somehow maintains and this would result in total collapse of civil society. The fear is not unfounded. But this fear emanates from the dualism of religion and science, which is only notional, not real.

For example, consider the traditional man-woman relationship, which was the core culture responsible for success of human evolution. Both religion as well as science accepts that the modern social and personal preferences in the contemporary liberal environment are not good for future of humanity.

The modern liberal notions of gender equality and gender role interchangeability are of course good and healthy for social and personal growths but the way this idea has been hijacked, ingeniously interpreted and practiced by a section of population, it is bound to destroy the very basic structure of human society.

Not only man-woman relationship, rather all relationships of humanity are in for big trouble. People say, majority of humanity’s troubles and pains in modern times stem out of relationships, which are becoming more troubled. Religion appeals against the trend but fails. Science can help as it offers objective logic and reasoning for the troubles

Globally, most societies are struggling with an unprecedented and hugely dysfunctional culture, infested with drug addiction, promiscuous sex, divorce and alienation, alcohol, thrill seeking, suicides, rebellion, corruption, gangs, mafia, crime, drive-by-shootings, teenage pregnancy, racial hate, terrorism and a horde of psychotic troubles.

Science is value neutral, unlike the prescriptive religion, but more effective as it objectively and logically explains the underlying troubles and problems that modern man-woman relationship face. It also explains the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of the prevailing sense of unbridled self-gratification zeal and selfish as well as psychotic interpretation of gender roles and utterly chaotic gender role interchangeability.

We have a scenario at hand. Not only religion and philosophy is scared, science also warns against this calamitous trend. Any amount of religious appeals has not stopped this degenerating trend in global society but science can help in checking this trend by explaining the working of instincts and emphasizing the need for self-discipline for a better society. Science is not value-neutral or against values and morality. It only approaches morality differently.

We just need to have the courage, determination and resilience to accept this new mindset to accommodate more and more science in our thinking and value summation. It is not necessary that one should accept these facts and make drastic changes in all aspects of one’s life. It shall be very tough.

One can simply do one thing. Accept this new paradigm to define, “who I am”. This shall greatly enhance one’s satisfaction and joys as he or she shall find himself in singularity of body and mind mechanism. That is good to start with.

It would be even better if one uses the energy of skepticism and doubts all. One should use his or her own resources to re-check their authenticity. Nevertheless, one must not ‘reject’ them out rightly or show them a close door. Doubt them, re-check them, correct them if you find them wrong but not ‘reject’ them. It is just a humble suggestion that mind’s value-summation shall definitely be more inclined towards this desirable ‘singularity’ if science is also accepted as a supportive approach, in cooperation with religion and philosophy.

In the post world war era, researches and surveys admit that the world has become a better place to live and humanity over all have evolved to better and higher cultural traits. We have now entered an era of consciousness where our collective and integrated wisdom, led by modern and scientific knowledge but assimilating the old wisdoms, is making us move towards excellence and larger wellness. This is the new spiritualism.

Unfortunately, this is still in small pockets and scattered unevenly throughout the globe. The majority of humanity still has to evolve. There is also a reverse tendency among a large segment of people who are degenerating to worse mindsets as the environment is becoming far more competitive and an average human finds it tough to survive.

This new spiritualism is a beautiful mix of ancient and modern wisdoms. This new spiritualism breathes in new thinking, this new mindset, this new culture of an integrative and assimilative consciousness of modern humanity.

This new spiritualism, which objectively accepts all lofty ideals of ancient wisdom but approaches them with a scientific consciousness can lead to a new world order where we all accept larger goodness of humanity with a far more open and non-dualistic mind. Every individual can contribute to hasten up the process of engendering of this new world order.

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Maya’s Viraat Swaroop: Cosmic Viewpoint

In the most respected and accepted Hindu religious discourse between Krishna and his favorite disciple Arjuna, there is a beautiful metaphoric description of ‘maya’ of the world we live in and the ideal consciousness position of ‘leela’. In the most revered epic text called Geeta, there is a detailed description of Krishna unraveling the ‘viraat swaroop’ (cosmic mechanism) of ‘maya’ structures to Arjuna, who was in utter conflict and confusion about his role, in the midst of an imminent war of righteousness.

Understanding this from holistic, assimilative and integrative perspective of spiritualism, philosophy as well as science helps in understanding the practical utility of the notions of ‘maya’ and ‘leela’ in winning over our personal conflicts and confusion of life. We talk about it now.

From a bacteria to humans, this world has billions of living beings and this is a bio-diversity which makes the planet earth a truly mesmerizing and probably the most unique one in the entire universe.

This diversity is something we humans do not often see, realize and count for in our daily thinking and rational actions. Let alone the diversity of all creatures on earth, we do not think of and admit the diversity within our human species. Actually, we never usually think of ourselves as a species evolved out of billions of years of evolution.

Almost unconsciously, we generally think of the entire world population as one common pool of almost equal beings, divided by geographies and culture. Actually, most humans only see and think about the small pool of people in their ambient social environment and local geographical limits.

The bitter reality is, like the biodiversities of other creatures, we humans also have the similar diversity among us and this diversity is not only in geographical segregation and in cultural exclusivity but originally and essentially in consciousness. It is the consciousness that is as diverse among humans on this planet as is the biodiversity.

From a tiny bacterium to a mighty elephant or whale, living beings on this planet have different physical make up and commensurate physical and mental capacities. Their respective consciousness is also a function of their body mechanism and the environment in which they live.

The millions of species on this planet have actually, different levels of consciousness, depending upon the physical and biological make up of their existence on the earth. However, it seems, within a species, consciousness of different living beings are not as varied as it is in humans. Humans are therefore hugely different from other species as we have ourselves created so diverse cultural and physical environments that consciousness within humans are much varied.

Animals have been living in natural and similar environment since ages and they cannot themselves change their living environment like humans. That is why, it seems they have a consciousness across population, not as variegated as we. This is a huge facility as well as the greatest challenge and threat for us.

The humans have diverse consciousness levels even as their physical and biological make up are more than similar. Almost 99 percent of genes of all humans are same. However, the consciousness varies because different humans have different brain and mind evolution. This is because; brain development is 85 percent environment led and only 15 percent gene. This environment for humans vary so much and that is why sizeable difference in consciousnesses.

World-renowned scientific minds have done a cross-cultural mapping of all possible and diverse states, structures, memes, types, levels, stages, and waves of human consciousness. As human development has been an evolutionary process, different human consciousness are on diverse and often overlapping stages of conscious development and evolution.

The idea is to understand the broad patterns of human’s individual as well as collective behavior and actions through their respective shades of consciousness. It is believed that such consciousness mapping has been very helpful for governments and authorities in planning order and peace in communities.

It is very interesting to understand that within so-called homogenous ethnic and geographical communities, consciousness of different members of the same society can vary so much. Some can be of higher integrative and assimilative consciousness and still, their neighbors may have age-old animalistic cave man consciousness. Some may be of belligerent consciousness and still others of the same ethnic group can be sensitive and amicable consciousness.

If one believes in evolutionary process of human development, then only one can accept and understand all this. The fact remains that all these diverse stages of human consciousness are in conflict and competition with each other. Every color and shade of consciousness dislikes and distrusts the other shade and types, as the subjective truths for all sets of colors of consciousness are so diverse, in contrasts and competitive to each other that there shall always be huge amount of conflict and chaos on this planet.

We need to understand and accept with innocence that biodiversity is the rule and this shall prevail always. The consciousness-diversity and a competing and conflicting state of diverse consciousness is what makes this planet earth so very mesmerizing and unique in this universe.

This rainbow of human consciousness ensures that every consciousness sees and accepts the realism colored in a diverse shades resulting in diversity of worldviews and pluralistically subjective realisms. Ancient wisdom knew about all this and called it ‘maya’.

Krishna, while encouraging his disciple Arjuna to perform his worldly duties in pure objectivity – the consciousness of ‘leela’, he unravels to him this rainbowish diversity of consciousnesses of billions of living beings, from a unicellular organism to a miracle called human. This event is portrayed in Geeta as an event when Krishna lent his special eyes (read perspectives) to Arjuna, so that he could see his viraat swaroop (myriad cosmic mechanism).

Like Arjuna, who understood the cosmic viewpoint of life and living and finally landed in a state of consciousness of pure objective role-performances; those who understand and accept the cosmic diversity of maya-mechanism and lead themselves towards an assimilative and integrative approach and attitude towards all shades of this myriad realism hit the road to ‘leela’ positioning in the maya-mechanism.

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Ultimate Ingenuity To Unravel Maya

Humanity had very early understood that ‘virtue’ is not singular. It is specific to utility for humanity in general. Some things are good and useful when ‘fresh’ and upgraded whereas, some other things had virtues in their antiquities. Preservation and antiquitization was not new to humanity, even before philosophy and spiritualism could define and prescribe their own ideas over ‘ultimate utilities’ for humanity.

Humanity’s values, its choice for virtuosity and relevance has always been subjective, like culture. Humanity fixes its value and utility in different entities in different ways. Divinity, traditions, rituals, faith, mysticism etc are like wines and