Largeness

The way of thinking of our current era has given emphasis to self-involvement, self importance. For this reason we have given obeisance to religious and political leaders and credence to their human-based ideologies and causes. My inclination is to chuckle instead. It is not that the individual lacks value, but that the value is transcendent. The individual’s greatness is the greatness of the undying universe. Each human expresses that greatness in the range of his uniqueness and the breadth of humanity’s diversity. The essential is not mortal. We owe no allegiance to ideas, leaders, nations, causes, priests, religions or their gods. Yet we cannot do other than remain loyal to our essence, the consciousness expressed through us, so uniquely and diversely. In living, as well as in dying we give testimony to the unceasing unfoldment of the divine, like the endless back and forward movement of waves on the shore. It is due to the conviction of our own self-importance that we so easily fall under the spell of leaders and are willing to lay down our lives to fulfill their dreams. Let the foolish give credence to the foolish. We have better things to do with our time; to lay in the warm sun listening to grass hoppers, or watching ants carry grains of corn to their nests are more worthy pursuits than participating in building empires or defending them. If we are unable to serve our essential nature, in a generosity of spirit, what is the purpose of accruing time, money or goods? The fulfillment of such service (of the essential) is the dissolution of all consideration of I and mine. We take part in the manifestation, the upheaval, the outpouring of all life. We own this process; this greatness is our greatness. And whether the name and form by which we are known dies today or lives another hundred years is rather trivial. Life itself is trivial if we think only of ourselves, or serve surrogates for the true essential greatness at the heart of our lives.

Our times

The 20th century may have been the last era when people were able to create innocently and non-imitatively while remaining true to the gradually constructed stack of human culture. It was still possible to believe in the myth of progress. Ideologies continued to offer hope. Affluence was still based on manufactured goods and hard labour. The earth still had a future. In the current century there is an imitative, phony atmosphere of excess. Creation is born of a cynical exploitation of past forms without inherent belief in them. Economically we have lost our gold standard, culturally there is a constant need to seek reassurance from the fake convictions of peers who are similarly deluded and obsessed. Only in the present era could leaders like Trump emerge, movements like ISIS emerge, socio-economic disparities grow so large, and mass delusion be so prevalent in the presence of available information. Meanwhile we are partying through the apocalypse, blissfully unaware: the decimation of our biosphere.

Creation, as a word is from an old Indo-European root meaning to act. In order to create innocently in the current era we need to stop re-acting, detach ourselves from our culture of imitation and violence, and free our minds from old forms. Our civilization has let us down. We are basing our lives on ways of thinking that have led to the current insanity, modes of behavior that we know to be destructive. Solutions are not to be found within the matrix that has created the problems. We need to free ourselves of the weight of human culture, reevaluate our place in the universe, taking as our measure the entire biosphere. We need to de-condition ourselves from learned thinking and behaviour.
#history

What happened when I walked into the world’s quietest place

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/24/what-happened-when-i-walked-into-the-worlds-most-silent-place

My time in the anechoic chamber was a forceful reminder that most of the sounds we hear come to us indirectly; reflected into our ears by the things and people around us. Sound is a shared experience, formed as much by the environment we live in as it is by whatever happens to produce it in the first place. The anechoic chamber shows us what it would be like to live in a world that gives nothing back: a lonely world where sounds simply evaporate without returning.

Adam Osborne and his computer

The first computer I owned was the Osborne 1, though the one I purchased was already several years old and a bit old fashioned by that time – probably it was in the late 1980s. I even bought a second model for parts.

The Osborne 1 was the world’s first truly portable computer. It was really innovative, in that the main unit and keyboard folded up together for easy carrying: folded up it had a similar weight to a portable sewing machine. It was invented in 1981 by Adam Osborne (1939-2003).

I have just learned that Adam was the son of Arthur Osborne (1906-1970) a British academic and writer who lived for a time in India and was a follower of Ramana Maharshi. His family home adjoins that of my friend in Tiruvannamalai, who I hope to visit again very soon.

According to Wikipedia, Adam wrote a bestselling book about his experiences together with John C. Dvorak, Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation. In later life, he returned to India, where he lived in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu.

genetic markers

It’s interesting to visit close family and observe that traits which one had taken to be individual are apparently in the blood. My lifelong dislike of garlic and its after-taste; dislike of crowds and feeling of being confused and overwhelmed by shopping malls, shared by my brother.