Knowledge Vs Devotion
We often hear the expression ‘god-fearing’ attributed to virtuous persons with a sense of approval. A god-fearing person is supposed to be an upright, honest, reliable and generally good person. I was brought up in a society having these sort of values, in which I had the fortune to be recognized a god-fearing boy. And I always felt guilty whenever I felt that I did some thing wrong or something against my conscience.
But now I feel and understand that the basic emotion underlying the need to be god-fearing is only pure fear, and not the desire to be good. What is actually required is not fear of God, but love of God, pure devotion or divine Love. Fearing God is just fear of one’s own conscience. Of course it has its own virtue for making one desist from doing things considered wrong or ‘sinful’.
One may ask why the love of God or devotion is more important than fear of God? Because, while fear of god helps keep a person pure in mind without the feeling of guilt, and prepare him ready to seek spiritual blessings, it does not help one to experience the Ultimate. Even intellectual knowledge of the Absolute is useless without devotion. Intellectual knowledge separates the knowledge from the known. To know reality, knowledge and the known has to merge and be one with the knower. That would be possible only with utmost devotion where the knower merges with the absolute. To know God one has to be God. Only in divine love oneness happens. That is why it is said, ‘Surrender to the Infinite, the Ultimate Reality that is God’.
But is the other way around true, meaning, does knowledge of the absolute come from devotion alone without any effort to know? The logical answer is, of course, having known God everything else is automatically known. Nothing is left to be known.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
talk in seminar at current books, Tellicherry
The subject today, 'Ageless body and Timeless mind’ is a very tough subject. It would have been very vague and intangible also but for the book by the same title of Deepak Chopra, a doctor and an endocrinologist. It is one of the best sellers, a wonderful book much appreciated in US as well as in India.
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)
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