Process in progress...

I am currently sorting, indexing and tagging the data and information in my brain... this might take few days or few weeks to complete. I hope I would be able to retrieve data and present information better when this is done, at least partly. Lots of thoughts racing in my mind at the moment, and it's branching out wide even when I pick up a single topic.
It's funny that we have such a powerful gadget within us and we try to spread like a drop of ink in water, trying to find answers to the innumerous questions. We try to analyse, right from the "atto, femto" levels to the "peta, exa" levels, right from the "atom, molecule" levels to "ecosystem, biosphere" levels and beyond. We have so many experts amongst us.
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.¹
Keep this quote in mind while we progress further... :-)
We have so many people specialising in so many different fields - so many new discoveries and inventions - we are evolving! Our lives have become so much better (am I sarcastic? ;-) I think so lol), we can do so many things which we could have only dreamt of if we were in the previous century. But still... how far are we away from the Truth?

Stephen Hawking: "If we do discover a theory of everything...it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would truly know the mind of God."

Well, what are we proceeding towards? Something that will give a complete answer to all our questions. We don't want billion answers for all our billion questions, we want one answer for all our billion questions. [ I have to think about this statement, I just said what came to my mind directly, need to verify if it is right ]

Someone asked long time back...

"What is that knowing which we will know everything?" :-)

So the very interesting question was already asked many thousands of years ago in ancient scriptures^2-4. And it was answered too.

From the Wikipedia page for Theory of everything:

The concept of a "theory of everything" is rooted in the ancient idea of causality, famously expressed by Laplace:

An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

– Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814

Let's draw a parallel to the words of Laplace to those found in the another set of ancient scriptures, the author being Patanjali.
III. 16 By mastery of the three transformations of nature (dharma), quality (laksana) and condition (avasthā), through samyama on the nirodha, samādhi, and ekāgratā states of consciousness, the yogi acquires knowledge of the past and the future.

And coming back to our expert who knows everything about nothing. Doesn't that sound funny? Knowing everything about nothing? Maybe not... :-)
In the words of Swami Vivekananda,
...Patanjali teaches us the meaning of these waves; secondly, the best way to repress them; and thirdly, how to make one wave so strong as to suppress all other waves, fire eating fire as it were. When only one remains, it will be easy to suppress that also, and when that is gone, this Samadhi or concentration is called seedless.

"Nothing" has a special significance too! :-)
Well, these are just my thoughts, I might be incomplete, I might have to explain more, I might be wrong. But I'm happy that a small section of my brain is now a little more organized. Hold on till we go on another adventure ;-)

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0. This isn't actually the topic that I am thinking about, but this does have some links to it.
1. Murphy Laws Site - Technology Laws
2. Spiritual Literature of India - Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Other Scriptures of India - Upanishads Mundaka Upanishad
3. The Theosophist : Vol. 124 NO. 4. January 2003
4. Lecture from Swami Vivekananda pointing to the same question, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Vedanta Philosophy

Putting the pieces together...

It has been quite some time since I wrote something. It's not so easy to write what we think... :-)

"We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light."
-Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) British novelist and essayist.

What a wonderful quote! I do have something in my mind that I want to say... hmm... many things to say :-D
But it's all so puzzling and intriguing that I don't know how to begin and how to end. Words... how insufficient are they to express thoughts. Anyway, I need to research more and get more clues. Maybe a mindmap should help organise the fuzzy thoughts. I hope then I would be able to put the pieces together in the big mind puzzle and get at least a part of it solved. It's fun getting answers to our questions by ourselves. Well, let's see ;-)

The Sense of Time

Well, how hard it is to express thoughts! I'll try again...
Being a technical support person forces me to take good notice of time. And the time-to-respond to events is almost always as-soon-as-possible. Everything in the day is time-bound, even sleep. Nothing escapes from it - the time it takes to respond to emails, start and end online meetings, the time to travel to work, to troubleshoot issues... the list is endless. Even the weekends don't escape from it - the time spent in the library, browsing through new books in the bookstore, selecting action movie CDs. I have to agree that I get a slight respite though, I sleep till around 2pm in the weekends. But that is not conscious relief from the clutches of the Time Devil. The sense of "what next?" doesn't die out at all.

Deviating a bit from the title now, for some time ;-)
I was introduced, almost providentially, to a workshop on personality development in another part of the city. Well, many might consider the monks who carry out this workshop as religious, but I don't think so. I consider them spiritual. The monks there are knowledgeable, are not narrow-minded and consider different religions as different paths leading to the same destination⁰. And their service to humanity is really commendable. And the environment there is calm even though just few hundred metres aways is the most busiest, crowded shopping place of the city. I realised that absence of sound or noise, which we sometimes feel at work or at home, doesn't provide peace of mind. It still has that vibrations of restlessness in it though devoid of the vibrations of sound. Now the place where I went was really peaceful, a nice park in the front, the library, the bookstore, the meeting hall and prayer hall after that.
But hold on! I didn't get a way to escape from Time yet. I had to get up early on a Sunday (the workshop is on the last Sunday of every month), get into a bus, walk fast for 11 minutes after getting down, and reach there exactly by 9:30am. The revered monk is very punctual, one of the many qualities that I adore in him. I always go alone and don't talk a word to anyone. After really inspiring talks and presentations the session ends and I leave by around 1:30pm and reach home in approximately 30 to 40 minutes by bus, not precise because that depends on various factors - the traffic, the mood of the driver, the condition of the vehicle, the crowd that gets down and gets in, unforeseen circumstances and so on¹. Even the workshop couldn't help to forget the sense of time.

I did find a solution though. I started visiting that wonderful place on other Sundays. I go, sit down under the big tree in that peaceful garden, with no one else except me out there. No one to question why I came, no one to question why I didn't leave. I just sit there and lose the sense of time that keeps clinging to me forever. I listen to the chirping of the birds, see the butterflies flying, the branches moving with the wind, the ants walking on their trails. Peace it is, inside and outside! Time, for once, vanishes out of thought. No priorities, no deadlines, no urgency, no haste. And outside... no honking, no traffic, no deafening music, no construction work². I sit there for about an hour, go to the library inside, look at the books calmly, come outside, sit down again for some more time before I leave... getting lost in the hustle and bustle of the city, the time-bound life, the tensions and anxieties of deadlines again.

Well, Time did get hold of me, again... but I did escape from it, and I got myself renewed to face the busy world with a calm attitude and a smiling face :-)

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0. I just realised today (5 hours 55 minutes after I finished writing the blog) that the monks support atheists too, provided the atheists have full faith in themselves and their beliefs.
1. This brings forth another topic... the number of factors that can be brought under control.
2. Another topic here, about the motive of living beings... more on a philosophical note and more on that later.

the world

Strange world, strange people.
Lots of differences, many similarities.
War and violence, welfare and peace.
Please tell me, is anyone at ease?