blog@Yantrajaal

I have always been puzzled by the image of Kali that we have grown up with. Why would a goddess appear naked ? Why should she be surrounded by images of murder, mayhem and destruction in the form of severed heads and hands ? Why should be standing or squatting on a lifeless Shiva ? Or as I learnt as I grew older, the actual image is that of a woman-on-man sexual act that has been sanitized by a sensitive society for "family viewing"! Gods and goddesses are supposed to be goody-goody figures that every society has conjured up to create a safe harbour for troubled times -- to protect and save helpless humanity in the face of uncomfortable challenges thrown up by a hostile environment. That is how primitive man created the mental image of the Divine. Someone who is loving and kind and benign and benefic and beautiful peaceful and calm and ..... so on and so forth. That is how the gods are supposed to be ... and then comes Kali and shatters that carefully crafted archetype wit...

Followers of the Sanatan Dharma, or "Hindus", in general and those who believe in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, as propounded by Sankaracharya, see the world as illusion ("Maya") that hides an underlying unity of universal consciousness or Brahman. This concept has been explored in greater detail in The Road to pSingularity but one of the key ideas is that there exists a central consciousness and all individual sentient entities ( or people) are a part of this central consciousness. The linkage between the central ("Brahman") and the individual ("Atman") is something that gets lost because of the illusion of "Maya" and only the true adept, after significant effort, realises the existence of the link and in doing so, succeeds in uniting his individual Atman with the universal Brahman through the process of Yoga or union. This post is not about trying to establish the authenticity of this point of view. Instead we explore how t...

Like the fifth postulate of Euclid, the twelfth chapter of this book has been a source of discomfort both for me as well as for some of my friends and readers. The need to introduce the Divine to plug a loophole in my logic – an inevitable loophole, given the limitations of the Gödel’s Theorem of Incompleteness – was rather irritating and yet it seemed that there is nothing I could do about it. Then I met a friend who alerted me to the existence of a very simple concept that was functionally analogous and one that would allow me to bridge the gap. But does it work ? and have I succeeded in doing so ? That question is best answered by the reader I suppose. Technology has moved significantly since the first edition and nowhere is this more evident than in the area of 3D displays. Direct connectivity between the human brain and a digital device has also improved dramatically but we are yet to reach the level of maturity that is necessary to blur the border between the real and illusor...

James Cameron's blockbuster movie, Avatar, about which I have written about in an earlier post , might have unconsciously sparked off a flurry of interest in the Hindu concept of Avatar, which can be loosely translated as a manifestation of -- usually -- the Divine in human form. But the term Avatar first entered the modern, techno-savvy, non-Hindu lexicon through its usage in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) like Everquest, World of Warcraft and 3D Virtual Worlds like Second Life. The MMORPG eco-system -- players and builders alike -- treats an Avatar as a digital extension of a conscious human entity, the player, and is used to "manifest" the player's personality and behaviour,  however imperfectly, in the game domain. So there are two domains -- the virtual, digital domain inhabited by the Avatar and the real, physical domain inhabited by the human player -- and these are connected through the "magic" of the MMORPG hardware and sof...

Most of us are familiar with the word agnostic but are slightly unsure of Gnosticism, so let me first explain the genesis of the word. The word gnosis derives from Greek and 'means' knowledge or the act of knowing. However this knowledge is different from rational, logical knowledge -- as is obtained by reading books or listening to a guru -- and instead refers to a form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. In this respect it bears an uncanny resemblance to the revelation or enlightenment that is experienced by Eastern mystics, which is different from the 'bookish' knowledge obtained by reading the Vedas or the Upanishads. The ascent of Kundalini in Tantra and the 'flash' of revelation that it brings to the sadhak is also an example of gnosis. Ramakrishna blessed many of his disciples by stating : Tor Chaitanya Hok - which may be translated as May You Be Aware Of, or, May You Realise (the Truth). In the first century after the appearance of Jesus Chr...