The whole – The wholeness of its parts

All of us are fascinated by nature. Particularly, we are fascinated by those which are visually captivating. Two things which have fascinated me are fractals and holograms. I saw a fractal diagram for the first time in my life when I was just 14 and was captivated instantly. The combination of colours, the different shades, together with the perfection in its shape captivated me. The holograms also had similar effects, as one tilts them; one gets to see different colours and shades.

I have had a chance to get to know more about them after that. Fractals have been used to model leaves, mountains etc. They have been used to explain seemingly random phenomena, with an idea that even randomness has some determinism. Holograms have been used to capture 3D objects, basically in information storage and retrieval, information security etc.

An important property of a hologram, which stores information, is that a part of it is enough to retrieve the entire information, even though the entire information is spread over it evenly. A similar definition of fractal is being known. A Fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole", as coined by a scientist who was an important contributor to its development, Mandelbrot.

But my recent findings about them is much exciting than what I had known previously. I came to know through literatures that they are being used to explain the working of brain, consciousness, universe and so on. Researches have proved that information is not stored as a whole, but in parts in our brain, at different locations. The exciting information is that a part of the brain is enough to get the entire information stored in the whole, as in a hologram. This has been concluded by an experiment on rats which have been found to perform complex tasks which they learnt before their brains were removed!

While the above experiment tries to explain how information is stored in our brain, many researches have found astounding relationship between science and consciousness. Researchers are of the opinion that there is something which is beyond our perception, and are hypothesizing a holographic universe, an entirely different viewpoint of our existence and beyond. Fractals play a part in it in explaining the connectivity of consciousness.

I encourage you to visit the below links
1. http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Holographic_Universe/id/5864
2. http://www.montalk.net/metaphys
3. http://www.fractalwisdom.com/FractalWisdom/weston.html
4. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1201004

Introductory information about fractals and holograms can be found in the below links
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hologram

Never the twain shall meet, or shall they?

I was chatting with one of my college friends that day. We share a common interest in philosophy. Not that we are great philosophers, but we do discuss the meaning of whatever philosophical quotes that we come across and try to appreciate the meaning and the subject in general.

We were discussing the happenings at each others end when he noticed “Tat Twam Asi” that I had put as my status line and remarked “Dwaitam”. I was suddenly taken aback by the word “Dwaitam” which I had understood as duality. I immediately searched to confirm what I understood was indeed true and replied back “That’s duality” (He had actually thought of writing “Adwaitam” but wrote “Dwaitam” by mistake), when he shot back “Trying to bring in science?”!

The reason why I write about this chat is to convey that there are so many similarities between science and philosophy. One might find another example in my previous posts when I have tried to explain philosophical concepts using concepts from thermodynamics. It is a common misconception that philosophy is a very dry subject and never these twains shall meet. But if we closely examine, they do seem to meet.

To help you appreciate what the terms “Dwaitam” and “Adwaitam” mean, let me try to explain whatever little that I have understood. Philosophy has modeled us as a hierarchy of different state of minds. The lowest level is physical, then mental and at the top is soul. These 3 states have been further subdivided into finer states. Philosophy holds that the soul is an aspect of something that is beyond our senses, something that is considered whole. A small part of the whole is called the Jivatma and the whole is called the Paramatma. Philosophy holds that even though this Jivatma is an aspect of the Paramatma, it is itself the Paramatma.

An analogy of this confusion is the duality that exists in light. While early researches pointed out that light was corpuscular, it was found to be a wave and finally was concluded that it expressed a dual nature. We perceive these two natures of light depending on the way we try to view it. Either we can consider them as a whole(as they represent the same thing) or as separate(an illusion). Similarly, depending on the way perceive the above philosophical problem, we either conclude that the Jivatma and Paramatma are one and the same or they are different.

I have one more analogy that explains how a part of the whole is the whole itself, which i will explain in my next post. :)
One can find more information about the different levels in http://www.ru.org/10-1koshas.htm.

The “Rat Race”

The title must be familiar to those who have read the book “Rich dad, Poor dad”. This describes the never ending chase for materialistic aspirations in a larger sense, though the book specifically deals with the pursuit of money, a situation in which one goes around money at the cost of his/her life.

I had a chance to read Osho’s article in Deccan chronicle today. He was explaining the difference between “Seriousness” and “Sincerity”. According to him (and any philosopher in general), there is no necessity for anyone to achieve anything in this life. This life is just to live, just to experience whatever is being presented each day, each moment. He says that in the “Seriousness” state, one fails to be in their “Being” state, always thinking about their goals (mostly materialistic and being narrow). One does not live his/her present moment but is always bogged down by the necessity to achieve (for no particular reason or a broad purpose).

His definition of “Sincerity” is being able to live the present, have an open outlook towards life. According to this, it is ok if you are able to achieve something; it is also ok if you are not able to achieve it. The stress is not the final result, but the activity in itself. In a sense, many philosophers state that this life is a game to play and not a game to win. The same idea is being reflected in Bhagavad Gita as

Karmanye Vaadhika-raste,

Maa Phaleshu Kadachana;

Maa karma-phala-hetur-bhoorma,

MaTe sangostwakarmini.

Your right is to work only,

But never to its fruits;

Let not the fruits of action be thy motive,

Nor let thy attachment be to inaction.

The following articles enlighten this idea better

http://www.oshorobbins.com/html/introduction.html

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-dcfEhgs0a7SKZbQ9er_P?p=37

A question of being

Perceptions change from person to person. Little we realize that there are perceptions which we would not have imagined at all, just like the first comment I got for my previous blog from my uncle. I was just dumbstruck by a philosophical perception of something which I had written in a lighter vein. Upon his wish, I am writing this outline, even though I am sure I won’t be able to do much justice to the subject. It’s a part of the learning curve, though.

Philosophy has always been a subject filled with thoughts that are not easily perceptible to the layman. The terminologies used, however obvious they may seem to be literally, have different, sometimes even difficult, interpretations, which our common dictionaries fail to bring forth. One of those terminologies is “being”. I am not dealing with it too much philosophically since I have not been able to appreciate it beyond a limit. Yet, I believe that the idea presented will bring forth a new perception to our existing knowledge.

All natural systems consist of many states. It is the property of the systems to always try to reach their equilibrium, by way of swinging back and forth between all the possible states. While they tend to reach the equilibrium, they never do so in real. A small perturbation is enough to offset the equilibrium that they seem to be in. It is in this equilibrium state that the system is void of any vibration, or any activity. This might also be called as the “ground state”. A system always has its energy preserved intact in this “ground state”. Philosophically speaking, the word “Being” exemplifies this state.

The way the electrons try to reach their ground state after being energized, the pluck of the string in a musical instrument giving rise to vibration, and the string slowly coming back to its original state as the vibration dampens, all represent the same.

Better sooner than later

"Better sooner than later". Doesn't it seem to be an improvisation of the older adage "Better late than never"? Well, yes in one way.

There are many ways to go about an activity. One can start on the literature survey, or anything equivalent, understand the activity and perform it in real. One can even start doing that activity, referring to the literatures as and when required. But the height of eccentricity is in doing the literature survey or the activity as though it is never ending.

For the past few days, i have been posed with a problem in encryption involving .NET and Java. I have been trying to find a method by which i can decrypt values in .NET which have been encrypted using java packages, well, a nice way to invite trouble. It could have been easy to have built a wrapper around the java packages so that the .NET code can access(sounds techie... doesnt it).

But it is always our psychology that we tend to make simple things complex, as it happened in my case. I started to get deep into the java package, find out how it was doing the encryption, try to simulate the same in .NET(well, a good learning), only to find that the proposition wont work(Atleast, it is better to realize our mistakes than to be in ignorance).

But then, we always realize our mistakes late. And the catch is to realize our mistakes sooner than later.

As my father puts, "Its always better to commit mistakes without making a thought rather than commit them after so much thought process"!!!