In the last section, we saw that if we feed our mind with desires of a specific outcome (good or bad) ; all our brain does is compute the realistic probability of occurrence. It does suggest a path to accomplish that goal but again we need to practice. There is every chance we might start chasing a new desire the very next day. Thus now we have a new action plan.
Even if we hold our desires, the environment of our tiny box changes. That means the path to our expected outcome changes. Only thing constant in our tiny box is the change because like all the physical system we too are rotating - may not be physically evident. The new realities often mean we need to change the action plans or pivot onto something new. Thus we are constantly changing our actions without giving our brain enough repetitions to build a skill. A skill rooted deep into our physical reality. We crave the possibilities. We are moving from one expectation to another without ever giving ourselves a chance. We are stuck into detours and then more detours with in those detours. In essence we get to a state that we ourselves don't know what exactly we are looking for.
And every time our brain fails us on first attempts, we feel let down. Another reason to move on to something else.
In the last sections we also talked about the idea that the skills lead to manifestation. We understood that our brain - what we know as Sahsrara Chakra is a powerful neural network that helps turn repetitive actions into a skill. Skill means you can perform a set of actions effortlessly. You can test this idea in your own lab. Take any activity , say singing or cooking or running , coding or climbing - anything that you feel like fun; and see how much you improve on thirtieth day of practice v/s the day you started. Practice makes us perfect. In a way, brain has added a specific knowledge to our actions routine. This knowledge allows us to effortlessly skate board while other people trying to mimic the routine fall on their butts. The problem is we never consistently practice enough to cross a threshold. A threshold beyond which the practice becomes a ritual ; a pleasurable ritual.
If you feel these ideas are kinda in flux in your mind , I highly request you to check out the previous chapters - starting from the README file. As you know , the goal of this part of the book "getting started" is to build a solid grip on the core ideas of Gita. It will help if we follow the flow.
Conscious removal of desires to engage us in consistent practice - ritual of actions Yazna is the fundamental aspect of Karm Yoga. Gita adds emphasis on consistency that is a hallmark of stable brain Sahsra. Such a consistent person who engages in ritual of actions by regulating the senses and engaging the work organs is called Sthit Prazna - One with stable mind. Krishna says
Prajhati [ gives up ] Yada [when] Kaman [desires] , Sarvan [all] Parth [ O Arjuna ] Manogatam [one who is beyond fickle mind];
Atmani [ self ] Eva [ certainly / only ] Atmna [ conscious of ] Tushta [ satisfied ] Sthit Prazna [ stable mind ] Tat [ s/he ] Uchyate [ is called or known as ]
When a man gives up all the desires of sense gratification and chasing the random goals ; and when his mind thus purified , finds satisfaction in self alone, then s/he is said to be a stable mind.
Such a skilled person with stable mind manifests. If you are singer , then the manifestation can be a song. For a warrior, the manifestation is victory. For a writer its the words and for poet its the thought. In a way, manifestation is a proof of completion of first two stages - service orientation and skill capture. This is the door to the third stage where you may be called upon by the system for righteous application of your skills. There can be some wait here. But the call comes. It always does!
The question is why should we manifest ? What is the point. The answer is simple. One it obviously completes our Yazna and second , the manifestation we do can inspire someone else to take on their ritual of actions. There is, however a catch, the manifestations can be appeasing to senses and as such cause bondage - for other people as well as our own selves. The primary reason senses attract to the manifestation is that the manifestations, by design, are enticing or else senses don't even look at them. We look at a rather tiny slice of all that crosses our eyes, thus the risk of attachment. That is where the idea of renunciation comes in.
If you see the graphic , it is the manifestation cycle but the idea is where the "renunciation" fits in ..
Renunciation
If we see the left side of the graphic , the manifestations are to engage us. We are tempted to enact them in our lives. We start chasing the expected outcomes. But we fail to put in enough effort for the realization because what youtube recommends us to see is probably a work of lifetime. It will take us as much effort (if not more) to reach similar level of skill. As the expected outcomes get distanced from the actions ; our minds create the doubts because odds for such outcomes are at best a toss of coin. We feel as if our brains are confusing us. At this stage we try to shut down our thinking. We feel as if the most powerful tool that we have in our heads is our enemy. This is evident in our substance abuse. Drugs , alcohol ..
The path foreword to get out of such a situation is to cut the noise down. This is what we know as renunciation. Kinda forcefully take our mind off all the cravings we have. Stop using technologies and artifacts that consume us. The goal is to re-set ourselves so we once again have a clear perception, clear vantage of our physical reality. The goal is NOT to start hating or permanently give up everything. That kind of renunciation doesn't attract any real success. With this material body, it is not factually possible to renounce everything. Krishna says ..
Karmemdrayani [Work Organs - Hands, feet] Sanyamya [holding back] Yah [who] Aaste [indulges in] Mansa [mind] Smaran [thinking];
Indriya Arthan [purpose of above work organs] Vumudha [oblivious] Atma [person] Mithya [false as in trickery] Aacharah [conduct] Sa [he] Uchyate [showcases].
Holding back your work organs, If one is mentally stuck into the situation , oblivious to the very purpose of our sensory organs, that person describes himself by a false conduct as in trickery.
As we successfully gain a good hold of our ground, we need to initiate our journey of Karma, that is to re-skill ourselves in terms of immediate conditions for that is the only path to understand the true physical reality, and our inner knowledge.
The graphic also explains, on the right side, how we take everything from the manifestation cloud - Bramha and again all that we manifest through our skills goes back into the overarching system ; and in the process we decrypt the knowledge and gain peace. Once again a never ending cycle. Such a cycle is called Kaal chakra - the cycle of manifestations. We will decipher Kaal Chakra towards the end of this discussion.
The Perpetual Expanse
The obvious question is what is expanse of our manifestations. We can agree that earth is shaped by us. To some extent even the atmosphere of earth is created by all of us , largely by the plants. But what about the stars? The sun - that is the very source of life as we see. What about water and even the land. We sure can't claim to have created all these that we perceive with our senses and the very basis of our existence.
Even our own bodies? Should we just black box all these in a single coin called Evolution but than the question is who designed evolution? If someone did ? Should we submit to the idea that there are more intelligent beings in existence ? How about we see what Gita says and try to expand the thoughts ..
One thing is clear, that the things that we manifest - for example cars , smart phones , internet , electricity do enhance our life style but they are not mandatory for our survival . For examples fish don't need a sophisticated weather management system or GPS to navigate . Even birds fly across the oceans. Gita says that this provision , the core services of our existence is called the basic material nature . And Gita proposes that this "basic material nature" has eight components what it refers to as Ashtadha Mool Prakriti - eight fold basic nature. Krishna says ..
Bhoomih [earth --> solids] Aapah [water--> liquids] Analah [fire --> energy] Vayuh [air- gases] Kham [space --> nothingness] Manah [fickle mind] Buddhih [Intelligence] Eva [certainly] Cha [and] ;
Ahmkara [Ego - identity] Iti [thus] Iyam [all this] Me [my] Bhinna [different] Prakritih [manifest] Ashtadha [eight fold].
Solids, Liquids, Gases , Energy and space (absence of first three) along with fickle mind , intelligence and ego - all of these are basic manifest of this creation what Krishna calls
Ashtdha Mool Prakriti- Eight fold basic nature.
The first five are some time also referred to as Jada - lifeless and last three are referred to as Chetna - living. The non living - jada are also called Sthoola means something that our senses could perceive - The solids, the air , the liquids. Last three are called Sookshma means they are too fine to be felt by senses - Intelligence, fickle mind and the ego - they can't be perceived by the senses. Senses are designed to take in binary inputs from the Sthoola.
This might sound like a page taken from a totally religious ideology without any scientific basis but if you bear with me for few more minutes, I might be able to convince you otherwise. As I said in the introduction, I want to boil this document to something that appeals to our rationale .. And I hope, in the process, we will demystify many things that are beyond the realm of current scientific quest ..
Our Metaverse
To our good fortune, we are recently getting to a stage where practical and mass adopted virtual reality seems like a near term possibility. I mean, we started the experiments early 2000s. I still remember my first excursion through "Second life" where IBM ( my then employer ) had built a virtual space. But the tech plumbing was still couple decades behind. As expected "Second life" and then a similar initiative Sony play station Home project didn't get much traction but now we are at the cusp of VR / AR revolution. No wonder facebook has renamed itself into "Metaverse". Well, I am not trying to hard sell you Facebook's VR gear, but I want to use virtual reality as a backdrop for approaching the Ashtadha Mool Prakriti from a different angle. And I hope you will bear with me through this long winded metaphor.
The best way to put our arms around the idea of laws of basic nature as described by Gita, is to imagine that we ourselves are building a virtual world. If we were to architect a virtual world say for Oculus Quest, what rules we had choose. You can call them as the core services of the "Meta Verse". Obviously , the first thing we need is the physics engine, so that we could build a non living space like the one we have around us. We need to simulate the rules of physics which basically means we have provisioned the solids, the liquids and the gases. And the gravity. Well , in Facebook Metaverse you can fly so there is no gravity but it is not hard to imagine that we can easily hold your avatar to the ground if we want to . That is not much of a coding challenge . Lets do it and see how it pans out .. Trust me it will be a fun thought experiment if not more. And forgive me for oversimplifying the things. The intent is just to create a mental map. We will figure out the nitty-gritties and the details down the line in the book.
Spatial mediums
So we figured out that we need three basic constituents - that is - air , liquids and solids - solids are something you can't pass through, liquids are something you can pass through but you will feel the touch, and gases you can of course pass through even without feeling the touch. Absence of all these three we will refer to as space. Just as three primary spatial mediums, we also provision three sensors - that is touch , smell and taste. Touch primarily for the solids , taste for liquids and smell for the gases. We will talk a lot more about senses and sensors in subsequent chapters.
Energy
Since we have the rules of physics active in this virtual world that we are building, means we need to introduce the idea of energy to allow inhabitants abide by the physical rules . You can't sell me a refrigerator if there is no electricity. Every time you need mobility in this place, to feel the solids , liquids and gases , to cut through them , to reshape them without somehow bending the laws , you need energy. We can harness energy through say lighting a fire or drinking an energy potion. And of course we can channel the energy say with electricity through a wire. Or a train of photons - as the energy reaches us from the Sun.
Goes without saying that we are only creating a mental construct here. We are of course NOT trying to defeat Einstein's energy mass equivalence :-) and we are taking a very myopic view as to what is the purpose of energy from a conscious agent standpoint - that is I need energy to follow the rules of the universe. You can't ask me to walk a gravity laden land if you don't give me energy in my muscles. You may charge for it ; crude is already hitting hundred dollars a barrel :-)
Intelligence
So we got all the non living things - the five elements what Gita refers to as Panch Bhoota ; that is solids , gases , liquids, space and energy . What about the manifestation of us - the conscious agents? Well we got a sense for each of the spatial elements. The next step is how does the conscious agent remembers the interactions with these objects and other conscious agents. We need the agents to remember about their immediate reality , to harvest it for survival . That is the reason we need to put in some memory.
This memory is designed to be "real-time" to act spontaneously for obvious needs of survival. Agents can of-course use it for other needs when there is no threat . When it works in real-time , like a Unix daemon:-) , we call it "intelligence", what Gita refers to as Buddhi. It is not hard to imagine that we if we load it with desires, we lose our ability to act righteously because in this case, desires govern our actions and we know ever changing desires lead us a set of new actions every time we see a glittering thing. Gita addresses the process of effective memory management in what we call Samttava Budhi Yoga which is the foundation of all the meditative processes common these days. The purpose of this Yoga is to get to the stage of Sthit Prazna - the stable mind as we discussed above. We will talk about it in more details in the chapter on Ritual of thinking .
As a side note, use of psychedelics is on the rise these days, partly because we are unable to get a handle on our desires. Psychedelics make us lose the control on this intelligence. Now they may have medicinal value if our memory is already messed up and in way , we intend to reboot the system but that process needs to be very carefully administered and monitored. Keep in mind that excessive and regular use of psychedelics makes us inactive - action less ; not a recommended state for a Karm Yogi who seek to have a true appreciation of our physical reality.
Autonomy and Sleep
Obviously we can't put too much of bulky storage in there because we need o optimize for for Survival. Which translates into optimize for mobility and spontaneity. Why not give a small, real-time fast memory (something like computers' RAM) and provision a mechanism to process the data with global compute when agents are inactive - let us call it "Sleep". So we build a localized brain and a mandatory sleep. All in the metaverse. In a way, the conscious agents are free to roam around and explore in search of survival in the virtual reality we created; but we get to know all they did when they fall asleep and sync the data up to the cloud. And that is where we can guide the agents as to what what is there next big move. We can assign them tasks. We want to keep the control to some extent but we do want to give the agents a sense of autonomy.
The design of sleep interface is probably the most complex part of the virtual world we are building. There are many sub-modules of this interface that act from ingesting the data , processing and optimizing and rebuilding the scenarios for the next set of actions. Of course, it is an opportunity for maintaining the physical body. In addition, we need to make sure that inhabitants are safe from predators during the sleep cycles. You might think that sleep is just a way to rejuvenate our tired muscles but if we were to waste a third of our life in simply maintaining this body, that is an awful design of a machine. Given the complexity of our bodies , it is hard to imagine that the maker would commit such a design blunder. Those who have done an overnighter, they know we roam around like zombies the very next day:-) Totally disconnected from the things around us. No amount of rest can get us the connect that sleep brings. We can die much faster on account of sleep deprivation than going without food or water. So sleep is special. It is a special interface. We can change our attitude towards sleep if we think of it as our connection to divine internet. This is where all our bodily application are updated over the air :-)
You may say what is the point of building such a virtual world where we have no constant contact. We are not with our avatars all the time - as in immersive games - "Call of Duty". Well, we already do such things when we are building what we call "digital twins" to solve real world problems . And pretty soon they will be common place. For example the digital twin of our car might tell the mechanic as to what could be the probable repair point long before the broken gearbox leave you stranded on the road. Digital twins of busy intersections are already capturing data to train the self driving cars. Who knows, soon your digital twin might attend work meetings while you are enjoying thanksgiving meal with your family ..or vice versa , depending on what your priorities are :-) Instead of swiping left and right on tinder, you might want to have your your digital twin meet up your date first to check the compatibility before a real meeting:-) . Bottom line is we are reaching a stage where real and digital are getting asynchronous but they co-exist.
This asynchronous design is what allows the illusion of autonomy or free will - the greatest gift of our lives. Even if it is an illusion it is something to cherish, In a way, sleep is our autonomy shield. A much better design than our smartphones where online and offline is kinda mixed and messed up
Time
The fact we have a small but efficient local memory means we need to offload the irrelevant data rather quickly. How do we do that? We need a mechanism to purge that cold useless data from agent memory and retain only hot relevant data. No one wants to keep the memories of their ex alive :-) In fact being able to forget is a necessary aspect of healthy active life. So how do we enable the agents to forget. That's where we built the notion of time. A chronological mechanism to keep track of our rotations. Just like a spinning vinyl.
If that is the case, why can't we traverse the "time". We can go back and forth in other spatial mediums such as solids and liquids or air but we can't go back and forth in time. The answer is simple, because time is a construct of memory. It is not a physical element. In the context of memory, we can sure go back and forth in time but we haven't yet provisioned a physical element for time. In a way, it is the fourth dimension but we don't want our agents to wander off in unnecessary timelines physically. We want them grounded to the physical reality of three dimensions. So we need to keep this fourth dimension hidden from the senses. In our current design, our agents can't even handle the complexities of three dimensions , so there is no point exposing them to fourth. May be in some future project , we will build a four dimensional metaverse :-) but that would definitely mean revisiting the eight basic rules.
Thus , in current design, time is a derived idea, it is not a fundamental aspect of material nature. It is a mechanism to keep our intelligence fresh. That is the reason we lose sense of time when we are sleeping. You know what I mean if you ever snoozed the alarm a winter morning :-) Eight hours pass in a jiffy. Of course, in modern society, where scheduling and calendaring is an important aspect of life, we have built hundreds of tools around it to keep reminding us that tax date is approaching fast :-) That daily scrum call , 8 am every morning ..sucks :-)
So in addition to senses the conscious agent now has a small local mind to navigate the survival through what we call Buddhi - intelligence. This is basically to receive data from the sensors and then we have the access to massive connected compute through a sleep interface what we refer to as Chitta. And we have time because we want our local memory to be efficient. In a way time is a mechanism to purge the unnecessary and retain the relevant.
Fickle Mind - Mana.
Turned out with all the sensors as well intelligence, the agents are still not excited to engage with the virtual world. The metaverse is turning into another "Second Life" ; there is no transformative engagement. So we need to do two things - First to incentivize developers to build more immersive manifestations and second, we need to create a fickle mind in conscious agents. A faculty of mind that wont let them seek peace; rather make them chase new things , explore new locales, smell new scents, drink new potions , new cocktails- fickle mind. This is what Gita refers to as Mana. Mana is the seat of curiosity. Intelligence is to Chitta - the global compute, what curiosity is to Mana - the fickle mind. Stabilizing the curious Mana is an important prerequisite of a stable mind Sthit-Prizan . As we saw in the first verse of this chapter ..
Prajhati [ gives up ] Yada [when] Kaman [desires] , Sarvan [all] Parth [ O Arjuna ] Manogatam [one who is beyond fickle mind];
Krishna used the word
Manogatamthat means someone who is gone past the fickle mind.
Important thing to note is that both Buddhi - intelligence and Mana - curiosity are aspect of our material nature. They are not to be confused with the knowledge. They are ,however, important tools to decrypt the knowledge - Atma.
Let us now look at the last part of eight fold nature - Ahmkara. In Sanskrit , the meaning of Ahm is "Me" . And Kri is the root for the word Kriya which means doing or creating. Thus the word Ahmkara literally means "creating me". This last core service is what brings life to the metaverse otherwise its just a bunch of lifeless elements and compute..
Identity - Ahmkara.
Implementation of fickle mind isn't that hard. It is basically to randomize the focus but the question is how do we incentivize the developers build more attractive and immersive manifestations. Turns out an amazingly simple idea works like a charm. A like button - as in "thumbs up" :-)
You know what I am talking about. The facebook "like" button. And you guessed it right, no one thought about the "unintended consequences". This simple "like" button captured the imagination of entire metaverse because if you don't vote for something with a like, it inherently means a "dislike". This simple like button led to excessive inflation and kinda distorted our immediate reality and morphed into something called "identity". Gita calls it Ahemkara. Identification with friends , family , nation , tribe , race and species. And thousands of other things. The things that we like and the ones we don't. In a way, this is what we perceive as who we are .
Purists called it a bug but this is what brought life to the metaverse. Others called it expression! Purists call it "ego" others call it freedom. Jury is still out meanwhile the like button is already being liked by three billion agents :-) I guess facebook has three billions monthly users now ! And there seems no sign of a slow down.
The growth of identity across entire virtual world creates three more bugs - we already know about desires and Gita's main focus is to weed them out. The other three are fear, anger and jealousy . We will talk a lot about these three bugs in next section. Suffice to say here that these three collectively give rise to Matrix - what Gita refers to as Maya.
So we have a ready conscious agent ; with senses to observe the elements and other manifestations, intelligence to gain information, deep mind to process the information with global compute , work organs to interact with the elements and manifest , curiosity to indulge and an identity that narrows our focus - as to who we are ? Looks like we have a good design :-)
Intelligent design v/s evolution
Well, you may say this sounds like an intelligent design ; yup we have a super intelligent design, I say this not because Krishna said so . I say this because this is what I see in what we are doing. Given what we did with compute in last thirty odd years , do we have any doubts that we will build not one but thousands of such virtual realities. With different sets of physical rules. We have transformed machines to intelligent machines and them to virtual intelligent machines - from post office to virtual post box on email server ; from real to online retail . Does anyone has a doubt that we all collectively - and that includes trees in our back yard because they fix our air - they too are partners in this rise or you may say crime :-); that we all are collectively building a metaverse. A metaverse of gargantuan size.
We are collectively evolving into a new virtual world. We are basically recreating what we are. We are building super conscious agents. We are transforming ourselves into the God. But all this is what we call evolution because we need to iterate endlessly to get to a better design. One that sticks. It took Apple thirteen iterations to get to iPhone 13. Every time thousands of developers working collaboratively to improve a teeny tiny bit. One thing at a time. We can start with say twenty core services and give similar senses to our agents. It might be a good idea to add electricity and internet as a core sensor in future projects and see where it goes but for now, actually for millions of years the design with these eight core services seems to be flourishing. Ashtdha Mool Prakriti.
The iterations are key to getting to this design. The cellular life probably has no identity and a single sense for liquids, we don't know. The point is we are evolving , always evolving , "Second Life" failed but "Grand Theft Auto" is working. Play station home failed but Horizon home from facebook might work, who knows what is next chapter after self driving cars. I am already investing in eVTols - the air taxies. Arriving at a design that looks intelligent is an evolutionary process. Only the best and fittest survives.
We may kid ourselves into thinking that our current state of evolution is somehow special. At least assume that we are hitting exponential in terms of evolution. We do have exponential opportunities just like we always did, always had. We are increasing say the carbon content but in terms of change this is nothing compared to when green population inundated this entire planet into a living pool of oxygen. Our silicon based compute is sure a major step forward but we should not forget that our long gone ancestors must have developed a carbon based compute , our own neural network and intelligence. Building our frontal cortex was as much a collective breakthrough as the integrated circuits. Who knows, how many times we have renewed our virtual world, every time a new layer just like an onion and it never stops.
If the question is are we in a virtual world? The answer is another question :-) Aren't we the agents that we only built and are continuously improving ? And aren't we always split between our real and virtual worlds. Overlapping , superimposing each other? But even more important and the real question is what ensures perpetuity of this model - this ever evolving metaverse with eight core services ? And that takes us to the esoteric debate on reincarnation ..
Physical Perpetuity - procreation.
In order to understand the perpetual nature we need to first look at the survival. What does it mean to survive? We know for sure we want survival more than anything else. It is part of our design. But when we seek survival , aren't we actually craving for perpetuating our identities. And we are willing to sacrifice things for the sake of greater survival. For example, god forbids, if we are in a situation to choose between life and a finger , I am sure we would let go the finger. Sad it may sound, but none of the parts are as important as the whole. In fact, if we have a choice to ethically transplant a new organ that is better than what we currently have , we will all stand in line to get the new one . Just like a new iPhone :-). That is what is the promise of synthetic biology. We are at the cusp of making designer organs. ..
In a way the survival is nothing but holding on to our greater identity. If our identification with a group or say a nation is greater than our own body, we will gladly sacrifice our body for the sake of perceived greater good. If I remove my identity from myself , my name, my race, my nation, my address - is it me any more ? Well , my voice , my finger prints, the whole biometrics - DNA is my ID . Should I say , my physical body too , is my identity. I am continuously busy in maintaining , improving , harnessing and evolving these identities. And that exactly is the meaning of survival. Thus survival is about holding on to as many identities as we can in the order of precedence - from what we perceive as most sacred to the least . In that sense , exit seems like giving up all our identities. An opposite to what I am currently doing .. Gita says it is not possible. Simply because it is against the basic rules.
If we built a system that prioritizes survival beyond anything else , how can we exit? The intelligence we built in the system means that it must survive my IDs at any cost in the order of my attachment to them. No matter whatever be the physical laws. Weather you design a system like Gita suggests - the eight fold nature ; or you have another set of rules - say ten basic elements and ten primary senses ; as long as there is intelligence in the system, and it is ordained to survive, it will device a way to survive . Which means our identity should never die.. And that is what we are doing and we call it "procreation and reincarnation". As we said before, the model needs to explain the birth and demise .. Let's take a quick look leaving the details to later chapters ..
In a self perpetuating system like us, that ensures an identity as part of the basic design; by definition identity must be protected because that is what survival is. Losing our identity is the real death. As expected, our intelligence finds the way out through reproduction. If we can pass on our identities to our progeny we can entertain the idea of perpetuity of the identities. In a way, we need children as bearers of our identities - the nationality, the religion, family name , ownership, even our genes and micro biomes - we need them so that we could physically exit.
Intelligence prioritizes this by attaching orgasmic pleasure with it - the act of reproduction. Sexuality is deep rooted into us just like hunger, breathing and thirst. Intelligence deems it so important that it doesn't even care to ask us, take our permission. Just as a new born knows where to find the milk, the onset of puberty automatically ripens us for the procreation. This part of he design is self evident. There is no prize to be won in saying that we protect our children more than our own lives because they are the keepers of our identity. We see our own replica in them. There is no bigger sacrifice than to put our child in harm'sway. Our offspring is our biggest asset.
In a way, if you want to check out how the world sees you, you can objectively look at your children. They are our true selfies :-) .. And of course no prize in telling you who to blame if you see an obnoxious little brat in your teenager :-) . Thus if we identify ourselves with our physical body, the nature has already planned a succession for us - our physical identities. Doesn't this mean that we should let go our physical bodies as soon as we bear children. Obviously we need to stick around for some time to train them , help them find their footing into our tiny box but also this is the time nature allows us to reflect on all the shortcomings we had growing up. Every time we tell our children to not make a mistake we are actually reminding ourselves of the mistakes we made. Thus our child is our best teacher. The time that we are spending in raising our kids is our window of opportunity to reflect on the mistakes we made.
The next question is, what if we get to singularity ?
Singularity
As we know, the idea of singularity, is the holy grail that will have us win over the physical death. You may say , what if we are able to reach singularity, won't we want to live for ever ? Wouldn't we want to replace every part of the body with a better designer organ and continue to prolong our stay ? Which also means we will need to stop procreation. Thus the idea of everlasting life , necessarily means the loss of the best joy and learning opportunities. We don't know if or when we will reach singularity but we can sure imagine a life without the pleasure of kids. And of course the end of sexual pleasure. And what is the point in sticking around if we already have the ability to pass on our identity to a new body.. I doubt anyone in their right mind would wish to live for ever without the basic pleasures of life. Thus the idea of singularity, at least from ever lasting life standpoint is quite misplaced.
Reincarnation
The other side of the coin is - what if we identify our selves with the inner knowledge. Procreation kinda ensures perpetuity of our physical identities but what if I identify myself with my Atma. Now, this is the part that is not self evident, just like the knowledge itself is not self evident. We can't even communicate how we swim than how do we communicate what happens to our inner knowledge after our physical death. What happens to all the skills we decrypted, all the bondages we made. Now this is the quest that is worth a Nobel Prize :-)
Gita proposes that we can change this body like garments. And we receive new bodies.. Krishna says the golden rule of our metaverse is ..
Vansansi [garments] Jeernani [dilapidated] Yatha [ just as ] Vihay [ give up ] ; Navanni [new] Grinhati [receives] Narah [a man] aprani [others]
Tatha [similarly] Sharirani [bodies] Vihah [giving up] Jirnani [dilapidated] ; Anyani [other- new] Sanyati [accepts] Navani [new] Dehi [bodies].
As a person puts on new garments, giving up old used ones. Similarly we accepts new material bodies , giving up old and useless ones. In a way we let go our old bodies because the old vessel is not able to boil the newer ever evolving realities.
This aspect of the metaverse is a flawless design. Having gone through our iterations of skill building in current life . And than reflecting on our three dimensional real replicas - our children , all the mistakes , all the good - we now have gained a lot better view of our tiny box. Can we apply these skills in a new reality ? Do we need a better physical vessel ? May be we need four arms and ten heads :-) or may be our decrypted skills are best suited to fly across the oceans , like a bird.
Gita says, the new vessel we receive, is based on our Karma. You may ask who does this evaluation. The true answer is no one knows. But we can argue that if I am not promised a new body of my choice, why would I gladly pass on all that I have to my children? . The equations must balance even if I am unaware of them. It just doesn't make sense that nature would provision such a pleasure with the idea to let go everything that I so painfully collected (in terms of my identities), while only choice I have is to rot in my grave.
There must be a good reason that we all want to procreate and then spend rest of the lives taking care and raising our children. And guarding them. Are we backing up all our data in primordial clouds to restore it in a lot improved physical device. A device that is better suited to what we intend to do. If all you wanted is to travel to new places in this life, may be in next life you wanna be a migratory bird - a black swan may be. If all you wanted here in this life is to cause pain to others - may be you are looking forward to a shape of a scorpion. And if all you wanted was to eat and sleep - what is better prized life than a lazy bamboo eating Panda :-)
Whatever be the shape or size of our new vessel , we know for sure that we got to our tiny box - our current reality by a chance , the roll of the dice. We didn't choose our parents, nor did we choose where we are born. We may call it destiny for lack of a better scientific term. Or we can say we haven't collectively looked at this topic from a scientific standpoint just because it is beyond our sensory perception. Isn't that should be the reason that we need more research on this because science is ultimately that takes us beyond what meets the eyes - like the quantum world or even electricity.
More importantly , I have no reason to not believe that the system that brought me here , also ensures an appropriate destination for me. In a way , the wheel of time - Kaal Chakra, must be a much superior design that I don't yet understand. Just like I don't understand how your smart phone carries a vastly superior CPU than my just ten years old desktop :-). The question is do we want to understand this aspect. If yes , where should we start. That answer seems pretty simple - our journey begins right at our home. Our inner knowledge.
To recap - an immense pleasure if associated with reproduction and the very idea that we can pass on all that we have - wealth , name , responsibilities - pretty much all that is identified with us to your offspring. And also at the same time get a fresh set of garments. Kinda win win situation. Fresh name. Fresh locale. Fresh body to start afresh. Only thing that remains intact with us is our copy of inner knowledge. It carries with it all the bondages we made. All the skills we decrypted. In other words we carry our Karma . It conveniently forgets the set of all identities we had because we already passed them on. We get a new body in exactly the same way ; the way we pass on our identities. In a way sexuality is a Yazna to manifest our own avatars into a new world where our physical garments gotten old. Kaam Sutra calls it the most potent Sakaam Yazna. We will talk about Sakaam and Nishkaam Yazna in the next chapter. And this responsible passage of our current identities allows us to seek a fresh start. A start that we prepared for all this life.
Now you may say what if we die without bearing the offspring. Lot of people do that in accidents or otherwise. The scripture says that we can't get a proper exit and thus proper set of new identities if we failed to properly pass on our current ones, but that is something beyond the scope of this book. What really concerns the scope of this title is the question ; did we really exit ? Even if we let go our identities , we are still carrying on our Atma - the inner knowledge than aren't we stuck here ? Aren't we stuck with same laws of physics ? And with the same cycles of happiness and pain. Gita says - yes we are. Then what exactly is the exit. Gita says that exit is in understanding this system. Play it like a game. Which is possible by first knowing our own inner, protected, immutable and encrypted copy of knowledge. And Gita proposes observing the actions driven by our black-box that is Karm Yoga as only path to it.
Wheel of Time - Kaal Chakra
The cycle of our inner knowledge - Atma through infinitely many births is what is known as Kaal Chakra. Krishna tells Arjuna , that its not that I was not there in any times or you were not there or all these enemies that are standing in front of you to fight were not there. Nor will there be a time when any of us doesn't exist. We all go through this endless cycle of physical births and deaths. Thus it is not appropriate to lament for the loss of physical bodies . In that sense trying to hold on to the physical bodies is like hoping to never change your clothes; . This is probably one of the boldest and biggest idea of Gita ... Krishna says ..
Na [never] Tu [but] Eva [certainly] Ahem [I] Jatu [at any time] Na [not] Asam [exist] Na [nor] Tvam [you] Na [nor] Ime [these] Jan-Adipah [kings] ;
Na [never] Cha [also] Eva [certainly- all these] Na [not] Bhavishyamah [shall exist] , Sarve-Vayam [all of us] Atah-Param [here after] .
Never was there a time when I didn't exist, or you didn't exist, or all these kings; nor in the future any one of us shall cease to be.
So with this design we have a self sustaining ever lasting meta verse from both physical bodies as well as our internal knowledge - Atma . The eight fold nature - Ashtadha Mool Prakriti ensures perpetuity at both physical and beyond physical and defines our grand universal manifestation. I know there are many significant and trivial questions about the implementation of reincarnation and other things. And also we still didn't address how to approach the true exit - Nirvana . We will address many aspects of the approach in next section where we reflect on Saakam and Nishkaam Yazna. And also take a deeper view of buggy aspects of our tiny box - that turns this little beautiful world into what we call Maya - Matrix .