It was during the phase of expanding the Pan-Africa e-Network platform, created under a project of the Government of India that, in 2011, I landed up in Rwanda, a beautiful country with a cool climate and scenic, hilly terrain. Rwanda, due to its geographic location on the continent, is called Africa’s heart. There was a flight from Nairobi in Kenya to Kigali, hopping over the small Bujumbura airport in Burundi. It was here that I met Colonel Ben Karenzi, a medical doctor, and Commandant of the Rwandan Army Hospital. He gave me a PowerPoint presentation on the proposed Super Specialty Hospital for Military, with 3D drawings. This was new to me, habituated to seeing the traditional Indian hospitals, which had evolved over several decades, adding layers upon layers of facilities. I was presented a copy of A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It, the story of Paul Kagame, a refugee who, after a generation of exile, found his way home.

Dr. Ben Karenzi and his team paid a return visit to India and saw Hyderabad as a fast-emerging hub for the treatment of international patients, mostly coming in from the African continent, finding it more suitable than the two other great Indian medical hubs – Mumbai, crowded and expensive, and Chennai, a little away. Our focus was using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide whatever services were possible in Africa itself and a lengthy follow-up back home after they returned, post-treatment. These visits and people travelling more often provided an impetus for better bilateral relations between India and Rwanda. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Rwanda in July 2018 and soon after, the Indian High Commission in Kigali became operational, on August 15, 2018.  

After superannuation from military service, Dr. Ben became a consultant in the management of international projects. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockouts and disruptions of international air travel, he could not visit India earlier, but he finally arrived last month on a week-long trip. It was very kind of him to visit me at my home as his first stop and before returning – what is generally called briefing/ debriefing sessions done at the beginning and conclusion of a visit. Age had affected both of us and there was no ‘pink of health’ anymore. But the spirit was indomitable and the vision about what could be done between India and Rwanda, sharper.

During this visit, Ben Karenzi spent an entire day at Bharat Biotech International Limited to understand the aspects of capacity building for vaccine manufacturing in Africa, totally dependent on UNICEF-sponsored vaccine programmes for their children, which means, vaccines manufactured in the Western countries. The CDC Africa is merely two years old, and a continental strategy is yet to emerge on what African people need and will get without dependence on imports. India offers a shining example of such a pursuit. India is now not only self-sufficient in all essential drugs and pharmaceuticals, including vaccines, but provided desperately needed COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda and other countries. The Indian “price” is unbeatable and Western powers can only persist by fortifying their current dominance through rules and regulations they have historically created and imposed upon Africa. 

Ben Karenzi spent another day at the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) factory in Hyderabad. BHEL had created a small 28 MW hydroelectric project on the Nyabarongo River in Rwanda, with an 80-million-dollar Indian line of credit. The project has eased out Rwanda’s electricity shortage to an extent. Rwanda has abundant methane reserves and can become an energy hub, following the gas turbine route. Besides being an energy partner, BHEL, with its world-class Plant and Machinery (P&M) building capacity, can establish the Kigali centralized water and sewage system. The focus is not merely funding and doing, but making the Rwandan people learn advanced engineering and cater to the needs of the African economy, something India did in the 1960s. Rwanda’s only sugar refinery and its only modern textile mill are both run by Indians, and it is time to upscale and raise the stakes.   

Since everything eventually acquires a name, this working together of developing countries has been called “South-South” cooperation. It is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the global South, with all developed countries in the North. When the developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise, and resources among themselves through concerted efforts, it is called “South-South” cooperation. There is a trend, led by China, of an increased volume of South-South trade and foreign direct investment. Between African and Asian continents, there is regional integration, technology transfers, and impromptu sharing of solutions and experts. It will take another few decades before becoming a viable alternative to the North-dominated world order, but the baby is born; it will grow with time. 

Ben Karenzi presented me a folder on Vision 2050, the Rwandan national development strategy, launched in December 2020 by President Paul Kagame. Rwanda aims to be an upper-middle income country (UMIC) by 2035, and a high-income country (HIC) by 2050. This means realizing a per capita GDP of about 4000 dollars by 2035 and of over 12,000 dollars by 2050. For understanding, India has a per capita GDP of 2000 in 2022. According to Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), in his February 2022 speech at the Asia Economic Dialogue, “I believe that with our progress, we will reach $10,000 per capita in the next 15-20 years.” Of course, with more than 1.35 billion people, and growing, it will be a humongous task. India must go global, capitalizing on its technology and engineering expertise. 

I am yet to deep dive into the document, but what struck me most was the assertion of President Kagame, “Vision 2050 has to be about the future we choose, because we can, and because we deserve it.” It is, indeed, true that we all are as big as our dream. Without aspiration, any individual, or community, or nation, easily gets lost in merry-making, only to be subjugated by a higher power, or to wither away into oblivion. The idea of ‘who I am’ and ‘what do I do with my life’, is fundamental. It was not until Bal Gangadhar Tilak proclaimed, “Swaraj is my birth right, and I shall have it!” that a movement started in India to overthrow the British Rule. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam used to say, “You have to dream before your dreams can come true.” So, President Kagame’s call to choose, because we can, and because we deserve it, is a call of our times, for the entire global South, where more than five billion people live mostly impoverished lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proved this much, that South-South cooperation is the only way forward. The urgent need for vaccines has opened a window of opportunity for a South-South cooperation initiative in health and related areas. But if not for Indian and Chinese vaccines, there would been a disaster. While the superficialities of advanced healthcare systems in the Western world surfaced, the vaccination of billions of people throughout the global South was a historic achievement. This has to move on to agriculture supply chains, and finally, education. It will happen, because we deserve it. It will take years, even decades, but like a tree that takes years before giving fruits, it will happen, if started and sustained.

The underlying reason behind an increasing number of people getting angry, cynical, and restless is their disconnect with their religion – something they can’t even acknowledge. Humans evolved so rapidly and extensively by understanding the vastness of the universe and the laws by which it is governed. What the ancient people imagined to be gods and demons later came to be known as natural and mental forces. Religion has served well in giving humanity a structured way to live and flourish. However, those who are disconnected, for whatever reason, are sunk in despair. They sit in front of the TV and nowadays, with their mobile phones, with numb minds and wither away their cognitive energy in the ever-open vanity fair of this world. 

I am a deeply religious person. Practicing my own Sanatan Dharma, I have thoroughly read and practiced its basic tenets. Its universal outlook and grasp of cosmic reality is amazing. I consider science a very narrow window into the Reality in which we live, like a candle lightening a huge cave with no end in sight. My lament is about religions becoming dogmatic rather than a quest. Some people in the West have woken up to this issue and I was delighted to attend some lectures, thanks to YouTube, discussing practical ways to feel at ease while living in the modern fast-paced and competitive world. 

I came across a lecture by Dr Rupert Sheldrake, who has been a plant pathologist, with a Doctorate at Cambridge University. He worked in ICRISAT, Hyderabad in the 1970s, got attracted to Indian spiritual practices (while remaining a devout Christian that he was and remains), and pursued philosophy since then. His lecture took me to David Bentley Hart, who pointed out the similarity in Shankaracharya’s sat-chit-ananda, Ibn Arbi’s wujud-wijad-wajd and Augustine’s summo meo—something that is beyond the utmost heights and simultaneously intimo meo—more inward than the inmost depths, the concept of God. I later read Hart’s very well-done book, The Experience of God: Being Consciousness, Bliss. 

This book took me to Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations, available on the Internet as a PDF file that can be downloaded for free. There are so many special things about this book to which this blog is devoted. Mentioned as “A shoe-maker’s son,” in Wikipedia, Thomas Traherne (1637-1674) graduated from Oxford before becoming a priest in the Church of England, or the Anglican Church. He was not considered a literary figure and when he died at a young age of 37, he had written some 510 paragraphs, each 100 paragraphs called a century, but the fifth century stopped at the tenth stanza because of Traherne’s sudden death. 

For over 200 years, this manuscript survived in neglect as a bundle of scribbled papers. As goes the legend, one connoisseur found them in a street book stall in a stack of old papers. It took some ten years in establishing the literary quality of the manuscript and the identity of Thomas Traherne as the author. The book was published in 1908 and later, the celebrated English writer, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) called Centuries of Meditations “almost the most beautiful book in English.” This book is a popular research subject, and the title of this blog is taken from a master’s thesis at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, awarded in 1965. 

Centuries of Meditations revolves around the concept of “felicity,” the state of bliss, as its thematic axis. This rings a bell in my ears, as the concept of Ananda (Bliss), is also central to my religion. In the Shri Ramakrishna Mission Order, it is very common for the saints to have “ananda” as their part of their ordained name as monks. The most celebrated monk being Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). In fact, I named my sons, Aseem Anand and Amol Anand, in the hope and belief that they may both bring happiness to their lives as well as the lives of the people who would cross their paths. 

So, after spending nearly a month with Centuries of Meditations and grasping the theme of God living right inside the human body as consciousness, I could see the mystery of life as the pursuit of the Bliss that comes out of acting in the similitude of God. And as Thomas Traherne described God as love, it follows that man is to live a life governed by the principles of love. He writes:

That all the World is yours, your very senses and the inclinations of your mind declare. The Works of God manifest, His laws testify, and His word Both prove it. His attributes most sweetly make it evident. The powers of your soul confirm it. So that in the midst of such rich demonstrations, you may infinitely delight in God as your Father, Friend and Benefactor, in yourself as His Heir, Child and Bride, in the whole World, as the Gift and Token of His love; neither can anything, but Ignorance destroy your joys. (Century 1, § 16)

So, it is ignorance – in our separateness, or isolation, our anger and fear – that insulates us from the natural and innate feeling of the joy of living, called joie de vivre by the French people for a cheerful enjoyment of life, an exultation of spirit – be it the joy of conversation, the joy of eating, the joy of anything one might do, my writing this blog, and your’s reading it. Whatever is done with joy as the base, is good, promotes goodness, and multiplies joy in the process. 

The Taittiriya Upanishad declares: आनन्दो ब्रह्मेति व्यजानात्, know Bliss for the Eternal. आनन्दाध्येव खल्विमानि भूतानि जायन्ते, For, from Bliss alone, does life appear, are these creatures born and live by Bliss, आनन्दं प्रयन्त्यभिसंविशन्तीति, and to Bliss they go hence and return (III.6.1

Adi Shankaracharya wrote a beautiful devotional poem, आनन्द लहरी, Waves of Bliss Divine, venerating Bhavani, the Mother Goddess of Creation. It is a Psalm, a type of power literature in verses, by reciting which, the innate God propensities and qualities get activated. Now, some cynics may say that if God is beyond qualities, how can there be Godly qualities. So, what we are talking about is not God’s qualities but how God reflects in our mind. When sunrays fall on a convex lens, they converge to light up a fire…. It is just like that! 

The twelfth stanza of this 20-stanza poem says: 

अयः स्पर्शे लग्नं सपदि लभते हेमपदवीं

यथा रथ्यापाथः शुचि भवति गंगौघमिलितम् ।

तथा तत्तत्पापैरतिमलिनमन्तर्मम यदि

त्वयि प्रेम्णासक्तं कथमिव न जायेत विमलम् ॥ 

Bliss is contagious. Like the philosopher’s stone turns iron into gold, water in the gutters turn good upon joining River Ganga, so a mind devoted to God receives bliss.  

So, as the Taittiriya Upanishad proclaims, as Adi Shankaracharya teaches, as Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations postulates, it is very much in our power to connect with the God within and become humble, spread love, enhance knowledge, communicate well, conduct ourselves with dignity, and thereby disperse away sadness like clouds and feel the ever-present Bliss as the sun in the daytime and the stars in the night sky. Mahatma Gandhi expressed this best, “Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.”

Every childhood is synonymous with instructions raining from parents and other people around. A child is continuously told to do this and not to do that. This continues throughout their childhood where they are influenced by the various people around them and their prejudices. And now, social media is treating human beings as puppets and has assigned emojis, so that they can express their emotions as one type of the many offered.

But a human being is not a puppet and, endowed with the mental faculty of imagination and discernment, can never be one. Even the poorest of the poor, the most hopeless, disadvantaged person, upholds this unique feature that no other creature has in the known universe. However, the tension between what you are told to do and what you believe you should do, creates a force that decides the course of your life. In the epic poem, Aeneid, Virgil (70-19 BCE) writes of a character as saying, “If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell,” (Book VII, line 312).

Even after we grow up and parents and other authority figures have faded away, the “shoulds” given to us, continue to live inside us, like the echo of a shout keeps wandering in the valley for a while. Our mind is, indeed, ruled by the oppression of the “shoulds”, dictating the way we think, act, and feel. Of course, our “should” beliefs have served us in the past, in shaping our concepts of how the world works and how we are to behave in it. Our achievements, social network, and control are the fruits of this “should tree.” 

But, like fruits rot over a period, we must examine the “shoulds” operating inside us, refreshing them with the changing times and situations. The good news is that we have the power to change the way we think — and free ourselves from the shackling “shoulds.” I have come to believe that the purpose of a human life is best served by allowing your unique “person” to manifest, transcending the “shoulds” by developing the faculty of discernment between what is good and bad, and acting upon life, as it presents itself. Adi Shankaracharya called his magnum opus of the Advaita Vedanta, the Vivekchudamani (विवेकचूडामणि) i.e., the “crest-jewel of discrimination.” 

All major religions of the world are unanimous on this one point that this life is an opportunity to better the afterlife. There is a Quranic verse (11.7), as translated by the Turkish scholar, Ali Ünal (b. 1955), ‘Your proper abode is the Hereafter, where you will be either in bliss or suffering according to your conduct in the world.’ Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam taught me to take every situation in life as a test that I must pass with honors. He used to say, ‘If things are flowing very fine for you, most likely, you are getting trapped by the bliss, to be driven to your destruction.’

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) titled his major work as Divine Comedy. Human beings are born in this sinful world, in the process of moral change. People suffer, not simply as the consequences of some past bad deeds or to repay some debt, but to become good. This world is a place where one can reflect upon the sins, and thereby, change the psychological tendencies which lead one to sin. This process, called Purgatory, leads to an extraordinary richness in one’s character.

Dante imagines Purgatory as being divided into seven terraces, each one corresponding to a vice, namely, pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. On each terrace, there is a slightly different form of suffering: the envious, for instance, have their eyes sewn up; the proud are weighed down by stones. The range of forms of suffering is, therefore, considerably greater, but so is the process of change, full of opportunities and possibilities.

And, coming to the concept of reincarnation, we leave one life and go into another as part of spiritual growth, by taking on physicality. There are varying levels of consciousness through which a soul moves, depending upon the moral quality of the activities in the life-forms, from minerals, plants and animals to human beings at the pinnacle. The implication is that the soul essentially remains the same, while occupying a new body. A life is, essentially, a dream: fleeting and illusory. 

Buddha pinned the ego-consciousness, as grounding one into a cesspool of desires. One is reborn through desire, which needs a body to manifest. Every desire creates an action, that generates a reaction, and this cascade of actions and reactions determines one’s next incarnation. A human life, being the highest in the entire creation, is, indeed, achieved after great tribulations through multiple existences at lower levels of consciousness, and it is a pity if it is wasted, and one slides back into inferior realms by living unwholesomely. Virgil writes in the Aeneid (Book VI, lines 126-129, as translated by the English poet, John Dryden (1631 1700):

The gates of hell are open night and day Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies. I have derived a three-fold code of living a good life, from the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita. The first is to act upon your circumstances, मा ते सङ्गः (च) अकर्मणि मा अस्तु. Action is not optional (II. 47). The second is to act wholesomely, and not selfishly. One must surrender to one’s fate, माम् एकम् शरणम् व्रज (XVIII.66). Attend to the situation in the best way possible, without grudging and complaining. And finally, one must learn to be satisfied in one’s own self, आत्मनि एव आत्मना तुष्टः. Being alive and experiencing bliss is the greatest blessing (II.55). 

There was a great tennis player, Arthur Ashe (1943 –1993), whom I admired as a teenager, for his graceful style. He won the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. But fate was cruel to him, and Ashe contracted HIV from a blood transfusion he received during a heart bypass surgery in 1983. However, rather than moaning over the tragedy, he dedicated the rest of his life, albeit a short one, to service. He founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, before his death in 1993. For several years, I used his words, ‘Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can,’ as a footer in my email. 

It is futile to get annoyed that your position is not good, that you are at a disadvantage, that conditions are unfavourable, people are against you, and so on. Acceptance of your situation and/ or condition, as well as putting in conscious efforts to make the best of the same and moving on from the undesirable situation, is fundamental to living a peaceful and meaningful life. Easy money, entitlements, and rise without effort have never been good to whoever had gone after them. 

I spent the last few months reading the copious History of Western Philosophy by the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), published in 1945. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Bertrand Russell presents, as a good teacher, how Western thought developed in ancient Greece, processed into Christianity and led to revolutions in England, France, Russia, and finally, the United States. The book brings out the deep-rooted ideological chasm between France, Spain, England and Germany, and how it even affects the politics of the modern United States.  

There is another excellent book, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by the young British historian, Peter Frankopan (b. 1971), published in 2015. The book debunks the high ground of the Western civilization and calls it the success of the military, greed, and deceit. “The age of empire and the rise of the west were built on the capacity to inflict violence on a major scale. The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, the progression towards democracy, civil liberty and human rights, were not the result of an unseen chain linking back to Athens in antiquity or a natural state of affairs in Europe; they were the fruits of political, military and economic success in faraway continents.” Who were the philosophers who inspired the Holocaust, and the nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities in 1945? What is happening in Ukraine? 

Both the books I mentioned above are blissfully ignorant about Indian philosophy. I am not lamenting, because even the majority of Indians today are like that. They have accepted the “mutations” of philosophy into traditions, rituals and superstitions, as their mental universe, and are ready to listen to the gurus who appear on TV in well-orchestrated and meticulously held “events” and move around displaying the latest “spiritual fashions.” No one has written about Indian philosophy after Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), whose two volumes of Indian Philosophy, published in 1923, remain the last lamp post. All further movement is in the dark and there is an abyss ahead.

Bertrand Russell writes, “To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal causation; the circumstances of men’s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.” People land themselves in certain circumstances by living in certain manners, and then the circumstances decide the way they live their lives. The inglorious subjugation of a vast country like India by a handful of invaders is, perhaps, the best example of this.  

Dr. Radhakrishnan is blunt when he writes in The Foundation of Civilisation: Ideas and Ideals, “Those who look upon our political slavery as the external violence of a band of robbers preying on innocent people have a very narrow conception of history… it is our ‘crowed uncleanness of soul’ that is responsible for our backward condition. This is required to be overcome. We cannot build a new India unless we first build ourselves. The immediate task confronting us is moral purgation, spiritual regeneration. It alone can bring national rebirth and freedom.”

These words were ignored. Our freedom came, but at the immense cost of the Partition that caused the uprooting of more than fifteen million people, and the deaths of between one and two million. It not only mutilated the body of the Indian nation, but also debased its soul. Living in denial and wandering without vision, when the world around us got transformed, India remained an energy-starved and technologically dependent country. Most of the wealth created continues to go out in importing oil and high-technology goods. 

Now, once again, we are facing a grave threat to our nation. In the post-coronavirus world, China has decided to define its sphere of influence in the world with Russia, who has not forgotten and forgiven the Western world over the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States has been exposed for the chinks in its armour. It is a divided nation and past its prime. So is the European Union, reduced to an arrangement of one currency and the free movement of people and trade, but unable to take any unified stand. The stand that India takes will decide the conditions in which our future generations live. And just when we need the best of our minds to come together, we see the ugly face of “The Argumentative Indian,” best portrayed by Dr. Amartya Sen (b. 1933), in his book of the same title. 

The biggest threat to India is the confusion around the idea of our nationhood. What makes India a nation? The Constitution of India, prepared over three years by the best of Indian minds, and in force since 1950, is the definition of India. Let there be no confusion about it, and no clever manipulations must be made for electoral gains by any political party. Any such daring would harm the nation and invite aggressors, who would be most happy to control our markets, and thereby, our future. Even a little error here would be costly. 

Economic growth, as it is happening, must not become the undoing of the work of social cohesion which has been effected; first, by the public sector and then, by the subsidy regimes. In a democratic doctrine, equality does not end with the Constitutional Proclamation, but continues from time to time through the medium of the elected governments, to which, therefore, it is the duty of the individual to submit his private opinions. The new fashion of squatting and picketing to oppose Parliamentary laws and disrupting the Parliament with sloganeering, is more dangerous then it appears on the surface. 

Young people are no longer ascertaining the truth by consulting their parents or teachers, who were the original authority figures, but from the social media, which is like a gutter of misinformation and untruths. There is a tendency, quickly developed, towards anarchism in politics, and, in religion, towards superficial rituals, rather than meditation and service, which had always fitted well into the framework of every religion In India. The culture of nuclear families, consumerism and living on credit is disastrous. Social institutions are withering and I look at the days ahead rather solemnly. 

When the invisible light passes through a medium, we only see different colors out of electromagnetic waves, and none else. Perhaps, this is the original idea of the soul living through physicality. A narrow view of life, chasing rainbows, indulging in the movements of clouds while ignoring the ground reality, is full of perils. Attend to your reality – who you are, your condition, and focus on how to harmonize it with the overall situation.

Grabbing what is not given, and living at the cost of others is, indeed, absurd. A parasite is existentially dependent upon its host and though it flourishes by feasting on its host, it must also die with it. We are all parts of one whole, and these parts are ordered in a certain way. Learn to see the whole, the unseen and the sacred, as therein lies the magic and the meaning of a human life. 

For many months, I have been reading “Faust,” a poem of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), published in two parts – in 1806 and in 1832. Originally written in German, it has been translated by several people. The translation by the American poet, Bayard Taylor, done in 1862, reached me. Later, I came to know that it is the best English translation done, including one by the famous poet, Shelley. I got into this book, as Carl Jung (1875-1961) called the character of Faust as his lifetime inspiration. Upon reading it, I found it very touching, and the storytelling was, indeed mesmerizing.  

One must read world-class literature, if interested, for expanding one’s mind beyond the 24×7 show of “make-beliefs” and pride and prejudices injected into our minds through “education” and “cultural conditioning.” This becomes even more important as the education system has disowned moral education and turned itself into an exam-passing machine; and culture has been hijacked by social media. We must read books starting with our mother tongue and national authors, and then move on to world classics and all-time greats. 

In the last one year, I have read Tolstoy (1828-1910), who wrote in Russian, the French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885), and now, Goethe. The beauty of “Faust” is that it makes you aware of yourself, raising questions about what it means to be a human in this imperfect world. As another German author, Karen Horney (1885-1952), puts it, there are three ways in which people manage their lives: by moving toward people, by moving against people, and by moving away from people. However, there are no pure types, and a lot of mix and match goes on, to make life complicated.

In the poem, Faust is a 50-year-old, highly educated and accomplished man living in Germany. He finds his life without purpose. He is unable to comprehend what holds the world together at its core (line 382). At this juncture, Faust is approached by Satan, who makes a deal that he will get Faust whatever he wants in this world, in exchange for controlling his afterlife. The moment Faust signs the contract, with his blood as ink, Satan becomes his slave to fulfill all his desires. 

Your palate also shall be sated
Your nostrils sweetly stimulated
Your sense of touch exhilarated
(lines 1442-44).

The desire of Faust to regain his youth is quickly met. Then, he wants to marry a pious girl. But, meanwhile, she ends up poisoning her mother, her brother is killed in a fight over her reputation, and she is hanged for drowning her illegitimate child. This is the story of Part One. It shakes you off from being a desire machine, as no desire is without consequences. The picture shows a painting of Faust and Satan playing chess to convey that every move of a piece on the board affects the entire game. 

Goethe very aptly describes life as simultaneously living in two worlds – one, small and another, bigger. The smaller world is our personal world – what we think and feel, our family, friends and adversaries, helpmates and tormentors, our pursuits, successes, and failures. Our free will is all we have here. The bigger world is that in which this small world exists – the society, economy, politics, nature, and so on. We hardly have any control on what happens in this world, and must make our way through it by taking good decisions.

In Part Two, which I find the most brilliant literature I have ever come across, Goethe creates Faust, facing characters and situations representing the Old World of Spirits and Providence and the New World of Science and Rationality. This time, Faust desires the resurrection of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman ever born, as his wife, and a kingdom for himself. Both happen, but again end in tragedy. There is a last-minute twist when Faust desires for salvation and, unable to accomplish it for him, Satan defaults on the contract and Faust finds impunity in Cosmic Unity (line 11807, 8).

What is the message? My takes are three.

The first is the brevity of human life. Even if we live for, say, 100 years, it is a very short time if we include our ancestors, whose DNA and karma we are living out, and our future generations, living out after our death, our DNA and karma. It is, indeed, most stupid to take decisions without considering this big picture. None of us exists as an isolated entity – everything is connected, not only here, in this world, but in other unseen realms and space-times. The spirit-world is, indeed, “running” our lives, through the impulses and drives emerging from within us.

The second learning is the mistake of trying to achieve stardom instead of living properly, or creating a perfect society without sorting out our own personal defects. People run businesses without sorting out the problems within their own families. Modern workplaces smack of unhealthy promiscuousness. Children and the elderly are neglected by the “global executives” and adultery is packaged into lifestyles. It is stupid to change and better the world without living a clean life oneself and attending to the responsibilities that the fundamental institution of a family entails. Many of these people end up in addictions. 

The third learning is, misunderstanding the purpose of human life itself. There is no “I” here. This is the biggest illusion that we carry. In whatever we do, or whatever happens to us, or even what we think, there is an involvement of others. Faust tries to step beyond the limitations of a human life, to seek that which is not given to mankind to know or experience. Because of this, his life is a constant series of disappointments and frustrations. So are the careers of people in the modern corporate world.  

Faust is a hero because he never loses heart and continues with the struggle. Ultimately, he comes to understand the meaning of life as to learn, as an eternal soul, different experiences in this mortal and ever-changing physicality. Interestingly, Goethe differed with Newton on light and colors. According to Goethe, the highest degree of light, such as that of the sun, is colorless. Only through a medium, is it seen as colored. Similarly, the pure cosmic soul acquires different qualities upon entering physicality.

Life is the striving of a soul during its evolution. It means action. Even if you have made mistakes, keep pursuing your path. Giving up midway, abandoning your responsibilities, failing your obligations, and letting down your own self by laziness and cowardice, is following Satan. There are no miracles, only traps with disastrous consequences. All you need is to say no to anything that is given, apparently free, or promised by breaking natural laws. 

The Scottish poetess, Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955), in her poem, “Mrs Faust”, sums up best the predicament of the contemporary woman and man chasing wealth, power, and pleasures in the world, and living their lives as if playing chess with the Devil:

I grew to love lifestyle, not the life.
He grew to love the kudos, not the wife.

She concludes the hard-hitting poem by questioning if the clever, cunning, and callous modern people have even a soul to sell.

There is so much humbug about the idea of the mind. Religions, philosophers, psychologists, medical doctors and, of late, businesspeople, especially those in the marketing domain, offer their own constructs about how the human mind works. And, for sure, people have no clue about the origin of their temperaments, attitudes, fears, and desires. It is interesting to understand the mind from a Calculus perspective.

Calculus is the child of two fathers – the English, natural philosopher, Isaac Newton (1643-1727), and the German polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The tendency to observe similarities and see a need for integration, and the tendency to notice dissimilarities and see a need for differentiation, is common and widespread. Labeling these two ways of looking at things as “integration” and “differentiation” from Calculus, is reasonable. 

There is variety. Some individuals are high in both, integration, and differentiation, and conversely, some people are low in both traits. For simplicity, and to emphasize their distinctness, we can call people as “lumpers” and “splitters.” A child is a great lumper, over-inclusive and its classes are generic and undifferentiated. As we grow, the development of “I-ness” makes us divide things, mostly into “what I like” and “what I dislike.” 

The “I-ness” is straightforward and should be accepted as the cornerstone of human personality. In the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (VII. 4), it is written as having been said by God Himself:

भूमिरापोऽनलो वायुः खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च।

अहङ्कार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा।।

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect, and the feeling of I-ness (अहंकारः) – thus is My Nature divided eightfold (इति अष्टधा भिन्ना मे इयम् प्रकृतिः).

The Austrian doctor, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), called “I-ness” as “Ego.” The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung (1875-1961), called it the center of the “conscious mind” and placed the “unconscious mind” as its opposite. The “I-ness of me” is held in balance by “what I am, but not aware of,” thereby, making it a dynamic entity. It will keep expanding as more and more psychic energy emerges out of the unconscious and gets added into the conscious. 

The issue is, therefore, not “what I am”, but “what I can be”, and the focus must be on “my openness” to “become.” The idea of openness to experience was articulated by the British polymath, Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality traits is currently the dominant theory in all of psychology today. The five factors are – Openness, Conscientiousness (careful way of working), Extroversion (outgoingness), Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (irritability). 

Self-development is all about discern, which is differentiating functions. The environment we live in offers a basket of options – some good, many bad – and there is always scope to choose one, especially not to go with that which is unwholesome. Growth demands declutter – letting go off all that and all those who have not been good. This not only includes primordial identities, dogmas, habits, and beliefs, but also faling into grooves of careers and roles in the society.    

The first differentiation, fundamental and the most difficult, is that we separate from the “parent” we have internalized. This is filled with anxiety and the most prevalent reason for young people getting into addiction or substance abuse – mostly smoking and alcohol – is to pacify this anxiety. Successful differentiation from the “parent” is like a “second birth.” Failure in differentiating ourselves from the parent effect settles us permanently in mediocrity and powerlessness. 

The second differentiation involves recognizing and changing the negative personality borrowed from our parents and other influential figures in childhood. Altering these unpleasant or toxic personality characteristics is essential. All vanity, phoniness, self-centeredness, a victimized orientation towards life, attitudes of superiority and contempt are appropriated from people around, and must be disowned. 

The third differentiation is, looking into the psychological defences we developed early in our lives to deal with pain. There is a strong, and almost automatic, tendency to defend ourselves the way we did as children. Denying, forgetting, exaggerating, projecting our fears, and outbursts are childish behaviours. Saying goodbye to our “child selves” is essential for living fully as the adults we are now.

The fourth and final step of psychological differentiation is to identify our own values, ideals, and beliefs that may be different from those of the culture in which we grew up. For example, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam did not eat meat from age 15 onwards. This is the last barrier before we can strive to lead a life of integrity, according to our own ideals, overcoming social pressures to conform to the standards of others. 

Integration operates in two domains – internal and external. Internal integration is to allow and assimilate the unconscious into consciousness. External integration is concerned with relatedness, interpersonal communion, and intimacy. Seeing similarities and connections is beneficial. Looking at the food before start eating and appreciating the complex ways it traversed to come before you – grains from fields, salt from the sea, spices from the hills, curd from the dairy…. and so on.  All forms of meditation are essentially integration exercises. 

Finally, I come to Limits and Continuity, the central concept of Calculus. All phenomenon is a function; constant for a while, that is, in a narrow frame of time, but eventually, changing. Only within limits is a function an independent variable. Outside the limits, it is part of chaos. This is like a line that can be drawn on a paper. Once the pencil is lifted or the paper border is breached, there is no more extension of the line.  

The fundamental philosophy of Calculus is to approximate, to refine the approximation, and apply a limit process. An insight into Calculus helps us identify the “balance points” as steady states. Moving away from steady state invites reactions, which may or may not be what we expect. To predict what changes would appear – integrating one instant, differentiating the next – is the real of art of living.

Unheeded happiness is, indeed, fatal. The more you desire, the weaker you become. The more you consume, the more diluted your life gets. The Scottish philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), described his despair of “becoming a utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside.” All the world’s a differential equation, and men and women are infinitesimal variables – may be less than any finite quantity; yet, never zero. 

Know your soul as a continuous function – infinity to infinity – but live within the limits of the time and space imposed by your body. Don’t slight or belittle anyone, or overlook a change, however minute it may appear. And never allow your mind to create its own imaginary world, neglecting the people around you, and running away from difficulties. Live your life embracing both, the good and the bad that it brings. You are an infinite function, so always choose to rise over run.