Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Realize Bacteria, Not Brahman

Brahman is an abstract entity that is supposed to be the ultimate reality whereas the world that we see is just an illusion, maya. Of course today we know enough about the brain to explain the states of brain which result in dissolution of the self and those states were interpreted to mean Brahman. Just like a junkie would rave on about his high, the people who experience the oneness also rave on about it. But the sad difference is that whereas the junkie realizes that his high is brought on by consuming certain classes of chemical compounds, the Vedic person is ignorant of neuroscience and blindly insists that realizing Brahman should be the goal of life for everyone.

The human brain has a great capacity to feel awe and wonder. There are many ways to tap into that capacity. The Vedas are one crude way of doing it as they only go after a small subset of experiences based on the primitive understanding of nature of that time. Limiting oneself to the knowledge of the Vedas is being like the proverbial frog in the well. Science has taught us so much about nature that one can pick any branch of science and find immense beauty in it.

One such source of beauty are bacteria, the closest a living thing can get to being called as omnipresent. Instead of wasting time on trying to realize a fictional entity, it is far better to realize bacteria which profoundly impact human life in ways that the people who concocted Brahman could never even have imagined. I can’t do complete justice in showing how awe inducing bacteria are. So I’m going to link to a few articles which do just that: