Kindle Notes & Highlights
the birth of each statue is nothing but the naked exposure of what was concealed. It is the completeness that remains, after every unwanted molecule that does not belong to the figurine is chiselled away—a wholeness, where nothing could be carved and nothing could be added.
morality was a means to disciplining oneself, beyond what religions and beliefs impose.
What was an ‘unconscious’ state? Was it mere lack of consciousness, or did the conscious mind travel elsewhere in that phase? Did our consciousness travel to the same place when we slept? If not, what was the difference between being asleep and being unconscious? If the travel between the conscious and unconscious states was the dance of similitudes, what role was Arunjit’s father playing now?
‘But friends, my thinking is that Karl Marx could also carry out miracles, much like Jesus the carpenter. But he made himself believe that he couldn’t! Marx’s belief was his disbelief in his own ability to herald miracles. A non-belief is also a belief. The belief that something exists and a belief that it doesn’t are both beliefs. The one who believes he can speak well becomes an orator. The person who believes he cannot, fails to be one. The one who believes he can write, writes. The one who believes he cannot, does not. Life is all about beliefs, right?’
‘When certain concepts did not capitulate to one’s intelligence, someone cleverly named it idealism. For everyone, what they believe in becomes their universe. Can you be sure that animals view all the objects of this world in the same size and shape as we humans do? Why, even you won’t be seeing that peepal and mango in the same proportion as I do! Maybe Bhaskaran sees them a hundred times larger or even one-tenth smaller than I do? Don’t we see that when a man is passionately in love, he speaks about his lover as being the most beautiful woman in the world? When hatred steps in, with those
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‘How many different sights the same eyes see! But that truth remains obscure. If I assert that billions of human beings have different perspectives, can you disprove it? Since the very measuring tools for unifying perspectives are also seen in millions and millions of ways, the differences will never be recognized.’
whether good or bad, every thought was like inscribing a dot on a white sheet of paper. When many such ‘dots’ of thoughts were imprinted, they became ‘visibly large’ and eventually emerged as a habit. Since every action was ultimately the embodiment of a thought, if we put ‘dots’ of positive thoughts in the mind’s sky, those would manifest as constructive habits.
It was primitive and atavistic to consider those in disagreement with one’s idea as adversaries. Nature encompassed all sorts of diversities. Even hard-to-digest perspectives had their own space. If defecation as such was disgusting to think about, the related organs had a vital role in the body’s functioning. It would be extreme stupidity to assume that by chopping off the urinary tract or the small intestine, one could expurgate them.
Disagreements
The inflexibility that one alone has exclusive insight into the universal mysteries, with a pronounced tendency to look down on the rest as ignoramuses, is not indicative of wisdom but of hubris triggered by ignorance. The seeds of pure wisdom would germinate only in the fertile fields of humility. How true was the saying that ‘the hallmark of wisdom was nothing but humility’!
Some measure the weight of objects within the gravitational field of earth, others at the surface of moon. One cannot be adamant that both the weights should be the same.
It was not to the erudite scholars but to the pure-hearted illiterates that the hidden worlds opened themselves up. ‘The pure in heart shall see God.’ Akhil believed that the saying carried nuances much deeper than the literal.
