Enquiry on power, control and consciousness
It’s a bustling morning at the Darbaar, with attendance from all the Mantris (ministers). An alchemist has returned from his voyage and is set to showcase his magic in front the of the Raja (King). The Raja, a power drunk person, and rightly so for the vast expanse of his kingdom has a special liking for the alchemist and had sent him in search of things that would satiate his thirst for more.
The shehnai plays loudly, for the Raja is about to walk in. Every single person, from a peasant to Mantri stands in unison and bows as the Raja walks in and climbs the stairs to his throne. With a gesture of his hand, the shehnai stops and everyone takes their seat again, like a coordinated orchestra.
The Raja orders the alchemist to be brought in. Chanting the Raja’s name, the alchemist walks in and presenting a dagger inside a glass jar. From the outside, it appears to be normal dagger, but in a swift motion, he takes it out and points it towards the roof. He shouts the Raja’s name once more, and the dagger catches fire.
The whole court is delighted and show their appreciation by thumping on their seats.
Next, he takes out a potion from his pocket, and claims that it can detect whether Raja’s drink has been tampered with. He pours two small glasses and adds a few drop of poison to one. Then he adds a drop of his potion to both and counts to five.
In a flash, the glass with poison changes colour.
The thumping sound echoes the court once again.
The Raja, sitting there with an apple in his hand, remains unimpressed. The demonstration doesn’t appeal to his sense of grandeur. His eyes fall upon the apple he has been eating, and in a quick motion, he lets it slip from his hand. It rolls down the stairs and stops near the alchemists foot.
The Raja announces: “Make the apple rise from the ground for me”
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All around us is the physical world, what we call our surrounding, ranging from microscopic atoms to unimaginable galaxies. This world is governed by the laws of nature. In this world sodium reacts with oxygen when it comes in contact with air, emitting the flame and not when the alchemist announces the Raja’s name. Here, 2 + 2 = 4, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In this world, an apple released in the air falls down due to gravity
And somewhere inside this physical world is a world of consciousness; the one for which no natural laws are present. That’s the world comprising of human beings and their thoughts. If you zoom in through the microscope, there is nothing fundamentally different between us and a stone, both comprised of atoms from the same periodic table. And yet this world is unpredictable.
A world where you have to carefully listen to someone speak because you don’t know what their next word will be. A world where the same person can make you feel good and bad within a single conversation. A world where your happiness from eating dessert disappears the moment you are reminded of your fitness goal. Objectively, nothing changed, subjectively, everything did.
Although the world of consciousness is a minuscule portion of the physical world, it’s where all our thoughts remain focused. Our brains are constantly trying to predict what happens next, and the act of an apple falling is not engaging enough once we understand the physical laws governing its trajectory.
In contrast, the same brain is overwhelmed worrying about how the person will react to what you have to say.
We don’t expect an apple to rise from the ground, yet we expect a person to change. We’re not angry at the coffee for spilling on our cloth, but at the person who dropped it. Have you ever seen someone shout at a stone for rolling down the mountain? We do not try to change the “nature” of something in the physical world; we simply understand and accept. Yet we all desire that people acted according to our whims.
What, then, is our obsession with the world of consciousness? What is the feeling we are chasing? Why are we in a constant effort to bend the reality to our will?
Perhaps we are all yearning to assert of our will, upon the canvas of a silent universe. And the only place we can do this is within the realm of consciousness. This yearning is a juxtaposition of two opposing forces. The first is our urge to feel alive. And to feel alive is to believe we can interfere with the future. We’re not stones doomed to roll downward, at gravity’s mercy until the end of our lifetime. We poke with the fabric of reality in an attempt to establish our aliveness.
“It’s because of me that the milk boiled”
“It’s because of me that the car is moving”.
The opposing urge is our desire reduce our anxiety about of the next moment, and thus to predict the future. And the only way to predict it would be have some control over it. So we dedicate our entire life taming this entropy.
If we define power as the ability to bring forth a particular future, we are all power hungry in the consciousness world. To distort the arrangement of atoms from an undesirable state to a desirable one. All pursuits in life are means towards the same end.
Light bends in its path, abandoning the straight line when it comes near a black hole. The sheer density of a black hole distorts the curvature of the space. When a beautiful girl walks by, the heads turn to catch a glance. A object released into the air falls downwards, and similarly everyone stands up when a powerful person enters a room. How are these two phenomenon any different? In our small capacity, we want to play god.