Ancient Love and the imminent self-rediscovery

For me personally Anoushka Shankar's music conveys a feeling of imminent `self-rediscovery', building bridges to a long-lost self. Does the self change? Better yet, can we speak about the self? Is it real? Not clear. Maybe yes and no in the sense of a sort of `quantum superposition' of such states. The paradox is in that even the non-existence of the self is formative. Dechen Palmo's video production is very helpful in said rediscovery.

`Rise, by contrast, incorporated jazz, pop, and pan-ethnic world music textures in an unpredictable melange. At the center of it all are Shankar's sitar expertise and traditional Indian roots.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_(Anoushka_Shankar_album)

A mindfulness exercise: Sri Aurobindo - "The Self's Infinity" (1939)

Sri Aurobindo marked a special moment of my mindfulness quest in the early-to-mid 1980's. Remembering his poetry style offers me a practical insight, over the years, into my own self.  Hopefully I will remember more.

Here's his sonnet "The Self's Infinity" (1939).

The Self’s Infinity

I have become what before Time I was.
A secret touch has quieted thought and sense:
All things by the agent Mind created pass
Into a void and mute magnificence.

My life is a silence grasped by timeless hands;
The world is drowned in an immortal gaze.
Naked my spirit from its vestures stands;
I am alone with my own self for space.

My heart is a centre of infinity,
My body a dot in the soul’s vast expanse.
All being’s huge abyss wakes under me,
Once screened in a gigantic Ignorance.

A momentless immensity pure and bare,
I stretch to an eternal everywhere.

 

A yellow sale bargain

Today, Springer notified me of some bargains in a yellow sale. I am proud to have been ordered a book on a topic and author that marked (alongside model theory) my mathematical upbringing:

Peter Roquette
The Riemann Hypothesis in Characteristic p in Historical Perspective

Primes - renewing the adventure

I would very much like to continue this adventure.

Schrodinger cat

I though of a self-assessment in the Schrodinger cat form, where the dead/alive cat gets pair gets replaced by a believer/agnostic pair (as Toma Caragiu was, and with high probability, Carmen as well). 

Now I am moving more towards an agnostic/atheist pair (with a mindfulness added flavor), and an increased awareness that the reality under the "believer" category (whatever that is, if any) is very different from what most people usually believe or expect without questioning.

In fact this represents rather well the substance and philosophical tone of my discussions with Carmen in the Summer of 2013, in Ploiesti. It was very interesting, and at some moment will be back with an account.

Since her passing, some concerted effort was made to "benevolently" forge her image as somebody totally committed to the orthodox dogma in the highest sense (which was far from the truth), going as far as burying her (who did not believe in the usual "mandatory sacraments") in a monastery. Knowing her, that's a gross cultural appropriation at a minimum.

There is a lot to discover about Carmen, since she was a complex figure (in no case 1D). In any case, approximating reality after the fact is hard.

Theology and science - signing off

In the last 20 years I authored or co-authored a couple of things on religion and science, theology and science, orthodox theology and science, and so on. Truthful to my evolution in the last six years, I am signing off from such a view. Especially in Romania, virtually all theology and science - related body of work starts from the strong assumption that theological dogma is, in a form or another, an absolute given, while somehow science must `illuminate' the `eternal truth' , attempting to offer validity, or claiming to establish an added bonus or certification of validity to said `absolute'. Such an approach seems to me deeply and fundamentally flawed. Even if there may have been occasionally some interesting points here and there, I am gladly forfeiting them all so that they will not leave any room for potential misunderstandings. Here and now I am explicitly distancing myself from whatever I wrote at the `theology/science' interface.

At this point in time, it seems to me that the right approach would be that of an agnostic/atheist who considers religion/theology a phenomenon that is real - but in the sense of it being a natural (or nature-based) phenomenon that is serious enough to warrant a natural explanation, simulations, network-based analyses, neurological, many-body, etc. Paradoxically, such natural-based insights may offer illuminations that are more rewarding than the whole `make theology great again through (improperly) associating it with science' paradigm I am signing off from.