Thoughts and Us

Thoughts and Us

Some dimensions regarding how we tend to think about situations around us. This is an attempt to portray the potential of our thoughts and the Reality (or the perception of existence) that our thoughts generate....

1. Any thought can be treated as ‘Real’ at a given point of time and any thought is not absolute – The two observations seem contradictory at first and it is only recent that I have concluded the essential nature of our thoughts in life. The nature of the thought in a given instant governs our feelings, desires, aspirations, projections at that very instant. If we choose to cling onto a set of thoughts – they tend to build a particular perception or a habit or a belief or a character regarding us. Depending on what we choose to think (as a series of thoughts), we generate action and have to face the consequence. This cycle of thought and action is never ending. The series of thoughts take us from one mood to another; from one shore to another; from one river bank to another; from one landscape to another....we keep moving in a direction (which I tend to visualize as NOT necessarily linear but in a multi dimensional grid of space), where all kinds of movements may happen – forward; backward; sideways; diagonal; upwards; downwards and so on. Essentially, our thoughts generate not a linear perception of life, but they have the capacity to generate any perception based on how we choose to set a direction! Thus, we can’t cling onto any thought. Since that is the case, we can’t cling on to any situation or an experience or a feeling or emotion or a memory – thoughts change and so do we. Therefore, no thought remains static and therefore it is not absolute. But that does not mean that we do not believe a particular thought occurring in a given instant. The control and choice is upto us. This also means that almost everything you know of – is NOT going to last forever. This is one the hardest facts to accept. It also challenges the notion of a ‘static reinforced identity’. And it offers a fresh perspective of an evolving identity – which is extremely malleable and porous. In its purest form, (it is believed by Seers) that there is no ‘individual identity’ but only ‘universal consciousnesses’! We are all heading towards that realization – sooner or later. In practical terms, it also means that one can change one’s personality deliberately or our personality changes automatically too, if we are not conscious of it. We can turn into angel, if we try and we can stoop down to disparaging levels of character, if we do not control ourselves. We can be Gods and turn into Devils and vice versa. Thus the person you see in front of you – is he real or is he temporal? The person is real as well as temporal – depending on what frame of time you choose to consider.
2. The control and choice of thoughts is upto us – Is it always? Not necessarily. Any life form generates a movement – from birth to death. This movement is accompanied by a push factor in our minds. Our mind + body undergo this feeling of forward push from birth to its evolution to ‘death’ (although death is not a correct word to be used here). This push is also the result of growing age and gender. Essentially it is about the need to survive – a notion created by our thoughts bounded by a finite existence (because of a body). The need to survive is the greatest generator of a billion series of thoughts. And we again come to point no. 01 for choosing to direct the thoughts in some direction.
3. Composition of thoughts – All thoughts include a notion of past, present and future. Correspondingly it means a notion of memory; existential conflict; and aspiration (or liberation). By memory, we mean our experiences, condensed emotions and feelings, associations, culture, history, community, society – they hint what we choose to hold on to; they hint about our values (despite changing circumstances); they hint the likely direction that we may take in the future; they hint regarding our tendencies. Existential conflict means a tussle between what we think should be ideally existing and the contradictory situation that we must deal with. The aspiration is a desire to make the situation perfect or better or stable or ideal. It may be realized eventually, that we create such situations for ourselves.
4. Tendency – According to me, this is one of the most crucial things to understand about ourselves. The question is: is there a general pattern to all of our thoughts (that we seem to project or adhere to), regardless of how much ever we try to change the thoughts?  May be ‘yes’. This tendency to think in a particular manner – is it inborn or is it acquired? Probably  a combination of both. But what seems to be the cause of the ‘inborn’ inclination of thoughts to generate a familiar pattern to us – which later on we term it as a ‘tendency’ of that person. Is tendency alterable? Tough question. And this realization of the term ‘tendency’ brings forth the idea of ‘acceptance’ of our essential nature – with all dents, curves, points, depressions and elevations....with all smoothness, roughness, strengths and weaknesses. Thus we have ‘characters’ all around us – bold, dashing, quiet, reserved, anxious, hyper, lovable, dominating, considerate, kind and so on. These characters need NOT change fundamentally – they will continue to exist because they indicate the tendencies evident in Nature itself. Realizing such tendencies is a matter of cultivating the value of ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’. It is also training ourselves to understand that we can change ourselves and people (or situations) around us only to a certain extent and for everything else, we have to accept things in good spirit.
5. Thought and anti-thought - I can’t prove this phenomenon, however this realization was revealed to me in recent times. To every thought we create, there is an opposite thought (or a tendency) that is created somewhere in time and space. And this may be perhaps Nature’s way of ‘balancing’ things. Or this perhaps creates a perceivable ‘movement’ of Energy. This means, the perceivable environment is always going to remain in a state of flux. If there are arrogant people around, it will give rise to quiet people. If there are leaders, there are followers. If there are talkative people, there are listeners who will also listen to the talk! The world may be considered as a sum total of opposites – matter and anti matter. So there is an ‘anti-you’ out there! It also means that our thoughts keep on yo-yoing from one opposite to another. The tendency of thought is to create ‘movement’ and thus, keep us from remaining static.
6. Binary – Is a thought understood in isolation (on its own merit) or in comparison with another notion? Is ‘identity’ of thought always in relation to the other? We understand ‘black’ only because of ‘white’? We understand light only because of darkness? We understand ‘movement’ only because of being stationed? However, how can ‘thought’ itself be understood by the ‘absence’ of it? And probably this is the reason, we can’t comprehend a situation before our birth or after our demise.
7. Notion of Time and scale of thoughts – Thoughts can be clubbed together or inter-related to reveal ‘connections’ of a given phenomenon. Simply put, as an example – ‘ecosystem’ is a phenomenon. The realization of this phenomenon that is labelled as ecosystem stems from realizing how different events are interlinked to generate an ecosystem. The concern here is of ‘interdependence’ and ‘inter-relationships’ of part to the whole. To understand this phenomenon of interconnections, it takes time and enormous patience. Our thoughts tend to slow down and bigger and more complex (not complicated) phenomenon may be revealed, should we choose to concentrate. Our thoughts acquire solid weight and depth. Fields like sociology, humanities, archaeology, palaeontology, climate, geography, history and of course philosophy, are concerned with larger and complex phenomena and we are dealing with extremely different perception of time and therefore, we tend to look at situations in a very different way. Herein, in this perspective, we realize the Unchanging Spirit behind the evident changing scenario of events. The idea is of ‘transcendence’ – seeing and experiencing something that is not subjected to the vagaries of time. All thoughts seem to dissolve and so does our identity. In other words, we realize that any given thought is NOT separate from any other thought in terms of its existence/ value/ character – essentially anything is the same. Thus, this means, you and I are not different. It means the trees, sky, Sun, sheep, sea, sand, horse, boat, rubber, pencil are one and the same. The idea of ‘separateness’ does not exist. Hence, time subsequently dissolves. The notion of ‘movement’ or ‘direction’ dissolves. As a person, we tend to become extremely calm and unperturbed by anything. We become compassionate towards all.
8. Fragmentation – The reverse of (7) is also true. Should we choose to train ourselves, we can go on dissecting any given phenomenon in infinitesimal parts, so that each micro part appears very distinct from the rest. The emphasis here, is on ‘individuality’ or uniqueness of the moment. The scale of thoughts and the sale of time is extremely small. The perception of reality thus generated, is one of rapid change and extreme fluidity. I am different and so you are. Each colour, smell, sound, texture, event, situation, object is different and has a unique place. The notion of autonomous identity is strong in this case. This can lead to leadership qualities but can prove stressful because of constant manoeuvring and negotiating with all different situations. The issue is of ‘power’, ‘ego’ and anything equivalent. The notions of history, culture, community take a back seat. People can tend to become aggressive, dominating, opportunistic, exploitative and arrogant if such is their nature of thoughts. What is generated is a lot of friction/ violence in thought and action.
9. Speed – Related with points (7) and (8) is the aspect of “speed” of thoughts. How fast a thought can occur and how fast can it change into something else? In other words, what is the ‘gap’ between two thoughts? By the habit of focussing, intense observation, we can develop the habit of reducing the speed of thoughts till they become extremely slow and give the perception of ‘stillness’. This reveals a very different perspective of external environment – we tend to sense something beyond the immediate, because our mind gets trained to recognize that dimension. This something can only be felt/ perceived and can’t be seen or described by words. This something seems universal and is not bounded by any life form or time. This something is present in the tiniest of event to the most gigantic of the events. Perhaps, this something is the only thing that exists – the usual manifestation of events is just distractions! Conversely, faster speed of thoughts indicate an exited mind and cannot observe anything deeper than the superfluous – it is like a flat stone bouncing off the surface of water, without attempting to penetrate the surface of water.
10. Combining points (7) and (8) is the picture of “deep ocean” or can also be visualized as “cyclone” phenomenon – The depths of ocean always seem to be calmer and still as compared to the turbulent nature of the sea waves. The winds along the periphery of cyclone rotate faster, despite the centre of cyclone remaining still. Therefore, the question is: are the two regions  (turbulence and stillness) to be regarded as separate or are they related? And if they are related, it means we can move from one region to the other. Thus, our nature of thoughts can give us stillness in life or excruciating turbulence. Another perspective that this example offers is that beyond every turbulent region of thoughts, there is a region of stillness. Thus, one wishful thinking for us would be to move our thoughts in the direction of stillness.

Summarily, the above is an indication regarding the manner in which we create our own perceptions about life. Human being’s mind is highly complex. Each human being, as a mammal is same. However, each human being’s perception (and subsequent quality of life) is different. A lot of debate since centuries has happened regarding the role of ‘choice’ in our thoughts and actions and is there something called fate or not. Bhagvad Geeta talks a lot of this and so do other philosophical cannons. 

I wish to consider the idea of ‘awareness’ of multiple dimensions of Reality. The idea of Reality is to be treated as something personal and which is relative. We define our own realities by our thoughts and we need to be aware that there exist billion versions of realities  - as much as there are people on earth. And we need to also consider the possibility that everything can be regarded as truth or can also be regarded as a mere illusion! 

In practical world that we exist in, even if we make an attempt to know multiple truths of the same phenomenon, we become tolerant, compassionate and non-judgemental about things around us. One of my professors mentioned that ‘Liberation’ is equivalent of knowing multiple perspectives of a given situation. 

Can we therefore, attempt to make our self aware of this fact?

Ritual

Usually this word tends to be associated with the aspect of ‘worship’ and something confined to the idea of ‘sacredness’. Loosely speaking, the idea of ritual indicates a sequence of actions one has to repeatedly undertake, strictly in a prescribed order (crystallized over the generations and codified/ sanctified through collective memory) to achieve a result – either of appeasing the Gods or fulfilling a duty or wishing for benevolent events to happen in one’s life. There are several ‘intentions’ behind the idea of ritual, one of them being of achieving a state of mind that may closely resemble Godliness. Other intentions include the idea of purity v/s non-purity, holy v/s secular, hierarchical systems to maintain ideas of privileged class and untouchables, financial support to the institutional structure of worship and many other political motives.

I would like to highlight important observations from above statements – A) Any concept, no matter how noble its intention maybe, isn’t uniformly perceived when it comes to applying the same in practice – modifications (and adulterations) are inevitable. B) Any concept or an idea undergoes changes and transformations over a period of time. C) It is upto the individual to ‘discover’ and realize the potential of the ‘idea’ and even surpass the idea itself. 

In other words, according to point ( C ), performance of a prescribed set of actions does not necessarily guarantee the intended noble intention that may have been dictated by somebody else in some different place and in some different time period. Or, a crystallized ‘method’ and the sequence of actions does not necessarily guarantee a historic output. And if one is doing actions for a substantial amount of time, without really questioning what that action is meant for and what it will let you achieve, then the action is nothing but a ‘ritual’ that is being performed. If we change, our intentions will change and so will our aspirations. If aspirations change, so should the method of achieving our priorities in life.

My question to the students therefore is: Is your way of thinking being - ritualistic? Are you performing actions without thinking, without analyzing, without any concern for yourself? Are you doing something just for the sake of doing? Are you doing something because it seems to have been dictated by the society and has a huge cultural/ historical/ social baggage? Have you evaluated that a given set of framework prescribed by your colleagues, family, college, relate to your individual aspirations? Are the prescribed demands entrusted by the society able to make you discover the meaning of your life? Have you thought about such questions deeply enough and boldly enough? 

My experience tells me that the biggest obstacle to our development is our nature of thought and the biggest asset is also the nature of our thoughts. Our thoughts are everything in life and therefore, I would sincerely urge the students to think deeply for themselves – since that will eventually make your life purposeful, meaningful and liberating. 

How does one achieve this? One can start by observing things that one is interested to learn something from – music, stories, reading, drawing, playing. One needs to experiment with things one has not done before. One has to start looking ‘inwards’ and ask oneself – what is one trying to discover here and how can one achieve this sense of discovery and learning? How is one thinking and how are those thoughts, in turn, shaping oneself and one’s life? 

The advantage of contemporary times is that everything is open for questioning – old orders are dismantled, hierarchical relationships need not be present always and ideas can be forthcoming from any dimension, from any place and from any slice of time. This is the time of volatility and a destabilized environment. The onus of finding one’s way is upto ‘you’ – the Reader!

Best wishes for a bright future!

Time and Thought

This article is an attempt to elaborate the relationship between ‘thought’ and the sense of ‘time’. It will explore what factors seem to influence our perception of time. With this introspection, comes the issue of how is the quality of perception (of things and architecture) related to time?  

Scientific approaches could be used to elaborate the above relation. However, I lay emphasis on the intuitive aspect and will attempt to take the Reader along this journey by taking examples, which most of us may be able to relate. I will conclude by asking a series of questions, which the Reader is encouraged to ponder and discover the answers to the same.

There seems to be a strong relationship between the ‘scale’ of our thoughts, the sense of time it generates and the quality of our perception. We will attempt to understand this relationship by taking a simple example.

For this, we choose a setting where a community is staying for generations and the building typology has evolved over centuries of trial and error techniques. Consider Long Houses, or the Bhungas or any kind of ‘traditional’ architecture. What exactly do we mean by the word ‘traditional’ (or ‘vernacular’)?  In trying to build a dwelling (such as a Bhunga), the inhabitant carries an impression of the traditional knowledge of building processes  – hand skills required for putting things together and building the structure by an available material palette. These considerations, in turn, are informed by ideas of social structures, cultural considerations, division of labour, inter-community exchange of skill sets, judicious use of natural resources such as water, climatic issues, privacy concerns, relationship with Nature, cycles of maintenance and deep rooted responses regarding sustenance, belief systems and so on. The thought needs to consider the sand, wind, clay, water, wind, sun, flora, fauna, material, process, people and the relationship of all these interdependent systems. In this complex (but not complicated) set of systems, architecture is thus, just a part of the whole. And therefore, the perception and the conception of architecture is not just spatially (and visually) driven, but encompasses a lot many parameters mentioned above – for these inhabitants and should also be considered for any fruitful architectural contribution by architects to them. Thus, the visual composition of form and space manifested by the inhabitants (despite ‘looking visually quite ordinary’) has the ability to convey a range of meanings based on the depth of our understanding of the relationship of people to their ideas of perception and to their expression of ideas in architectural forms. The consideration of these parameters takes our gaze of thought beyond the visual and the response for architecture which gets generated, has a significant contribution of geography, history and at times – philosophy. Thus, our perceptions of spaces (as architects) is bound to change by our increasing awareness of inter – relationship of different systems that generate architecture. Thus, a naïve judgement of architectural appraisal based on the sole criteria of visual aesthetics ought to be discouraged. Further, achievement of architecture, in terms of grandiose scale of projects or eccentric visual delights cannot be the sole criteria for understanding “appropriateness” or “goodness” of the intent of expression. Essentially, we are trying to understand ‘readings’ of spaces and ways to conceive architecture, and the argument is that the more we become aware of the inter relationships of different systems, the more profound our ideas may be informed and may get manifested in architecture.  It is quite natural, that in realizing the inter relationships of systems, we are now dealing with a different ‘scale’ of time – mostly pertaining to decades, generations or centuries, since manifestations of phenomena in terms of culture, beliefs, history, myths, religion, nationhood, and even the meaning of community, take enormous time. Thus, one of the questions to ask ourselves is: what we are seeing in front of us – does it convey the complete picture? Or does it relate to something far more different, if many parameters are taken into consideration for a longer period of time? Thus, we develop a tendency to take a deep pause before arriving at any kind of a judgement and initiate a response. Time is the key ingredient. By giving more time to understand and feel things around us, our perceptions may tend to become profound with meaning. We may start to arrive at some of the fundamental questions pertaining to ‘forward movement’, ‘ development’, ‘vernacular’, ‘backward’, ‘traditional’, ‘sustainable’ and so on, since each of these terms indicates a perception of space which is informed by our understanding of effects of Time on the phenomena. Simply stated, by giving more Time, we perceive situations, people and relationships differently thereby creating corresponding responses.

Let’s explore the reverse case, since it is an indicator of contemporary urban situation as regards to Time. I wish to narrow my argument to prominent concerns of our time – digitization and its effect on time. Impact of digitization on our perception of thought, the way we choose to live and form our experiences, and our relationship with time is an extremely vast topic to explore and debate. Summarily it can be stated to be a perception that ‘Time seems short’. This should prompt us to question – how did this perception get created and why do we seem to feel this? And what seems to be the effect of this perception on the quality of spaces we design or we live in?

Digitization has many effects, which we will try to see now. I prefer to equate digitization with its nature of rapid change. Digitization is also connected with the processes of visualization, drawing making and construction industry. It is also connected to the domain of management of any phenomena from micro scale (such as biometric thumb impressions) to mega scales (such as management of cities, infrastructure, and services). And importantly, it is also connected to dissection of any given phenomenon into infinitesimally parts, thereby generating enormous quantum of data and compelling us to be engrossed continuously in analysis – all in the name of ‘refinement’ or perfection or prediction. We are compelled to concentrate and base our analysis and response on the infinitesimal part (or the ‘moment’), rather than eternity. Since a moment changes fast, so does the dissected data generated by the digitization tool, thereby forcing our responses to change with the same rapidity. The entire notion of our perception seems to only be concerned on the reality of the moment – since we have allowed digital world to take control of the smallest of components of time, on which, we are basing our analysis and responses.

Secondly is the aspect of increasing penetration and dissipation of information by virtual environments such as smart phones and the internet in our daily lives and its apparent changing nature characterized by replacement, displacement, transformation, modification and so on. The frame of reference in this virtual world seems to be changing and fluid. This has advantages as well as disadvantages on the nature of perceptions of reality. We will try to see what do above two developments (digitization and the internet presence) seem to have an effect on our perceptions:

Any concept or an idea or an issue or an understanding, which depends on a larger framework of time to evolve and be realized, has no place now to be aptly considered for discussion. This includes any idea or a concern or an understanding related to Nature, ecology, geography, culture, society, nation, history, myth, and religion, a sense of community, collective wisdom, and hierarchical relationships and so on. Note that above terms indicate a larger reference of time to evolve and indicate an understanding of a relationship of different phenomena to create an idea or a concern or an understanding. Due to the compulsion of reducing our frame of reference to only a ‘moment’, it becomes difficult (and perhaps redundant) to consider complex set of inter relationships of different systems of phenomena – thus forcing us to consider each part as a separate part (and NOT necessarily connected or related to the whole). This constitutes a change in perceiving our world now. All ideas, concerns, issues seem unique, separate, novel and not inter connected. The ‘whole’ picture is becoming more and more fragmented, changing, complex. The individual reality or the idea of being distinct or separate supersedes the idea of the collective and the interconnected. These have bearings on our perceptions of Nature, self and architecture. Architecturally, this means, we conceive spaces not necessarily considering the phenomena of culture, society, myth, religion, climate, traditional building techniques, ecosystems, renewal and so on. Our responses seem to cater only to the immediate and the individual tastes and not really trying to see how spaces can cater to a multi functional and multipurpose use for the family or the community or even for those stakeholders or participants of space creation, whose voices are rarely heard or acknowledged in the processes of interventions, planning, designing. The decisions may not be considerate to the subtle effects of climate, geology, history, tradition and so on. Thus, the nature of spaces is not becoming ‘inclusive’ of many parameters. This brings to the forefront regarding the changing identity of community spaces, neighbourhood spaces, social and cultural spaces within the city, multifunctional zones in the city and so on. Spaces seem to be conceived only to be enjoyed by a few, its huge carbon footprints denting our delicate relationship with Nature and abused at will by few people with little care for others. One does not seem to care about the aspect of sustenance and renewal and perhaps it is casually assumed that anything can be built overnight without the slightest regard for utilization of energy and anything can be brutally bulldozed with equal speed by constantly shifting priorities catering to individual whims, fancies and fashions. One need not be responsible for the ‘greater good’, one need not be answerable and one need not be concerned about critiquing one’s own creation.  Of course, there are advantages in this change of our perception and our tendencies of concentrating on the moment (or the “now”), some of them being - “newness” to look at the same phenomena in extremely divergent perspectives (which need not be converging), breaking and challenging hard set belief systems born out of tradition, culture, breaking hierarchical dispersal of knowledge systems and a constantly changing focus. However, I argue that such tendencies to concentrate only on the ‘moment’ and the resultant expression of this tendency towards a ‘distinct’ or ‘separate’ response is to be seen critically, since it may disconnect our relation and responsibility to Nature, thus causing serious harm to the environment and us. This is at the crux of the problems we seem to face today. The requirement of inclusive thinking and wider + longer view of the situation is dependent on the frame of Time.

Changing digitization tools also means changes in the ways things are done. This means new ways of execution, but also means disruption of traditional skill sets. Since traditional systems of thinking – place reading, conception, hand drawing, negotiating with building masons, the actual building process itself were slow; the nature and the process of design had to cater to these parameters. With increasing use of software technology in the processes of drawing and execution, our thinking pattern and its relationship to different aspects of idea creation, to the people and to the processes of execution are also affected. Questions to be asked is whether effects of traditional skill of spanning and construction need to be considered or not? Should we be dependent on slower and local building techniques of execution, when much quicker alternatives are available? Do we need to feel concerned about empowering local skills, craft based occupations through the medium of architecture by giving an opportunity for such skills to manifest in our design or a quick, efficient, standardized solution bulldozing generations of wisdom is the correct way of going forward?  Do we really need to go to the site to ‘feel’ its nuances or can our feelings be informed only by virtual data? What is the approach towards maintenance? The question is what do we seem to achieve by faster mode of thinking and execution? What do we gain and what subtle clues from the environment do we get, when we deliberately attempt to slow down our responses? These have repercussions on how we think about ourselves, our environment, the choice of material palette and the carbon footprint on the ecosystem that our proposed designs generate.

And finally, there is the aspect of ‘memory’. Our changing perceptions about time scale affect the nature of our memories as well. With the changing nature of our memory, we see ourselves differently, perceive spaces differently and have different priorities to consider – all this is a subject matter of another article some day.

Niranjan Garde