Engagement with Life!

There is just one phenomenon that is perpetually going on infinitely: conversion of space into manifested form and dissolution of form into space – the cyclic pattern continuous. On a cosmic scale, space, form, force (gravity), light, time (and therefore perception) are interrelated. Hence, can we say that space is different from form OR is the form only an expression of space and that too – which undergoes constant change?! The process of conversion of space to form and form to space can be regarded as “engagement” by the Creative Force.

At the human level of existence (in biological terms) – this cyclic pattern is demonstrated as space – body + mind (place/ form and time) – space again. With this logic, it appears that ‘we’ may encounter million lives, each with a different set of body and a unique mind, and each life will eventually meet the formless space.

At the human level of consciousness, the cyclic pattern can be realized as space – idea/thought – process or action – manifestation or product – decoding of product to imagine the process – decoding the process to imagine the idea – decoding the idea to experience space….and the cycle from space to product to space continuous. It means that thoughts are a part of the chain of events that lead to action and making of built environments. And conversely, by observing the built environments, we can imagine the processes behind those and the ideas that seem to be hinted/ revealed by observing the built environment. In two words, we are involved in thoughts that led to conception of a form and the perception of the form/space. Therefore, ANY kind of a thought can lead to a manifested situation and any situation can be interpreted to reveal many ideas or thoughts. Thus, we operate with intentions and perceptions.

Lets examine each step. Space is formless – that contains the potential to generate anything. Hence, it is the most potent element.

From space, we have ‘thoughts’ – which mean intentions, tendencies, concerns, values etc. All such thoughts are bounded by the body – mind construct. Because there is a body, there is a mind to address the issue of existence. Thoughts tend to materialize everything – from concerns to issues to fears to hunger to desires etc – that’s the nature of thoughts and therefore they generate a manifested built environment! We prefer those thoughts that exhibit dependence of Nature and express empathy and comprehensiveness of all creations. We prefer those thoughts that expand our own self created mind boundaries and attempt to include all. We prefer those thoughts therefore, that come from the understanding of geography, history and philosophy. Having known which thoughts need to be preferred, an individual can be trained to inculcate such tendencies of thoughts, because finally, they would be creating a subsequent reality!

Thoughts lead to processes – which means, thought will contain a necessity (or urge) to manifest into something. It is concerned with ‘how can I make this happen?’ It is concerned with ACTION. Hence, process becomes important. Pure thoughts necessarily will lead to pure action. Impure/ grosser thoughts will likewise lead to grosser processes. Just thinking is not sufficient; you will be ‘compelled’ to DO something about it! That’s the Force of creativity you are encountering!

Processes lead to manifestation – either as art, architecture or anything else. The quality of manifestation will therefore depend on previous steps of thoughts and processes.

Lets see the reverse case.

The manifestation (art, architecture or any situation of people or person etc) will be ‘perceived’ by us in multiple ways. The perception depends on our own desires, concerns, values etc. The manifestation will lead us to know the process (in order to understand the situation). The process or a pattern of doing things will lead us to realize certain values/ concerns – which are nothing but thoughts or ideas. Where are ideas coming from? Space!

In life, pain, happiness are the forms of engagement – thoughts trying to manifest something. Being involved with life – means to be engaged in the act of creation (from space to form and from form to space again). The emphasis on “control” of thoughts means to create sensitively and responsibly and to also transform responsibly. The emphasis on “control” of thoughts means to be aware of the compulsions of cyclic nature of thoughts to manifestations and being engaged with the world likewise!

The hammer and the Peeler

There are two experiences that we can offer the students – 

We help them to develop their skill sets by what is known and required to be done. There is an ‘idea’ of what is right (thought, process, product) and we teach them to be right at each step as per the norms. This assumes that students obviously are some steps behind the master and therefore, require training to perfect themselves. I call this – “hammering” to create an idol out of pure stone or creating a pot out of mud and so on. We begin with the assumption that students are ‘raw’ by nature and our successive attempts would mould them into good individuals/ products. 

The second approach engages the students to question themselves – their thoughts, processes and the products they make or perceive. This question reveals the ‘connections’ they have made for themselves and they are made aware of the connections that may benefit in their way of conceiving products or for dealing with situations. Thus, the idea of questioning is not to doubt them, but to let them discover the meaning of knowledge for themselves – this places responsibility primarily in their hands and the teacher is required to only guide/ give directions to their confusions or attempts to gain knowledge. It can result in a healthy exchange of ideas for both. In this, both the students and the master is involved – both may have divergent view points and that is acceptable. The whole mode becomes a kind of discussion, explorative and interpretative. I call this – “peeling off” known layers of knowledge the student has gathered and relook the situation in a fresh perspective. This is a much more harder process and may also be painful, but the rewards are phenomenal. 

We required a good mix of both the approaches for creating a good academic environment.

Changing world views

How is connection made by thought and felt as an experience? Present times begs us to consider this question. The nature of the connection has a reflection on the kind of spatial experience we create for people to live and the nature of connection also informs the manner in which a given space would be read by people. In short, connection informs our thoughts which, in turn, inform our ways of conceiving and perceiving spaces.

The nature of connection in contemporary times is influenced by onslaught of virtual environment, and the necessity to absorb large amounts of information in a limited time. We need to see what happens in this scenario - our responses are subjected continuous (and accelerating pace of) change because of micro level changes in virtual environment. Analysis and inferences are dependent on micro unit of data. It means micro control of situations (discussions, arguments, divergent views etc.) and inability to relate one bit of information or inference with the other. perhaps, even analysis and inferences are broken down to bits to data without a common thread. Thus, the experience is of complete fluidity of thought and no idea of how the larger picture seems to appear or how we seem to relate to the big picture of life? So, is it that the big picture is no longer relevant to be considered? As the world appears as a set of bits of data - unrelated to one another - we don't have a complete picture of ourselves or the people around us or even the idea of relationships. We don't know our own selves, we are filled with contradictions and we can't understand implicit signals that people send us or the environment seem to indicate.  Extending further, we seem to forget the experience of a continuous and refined memory collected over the generations to form cultural and social traits. We don't seem to consider the effect of geography on history and philosophy. in a nutshell, we can't visualize a "pattern" or "tendency" to design or conceive or relate to the phenomenon around us. Decisions taken with knowing the pattern have larger longevity and applicability than taken in response to bits of slices of time fragments.

Thus, we are referring to spaces which become highly personal, highly instantaneous and unrelated to the notion of what makes history, culture or society. We may as well forget how multi functional spaces seem to be used and how spaces acquire social, cultural, philosophical meanings born from considerations of geography and history. Thus, spaces, by nature, become fragmented/ unrelated/ bounded/ isolated/ disconnected  - architecturally, aesthetically and experientially.

The other approach is of being aware of the nature of comprehensiveness - everything being interrelated and because of which, a "pattern" is revealed behind the immediate Present. The bits of information, if connected or consolidated or analyzed - start to create connections. From connections, we perceive patterns and that results in generation of 'character'. The connections, may be informed by our associations with people, activities, climate (geography), ways of doing things (history) and the fundamental values that need to be cherished (philosophical). What we may be referring to is the experience of collective memory/ consciousness. Our gaze has to take into account a long term perspective of our actions and acknowledge the role of everything thing around us. We become aware of phenomena informing our thoughts and our boundaries of self seem to expand. In this experience of patterns, we create hierarchies, power equations, biases, preferences, relationships, cooperations and negotiations, attachments and other forms of connections. We tend to become  - more grounded and contextual in our response. This gets reflected in perceiving and conceiving spaces - which tend to become multiuse, multi functional, sensitive to environment, blissful or peaceful and subtle as an experience.

We operate in two such world views. We have societies that exhibit either of the two dominant traits and the architecture reflects these traits. We have societies that have both traits existing together.

From my experience of today's academic environment, the view of comprehensiveness gives us a promise to generate empathy towards each other and the environment. Can we transfer and evoke such values in the students, for whom the future is yet to arrive and who can engage in defining the nature of Future?

Which of the world views would you consider 'proper' to pursue?

The benefit of Doubt

This article is written with a realization of certain characteristics of ‘Doubt’ – which, perhaps, some people like ‘us’ are besieged with!  

There can be a history, as to ‘why’ and ‘how’ the issue of doubt arises in us and how it has lead to certain quality of experience of life for us – a lot of thinking definitely has been done by us – we being introverted. After many years of this internalization of what we are grappling with, a certain level of clarity is now set to unfold. I am drawing certain inferences from the Past – those being:

1.       It represents an intellectual pursuit of the mind (rather than materialistic or object driven)

2.       It represents a very critical view of situations – numerous possibilities and therefore, it takes time to arrive at a decision

3.       It can dissect thought to any microscopic level and therefore – can tend to be highly abstract in nature (Now this is something most people may not understand or connect with us).

4.       We probably have much higher and deeper questions to resolve – something of a creation of our own intellect capacities – For finding answers; we must walk the path our questions have set out for us. This path is ours to take – no other person will be aware of where we are choosing to walk and what has been laid down for us and by us.

5.       We identify more with thoughts and ideas – rather than bodies and relationships perhaps. It is not to say that we reject bodily experiences, it is just that we probably are involved purely at the thought/ intellect level.

6.       This can make us reserved, introverted, aloof and a whole lot of such similar things.

7.       The grander narrative of life, is, however, above intellectual understanding. More intellect means more questions and more possibilities – it seems like a double edged sword.

8.       The sword can dissect our own minds and can also annihilate us! We therefore can reach to the fundamental abstract notion of space – a realization that is liberating and dreadful as well. What we can become aware – is the hardest, fundamental truth of existence – that there is no real meaning of life – or we create our own meanings.

9.       This potential of Self Doubt – can take us to philosophical levels of abstractions and subtle nuances of thoughts.

10.   We know that we remain misunderstood and there were many things that happened which were of our own making and NOT of our own making simultaneously.

11.   To go back is to find a start point – which is a futile attempt – since there is no such thing as a start point!....which means, there is no such thing as a perfect past or an ideal future – what is reality is ‘Now’ – which can be regarded as the only start point for us to move on.

12.   The enemy to be watched out for – is the Loneliness that we have created. And the remedy for the Loneliness – is Service and outward attempt to connect/ expand.

13.   We have a lot of things to handle – especially the challenges to ‘connect’ to others who don’t understand our language….This needs to be accepted and forgiven.

14.   What we may come to terms with – is the understanding that there is only ‘Life’ - and we remain just instruments. There might have been a Past and certainly there is a Future, but we can exercise choices any time and that’s all there is to it.

15.   Finally, although the intellect makes us believe about Cause – Effect relationships in complex ways, we can also make us believe that the Cause-Effect DO NOT or SHOULD NOT determine our happiness/ peace quotient. Whatever Cause-Effect relationships exists within us and outside us, we STILL can decide to delink the whole thing to our decision to stay happy. THAT can be regarded as the greatest contribution of our own capacity.

Independence and Dependence

There is a lot of talk about ‘Independence’ worldwide and the constant need to keep expressing one’s existence – by actions, words, and products. Is there a place for ‘silence’ or contemplation? Anyways, let’s keep that question aside.

The ‘feeling’ of independence, I believe, is created on account of following scenario in contemporary times –

The slice of Time considered (or available at our disposal) is brought to a minute scale. We seem to concentrate only on events contained in that spec of time. This means, the rate of change is fast.

We are bombarded by billions of information from all directions and all appear fragmented or totally disconnected. It appears that there is little point correlating one information with another, since we have no time to condense what we are absorbing! In such a scenario, even the ‘same’ information of today may appear different tomorrow! In a nut shell – there is hardly a place for any thought or response to develop or properly sink in our consciousness. What we appear to behave – are fleeting memories or notional beings with feeble footings on the ground, because what is ‘ground’ any way?!

In present condition, everything may appear to be extremely ‘fresh’ and changing and therefore ‘different’ or unique! Since the idea of ‘connection’ seems to break down and as more and more fragmentation arises, “we” become islands in ourselves – and our consciousness too, becomes fragmented. Since island does not last long, we feel this urge to exert our existence forcefully – and from this comes the compulsion to constantly express. Whatever we do, our expressions are now believed to be independent (read disconnected) from anything else. My conclusion is that the feeling of independence is an expression of disconnection with everything around you. The expression of ‘creativity’ seems to take the form of ‘disconnection’ or fragmentation from the relationship with the context. In other words, perhaps the term context needs to focus on the fragment! In this world of fragments, anything remotely associated with memory – culture, society, nation, community, history, ecology – has very limited value. Our reactions (or responses) are short lived and we only seem to create a lot of ‘noise’ without any substantial change in our perceptions/ attitudes/ feelings/ actions. Of course, other pitfalls of culture such as biases, prejudices, hierarchical power structures etc. also don’t have much relevance here.

Let’s come to the notion of ‘dependence’. Another world view is felt when one starts to connect a single dot with another. A dot may have a link with more dots – forming lines, planes and spaces. Thus the identity or the relevance of dot is related to the entire volume! Here, we are talking of interrelationships or patterns or tendencies or movements of systems. For this, the scale of Time needs to increase to include generations or centuries or millennia. This world is of interconnections  - ecology to geography to history to culture to behavior to architecture to philosophy to existence and so on. In such a state of mind, we become ‘silent’ – for we understand that ‘we’ are not individuals, but represent a dimension of the cosmos. We may just appear different (in terms of manifestation), but we are all connected. In this world, we care less for individual identity and care more about connections – empathy. ‘Memory’ becomes collective or even transcends body-mind limitations. Of course, one should also guard aganst hierarchical power structures, prejudices, superstitions etc. – which are also a part of collective memories. In a nutshell, in this world, the idea of creation is of expressing or revealing a ‘pattern’ through a product. Every act is a realization of a pattern and our role in it.