Beyond the equations.

We cannot separate the subjective understanding of our memory from what goes on in the world. That is, there is no room to think of memory as something cut off from the material world, or of the material world as something cut off from memory.

The tool with which we build the narrative of the material world we may call "cause." On the assumption that whatever happens always happens "for some reason," we keep creating a concept called "prediction." I say "keep creating" because this concept need not be taught to anyone; from birth a human does it spontaneously, in order to perceive their surroundings — it is inherent in us. As if we simply assume that every interrelation (correlation) in the world is caught in the net of "cause." As if the interrelations were approximations whose root is micro-causality, with "memory" as the narrator — as if memory's only task were to grope out, from the jungle of correlations, the causalities that have gone missing.

But we could put it another way. We could begin the narrative from "memory," since we cannot separate matter from memory. Begun this way, memory is not a flowing thing; it is a still image. Yesterday's event and an event a year ago do not sit far apart in my memory — they sit side by side. Thus "time lapse" and "time collapse" come to one footing. Once time has passed, "what came after what" is no longer important — in fact the very existence of "after" dissolves. Causations thus become "not necessarily meaningful," while correlations become concrete. After significant time lapse, only pattern remains. There is actually nothing but "correlations," whereas "causation" becomes vague, even irrelevant.

So what emerges is this: if we give priority to my subjective experience, correlations appear as the primary tool for explaining the world, and "causations" become man-made ghosts that guard our worldly sanity. If we begin to see the future too with this eye, it also becomes a still image — though this seeing is difficult, since we are not as far-sighted as we are hind-sighted.

— February 17, 2025

Narrativism — or "explanationism"; in English one might say "narrativism." I place before you an idea that I think is important to grasp in our times.

To me, narrativism is placing boundless faith in a narrative. What do I mean? Take Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens as an example. On the surface Sapiens seems very convincing, but think a little and you see that its narrative is built by picking and choosing from countless possible scenarios — presented as though this were the only explanation.

Let me describe the method. Suppose event "A" happened, and then event "Z" happened. To connect A and Z, if one shows A→B→C→…→Z — that is, tells the story of reaching Z through several intermediate steps — many people will accept it without much thought. That each of these steps is cherry-picked is something people rarely consider. They assume the author has brought us all the way to Z as an inevitable consequence. The effect is that B, C, D and the rest are taken as given too. This is the problem with narrativism.

Not every narrativist intellectual is a fraud. Often one develops such faith in one's own grand narrative that one can no longer see its problem. Take Salimullah Khan, one of present-day Bangladesh's most erudite scholars. In cultivating a critical posture in a new generation, in introducing thinkers from home and abroad, he is superb. After much reading he has built a grand narrative of subcontinental history, which he uses as spectacles to diagnose various social issues. Some call him a "footnote intellectual" for his heavy referencing; I object. He does cite heavily, but he has his own narrative. Another charge is that he begins every explanation from something hundreds or thousands of years old. I think he has to, in order to foreground the grand narrative whose lens he will use. This is not uncommon — almost all Indian intellectuals, in particular, are afflicted by narrativism.

The problem is that a narrative is inherently one-dimensional; its world is linear. Not necessarily a straight line — it can be complex — but linear. History, however, is not linear; it is like a network, with one or many causes and non-causes interwoven. The world on which the web of human history is stretched is not one-dimensional. If we imagine the finitude of world and life as a metaphorical sphere, then the web of human history covers this sphere. History does not travel along a single latitude. Even when it circles back to a point, its onward path need not be as before. But "narrative," being one-dimensional and linear, traces a circular, cyclic path over the sphere — it keeps spinning within one narrative. History has no such inertia.

Beyond the writing of history, "narrative" can be extended to the context of life or society. If we try to bind the reality of life or society into the frame of a story, we may call that story a narrative. A story's feature is that it has some well-defined characters. Even without stating values explicitly, the story's movement tells us what is good and what is bad — a moral code is ingrained in it. But there is no reason reality should carry these limitations.

Yet without narrative our brain cannot process reality. So narrative matters, for bringing reality into a tolerable form. But we must remember that the narrative itself is not haqiqat (truth). "Narrative" tells us a toy reality projected through history and tradition. So it is also our duty to free ourselves from narrative as far as possible. This is far harder to do than to say. We spend our daily lives inside social narratives. Our honour, our envy, our pride — all are formed on our relative position within society's narrative.

For example, suppose someone won the Nobel Prize three times. In their social narrative this is a huge event. But in the social narrative of an inhabitant of the Amazon rainforest, this prize is meaningless. So there is no meaning in pride outside the narrative. Dignity, too, is narrative-dependent.

Social narrative also dictates our sense of right and wrong. Consider the objection people raise to Humayun Ahmed marrying a much younger woman: it comes from the social narrative, and has no religious or legal basis. Or: the middle class feels awkward eating at the same table as their household help, yet feels no awkwardness eating together while seated on the floor — behaviour with no religious or cultural basis. The social narrative gives shape to even our spontaneity.

People want to live inside a narrative. In the narrative they find a normalcy that gives them psychological security. Culture and narrative are not the same thing. Narrative is a moving thing, a current people want to join, like a flock of ducks. Culture, on the other hand, is a still image, looking at which one finds one's home. Floating in this river beside the house, one's life passes. One does not enter the house — one wanders outside a little and returns to the river. Such is the relation of culture and narrative.

I called narrativism "explanationism." The reason: whenever we question or explain, there is always a pretext; some things are assumed. The more the questioning or explaining, the wider the pretext. And a pretext is a narrative. So explanation is always narrative-dependent. This is why one cannot find haqiqat within explanation.

The law claims that it wants to establish justice in society on the basis of haqiqat. But it stands on questioning and explanation. "Law is a false hope to cleanse the narrative to reflect the truth (huqq)." So placing faith in the law is also narrativism. Obeying the law for the sake of a social contract is fine, but the law can by no means establish universal huqq. Therefore it is a mistaken thought that the servants of the law (police and army, judges and barristers) or the servants of explanation (academic teachers, intellectuals) are doing something nobler than others.

Complete liberation from narrative may be impossible, but it is vital to keep watch on how narrative operates in human society. This will lessen, a little, the inertia imposed upon huqq and haqiqat.

— September 9, 2022

The institutions of society are held by whoever is privileged in the state order — in plain words, they sit at the summit of power. They decide our right and wrong, our fashion, culture, art, values. It is not that they are something other than us; they are us. The schools and colleges we attend, the debates we hold, the poetry and prose we make — these give us the ticket to enter this power-structure, so that we always serve it, whether for it or against it. Even to go against it, one must know organically what is for it. This knowing is recognition, and recognition keeps the structure running.

Beyond this power-structure, other social orders can exist, with their own dynamics of power, their own values, politics, literature. There the exercise of state power is nominal, so its importance too is nominal. The inhabitants of such a society are called "sub-altern." Examples might be the hill indigenous peoples of Bangladesh, the inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest, the people of Ladakh. Even the villages in Zahir Raihan's novel Hajar Bochor Dhore might fall in this category. Sub-altern does not necessarily mean a people exploited by the state power-structure. The hand of state power, or of the law, often does not reach the sub-altern; the norms of their society run in their own fashion. There is exploitation and injustice there too, since it is also a structure — but a local one. There has to be an unwritten understanding between the state and the sub-altern. They take from the state only as much as will not make it press down on them. This balance is very important. Some is taken for the sake of recognition, and security is another reason. The trouble arises when this balance breaks — and mostly it does break.

The Bengali translation of sub-altern is nimnoborgo (lower order). Though literally correct, I think this rendering is wrong. The reason is precisely a European mentality — they too think of the sub-altern as a lower order. Through this way of thinking the state gradually begins to grow dystopically homogeneous. For instance, Italy, though so large a country, speaks one language everywhere; cross the state border and it is another language. Such an intense, artificial division can happen only when a nation is made to pass through extreme cultural exploitation. In Italy there are differences of accent by region, but the language is the same everywhere, and the cultural differences are not stark. What linguistic differences there were, they tried to keep alive within their own families; but since there is no literary practice carrying those differences, in time even that little difference is nearly extinct. The state imposes language, culture, food habits. Look at America, and we see McDonald's everywhere, everyone spinning within the binary of the Democrat and Republican mindset. America's indigenous population, who could truly have been sub-altern, have to remain instead an oppressed minority. In any case, I want to say that the relationship between the state apparatus and the sub-altern is delicate; to keep it alive, a parallel outlook and a minimum of intervention are essential.

To catch where the confusion arises, it is important to speak of another class. This class is called the marginal. The marginal are essentially an exploited people, whose life-security stands at the lowest level of society. Examples might be the poor minority communities of Bangladesh, the children of orphanages, landless farmers. Note that the sub-altern becomes marginal before it is wiped out. Literary intellectuals want to show this marginal sub-altern as the traditional sub-altern. This wish is romantic, but mistaken. When they speak of reconstructing history in the sub-altern's narrative, what they really want to hear is the marginal's story told in the culturalist intellectual's telling. Take, as an example, Manik Bandyopadhyay's Padma Nadir Majhi. The telling has two faults.

The first fault — conflating the sub-altern and the marginal. This belittles the sub-altern. We see, for this reason, that Advaita Malla Barman, who himself came from that sub-altern upbringing, is irritated on reading Padma Nadir Majhi. He then goes on to write a novel of his own, Titas Ekti Nadir Naam. In it we find the narrative of the Malos who live by the banks of the Titas — a sub-altern people who, toward the end of the novel, turn marginal. What is worth noticing is that this novel does not show the sub-altern as marginal; rather it shows the marginal as the outcome of the sub-altern's extinction.

The second fault — trying to tell the marginal's story. This is dehumanification. We cannot write from a marginal's point of view, because we do not know where one marginal differs from another, where the individualism lies. They would be given to us as individuals if their characters were like the characters of a story — that is, if they obeyed the dead grammar of story. What is the dead grammar of story? It is a frame in which there will be certain kinds of characters — the comic, the tragic, the stubborn, the hero, the villain. The marginal does not obey this dead grammar. He is kind in one body, and in that same body cruel. He holds everyone, and holds no one. He must struggle anew each day. What he will eat tomorrow, and where, may not be settled. So he must have a power of reading situations far beyond the ordinary, which creates a high order of sensitivity. From here comes character-fluidity. A marginal is a character outside the story-frame of his time's social order. The story with which the system lulls us to sleep — the marginal is its wakeful critic. He dwells in the transition of breaking and making; the road of the saint and of the demon is his.

The interesting thing is that when the marginal becomes civilized, he is no longer marginal. With the traditional sub-altern it is not so. A sub-altern, even after leaving his own domain and entering the sphere of state power, can still tell of the joys and sorrows, the conflicts, the loves of the society he left behind. So in the sub-altern's account we can recognize the sub-altern. But the marginal, because he lives in no frame, when he overcomes his misery and enters a frame, forgets his former condition. It is like once you see a pattern in a drawing, you cannot unsee it — you always find that pattern. Advaita showed a fine insight here too. When the youth Ananta, having finished his studies, has stood on his own feet and moves about with the gentlefolk, he returns to the village and can no longer recognize Anantabala and Basanti.

It is not that the marginal has no story; rather it is full of a thousand kinds of subtle sensitivity, a very complex ego-dynamics, where the luxury of narrative becomes unimportant. And again, when the marginal overcomes his marginality, he becomes another person. So even if the luxury of narrative then forms, he can no longer recall it.

The story of marginals exists. It exists without a narrative, it exists without a storyteller.

— August 26, 2022

Do we write the way we think? I don't think so. Just as there is a box of thought — thought held in a box — there is also a box of writing, writing held in a box. By this box I do not mean the limitation of language. It is formed in the process of socialization.

Let me try to open this up with a few examples.

Let me start with a small one. When I compose a melody of my own, the thought-space it comes from is not built by any conventional structure. That is, I do not then use any routine that follows from the theories we call the grammar of music. Nor is it that what I do has no structure — the structure is my own. This is quite hard to explain to another person. But if I am asked what I did, I will try to explain it with the conventional theory of music — even in such a way that it sounds as if I made the melody using that conventional grammar. Why would I do this? Because the logical motion of the conventional musical structure is universal. When we say that something has been "proven," we mean that it is validated by a universally accepted logical motion. So we try to bring any statement into a canonical (proof) structure. This is part of the socialization of expression.

The question is: must every melody be made this way? Does the canonical structure not actually produce melody? Of course it does — in most cases it does. For instance, playing random progressions within the conventional grammar of music and taking a combination of the spots that sound good, one can make a song; many commercial songs are made this way. And those who have practised a great deal develop various kinds of muscle memory; hand them a lyric and, sensing its mood, after one chord the next comes spontaneously to their hands. This works in improvisation too. But I think melody-practice based only on the canonical structure is bounded within a certain limit. Root-thought has little place there. Its existence has no reach beyond the space-time the given structure represents; as the age passes, that melody's relevance passes too. I am not saying this is bad. Such a melody can be sustained for years — but the year's harvest must be eaten within the year.

So I am saying there are two modes of sadhana (practice).

One mode does not come from any canonical structure; we may call it "original practice" (maulik sadhana). This practice begins with single-minded concentration on one idea. Then it slowly expands, leaning on intuition. It has a single, whole entity, its own grammar, and something of a reflection of the practitioner's soul. The mood that issues from this practice is then presented to people wrapped inside a canonical structure, so that it becomes intelligible. It may appear that the practitioner produced the mood by working through the complex rules of the canonical structure — but in truth it is not so. The mood was already born; to make it acceptable, the practitioner laboriously wrapped it in the canonical structure. This I call the socialization of mood.

The second mode may be called "unburdened practice" (nirbhar sadhana), because in it one need not carry the burden of an idea. Its very existence rests on the canonical structure. Its aim is to add some variation to what is already public and, through permutation and combination, to create and spread small new moods. Since the depth of its roots is shallow, its relevance depends heavily on space and time.

Now let me give an example from philosophy.

Michel Foucault is a very great philosopher. But did he think the way he wrote? Pure thought is like sowing a seed. It gets sunlight and grows on its own; its branches spread of themselves. Root-thought likewise does not need a thousand accessory facts. It has its own motion; the theories come to the head from an intuitive place, needing very little external influence. But when Foucault writes voluminous books, notice what he is doing. He takes shelter in anthropology and history to bring out his theory. He speaks in such a way that it seems he built his theory by reading these disciplines. In truth it is not so. The theory stood there long ago, born from the seed of his pure thought. Using anthropology and history he places the theory into a canonical structure. This is the socialization of theory. It is certainly needed, in order to connect with people.

Let me turn a little to Wittgenstein. We see that he wrote two books in his lifetime. His theory was not dwelt on as much as the man himself was. Had Bertrand Russell not endorsed Wittgenstein, it is doubtful how many would have known him. The reason must be understood. Wittgenstein wrote the way he thought. He did not undertake to place his thought into a canonical structure. As a result, without Russell the social acceptance of his writing might never have formed. Like Otto Weininger, he too might have been left aside.

So the extra labour one must take to place thought into a canonical structure is an unavoidable reality. Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" is one such unavoidable reality.

The question remains: is it then impossible to make philosophy by observing history and anthropology? The answer is as before: "Yes, it is possible!" Most academic philosophers are of this kind. But — as I said — such philosophies do not come from root-thought, so their dependence on space and time is great. To tell the truth, those we call present-day intellectuals, whom we see speaking on various political and social matters, are mainly philosophers of this kind. This philosophy certainly has importance.

An analogy will make it clear. Suppose a farmer sows rice seed, because at the year's end he will sell the rice to feed his child. There is no need to restate how important rice-farming is to the process of production. This rice-farming is much like the philosophy of society's ordinary intellectuals. Since society, history and anthropology hold countless elements, countless small philosophies can be made from them. But the kind of seed here is rice. Its applicability ends the very year it is sown.

But one thing must be remembered: a farmer is also a human being. At rest, sitting beneath the shade of a big tree, he wants to think about the world. He realizes that producing rice and gathering food is not the sole aim of his life. The big tree gives him that chance to think. The philosophy of pure thought is like this tree.

One thing must be made clear. Foucault is doing the philosophy of pure thought; he is tending the big tree. But he presents it to people placed inside a canonical structure. So to the farmer the tree appears in the form of a mango tree. There is an advertisement on the tree about how the mango can help the farmer's livelihood. For that lure, if nothing else, the farmer comes to the tree's shade — and that is Foucault's success.

Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is also doing pure philosophy, but his tree appears to the farmer's eyes as a banyan tree. That the banyan's fruit is not tasty is plain to the eye. So the farmer sees no possibility of livelihood in it. Only if the shade alone is desired will the farmer go near the tree.

Now the question is: what is the purpose of all these words? We have understood that there are two kinds of practice — but so what?

The reason for saying all this is to bring out a little of our behaviour as human beings. When I look toward academia, I see a great lack of understanding of these variations of practice. In academia now the breathing space for original practice is nearly at zero. Universities teach that practice must be done only on the basis of the canonical structure. This poverty of thought is mainly of the Western strain.

Even fifty years ago the condition was not this bad. Yes, what was there before, and is there still, is that the outer arrangement of logic must be set in the mould of the canonical structure — that is, research results must be presented in a canonical structure. Take physics itself. Einstein could not present his real thought-process in a seminar; he had to present the results of his research placed in a canonical structure. The same holds for Dirac, Schrödinger, Higgs — all of them. There is a certain necessity to this, if we desire collective or collaborative progress. But what was there before (and is not there now) is that the breathing space a researcher had could, if he wished, be used to do original practice and then find the leisure to present his research results in a canonical structure.

The trouble has come about through the outright denial of the process of original practice. Over time it has come to such a pass that a new researcher has no leisure at all to think originally, outside the canonical structure.

A new researcher writing papers year after year is much like rice-farming. He wants a granary full of rice, so that at the year's end, having paid the tax, he may get the chance to farm again next year. And each year the amount of the tax keeps rising. He has no time at all to nurture a big tree.

A few things we must understand:

• First, the collective progress of any discipline is not the only progress. Those who, after doing pure practice, feel no urge to bring their research into a canonical structure — new practitioners will be nourished by them. These non-canonical documents are like great fruit-bearing trees, in whose shade a person finds the inspiration to see the world from beyond worldliness.

• Second, even if we desire collective progress, a very important part of it comes from another kind of pure practitioner — those who practise outside the canonical structure but present the fruit of their practice placed within it. These works are like great fruit-bearing trees; through the world's variety of colour and flavour, they show us the infinite within the finite.

• Third, the practices obtained from within the canonical structure play a role in collective progress. This is like rice-farming. So it too is important, in the duty of keeping production going.

I think it is important to understand the categories set out above.

— February 28, 2021

As a child, reading Rabindranath Tagore's short stories, my mind was jolted more than once. What a strange realization! I used to underline the lines I loved, as if the underlining itself was my fulfilment. I didn't much care for the "point" of a story — I didn't even remember it. Nor was I gripped by wanting to know what would happen next. Yet I kept returning, because every so often Tagore, with the lens of his life-philosophy, would delicately conjure some subtle feeling from within the story itself. That was my nectar.

The writers whose themes I did love — I cannot remember their names. After Aesop, I know of no one who has done this so well. A couple of stories by very ordinary people had themes I loved — in Bukowski's words, they are the strongest of the "strange ones." But sadly, even when I liked the theme of a man-made story, it rarely left a mark.

When I read Humayun Ahmed, the main engine was curiosity — "what happens next" — together with his ingenious humour, which shook my mind again and again. There is an interesting difference between Tagore and Humayun. Humayun made us think his way. Tagore made us think many times over, but not his way — the reader's own way. This is not a question of better or worse; it is a difference of kind.

Back to the point. Why should a single line of Tagore or Humayun resonate so much? Surely you felt, "Yes! I never thought of it like this." I would say it is not that. Any writing resonates because those words were already inside me — only, until now, they had not been translated into any language. What great writers do best is give language to this untranslated feeling. Untranslated things sit scattered in the mind, in a fuzzy form. The moment I hear the writer's phrasing, a concretized form is made. There is a danger here: a person can, subconsciously, revise the fuzzy form in the light of lived experience — but the concretized form they usually leave untouched. Once it lodges in the mind, it keeps returning. So reading, too, has its hazard!

The upshot is this: a writer's realization becomes intelligible to the reader only when it already dwells in the reader. It is a strange dilemma. Unless the human makeup of reader and writer are close, one cannot communicate with the other. I do not mean that if the writer is a good person the reader must be too. Conscious values may differ; but the sense of beautiful and ugly, of black and white, of red and blue must be close. Education, culture, family, society bring us all roughly into a single queue (kaatar). So the human makeup of most of society — thief, robber, teacher, doctor, middle-class, upper-class, corrupt — is much the same. This is not a question of good or bad.

Now the real question. When someone comes from outside this queue, can we understand them by hearing or reading them? First, one thing must be clear. Whatever falls under rational reasoning is not in question here, because rational reasoning has a universal structure — what we call "logic." This part is fairly primitive, so humans are genetically able to grasp logic. (In my earlier essay "Nature and Truth" I explained why a child can learn language. Along with language, the package of understanding logic arrives free.)

To explain a little: when we weave logic in the mind, we always take shelter in a language. We weave logic with language; without language, logic has almost no reach. (This does not mean language brought only logic; it brought much else besides.) The point is, because a human knows language, they can also understand logic — without any external influence such as education, culture, social or family formation, or closeness to nature.

So two people from different queues can communicate through matters that fall under rational reasoning. "It's hot, please turn on the fan," or "Are you hungry, brother? Have some rice with me" — the structure of such ordinary communication is universal, not queue-bound. The queue enters when we exchange bhaab — feeling, sense — which lies outside rational reasoning.

For some people it goes so far that they are so immersed in the ocean of bhaab that entering rational structure disgusts them, feels filthy. We sometimes call them mad-with-feeling.

Again, "trauma" is an enormous external influence. It can carry a person into a queue where rational structure is like thorns, causing acute pain whenever they try to step into rational space. These we call mad outright, because rational communication with them is impossible; what little they manage is only for survival. (I am not saying only such people are called mad, but I won't take that up here.)

Back to my main question. Can ordinary-queue people grasp the bhaab of another queue? I think not. For instance, I cannot understand Lalon. And I am certain that those who claim to understand him do not either — unless they are themselves mystics (sadhaks). The matter is simple: the ingredients required for understanding are not present in everyone. They can be acquired only through living and through practice. The same holds for the Sufi mystics. One Sufi can exchange bhaab with another, but to say it to ordinary people would be a great error. We ordinary-queue people lack the equipment to understand that special bhaab. So, lacking the bhaab, we would force the words into rational space to understand them — and the result would be misinterpretation. This is why such knowledge is best kept secret. Call it the mystic's esoteric knowledge.

We see this in miniature too. A poet's poem is entirely bhaab. To understand a poem you must feel the poet. One who lacks the will and the empathy will not understand it. In the same way, the bhaab-connection that would form between Tagore and Einstein would take an ordinary reader great effort to follow. In the case of mystics, the ordinary person's failure to understand is mountainous.

So the question remains: can the mystics leave us nothing at all? No word of bhaab for the future reader? Yes, they can — but only through riddles. A riddle is a singular instrument of language, much like an encrypted message. The interesting thing is that a riddle cannot be solved without grasping its context. Here, unless the mystic's bhaab has formed in the reader's heart, the context cannot be caught, and the reader cannot even attempt to solve it. So the words are saved from misinterpretation. If the reader can, through practice, make the mind fit, then and only then can they solve it. Hence, saints have to be necessarily mystique. This is no idle mystification; it is a matter of necessity. The mystic can speak the words of the heart only in riddles.

So — the unattainable is not to be grasped!

(February 2, 2020)

As one is, so is one's world. There is a depth to this saying. Its relation to a philosophy of life is deep, and grasping it is necessary to understand what truth is like. When a person sees two events, they want to find a link between the one and the other. That link may be "rational," or it may be "irrational." Irrational does not necessarily mean superstition. Many events happen without logic. A boy, say, smiles at a girl; but in return the girl makes a face at him. It makes no sense. Does that mean there is no connection between the two events? Of course there is. This connection is not woven of logic, nor does it come from superstition.

Or take the burnt cow that is frightened when it sees a red, sindoor-coloured cloud. The logical weave of the event is that on some stormy night the sky had clouded over; clouds rubbed against clouds and then lightning struck; the cow's shed burned down. Now the cow is frightened whenever it sees a cloud. It is not that the cow built the link from a logical foundation. Nor can it be called superstition. The cow is perhaps joining the two events by something else entirely.

Turn to literature. When we read a novel, we enjoy it because we can make mutual connections among the events of the novel. A large part of these connections has no rational basis — yet it is not superstition either.

Anyway, the main point is that we want to find a link between two events — whether by logic, without logic, or by superstition. Since life is the sum of countless events, no overall meaning is found by describing each connection. When we say "to make sense of this world," we are really seeking a principle by which all these connections can be addressed together. This principle we naively call worldview.

An example will make it clear. Suppose someone is asked, "How does the world work?"

(1) One class of people will answer: the world runs on money. Human behaviour, social structure, the spread of religion — everything is economic at its base. At the root of civilization is money. Writing began for the sake of money. Mathematics arose from keeping accounts of money. The modern age began with industrialization, at whose root lie financial transactions. What is needed to build and run the laboratories of knowledge and science is money. And this ongoing world politics — what drives it? Western industry needs energy; and once it began buying that from the Arabs, billions of dollars flowed from West to Middle East, and the Arabs grew rich overnight. To control this one-way flow, continuous conflict became necessary. Through the killing or removal of progressive leaders and the funding of warmongers, this effort began. In consequence the Arab world had to buy billions of dollars of weapons from America. A thousand such wars, a thousand such treaties — at the root of all is money.

Money controls the smallest personal matters too. With money one can go to the gym and gain good health. With good nutrition one can grow tall and broad — as Korea's average height changed markedly with its economic growth. The indispensability of the spa, of yoga, of the vegan diet for preserving and enhancing beauty — money ensures all this. In old age, the only ones to rely on for care are one's children. So, to keep this bond alive until death, the tie of parent-child must be made permanent, which becomes possible through the institution called "marriage." Where society takes on this responsibility, marriage is no longer needed — as is already happening in various countries. A person's social dignity is money-centred. Even love is sweetened through money. With money one can buy a good camera and take lovely pictures; give magical surprises on a birthday or on Valentine's Day; when there is a quarrel, spend money to go to beautiful places and buy nice hotel packages to soothe the heart. And even the great and noble works become possible only when there is money. In Ayn Rand's words, "the best way to help the poor is not to be one of them!" So she spoke for the system that is founded upon a financially advanced, educated populace — which is exactly the moderate capitalist system. Where one has no chance to advance beyond another, there is no competition, and hence no incentive to work.

Now someone might say that dependence on money is a man-made condition, so etymologically all the above reasoning is baseless. But a practical person first places himself in the present condition, not in some abstract hypothetical space. In Heideggerian language, "we are thrown into the world, and that is the first reality." Since I was not present at the birth of money, it is meaningless to stand at that origin and look at society. Placing myself in the present, I see that money exists and that money is the driving force of the whole world. So the "misery of human being" must be addressed with money (as in social business); human distress must be removed with this very money. Many great saints, sages and philosophers have thought about, or prescribed remedies for, human misery. Well — what was their social position? Gautama Buddha was a prince. Had he not been a prince, it is doubtful he would have realized that the world is full of sorrow. The philosopher of philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was the son of the richest man in Vienna; so he could scorn wealth and riches. The same holds for Bertrand Russell, Confucius, Karl Marx. In the feudal age, when the gap between rich and poor was beyond touch, it was at the hands of landlords' children that the world's most humanist literature, poetry and stories grew. To do philosophy, literature, art, one needs boundless time, needs idleness, needs the luxury of thought — which comes only by the force of money. The world works through the dynamics of money.

(2) Another class of people will say the world runs by the force of power. The very beginning was "survival of the fittest." Today's human strides across the whole earth, and at the root of that is organization. And being able to organize others to accomplish one's own aim — that is power. Whether there is money or not makes no difference. Look at history and it becomes clear. There are countless examples of great rulers who, sent into exile, were able to recover their position. Money will come and go, but power is not for everyone. Today Singapore, the Arab states, have much money — but are they running the world? The world is run by America, Russia, China, Israel. These are the states strongest in military and technology, which serves as the source of power. Of all the world's great leaders, how many were thirsty for money? How did Gandhi live? How did Bhashani live? Yet they were able to turn the course of a whole nation. So many saints and sages have come into the world; none lived a life of luxury, yet generation after generation has been initiated, entranced by their words. When we remember Gautama Buddha, we do not trouble ourselves over whether he was king or beggar. We trouble ourselves over his powerful words.

What lies at the root of patriarchy? It is not that women are genetically inferior. Think a little and one sees it exactly boils down to the power of tradition. Marriage is a part of this tradition. So to think of marriage as men's empowerment, and of not-marrying as women's empowerment, is not entirely without reason.

With power, falsehood can be made truth and truth made falsehood. History is written by the winners! So in ancient literature one finds the ballads of Roman valour, their humanity, their civilization, while the Germans are shown as a barbarous people. The reason is that the Romans were victorious and the Germans defeated. Religion did not bring money — it brought power, by whose force great empires have fallen, changed, expanded. This is noticeable in small matters too. With power one can ride a government helicopter for free to attend a wedding, while without power one may sit stuck in traffic for hours despite owning a BMW. And since the study and processing of power is called politics, politics is everything! The world works through power.

(3) For one class of people, the world runs on its own. It is not that some people control it. At the root of all that happens is fate. That I have been born a human today is a fate. Some are born with a golden spoon in the mouth, some in a ruined hut. Neither the economic order nor the order of power was made by any grand plan; they happened by coincidence. When the full moon is a scorched piece of bread, nation and race, black and white, Shia and Sunni — none of it works. Just then the truth is revealed like sunlight: that in truth nothing is in a human's hands. So worldly doctrines are baseless. Steeped in the play of worldly colour one can parrot great doctrines, logic, civilization or barbarism — but with the slightest change, everything shatters into dust. Then theft, robbery, plunder, rape all become permissible. Therefore a human has no fitness at all to decide right and wrong. The greatest truth is: I exist. I want to live. Therefore I want justice. But I will not accept the judgment of any scoundrel. Everyone is a schemer, ugly-faced within. I want the fruit of deeds — Karma! I want punishment for birth, perpetual torment! I want an unseen judgment, divine justice! Otherwise nothing adds up! So I see two possible answers.

One — no one runs the world; in which case nothing has any value. There is no logic to any plan. Who should control how much of the world, and how, is a preposterous question. The big ideas were formed coincidentally from the coming-together of small selfish ideas. Country, society, the justice system were not made from any vast, sweeping plan; they were made from the coincidences of history. So thinking about country and society is also preposterous.

Two — fate is fixed, and the world runs at the fingertip of the fate-decider. In that case all logic, all cause and effect, are pretexts. The lofty imagination of making progress is therefore irrelevant. Whoever is meant to see, will see. My effort will succeed at the decider's command, and fail in the same way. Into the pot go all your plans and programmes.

In any case, the world is all about fate, whether spontaneous or controlled.

(4) One class will say the world does not run at all. That portion of eternity in which the existence of humans on earth is possible is like a single moment. What we are calling Balance is, in the eye of eternity, a transient state. The tiny span of existence in the history of the animal kingdom may seem a steady state, but in truth this is an illusion. And within this illusion are yet more illusions. A human assumes the earth persists within a delicate balance. It is not so at all. In Žižekian language, "mother earth is a cruel bitch!" The greatest proof of this is the abundance of oil inside the earth. Through how much catastrophe must the earth have passed for that much oil to lie in its mines! Today we speak big words about climate change, as if we could do something about it if we wished! In truth nothing will come of it. Animals come, animals go extinct. Even the utterly harmless, more-Buddhist-than-Buddha vegetarian dinosaurs were wiped out. Humans will be too. Some other animal will take their place. Perhaps they will be more intelligent than humans. And they too will be wiped out. Even this earth will be wiped out when the sun's fuel runs low. And there are the cosmic meteors besides.

Life has no purpose; not even on the basis of its brief persistence can an apparent purpose be framed. There is neither fate nor coincidence in the world. What happens is merely the result of a huge probability equation. We ourselves are part of this equation. The equation has brought us, the equation will erase us. What is true is Chaos. We came from Chaos, our life will pass through a Chaos, and then chaotically be wiped away.

All this crime, wrongdoing, war, love, peace is one phase of this uncontrolled disorder. By some random means we have been able to become spectators of this Chaos. So what one ought to do is to mock the seriousness of human beings. To make fun of the mask of order that society shows. In Camus's words, to present oneself so that one's very existence appears to society as a revolt. To fulfil one's desires as much as one can, and to make merry at the establishment's expense. And, if possible, to enjoy fame as a bonus.

So, the world does not work, it is just a chaos.

(5) One class will say: however the world may have run until now, ahead it will run by science. The need for money, the need for power, even the need for fate will run out as science advances further. Passing through error upon error, humans have reached the present state. What is civilization, after all, but the growth of knowledge and its application? The stream of knowledge was not always so from the start; how to ask questions we have learned slowly. Fumbling this way and that, we have moved little by little toward asking the right question, and have come to know how to seek the answer. That the right language of knowledge is science — this we have understood only a few hundred years ago, and it will very soon become universal. Before this, the discipline that discussed the deep questions was philosophy. Philosophy can go deep, true, but it does so on a foundation of unreal imagination. For thinking by the right process one needs Facts and Logic; and to confirm the conclusion reached, Experimental Verification. Whatever lies outside this process is unnecessary. Science will one day, through neural mapping, be able to explain the minutest feelings of humans, even their existence. It will prove for certain that a human is nothing but a complex machine. Virtual Reality will reach such a stage that humans will begin to live there and make the world as they wish. The body will not be needed. The brain preserved in a jar, they will dwell forever in happiness and peace in some world like the Matrix. If one wishes strongly enough, even a holy godman can be conjured up in that world. One can fall in love, again and again, with the same person or with different ones. The responsibility of controlling this whole machinery will be given to some Artificially Intelligent system. In time the entire content of the brain can be brought out of the biological brain and stored inside a server. Coming out of the skull, humans will then cross the limitation of the skull. They will cross the wall of existence of new desires and feelings. Later still, the electronic version of all humans can, by some process, be brought together to create a new harmony. The age of Super Intelligence will begin. To maintain such a system one need not remain on earth; the system could be inside some spaceship out in the void. And under proper care it could even be immortal. Since the idea of time is under control and the maintenance process is active, it makes no difference whether the spaceship moves fast or slow. From planet to planet the system will roam, gathering information, and the Super Intelligence will dissect it. Unless, of course, the phase of the universe changes — though perhaps the Super Intelligence will find a way to keep even itself aloof from that.

So, the world might have worked through some primitive means, but it will eventually work through science for sure!

(6) One class will perhaps say the world runs because there is love. Had there been no love, we would long ago have been wiped out! The human begins from love — whether biological or otherwise. This bond of love ensures mutual security. At the root of human belief is love. Standing on that belief, humans organize themselves and establish dominion over the animal kingdom. No one will deny literature's contribution to the growth of the inner world; and the life-force of literature is passion, which comes from love. The same is true for science. Science may explain the properties of a thing, but it cannot explain the thing's purpose. Science may perhaps take us into a fully virtual world, but it will not be able to explain the hopes and longings, the art, the love of the humans dwelling there. Many perhaps want to set up marriage as a necessary tool of the economic or the power order. But what marriage has contributed to our inner world — can that be explained by anything but love? The degree of a husband and wife's mutual feeling, or the emotion of the parent-child bond, the pull of the umbilical cord — only love can fittingly address these. Other matters become secondary then. It was not out of the mere thirst for revenge that the people of Bengal threw themselves into the great Liberation War; without love for one's own people it would not have been possible. Today, amid so much strife, so much bloodshed and dispute in the world, we can still laugh, still write poetry, and above all cultivate the flowering of human variety — though, seeing and enduring all this sorrow and suffering, there was no way left but to go mad. And yet the human manages, because after enduring all this, when they go home, there is a mother to love them, a wife, a child, a friend. It is by the force of love that they flower.

The world works through human activity and human being flourishes through love.

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In these examples we see that each class of thought has its own logical motion. Each one of them seems consistent. The question is: is the truth (in the sense of haqiqat) the sum of all these? I think not. Because if we take any one of them as true, the rest are dismissed. And if we make a blend by taking a part of one and a part of another, the consistency, the flow of logic, does not hold. Many people try to present just such a blend, but because of the inconsistency such words may find a place in a motivational speech, yet in truth they are nothing but garbage. So the first thing to realize is that consistency of logic is not enough to determine truth. Many of us step into this trap. Before saying some statement, call it X, if instead of saying it directly I can somehow show that "V" led to "W" and "W" led to "X," then most people accept it. As if drawing the conclusion in three or four steps makes the statement correct! It is not so at all. (This kind of step-heavy reasoning I call "flimsy logic.")

Then what is real haqiqat? The only conclusion I can arrive at is that truth is not something inorganic; truth is an Organic Entity. As we interact with truth, truth also interacts with us. It is rather like a game. We may name it "maya khela" — the play of illusion. This play of illusion is such that the way I want to see the world, the world shows up before me in that way. My past and future too become accordingly. A person's social position often determines from which view they will see the world. A marginal person will most likely see the world from the standpoint of fate; a businessman, most likely, from the standpoint of money; and a politician, perhaps, from the standpoint of power. The Aziz-Super-Market-type "keep-my-hands-clean" intellectuals will perhaps see the world as Chaos. And a new petty-scientism-ist will perhaps see the world only through science.

The "play of illusion," with time, hardens these viewpoints further. A person begins to explain all the gains and failures of their life in one and the same manner. In this way they become a slave of maya. This state we naively call "dogma." But the idea of the "bondage of maya" is something larger than that. As long as a person lives, they give great importance to their social position. So liberation from the bondage of maya is not possible within one's lifetime. Perhaps that is why Lalon said that one must die before dying. Only in this way is it possible, while remaining on earth, to understand the play of maya.

The world is maya. Maya is not false; maya is worldly truth.

— January 30, 2020