Axis of Evil .... Part 1

Disclaimer:
1. The decision to read this article is fraught with dangerous and unimaginable consequences of it forcing you to think deeper (on issues that are practically unimportant, unimportantly fundamental and fundamentally inconclusive to lead a normal life) and hence people who are not adventurous and not accustomed to such events are advised not to proceed further. The author does not take any direct or indirect responsibility for the consequences barring to agree to discuss these things over a drink :)
2. Life is as simple as you want it to be. (Ref. Rule 1: Ten Commandments of Rags Gopalan http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com/2008/10/golden-rules.html) . If you are going to proceed after this, you may be complicating it more than required.
3. Please do not proceed to the article without understanding the disclaimer 1 & 2.

Axis of Evil: This popular term used by Dubya in 2002, triggered many reactions around the world, some public and others did not ... My reaction is simple...Why should axis is having only three entities always? Iran, Iraq and N.Korea now but Germany, Italy and Japan in WW II. I also read somewhere that Wipro, Infosys, TCS is the Indian software axis of evil killing upcoming software companies... while i don't subscribe to that view but again its just 3 here too... I think there is a primordial unwritten rule that "Two is company, three is axis".

But little did many of us (including Bush) realize that "good" and "evil" are not available with "form and name", but these represent our mental states and hence contextual, impermanent not incorrigible and essentially a state of mind.

Adhi Shankara states
"Sarva Praaneeshu Prathi deham, Devasura sangramo anadhi kala pravarthithaha" meaning
"The fight between Good and Evil has been happening within every person at all times". The sensory organs that divert our attention to external world and make us commit sins like lust, theft, jealousy etc are the evils and the force that focuses these sensory organs and our mind internally to realize what we are, and in the process makes us bind with Love, charity, mercy etc are the good.

A sudden thought arose and i was asking what would be the axis of evil within ourselves? Being a rebel without a cause i decided on the following:

• It would certainly have more than 3 names.
• My axis of evil is not certainly going to be a straight line as it is made out to be always. Then what can be the shape of the axis? As you know, a straight line extended infinitely is a curve and this curve as it progresses should meet itself, which means it could be a circle or ellipsoid. Then to be geometrically right the axis of evil has to be Circle of evil. But lets continue to call it axis of evil only for the time being.
  

Where does this axis of Evil begin? Let's analyse that:

• Good and Evil are essentially the result of widely accepted interpretations of what is right and wrong. Where does this sense of right and wrong lie?
• What is right and wrong are essentially value systems which are interpreted by the mind. (~ Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so. ~ William Shakespeare)
• But the roots of our mind are in the society for everything we do are based on the society we have grown up. The way we dress, we eat, we read, we work the reason for setting into marriage as an institution blah blah. As Einstein famously noted, common sense is a set of prejudices which we accumulate before the age of 18.
• These prejudices are unfortunately not stacked and arranged as black and white for easy interpretation but just like a rainbow not limited to 7 colors, but as a continuum of multiple shades of grey between white and black.
• This rainbow is also called as the "Individual conscience" which is the aggregation & accumulation of this value system over a period of time.
  

So the starting point of this axis of Evil is essentially the "Individual Conscience" which is ever evolving and is mostly based on the society we live. So we have the starting point as a "ever floating" point.

Let's analyse one more aspect of this starting point:

This "individual conscience" has a value system which is interpreted by the mind, but the mind is evolving from the society. No one would disagree that we have a society which is suffering from falling moral standards. Hence this floating point has a consistently falling altitude based on the falling moral standards of the society and hence the mind is preparing to accept lesser standards than it currently holds.

So based on the above, the starting point is actually not a Point, but a point which is circularly moving down which is essentially a SPIRAL moving downwards. Hence this is a dynamic entity and where does the seat of conscience lie?

Modern scientists and doctors are quick but certainly wrong in pointing out that its the brain. Scriptures from Hinduism and Buddhism indicate that its the heart but not the one that pumps but hridya the seat of feeling. In my opinion this should not be confined just to one place in a body but through the entire causal and ethereal body which is subtle and limitless.

Wow!, if you are fine so far, we have just understood the starting point.

(To be continued in the next article...)

Happy reading!