-- *Mar**Experiencing Understanding* *Mankind always lived in modern times. Whether it was 10000 BC, or 2025 AD, the living population felt/feels that its era is the latest and improved over what existed prior to its time. Before I go to the era of faith and the Holistic approach let me just mention our present situation. If the computers watching over the countries perceived as threats, in the case of the super powers, commit a mistake and give the fatal wrong signal there will be the nuclear attacks and the biosphere will be gone. The world today is on the brink. Actually the computers did commit mistakes, but it was the timely dereliction of duty on the part of the officers at the spot who did not do the needed DUTY, that we are still living. Adding to the problem our industries spew poisons, cut away forests, and pollute water and air, making it very difficult to keep sanity. In this patent crisis considered latent, we have the worst people capturing political power. This is the present modern time, the flower of the Cartesian or the analytical approach, a world galloping into complete mechanization. The machines have taken over the power of ultimate decisions.Accostommed to the disuse of own organs, because the machines are doing that work, we feel that we are individuals basking in liberty.*
*What all life is, is the effort to perceive and understand. You may experience understanding by actually using all your organs and by actually living symbiotically (mutually beneficially) with nature, or you may employ machines and take their dictation. Today we are living under the latter. We are at the brink of the abyss; deceiving ourselves that abyss does not exist. The nuclear first strike policy of the super powers involves the first strike that does not allow the retaliatory counter strike. As it is we are supposed to be protected by the MAD (mutually assured deterrence), situation, which the strategists of the super powers are trying to undo. The very understanding and perceiving process is mortgaged to this abyss directed mind.* *This ‘non-consciousness’, is today’s scientific mind. Now let us examine the era of consciousness or the era of faith. That was the era, when people could not understand the situation where the news papers report that a Higgs boson is found by the machines and so all people achieved progress, because the elegant mathematical equation has been arrived at. In lush nature consisting of flora and fauna in full bloom, originally all organisms of the biosphere, smelt, sensed, understood, interacted, perceived and harmonized in rapture. The rapture created dances, songs all types of arts. The musings were musical. Theism flowed naturally. Theism was the basis of learning. That was the era where the person actually experienced pure consciousness wherein his individuality fused with the cosmos.* * His understanding was based on the cosmic rhythm as the connecting concept. He accepted nature as the Divine and had to show the ultimate reverence and respect. Nature was not a resource for use or abuse. When you see a tree being cut, or whole mountains and forests exploded, note that it is actually a part of your body that is getting destroyed. I can go on giving quotations of great sages by the hundred. Their message is simple—you are the Cosmos. And development means the hara-kiri of the self. When you see every morning huge tree trunks, by the hundred in Lorries, each trunk, a big tree of hundred or more years, all taken to the timber depots, think what is happening. A big tree maintains not only the visible birds and animals but also thousands of different organisms...insects, worms, bacteria all participating in the living earth. Understanding once was participation with them in the gigantic symbiosis. AND IT IS BASIC STATION OF THE PHOTO SYNTHESIS, WHICH CHANGES THE SUN’S ENERGY INTO YOUR FOOD.* *If nature is murdered continuously and if employment is found only in activities that destroy nature, the very faculty of learning by feeling dies.* *YM Sarma* *Chat gpt* Below is a *polished, expanded, presentation-style version* of your essay. I have preserved your philosophical intent, emotional force, and central themes, while greatly improving structure, clarity, flow, and coherence. The tone is elevated and suitable for a talk, essay, or preface. If you want a shorter, more academic, or more poetic version, I can create one as well. ------------------------------ *Experiencing Understanding: A Reflection on Consciousness, Nature, and the Modern Mind* *Expanded and Revised from the original essay by YM Sarma* ------------------------------ *Introduction: The Illusion of Modernity* Every generation believes it lives in the most advanced era ever known. Whether in 10,000 BC or the year 2025, people feel their time is the pinnacle of progress. Yet this faith in perpetual advancement conceals a disturbing truth: we have constructed a world so dependent on machines that a single technological error could erase the biosphere. Today, automated systems monitor global threats and can trigger immense destruction. History already records moments when computers misread data and signaled imminent nuclear strikes—moments narrowly averted only because human officers refused to obey the machine. It is no exaggeration to say we owe our survival to acts of “dereliction of duty” that were, in fact, acts of human wisdom. At the same time, our industries poison the air, erode forests, and pollute water systems, pushing both nature and psyche toward breakdown. Amid this latent but worsening crisis, political power often falls into the hands of those least equipped to address it. This is the flower of the Cartesian age: a world running on analytical abstraction, marching toward complete mechanization. We sit on the edge of an abyss. And yet, we persist in denying the abyss exists. ------------------------------ *The Modern Condition: Disuse of Our Own Organs* Machines now perform the tasks that once depended on human perception. As our sensory organs lie neglected, so too does our capacity for direct understanding. We outsource thinking to algorithms, judgement to automated systems, and attention to screens. We believe ourselves liberated individuals, yet we live under the dictation of devices. Our deepest existential decisions—war, governance, even the rhythms of daily life—are increasingly shaped by technological systems whose operations we neither see nor fully comprehend. The modern mind, dazzled by instrumentation, often confuses machine output with truth. This narrowing of consciousness produces what may be called a “non-consciousness”—a mode of existence in which the world is interpreted solely through data, not experience. ------------------------------ *An Older Mode of Being: The Era of Experiential Consciousness* There was a time when people lived differently—not because they lacked machines, but because they possessed a different quality of attention. This was the era of experiential understanding, when the world was not read about but directly encountered through the senses. Surrounded by flourishing forests, clear waters, and abundant life, ancient humans smelled, touched, listened, and observed with an intensity we rarely know today. They lived in symbiosis with the world around them, participating in a vast, interconnected web of life. >From this immersion arose music, dance, art, ritual, and the earliest forms of spirituality. Theism was not an abstract doctrine; it was an immediate awareness of being embedded in a living cosmos. Individuals perceived themselves not as isolated entities but as expressions of a larger rhythm—what might be called the cosmic pulse. Learning flowed from this relationship. Nature was not a “resource” to be exploited but a sacred presence deserving reverence. To injure nature was to injure oneself. ------------------------------ *Understanding as Participation* What is understanding? It is not merely the acquisition of facts. It is the ability to participate in reality through the full engagement of one’s faculties. In the older mode of being: - the eyes saw truly, - the ears listened deeply, - the skin felt subtle changes, - the breath carried information, - and intuition wove these perceptions into wisdom. This holistic intelligence was relational. It recognized that a tree is more than timber; it is a community of organisms, a generator of oxygen, a stabilizer of soil, a participant in the great photosynthetic miracle that turns sunlight into food—your food. When a forest is blasted away or a mountain is cut open, something in us is severed as well. Watch trucks carrying away hundred-year-old tree trunks each morning. Behind every trunk is an entire ecosystem—birds, insects, fungi, bacteria—displaced or destroyed. And behind that, a piece of our inner life is diminished. To harm the living earth is to commit a slow form of self-destruction. ------------------------------ *The Technological Mind and the Abyss* Yet the modern world encourages a different posture. It teaches that progress depends on conquering nature, accelerating consumption, and trusting machines more than human senses. Even the idea of security has become perverse: we rely on mutually assured destruction—MAD—to prevent catastrophe, and strategists work tirelessly to undo even that fragile deterrence. When understanding is filtered through systems built for efficiency rather than empathy, consciousness narrows. We begin to see the world not as a living companion but as an object to be quantified and mastered. In such a mindset, the destruction of forests becomes “employment,” and the degradation of ecosystems becomes “development.” But development that murders nature is nothing but the hara-kiri of the self. ------------------------------ *The Crisis of Learning* If meaningful work is found only in activities that erode nature, then the very faculty of experiential learning begins to die. Children grow without knowing the textures of soil or the silence of forests. Adults navigate life mediated by screens, not senses. The body—once the primary instrument of wisdom—becomes an unused archive. A society that cannot feel cannot learn. A society that cannot learn cannot survive. ------------------------------ *Conclusion: Returning to Conscious Participation* We stand today at a crossroads between two modes of being: 1. *The mechanical path*, which offers speed, convenience, and the illusion of control while pulling us toward ecological collapse and sensory impoverishment. 2. *The conscious path*, which invites us back into relationship with the living world, where understanding arises from participation, reverence, and sensory engagement. To choose the second path is not to reject technology but to reclaim our humanity. It is to remember that we are the cosmos made conscious, and that the earth is not a warehouse of materials but a vast, breathing community of which we are a part. The task before us is simple yet profound: *to experience understanding again—through presence, through perception, and through harmony with the living world.* ------------------------------ If you’d like, I can also: - format this as a *speech* for public presentation, - turn it into a *shorter essay*, - give it a more *poetic*, *academic*, or *philosophical* tone, - or adapt it into a *chapter for a book*. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCKrWmwpjni8ED-QbcXt80ZPi3c274jpDaoCEvxOgcJE3g%40mail.gmail.com.
