A sketch of Spinoza, the secular saint from “The courtier and the heretic” by Matthew Stewart

I have a fascination for secular saints, spiritual teachers who stand outside the religious boundaries and practice what they preach. Seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza is one of them. I got a chance to read Matthew Stewart’s book, “The courtier and the heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the fate of God in the modern world”. As the name suggests the book is as much about Leibniz, the German polymath as it is about Spinoza and their interaction. However, in this article, I would like to restrict myself to the brief sketch of life, times and work of Spinoza that I could create from this book.

Life: Born in a Jewish family emigrated from Portugal, Spinoza lived in the Netherlands from 1632 to 1677. He lived a life of double exile – his family was exiled from their native country and then he was excommunicated from the Jewish community because of his heretical views when he was twenty-three. After the death of his father and elder brothers, Spinoza and his younger brother managed the trading business for a few years before getting excommunicated.

During the day, Spinoza ground lenses for microscopes and telescopes. And at night, he polished his system of metaphysics. He lived a peaceful and solitary life of contemplation. However, he always had a few friends with whom he discussed his views and corresponded extensively with philosophers, scientists, and theologians across Europe. When he died, the inventory he left behind included two pairs of pants, seven shirts, and five handkerchiefs. His only luxury was a large bed with red curtains which he had inherited from parents.

Times: Spinoza grew up in Amsterdam during the Dutch golden age – times when Amsterdam was the center of world trade, tolerant of the incoming settlers and visiting traders, and most important it was a place where freedom of its citizens was valued. It was home to philosophers (Descartes), scientists (Huygens, Leeuwenhoek), painters, merchants and more. It was also a time when a new scientific order was beginning to rise on the backdrop of an established theocratic order. 

Work: Key philosophical contributions of Spinoza are presented in two books: Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and Ethics (published posthumously in 1677). Here are a few sentences from the “The courtier and the heretic” that I found useful in understanding Spinoza’s ideas:

• God (or Nature or Substance) is the essence of the world (or universe). p. 158.
• This one Substance has infinite attributes. p. 159.
• Everything in this world is merely a “mode” of an attribute of this Substance. All creatures are nothing but modes. p. 160.
• Everything that happens, happens necessarily. p. 160.
• Things could not have been produced by God in any manner or any order different from that which exists. p. 160.
• Two of the infinite attributes of Substance are Thought and Extension. Under Thought, the Substance manifests as minds, ideas, and decisions. Under Extension, the Substance manifests as physical bodies. p. 168.
• Human beings have no free will in an absolute sense. Our experience of freedom consists only in this: that we are conscious of our desires but ignorant of the causes that determine them. p. 171.
• Happiness or freedom comes only from the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature (or God). p. 57.
• Freedom follows when we “realize ourselves” as it were. p. 174.

In short, I found the book quite helpful in understanding the life, times and philosophy of Spinoza. As a freelancer, a spiritual teacher, someone who enjoys solitude, frugal living and feels no sense of belonging to any religion, it isn’t surprising that I resonate with Spinoza.

3 types of reflections and 3 leading questions

“Hi, How are you?” This common greeting is potentially an invitation to reflect. However, we mostly respond with a mechanical “I am fine, thank you” and move on. What would it mean to actually reflect? This is what we explore in this article. Let’s look at 3 leading questions that result in 3 types of reflections.

How did it go? This is perhaps the most common type of reflection. It is like rewind and replay of a chain of events with a critical lens. The time span could be past few days, weeks, months or years of our life.  Or it could be a start to the end of a project we just completed. The primary objective of this reflection is to learn from the past and incorporate the learning in future actions. Three common sub-questions during this reflection are: What went well? What went wrong? And how do we do it better? In my case, I write a note after every workshop where these points are captured.

What next? When we ask, “How to do it better?” we assume, we will continue to do the same or similar thing in future, hopefully, more effectively. “What next?” question suggests that you don’t have to do the same thing as you did in the past. If you have been working in a particular area, “What next?” may prompt you to consider doing something else. In contrast, for someone who is not working, “What next?” may prompt him to consider working. It may involve looking within and asking, “What do I really enjoy?” and then checking how more of it can be done. It may also come from feedback from the environment where a good opportunity is spotted. In my case, I tend to do this reflection every few months. Sometimes there is a course-correction, sometimes not.

What’s going on here? The previous two types of reflections involve looking at the past and into the future. The third type of reflection involves paying attention to what’s going on in the present moment. In that sense, it is a run-time reflection. Present moment may be pleasurable or painful or perhaps neither. The idea is to watch whatever sensation arises and passes. Perhaps there is a story running in the head of how I or someone else did something and that caused something else etc. The reflection involves watching the train of thought. If there is alertness one may even witness hurts and pride getting registered in memory. For me, this is going on almost all the time. It is intensified when the situation is challenging.

For people who are busy in their job, it is considered a luxury to do even the first type (How did it go?) of reflection. However, the most powerful reflection is the third type of reflection (What’s going on here?) The first and second type reflection may happen when you are unwinding say over a weekend or while on a vacation. In contrast, the third type of reflection may catch the unnecessary winding itself, thus eliminating the need for unwinding.

Why did Prof. George Sudarshan say, “I am quite good at deceiving myself”?

Prof. George Sudarshan was an eminent scientist known for his contributions in theoretical physics. He passed away a few months ago. He was 86. Sudarshan attended a seminar of scientists at Brockwood Park Educational Centre in Southern English countryside between October 14 and 19, 1974. Brockwood Park was founded by the spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti who was also a participant in this seminar. During this seminar, Sudarshan said, “Like everybody else, I am quite good at deceiving myself.” Why would an eminent scientist say such a thing? What did he actually mean? Does it mean all of us are also deceiving ourselves?  Or was Sudarshan wrong in generalizing it to everybody? These are the questions I am hoping to explore in this article.

Let’s begin by understanding the context in which Sudarshan made the statement. The week-long seminar was facilitated by Krishnamurti’s friend David Bohm. The theme of the seminar was the question, “What is the role of knowledge in the transformation of man and society?” The participating scientists were specialists in various areas such as physics, biology, psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy etc¹. The audio recording of the seminar is available on YouTube in the form of 12 videos. The format of the seminar included each scientist giving a short talk on the theme and it was followed by a discussion.

Sudarshan’s talk and subsequent discussion are captured in session 5. It contains the following dialogue²: Sudarshan: There are times when there are tensions. And I say, “I don’t want to read Dr. Shainberg’s paper because he was not nice to me. And I am not really interested in him and I am reading his paper. But I can’t read his paper without thinking of the person. And I say, I have better ideas than he has, so why should I read his paper?” To which JK commented, “To sustain (the state free of anxiety and tension), I am just asking, you have to have a great deal of self-knowledge, a great deal of understanding of your own nature, your tricks, your fancies, your deceptions and so on?” Sudarshan responded, “I wouldn’t want to put it that way because I don’t have that much knowledge about my ability to deceive myself. Like everybody else, I am quite good at deceiving myself.”

To illustrate further what he means Sudarshan gives following example³.  He says, "A few days ago in an American supermarket, I saw a book about God by von Daniken. The book says that the transport of people from other planets and other civilizations is now not only possible but feasible. And it says that physicists are talking about the possibility of propagation faster than the speed of light. I don’t think Daniken is a particularly good critique of physics. But I found that a person who is referred to there as having initiated this hypothesis (of transport of people) was a man who simply plagiarized my work six years after it was published in an American journal. Now, I don’t really expect that somebody is going to disapprove of me if this (reference to my name) is not there. But it took all the pleasure out of me. I had spent $1.25 to buy this book. And I didn’t read the book further. I hope to read it when I have more strength. May be after this conference."

Now, Sudarshan would have come up with a good excuse to not read the book further. Perhaps he would have said, “Oh, this is not a good book, anyway.” But he is indirectly admitting that the real reason for abandoning the book is not because of the content of the book but because it referred to an idea he published first and it didn’t give him any credit. And this is self-deception.

Self-deception typically involves two things. First, it involves feeling a pain in some form – we may feel anxious, sad, stressed, irritated, angry, guilty etc.  And two, it involves misattributing the pain to some entity – a person or an object or a situation. In this case, Sudarshan was pained because the book he was reading didn’t give him credit he felt he deserved. And then perhaps he attributed the pain to the quality of the book and made a decision of not reading it further.

Both Krishnamurti and Sudarshan are suggesting that this self-deception is going on with all of us. And it is happening in a subtle way and fooling us. Sudarshan seems to have done a good job in observing the process of self-deception post-facto. That doesn’t seem to prevent self-deception from happening again. What JK is suggesting is that there is a need for an alertness to catch oneself red-handed while deceiving oneself.

Is it possible to catch oneself red-handed during self-deception? How would you know unless you experiment?  Next time, when you are upset and holding someone responsible, ask yourself, “Could I be deceiving myself?”

Notes:

1.      JK’s personal assistant Mary Zimbalist gives an account of this seminar in her memoirs here. http://inthepresenceofk.org/issues/issue-33/

2.      Sudarshan’s comment related to Dr. Shainberg is at: Audio | J. Krishnamurti & Scientists – Brockwood 1974, Seminars – 5: Transformation, feeling responsible, being attached at 18:50.

3.      Sudarshan’s example related to the book he purchased in a supermarket is at: Audio | J. Krishnamurti & Scientists – Brockwood 1974, Seminars – 5: Transformation, feeling responsible, being attached at 42:37.

4.      Source of Sudarshan’s image: By Tabish q at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47701717

Revisiting an obsession checklist after a decade

By August 2008 (a decade ago), my independent consulting practice was less than two years old. And the economic downturn was in the air. Perhaps the worry related to questions like, “What would happen to my business? Will I have to shut the shop?” was visible on my face. It was pointed out by my wife and friends. This is when I reflected upon the signals that might indicate that my passion has turned into an obsession. Obsession and anxiety are two sides of the same coin. Hence, I thought of making a checklist that might help me observe my own anxiety. I wrote the article “Thin line between passion and obsession” (Aug 24, 2008) in which I published an obsession checklist. I thought a decade is a good time to revisit the checklist and look at its usefulness.

If I answer the checklist today, what do I see?

1.  Did I jog in the last week? (Yes, this morning)

2.  Did I go for a walk / watch movie / play / concert with my wife? (Yes, went for a walk with her last evening, watched a play – “Photograph 51” with her a couple of weeks ago)

3.  Did I listen to Hindustani classical music in the past 2 weeks? (Yes, listened to my flute teacher play raga Durga last Saturday after my class).

4.  Did I practice flute in the last 2 weeks? (Yes, today and went for a flute class last Saturday)

5.  Did I go cycling with my son in the last 2-3 weeks? (Yes, our son doesn’t live with us anymore. But I went cycling last week alone. We visited our son in Pune last week and went for a walk with him on lush green Panchwati hills).

6.  Did I get out of the city in the last 2-3 months? (Yes, returned from a visit to Mumbai-Pune a few days back and visited Coimbatore 2 weeks ago).

7. Did I read any fiction, especially a Marathi book in the past 2-3 months? (Yes, read the play Atmakatha (Autobiography) by Mahesh Elkunchwar a few days ago).

So, looks like I am doing ok as far as the checklist is concerned. Question is: is the checklist still relevant today?

To answer this question, let’s first ask, “What does this checklist represent?” If I understand correctly, this checklist represents little joys as I saw them a decade ago. It so happens that all these activities continue to give me joy even today. But the list of little joys has grown significantly in the last decade. What does it contain now?

Well, a number of small things seem to give joy – cutting vegetables, making tea, watering plants, making home compost, juggling, playing cricket in the corridor with a 5-year-old neighbor etc. But perhaps the most significant addition to the list is – doing nothing. I could be sitting in my house or in a bus or at an airport or in a reception area and just watching the movements – sounds, thoughts, people, breath etc. and just enjoy being there.

What about the original anxiety of not getting any customer and not making any money? Well, in the last twelve years, there were some years in which I made less money. And? Nothing happened. In fact, I don’t remember anything special of those years. I am sure, all the basic needs – food, shelter, clothing even travel weren’t affected. And that’s where the main point may be. That is, over the years, my needs have shrunk significantly. There is no goal to be achieved. Journey seems to be primary and destination secondary.

In short, the obsession checklist isn’t obsolete. However, there is no dearth of small joys every day.

Is “design thinking” old wine in a new bottle?

I co-facilitated a 2-day design thinking workshop at IIM Bangalore a week ago. One of the questions that came up from a participant during the session was – “Is design thinking old wine in new bottle?” My short answer is “May be”. This blog is an attempt to elaborate on the short answer.

To check whether design thinking is something that you already know, I suggest looking at three dimensions: empathy, experimentation and experience. Let’s look at them one by one.

Empathy: “We have been in services business for decades. Empathy is ingrained in us.” This was a remark from a senior manager at the opening module of a DT workshop in an IT services firm. Later when the participants went through an empathy exercise involving interviews with new joinees the team discovered that the new joinees had to submit their personal documents three times during the joining process. Moreover, during the induction program they would get a lecture on the core themes of the organization, one of which was ‘Connected world’. New joinees were smart enough to see the irony of the situation. The senior managers who were open enough realized that empathy wasn’t as ingrained in them as they thought earlier. Empathy is a dimension with endless depth. Cognitive illusions may be hindering seeing the others’ perspective. DT creates an opportunity to explore the empathy dimension more deeply than what one would have done so far.

Experimentation: Prototyping is an important element of DT. Many people are familiar with building prototypes or proof-of-concepts. However, when participants are asked build a working prototype in one day, they are typically lost. They are not sure how to identify a small part of the overall idea which they can build in a day. They are not used to thinking in terms of available resources at low-cost to validate assumptions. How do we design low-cost high-speed experiments? How to test some of the critical assumptions early? These are some of the questions DT nudges you to address. DT offers an opportunity to learn to pay attention to cost, speed and sequence while designing experiments. DT urges you to consider the possibility that your core assumptions could be incorrect. This requires a degree of openness which many participants aren’t familiar with.

Experience: This is a picture of a government school from the Udupi district in Karnataka. Principal of the school saved Rs. 3000 every month for a year to get the school painted like a train. This has resulted in attracting more students and ex-students to see the new look of the school. Principal’s efforts are certainly noteworthy. However, when I ask: What could be missing in this innovation? Not many participants are able to see that the outward appearance of a school may be a small part of the overall end-to-end schooling experience of a child. Unless the experience inside the classroom is changed, not much may have changed for students. What the principal did could be a good first step, however unless it is extended inside the classroom, its value may be limited. DT offers an opportunity to look at end-to-end experience of various stakeholders.

If you have explored these dimensions already, DT could very well be old wine in old bottle. However, after the design thinking workshop I facilitate, that is generally not the impression participants carry. Perhaps they discover that there may be one or more dimensions which they haven’t explored at a sufficient depth.

image source:
wine bottle: uidownload.com
school: thehindu.com

Paying attention to the two roles we play: listener and story-teller

The 13-minute film “Listener” (2018, directed by Tarun Dudeja) highlights the two roles we play all the time – listener and story-teller. Both roles have a place in our day-to-day life. Unless we listen, we won’t know what others are saying, and unless we tell, we can’t communicate our views. However, the story-teller role dominates our life most of the time. And that puts us off-balance. That’s what the short film Listener shows. How does one balance between these two roles? Let’s explore in this article.

In “Listener”, the protagonist (Kumud Mishra) gets paid to lend an ear in a restaurant. Hire a “listener for Rs. 1495 per hour” is how one of the entries in the menu card reads. “First time?” asks the listener to the stranger who has hired him to listen for the next hour, “You can speak your heart out, whatever is bothering in your mind. Trust me, you will walk out of here as a much lighter person.” And the other person starts to tell the story.

The listener listens to an old man complain about how nobody at home listens to him, a young lady talks about her successful driving experience through crazy roads, a boy cries over the breakup with his girlfriend and how her status change on the social network got 56 likes. Through this process, we see that the listener is just listening, not judging or commenting. At the end, we see that the listener is also a good storyteller, especially to his daughter.

We have a need to be listened to and in a hyperactive world, listening has become an expensive currency. On the face of it, a large friend circle on Facebook and WhatsApp creates a feeling of connectedness. However, sooner or later we realize how superficial it is. How does one balance between these two roles?

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak” This quote supposed have come from the first-century Stoic philosopher Epictetus. It is suggesting us to follow a 70-30 rule – Listen more than 70% of the time, talk less than 30% of the time. Perhaps that’s a good start. However, there is more to it than just the time spent on listening vs talking.

As one begins to experiment with listening, one realizes that the act of listening itself might involve deception. As we are listening, we might be simultaneously generating a story – a kind of running commentary in the head – on what is being listened to. And the internal storytelling is hampering the quality of listening. Thus storytelling might be a major part of listening itself.

How does one curtail the internal storytelling? Perhaps there is no formula. However, a good place to start could be to start paying attention to the story in our head. And ask, “Is this serving any useful purpose right now?” Perhaps one may realize that the continuous judgments may not serve any useful purpose. And the recognition itself may subside the commentary.

Try and see if it works for you.

Note: There is a twist at the end of the film "Listener". I feel that the twist is not relevant to the essence of this article. However, happy to hear your views.

Electromagnetism: My favourite metaphor from Salman Rushdie’s “The golden house”

I decided to read Salman Rushdie’s “The golden house” (2017) after reading one of his interviews. He was asked to explain what he meant by the line in the novel – dirt is freedom. That sentence jumped out at me and I added the novel to the to-read list last year.

In “The golden house” the story is being narrated by Rene’ who is attempting to write a movie script based on the life of a family staying in the neighbouring house called the “Golden House” in Lower Manhattan. The family – father and three sons – have migrated to the US from Mumbai after 26/11 terror attacks and they are behaving as though they didn’t have a past. The novel is choke-full of metaphors, a large portion of them from Greek mythology. Here I would like to focus on the metaphor which appealed to me the most: Electromagnetism. I felt that this metaphor runs through all the major characters of the novel including the narrator.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, electricity and magnetism were two totally unrelated concepts. Later, Faraday, Maxwell, and others showed that it is one thing, not two different things – electromagnetism. “Can a man be a good man when he is a bad man?” Nero Golden, the father of the neighbouring family asks the narrator. He is saying that he is goodandbad – similar to electromagnetism.

Petronius alias Petya, the eldest son of Nero is on the extreme side in the autism spectrum. He is making millions of dollars from the computer games he builds. He has agoraphobia which results in him carrying a fear of outdoors, manic depression, inability to socialize and heavy drinking. In short, Petya is saneandinsane.

Lucius Apuleius (Apu) is the middle son. He is a successful artist holding solo exhibitions. In contrast to his elder brother Petya who lives in the virtual world of computer games sitting in his room, Apu mingles with ease in the real world of undergrounds, clubs, prisons, subcultures, gamblers, dying factories, dancing queens. He has a vision problem on the left eye and he sees everything distorted and deformed. In fact, Apu sees ghosts. Thus Apu lives in a world that is realandimaginary.

Dionysus (D) Golden, the youngest son, is androgynous. He is “miserable in men’s clothes and too scared to go public in a dress, painted mouth, and pink hat”. Thus D is manandwoman.

When Nero Golden asks Rene’ the goodandbad question, he further adds, “If you believe Spinoza and agree that everything is determined by necessity, can the necessities that drive a man drive him to wrongdoing as well as right? What is a good man in this deterministic world? Does the adjective mean anything?”  

Today, we don’t differentiate between electricity and magnetism. We call it electromagnetism. Can something similar happen to the polarities of good-bad, san-insane, man-woman, real-imaginary? Is this the core question Rushdie is asking? And when we begin to see the logic of necessity behind every action, goodandbad, isn’t it also called – empathy?

Perhaps dirtandpurity belongs to the same category. In explaining his love of dirt, Rushdie mentions in the interview: “The moment people start talking about purity, other people start dying, you know? The moment Nazi Germany started talking about racial purity there followed a great massacre.” Hence to see that dirt is, in fact, dirtandpurity is freedom.

image source: goodreads.com