Pray, Nataraja, What makes You dance?

Chapter 8
PRAY, NATARAJA, WHAT MAKES YOU DANCE?
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...Shiva... plays a sometimes marvelous and often terrible game, whose rules are forever unknown to us, all the more so as it is not certain that Shiva himself knows them...---Jean-Claude Carriere

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures. --- Goethe
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‘Pray, Nataraja, what makes you dance?’


I wonder if Nataraja (lord of dancers, another name for Shiva) - perhaps even with a tear or two in his eyes - would not retort: ‘Parbati, who  else?’  He may even add: ‘Arre bhai, O brother, who dances? What you think is dance is actually my struggle to wriggle out of Parbati’s clutches against her insistence on keeping me in chains, and viewed together, it gives you, you shadowy spectators, the appearance of a dance! Why, if all this is so dancy, all the wisest of your wise dream of freedom, liberation, nirvana, dream of getting out of this dance?’ (For the benefit of the Western reader I may explain that Shiva, in the Hindu religious traditions, is taken to be pure-consciousness - in a sense equivalent to our Mosc - and Parbati, his consort, represents our Mopc or the actual world, which lends itself, thanks to our scientists, to be reduced to four basic forces. So that, simply put, Parbati represents four basic forces.)

I assure my readers who might have begun yawning in anticipation of a boring chapter ahead, involving perhaps a whole lot of ‘dry,’ whimsical electrons, photons, mesons, pions, muons, and so on and so forth that our treatment of four basic forces would be quite ‘wet.’ What is there at the micro or even micro-micro levels is very much here at the macro, and even at our own very human levels. And as humans, you know we can be as ‘wet’ in  our descriptions as we wish, or as our ‘spirits’ allow. Follow it? So rest assured that we shall take up the challenge of describing physicists’ four basic forces in our own very lively and human terms. As to their accuracy please withhold judgment till our proposition has unfolded fully.

So let us begin from where we digressed. That Parbati in the guise of four basic forces of Nature has held Shiva in bondage. And that the whole game of life, in fact, represents the efforts on the part of Shiva to get out of that bondage.
   In other words, the whole game of life is the game of bondage and freedom being played between Parbati and Shiva, between the matter principle and the spirit principle, between the body principle and the soul principle, between the restricting principle and the freeing principle, between the passive principle and the active principle, between even the reactive principle and the active principle, between the actual world and the spiritual world, between four fundamental forces and Mosc, at myriad of levels. And of course through the agency or mediation of Movc. Or through the agency or mediation of what we call our minds, or may even call the mind principle, at our own levels.
   We have already discussed Mosc or the spiritual world and Movc or the virtual world respectively in the last two chapters. Now in this chapter we shall be discussing Mopc or the actual world in the form of four basic forces.
   But before we begin in right earnest, I must attend to a doubt I see lurking in the backwaters of some lay readers’ minds that there could be, in fact, a countless number of forces operating in the Universe rather than the professed four. Sure they are right and actually I myself was one among them till the other day. But such open, unsystematic notions cannot help us acquire knowledge. For that we shall have to organize, analyze, categorize, reduce everything. Can we go anywhere by counting our lives in seconds, minutes, hours, days or even years? For their proper study the wise have reduced them to four fundamental phases: that of childhood, youth, middle-age, and old-age. Likewise our great scientists have reduced all those innumerable forces into four basic ones, which they call interactions, namely:
1. The gravitational interactions
2. The Electromagnetic interactions
3. The strong interactions
4. The weak interactions
   Sometimes it seems God’s computer gets stuck at number 4 and likewise, perhaps, of us human beings, who, as they say, are made in His image. If there are elements, they seem to fall into four basic categories: earth, water, fire and air. If there are species, likewise, they fit into the number four description: clay to minerals, plants to animals, primates to man and expected superman. Same is the case with cultural Ages - the Middle Ages, The Age of Romanticism, the Age of Reason, and shortly expected, the Age of Intelligence or Intuition; with individual ages - childhood, youth, middle age, and old age; with individual what are called daily biorhythms - physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Consciousness similarly lends itself to be categorized into un, sub, self, and super-consciousness; or as Ken Wilber puts it, into: the ego level, the biosocial level, the existential level, and the transpersonal level. Even DNA has four nucleotide bases...
   One may infer from this - and actually we are after this very goal - that all these categorizations are, in fact, the manifestations of the four fundamental forces or interactions as mentioned above, in one way or the other, at one level or the other. But if you ask me why the fundamental interactions themselves are four I must admit that I have no answer at least for the present, and would, however, promise to try to answer it sometime later. So as of now let us admit that beyond lies the domain of the unknowable and come to and explain what is already in hand: the four fundamental forces or interactions of Nature I mean.

1.  The gravitational interactions:
   The gravitational interactions or simply gravity should be, if not already is, as familiar to you as an apple. Actually all manifested life, everything, begins and ends with gravity: begins from sort of perhaps what the scientists call worm holes where you first found yourself at the mercy of gravity, and ends in what they say black holes into which gravity again shall finally suck you.
   At your level and in your particular life-cycle, with your first kick as soon as you came out of your mother’s womb, you made a dent in the otherwise absolute realm of gravity in which you previously were, and likewise, with your final fall the absolute realm of gravity will again overtake you. Until finally, that is, after your last life-cycle, you are one with Mosc, have merged indistinguishably into Mosc, where there will be no forces acting on ‘you.’ (Don’t switch on your computers! Even when you are dead asleep no forces are acting on ‘you.’ When you would be indistinguishably one with totality, with Mosc, likewise, no forces would be acting upon ‘you.’ Remember, all the forces cancel do in totality, in Mosc. To know what ‘you’ really will be then, consult chapter six on Mosc again.)
   Surprisingly, these gravitational interactions are so omnipresent that nothing can escape them, not even light not to talk of other forces or their fields. And surprisingly again, only ‘nothing’  - as some love to call our Mosc - can challenge their supremacy.
   At our Earth’s level, the creation of all plant life, in exactly the opposite direction to gravity, was the first challenge our mighty Mosc threw at it. This process continued through successive species giving birth to high-soaring birds and still higher-soaring spaceships. Though no sooner had Mosc begun succeeding in subduing gravity to a certain extent than electromagnetic interactions began throwing spanners into its freedom, displaying the struggle in the species animals.
   Perhaps the readers know that the weights we carry, our body weights I mean, are the direct consequence of these gravitational interactions upon us by the Earth. And those of my readers who are overly obese like me, may come to the conclusion that these gravitational interactions must be the mightiest of all the interactions, more so as they may not be familiar with the other interactions in their ordinary living. I myself once thought so. But the scientists, as they say, slay our most commonsensical of conclusions with the sword of their most no-nonsensical of facts. And listen to what they have to say about our supposedly mighty gravitational interactions’ strength: Our mighty gravitational interactions are some 1040 times weaker than the very next on the line, that is, the electromagnetic interactions.
   Not for nothing, dear reader, once you could not resist the temptation to go to your beloved even when your legs refused to carry your weight! That was the handiwork of comparatively mightier electromagnetic interactions or rather attractions - its one facet.

2. The electromagnetic interactions:
   The gravitational interactions were the first to be discovered because they were the first on the line, just on the surface so to say: From molecules to meta-galaxies all are under their uniform spell. And perhaps that is why only they could have been discovered by so obvious an incident as the falling of an apple.
   But the next on the line are more subtle. To discover them we shall have to go deeper into the scheme of things, that is, from the level of the molecules to the level of the atoms.
   To discover them a Newton would need thinking, instead of why the apple fell on his mouth, why his mouth watered on seeing the apple. And then why he could not resist jumping this way or that to grab it. In other words, and in our poor man’s science, these interactions are the cause of our feelings of attractions and repulsions and, moreover, of movements.
   And that is exactly what Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday, and then James Clerk Maxwell found, of course, camouflaged in their scientific jargon.
   For them, electromagnetic interactions take place in all charged particles and are the cause of chemical processes everywhere, the insides of our bodies including (what else do you think mouth-watering is?).
   Ultimately these long-ranged interactions are responsible for the formations of all atomic, molecular and even biological structures (hail love!).
   Next time you want to avoid falling in love shield yourself well from the incoming photons, for, the photons are the ‘messengers’ which carry these interactions from one charged particle to another. And which may even go virtual to deceive you, for after all, as they say, everything is fair in love and war, in the out and out emotional realm of electromagnetic interactions!.
   In more scientific jargon, photons are the carriers of these electromagnetic interactions, and they are their own virtual counterparts. Which would mean in practical terms that these interactions would always strike the would-be-participants unawares .
   But once you are struck, but once you are entangled, these electromagnetic interactions would, next, cause you to move.
   While its electro part would cause the attractions or repulsions, its magnetic part - though my knowledge of it is yet on the intuitive stage - would cause the movements.
   To give an idea: Electric field produced because of the electro part of the electromagnetic interactions between two individuals of opposite sex (or charge), further produces the dia-polar magnetic field between them all the way down to their individual molecules’ levels. Which then, through a mechanism known as the muscular contraction mechanism in the details of which we may not go here, produces movement first in the molecules, then in the muscles and ultimately in the whole of the organisms under question.
   Anyway, at our Earth’s level, if the creation of all flora was Shiva’s or Mosc’s direct challenge to gravity, the creation of all fauna was Parbati’s or Mopc’s immediate response to it. In other words, no sooner did Mosc challenge gravity in the form of the creation of plant life than it was entangled into electromagnetic interactions causing it first to bend and then to move through love or attraction or through hate or repulsion, creating in the process species called animals. Simply put, animals are plants forced to bend horizontally and move because of the attractions and repulsions of the electromagnetic forces at their base.
   Would you like an example nearer home? No sooner had you grown big enough to show thumb to your parents (Mopc or the bonding or restrictive principle representing gravitational interactions now) than Mopc (the same bonding or restrictive principle) transformed itself into your ‘love’ (into electromagnetic interactions) to way-lay you and - if you wouldn’t mind - make an animal of you.
   The reason we bind flora and fauna together is perhaps ultimately the same we bind electricity and magnetism together. In that eucalyptus tree outside my house Shiva or the freeing principle waves me to look how it has trampled Parbati or the restricting principle (gravity) under foot. And in the very next moment Parbati  (now electromagnetic interactions), not to be outdone, signals me with the movement of her right thumb towards a dog who is following a bitch as if saying: see what I have made of Shiva or the freeing principle again..
   In fact, as soon as Mosc freed itself from gravity to the extent due to the level, as soon as plant life was created, perhaps in the form of algae (Fig.9) it fell into the clutches of electromagnetic interactions or attractions which declared its victory as final, finally, with the invention of sex. And the attraction of sex was the main reason flora developed movement to become in the process fauna.
   Whom should we thank it for: to Darwin’s natural selection or to our hypothesis of struggle between two opposing forces of Nature? Because of which it will be a sort of forced selection if selection is the word we must use?
   Or is it that the forced selection itself is the natural selection? It could be, in a manner of speaking.
   Mosc will simply move in animals as dictated by the electromagnetic attractions and repulsions, that is, without a will of its own. Except perhaps for survival purposes, for, it intuitively knows in advance that it will have to survive and survive to finally move deeper beyond the clutches of the electromagnetic interactions and those to follow; deeper beyond the level of the atom further down into the nucleus to be finally free (one can here have a glimpse of the fundamental reason why the genes have to be so selfish). It will be only after it goes beyond, goes deeper from the level of the atom to the level of the nucleus as said above, or rather into the ‘prison’ of nucleus, that it will develop a will of its own, will develop, in other words, self-consciousness; and as a consequence, become conscious of its plight.
   And then it will not move simply as dictated by electromagnetic attractions or repulsions as in the case of the animals, but will develop the ability to weigh the pros and cons of a situation. Which will then give birth to a phenomenon the scientists would call ‘the delayed-response phenomenon’ for the level of the primates, and ‘postponement of the gratification of desire’ ultimately for the level of the humans.
   (Though proffering very superficial explanations for them. For example, here is how J.Bronowski explains them in his book The Ascent of Man:
The change from a vegetarian to an omnivorous diet, once made, persisted...in Homo sapiens. Meat is a more concentrated protein than plant, and eating meat...cuts down the time spent in eating by two-thirds. The consequences for the evolution of man were far-reaching. He had more time free, and could spend it in more indirect ways, to get food from sources which - such as large animals - could not be tackled by hungry brute force. Evidently that helped to promote (by natural selection) the tendency of all primates to interpose an internal delay in the brain between stimulus and response, until it developed into the full human ability to postpone the gratification of desire.

   No sir, we would like to rejoin: it is the forces which did the trick. When the system bearing the species, in fact, jumped from its electromagnetic interactions era to its strong interactions era, or from the animal era to the man era; but in the above example, from the electromagnetic era further of the species man to its strong interactions era - and which would practically mean from the Id propelled era to ego controlled era.)
   Alas, Mosc didn’t know that what is beyond will not allow it even movement in the real sense of the word! Even while flying in a plane it will feel imprisoned, or unmoving! That, that in other words, will rather cause its imprisonment in its own house, which in scientific jargon is called the nucleus.
   The scientists have rightly given that, that which is deeper beyond the realm of even the electromagnetic interactions, that which is deeper beyond the realm of even the atom, the name - the strong interactions.

3. The Strong interactions:
   If you have already begun feeling helpless before the enormous strength of the electromagnetic interactions, if your mind is still lost handling zeros in the figure 1040 by which electromagnetic interactions are stronger than the gravitational interactions, I am afraid you are in for a real shock now. The next interactions on the line, and as per our theory the main cause of the mutation of animal species into Homo sapiens at our universal level, the main cause of the development of specific human traits such as ego, the self-consciousness, the thought process, the language, the need of information, the need of exchange of information etc., Mosc’s equally tough sparring partner are further some 100 times stronger than even the electromagnetic interactions!
   These, our very scourge, which have the power even to cause suicides in Shivas, in Mosc now in human form, are the mightiest strong interactions.
   If gravitational and electromagnetic interactions are said to operate (come into the foreground) at the level of molecules and atoms respectively, with strong interactions we have - or our Mosc has -  penetrated yet deeper into the heart of the matter.
   These are said to operate at the level of the hadrons. And hadrons are all sorts of particles ‘residing’ in the nucleus; or rather, cause the nucleus with Mosc to ‘reside’ in them,  thanks, besides their obvious strong bonds with the nucleus or Mosc, to their strong mutual-embracing nature.
   These strong interactions, in other words, in the name of keeping these nucleons (another name for hadrons, further divided into baryons and mesons, and if you would like to have a real taste of the ‘dry’ description, having names such as omega, cascade, lambda, eta, kaon, pion, besides our familiar neutron and proton, and so on and so forth) in an atom together, keep ‘us’ under house-arrest: keep our Mosc, our ‘I’s entrapped inside the nucleus. In other words, create sort of a prison around us at our very base.
   They have, as the scientists say, a very short range - some 10-15 meters (prisons are not meant to be long ranged, you know!), and are carried out through the agency of virtual particles of the same kind as their main participators i.e., hadrons, besides of some others such as ‘gluons,’ which also belong to the virtual realm inside the nucleus.
   If electromagnetic attractions or repulsions were the main cause of the creation of the species animals, this cage of the strongly interacting nucleons was the main cause of the creation of Homo sapiens.
   Just put a primate in a cage for a considerable length of time and he will begin to develop all the traits of the humans. Likewise, just put Mosc freshly freed from the electromagnetic clutches into the strong interactions created nucleic prison and it will begin to develop self-consciousness, thought process, language and all that, leading ultimately to man’s much flaunted intellectual prowess.
   This imprisonment at the very base, in fact, is the main reason man - and only man of all the species - asks questions, and as a consequence acquires knowledge. Homo in the name Homo sapiens stands for the above-mentioned prison and subsequent acquiring of knowledge by them to free themselves of that prison, to outgrow that prison, entitles them to the adjective sapiens. As Jung sort of confirms it in one of his so famous visions: ‘Life and the whole world struck me as a prison…I had been so glad to shed it…’
   In fact, our psychological terms such as id, ego and super-ego are also nothing but the functions of electromagnetic, strong and weak interactions respectively at our base. At species level these represent animals, man, and superman; for our human life-cycles these represent our youth, middle-age and old-age. The above mentioned human traits, in fact, are the development of ego and ego-functions in previously id propelled animals.
   At the species level, these strong interactions caused the creation of man. Within the species man, these caused the creation of what historians call the Settled man. At our present global cultural cycle level, which began with the beginning of the AD era, these caused the creation of science and rational philosophy. Within this science and rational philosophy cycle, these caused the creation of post quantum-relativistic ‘isolating,’ ‘alienating,’ ‘tragic’ so-called nuclear science best expressed in the following words by Jacques Monod in his book Chance and Necessity:
Man must at last awake from his millenary dream; and in doing so, awake to his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. Now does he at least realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world...

   And all the post-war pessimistic philosophies giving birth to words such as anguish, angst, nothingness and so on. In other words, giving birth collectively to our Age of Reason and Anxiety.
   And finally at personal levels, in our personal life-cycles, these interactions are the cause of our so-called middle-age crisis.
   There are, in fact, endless cycles within cycles, or better still, spirals within spirals as I wrote somewhere back, and the third stage of every cycle, third step of every spiral of every spiral staircase, third nucleotide base of every DNA - and the phenomena of life produced accordingly, or as the scientists say, the phenotype developed accordingly - has been the outcome of these strong interactions.
   With the science of Prigogine and his collaborators, of David Bohm and other ‘philosophers of science’ I mentioned in a previous chapter, with the intuitions of Fritzof Capra and the like, we as a global culture are moving beyond even the range of these strong interactions. Thenceforth, we will be entering the realm of the weak interactions, where instead of alienation, suffocation we would be experiencing wholeness, freedom, spontaneity. Where the science, the philosophy of ‘to be’ would direct our actions rather than, as of now, the science, the philosophy of ‘to know.’ Our culture then will not be the scientific culture in the real sense of the word, would not be the intellectual culture so to say, but would be the culture of intelligence. Which has known, seen life inside-out and now enjoys it within its limits - and would even be ready to pass out when the time comes which is inevitable a la the coming of the Dark Periods after the Golden Period of the Greeks some two thousands years before.
   We shall come to all these points once again near the end, so allow me for the time being to complete the work already in hand - that of describing the forces. And in this connection the next on the line are the weak interactions.
   What? Before that you would like to have a nearer home version of these strong interactions as well?
   Sure. No sooner have you grown enough to ‘waken up’ even from your love, from your being lovelorn, from your being lost in emotional entanglements (electromagnetic interactions) than the same Mopc or the restrictive principle has already metamorphosed itself into your spouse (to set the stage or rather the ‘prison’ for you to experience strong interactions, to experience the same bondage through strong interactions). And to surround you in your nucleus now - the home which you have set to settle down - along with your spouse would be your children, the ‘nucleons.’ Not for nothing it is said after a youth’s marriage: ‘He has become a man now.’ How true!
   Now you amuse over this proposition and I will move over to our weak interactions.

4. The weak interactions:
   The last on the line, the ‘spirituo-virtuo-physical’ cause of the development of old age in our individual lives, the development of ego-transcending old-age wisdom in our individual lives, the development of ‘species’ known as masters and sages - or even ‘polymath’ geniuses as Carl Sagan described those rare men who are equally at home with many subjects at the same time in his book The Gardens of Eden – further within the overall species of Homo sapiens, are called the weak interactions .
   If in the previous case, Mosc felt weak because the interactions were strong, man felt helpless because the interactions were suffocating, in this case Mosc will be the master because the interactions are weak: just weak attractions and repulsions, unable to force one to hop around like mad as is the case with other interactions, especially electromagnetic and strong interactions, the ‘propellers’ of animals and man respectively.
   In ‘dry’ description, these weak interactions operate at the level of ‘leptons’ - sub-atomic particles in a way further subordinate to the hadrons, just as hadrons are to atoms and atoms are to molecules - and are some 10-12 times weaker than strong interactions. Beta decay is a form of weak interactions. Virtual bosons called W and Z, and actual neutrinos are said to be their ‘messenger’ particles. Remember our friend photon, that arrow of love!? Here neutrinos may be said to be the arrows of compassion - of identity, of oneness - supposed to be felt by the masters and sages for the whole of humanity. In other words, these neutrinos will help them to have what the psychologists call transpersonal experiences, though actually those would be trans-everything experiences. Simply because while photons could travel comparatively only small distances and, moreover, could pass through only up to certain depth/fineness of matter, neutrinos could travel throughout the world, nay, the universe, and unhindered.
   These weak interactions could be both short-ranged and long-ranged depending upon whether these are transmitted by the virtual bosons or the actual neutrinos. At our individual levels and in our simple terms, in the former case an old man, though now not having the same prison-like strong bonds with family members as in the case of strong interactions era will still be feeling oneness with them, will still be feeling weak attractions and repulsions towards them, while in the later case, he will be feeling more one with the world, identify more with the world in general now than with his family members.
   Talking in terms of the masters and sages, in the former case, a sage would be showering grace upon his disciples sitting around him – who too would act sort of a family to him - while in the later he would be sitting in Spinozian total oneness with the whole of Nature - though yet aware of Nature.
   Beyond even the almost other-worldly neutrinos ‘coupling,’ the sage would be sitting totally oblivious of anything we can speak of, including our Nature as we know it. In other words, he would then be sitting in total oneness with our wordless, particle-less realm of Mosc, with sort of scientists’ Grand Unification state so to say. Or in sort of ‘I am what I am’ state.
   The fundamental particles taking part in these interactions, as already said, are called leptons, in which the scientists include our familiar electrons and photons - at first the cause of great confusion in my mind. For, these electrons and photons otherwise take part in electromagnetic interactions. The scientists must be having their own reasons no doubt, but just see how they have hit the nail on the head as they say, to suit what we have been saying all along in this book.
   Remember, what is the difference between the experience of an ordinary lover and of that of a mystic? That while the experience of the former is circumscribed at the base mainly by the electromagnetic interactions, that of the later is circumscribed at the base by the weak interactions? Now from the above findings of the scientists, it is clear that the experience of what we call love must somehow involve leptons. But while it involves electrons and photons in the case of our ordinary love thanks to its being circumscribed at the base by the electromagnetic interactions, it involves other leptons such as bosons and neutrinos in the case of the mystics, thanks to its being circumscribed at the base by the weak interactions.
   Perhaps that is why, while all the mystics can be lovers if they so desire - and in India we have Krishna of the Bhagvad Gita fame with his large number of gopis (beloveds) to prove that - all the lovers cannot be mystics (there could be exceptions as when after a long time some of those particular lovers may go beyond the mere physical aspect of love; though by then they would have already become sort of mystics!).
   If you would like to have an exercise for your mind for the present, try to solve the question: Why masters and sages have far greater influence and for far longer periods on the populations than the philosophers and thinkers? Try it seriously in the light of our discussion of interactions above -that mystics are the product of the weak interactions while the philosophers are that of the strong interactions. Hint: all the known particles in the world ‘couple’ to the weak force...which can affect transmutations in the particles...often propelling the products to high speeds...their carrier neutrinos having sort of a network throughout the world...
   If you wouldn’t laugh, I can give you a hint even in a very simplified language: The sages can influence even the ‘plants’ and ‘animals’ (if ‘minerals’ would be too much for you) among us, while the philosophers can influence only the human beings. And how many do you think are really human beings among us?  
   Anyway, don’t let us lose heart for we all are ultimately going to become sages. Let us for the time being take leave from these mighty interactions and venture forth to the next syllable of our Mosc theory. And that is entanglement.
   ...Mosc explodes off from itself to what we would call Matter of virtual category...and gets in the process progressively entangled into a topsy-turvy network of four basic forces...Remember? let us see how.
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