Chaos Is Order & Order Is Chaos

Mahatma Gandhi said, 'When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator.'

The cosmos, the universe, the vast space that surrounds our home, is so wonder-filled. It is while contemplating our own existence in relationship to this vastness beyond, it is in exploration of who we are in comparison with the inestimable space that surrounds us, that ancient sages realized timeless truths. These truths over time became structured and they turned into religions. The truth however remains the same across all the religions. .

What has filled man with wonder, made poets sing with joy, painters draw and mystics go deep into themselves, is the orderliness and regularity with which many cosmic events happened and repeated themselves.

As man delved deeper and developed instruments that could see and measure incalculable distances more accurately, this wonder deepened. There was nothing as far as the human could see that regulated this space. There was no one visible entity that controlled and managed this universe. Objects, whether they were stars, planets or galaxies, moved in established orbits that rarely varied, vet there were many events within this orderliness that defied prediction.

For example, one of the recent scientific discoveries in quantum physics states that you cannot even measure the exact position of the electron inside an atom, because the very act of measurement would displace it from its position. There was order and yet nothing was predictable 100%; there was no one who seemed to manage this order. In a rational and scientific sense, it was the ideal set up for chaos. When logic fails, chaos is expected to be round the corner, but yet there seemed to be an unperceivable order in the seemingly chaotic happenings in the universe.

We don't understand what is going on. Each new discovery seems to bring us closer, but never close enough for real understanding.

There are hundreds of scientific theories about the creation of the universe, in addition to the hundreds that various religions have come up with, without any of them having been proven. No one knows till date how it all began. When someone asked Buddha as to who or what created the universe, He replied, 'The Universe creates the Universe. The Universe has its own energy, its own intelligence and its own power to replicate, grow endlessly and evolve limitlessly. '

There never was a time when it did not exist; there never will be a time when it will not exist. This is the Truth.

Yet, we do not have scientific proof.

The energy in each atom is chaotic. We do not even know in which form the sub-atomic particle exists. The more the scientist studies the nature of sub-atomic particles, the more they seem to be different from the previous understanding. The string theory says that the smallest particles exist only as frequencies. Some say that depending on the viewer and how they are viewed, these particles can be waves, packets, energy or matter or all together at once. The fact is that we still do not know for certain.

The universe, what we call the Brahmanda or the macrocosm is all apparent chaos, totally out of control, without any seeming controller. On the other hand, the individual body, what we call Pindanda or the microcosm, is all in apparent order, all under control.

A small joke:

Two drunkards were walking down a street past a halogen lamp. One of them exclaimed, 'Look! The Sun has come down for us!' The other replied, 'No, it is night now; it is the moon.' The first one continued, 'It is yellow in color and therefore is the sun.' A third man, who also had consumed liquor, came by them. They asked him, 'Sir, please tell us whether this is the sun or the moon.' The man replied. 'I am new to this neighborhood; I do not know.'

Our understanding of the universe is along similar lines! We are still new to the neighborhood. though humankind has existed for many thousand years. The energy in the universe is seemingly chaotic.

However, within this apparent chaos there is order. Chaos is always exciting and energetic; orderliness is predictable and dull. When you break a rule, you are thrilled; you radiate joy; you exude energy.

It is man's basic instinct. For example, the moment you see there is no cop or the traffic signal is not working, you start speeding. The moment you see a cop, you reduce the speed.

I am reminded of a speeding joke:

A lady was driving her car very fast, beyond speed limits down a Paris Boulevard. She was stopped by a policeman for speeding. He demanded why she was driving at that speed. The lady hastily replied, 'I am chasing my husband and another woman who are in the car ahead.' The policeman waved her on, 'after them Madam, after them!'

You see, rules are there alright, but people are looking for the first opportunity to break them. That is the inherent nature of man because man is chaotic by nature. Man is wild energy, conditioned by society and state.

As long as morality is taught with fear as the basis, when morality is instilled in you from the outside, it is only social laws. If it is programmed in your mind right from young age, it is still programming. According to me, conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness. I always tell people it is time for them to drop their toys and become mature.

Rules are toys actually which we break often! We need to outgrow them and be able to look at them in a mature fashion. I am not saying we should not follow rules; no! The rules should not bind us in a forceful ways like how toys bind us. Our normal self, our words, our actions, should speak the rules for themselves, not our tongue.

Dancing without rules is joyful; regulated dancing may be pleasing to those who watch, but not as joyful to those who perform and those who train to perform. Discipline hurts and that too in dance. Just compare the energy of those dancing in a natural way with spontaneous release of emotions and inhibitions with the energy in dance with orderly movements like in the most reputed classical dance. No one can deny that from the point of view of sheer enjoyment and exuberance of the performer, the classical dancer pales in comparison.

I tell you: when you can dance totally, your dance becomes meditation. There will be an intense order in your chaotic dance, the order of the universe, of Existence that you can simply attain through dance itself. You don't need to learn dance formally to dance totally. In fact, if you have learnt formal dance, it is a hindrance! It will come in the way like old samskara and trouble you to come into its familiar order. Once this happens you will not be total, you will be conditioned and pseudo.

Coming to rules, saying 'no', binding us to rules and regulations, makes us solid and assertive; saying 'yes', makes us free, makes us liquid, yielding, blissful. When some one smokes, most often, it is for the joy of breaking the rules, rather than for any benefit derived from smoking.

Why do you think many teen-agers succumb to the temptation to smoke? At the first instance of smoking, there is nothing attractive about it: in fact, the system vigorously rejects the injurious smoke you are trying to push inside it. But, what do you do? You resist the cough that comes up so that you can prove to others that you are independent, different and are not afraid to break rules: to prove vour individuality. The boy thinks he has become a man only when he is able to say 'no' to his parents.

Man loves to be chaotic. As he grows, he loses this passion or rather this passion goes under covers and remains as a dormant volcano which is why at the first opportunity he is ready to let go. Actually if observe keenly, even the most meticulous and fastidious people get a silent kick out of breaking rules when the situation calls for it. They may not express it or demonstrate it but their system will feel a slight burp, a slight relief, a silent smirk when they break a rule. So man as a rule is chaotic.

Chaos with order is Cosmic Intelligence. The stars and planets move in order, with no perceivable regulatory authority. Science is yet to find the source of this order. Universe is not just power; it is power combined with Intelligence, which is Energy.

Energy is nothing but intelligence and the whole of Existence is nothing but pure energy. Most of us do not realize this fundamental truth and create problems for ourselves. We think that God, Existence has only power and no intelligence. We think we are the only creations of God that have intelligence. We feel we are the source of all intelligence on planet Earth. We feel the only thing we lack is power. And for that we look to Existence, to God.

That is why we keep praving. 'Give me this: give me that.' We even bargain saying, 'If you give me this, I will give you that."

A small story:

A clergyman once received a call on his mobile phone to attend immediately to a lady who was seriously ill.

He left for her house soon after the call but was puzzled as to why he was being called as the lady was not of his parish and she was more a visitor from the other church.

He rang the doorbell and entered the house. While he was waiting to be shown into the room, he looked at the lady's child who was with him and asked. 'It feels very nice that you thought of me at this moment. Is your own minister out of

town?'

The child promptly replied, 'Oh no! He is in town. We were just taking precaution in case the disease is contagious.'

We play our intelligent games all the time, even with God. We play it so safe and small because we don't know that if we let go, we will become infinitely intelligent and allow ourselves to be embraced by Existence, which is infinite intelligence.

We have these ideas of what we want but we do not realize that these ideas have come from the limited intelligence we possess ourselves. We do not even know what we need really and keep yearning and begging for momentary pleasures. If we just go a bit deeper and realize that we are a part of a grand creation and in the safest hands of the Ultimate Intelligence, we will be utterly relaxed and be able to live to our complete potential and enjoy life to the fullest. We will be able to achieve anything we want but without the stress that arises from fear and greed.

This Intelligence responds to our prayers, to our every thought. Thoughts and desires are energy. Be very clear: Whatever you see as physical reality is created in the laboratory of your mind first. Only after its creation in the mind does it transform to physical reality. It is only because the universe responds to man's every thought, to every prayer, that man follows worship till date. But he forgets that the response is not through power but through intelligence. He doesn't understand that and there starts the problem of asking and asking.

The law of conservation of energy combined with Einstein's equation that proves the equivalence of matter and energy also reflect the same truth that there is nothing either created or destroyed in the universe; it is just a change of forms.

The mystics say that we come from God. On the other hand, scientists believe that we come from monkeys. If evolution was that straight forward, all monkeys should by now have become humans and humans should have become something more. Evolution has stopped with humans because we are the only ones with consciousness. Our next step is to advance to universal consciousness.

A buffalo cannot become enlightened even if it lived for a thousand years. Humans have this unique capability of consciousness and hence, every human has the potential to become enlightened and realize his true nature. Being alive is the only qualification needed to become enlightened. With this capability comes the inherent urge to know the true nature of oneself.

No other animal is perturbed about questions about existence or its purpose or the meaning of life. A dog is quite happy eating, sleeping and going about its daily habits. A bird is happy chirping. flying and giving birth to young ones. However, man always has the urge and curiosity to know, to be aware of himself, to look beyond.