In What Furnace Thy Brain?

We have talked at some length about the nature of the reality, and about the apparitional screen through which we see it. And we have seen how we, as living organisms, genetic inventions if you like, see that screen much colored by our own genetic past. We have talked of Advaita Vedanta as a map, and we have talked about the map of modern science. And we have seen that the maps are easily joined since the advent of relativity theory. We have seen how even the quest of modern science, through the extrapolation suggested by relativity theory, has reached its fulfillment — the utterly simple — the Brahman of the Vedanta — which must underlie the obvious complexities of the physical universe. For us, as living beings, as travelers, what remain to be discussed are the paths, the trails, the possible journeys, which follow from the map. What remains to be seen is how the variety of sublime vistas which unfold before the eyes of the traveler fit into the map. And what remains to be known is how to get from our present state of perception to the goal. The goal is to know the truth, to see beyond the screen, to see the reality as it is, and the goal is to be reached by means of a path, by means of a journey, and not by means of a map. If one is to drive a bus from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, one does not drive the bus over the map but over the intervening highways and freeways, and there are many things to be seen along the way. Modern science and the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta are our map; Sadhana is our journey. With the help of the map we choose a road, we choose a course of Sadhana, and along that road, however long, however beset by seeming trials, we journey, through regions ever more sublime, till the goal is reached. We journey till we see, at last that the goal itself was never distant and that the journey was but part of the screen. Now a course of Sadhana, like a bus route, must take into account our point of origin as well as our destination, and our point of origin is deeply involved in our long genetic past. Far down the genetic line in this menagerie of living forms, and late in time, we come to inherit the peculiar problems of our kind, not those of the butterfly who wears her skeleton outside, nor, any longer, those of a fish. But look at your face in a mirror! Your jaw still swings like the jaw of a bony fish, which once you were, some four hundred million years ago. And the bones of that fish must shape your Sadhana. Sadhana, in a sense, is not the beginning of anything. It is simply the continuation, with better knowledge, of your age-old struggle to see the real, and it starts from where you find yourself in that struggle. We are primates, brachiating primates, come from the greenroofed jungle by way of a sojourn in the Indian Ocean and the warm, sunny beaches of East Africa. The salt tears which we shed are the tears of a sea-going primate. The hands with which we do the worship are the hands of a jungle ape, reshaped by swimming in the sea. And our brain, our precious brain, the only brain on the face of this planet which allows the perceiver behind it to see through this apparition, is the brain of an ancient misfit, driven from one environment to the next so many times by the genetic hardware of better-adapted species that the software behind his eyes allows him now, at last, to see through the whole charade. For hundreds of millions of years you have been bullied and pushed around, driven from the ocean to the rivers, from the rivers to the shallows, from the shallows to the swamps, and out on land. Always the species who were better adapted to the older environment stayed in the older environment. The faster fishes stayed in the sea. You are not descended from them. You are descended from a long line of misfits who were bullied and driven out. Always it was "Shape up or ship out!" and you got out. You were driven ashore on stumpy fins in the Devonian swamps, and you were driven underground in the Paleocene grass, and you were driven from the grass into the trees, by other descendants of those stumpy fins. And every change entailed millions of years of discomfort while you painfully built in your new genetic adjustments, not so much by the survival of those who succeeded as by the early demise of those who failed. The dinosaurs, with scaly feet, drove some of you underground. Those who couldn't adjust are gone. There in their burrows, in the sunny grass, the rodents, furry mammals much like you, but better adapted to the grass than you, drove you to the trees. Those who couldn't adjust went down. There in the trees, through long and painful genetic readjustments you learned to swing from branch to branch. Those who failed were eaten by cats. Then, after many more millions of years, just when your arms could reach from side to side, came the dwindling of the forests by drought, twelve million years of drought. Those who were better at swinging than you drove you to the ground, and you fled to the sea. You had four hands and no feet, and the grass was now no place for you. There were packhunting dogs and great, stalking cats. Those who didn't make it to the beach are gone. In the safety of the terrifying breakers you were cradled in the sea, with hands instead of paddles and hands instead of feet, and there were millions of cold, wet, salty years before you even had the tears to cry. You were small and you were timid when you came from the green-roofed jungle with eyes accustomed to the dark, and there were millions of years of blinding brightness on the sunlit waves and beaches before you had the frown of your bewilderment, the furrowed brow of the thinker, and you wondered what it's all about. The long pursuit has made you thoughtful. Every new adjustment entailed a genetic enlargement of the brain. It is the brain of a misfit, driven hither and yon to the refuge of new environments by those better adapted to the old. It is the brain of a shiftless outcast, living always in the discomfort of genetic maladjustment. It is the product of hundreds of millions of years of distress, the product of the vicissitudes of countless misfortunes encountered along the seemingly endless reaches of the immense journey. And your present form is not the end. The journey lies as far ahead as behind. No, not so far, for now, for the first time, you can look behind to see how you have come. And now, for the first time, you can guess ahead to see how you should go. In all that three hundred million years a creature descended from that lumbering, Devonian fish with simple lungs and bubbles in his brain. In all that length of time no creature thought that any creature would ever think to figure it out, to unscramble and decipher the account. You are the first species that ever investigated its own genetic past. You are the only creatures who are not fish who ever knew that they are not fish but that their ancestors were. You are the first creatures who ever lived on land but who knew that their ancestors lived in the sea. And you are the first creatures who can look ahead to see where you are going. You are the first creatures who can understand that you got into this mess through an uncertainty and cannot possibly get out by transformation. Uncertainty is overcome by knowledge, not by transformation. You alone can understand that the journey has an end, which cannot possibly be reached by journeying. Yours is the strength of the eternal underdog. You have been pushed and bullied and driven till you have mastered every environment on the face of the earth, and have the brain to comprehend the universe beyond. Out of the endless vicissitudes of your misfortunes and your failures has come your strength, and your love for the underdog. Every unbiased observer among you roots for the underdog. When you walk in the woods the squirrels don't bring you their peanuts, but you carry peanuts for them. The gulls don't bring you their lunches, but you throw your lunches to them. And signs are required at every zoo to keep you from feeding the underdog. Out of the strength to save yourselves has come the strength to save others. You are Star Throwers. Hundreds of millions of years of distress have gone into that strength, and the salt of those eyes. For hundreds of millions of years you have been bullied by the superior genetic technologies of better adapted species. You were hurt by the pincers of crabs, bled by the syringes of insects and killed by the syringes of snakes. You were scratched and torn by the talons and beaks of birds, crushed by the hoofs of mammals, tossed by their antlers and gored by their horns. Losing the sea to the fins of faster fishes, long ago, and to the flukes of faster mammals, only yesterday, you came ashore again, only to be slashed by the fangs of cats, descended by another trail, another trial, from that same Devonian fish. Into every new habitat you came, you came lately. Everywhere you looked there was someone ahead of you. Everything you could do they could do better. Every vicissitude of your misfortune had robbed you of some piece of genetic hardware which could have saved you in some niche, till, by the time you came, a second time, ashore, you had no fins, you had no flukes, you had no tusks, you had no claws, you had no hoofs, you had no fur. You were a ne'er-do-well's ne'er-do-well, protecting naked babies in the grass. Without pincers, without syringe, without talons, without beak and without wings you came ashore, with no trunk, no hoofs, no fangs and no fur. But something else you had. Behind your furrowed brow you had a better brain. Every single blow of your misfortune, which drove you to another niche and robbed you of some piece of genetic technology, had hammered on its anvil some improvement in your brain till you had now the gleam of knowledge in your eye. At the cost of losing every piece of hard-won hardware you have built the software behind your eyes. You have a brain to wonder and to understand. And you have breasts to feed the growing brain of your helpless offspring. And you have tools, and you have words to tell your offspring how to use them. And you have fire to protect both your infant and your breasts from the bullying of furry beasts with fangs and claws and chattering teeth. Only in your nakedness have your lost your fear of fire, driven by the cold and by your terror of the hardware of other species. Your every misfortune you have turned to your account. Through the unfortunate necessity of prolonged parental care has come the growth of that brain that uses fire. Only through the prolonging of your youth has come your wisdom which began in the swamp, long ago, around those bubbles in your brain. You are the descendants of that air- breathing fish, and the children of children who never grow up. Now, for the first time, you have a software technology before which all the genetic hardware has gone down. Now, with non-genetic hardware, you out-swim the fish, you out-run the cats, you out-fly the birds, and you took down from the moon, and you smile. Just think what went into that smile. You have been pushed and bullied till you can be pushed and bullied no more. Every time you went down before the onslaught of some piece of genetic hardware you have come back with some unexpected improvement in the software behind your eyes, till now, with your software technology and the use of non-genetic hardware, you, the eternal underdog, can bully any species that ever bullied you. But with your new-won strength has come the frown of your puzzlement, the salt of your tears, and your smile. Why should dog eat dog? Why should a species, once bullied, bully back against the species that bullied it? The furrowed brow has noticed and the salty eyes are wet. You are the underdog's underdog, and now that hand, once fin, once paw, lengthened for swinging in the trees, and flattened for swimming in the sea, now that hand, grown old, reaches out to touch, in consolation, those who, in the past, have bullied it. Was it not their bullying that made you what you are? You are the Star Thrower, throwing the broken starfish back into the sea. Save the condor! Save the whales! Save the leopard! Save the shark! Save that menace of the seas against whose fearful jaws you learned to clench your fist. You are the only creatures who ever knew that the rest of the creatures are just like you. You are the only creatures to have figured it out, that you got into this plight through an uncertainty and cannot possibly get out through a transformation. Knowledge is the key. That ancient, bullied hand still reaches out. That ancient, furrowed brow has understood, and now the strength of knowledge lights those salty eyes. The end is not far, and, to one who sees beyond the transformations, the end is already within reach. The journey has been immense, and, in its immensity, it has yet to run, but the journey has an end which cannot possibly be reached by journeying. We must start from where we are. We cannot start from somewhere else. And where we are is embodied in a form with a long genetic past, with genetic predilections and with genetic programming on how to seek the real. That is, we start with the consciousness of our identity with such a form. We are programmed to seek the changeless, the infinite, the undivided, because there is nothing else to seek. There are no other goals. Toward that runs whatever runs. Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when a man has a thorn stuck in his foot, he picks another thorn; then, with the help of the second, he removes the first and throws both thorns away. It is by understanding and making use of our genetic programming that we overcome our problem. Although the screen through which we view the reality is fundamentally apparitional, our viewing of the screen, our understanding of the screen, is largely the result of transformations. It is colored by our long genetic past, and therein lies part of our problem. Had it been a simple apparition, the solution to our problem would have been a simple piece of knowledge. But it is not at all that simple. We have this long genetic past through which we must worm. Seen from the standpoint of our genetic programming, Sadhana is a device for countercheating the genes. The genes have us programmed to seek the real through action, through transformational causation. They have cheated us into the belief that through action we can reach what we seek. But what we seek is beyond the screen thrown up by the apparition, while all action, its origin, its end and its means, exist within it. We are cheated into the belief that within time and space we can find and grasp that which is beyond all time and space. "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again." Our problem is how to drink in such a way that the drinking erodes the apparition in which our thirst, itself, had its origin. Our problem is to do what we do in such a way that our discrimination and our renunciation transcend the screen. The screen through which we glimpse the reality has become enormously complicated by the long series of genetic transformations through which our race has run. And, to a very large extent, our choice of journeys, as well as the vistas which unfold along the way, are dictated by that long genetic past. The reason that we offer, in our worship, the choicest fruits and flowers is because some hundred million years ago, about when we invented milk, the plants invented flowers and fruits, and the consequent spreading of the plants made possible the spreading of our ancestors across the land masses of this planet. The proliferation of the mammals awaited the spreading of the plants. The beauty of the flowers is not in the flowers, but in our own genetic response. It is not that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is in the reality, but our ability to see it is under the thralldom of the genes. Where we would offer flowers, the vulture, surely, would offer a long-dead deer.