Time to kill the expression - ‘I am ONLY human!’

The other day I was yanked out of my mid-day nap, by the most BIZARRE dream I had seen in a while. The central character of the plot, a squint eyed bulldozer of an ant with a plan to dislodge humanity off its very callous roots!

WOW! Way to go my subconscious! I knew something was in the making, now that I had deprived you over 3 days of sound sleep; but hardly was I prepared for such a payback.

An ANT - How can a tiny spec of a life such as that, barely moving in and out of its mud igloo, assume such mammoth proportion? Furthermore, plot to take on a race that’s dominated the scene for nothing less than 6 million years!

But nay, my super-persistent subconscious was bustling to treat me a with a long-due sci-fi extravaganza. And so, the bizzaro dream went on through all the customary motions of a Hollywood sci-fi essential. And this ant leader, lets call him Mr. X, who accidentally got exposed to some goofy gamma rays in a freak experiment and gained some extra pounds, brain cells and biceps complimentary, is going about his business, forging his troop of warrior ants from around the globe, each sized up to a human toddler.

By about this point, my otherwise dormant conscious mind, decides to turn into a cinema critic and nudges – Hey, this is a rip off from Hollywood, isn’t it! Apes worked out so much better! Buzz off…

My subconscious notwithstanding, sure enough had Mr. X continue his glorious march and rally his forces to the doorsteps of the holy trinity of the human armed forces – Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping & Donald Trump. Just when I though it couldn’t get any more hysterical!

Being a sci-fi buff myself, this one kept me engaged for a while, especially with ‘the trinity’ antics (you can let your creativity go wild here), until the climax hastily shaped into a 4D war zone, and we, the much superior contemporaries got poorly outnumbered and hustled into a crushing defeat. Again, way to go, my subconscious!

Finally, I woke up with a mild hangover of this sinful defeat, by the hands of one Mr.X, a singled out evolutionary mishap, who converged the long-undermined species to become the new dominant race on Earth.

By this time, I had experienced enough virtual dramatics to be utterly relieved on having left all that behind!

What didn’t leave me though, was a lingering question which seldom claims our attention in daily life – What makes us ‘Humans’ so unique among so many others in the animal kingdom? So much so, that millions of species and their unique traits put together could not suppress our thumping forward march on Earth.

Was it the evolutionary opposing thumb, which gave us the advantage to grasp objects and make tools that could cut through anything? Or was it our super-sized brain that that gave us a leap frog benefit over our counterparts? More likely, it was a combination of hundreds of such evolutionary factors which incidentally only favored a SINGLE RACE on Earth.

Why just us? Why couldn’t ants evolve into some upgraded version of themselves? Coupled with their naturally endowed qualities of discipline, strength, focus and cohesive team work, a progressive evolutionary pattern over some million years would have given them some serious edge over our own humble upsurge. And what about our pre-civilization cousins, the apes, who too got left behind soon enough? There are thousands of potential contenders out there, but none like us. We had something extraordinary going for us. The answer is still not obvious, even after a hundred years of recorded research. Is this only an incidental result of the many half chances lining up BEAUTIFULLY for us?

Let’s begin by bringing to fore, the central object of our discussion; the human body, its very nature and the potential it holds to reach even higher states.

If, for a moment, we are to take our eyes off logical reasoning, the bedrock of all our scientific endeavors to date, we might be able to shed some new light into this argument. A fresh perspective is always welcome, isn’t it?

For this, lets lean towards some old snippets of texts laid out by our predecessors. The most ancient and holy of the Hindu trinity, the Vedas, pronounce that it took each of us aeons of births, going through various forms like plants, birds & animals, 8,400,000 to be precise, before we stumbled upon this magnificent instrument of the Human body. All of nature, as it were, is a fluid version of this hierarchical framework.

As we pass by a tiny sparrow or a mammoth elephant, each of whom at that moment, are actually grappling their way through this primeval hierarchy to get to where WE have managed to reach, we can take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary endurance that this would have demanded of us.

Without delving too deep into the metaphysical angle, let’s try and expound only on this piece of information, assuming for now, that this was a reliable condensation from a text which was derived after many centuries of human perusal.

Does this mean that we in fact are at the helm of this hierarchy? Top of the pile? And if not, who is?

The closest case made in these lines is in the Manu Smriti (Laws of Manu), which says that, we are participants of this mega marathon, organized at the scale of a universal life cycle. A cycle that lasts 4,320,000 years and progresses through 4 sub stages, Yugas or Value cycles. At the onset of this cycle, many multitudes of potential souls are set off on this precarious race which puts them through millions of transformations. As they shed one form after the other, they steadily keep inching toward their eventual goal - Realization of the penultimate, or the human form and from there, the ultimate - Godly form.

The Vedas concur that we are all Jiv-atmaas, a figment of the Ultimate Soul – Param-atmaa. As a seed contains all the compositions and properties from its tree, in potential form, so we as Jiv-atmaas are enshrined with the same energy as our creator. But the bit that makes this tricky game almost ruthless, is that, the apparent goal is ever elusive. We are not even aware of the past forms we donned, let alone figuring the roadmap to the finishing line. This lends little support to the cause of planning our long joyride to a relatively remote destination. Am I then, right to assert that the fault lies in the design?

And what if the design was always meant to be this way? While we can hardly function without it in our daily transactions, MEMORY in fact, proves to be much of a detractor than a guide on the long run. Especially, considering the mind’s tendency to condition our intellect with so many rhetorical influences. The utility of memory in the shorter formats is magnanimous, while on the longer run, it oftentimes leaves much of an opinionated trail that lends obscure decision making. Open argument there.

If our entire goalless journey is meant to lead us past all the roughs and pitfalls, all the trials and turmoil, to eventually realize something, that SOMETHING better be worthwhile! Well, the question beckons the greatest endeavors that mankind can fulfill or should I say, is MEANT to fulfill -Realization of the PARAM ATMAA. When that happens, life comes full circle, completes an equinox per-se, to finally merge with its creator.

In this entire setting, the human body plays the perfect carrier to help our on-board passengers – The Jiv-atmaa to its preferred destination. After having procured this instrument designed with such precision and intricacy, our subsequent effort then, should ideally be placed on actions that will propel us through this last lap in the journey. But here is where the lack of roadmap, and absence of a figurative goal even, gets accentuated. A blindfolded sprinter faces the biggest dilemma of all – when should he stop running, with no finishing line in sight?

How different would our lives be if the guidelines were clear right at the onset. Our parents, teachers and society as a whole culminated to this single purpose of all human endeavor. But all this entertainment would have been amiss, wouldn’t it? We all play the proverbial 'headless chicken', running around all the wrong objects. But who is to blame?

Here I again turn to our Vedic past. The Manu Smriti proclaims, that the last Value cycle, the Kali Yuga, is meant to be one hell of a ride, where the human kind and our value systems will reach its precipice; making it the most difficult of the 4 Yugas to attain realization. Our bodies have to transcend the bondage levied by our senses and claim the higher plains of the mind, intellect and further our Soul, the Jiv-atmaa. Majority of us though, get engulfed in the bondage of our ingeniously crafted human form. Yet, this is the best instrument we got.

Well, so much for taking my subconscious mind for granted. Lessons can be found at the most unexpected quarters, all we need is to keep our eyes open. In my case however, eyes closed worked out better!

 Do share your thoughts on the comments section below, as I learn more from exchange than my monologues. :)