Midnight Musings - Intoxication

Beneath a sky where day and night entwine,

The stars emerge as dusk begins to shine...

Those are the starting lines of a beautiful poem, But anyway, today I`m not in the mood to write one.

So for a change, let's not take the poetic route. And hop straight onto the bandwagon of my thought train of my memories.

That beautiful evening, I was at Bugle Rock Park, a place I love and look forward to visiting whenever I'm in Bengaluru. I was sitting on a rock, Opposite to me was my dear friend, Sincerely trying to meditate. I had one lollipop in my upper shirt pocket. I removed the wrapper of the candy and placed it in the mud. After a moment, I saw an ant, approaching the candy, It inspected it for some time, with its antlers. After another moment or two, I saw that the whole candy was swarmed by ants. 

I started observing the trail of ants leading to the candy. Individually their movements were completely random. But the group of ants together displayed a perfect pattern of movement. I read it somewhere, a bunch of random things acting together and creating patterns, It's called emergence. Such a fascinating idea!!!. It`s similar to how neural networks work, Where each neuron does something random, But together a neural network emerges into intelligence. It`s also something that is the idea behind Gestalt Psychology.

Then suddenly, I saw many entering the park from the BMS College for Women, as it was its closing time. The college was located right in the front of the Bugle Rock Park. I was observing them, They split and took random paths, And I noticed, that some were going to Sri Renuka Yellamma Temple, Which is located just near Bugle Rock Park.

I looked up, The birds were flying home to their nests. I could hear their chirping, People laughing, and The Harathi from the Renuka Yellamma temple. Then all of a sudden, I remembered that someone I know was telling me how they stay near Entropy Order Chaos, A pizza place in Bengaluru. Well for a moment, I was blank, then started thinking. Not about pizzas, But about entropy, order, or chaos. Entropy, Isn`t it is described by thermodynamics second law? That anything will approach randomness or disorder gradually over time. Then I wondered is emergence the polar opposite of entropy? Where in emergence there is order, gradually over time. But after some time I realized that emergence does not oppose entropy, but complements it. Even when everything in the universe is moving towards higher entropy, The localized pockets of it are showing emergence. Well, Then I thought that there was no point in thinking about these two in comparison as entropy is a measure and emergence is a property or phenomenon.

Then I looked back at the candy I placed in the mud earlier. Some of the ants looked over energetic and some slowed down relatively compared to when I observed earlier (Are they full ? Or they are worker ants!!! I was afraid, better move a little away I thought).

Then I wondered, Did the slower ones or the super active ones get intoxicated by the sugar? It intrigued me, I googled it and found out that it was highly unlikely. Then I looked away from my phone, I could see one girl smoking a cigarette, looking into the sky. Well, she looked interesting!... What is she thinking about? She was not even blinking her eyes, Just smoking. I wondered, Was she Intoxicated?. No, she was not. Well, not in the medical sense, it cannot be called intoxication if it`s just a cigarette. Then I thought, there must be something in an activity or a substance, at a fundamental level that is altering her mind, Or pulling her mind in a certain direction. Well, I thought for the sake of my thought, I would like to call it Intoxication.

I remembered something that was taught to me in my first year of engineering mathematics.

In the above example of a 2x2 matrix, Although there are two columns and two rows, They do not represent any complex pattern or information, Simply put the first column vector multiplied by two gives out the second column vector. The same goes for the row vectors. i.e. The whole thing just points to only one direction. I recall discussing direction and vectors in my previous articles: Vectors & Whats the point ?. The gist of the lesson was that even under the complexly looking matrices or people or their behaviors, there are fundamental ideas that represent the entire data simply and concisely.

Then I questioned myself, What could be the fundamental ideas that can explain Intoxication. And there are multiple definitions in legal, psychological, and medicinal terms. So I set out to jump on another thought train (However lousy it may sound) to contemplate on Intoxication.

I Imagined a child, with age of a year or two. I tried to imagined how they behave, They are ever intrigued, intensely curious, and fascinated with anything interesting or new. Well, Can I say they are intoxicated, at least in the metaphorical sense? Well no substance is involved here, And they are not having an altered state. So no Intoxication in that sense, but their mind is being pulled in some direction driven by dopamine in learning and growing. It's black and white, in the case of the children, there is no intoxication.

Coming to teenagers, Since their brains are not fully developed, particularly the pre-frontal cortex, It's highly likely that because of this, they are more influenced by rewards and emotions. I wondered, if then, there should also be a chance of them experiencing states of natural intoxication. Well, I noted down in my phone to research more about the existing literature on the possibility of natural intoxication in teenagers. 

Well, it is all quite intriguing to think about...!. I know of conventional intoxication by alcohol, drugs, and other substances which causes an altered state and may cause motor dysfunction. Well, I thought about addiction, Which may have intoxication as one of its factors but never have a direct association, and also a direct association did not make any sense in my head. That was a grey area that I was not interested in thinking about.

Well, it occurred to me that some people call love an intoxication. True...!. 

I thought..., Love, a potion, brewed by time, desperation, or attraction. There is nothing sweeter than the pinnacle of love, and there is nothing bitter than the pain caused by love. It's the most powerful natural intoxication, any human can experience.

I noticed that whenever anyone, including myself, thinks about love, their poetic persona naturally emerges. So I decided, For the sake of the thought, I killed that poet in me. Then I started questioning, What part of love really intoxicates people?. The longing for intimacy? The episodic memories of affection? , The inability to forget certain memories ?. From what I know, I could not come to any conclusion in my mind. Biologically, the need for intimacy is fueled by neurochemicals like oxytocin and dopamine, As it is wired in the brain to seek relationships for evolutionary purposes. If you consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs, love satisfies the fundamental human need of belonging. And also in another sense, the brain activity of a heroin addict and the brain activity of a person who is deeply in love is not different. Also, love makes pleasure even more pleasurable and pain even more deeper. 

So I understood the idea, that love is one of the fundamental entities that can cause intoxication.   

Well, these are studied everywhere anyway, Then I wondered for some time if there was a more fundamental thing that is fundamental to intoxication?

I was blank for some time. I looked around, My friend was still in his meditation. Gradually, my mind consciously shifted to the idea of meditation itself. I unconsciously chanted :

 "...kriyaheenam...Sureswari,

Yath poojitham maya devi paripoornam thadasthuthe"

Then immediately I asked myself the most important question, If intoxication causes an altered state, What is the natural state of humans? Is the state we are assuming to be normal an altered state? Are we intoxicated by this world projecting itself into our minds?.

If I borrow the idea of kosha from the Mandukya Upanishad. The innermost (kosha) body we have is Anandamayakosha (Body made of pure bliss). Then I thought, that Atman`s blissful state is the real state, And we are intoxicated by this world. And when we find ourselves in an enlightened one`s abode, 

we are intoxicated by the glance at the experience of para brahman. 

Getting intoxicated by Maya, Getting intoxicated by experience of para brahman, But who is the one getting intoxicated by either of them? The para brahman itself.

Shittttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..................... I felt a sharp sting on my leg—one of the ants had bitten me!

I returned to my thoughts and wondered: Had I just reinvented the wheel? Contemplating and arriving at ideas that seemed strikingly similar to what Sanatanis have been saying for ages?

It was already late for our flight, so my friend and I quickly took a few pictures and headed back to the airport.