Skip to main content

Mystery


Philosopher Gabriel Marcel drew an interesting distinction between problem and mystery.  Problems have solutions, he said, while mysteries are to be enjoyed unsolved.  “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived” is an aphorism attributed to Marcel. 

Too many things lie beyond our capacity for solutions.  The earthquakes and the cyclones belong to the nonhuman side of the universe, beyond human control.  When the variegated colours and sounds of nature enchant us we are immersing ourselves in the mystery of the same nonhuman universe. 

The universe does not comprehend the difference between the shifting of the tectonic plates and the warbling of the nightingale, between a shipwreck and a swan’s neck. 

The heavens are indifferent whether lightning strikes down the greatest monument or Beethoven composes the sweetest symphony.  The sense of wonder or despair belongs to the human consciousness.  The heavens are above and beyond the need for wonder as well as despair.  We don’t like that indifference.  Our hearts long to feel emotions such as love and hatred, wonder and despair.  That’s why we need a god (or many gods) in the heavens.  To mitigate the inhuman indifference of the heavens.  To be our alter egos up there in the emptiness, the scary emptiness, the emptiness that stares into our hearts. 

The emptiness and the indifference of the heavens is the mystery that we have to live.  Instead we fill that emptiness with mumbo jumbo offered to gods with our own shapes.



Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 6, 2015 at 10:57 AM

    A while ago, I had an argument with someone who said everything can be explained and anything that cannot be explained does not exist or is unreal. Of course, after giving up on trying to make the person understand that not everything "needs" to be explained, I went and did what every blogger would do - I wrote a poem about the incident! ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2015 at 12:14 PM

      The ability to stand in doubt and wonder, to experience the awe, is not given to all, I think. Most people need to explain everything, even the mystery! No use of arguing with such people. They can at best impose a religion on you but won't ever understand the meaning of even that religion!

      Delete
  2. AmitAagApril 6, 2015 at 11:42 AM

    One of the greatest geniuses of our times, believed to have had the highest IQ said:
    "The more I know the more I come to know that I don't know!"
    (...and we dim wits think we know!!)
    The Mystery is something to be experienced and enjoyed rather than attempted to be explained, for it is beyond words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2015 at 12:16 PM

      The more we know the wider our perception becomes thus opening up wider areas before us... then we realise there's a lot more that we had not noticed earlier... Small minds need to compartmentalise everything!

      Delete
  3. Shesha ChaturvediApril 6, 2015 at 1:07 PM

    Things are some times simpler when we don't know. They are lived better n peacefully. In urge to know everything we somewhere disown the beauty of mystery and unexpectedness... Sometimes ignorance is bliss and sometimes having a God(s) is a strength to walk and enjoy an unseen passage and to live a negative phase with a ray of hope! Like said before not everything needs to be explained, something's are to be left untouched...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roohi BhatnagarApril 6, 2015 at 4:10 PM

    Such profound words, Matheikal :) "In the sky there is no distinction of east and west; people create the distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2015 at 5:13 PM

      Yes, Roohi, eternity has no measurements. Nor has infinity. We, human beings, need to limit them within structures. And then some of us fight in the name of those structures we imposed.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
12 comments
Read more

Good Life

I introduced A C Grayling’s book, The God Argument , in two earlier posts.   This post presents the professor’s views on good life.   Grayling posits seven characteristics of a good life.   The first characteristic is that a good life is a meaningful one.   Meaning is “a set of values and their associated goals that give a life its shape and direction.”   Having children to look after or achieving success in one’s profession or any other very ordinary goal can make life meaningful.   But Grayling says quoting Oscar Wilde that everyone’s map of the world should have a Utopia on it.   That is, everyone should dream of a better world and strive to materialise that dream, if life is to be truly meaningful.   Ability to form relationships with other people is the second characteristic.   Intimacy with at least one other person is an important feature of a meaningful life.   “Good relationships make better people,” says G...
21 comments
Read more

Georges Lemaitre: The Priest and the Scientist

Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966) The Big Bang theory that brought about a new revolution in science was proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lamaitre. When this priest-scientist suggested that the universe began from a “primeval atom,” Pope Pius XII was eager to link that primeval entity with God. But Rev Lemaitre told the Pope gently enough that science and religion are two different things and it’d be better to keep them separate.   Both science and religion are valid ways to truth, according to Lemaitre. Science uses the mind and religion uses the heart. Speaking more precisely, science investigates how the universe works, and religion explores why anything exists at all. Lemaitre was very uncomfortable when one tried to invade the other. God is not a filler of the gaps in science, Lemaitre asserted. We should not invoke God to explain what science cannot. Science has its limits precisely because it is absolutely rational. Although intuition and imagination may lead a scient...
4 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
6 comments
Read more