Today is Deepavali so I dedicate this piece to the creator of Maya and Lila,
The big question is whatever we see around us, is it a reality or just Maya, the illusion ? And by the way who has created this illusion ? It does not seems to be a work of a mortal, so the easiest thing is to name the person who created it as God.
In ancient Vedic scriptures Maya connotes something akin to a magic show or an illusion where things appear to be present but not what they seem.It is also interpreted as a spiritual concept connoting 'that which exists, but is constantly changing thus spiritually unreal.' On the other hand, Lila, another ancient concept, can be loosely termed as the noun 'sport' or 'play'. Within the non dualistic school of thought,'Lila' is a way to describe all reality including the cosmos as the outcome of creative play by Divine Absolute, the brahmn. In dualistic school of thought, the 'Lila' refers to activities of God as well as the macrocosmic actions of the manifest universe. In both schools of thought, 'Lila' indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahmn as it continually reinvents itself. Together 'Maya' and 'Lila' can be loosely translated as a game of magic realism or virtual reality.
Noted Swedish Philosopher Nick Bostrom echoed the same thing in 2001 in his essay 'Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?'
He came to striking conclusion that there is a significant probability that the world in which we are living in is a computer simulation much like Neo and his cohorts were in the screen triology. 'The Matrix'. And that it is probably a game being played by an advance civilization of our far more advanced civilization of our far-removed descendants in the future for their pleasure, edification or both.
Bostrom realized that like we play realistic games on our laptops these days where we simulate some limited facets of reality. In the future it might be theoretically possible to create a machine with enough computing power to simulate both the human mind and the universe in sufficient details to create a simulation that would be indistinguishable from our 'real' universe-where, in fact, our brain too would be part of simulation, alongwith all our memories, family history and socially extended narratives.
The putative link between 'Lila' / 'Maya' archetypal model and simulation model and the simulation hypothesis was not taken seriously by anything more than may be a per cent or two of the scientific community. In September this year, analysts at bank of America, Merill Lynch upped the ante by suggesting there was 20 to 50 per cent chance that our world is a Matrix style virtual reality. They said,'It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and computing power, members of our future civilizations could have decided to run a simulation of their ancestors.'
Not to be left behind, Elon Musk the Space X and Tesla CEO said at a recently concluded conference in California that he believed there was only 'one in billions' chance we are not living in computer simulation. Elon observed, 'Forty years back we had a computer game called 'Pong'-two rectangles and a dot. That is where we were. Now we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and its getting better and better over the years. and soon we will have virtual reality, we have augmented reality. If we assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.'
Voicing similar thought, renowned astrophysicist and cosmologist Neil DeGrasse says,' Likelihood of the universe being a simulation may be very high'.
Now two Silicon Valley tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage top quality information scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation by finding evidence, proof and some possible way out if achievable.
There are two evidences that lead some of our finest minds to embark on such an out of the world intellectual ride. The first is Anthropic Principle. This states that the universe seems to have been uniquely fine - tuned in the formation and working of physical laws in order too support planets like ours and living systems such as we the human beings. Meaning if any one of the universal constants-like gravitational constant for instance-were even infinitesimally shifted in value, galaxies and stars would not form. So planet would not form, we would also not be there. One explanation is that the conditions were deliberately set in place with intention of giving us life. The second is pixellation. The next time you play any computer game which has realistic imagery, just keep zooming in. After a point, you will find that the image vanishes and morphs into individually unrecognizable and blurred out pixels. If reality were really computer game the same thing should happen-and quantum theory says it does. apparently space and time are both pixelated or grainy at the smallest scale. It is called quantum foam from which our reality as we see it on a macro scale actually arises.
So the time has come that we have to understand well that the entirety of all our legitimacy including our own lives and the whole universal fitment has actually been created by an external entity ? That is what most of the religions have been saying all along. Goswami Tulsidas aptly wrote 'Sabhin Nachavat Nath Gusaain' .
So in technical lingo God may be the programmer who want us to know that she or he exists, and wrote code to give us an innate feeling of having been created.
In ancient Vedic scriptures Maya connotes something akin to a magic show or an illusion where things appear to be present but not what they seem.It is also interpreted as a spiritual concept connoting 'that which exists, but is constantly changing thus spiritually unreal.' On the other hand, Lila, another ancient concept, can be loosely termed as the noun 'sport' or 'play'. Within the non dualistic school of thought,'Lila' is a way to describe all reality including the cosmos as the outcome of creative play by Divine Absolute, the brahmn. In dualistic school of thought, the 'Lila' refers to activities of God as well as the macrocosmic actions of the manifest universe. In both schools of thought, 'Lila' indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahmn as it continually reinvents itself. Together 'Maya' and 'Lila' can be loosely translated as a game of magic realism or virtual reality.
Noted Swedish Philosopher Nick Bostrom echoed the same thing in 2001 in his essay 'Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?'
He came to striking conclusion that there is a significant probability that the world in which we are living in is a computer simulation much like Neo and his cohorts were in the screen triology. 'The Matrix'. And that it is probably a game being played by an advance civilization of our far more advanced civilization of our far-removed descendants in the future for their pleasure, edification or both.
Bostrom realized that like we play realistic games on our laptops these days where we simulate some limited facets of reality. In the future it might be theoretically possible to create a machine with enough computing power to simulate both the human mind and the universe in sufficient details to create a simulation that would be indistinguishable from our 'real' universe-where, in fact, our brain too would be part of simulation, alongwith all our memories, family history and socially extended narratives.
The putative link between 'Lila' / 'Maya' archetypal model and simulation model and the simulation hypothesis was not taken seriously by anything more than may be a per cent or two of the scientific community. In September this year, analysts at bank of America, Merill Lynch upped the ante by suggesting there was 20 to 50 per cent chance that our world is a Matrix style virtual reality. They said,'It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and computing power, members of our future civilizations could have decided to run a simulation of their ancestors.'
Not to be left behind, Elon Musk the Space X and Tesla CEO said at a recently concluded conference in California that he believed there was only 'one in billions' chance we are not living in computer simulation. Elon observed, 'Forty years back we had a computer game called 'Pong'-two rectangles and a dot. That is where we were. Now we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and its getting better and better over the years. and soon we will have virtual reality, we have augmented reality. If we assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.'
Voicing similar thought, renowned astrophysicist and cosmologist Neil DeGrasse says,' Likelihood of the universe being a simulation may be very high'.
Now two Silicon Valley tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage top quality information scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation by finding evidence, proof and some possible way out if achievable.
There are two evidences that lead some of our finest minds to embark on such an out of the world intellectual ride. The first is Anthropic Principle. This states that the universe seems to have been uniquely fine - tuned in the formation and working of physical laws in order too support planets like ours and living systems such as we the human beings. Meaning if any one of the universal constants-like gravitational constant for instance-were even infinitesimally shifted in value, galaxies and stars would not form. So planet would not form, we would also not be there. One explanation is that the conditions were deliberately set in place with intention of giving us life. The second is pixellation. The next time you play any computer game which has realistic imagery, just keep zooming in. After a point, you will find that the image vanishes and morphs into individually unrecognizable and blurred out pixels. If reality were really computer game the same thing should happen-and quantum theory says it does. apparently space and time are both pixelated or grainy at the smallest scale. It is called quantum foam from which our reality as we see it on a macro scale actually arises.
So the time has come that we have to understand well that the entirety of all our legitimacy including our own lives and the whole universal fitment has actually been created by an external entity ? That is what most of the religions have been saying all along. Goswami Tulsidas aptly wrote 'Sabhin Nachavat Nath Gusaain' .
So in technical lingo God may be the programmer who want us to know that she or he exists, and wrote code to give us an innate feeling of having been created.
.jpg "A Gumnam Actress Strips Nude to Protest Auto/taxi Fare Hike")
