Identity and Transcendence

Identification with something, somebody, or some name may appears to be just a process of categorization for the purpose of ease, however this process has profound effects on our thoughts, practices, relationships, and the whole process of association and disassociation take place around the nucleus of self-identified being. Identification starts with attraction, motivation, and movement towards something or somebody as a desired object, a lack, which is felt to be fulfilled the moment one starts identifying himself or herself with that desired identity; desire appears as dynamics, a moving force, which is fulfilled anyway, even if one remains unaware about it. People usually identify as a separate human body, ego, separate mind, race, caste, gender, nationality, life, and what not. Identity is always already a limited belief. If one gazes the Universe with a materialistic conception just like an opportunity to extract resources for commercialized purposes, everything, from plants, animals, to moons and stars, they appear to be soulless objects to be owned and exploited. On the contrary, realizing everything and everyone as a part of me, a part of life, a dust of cosmos, makes the stranger objects our own self. Realizing cosmic consciousness is the true essence of all meditations, religious, scientific, philosophical, or psychological. The anxiety of being stranger in the world fades away the moment this profound realization is felt by our own self. We are all sparks of the life, get our moments of illumination in different forms. Looking meditatively in the eyes of everyone and everything makes us realize that we are either all or none. In both ways, scientifically or spiritually, cosmic reality reveals in its full dimensions. We are limited by our self-identification, and realize ourselves as life in the moment of transcendence from an identified body of ego to limitless, infinite life. This sense is not absent anywhere, but hidden from our limited perspectives.

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Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

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BEING AND BECOMING

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