I Don’t Know…!

A Journey being with this Feeling!

A Facebook post (imagine that!) jogged my memory. A theoretical physicist friend of mine posted his case for Integrity. Central to this theme was the honesty that is required to recognize that, yes, indeed, I don’t know!

This got me thinking. My whole life has been a series of I don’t know (IDK). It began when I was a little boy… Can I hide from my Mom for the entire day in the house? I don’t know! Let me find out. And find out I did. This resulted in a bell being tied around my neck. I could hide but I could not be silent! Now I know.

Could I get away from not being selected to participate in a class play in school? I don’t know! Let me give it a shot. Well, I did dodge the recruitment process with an ingenious “drop” of the pencil and bending down below the desk to retrieve it; and staying down till the recruitment was done with. Well, it was a temporary win. (For the full story, you’ll have to come to one of our Happiness Program or just ask me)

Then there was this physics teacher who asked, how many ways can you measure the height of a building with a piece of rope, a stone and a stopwatch? I don’t know!! And then I started enumerating the various ways… Measuring the length of shadow cast; Measuring the (minute) difference in time period of the pendulum at the bottom and top of the building; Measuring the time it took for the stone to fall from the top to the bottom; And so on…! There are many MANY ways!! Now I know.

How thick can you coat paint on a wall before it starts to drip? I didn’t know… till I learned about Bingham Fluids! Now I know! Now I also know why we need to shake a bottle of ketchup before it starts to flow freely!! Its exactly the same reason!

And then there were moments of frustration; The moments when I was totally consumed with a task at hand and a question was asked of me. In such situations a frustrated “I DON’T KNOW!” came out. Till today, I don’t know. I never learned. That moment came and went and I remained, till today, ignorant! Nothing was learned after the frustrated I DON’T KNOW!

IDK is a beautiful feeling. There is an upward push in consciousness that happens when a beautiful IDK comes up! There is enthusiasm. There is excitement. It leads to expansion.

Except, when IDK comes from a frustrated space, it degenerates to ignorance becoming firmly entrenched in our consciousness. It leads to contraction.

I’ve heard my spiritual teacher, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, explain this process so beautifully in his discourse on the Ashtavakra Gita. I’ve been lucky enough to experience the beautiful I don’t know!

As we move through life, we start, as babies, with a dot. That dot is us. The dot represents all things we know. We, as babies, know zero. Gradually the learning process happens. We learn to recognize people; learn to crawl; learn to speak; The dot starts expanding into a small circle. The circumference starts growing and the boundary of our circle pushes outward. We start the process of “knowing”.

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The space inside the circle is our known space. The space outside the circle is our more-than-known or unknown space. Throughout our whole life, each one of us, we push this circle bigger and bigger. We move from the less-known to more-known.

And this brings me to God. Wait, what? I’ll connect the dots from my life experience at the intersection of Science & Spirituality.

What is God? Each one of us has our own definition. It has to be our own otherwise it does not work. We have to define it precisely. Only then can we decide whether we believe or not.

Here is my definition: God is everything that is more-than-known.

As babies, everything is more-than-known to us; As our circle of known grows, we push outward; we move towards the more-than-known; we move towards God. Bringing more of what I don’t know into my known space, I’ve been moving towards God all my life! And so has everyone else.

(I live my life at the intersection of Science & Spirituality.)

In Science, whenever I’ve figured something out, after that Eureka moment has passed, inevitably there is a tail of more questions. What about this? What about that and what-if such-and-such? And off I go working to bring the IDK into my known space. It requires perseverance. It requires determination to stick with the problem for long enough and courage to admit that, yes, there are things that I don’t know, yet!

In lock step with Science is my Spiritual practice. Twice a day I meditate. This too requires perseverance. This too requires determination to stick with this process for long enough time till the knowledge dawns. In the process of meditation, the movement from IDK to known happens through stillness and impartial observation. And this can be done, because, as the prominent physicist Richard Feynman said:

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

As such, impartial observation, in stillness, of ourself (a small piece of the fabric), will reveal the innermost workings of the Universe!

As we journey onward in life, we have to ask ourselves: Is our known space life-enhancing? Life-enhancing not only for us but also for the large majority of people around us?

This we have to answer for ourselves.

For this, we need Integrity.