Indra

Its amazing what we can learn out of a simple thing called Fire. The something we see everyday but it never crossed our minds on what it could convey to us. During my Vedic research, and even till today, I find that many other Deities/Dynamics/Mechanisms, whatever you may call them, really do have Agni as their basis which allows them to be converted to living things. It also actually looks like everything leads to Agni. A very Zorastrian thought but true in nature. Agni seems to the central point of attraction, like a feminine surrounded by men who admire her beauty. The Egyptian texts have in fact depicted their Agni counterpart, Shu, as feminine. Well, the Egyptians too new about this commonality and I was amazed at the correlation between Vedic Ideology and the Egyptian Ideology. The Egyptians too converted all dynamics into living things and explained concepts in a dramatic style. At some point in my blog, I will definitely post a tour of the Egyptian Sacred Texts. I'm hoping to find the same in the Greek Mythological Texts and once I do I will post a tour of it probably right after the Egyptians. And if I do the same for the Sumerian Texts of Mesopotamia also, we will complete the Alexandrian Empire.

INDRA:

The Rig Veda describes Indra to be the one who joins two ends to make a cycle. And so they termed him as the Thunderbolt Bearer. Thunder... something that signifies that there is going to be a good amount of rain. Rain is something that connects the sky to the ground and whatever amount of water evaporated from the ocean falls back there. Geologists call this the Water "Cycle". Everything is a cycle in nature. There is also a nitrogen cycle. It ensures sustainability. So if you have to sustain life, we need a cycle. Don't we? We breathe in oxygen and let out carbon-dioxide which the plants take in and let out oxygen for us. It's a balance between the "want" factor. We want oxygen and they want carbon-dioxide, and we give each other what we want in return for getting what we want. Balance... another reason why a cycle is meant for. We can definitely break down the meaning like this, "If someone slaps your left cheek, you don't slap his right cheek, you slap his left cheek because its easier to do so since the other guy's hand isn't in the way already".

Making two ends meet is like drawing any closed loop or shape. It define the shape as a single separate entity. Our body structure for example is a closed loop. Have you ever seen those crime scenes where the the police draws on the floor a neat drawing of the awkward position the victim died? There's a closed loop there. Have you ever heard of closed loop integrals in mathematics or physics? It's the same idea. If you think deeper, even light and sound, or lightning and thunder, (just to conform with Indra in our discussion) are cyclic in nature. They only differ in frequency. You can come across the common spectrum chart that shows from audible frequencies to radio frequencies to the visible spectrum to the non visible spectrum or may be the heat spectrum (infrared and ultraviolet) to the dangerous spectrum. Everything is cyclic or in some form of closed loop.

If you are an electrical engineer, you would have heard the Kirchoff's Voltage Law that says sum of all voltages in a "closed loop" equal to zero. Zero... that signifies a "balance". For the non electrical engineers, that's the same as saying that if a beaker has a 1 ml capacity, you can pour different liquids in it uptil the 1 ml limit, but it should be filled completely. The difference between the total amount of liquid and the maximum capacity become zero. So the "balance" factor creates limits of what can be done... limits mean its bounded or there are boundaries to the solution... boundaries are closely associated with closed loop structures. If I had to draw this, I will draw a circle (which is in the shape of a "cycle"), draw three lines from the center to show three different parameters for example, and draw a new set of boundaries and still get a closed loop structure.



You might have noticed by now that even time is cyclic. The whole purpose of the clock is to serve that. Propagation or communication also occurs in rings that "circular" in nature. Music also follows a cycle. Ask a musician, he/she will tell you that if a composition starts from one harmonic set, it ends in the same harmonic set to make sure it sounds complete. That also suggests that the music of our speech follows the same thing. The Rig Veda actually describes this as everything following in a cyclic manner by saying that Indra rules everything. May be not at the time of creation, but only in the end when he eventually rules everything. So the fact is everything follows the cycle or a closed loop fashion and is not a cycle or a closed loop fashion and so the sacrificing part doesn't belong to Indra. Remember I included the fashion part with closed loop. So it redefines things to follow a closed loop fashion. So since the sacrificing part is not a property of Indra, this suggests that real learning cannot happen by just looking at how things look like. This sort of learning, if in case it occurs, is "bounded" and doesn't show you anything beyond it. Therefore illusion is an aspect of Indra. Indra as a ruler doesn't want show you everything, just like a ruler of any country who tries to create an illusion to the public about his/her actions and motives.

So if ancient texts talk about someone uprooting Indra or defeating Indra, it means that someone became an expert in illusionary craftsmenship. Indrajeet... Indian Mythology says he was the first one to master illusionary crafts.

There's another interesting thing the Vedas talk about. It is the relation of Indra as Agni's brother. I will dedicate my next post to explaining this relationship in detail. For now to give you a hint, we can understand this relationship by just taking one of the characteristics of each one and see how they are linked. Let's take the "learning" aspect of Agni and the "cyclic" aspect of Indra. It suggests that learning can happen through some sort of feedback. Hmmmmm... I gave an example of a chemical analysis in my previous post. The chemist "gives" the chemical compound a test compound, which reacts to it and turns red in color. This is "seen" by the chemist and he/she "infers" that the chemical compound is a sugar-based compound. Neural engineers would have understood this immediately. They call learning through feedback as unsupervised learning. Commercial industries use customer feedback to learn how their products reach their customers. It definitely can't tell them everything, but its a start. Just like how learning starts. The apple fell on Newton's head which didn't tell him everything immediately about why the apple fell down and why it didn't go up. But it was a start for him. He delved deeper and found the real reason.

Therefore looking at how things look like is just a start. Delving deeper can tell you a lot more of the matter and the real reason of why it existed. A good way of saying this: "avoid prejudice"... it can save you from a lot of trouble. Relying on Indra can lead you into trouble... which is why most Puranas depict Indra as a trouble-maker.