What is the nature of reality? What is the fundamental building block of life? What is the grand unifying theory that connects everything? This has been the quest of man for centuries. He has searched for answers in everything. He has searched in words through philosophy; he has searched in creativity through art, he has searched in enquiry through science, and he has searched in silence through meditation.
More energy, time and money have been spent in this endeavor than all our other activities put together. All our scientific advancement, our cultural dynamism, even the wars we have fought is a direct consequence of trying to answer this all-important question; who are we and what is the nature of reality.
In philosophy, Adi Sankara of ancient India came closest to answering this question through the philosophy of Advaita or non-duality. In science, Einstein came closest through his Mass to Energy conversion equation. In poetry, Tagore came closest through his collection of poems Gitanjali. In mysticism and silence Buddha came the closest.
Every new generation of people has come up with ever newer and simpler ways of understanding and expressing the nature of reality. The quest is on and the whole world is participating in the process. Let us try another new way of expressing the nature of reality. As with all other theories, it will look silly when presented for the first time and its authenticity can be proven only by the test of time.
R = CTT (Reality = Consciousness multiplied by time and thoughts)
There are three entities that make up the world we live in; Thoughts provide us the content, time provides us the landscape and consciousness provides us the ability to perceive. Take away any one of these, our world simply falls apart. If there were only thoughts and no time to arrange them in some sequence, the world would not have existed. If there was only time and no thoughts, we would not have been able to grasp reality in words like the way we are doing now. If there were thoughts and time but no conscious being to perceive all this, then again our world would have been impossible.
Every single moment our world is being shaped by these three entities. ‘There is someone thinking all the time’ this has to be the fundamental building block of life. This sentence just by itself completes the equation; ‘someone’ provides the consciousness; his thoughts make up the content and his time becomes the landscape where thoughts are arranged.
We can play with this equation and arrange it in all possible combinations, it will always hold true. Yet, equations make us wonder if our world is so simple that an equation is always just a little too complicated to capture the simple truth of life. Everything seems like just another way of saying the same thing. Well, participating in this quest is more important than getting it right; I wanted only to participate!