On Interpretation

The topic of interpretation came up in a conversation I had been having someone. This is a vexed issue, yet one which I think is very important to resolve for any reasonably thoughtful person. We can help each other to an extent, but it can only be resolved by & for oneself by each individual. What follows is my limited attempt to highlight various aspects.

Let me begin with a story I read recently:

One day, Drona summoned two of his students, Yudhishtira and Duryodhan. “Spend a day in Hastinapur and find me a really bad man,” he told Yudhishtira. Then turning to Duryodhan, he said, “Spend a day in Hastinapur and find me a really good man.” The day passed. Drona waited for his students to complete the search. Finally, at sunset, the two returned, but with no one accompanying either of them. “Well, where are the men I asked you to find?” asked Drona.

Yudhishtira replied, “I scoured the city and went to every house. I met every man, woman and child. I really looked for a bad man but at the end of my search, I am convinced that everyone is the city is actually very nice. There is not a single bad person in Hastinapur.”

Duryodhan replied, “I don’t agree. I too scoured the city and went to every house. But everyone I met was a scoundrel. Even the children. There is no good man in Hastinapur.”

Drona heard both and said, “This is all Maya.”

The author then goes on to clarify what is meant by the word maya. It is usually simply translated as illusion in English, which is incorrect. Yet that is how most people seem to interpret this word. Maya derives from another Sanskrit root which means to measure. What the word maya tries to convey is that "...our understanding of the world depends on the measuring scale we subscribe to. Yudhishtira’s measuring scale failed to identify a single bad man in Hastinapur. Duryodhan’s measuring scale failed to identify a single good man in Hastinapur. Their opinions about Hastinapur said nothing about Hastinapur but about the measuring scales they subscribed to."

The way that they interpreted the behavior of others revealed more about themselves than the people they observed. We are the creators of our own limited worldview mistaking it for reality. That is not the same as saying that we are in illusion, because what we perceive as reality seems real enough to us. My guess is that depending upon how clear we are, either our sense of reality is way off the mark & quite distorted, or we somewhat see reality or the truth, but as if through veils. I have a notion that being intelligent is a never ending process wherein you constantly strive to uncover veil after veil so as to see the truth or reality as it is. If so, this would hold true whether we are trying to understand the world (the external) or our own self (the internal). Also, even amongst the most clear of people, their perception of reality is bound to be limited by their consciousness, however intelligent they may be. As a corollary, I can take our sense of vision as an example. Human beings do not have the ability to see the ultraviolet or the infrared spectrum. That is the limitation of the human eye. The eye of a bee can see some of the ultraviolet spectrum as well. Some other animals can see infrared. Some see only the primary colors - red, green & blue. Imagine what if we too could see some ultraviolet & infrared spectrum. Our sense of reality would be radically altered. A crow, instead of appearing to be in shades of grey, might appear multi-colored. Same with the mind as well: the nature of the human consciousness affects our perception of reality. If we evolve & have a different consciousness, our sense of reality will also be radically altered.

Conditioning also plays a major role in our lives. Although a lot of people talk about unlearning & unconditioning, I think that is almost always more a case of substituting one kind of conditioning with another. We see the world as we want to or the way we have been conditioned to see it. Our consciousness, which includes experience, knowledge, desires, hopes, relationships, beliefs, ideas, biases, prejudices, images and all kinds of emotions, act as a distorting screen through which we see the world. I can see all this happening in myself quite clearly, yet is very difficult to live & act in another manner - to live a life illuminated by the light of truth. I am not being too negative by saying this. I am merely being brutally frank.

Here’s another related idea. I remember reading what Mirra Alfassa said once, that “…if you see a defect in someone else, you may be sure that it in you…” All of us are human beings, members of the same species sharing a common evolutionary heritage of millions of years. Thus in a certain sense our consciousness is the consciousness of the whole of humanity. If I see a certain quality in another person, that is only because the very existence of that quality in myself allows me to recognise it in him or her. It is only my conditioning which causes me to label it & classify it as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, beautiful or ugly and so on. A warning though! This should not be interpreted as a justification for nihilism or that moral values do not matter. Rather, what it means is that if you see some defect in others then it is a pointer for you to correct it in yourself first. Similarly, if we see something wrong with the world, then this attitude would help us realise that the cause of it is our own self. The problems of the world are merely a gigantic projection of the problems in the consciousness of each human being. For example, all the terrible wars are merely the projection or externalization of the conflicts that exist in our minds. We are directly responsible for the wars of the world. Thus, to change the world, we have to change our own selves first. The human consciousness itself has to change, because it seems as though there is something seriously wrong with the way it has evolved so far. What this calls for is a scientific attitude towards understanding one’s own self. To explore this further, I would have to go off at a tangent so I shall leave it at that for now. :)

Getting back to the topic, here are some other aspects related to interpretation.

To quote verbatim, my friend wrote that “... a piece of art stops being owned by the artist once its gone public... its then an idea which is shared and meant to be tossed and turned, introspected, mulled, subsumed, consumed. There is, in my belief, no one true meaning to anything. There are only interpretations...”

I think that to have a meaningful exploration or understanding of anything, meaning has to be distinguished from interpretation. Speaking of art, that does not mean that, let us say a poem, has only one meaning. It may have multiple meanings and/or multiple layered meanings. The richer & deeper a work of art is, the more this would tend to be the case with it. Yet I think that these meanings should me distinguished from interpretations. Interpretations can be thought of as arrows shot in the dark. We are in the darkness of ignorance, not knowing what is meant or intended to be conveyed and so we interpret in an attempt at understanding. And that is not a bad thing at all. It is a good thing. It is always better to say that perhaps this is what it means, or probably that is what he/she meant, rather than making assertions, or sticking to beliefs & ideas as opposed to facts or reasonable conjectures/interpretations.

Actually, a lot depends on how one interprets the idea of interpretation itself. :) There is certainly a place for responsible interpretation as opposed to irresponsible interpretation. A classic example of this would be the different ways in which people have interpreted the various religious scriptures. Asserting that a certain interpretation is the right one and developing a codified set of beliefs only leads to conflicts between religions and sects. This has been a big time problem throughout history, all because people don’t know how to be reasonable, think logically and not indulge in irresponsible interpretations. I am sure God would be horrified to know that he (or she, whatever you please) has been one of the leading causes of death in the world. :)

The so-called scientists are also not as scientific & logical as we might expect them to be. There are of course those who validly point out science is very limited in what it can & cannot explain. Yet even in their somewhat limited field of enquiry, scientists seem to be as worse as if not more than ordinary folks like us. Two of them may study the same phenomenon, analyse the same evidence, and yet come up with totally different conclusions – both asserting that they are absolutely right, and mistaking their dimly lit investigations & crude hypothesis & theories for the truth. I shall only give two examples to illustrate this. Firstly, note how for centuries they asserted that the Sun, other planets & the entire universe revolved around the earth. When Galileo said “Nonsense!” to that, they got him imprisoned and virtually killed through mental torture in collaboration with other powers. Another example is of how members of society are being brought up to believe that all human beings are in essence selfish, scheming creatures only interested in protecting their own self-interest above everything else. This idea, supposedly supported by the game theory, is at the core of the laissez-faire ideologies and the belief that in each person pursuing his or her own self-interest, whatever it may be, lies the overall good of society. One of the leading proponents of this was John Nash (A Beautiful Mind is based on him). Yet, as I saw in a brilliant documentary series called “The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom”, it turns out that he was quite mistaken. His beliefs about the behaviour of human beings arose from his own schizophrenia, which no one knew he was suffering from. He used theories & twisted evidence to support his own beliefs. In the documentary, there is an interview in which the now old & cured John Nash admits that he may have overemphasized the role of that in human interpersonal relations. Yet so much mischief and harm has already been done by his theories which influenced hundreds of other people and their work, who caused even more chaos in the world.

Often people in power also wilfully distort scientific truths to serve their own self interest and to manipulate others and influence society as a whole. A classic case of this is how Darwin’s theory of evolution has been distorted to justify the survival of the fittest in human society. It has almost become a buzzword, which you will hear in corporate boardrooms as well as in interpersonal relationships. What of kindness? What of kinship & compassion? Even other animals, which we consider lower than ourselves (another artificial and noxious idea!), have some measure of that.

Well that’s all. I know I have rambled too much & wandered here & there, perhaps aimlessly, but that’s how I am. I really should learn to be more focussed and stick to the topic while writing. :)

Sleepy now… and tired. Got to go. Over and out.