Conversation waves in Delhi

Before leaving Delhi from ISBT now, in the last 40 hours, I have slipped into several long-term free-flowing conversations with primarily 2 friends of mine - one of my ex-roomies and a newly happened JNUite friend. One went about 3-4 hrs long. Fairly existential stuff.. crossing boundaries of disciplines with absolute flexibility. Almost unbelievable! 

AS and I started with the conditions back home, how the career-playing-field has changed for us, getting married, etc., but soon slipped into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), weed, psychedelics in general, our association with ISKCON and inevitably discussed Open Eyed Meditation and the so-called Mindfulness. The illusion of free will again became a crucial friction point between us. 

I admit I pushed it on AS way harder than optimal. I generally do that with Physics people since they are better positioned to address this question head-on. Kharbanda, if she is reading this, can relate to this, "Umm.. yeah.. undoubtedly, we are stardust.")

AS admitted that he doesn't go through these basics very often, and now that my multi-disciplinary- nonsense made his headache, it was time to relax.. intellectually. "But I am up for coming on your podcast any day." Lol. 

The universe on this side made me meet KL (whose poetry I have been a fan of) in the southern part of the megacity - at a Vishwavidyalaya known for its liberal education atmosphere and warm ideological- philosophical waves. Fortunate enough to have some campus beings as my friends here. 

I got exposed to some profoundly amazing Q'awaalis and music from KL and PS, our mutual friend and the person behind my YIF aspiration. 

PS told me that KL and I would have some exciting conversations on free will, etc, (if we could open up to each other). And she was damn right. We entered the conversation with Free Will and had a good wrestling session on topics like 'What is 'matter'?'. What's 'energy' if it is not matter? What's reality? (How's fact different from fantasy?). What's Advaita (nonduality) if there's matter and energy?

 Interestingly KL and I didn't slip into ideologies, morality and the political issues, it was all existential questioning to the bottom. 

KL has an interesting language tool here. He goes something like, if all the events in the universe are fully predetermined, there's no possibility of 'choosing' out of different results. So things are gonna happen just one way. And that one way is his free will. It's the only will he can have, given that our thoughts, too, are fully predetermined from prior events (biochemical reactions and neurophysiological processes going on in our brain). Needless to say, to my knowledge, most people don't mean this by free will. The popular meaning correlates with a conscious agent's ability to choose, intervene in the physical time evolution, and decide to listen to Shabnam Virmani instead of Sidhu Moose Wala. I haven't received such an engagement from anyone other than KL. 

KL also becomes a facilitator and companion for my first ps###ic experience. (AS couldn't turn up. RJ had an exam the following morning.) 

We flexibly touched many ideas in parallel to our philosophical badminton (mentioning in my language)

possible meanings of the phrase Free Will, determinism, quantum mechanics(!),  experience/consciousness, 

the sense of the self (like.. this Vinod is the center of the experience, riding around the horse of consciousness... that this Vinod is separate from the rest of the universe), self - transcendence / cutting through the illusion of self and different means to cut through: Buddhist practices, psychedelics, climbing up Mt Everest, some game/dance intensely, etc (bhakti, mindful sex, painting, poetry, awe-inspiring beautiful scenes of nature...)

PS, KL, and I share at least two of the personality traits that overlap - high openness and somewhat low conscientiousness. 

My JNUite circle has a unique sense of music and poetry, unlike many other circles, which move on rock Punjabi oscillations. My wakeful night ended with having ps..ic and listening to beautiful and entertaining music with KL, NR, and NS. 

One observation that happened to me, as a psychology student, is that many of my JNUite birds don't seem to value discipline, delayed gratification, and consistency in pursuit of something distant. Has it something to do with extremely high Openness combined with weed ... or VKJ perhaps doesn't know these birds enough!

Hwff!  Haryana Shakti sucks. Land krao mujhe. 

_/\_ 

VKJ)