More excerpts from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, Brainaissance:

The Raw Materials Of Life Are Information And Energy!

Energy impels motion, sustains it, and lets it dissolve. It equally expresses emotion, its release, its preservation, and its dissipation. Energy dances her seductive dances around the central pole that is consciousness (information). Her infinitude of manifestations simultaneously reveals and conceals, fascinates and spellbinds, leaving observers entranced by such kaleidoscopic transfigurations. All illusion (maya) and yet real. 

This phenomenon is familiar to Hindu awareness, where, in the metaphor above, Shiva is the central pole, consciousness, and his consort, Shakti, is energy. Hindu devotees are all too familiar with myriad representations of their deities, worshipped with innumerable illusive forms and expressions. But Indian monism demands that there be one, sole, ultimate, reality. Thus, Shiva and the Goddess are not in essence two, but one: he is the core of being, and she the energy radiating from it. 

This blended relationship of Maya and Shakti is encapsulated in the metaphor of clay to a potter’s wheel. Clay is the substance, the matter of creation, the raw information awaiting form and function. The Potter’s wheel is the formative force (energy) that begets expressed reality. All temporary, all illusion, and yet real. 

We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. ~ Tao Wisdom

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but in building the new. ~ Socrates 

INFORMATION - ENERGY = POWERLESS 

ENERGY - INFORMATION = PURPOSELESS 

Creative brains energise information via the questions they ask; some of these include:

Are you creative enough to meet, and defeat, emerging challenges? 

Are you busy pursuing a set of careers that will soon become obsolete? 

What is your COST of CONFUSION and the VALUE of CLARITY? 

What are you NOT doing that you should be doing if you knew that your prospects were to evaporate within a year?

What is impossible to do but if it could be done, would fundamentally change your business? 

Are you busy trying to sell products that you make, or are you making products that you can sell? 

Are you busy making your products smarter or are you making smarter products? 

How confident are you that you and your Organisation can outperform the world economy? 

Be the energy you wish to attract!

Effective communication, curiosity, imagination, and thinking skills that comprise competencies spanning creative, systemic, design, and critical disciplines, are much more than just the traditional desirable outcomes of a professional education. They are essential competencies and habits of mind for life in the 21st century, demanding the play and interplay between information and energy.

The Info-Energy Lamp Metaphor

Energy and information are a duality but their influence on life is a unity. Energy is an expression of force and power, whereas information reflects form and function. Energy without information is purposeless, and information without energy is powerless. Let us consider the metaphor of the lamp. No matter how well we design, fabricate, and embellish the components of the lamp, it cannot function, until. . .it is powered by energy ! 

Insert the plug, and voila! Allow energy to flood the system. From the composite of energy and information, we now have power and purpose. 

Illumination! 

Enlightenment! 

Awakening!

KEY INSIGHTS: 

Information blended with energy is expressed in space and time; it becomes available to us via the power and responsibility of intention and choice! We live in darkness, yet can be radiant with light. The flame exists, it just has to be provoked. Consciousness is there; it just has to be awakened. We are born, as an opportunity, awaiting our inner luminosity to emerge.  It is our birthright. Ordinarily, we are in a state of paradise lost; “en-light-ened,” we have paradise regained!