Divinity At Work

In the first ten days of October, the various Nobel prizes were announced. In the field of Physics, it was awarded to scientists who could establish a connection between machine learning and neural networks. In the field of Chemistry, it was awarded to scientists who worked on protein structure design. In the field of Medicine, it was awarded to scientists who worked on gene regulation. I was a Commerce student in my eleventh and twelfth grade and then pursued Economics. I kept Science at a bargepole’s distance ever since my tenth. Mathematics, even farther. But every now and then, a few curious thoughts about the Universe and its functioning would pop in my head and all I had to do was Google them.This particular time my interest piqued with what John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Physics Prize laureates, had chosen to study and establish. The former was initially a molecular biologist and the latter a computer science engineer. But when they started delving deeper into how the human mind makes connections, they arrived at how it intersects with machine learning. And voila, they created artificial neural networks. Though I still do not understand the nuances of this discovery, it was fascinating to see how the human mind worked. Which is precisely what another X (Twitter) user remarked as a comment, ‘every other scientist puts in hours of research, rigorous practice, carefully constructs theorems… wins Nobel. Meanwhile, Ramanujan says it came to me in my dreams.’.Though the comment was entirely not true, the Indian born Srinivisa Ramanujan, did indeed credit the Devi of the Namagiri temple as having dictated theorems in his dreams. Of course, the physicist himself put in the hard work to develop such an intellect, but to rise beyond the mind required a divine push. In fact, it is said that he sought the permission of the Goddess in the temple at Namakkal, Tamil Nadu, before he left for Cambridge. He saw Mathematics, Physics and spirituality as deeply linked concepts..An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.Srinivasa Ramanujan.All this talk of Nobel winners, their inspirations and their working methods got me thinking. Don’t we all observe the world around us too? Don’t we also notice how humans recognise patterns? Aren’t we able to make connections between shapes and sounds and textures and tastes? Then why was it only Hopfield and Hinton who discovered artificial neural networks? Before Newton, our sage Pippalada had also observed gravity and written a treatise on it. Yet, for the majority of us this is mundane. It is not worthy of pursuit.For the few of us who do choose to pursue, obstacles come in the form of unsolvable theorems, bad professors, uncooperative institutions and whatnot. Matters of the intellect is not everyone’s calling. In fact, science and mathematics themselves are not everyone’s calling, including yours truly. My dreams, or nightmares, rather are still graced by an agitated boss or an out-of-syllabus question paper in a long-gone exam. No Devi is handing out strategies to win at consulting!.Pushing this thought further, I am sure that these scientists, though masters in their own field, falter in other ways. For example, they might not be able to hit a sixer across a stadium or cook a three-course meal. Even the masters in such fields often credit their breakthrough moments to power far greater than themselves.In a recent interview, Indian cricketers Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli, admitted that in a particularly difficult match, both were chanting Hanuman Chalisa and Om Namaha Shivaya between shots. They say they were powered by a different energy.All our scientist sages, our spiritual seers, our extraordinary artists and even our grandmothers when they cook their best, often say that their best was only an offering to the Lord. In such a state of egolessness, is it not true that it is indeed the Lord who is working through them? And could the handiwork of the Devi or Deva be anything less than perfect? The more I ponder upon this, the more I am compelled to believe that surrendering to an altar is the sure shot way to navigate through the complexities of any chosen field. And to ace it, we must transform ourselves into a divine instrument.