Those Ruby Slippers Will Take You Home, Dorothy

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* A stained glass window with the contracted version of the Greek aphorism, 'Know Yourself', wiki.
You Have It In You, You Just Have To Find It
The Scarecrow had all the brains that the rest of us always possess all the time; the only thing that he didn't have was the piece of paper with the word "DIPLOMA" written over it. So when the Wizard of Oz confers upon him the piece of paper, the Scarecrow becomes Dr. Scarecrow, Th.D., short for "Doctorate in Thinkology". The timid Lion had all the courage that ordinary folks have; the only thing that he didn't have was a piece of ornately carved alloy that goes by the name of "medal". So when the Wizard of Oz awards the Lion the Triple Cross - for bravery and valor displayed by him against the wicked witches -, the Lion restores his roar. The Tin Man suffered from the sorrow of not possessing a heart in his bosom. So when the Wizard of Oz presents him with a heart-shaped clock as "a token of society's esteem and affection", the Tin Man discovers that his hollow bosom was not hollow after all. The punch-line that the Tin Man returns with is that "... a heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others." You see, all these creatures carried great virtues in them already. But they never knew. It was only when somebody validated it for them using the totems of a degree and a medal and a testimonial that they came to realize how fortunate and blessed they were. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion, they were all fortunate, for they got somebody - a fake Wizard - to reveal to them the potential they possessed on their own.

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* 'Theatrical release poster of the movie - The Wizard of Oz', wiki.
And what about Dorothy? That little girl Dorothy Gale from Kansas? Well, actually, the power to return from the Emerald City back to her house in Kansas lay with her all the time, matter of fact the power was in the ruby slippers she was wearing! All that was required was for her to tap the heels three times, to close her eyes, and auto-suggest to herself the positive self-affirmation of "There's no place like home". And abracadabra! The house she was housed in would come tumbling down from wherever it was perched in the space-time utopian continuum, to the reality of the present moment. But the gift hidden in those ruby slippers had to be revealed to her by some other person in order for Dorothy to make use of it. Without Glinda, the Witch of the North's help, Dorothy might have been stuck till eternity in that utopian continuum. Still, Dorothy was very lucky; for she got somebody to reveal to her the potential that she always had in her, lying, waiting to be fulfilled.

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* Scenes from the movie - "The Wizard of Oz", performed by Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, YouTube. This 1939 movie shows how auto-suggestion can be implemented, and how results can manifest themselves in one's life by chanting in the mind positive self-affirmations, all the while holding dollops of faith and trust in the heart. This movie also shows how some people are fortunate to have the right people turn up in their lives to validate and endorse the talents they always had, or to reveal to them the hidden gifts that they had always possessed but never knew.
The difference between the evolution of human beings and the other living beings, to my mind, is that while the evolution of the latter faithfully follows the framework laid down by Charles Darwin to a large extent, in the case of human beings evolution is much more than just a response to the-urge-to-procreate and the-urge-to-survive-in-a-competitive-environment. In the case of human beings, evolution happens also due to the urge to actualize innate potentialities, which Darwinism overlooks, probably because that was not part of Darwin's intent in the first place when he set out to write his book on the Origin of Species. Whatever the critics of Vitalism may say, and despite the fact that Human Life has been created by fusing the two opposite-gender gametes in a Petri dish in a laboratory outside of the uterus, this vital urge cannot still be explained away by some as-yet-unexplainable reactions, Wohler-style, between organic chemicals under the right conditions of heat and light.


This vital urge is found missing in the other living beings. Ever seen the cow in the meadows reading intently the content on the crumpled paper lying in the grass? All that crosses her mind is to chew up the paper. That is not to say that the cow is any less evolved than us human beings; quite possible it is that the cow and the other of her species ponder on philosophical dimensions deeper than we have ever been able to fathom, while seemingly leisurely focusing on her masticating. We do not know. And our acknowledgment that we do not know is another aspect of our evolution which makes us different, and which Darwinism does not explain. But all this is beside the point. The point here is that it is this urge to actualize innate potentialities that takes Dorothy to the fantasyland, and it is this urge that brings her back again to her home in Kansas.

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* German chemist Friedrich Wohler, circa 1850s, wiki. When Wohler invented the process of synthesizing organic matter (urea) from inorganic elements, he is said to have written to a colleague of having witnessed "...the great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis (of Vitalism) by an ugly fact (of a dish of urea crystals being created from inorganic material)." Entire generations of scientists are said to have grown up with this Wohler story having fed to them. So when you come across a scientist who rubbishes the possibility that any entity called "soul" might exist, don't blame him or her. Blame instead the Wohler Myth that was perpetuated in school.
From an anecdote from children's fiction to a sliver from ancient mythology. Indologists and tourists visiting the subcontinent of India must be familiar with the image of Hanuman, an important deity in the Hindu pantheon. There is hardly any village, city or town in the country of India where you will not come across a temple or image of this god - even if it is a single slab of engraved stone erected upright in the middle of nowhere - drenched in vermillion. Dwelling on this god is said to stabilize the mind on negative thoughts of fear and worry, especially fear of apparitions and forms belonging to other dimensions. A very important war in Hindu mythology was fought with the help of this entity.

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* 'Standing Hanuman, Chola dynasty, 11th Century', wiki.
And yet, this god - who immediately after being born dived towards the sky to gobble the rising Sun, because he took the golden globe to be a luscious fruit and had to be persuaded by the other gods to not do so - was not aware of his self-prowess for the major part of his youth. [He had been made to forget his supreme powers along the way of growing up, just so that the ordinary mortals around him could live life easily.] Somebody - the King of bears, Jamavant - had to remind him of the gifts lying hidden within him, in order for him to know of them. In much the same way that Glinda informed Dorothy about the ruby slippers. The timing of the reminder was important, of course, for the war had become imminent, and it was deemed that Hanuman had come of age, and therefore will not use his powers for harassment but only for the good of others. It was like lifting of a veil that showed him his own shining soul. And Hanuman regained his divinity.

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* Asia's tallest idol of Hanuman at Phillaur, District Jalandhar, Punjab State, India.
And, having arrived at our own conclusion that our additional urge to attain innate potentialities gives us an edge over the other sentient species in the world of the Living, let us now not join the debate over which school of thought has more merit: Aristotelian entelechism or Bergson-ist process-philosophy. Let's not squabble over whether these innate potentialities are all listed neatly on a piece of paper which lies in a safe and secure vault deep within our soul which we have to open and read and work upon... Or whether potentialities are to be discovered by the individuals along the way, as they continue with the task of existing, and that there is no such thing as a "final list"? Let the philosophers slug it out amongst themselves. As for us ordinary mortals, it is the revelation to us of these innate gifts and talents - which each one of us has been bestowed upon by a benign, benevolent and caring Universe - that matters. And it is the making use of these innate gifts and talents for our own good and if possible for the good of the others around us, that matters.


* 'Mind-Energy: Lectures And Essays' by Henri Bergson, Amazon.com. Bergson theorized that living entities continue to ceaselessly exist and evolve, without the constraint of a final list of attainable potentialities.
From a sliver from ancient mythology, let's move towards science-fiction action films. Neo, aka Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer who by day works with the software company Metacortex and by night is a hacker who does odd jobs for extra money, does not know what extraordinary talents he is the owner of. However, while living and breathing within the false world created by sentient machines, he is unable to get over the niggling feeling of a higher calling that he is required to pursue, which he must pursue. A quiet person who would faint from vertigo, Neo does not know that he has it in him to leap from the tallest of skyscrapers without thinking. A timid individual who never handled a gun in his life, Neo does not know that dodging bullets will come so fluidly easy to him, and that a time will come when he will no longer have to "dodge bullets", but that the bullets coming towards him will stop in mid-air. No, Neo does not know all that. He has to be told that he is "The One" by a hovercraft captain named Morpheus. It is only when Neo becomes aware of the out-of-the-world talents and innate gifts that he has all along carried within him, that he becomes ready to take on the invincible Matrix. Neo, you see, is one lucky man, for the right people came into his world at the right time to steer him to his true destiny.

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* A clip from the movie "Matrix", performed by Keanu Reeves, Gloria Foster, YouTube / jasonzigg.
In all our examples, we emphasized that the protagonists were extremely lucky. These personalities while on their Monomyth bumped into people who told them something about themselves that they didn't upfront know, and who by so doing transformed the course of their destiny. And were these people - the fake Wizard, Glinda the benign Witch, Jamavant and Morpheus - any exceptional themselves? Not really. But what set these folks apart was their ability to perceive greatness in others.


Thudding from the realms of fiction and mythology to the reality of Ground Zero, what about us? Who is going to tell us about our hidden talents? Is there a Wizard, a Glinda, a Jamavant or a Morpheus waiting for us at the next corner? And how long do we wait for these exalted folks to come into our life? Will they come in this lifetime, or the next? Or the one after that? Should we go to the tallest hill in our vicinity and shout? Or use a megaphone? Or set up a web page and ask for our mentors to come out of their hiding and tell us what we already have but don't know about?


The simple solution that comes to mind is to stop being dependent on external elements, and to stop seeking validation from other people. But to become conscious about our being, and to engage our soul in a reflective discourse. To meditate on our existence and search for the answers within. To dive deep within, and make it a daily practice to dive deep within, and explore the hidden treasures waiting to be opened and utilized.


But here we come across another obstacle. And unfortunately, this obstacle is self-created. You see, so enamored are we of our present state of existence, so deeply ingrained is the heavy inertia in our body and mind, that we are loathe to leave the present state and move to a "meta stable" state, howsoever better it might prove to be ultimately. So immersed are we in the cesspool of Akrasia that the energy and enthusiasm to implement change gets overcome any day by the overwhelming force of reticence. The familiarity and comfort of the cesspool is much preferred over the scare and untested of the unknown. Is it any wonder then, that we shuffle around, bemoaning our poverty, all the while sitting over a veritable treasure trove that is all ours for the asking?


And then there is this other angle to the cesspool. While we continue in a vegetative state of living, year after year after year, like it or not, we are progressively, ceaselessly evolving by virtue of moving forward on the fourth dimension of time. The "metastable" ontogenesis, as opposed to the "stable" ontology of being, is always happening. Since ontogenesis is unavoidable, then why not include in our existence the treasure trove that can make it enjoyable?

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* 'Incorporations' - edited by Crary & Kwinter, Amazon.com. An article by Gilbert Simondon in this book - "The Genesis Of The Individual" talks about ontogenesis as a concept of "an entity coming to be", as opposed to ontology as a concept describing "how an entity is".
The take-away message is: Know Yourself. As the Greek would say: Gnothi Seauton. Or as the Latin would say: nosce te ipsum. Or as the sign above the kitchen door in Oracle's house in the movie "The Matrix" said: Temet Nosce. Instead of asking the Cosmos to give you your next job, ask to be given insight and understanding to discover the talents it has pre-loaded you with before sending you to Planet Earth. And don't wait for somebody to show up to tell you who you really are. And stop lolling in the cesspool of familiarity. Doesn't behoove you, the cesspool.