Strengths, the Human Mind and the Mahabharata

I had written a rather bland morose and uninteresting article on this topic in the month of december simply titled 'STRENGTHS'. That was the result of a random tangible idea that had come out of one of my ritual tussles with insanity. That idea sparked off a chain of thoughts which when impregnated with certain inferences have transformed into the following theory:

It is true that a human being is a multifacetted creature. There are many different levels on which the human being operates. And for each of these levels we possess a separate strength. There are five different strengths that each one of us is equipped with. There is the most obvious, the physical strength which enables us to do mechanical things like lifting and moving. The greater the magnitude of this strength, the greater the ease of those operations. Then we have the slightly more subtle psychological strength which enables us to concentrate on one particular object, be it an action or an artefat. The third would be emotional strength or the ability to control ones own and at a later stage of greater magnitude, the emotions of others. Then would come the mental strength which is the power of deduction, this strength is directly linked to the level of intelligence of the person. The last and arguably the greatest of the five strengths is spiritual strength. This is the most difficult to obtain and the most difficult to practise and ascetics in India (and around the world before the christian invasion) have spent their entire lifetime in the search of this strength. At the most mundane level it entails the ability to amplify the magnitude of the other four strengths by using the energy of the soul. And at the most lofty level it entails the ability of the soul to remain alive without the help of the body for short periods of time and even space-time manipulation.

These strengths are also linked to the five elements, each one of them representing one strength. air-mental, water-emotional, earth-physical, fire-psychological and ether-spiritual.

Ether has often been interpreted as being the stuff souls are made of. But I would like to go a step further and say that ether represents quantum foam (quantum foam is the nature of space-time at the subatomic level). I can't yet explain why I make this assumption.

The five strengths are also linked to the five pandavas (the principle protagonists of the Mahabharata) in the sense that they represent the five facets of a single man. Or in more mundane terms, the five pandavas represent a single person who had multiple personalities that were bound into one integral whole. Yuddhishthira, represented the emotional strength- he never gets swayed off the righteous path by his emotions. Bhima, obviously represents physical strength. Arjuna reprensents spiritual strength, Nakula represents psychological strength as Sahadeva represents mental strength.

Then what does the relation these five have to each other have to do with the strengths? Sahadeva and the other four are not born of the same mother, thus Mental strength is not related to the other four strengths (namely physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual) as deeply as those four are inter related to each other. Mental strength, or intelligence is a direct consequence of the physical connections made between the neurons in the brain, they can be manipulated by the soul, but the connections are very much physical, tangible and material. Whereas the other four strengths pertain to the soul alone.

Then one would be compelled to ask about Karna, he being a genetic brother to the Pandavas, what strength does he signify? Yes he does signify something but definately not a strength. Karna signifies weakness. The only weakness a righteous person can fall prey to is 'obligation to the unrighteous'.

The epic called the Mahabharata is a thorough study of human behaviour told in the form of a charming story by the means of metaphors.