Metamorphosis example
Just the other day, I drew metamorphosis of a monarch butterfly. By definition it means dramatic transition of morphology of an animal more than twice during its life cycle. So, eggs becoming chicken is not, but a larve becoming a butterfly is metamorphosis. There are many examples for these kind of transitions in animal Kingdom. And the most common other example being tadpoles becoming frogs. We used to catch them in streams, and fields, tadpoles without legs were just like fish. But when they have developed legs they looked scary and disgusting. I would not dare touch them. So, what does really happen? How can we understand anything from this phenomenon?
I am going to show why metamorphosis is not exactly what we think it is. We can start by looking at it in different angles.
Story of the embryo.
Maybe you have heard. Maybe you have not. In the begining of our lives in mothers woumb we all were embryos. Just like a microscopic tadpole, a sperm joined with an egg to form a single cell. Progrssively devided into forming a morulla and then an embryo. If you compared this small organism to ourselves now, I can say it is just metamorphosis. We were just like some larve when inside the mother.
If you do not believe me, in the begining, we had tails, and had a circulating arch system like a fish. Everything was flat at the begining like a stingray and was like a pancake before it was rolled and fused in the midline, to form a continous tube from mouth to back passage! That there is our embryology lesson! In summary I can say we were all pancakes which developed into human form by progressively breaking down old systems with new ones by enzymes in a giant chemical reaction, which is called metamorphosis. We were caterpillars for nine months before being free butterflies.
But what is the philosophy in it?
In summary a caterpillar did not become a butterfly overnight. It is easy to understand. If you were given photographs of caterpillars changing from a larve to a butterfly every minute it would be slow transition. Just like what is happening to a human embryo. Although there are distinct steps like a butterfly coming out of the cocoon. Yet this is a continous process. But humans are not capable of understanding continous change, as they doesn't make any sense, we make them discrete by saying a caterpillar became a butterfly overnight. Forgetting everything in between this slow transition process. This simple fact has profound implications in many observations in life.
Examples of continous life.
Consider getting old, we say Mr. M got old just by looking at two pictures of him forgetting the fact that it is slow transition from childhood to adulthood. Even changing occurred when he was sleeping.
Consider falling of an apple. We call it fell from a tree forgetting all the seconds which it fell through the air.
We can say you read the article forgetting everything happened in between start to the finish. Did you even know how you got a meaning out of syllables which individually do not even have a meaning? Is it a magic or what?
Mindfulness is looking at the process, of how we create abstractions on these continous ever changing function. For someone with a mathematical background I have created a formula collecting all the functions of the world. If you understand you would be amazed how so called things in our brains that we interact with are just like caterpillars and butterflies of the continous function of an animal, and neither do exist nor non existing either. And what is true for a butterfly seems true for ourselves as well. Which can be arrived by logic but applied only by mindful examination of self.
Comments