Originality: boon, bane or plain myth?

When🎓unseasoned✍️authors📜are📧notified by seasoned🫚editors &/or reviewers that their🙅🏻‍♂️rejected📄manuscript/thesis📔lacks “originality,” little do either of the intellectual parties involved realise that this scathing but polished remark/comment is, either intentionally/unintentionally & knowingly/unknowingly, merely a politically-correct euphemism to convey “you aren’t yet talented enough like LLM-based AI🤖chatbots to smartly mask🎭your plagiarism & fake your value addition⚠️”

Indeed, if “courage/bravery/confidence” is defined as nothing more than “an ability to🕴️fake🎭fearlessness,” how does one define “originality ⁉️” Well, anyone who has an awakened conscience can easily re-cognise🪬the factual truth & truthful fact that nothing, absolutely💯nothing, other than ourSelf was, is & can ever be genuinely original. Period. That realisation alone can enable one to seamlessly transition from science to spirituality & back only to perceive that there never was a boundary separating them into duality, except in our hallucinations. The pinnacle of science is true spirituality & the pinnacle of spirituality is true science in deed, word, thought & beyond.

It’s not for nothing that we list references at the end of our drafts in the bibliography. At least some of those listed works formed the basis over which our current work was built. Even when we want to minimise assumptions, we start from the “scratch” or start from the “fundamentals,” never from “nothing ⚠️” For🕳️nothingness alone is original. Nothing else is. That humility ought to sink deep into us, nay we ought to drown in it if at all we wanna make a meaningful impact.

But, whether one likes👍it or not👎, 📓plagiarism©️checks & similarity🔂reports are quintessential in all professional knowledge-sharing endeavours today. So, how does the🌲evergreen & universally-utilitarian śrīmad bhagavad gītā fare on this critical criterion⁉️ Well, according to an🤪original🤣AI tools-based study📖published by a couple of IIT🇮🇳&🇦🇺Australian academics last year, the gītā bears a whopping 73% similarity with its timelessly-eternal predecessors from the vēdās: upaniṣads@vēdāntā⚠️ As 82% of the gītā‘s stanzas* are spoken by🪈kr̥ṣṇā, wherein all of these similarities occur, his plagiarism level is a jaw-dropping 73/82 ➡️ 89%❣️ No💭wonder🤔, “harē” synonymous with his name actually means to “rob/kidnap/hijack‼️”

But to be fair to kr̥ṣṇā, the beloved😻butter🏴‍☠️thief <mākhan🧈cōr> never🙅🏿ever claimed originality in the first🥇place❣️In fact, the gītā dhyānam̐’s 4th verse illustrates the analogous equivalence of “🐄cows🐮 : 🍼milk🥛 :: upaniṣads : gītā❣️” Indeed, the upaniṣads are akin to 🐮cows🐄 while the gītā is their🍼milk🥛. And the upaniṣadik🐮cows🐄are milked by none other than ourSelf’s own all-attractive🧲magnetism <kr̥ṣṇā> to quench our thirst as a seeker & thus nurture our own intellect <arjunā>, represented in the analogy by the calf.

The real utility of kr̥ṣṇā‘s gītōpadēśā is in its intelligent & practical adaptation of the universal & eternal wisdom of vēdãntā to the unanticipated contemporary 🆘 emergency 🚨 situation which was rapidly developing & ballooning beyond control. Most significantly, it was a response rather than a reaction which made all the difference. There was no point in arguing or even evaluating whether the strategies & tactics were original/novel. On the contrary, its being time-tested was a pro rather than a con… pun😆intended. All that mattered was the effectiveness of even the unoriginal as a long-term impactful solution for all concerned even now as much as it was then. It’s time to go beyond hankering with logical reasoning alone as a one-size-fits-all tool.

In the age of GenAI, while we await AGI, it’s imperative & high time for us to clearly fathom & humbly admit the limitations of our precious🛠tool of a cutting-edge🔪intellect🧠<buddhi> & its associated faculty of discrimination <vivēkā>. Else, even our limited access to the unlimited life energy could be squandered away through an overemphasis on mere intellectual🧐pursuits, which of course have their own rightful place, but definitely not at the cost of access to the natural & holistic universal🌬️intelligence, which is far more potent & widespread, in fact omnipotent & omnipresent.

As I explained a few years ago to a distinguished aircraft✈️engine designer & scientist, “Our🗣️vēdās🎶are so profoundly comprehensive that there’s absolutely💯no room left for anything absolutely 🆕, though there’s always the possibility to immensely wonder💭for the truly🪬perceptive👁️amongst us. Thus, it’ll always be old🍷wine, perhaps in a newer & fancier bottle at the most. Contemporary📦packaging🎁is💝the🔑key for technological utility.

In fact, in my pristine perception, there’s no such thing as an invention nor an inventor, with due respect to all those who’ve been bestowed upon with such a title over the years around the world. In reality, every one of their so-called ‘inventions’ is a mere discovery as Mother🌬️Nature already has elements of it in some basic form or the other, but inadvertently hidden, purely due to our predecessors’ lack of clarity in perception.

When we uncover something which has been too deeply hidden from most people before us & our contemporaries too, we tend to call it an ‘invention’ colloquially, knowing fully well that, leave alone our ‘invention,” even we so-called “inventors” ourselves at the BMI-level are but products/produces entirely of this universe, composed of its infinitesimal bits, shots & pieces ofℹ️info, energy⚡️&🪨matter💦💨.

Irrespective of how tirelessly striven for, how highly-innovative & how tremendously-ingenious our outputs might be, at the end of the day, all our works are thus products of a product (ourselves) & thus can never be truly original! The value we seem to add to existing products & knowledge, for others to also see them from a different perspective, is what makes our contributions, be it technical or spiritual, so worthy for as large a section of our society, nation & humanity as we’re capable of reaching out to.”

For example, it’s only because we could naturally move🦶&🦵walk, while the species that we once evolved from & still constitute a small part of our genetic🧬makeup💄could swim/slither/fly, that we ‘discovered’ vehicles:🚲🚗🚞🚤🚢✈️🚀🛰; only because we could naturally hear👂&👄talk, we ‘discovered‘ communication devices:🖊📝📞☎️🎙🎤📱🔊📻; only because we could naturally👀see👁, we ‘discovered’ scopes:👓🔬🔭📺📸🎥📽📼🎞💡🔦🔥🕯🪔; only because we could naturally💭think, remember🤔, calculate🫰&🧠analyse, we ‘discovered’ AI & its predecessors:🧮💻🖥⌨️🖱💾📀... the list can go on to cover, or rather uncover, all that we’ve been prejudicially pre-programmed to think of as ‘inventions!’

The invocation & play of the pañca bhūtās (5️⃣ elements/phases of matter/energy, including their domain of existence/action: spacetime) in this voyage of discovery is not only phenomenal, but inevitable too. For long, we’ve overemphasised the mirage of “novelty” over practical utility of our contributions. Hope more & more re-searchers re-cognise sooner rather than later the inherent futility & inevitable fakeness of their truly well-meaning endeavours. May we reorient our efforts towards longer-term utility for larger cross sections of life in & around us.