A TREATISE ON ETERNAL SYMBIOSIS

In We Get to Live, Anubhav Kandpal examines humanity's profound interconnectedness with nature through the lenses of philosophy, spirituality, quantum physics and whatnot, exploring a holistic approach to existence that transcends modern notions of compartmentalisation and advocates for a broader ecological responsibility. This is the first part of the two-part book review

- SANJEEV CHOPRA

Anubhav Kandpal's "We Get to Live: A Journey into the Wonders of Nature and How We are Connected to Everything" is not an easy read. Neither was Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The treatises of Abhinavagupta fall in the same genre. But this does not take away from the seminal value of these works. Kandpal has delved deep into works of a wide spectrum of thought leaders including Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Alan Watts, Fritjof Capra, Alfred Einstein, David Bohm, Humberto Maturana, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Thich Nhat Hanh, amongst many others. As such, this review is an invitation to absorb the insights which Kandpal offers in his meditations on quantum physics, the function of the mind, questions of foundational myths, issues of control and identity, the nature of the self, time as an arbitrary category, tragic optimism, the nature of love and power as well as issues of surrender and transcendence, and finally the integration of the subjective with the objective. I propose to do this review in two parts - for a typical 1200-word review cannot do justice to the conceptual framework backed with empirical evidence and possible prognosis for the future that Kandpal brings to the fore.

He begins with an interesting postulate - nature is as dependent on us, as we are on nature. And whatever we do has an implication elsewhere, and everywhere. It is true that Newtonian Physics and Cartesian Philosophy saw matter and energy as apart. For Descartes, there was a fundamental division of nature into the mind - or the res cogitans (the thinking matter) and