Institutions were made for wisdom, not wisdom for institutions

Many of us may remember playing a childhood game where one person has a message to pass on to the entire group, and each individual must whisper it into the ear of the next person until it reaches the last person. This individual then proclaims the message to the entire group, who more often than not, burst into laughter at the absurd butchering of language. Through a round of mishearing, fabrication and lack of attention, we end up with an unrecognisable message at best, and garbled nonsense at worst. What starts as “Mary wears a red dress” disintegrates into “Mary needs some bed rest!”

Most children playfully laugh off the naive error because it’s just a fun game. Until it isn’t.

Like thermodynamic systems, information also tends toward entropy. We can observe that communication tends towards disorder over time, or in the age of social media, in a matter of minutes. Systems of all kinds naturally move from order to chaos, dispersing their energy until it becomes useless and unable to work, like Mary who is sadly on bed rest. That is, unless we make an effort and add energy to maintain it.

Now, if we look at this from an existential perspective, life appears extremely gloomy. Why bother continually working for a world where everything is going to ruin anyway? Here is where the objective, detached approach of science can help us both learn from life whilst staying grounded. Science tells us that entropy is real, measurable and necessary. The cyclical nature of life means that nothing stays the same forever, and it’s not desirable for it to do so. Decay and death can be viewed only as tragic endings, which they undoubtedly can be, but nature tries to show us that even death can fertilise new beginnings. Note: The principle of entropy appears across multiple domains—from physics to information to human memory to religious and spiritual institutions. I’ll be exploring these parallels not as identical mechanisms, but as a pattern that reveals something about how meaning and order naturally behave.

Memories are like playing a long game of “pass it on” with ourselves

There’s a reason most families have had at least one argument about how a past incident played out. The memory is uniquely formed in each mind and often held with unshakable conviction. But how much should we really trust memory?

Whatever happens to us in life, we experience subjectively. This means that only we have the first-person perception of how it felt to be on the receiving end of such an experience. Our perception of each event is filtered through our emotions, mental conditioning and our awareness at the time. This is why telling someone else how they are supposed to feel rarely works well.

When we recall a memory, our mind is reconstructing the original event, which we now realise could have been pretty dicey anyway. During this reconstruction, our mind processes memory fragments and conveniently fills in the gaps based on current understanding, beliefs and feelings. Details tend to get hazy, so we may look to photo albums, heirlooms, friends or relatives to find missing pieces of the puzzle. To add to the confusion, each time we recall that same memory, we are in fact remembering the last time we remembered it, thereby allowing any “errors” to compound. Yet, we confidently state that “this is exactly how it happened” and even take offence when that narrative is challenged.

In the example of memories, even though entropy takes place, we are continuously expending effort during the reconstruction and recall. Our minds do this in order to make sense of things and resolve any cognitive dissonance. However, it makes one wonder when, despite all the effort, we often end up with inaccurate and conflicting memories.

The question of theological and spiritual institutions

Before we continue, I must make it very clear that this article, like much of my writing, only serves food for thought. They are personal realisations arising from my own spiritual and religious practices. Neither do I need everyone to believe as I do, nor do I feel inclined to debate. Why?

Firstly, it should go without saying that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, practices and lifestyle, provided they don’t intentionally harm others. I say intentionally because none of us can guarantee that no one else in the entire world feels harmed because of something we said or did.

Secondly, truth isn’t something that can be imposed upon our minds intellectually. We can study all the scripture in the world a thousand times over and listen to great teachers for hours on end, but until the heart is able to receive the wisdom and embody it, individual realisation can’t flower.

Having said that, let’s consider the mechanism by which theological and spiritual teachings reach the modern day seeker. Many of these teachings have been passed down in some form or another for millennia.

The wise ones have often talked about how all paths lead to the same Source. In my view, there are as many paths as there are people in the world. Sadly, in the buffet of spiritual and religious seeking, the chefs are holding out on us, misleading us into believing that we only have a handful of dishes to select from and that we’d better like it!

All religious institutions and spiritual organisations serve an important purpose in their own way. They have collectively given millions of people comfort, safety, belonging and genuine spiritual wisdom and freedom. To dismiss this entirely would not just be disrespectful, but intellectually arrogant. The problems tend to creep in when we get a little too attached to the identity of being from X religion or Y community. We end up with a world where even sincere questioning feels like an attack and independence feels like heresy.

How Truth entropies through the ages

Let’s say that in the beginning of each tradition, there was the unadulterated message of the Divine, by whatever name we may call it. This was teaching in its purest form; the Essence of wisdom. Let’s also say that the all-encompassing Source is also the source of keen discrimination, and therefore only chooses to reveal its Essence to those deemed capable of transmitting it accurately. Otherwise, we are in trouble before even setting off! However, as we may be about to find out, transmissions are rarely lossless.

Oral tradition

In ancient times, students would sit by the teacher and listen to their wisdom pour out, often through the medium of speech. But as soon as anything pure touches the tongue, it becomes unavoidably corrupted. This isn’t the fault of those teachers, as they had the unenviable task of filtering unspoken, transmitted wisdom into miserly language as precisely as possible. They also were bound by the culture and politics of the times they lived in, and had to communicate in a way that made sense to the people of that era. Sadly, we often overlook that what was taught 1000 years ago was culturally relevant to a society who lived 1000 years ago!

The first transcribing

Even if the teacher was giving pure ambrosia, each student can only hold as much as their capacity. Each one walks away with a slightly different understanding of what the teacher meant, and this differentiation already introduces a little tension. Even if someone transcribed immediately during the teaching itself, each scribe’s capacity would introduce slight variations. If only they had smartphones. If we factor in the literacy level of the times, it is quite possible that transcribing was delayed, or was fragmented and compiled later on.

Once we delay the transcribing process, each individual may inadvertently introduce their own theological or cultural biases into the mix. As hard as it is to convey deep, nuanced inner wisdom through speech, it can harden even more when crystallised into a written form.

Copies of copies of copies

Remember what we discussed about memory reconstruction? Just as a memory recalled numerous times can compound its errors, teachings copied or re-transcribed repeatedly over the ages can drift steadily away from the original material. It is only human to misread, mishear or fill in the gaps with available knowledge and assumptions. We also have the added influence of cultural and language shifts over time, which tend to colour the perceptions of the transcriber. Each generation builds on the previous, viewing the wisdom through the lens of their predecessors. It is not unusual for groups to branch off due to irreconcilable differences in their recollections or understanding.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and some distortions are genuinely just adaptations to new contexts. However, it does illustrate how far a message can deviate from its source. That’s something to be aware of if we claim to be a unique holder of Truth.

The cost of translation

Many people feel that the most beautiful Persian poetry loses some of its finesse in translation. This is true of many old traditions, especially ones that were brought to us in languages that people don’t widely study anymore. While translation is crucial for enabling access, we often lose the passion, the metaphors and the pithy aphorisms of the original.

I often wonder what the original teachers would have to say if they could witness what we have done to their work, and in the name of their work.

Okay, so what’s the point if everything gets destroyed?

Wait, so why should we have any religious or spiritual institutions at all? Because we still need them to varying degrees. There’s a saying about how one shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many institutions and organisations still provide real support, guidance and meaning to many people. Without any structure or systematisation of teachings, humanity would have missed out on a lot of wisdom and possibly found ourselves in an even darker place than we currently are. People could argue endlessly with what if’s and what about’s, but at the heart of any healthy discussion there has to be a level of respect for the humanity of all involved.

Having said that, nature always has her way in the end. Remember, entropy isn’t a bad thing. It’s necessary. After all, if the energy of any structure has dissipated so much that it’s both unredeemable and unrecognisable to its original essence, perhaps dissolution is a kindness.

As bleak as that sounds, this viewpoint introduces a greater complexity that may serve us well. After all, what is it that entropies in the first place? Systems, organisations, institutional structures, even language and memories. Who said anything about the original Essence of wisdom itself?

Forms may vanish, but the Essence always live on

Each tradition ultimately tries pointing to the same Essence. The source of all wisdom, not just the carrier of it. This isn’t something just outside or beyond us. It resides within us too. So many of us have, at least at some point, perceived truth in a way that is so universal, so compassionate and harmonious that it simply cannot be rationalised away.

Many religions have a lot of common ground if we make efforts to look for it. My favourite example is one of the most simple ones; the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. This is a part of Essence, because it’s experienced subjectively by all of us and felt right down to our cores. It is Love. Who can argue with Love? And why on earth would anyone want to? Does this wisdom need layers of spiritual bureaucracy and tomes of scripture to be understood? Because despite all available resources pointing to the same thing, we aren’t living this one very well right now.

Perhaps the middle path is to accept what is good and useful about our current structures, honour those who guide us on the path, and also turn inward to verify through direct experience what resonates as True. Then, we can know Essence for ourselves. Our inner Divinity. Humanity’s shared repository of Love. In a future world where we each live this way, there won’t be a need for any scribes, scriptures, or even teachers. And we would accept that in peace.

Even if natural law dictates that all external forms will entropy and die, Essence always finds a way to live on, sometimes finding even more beautiful expressions of itself if allowed to.

Through constant churning, it may appear that the poor milk has been destroyed. In a very real way, it has. However, it is from the breakdown and chaos that the fat molecules self-organise and coalesce, gifting us with smooth, nourishing butter.

Kiruthika Rajeswaran