Abhijit Naskar's Blog, page 104

I am Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu & Atheist

People often ask me, what my religion is. My answer to them is, I am a Christian to the Christian, a Jew to the Jew, a Muslim to the Muslim, a Hindu to the Hindu and an Atheist to the Atheist. There is nothing wrong or unscientific or primitive about being a religious person. In fact, we neuroscientists have shown with countless experiments that in daily life, religious rituals such as engaging prayers, aid in sustaining mental as well as physical health. But the problem with religion, in the way it is perceived in today's world, is that, it is more of a matter of theoretical indoctrination than actual realization of divinity within the self. And that's where religion becomes dangerous.

A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society. That is why, I am a relative of both the religious and the atheist portions of the society, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with modern civilization. And indeed, it has nothing to do with religion. And if it does fester in any corner of the world, it is the responsibility of the conscientious people of that society to rise against such barbarianism and uproot it before it grabs onto the psyche of a broader audience.

Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil. In a society, where people most progressively practice rational thinking, no fundamentalist pest can infect their psyche. But if the people are already boiling with rage, then such minds are more vulnerable to fundamentalist contagion. Thus emerge Jihadis or Holy Warriors. Here let me quote from my book "The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance", to show you, what goes on inside the brain of a holy warrior.

“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”

To get rid of religious terrorism, it is not enough to kill a bunch of Jihadis, even though it may be morally justified to do so, for saving humanity from their wrath. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.

The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation. Some people like baseball, some soccer and some others like no sports at all. Their psychological orientation with sports doesn't make them any less or more human. The same is with religious orientation. The true Kingdom of God is within you, and it is defined by your behavior with other people, regardless of their religious affiliation. You are the God of your life, and your divinity lies in your actions. And once you realize this, it will dawn on you that, all religions are mere external echoes of humankind's internal divinity. Remember, divinity is goodness, and goodness is godliness. There is nothing higher than this. There is no greater religion than this.

Further Reading
In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance

Film Making - A Great Tool to Shape a Society

Motion Picture - it can be a great tool to inspire and shape the thinking of the masses, yet the harsh reality of the so-called modern society is that, most of the films that are made today have not the slightest bit of nutritious food for the mind, rather it is all a cocktail of various cheap stimuli. They can, if they want, make movies of great taste, capable of getting inside the head, or rather the heart of the people, and make them feel sentiments of utter significance both in the paths of individual and social progress, yet they choose not to. And their excuse for not making such movies is that, they do not sell – their excuse is that, people won't go to the theaters to watch an inspirational and thought-provoking movie – their excuse is that, people want entertainment, not philosophy!

However, regardless of such petty notion about film-making, there are some true filmmakers, who give their heart and soul to make movies that are most incredible in their ability to touch the heart as well as the brains of the masses. A Film has the potential to kindle such a spark of inspiration in an individual that it can alter the course of human progress. Today the thinker whom you know as Naskar, had his inspiration from not only the world of science and philosophy, but also from the world of motion-picture. Back in the years, when I was in the pursuit of recognizing my real self, movies did not only fuel that pursuit to some extent, but also, they taught me to speak languages other than my mother-tongue Bengali, such as English, Telugu and others.

The reality is, films that are made solely to sell, instead of touching the conscience of the masses, feed on the ignorance and confusions of the people, on the other hand, films that are created to both inspire and entertain at a deeper level, are more likely to have fewer audience. But remember this, my dear film-maker, the few viewers that your film receives because of being more inspiring and less entertaining, have the potential to shape their society in the line of the idea conveyed by you. Now you choose, my dear friend, what kind of society you wish to have - a society full of dumb manikins who love nothing more than pure, pedestrian entertainment, or a society where the very term entertainment is defined by the message conveyed by your film. A film with no message, is a film of no value in the society of civilized humans. You can tell the level of intellect and advancement of a nation, by the kind of movies its citizens watch.

A society does not stay dumb because of its dumb co-called political leaders, but because of those large number of creative individuals with great public outreach, such as film-makers, actors, music composers, singers, and others, who are more interested in increasing their fan-following than shaping the mind of their preexisting followers with their work towards a progressive future. There is a difference between healthy entertainment and cheap, pedestrian entertainment. And unfortunately, most of today's film-makers are inclined towards the later instead of the former, especially in the developing countries. In fact, to these directors, the only entertainment that there is, is the pedestrian entertainment - and as for the healthy entertainment, it is apparently a myth that is less likely to receive a broader audience.

So, now let's try to understand, what the heck is healthy entertainment! Healthy entertainment is a beautiful blend of stimuli that can connect with the viewer at a sentimental level, then sow the seeds of a certain idea or feed the mind with inspiration and courage. In short, healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction. This leads to not only an entertained viewer, but also an inspired soul. And that should be the purpose of film-making, and indeed the entire entertainment industry, rather than feeding the general population with garbage. Remember - Entertain, but also, give the viewer something to think about. Without an underlying message to think about, there is no difference between going to the movie-theater and going to the bar.

A Few Recommended Movies:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, People will Talk, Good Will Hunting, Patch Adams, Bicentennial Man, 3 Idiots (Hindi), Taare Zameen Par (Hindi), Oh My God (Hindi), Moner Manush (Bengali), Leader (Telugu)

Islam - Religion of Peace or Violence

Islam - is it a religion of peace or of violence? This is a question that torments the entire human society. But just because it is correlated with over-exaggerated discussions and debates, does not mean that the question itself is a genuine one. Let me put it this way - Islam is a religion of course, but neither of peace nor of violence. It is a religion like any other religion, that provides a psychological bedrock of baseline cultural identity and individuality to its people. But it is the actions of these people that should be accounted for to define whether the religion "Islam" is a religion of peace or of violence, instead of judging it based on the scripture Quran. Books are no measure for judgement in the society of thinking humanity. It is the actions of the people that counts, nothing else.

Here you must remember, the so-called Jihadis who are in reality, mentally unstable individuals run by Quranic fundamentalists, do not represent the whole Muslim population of the world. Muslims are just as peace-loving as the Christians, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists. Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.

Peace and Violence are both biological traits of humans as well as the entire animal kingdom. And since humans are the only species capable of creating literatures, it should not be surprising that these literatures would have the same blend of peace and violence, or simply, good and evil, that the human character possesses. And these literatures include all the scriptures in the world. As such, they are not immune to the innate evil of the human psyche. In fact, since these scriptures are the product of a time when ignorance and barbarianism ran rampant in the human society, it is more reason, for evil traits to appear on their pages alongside the goodness that they teach.

Like all human literatures the Islamic literature, the Quran and the Hadith, were also human creation. No Allah or God had anything to with them. They arose from the minds of the humans. The Quranic messages were born from the mind of supposedly the man named Mohammed in a state of transcendence. This state of mind is an extraordinary one, with such unique elements that often leave the smartest individuals baffled. And Mohammed was no smart man, like say, Albert Einstein or James Watson. He was an ordinary man of his time, who attained the state of transcendence during his daily prayers in a mountain cave. And in that state of transcendence his mind gave rise to all the revelations, both good and bad, that later collectively became known as the Holy Quran. Hence, it is the reader who must distinguish the good from the bad, if he or she is to remain a genuine part of the civilized society.

Let me bring up an excerpt from my book The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance" to shed further light on this matter.

"Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of some of the Quranic doctrines that literally command to kill the infidels if they do not become Muslims! Think of the textual creeds that teach, a man who does not believe all the teachings of Quran should be killed and it is a mercy to kill him! The one ultimate rule of the Quranic fundamentalists is “there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith. At moment’s notice, every man or woman, who does not exactly believe in that, must be killed. Everything that does not belong to this set of ideals must be killed."

And because of such barbarian actions of the Quranic fundamentalists, many atheists, including my dear friends and colleagues Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris quite naively want to turn every single religious person on earth into an atheist, which by the way, is a great and progressive notion, but I am afraid, it biologically, or to be more specific neurologically, is an impractical idea. Religion itself is a neurological phenomenon which evolved in the human mind to act as an aid in daily life. Which means, Mother Nature selected it as a neuropsychological feature for the humans in the path of survival. Hence, no individual has the power to take such natural trait away from the human mind, unless Natural Selection gives consent. Therefore, it is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.

All we need to do, is to turn human actions into a measure of judgement for religions, instead of some old books. Once we successfully do this, eventually we will be able to build a world where the human self shall be the Alpha and the Omega of the society, not a God self of some old books. In fact, the God self depicted in those books, was nothing but the transcendental manifestation of the human self. Which means, the God of humanity is, in actuality, human, or to be more accurate, man himself. Men in different times went into transcendence and quite unintentionally, due to neurological reasons (refer to Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality), mistook the messages rising from their own mind as revelations coming from an external divine realm. Thus, all revelations of all scriptures are the creations of the human mind, not of God.

Now tell me, do you still hail those texts as irrefutable? Do you still think that you are ought to follow every single word of those scriptures with a blind eye? Don't you think that it is the existential responsibility of a civilized human being to measure those texts, as they have such a blinding impact upon the society, with your own rational mind?

Progress of the human society is predicated upon the proper functioning of a key element of the human mind, that is reasoning. Without this mental element we would no longer be a civilized species. And when reasoning runs pure in the heart of the humans, no book has the power to compel them to fight among each other in the name of religion or paradise. Remember, reasoning is the cure for superstitions and bigotry. Once reasoning reigns, love and acceptance become the religion, and hatred and dogmatism become a matter of ancient history.

Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
Abhijit Naskar, 2017, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance

Surgery on Society

How can we treat a nation? How can we solve its issues? This article is for every single person who wants to do something for his or her nation - who hails himself or herself as a patriot. In this article I am going to show you the biological procedure of treating the issues that torment a nation's soul.

The first step towards treating a nation, is that you must accept that you can't treat a nation, because it is not the nation that requires treatment. Rather it is the people. It is you, the modern human being of the civilized world who needs to work on treating your own conscience and perception. Perhaps I am sounding a bit complicated. So let me simplify.

The world consists of nations. A nation consists of people. A people consists of human beings. A human consists of fascinating psychological elements, collectively called the mind. And a mind is a product of a hundred billion nerve cells working relentlessly in proper harmony. Thus, a little change at the very rudimentary level of the neural network inside one human brain, has the potential to essentially influence a whole nation, and even a whole world. We have countless examples of such individual human minds inspiring the entire planet. Tolstoy, Gandhi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Mandela, Subhas Chandra Bose, Vasil Levsky and so on. These are individual human beings who first worked on their own minds, and then embarked on an unforgettable journey to put their wisdom into practice.

So, in order to really do something for your nation, you must first stop trying to do something for your nation, and turn your focus on yourself in order to make a better version of that self. Reformed and rejuvenated selves are what we need to reform the conscience of a whole nation.

Changes in the neurochemistry of one human being have the potential to inspire the entire national organism. After all, a nation is nothing without its people. When you start understanding the biology behind every single emotion and behavioral response of that people, including your own, you can learn to program them on your side in a way that will lead to the best possible outcome. And this very self-control is the key to a better nation. Also, such human action is contagious. When you start being a better version of yourself, people around you would start to feel the need to nourish their virtue of self-control as well. Your awakening will initiate the awakening of others. Remember, a nation with a thousand awakened citizens and a corrupt leader, is much more alive than a nation with an awakened leader and a thousand corrupt citizens.

So how can one learn to become in control of his or her emotions and behavioral responses. The first step is to accept yourself, the way you are. You need to accept your biology, as well as the biology of others. For example, a man's biology is designed by Mother Nature in such a way that it is impossible for him to not get turned on when he sees a hot lady with big boobs and butt in front of him. Now, of course, due to social norms, in most cases, men feel ashamed of those sexual impulses, and pretend as much as possible to act as if they are the most decent gentleman on earth. And there lies a crucial element that acts as a stimulant for the common social issue of sexual assaults. I have discussed this matter in minute detail in my book Prescription: Treating India's Soul.

The point is, if you don't learn to accept your basic biological instincts as normal human elements, then you can never be able to make your country a better place for your children. You cannot fight your biology. Things go nuts, when you try to. Your biology makes you who you are. Without biology you don't exist. And accepting your basic biological instincts does not mean letting them get hold of your behavior. With the help of the frontal lobes of your brain, you can learn how to manipulate your basic instincts in a healthy way. And this is what you need to do, to reform a nation.

Understanding and accepting the biology is the first step towards transforming a nation, or rather a nation's conscience. Let me tell you some of those basic neurobiological facts of human life. First, we humans are born selfish. Without the element of selfishness we would have never survived this long. And this biological element of selfishness makes each one of us corrupt at a genetic level. So, yes, corruption is biological, it cannot be avoided, but only manipulated.

Second, men think about sex way more than women. And a hot figure of a lady always turns them on, whether they are in a relationship or not. Hence, either consciously or subconsciously they end up having an innate desire to have sex with her. That's the reality of the male psychology. Accept it. Because all men from the civilized world may pretend that they are decent and that they only think about sex with their romantic partner, but the neurological reality is that there is a beast inside all of them, who subconsciously wants to mate with every single woman it encounters. However, sexual repression itself is not the cause of sexual assaults in various nations, especially the developing ones, but it does play a crucial role in the society's ability to deal with such issues. We see this mostly in developing countries like India. How can the Indians expect to solve the issue of women's safety when they are not even mature enough to talk about sex. To quote from Prescription: Treating India's Soul
"Stop talking about “rape” and start talking about “sex”, and within a few decades India will attain the true mindset to prevent sexual assaults."

Another crucial biological reality is, religion is a neurological phenomenon. It is born in the human brain and dies with it. It does not come from any Supreme Entity, up in the sky. It has nothing to do with any Lord Almighty running the universe. It all comes from the human mind, including the very notion of God. God is a human creation, and so is religion.

Hence, nobody is qualified enough to teach you how to be spiritual or religious. Get rid of all those religious preachers from your society. Nourish the neurological phenomenon of divinity within your own mind. Do not let this natural human element to be the tool of exploitation in the hands of countless bloodsucking preachers and religious fanatics.

These are only a few among the rudimentary biological elements that influence the true progress of a nation. And as I have said in Prescription, "It is you who needs to transform into a modern human being of the 21st century, not your nation. Your nation shall be defined by the character of each one of you. So, be the change you want to see in your nation. But the change has to come through the methods of Science for an actual ever-lasting impact."

The general human mind has a common affection for philosophy. But philosophy is useless if it is not directed by science. Science and philosophy are the two wheels of development of a nation. If either one fails, the development of a nation gets stuck. And this has been the problem with many nations throughout the ages. Useless philosophy has overwhelmed the vulnerable minds of many nations. Their heads have become filled with metaphysical garbage which does not have any practical application whatsoever in this modern age. To have an actual impact on the development of a nation, you must incorporate the methods of Science in daily life, only then you will become truly civilized, not before that.

Be aware of the science of the human mind. Be aware of yourself. Be aware of your weakness and your strength. Weakness and darkness are common elements of life on planet earth. You cannot avoid them. They are essential part of our evolutionary history. Fear, weakness, rage, lust all are basic features of every biological lifeform, and they serve only one purpose, that is survival of the species. But for obvious reasons we hate these elements and love the good ones, like happiness, peace, strength and love. And there is the biggest psychological impediment in the progress of human civilization. Every time humans try to fight the elements they don't like, their biology reinforces those elements even more and leads the humans to misery. Misery rises in human life, when a human doesn't accept his or her true biological self.

I urge to you in the name of human progress, embrace your biology. Be brave and upright. And have the courage to face your inner self, and emerge as a civilized and liberated being. Liberate yourself from the tyranny of your hatred against your own biological reality, and you shall automatically liberate your nation from all its misery.


Further Reading
Neurosutra: The Abhijit Naskar Collection
Prescription: Treating India's Soul
What is Mind?
The Krishna Cancer

The Invention of Vedas and Ayurveda

No knowledge comes from the outside world or an imaginary supernatural paradise. No knowledge comes from some sort of divine entity, regardless of how effective they are. All knowledge, scientific or philosophical, ancient or modern, rises from the human mind. These minds are by all means just as human any other person on earth. But rigorous training on the self puts them at a higher level of intellect than the general population. However, this height of excellence has its own peculiar purpose. At this level, we thinkers hail ourselves to be the servant of humanity. And this trend of servitude goes back not decades or even centuries, rather a few thousand years. In every age, there are these individuals upon the shoulders of whom the entire human civilization progresses.

But like any other person, we the scientists and philosophers, are ordinary human beings. Today you have Ramachandran, Dawkins, Hawking, myself and many others - and all of them are humans, not gods. And all the work we do - all the scientific and philosophical literature we create, we do so by the use of our very natural human faculties, which have evolved in us, that is all the humanity, through the natural process of evolution. All the knowledge and wisdom that we give to the species are constructed by the biological circuits of our brain, and not by some sort of God. And the same goes to the knowledge that the ancient thinkers of India and some other civilizations came up with. All their knowledge that later constructed the organized textual scriptures of early humanity, were their creation, and not God's.

However, think about this. If I say that my insight of the human mind came not from my own brain through rigorous nourishment and utilization of my intellectual faculties, rather from the Lord Almighty - say Brahma, it is more likely for the vulnerable masses with no scientific awareness whatsoever to embrace my knowledge as divine will. They would embrace the texts created by me as irrefutable gospel. They would submit to every single word at an innate emotional level and hail those words as eternal knowledge, even if I intentionally put some negative elements in those texts to serve my own personal interest and not the interest of the society or the pursuit of truth. And this is exactly what happened to the ancient texts of the Vedas. They say the Vedas are eternal - the knowledge within it came not from the mind of man, but from Brahma himself.

Now imagine the ancient society of India, and in fact all over the world a few thousand years ago. In those days, rational thinking was quite scarce. Ignorance was the default mode of thinking. Only a handful of individuals were capable of higher intellectual thinking. Among them were Vyasa, Susruta, Charaka, Aryabhatta, Vatsayana, Patanjali, Brahmagupta and a few others. These people were the real scientists and philosophers of the ancient Indian society. They were neither gods, nor angels, or any sort of divine beings. They were just ordinary flesh and blood human beings, who happened to be exceptionally intelligent for people of their time.

These great minds despite being born in a superstitious society, were able to break free from their own shackles of prejudices and ignorance. Unfortunately, over time, their scientific contribution started to get hugely overlooked by their own people. Later generations of their motherland began to hail them as some sort of divine beings with supernatural powers, and thus emerged the term “sage” or “rishi”. Even though the term technically means a profoundly wise man, today people abuse it in the worst manner possible.

Sages or Rishis are present in all times. The term itself refers to any ordinary human being who possesses extraordinary expertise in his or her field of work. There is no supernatural element involved in it. In the ancient times, India was full with such brilliant human minds. And in the hands of some of those individuals, we received the most effective and glorious natural means to maintain a healthy anatomy - we received the Knowledge about Healthy Life - the Veda of Ayu - the Ayurveda.

The term "Veda" means knowledge, and even though the innate, primordial, superstitious part of the human mind that has a knack for paranormal stuff, would very much like to believe that what we call the Vedas, came from the mouth of Brahma - that, they are "Apauruseya" (meaning 'not of man' or 'authorless') - in reality, they came from the mind of some ancient Indians, just like "Republic" came from Plato, "The Art of War" came for Sun Tzu, "On the Origin of Species" came from Charles Darwin, "A Brief History of Time” came from Stephen Hawking, "The Selfish Gene" came from Richard Dawkins, "What is Mind?" came from Naskar, "Capital" came from Karl Marx, "Sapiens" came from Yuval Noah Harari and so on. Greed of hierarchically higher people always drives them to incorporate imaginary divine intervention into human creations, so that through these creations, they can have authority over the people in their national society as well as the global society. Hence from the primordial urge for authority rises the need to attach the term "Apauruseya" to the Vedas.

The Vedic Hymns were skillfully crafted by the sages of ancient India through rigorous mental exercise. The sanskrit word Veda is derived from the root "Vid" which means "to know". The Vedic literature was among the earliest written texts in human history, and indeed they are of great scientific and philosophical significance. The Vedas are divided into four folds, namely - Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. Of these, the first three were the principal original division, also called "trayi vidya", that is, "the triple science" of reciting hymns (Rigveda), performing sacrifices (Yajurveda), and chanting songs (Samaveda). The Rigveda is the oldest of all the Vedic texts, which is approximately from the period of 1900 to 1100 BC.

And what you today know as Ayurveda is a sub-section of the fourth Veda - the Atharva Veda. Like it happens to all the ancient scriptures, the Atharva Veda is an amazing mixture of wonderful scientific truth and mystical and prejudicial non-sense such as metaphorical magic spells. The scientific part of this text is what we call Ayurveda, which deals with various physical and mental ailments. And when we talk about Ayurveda, the three most important minds that you need to get acquainted with are Charaka, Susruta and Vaghbata. All the knowledge of Ayurveda rise from the scientific compositions of the first two of these scientists and detailed elaboration of the third one.

Charaka (1st century A.D.) wrote Charaka Samhita (samhita- meaning collection of verses written in Sanskrit). Susruta (4th century A.D.) wrote his Samhita i.e Susruta Samhita. Vaghbata (5th century A.D.) compiled the third set of major texts called Ashtanga Hridaya and Ashtanga Sangraha. Charaka’s School of Physicians and Susruta’s School of Surgeons became the basis of Ayurveda and helped organize and systematically classify into branches of medicine and surgery.

In the ensuing years sixteen major supplementary texts or Nighantus were composed by a few other brilliant minds, such as Dhanvantari Bahavaprakasha, Raja and Shaligrama to name a few – that helped refine the practice of Ayurveda. New drugs were added and ineffective ones were discarded. Expansion of application, identification of new illnesses and finding substitute treatments seemed to have been an evolving process. Close to 2000 plants that were used in healing diseases and abating symptoms were identified in these supplements. Dridhabala in the 4th century revised the Charaka Samhita. The texts of Susruta Samhita were revised and supplemented by Nagarjuna in the 6th century.

Thus, several scientific minds of a society which was at large mostly ignorant, gave rise to a fantastically effective natural system of maintaining health, comprising eight major branches, that later became known as Ayurveda. The eight branches of this system were:
1. Kaya-chikitsa (Internal Medicine)
2. Shalakya Tantra (surgery and treatment of head and neck, Ophthalmology and ear, nose, throat)
3. Shalya Tantra (Surgery)
4. Agada Tantra (Toxicology)
5. Bhuta Vidya (Psychiatry)
6. Kaumara bhritya (Pediatrics)
7. Rasayana (science of rejuvenation or anti-ageing)
8. Vajikarana (the science of fertility and aphrodisiac)

All the advancement in Ayurveda was based upon the core scientific compositions of Charaka, Susruta and Vaghbata – mainly the compositions of Charaka and Susruta. Charaka, a 1st century man of medicine is perceived as the father of ancient Indian medicine. He was the Raj Vaidya (royal doctor) in the court of Kanishka. He is most celebrated for his scientific work known as Charak Samhita. It is a remarkable book on medicine. It has the description of a large number of diseases and gives methods of identifying their causes as well as the method of treating them. He was one of the early scientists in the world to talk about digestion, metabolism and immunity as important for health and so for medicinal sciences.

Susruta on the other hand was a brilliant surgeon who lived around 1500 years ago. His work Susruta Samhita is literally the earliest scientific work on the methodology of surgery. Let me bring up an excerpt from my book Prescription: Treating India's Soul in this context:

"He (Susruta) considered surgery as “the highest division of the healing arts and least liable to fallacy”. He studied human anatomy with the help of a dead body. In Susruta Samhita, over 1100 diseases are mentioned including fevers of twenty-six kinds, jaundice of eight kinds and urinary complaints of twenty kinds. Over 760 plants are described. All roots, bark, juice, resin, flowers etc. are mentioned as useful in health purposes. Cinnamon, sesame, peppers, cardamom, ginger are household remedies even today.
In Susruta Samhita, the method of selecting and preserving a dead body for the purpose of its detailed study has also been described. The dead body of an old man or a person who died of a severe disease was generally not considered for studies. The body needed to be perfectly cleaned and then preserved in the bark of a tree. It was then kept in a cage and hidden carefully in a spot in the river. There the current of the river softened it. After seven days it was removed from the river. It was then cleaned with a brush made of grass roots, hair and bamboo. When this was done, every inner or outer part of the body could be seen clearly.
Susruta’s greatest contribution was in the fields of Rhinoplasty (plastic surgery) and Ophthalmic surgery (removal of cataracts). In those days, cutting of nose and ears was a common punishment. Restoration of these, or limbs lost in wars was a great blessing. In Susruta Samhita, there is a very accurate step-by-step description of these operation procedures. Surprisingly, the steps followed by Susruta are strikingly similar to those followed by modern surgeons while doing plastic surgery. Susruta Samhita also gives a description of 101 instruments used in surgery. Some serious operations performed by him included taking foetus out of the womb, repairing the damaged rectum, removing stone from the bladder, etc."

Another important name behind Ayurveda was Vaghbata. Even though his work was not as original as the two major founders of Ayurveda - Charaka and Susruta, he made the works of these two scientists more lucid. Vaghbata in the 5th century compiled two sets of texts called Ashtanga Sangraha and Ashtanga Hridaya. In his work, he shed light on the Internal Medicine of Charaka Samhita and the various surgical procedures of Susruta Samhita.

Now the most important feature of these scientific works is that in all of them, their composers emphasized on the physiological aspects of human life, unlike the contemporary abundance of spiritual perspective in the society. They talked about science and rationality in a society, where everyone else was talking about demons, gods, ghosts and witches. Even when they were surrounded by ignorance, going quite against their society, they nourished their intellect and made it so strong and pure that it gave rise to some of the most glorious works in human history.

Today, the Ayurveda that they created, falls under the category of Alternative Medicine with all its natural remedies. As I have said in Prescription - "Ayurvedic remedies actually introduce active natural ingredients to the body. Ayurveda places great emphasis on prevention of illness and promotion of wellness. And that’s precisely what many of the Ayurvedic remedies do. Ingredients like ginger, honey, turmeric, cinnamon, clove, garlic etc. have in fact proven to have significant influence in promoting health and preventing illness."

However, you must remember that Ayurveda is no substitute for modern medicine. Modern Medicine has evolved through rigorous efforts of thousands of scientists through centuries. And I must admit that Modern Medicine as it is today, is predicated on the core principle of treating ailments, while the ancient system of Ayurveda is mostly predicated on the prevention of ailments. Therefore, utilizing various natural substances recorded in the Ayurvedic literature, in your daily life can help you maintain a healthy body as well as deal with minor bodily issues, and can greatly prevent major ailments, but if a major disease does rise, remember that Modern Medicine is the most effective tool that you can have, not any ancient system, be it Ayurveda or anything else. Hence, use Ayurveda - it will keep you healthy, but sometimes the body needs more advance treatment than Ayurveda can provide, and that need can only be met by Modern Medicine can provide.

Nevertheless, quite similar to us modern day scientists, all those scientists of ancient India were ordinary humans with excellent minds. There was nothing supernatural about their intelligence. So, start seeing them the way they actually were. Stop the paranormal fanaticism right now if you want your society to grow. Grow a brilliant and rational mind within yourself just as the scientists of ancient India did. Use your ability of reasoning to distinguish the genuine scientific works from the hodge-podge of fantasies.

Ayurveda if embraced properly can become a great promoter of heath in your life. In fact, all the Vedic texts can become a great tool in the path of humanity's progress, if their adjacent primordial fanaticism, such as they being written by a mystical figure called "Ganesha", is torn apart. Today you know that “Rahu” and “Ketu” were imaginations of the ignorant mind in an unqualified attempt to explain the phenomenon of eclipse - you know how positions of the sun, earth and moon occasionally give rise to solar and lunar eclipses. Likewise, one after another you need to get to rid of all the prejudicial concepts in your society and only then the good and beneficial ideas of the ancient texts shall rise to aid humanity. It is only through rational investigation of the ancient texts that they can become a true help to human life.

Man's Invention of God

The mystics of modern world who thrive on humanity's primitive knack for mysticism often proclaim with utter glory that spirituality is what distinguishes us humans from the animals. But the biological reality of life is, the element of spirituality does not distinguish us from the animal kingdom. Rather it is the extraordinarily unique blend of emotions, creativity and intellect, that sets us apart from the rest of the animal society. This fusion of vivid and varied elements of mental features makes us humans. It makes us a species unlike any other.

There is nothing extraordinary about the mental trait of spirituality. It evolved as a counter-mechanism for the fear of the unknown while we were living in the wild. If we look closely, we can discover the existence of this apparently supernatural element in various species other than humans, such as dogs. Dogs are spiritual in their own instinctive knack for sensing life in even inanimate objects. And in this aspect, the humans are not much different.

However, due to the extraordinary advancement of our brain circuits, unlike any other species, the humans quite unconsciously learnt to incorporate spirituality in their daily lives beyond the wildest instincts of all the lifeforms in the world.

Now let's go back in time. Think about the distant past, when our primitive ancestors were surrounded by the permeating darkness of absolute ignorance. In every walk of life, they encountered something incomprehensible. But irony of Mother Nature was that they had no modern means to satisfy their curious yet childishly immature mind in the face of those enigmatic natural phenomena. Thunderstorm, Earthquake, Volcanoes - all these events sparked nothing but fear in their instinctively driven mind. They were the slaves of Mother Nature, and as such they were tormented in every walk of life by the surrounding harsh environment.

Unlike now, instinct used to get the best of them, back in those days of incessant hardship for survival. Instincts drove their scared mind to forge explanations of paranormal nature our of their fear, anxiety and ignorance. Their mind was immersed in the sea of ignorance, where there was neither a single shred of data available to them, nor they had the brain capacity to comprehend such data. All they could sense with their instinctive mind was the overwhelming abundance of power-play by some sort of force, stronger than them.

Hence, they felt the growing urge to appease that supposed supernatural force with rituals of worship. And they began worshiping all the natural elements of nature, such as stones, hills, trees, lakes, animals and many more, driven by their craving for a sense of security. As such practice grew more prevalent, the brain circuits for such mental trait, began evolving. And slowly their worship of natural elements acquired stronger roots of spirit origin in their mind. Thus they learnt to impose the primordially concocted idea of spirits on various elements of nature. Thus in the mind of early humans, a whole new world of nature spirits was born. In this world, the lakes were home for lake spirits, the trees were home for tree spirits, the rivers were home for river spirits and so on.

Thus evolved the early neurological ground for spirituality, which would later pave the way for the arrival of the modern structure of religion in the human mind. Since then the human brain has evolved a lot, especially in the intellectual domain. However, despite the intellectual development, the early instinctively spiritual sense of a Supernatural Force driving the universe, still prevails in the psyche of the general population. This primitive idea got even more reinforced when a few individuals in the history of humanity proclaimed their mental union with their preconceived notion of that Almighty Force or Entity. Thus, through misinterpretation of individual experiences of the mental state of transcendence, the primitive sense of spirituality got psychologically molded into the modern humanized conception of God and Gods.

Religions, Prophets and Politics

"The Church has carried out some of the most inhuman and above all un-Christian acts of human history, yet, it is still gloriously hailed by the majority of human population as to be synonymous with Jesus Christ." - Neurons of Jesus

You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.

The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.

Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.

When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.

In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.

However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.

"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus

This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.

A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.

To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."

The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.

In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.

Real Education versus Educational Fundamentalism

What is Education?
Can you think of an accurate answer to this question?
Does the modern civilized society have any idea on the true meaning of the term?
Has the society ever been able to understand the true psychological underpinnings of education?
Or has it only constructed a sophisticated and hectic structure and stuck the label “education” on it just to gain authentication?

Education means nourishing the mind and make it develop in order to see beyond the limitations of current social perception. It means breaking the barriers of the rugged sociological system that impede in the progress of human civilization. It means trying new things out for the first time in human history and succeeding in a few while failing in some. That’s how a species grows and becomes more and more advanced.

Yet, somehow the craving for security has conditioned the society to perceive education not as an endeavor of the mind, rather as a preprogrammed task created by some sophisticated, illusory structure known as the “system of education”. Education means breaking free from the manacles of limitations put forward by primitive ignorance. Yet today’s fake education is gloriously founded upon the primordial element of “limitation”. And the authorities of this so-called education often take pride it in their ship shape structure where they manufacture dumb manikins.

Psychologically speaking, a system is indeed necessary, for any kind of human endeavor. However, the moment the mind becomes dependent on the system and starts trusting the system more than internal faculties of the mind, the very element of education fades away from the system. And that’s exactly what has become of the modern system of education. There is a system alright, but the actual element of education has long gone.

A carefully constructed structure of education is supposed to smoothen the pursuit of knowledge, instead of restricting the flow of knowledge. The ultimate goal of humanity is knowledge, yet modern society has made knowledge secondary and the pompous pride of the system primary. The flow of knowledge towards the mind should be moderated by the faculties of the mind itself, based on the acceptability of nothing but the mind.

Mind is the Alpha – Mind is the Omega. There is nothing else in the pursuit of knowledge. And more importantly, there is nothing else in education. All systems of the society are meant to serve the mind, not the mind to serve the systems.

Today’s system of education in most countries is based on rigorous indoctrination. This is what I call “Educational Fundamentalism”, which is quite similar to religious fundamentalism. The only difference between these two types of fundamentalism is that the later torments the entire human society, while the former tyrannizes the flourishing and vulnerable minds of the young society.

Quite like religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism is based upon bookish creeds created by the self-proclaimed authority figures of the system. And this very fundamentalism is the cause of all the growing conflicts between the student-body of the education society and the teachers running that society. And these conflicts further become tools of exploitation in the hands of a handful of war-mongering, authoritarian, blood-sucking, politicians.

In short, today’s modern human society, perceives educational fundamentalism as true education, while the reality is, it is totally opposite of education. Real education opens up the mind to the vast world of possibilities and potentials. It enables the mind to come up with its own unique answers to questions that have been never answered before. Real education creates a complex mesh of neural network in the brain, solely concerned with delicate processing of knowledge, that allows the being known as human, to see something that nobody else can.

A properly constructed system can aid in this process of the growth of mind and smoothen the course of learning. However, the reality is something quite pathetic and of utter concern for us scientists and other thinkers in the field of philosophy. We are concerned because, the modern pedagogy of the system in most countries does not allow the flourishing minds of the young generation to grow at its natural pace, rather it overloads their brain with preprogrammed stream of life-less information and expects them to regurgitate that information in an exact order. Those who succeed in standing up to that ruthless expectation earns the ticket to the next level of the system and eventually they emerge as heartless robots. And those who don’t are quite cold-bloodedly labeled as “failed” and are expected to go through the whole process of regurgitation year after year, until they either succeed or meet their doom.

This is not Education. It is a process of manufacturing computation devices that look like Homo sapiens, and thereby falsely and quite mistakenly labeled as “Education”. This “False Education” or “Educational Fundamentalism” is dangerous for the society, and moreover it is a threat to the entire species, because it takes away the basic cognitive capacities of the mind, which are quintessential for the advancement of the species.

The need of a safe and stable structure is ingrained in the mind as a primitive psychological characteristic. It is a basic instinctual necessity of the cavemen with us. Hence, it is quite easy for the society to fall prey to this innate instinctual need. And slowly it outweighs the urge for growth. It is plain biological evolution. As my dearly beloved Lizi often says to me in order to win an argument, “when Evolution speaks, even the Gods are silent”. And it is indeed accurate. Evolution drives all kinds of lifeforms as well as mindforms. And it is Mother Nature that drives the whole process of biological evolution. Here I’d take a step further and say, when Mother Nature speaks, even the Gods hold silence.

Instincts, drives and urges, all are evolutionary, and as such they serve their distinct purposes in the path of survival. However, these antique elements of the primitive human psyche are kept in check by the modern part of the brain, i.e. the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex of the brain is responsible for the modern rational thinking of the human mind, while the limbic system holds all the emotional elements of the mind, including the primordial ones.

Now the point is, primordial instinctual elements come more naturally to the human mind, than rational thinking. This is because all the basic instincts and drives of the mind have been there since the reptilian days, whereas rational and analytical thinking has evolved in the human brain far too recently. Naturally, it takes a lot of practice and efforts to become a rational free thinker, compared to the ignorant minds incessantly driven by the lizard within.

And that’s exactly what has become of this so-called civilized and modern human society and its system of education. Most of the human society as well as its system of education is driven by the lizards of the limbic brain. Hence, it’s not the fault of the system. Rather if anyone to blame it is Mother Nature. She is a wicked old lady, who always has it her way.

However, if you have sufficient insight into the whole process of evolution and can take into account all its correlated ups and downs, you will no longer be able to blame Mother Nature. Because, even though we have been living in the wilderness and surviving with our limbic instincts and drives for millions of years, we also have received from Mother Nature the gift of a complicated and advanced cerebral cortex, which enables us to carefully modulate the wild responses of the limbic system in this civilized world. We truly are an advanced species that has gained the brain capacity look beyond the basic needs of survival. We have learnt to take significant steps in the path of development.

And the most necessary tool in that path of advancement is Education. And here, by education, I refer to the real education of the mind, that endows the human psyche with vigor and expands its intellectual perception of the world. And in this whole process of progress, there is no place for the fake education of modern society that does nothing but condition the young human minds to become hypnotized hominid elitists.

To quote from my book Love, God & Neurons
“indoctrination is not just demeaning to the human conscience, it is lethal for the flourishing psychology of the hungry, young mind.
The purpose of education should ultimately be the advancement of the species. And for this to actually happen, the world needs the kind of education by means of which character is formed, strength of the mind is increased and the human intellect is expanded beyond its own limits.”

First the world needs teachers – teachers who have broken their own shackles of indoctrination – teachers who can go beyond the narrow-mindedness of the society. A handful of these young, brave and zealous teachers in every nation, shall be enough to rekindle the spark of pure knowledge in the entire species.

Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, What is Mind?
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost

Neural Kingdom of God

God – Allah – Jehovah – Brahman – all these mere man-made verbal expressions become bleak and dismal upon the attainment of the actual experience. Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. Awakening into that state makes all the perceptual limitations of the mind disappear, just like a bucket of muddy water turns crystal-clear once poured into the ocean.
To put it simply, the transcendental state sets the human mind free. In this extraordinary state of mind, the usual finite domain of consciousness transforms into a subjective, infinite, universal, all-pervading consciousness. This mental state is what we can quite literally call the Kingdom of God . Clinically I have termed this state of mind in What is Mind? as Absolute Unitary Qualia .
The experience itself is encoded in the neurological circuits of the human brain. However, this specific functional expression of the neurons does not occur in the usual state of mind. It requires specific internal and external stimuli to trigger the manifestation of the God state in the human mind.
Various neural activities collectively construct the vividly divine internal environment of the Kingdom of God. It involves various internal biological factors. However, the most important question of this century that rises from the study of the psychology of religion, is that whether the God state is a delusional state of the mind.
Despite the fact that a few radical atheist psychologists have put forward the suggestion that religious faith or simply any kind of faith upon God may turn out to be mere delusion, we neuroscientists who actually investigate the molecular underpinnings of all things religious and spiritual, have empirically proven otherwise.
The argument against faith is all based upon the rigorous analysis of the scriptures, and not upon the objective observation of the actual individual sensation of faith. Historical experiences of the Kingdom of God gave rise to all the scriptures in the world, but the scriptures themselves don’t account for the actual globally prevalent psychological element of faith or divinity in the human mind.
Faith is a natural evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping-mechanism.
Now let’s first distinguish what is the difference between faith and the mental state of God. Faith is simply a natural sensation of the mind, quite like love, which is seen in most of the human population. On the other hand, the God state is the actual subjective experience of encountering God, quite literally. Hence, this subjective experience occurs only in the fraction of the human population, due to various stimuli.
Moreover, the manifestation of the God Dimension in the human mind requires specific internal and external environment. In short, there are a few kinds of stimuli that evoke such transcendental state where a person simply has an inexplicable encounter with God, unlike the everyday personal sense of faith. This encounter manifests at different intensities based on the kind of the stimulus, and more importantly, majority of the modern day God state experiences tend to be lethal, due to their pathological origin.
This means, pathology can indeed cause experiences of the Kingdom of God, but not all God state experiences are caused by pathology. They can also occur due to disturbance in the geomagnetic field of our planet, consumption of psychedelics, excruciatingly extreme level of stress during a near-death situation, or ultimately through a natural and healthy procedure of meditation.
Now let’s shed some light on the shady domain of the Kingdom of God or to speak clinically, the Absolute Unitary Qualia. So, the very first question that may rise in the mind of a rational human being, is - what is this God state? Is it some kind of extraterrestrial dimension?
To answer these questions, we need to resort to two different perspectives. From a subjective point of view, i.e. from the point of view of a person who’s actually experiencing the God state, it is indeed an extraterrestrial dimension which the ancient cultures termed as the Kingdom of God. Now from an objective point of view, i.e. from the point of view of a scientist who analyzes subject’s experience of the God state, it is an exceptional state of the human mind, attained in specific internal and external conditions.
Basically, it is an earthly experience, which manifests in an unearthly manner. It appears to be devoid of the mortal limitations of the human life. And especially due to its unearthly and quite heavenly characteristics, it is deemed in many early human civilizations as the Abode of the Lord Almighty.
Unlike the usual sensation of divinity in the general population, the God state is an actual experiential encounter with the pre-dominant mental picture of an Almighty Being. I termed it as Absolute Unitary Qualia because of its unifying nature, that puts forward a sensation of oneness between human and the God or the Universe.
Here is a common expression of experiencing the Absolute Unitary Qualia or the God state:
“The experience took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go through my whole soul, so it seemed as if God was praying in, with, and for me.”
Now in order to understand the underlying biology of the Kingdom of God, let’s start with a basic understanding of the anatomy of the soul.
Until the advancement in the field of Neuroscience, there have been a lot of mystical confusions surrounding the ancient notions of mind, body, and soul, in both the philosophical and scientific societies. Unfortunately, the confusion still prevails to a great extent in the general population. And to clear this air of mystery, a lot of scientific literatures have been published. So, I’ll not go into the detail analysis of these ideas.
All these confusions are based on ignorance. However, far from the confusions, let’s have a basic scientific perception on the idea of mind, body and soul. For ages, due to lack of insight into the biological basis of life, the ancient notion of soul being the driving force behind mind and body, has remained dominant in the general human psyche.
There has always been an irresistible desire in humans to see ourselves somehow above nature and our biological body. And this primordially innate desire has given rise to varied doctrines and philosophies of dualism, which inadvertently implied a mystical distinction between our biological body and the supernatural realm. Thus, the mystical idea of a soul has survived through ages.
The primitive human notion about the soul has been that, the soul bestows a person with his or her unique personality. This is more or less the universal perception of the soul. And if that so, then soul and mind are basically one and the same thing, because the modern understanding of the human psychology reveals that the mind is the collective expression of various mental elements such as emotions, ambitions, ideologies, sentiments etc. All these mental elements define a person’s personality traits. Therefore, soul is only the primordial equivalent of the mind.
Having diminished the confusing primeval separation between mind and soul, let’s move on and get acquainted with the fundamental building blocks of the mind/soul.
It all begins in the tiny cells of the brain which we call neurons. Neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the mind/soul. Bring a bunch of live neurons together and from them would rise a rudimentary mental feature. Bring enough of such different features together, by interconnecting their individual networks of neurons and collectively they’ll form the mind/soul.
Now imagine a hundred billion of such neurons creating a magnificent network, which gives rise to your lavishly colored mental life. Neuron is to mind, what DNA is to life. Now, let’s look at the connection between mind and life. While being an essential part of life, mind is what enables life to maneuver in this world. And consciousness is a quintessential part of mind which makes life aware of its environment. Now, given the context of the article, one might wonder, where does God fit into all this?
There is nothing mystical about it actually. It is pretty simple - mind is a part of life – consciousness is a part of mind – God is a part of consciousness. And as mentioned earlier, the God part of the consciousness is attainable only through certain stimuli. It may seem demeaning to the vanity of some individuals, but like all elements of the mind, God and all its correlated sensations of divinity are the majestic creations of the neurobiology.

Further Reading
1. Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality
2. Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
3. What is Mind?
4. In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience

Reformation of Religion and Natural Selection

Perfection is not a feature of our world. On this planet nothing is perfect. Yet we crave for perfection. Especially biological life on this planet is definitely far from perfect. We are not perfect. That's where the process of evolution comes in. Biological life including us the sapiens, keeps evolving from an imperfect species to a less imperfect species. So, we keep going in the path of getting less and less imperfect. The process of evolution is a relentless journey from imperfection towards perfection. This perfection is defined by its survival value. And those who can't keep up with the process, get extinct. That's how natural selection works. Either you are a winner, or you lose your license to survive on this planet. It is the very basis of biology. And biology is the bedrock of life.

And when a biological species evolves, in order to adapt to its environment, it adopts some new biological features and gets rid of the unnecessary ones. And this process of adoption and exclusion of biological features is a crucial element in the path of survival. And it has been going on since the birth of the very first life form on this planet, and shall go on in the future.

Human life is a hodge-podge of various biological features. However, the features that distinguish humanity from the rest of the species on this planet are those of our uniquely advanced neurobiology. Our very pride on being the smartest species on earth is predicated on a highly complex and magnificent neurobiology. Our fascinating neurobiology puts us apart from the entire animal kingdom. Without our advanced neural network of a hundred billion nerve cells, we are nothing compared to the brawn of the wild animals.

And this very neurobiology has endowed us with a beautiful psychological system, called the human consciousness. It has endowed us with uniquely majestic cognitive features. The 3 pound lump of jelly, which we call the human brain, is the birthplace of all our extraordinary achievements. Human Brain is the most complex organized structure in this entire universe. It is made up of a hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. The relentless activity of these neurons gives rise to all the richness of our conscious experience. All our feelings, emotions, thoughts, ambitions, love lives, our sense of self, and even our religious sentiments are simply born from the activity of these little specks of jelly in our head.

All our sentiments, whether they are religious, romantic or any other, are born in the neurons. In fact, religion itself is a natural biological feature of the human brain. And as I said earlier, any biological life-form must evolve in order to survive, while modifying its basic biological features. And one of the most significant features of human life, is its religious sentiments. Hence, when Mother Nature decides that some of those religious sentiments are not working properly, she puts selective pressure on the human brain in order to modify those sentiments, and if needed, terminate some and develop new ones. And in this process of religious evolution, two of the most glaring specimens, are Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama, whom you know as Buddha.

In the process of biological evolution, change in a biological feature takes a long time to become noticeable. However, the first step towards that change, leads to a big leap for the whole species.
For example, around 1.89 million years ago something extraordinary happened, that changed the course of mankind history forever. At that point of time your ancestral lineage reached the crossroads of evolution. Henceforth, evolved one of the most advanced early humans. They were the Homo erectus. You really owe a lot of your brilliance to them, because they did something that was and still is beyond the wildest dreams of the entire animal kingdom on planet earth. They solved one of the most important pieces of your evolutionary puzzle -the mystery of fire.

There was not a single species on your entire planet, that could thwart its instinctual fear of fire, until the arrival of Homo erectus. These early members of your evolutionary tree achieved the unthinkable. They conquered their primeval fear of fire and reached into the fascinating blaze like a true brave-heart. But for this to actually happen, there had to be one or a couple of brave Homo erectus, filled with vigor, who took the first step toward achieving their own fear of fire. And as soon as they conquered their own fear, following them came all the fellow erectus. As a result, for the first time in the history of life, a biological species harnessed fire. Naturally, they became superior to all other contemporary species, including the wildest ones. Suddenly everything changed. It was absolutely mesmerizing. As if your evolutionary timeline witnessed the captivating dawn of human excellence.

Similar extraordinary events of evolution in the human religious sentiments occurred when two brave men, took the first step outside their circle of orthodox system of beliefs. They took the first step towards shaking off the unnecessary and quite harmful elements of religious dogma, that were bestowed upon them by the environment. Their minds wanted to evolve into better versions of themselves, with new and refreshed religious sentiments.

Those two were Christ and Buddha. They were ordinary humans who, upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia (transcendence/nirvana/god – see What is Mind? to learn in detail) wanted to adorn humanity with better and less wild religious sentiments. They wanted to adorn humanity with true humanism. And above all they wanted to adorn humanity with plain ordinary everyday kindness and empathy.

Their attempt to reform the contemporary system of religious sentiments was hailed as blasphemy by the orthodox believers, however, as it always happens in nature, if a change is beneficial to a species, then that change eventually sinks into the psychology of that species. Naturally, two new systems of religious sentiments were born upon the foundation of the teachings of Christ and Buddha. These were Christianity and Buddhism. But, like all of their predecessors these systems are also man-made, hence are prone to orthodoxy and authoritarianism. And when such orthodoxy gets intense, an urge for a new system appears in the mind of thinking humanity.

As long as the teachings of great minds remain as a kind of philosophical literature, which you can read and analyze, and then embrace the parts that appeal to you while discarding the rest, they shall flow pure and strong in the hearts of many, but the moment, representatives of those teachings start making the peculiar claim of their exclusive textual possession of divinity while defying all other philosophies, the world will imminently plunge into chaos.

Thus, whenever fundamentalism, be it religious, political or educational becomes an impediment in the progress of thinking humanity, it becomes a sociological responsibility of the children of Mother Earth to break free from the bonds of textual orthodoxy, and if necessary build a new system aligned with rational thinking and universal acceptance.

Belief is indeed psychologically important for the human mind of general population, but that belief should be nicely compatible with scientific reasoning, otherwise that belief turns into prejudice, which is never beneficial to the human life.

Above all, it is the quality of life that matters. While, Science plays the most influential role in improving the quality of life as a whole, Religion on the other hand, plays the major role in strengthening life from within. In some occasions, both science and religion become expendable. But in no circumstances, the quality of life can be compromised. Religion and Science both must help a person wherever he or she stands, or else, they are of no use.