Awdhesh Singh's Blog, page 3

Seven Methods of Releasing Evils to Clean Your Soul

Recently, one multinational company in Gurgaon, India, asked their employees to act like hooligans and break the furniture and equipments of the office. The employees broke the office in full view of the employer and media cameras which was telecast on television. The employer told the media that the exercise was done to reduce the tension from the mind of the employees. The employees too were looking quite relaxed and happy after doing the destructive activities. The incidence of looting and destruction of public properties are quite common in many countries. The people vent their frustration against the government and the system by engaging themselves in such illegal, criminal and destructive activities, and even suffer imprisonment for their outbursts. It seems that when people engage themselves in such destructive acts against the law, they cool down as their moral superiority is lowered by breaking the law, which perhaps reduces their hatred for the State which in their opinion is not functioning according to the law. The destruction of property is not the only means for displaying the negative emotions by civilized men. They are often engaged in many similar activities considered sinful, evil, and criminal in the modern world knowing fully well the consequences. Society divides all actions between good or evil. It has actually defined only ‘good’ which includes love, compassion, justice, equality, charity etc. The evil gets automatically defined being the opposite of good.  Every society welcomes only good and does not allow evil to be expressed freely. Hence the evil keeps on accumulating in the minds of the people who are forced to do only good deeds and to think only good thoughts. The result is silent accumulation of evil in their minds that creates tension and pressure in man. Such pressures make his life miserable and he gets relief only when he allows the evil to escape through some destructive acts. Seven Methods to Release Evil  The necessity of the release of evil has always been recognized by men. Over thousands of years, men have created many methods which allow release of the evil. If one follows these methods, he can perhaps live a happy life without getting suffocated from the accumulation of evil. Some of these methods are described as following: (1)        SportsGone are the days when men had to fight wars and kill thousands of people to enjoy victory and rejoice the humiliation of enemies. Today the same satisfaction can be achieved by defeating the enemy in games of sports. This is the reason why the sports between enemy countries are watched by their countrymen with so much interest. The celebration of the victory in game is no less than that of winning a war. It is common to see the football fans fighting in the stadium as if there is a war going on. Bill Shankley expressed this feeling in the following words–‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death...it is much, much more important than that.’
Man has devised many types of games to satisfy his urge to defeat his enemies in a bloodless war. Every country tries to get as many medals as possible in the Olympics and gets great satisfaction when they defeat their enemies. Millions of people see these games to derive the satisfaction of a victory. (2)        CompetitionsMen invented the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory to justify the subordination of one human being by others. The Europeans used this theory to expand their empires and rule over the world. Even in the modern era, all colleges and companies appoint people who score high marks in the competitions conducted by them. A competition provides a legal method to defeat millions of people and come victorious. Competition kills compassion as you can’t win a competition without defeating others. The world worships the winners. Even in democracies, the parliamentarians and Presidents are elected only when they defeat all their rivals not in the battle-field but in the ballot-box. (3)        MoviesThe civilized world has put lot of restrictions on sexual relationships. The scriptures term adultery as one of the greatest sins, which is often punishable with death. Most countries punish adultery by imprisonment and in some cases even by death. Yet prostitution always existed in the world and it is rightly called the oldest profession. Most countries still treat prostitution illegal and immoral, and have made it a punishable offence.  In the modern world, movies provide a great relief to people to release their evil thoughts. Most movies depict heroes and heroines breaking all moral and legal barriers to achieve their goal and enjoy life. Violence, adultery, nudity and sex—otherwise prohibited in the society—are the main theme of the movies. Hence, a common man is able to identify himself with the actors of the movies and releases his negativity by cheering the movie stars. (4)        IntoxicantsThe use of drugs and hard intoxicants like alcohol, cigarette and mild intoxicants like tea, coffee or fizzy drinks having caffeine, has grown quite rapidly in the last few decades. The increase has been more rapid in the developed countries despite increasing awareness of their harmful effects on the body and mind. There are often very strong laws against their use. Most countries award death sentence to the drug peddlers. Still drug trafficking has emerged as the biggest challenge to the world. It is a well known fact that intoxicants destroy both body and mind. Their regular use not only causes several diseases in the body but also corrupts the mind. It is no surprise that most crimes are committed in the world under the influence of intoxicants.Yet men fail to avoid intoxicants, as they find them as the safest way to release their evil. There is no country in the world which prohibits all intoxicants. The milder intoxicants like alcohol and cigarette are allowed in most countries. Many of the non-alcoholic drinks like tea, coffee and soft-drinks contain caffeine and other intoxicant material. It is quite difficult to find a person who does not consume any intoxicant at all.
The consumption of intoxicants makes people feel free and allows the evil thoughts and actions to come out. If their evil is provided other safer outlets, they may stop relying on hard intoxicants. Intoxicants fulfill the destructive need of a person. It does not cause conflicts with other human beings since the person destroys himself only, not others. In many countries like Netherlands, even drugs are allowed to be consumed legally, which has resulted in reduction of consumption of the hard drugs and crimes. (5)        Verbal AbuseAbuses are common in all cultures. An abuse is meant to humiliate others by casting aspersion on their character and calling them by names and adjectives that are taboo and are abhorable in the society. It is by abuse that a man releases some of his deep hidden emotions that can’t be expressed in a civilized manner. Studies have shown that swearing or using vulgar words against others improves the credibility of the person. Studies have concluded that dropping the F-bomb or other expletives may not only be an expression of agony but also a means to alleviate it.    (6)       CriticismMahatma Gandhi used to have statues of three monkeys with him, who symbolized his philosophy of life. One monkey covered his mouth with his hands; the second covered his eyes and the third covered his ears. The message conveyed by the monkeys was—‘say no evil’– ‘see no evil’ and ‘hear no evil’.  A good man was advised by Gandhi to follow these three rules in life as any contact of evil is considered bad—as it makes the person evil. Criticism is thus considered to be a great evil, wherein one speaks evil against others, which creates hatred amongst the human beings. Yet newspapers and media are full of criticism of others. Criticism of powerful people seems to be the prime time entertainment for most citizens. What a pleasure it is to demolish a man who is considered to be great! Media would not show criticism, unless people like to see them, since these media channels and newspapers thrive on the popularity of their news reports.   Therefore, criticism is not considered evil by the society and individuals, unless they themselves are the subject of criticism. We all enjoy criticizing others. It provides a great relief to the people as the evil of hatred accumulated in their hearts gets a safe outlet. Since you generally criticize a person behind his back and most of the time, the criticized person may not even come to know about it, it is almost a nonviolent method to let go your evil thoughts without harming others. You can have the cake and eat it too, if others can keep secret of your criticism.  (7)        Accumulation of WealthWealth is considered to be the biggest hindrance in being good. A wealthy man is universally envied and disliked by people as most people link pleasures and power to his wealth. Jesus denounced wealth when he said–‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’ (Mark 10:25).
People accumulate wealth which they may never use in their life. The reason for earning wealth is not merely the pleasure of senses but also to get a sense of superiority over fellow human beings. Accumulation of wealth is usually not possible by honest and moral means. A wealthy man extracts maximum price for his goods and services so that he makes maximum profit in his business. He also exploits his employees by paying them less than their fair share of wages. Thus a wealthy man follows all tricks of the trade to become rich. So a person whose goal of life has become accumulation of money can exhaust many evils in the process of earning wealth as the evil of earning wealth can guard the person from doing other evils. You would not see many rich businessmen committing heinous crimes as they are releasing their evil in the acquisition of wealth itself. Release the EvilThe evil thoughts are created in every man as soon as a good thought is born in his mind. Hence, it would not be safe to let only good thoughts released while allowing the evil thoughts to be pent-up. People like Hitler became evil for they left no escape route for their evil thoughts. Hitler had no evil. He was an idealist, teetotaler, vegetarian and avoided married life. He provided no escape route for his evil thoughts which were born naturally in him as he was striving to make Germany the greatest country of the world. The result was that all his evil thoughts got accumulated and burst in the form of extreme hatred for Jews, Russians, French and almost everyone else. The hatred was translated into action that resulted in the loss of millions of human lives. The other great leaders of his time like Roosevelt and Churchill provided safe outlets to evil, so they maintained their sanity and remained more humane. It is, therefore, advisable to allow evil thoughts to escape by following simple methods like sports, competitions and mild intoxicants rather than allowing the evil to take over your thoughts and cause immeasurable damage to yourself, the society and the world.Reference1: ‘Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief’, Scientific American URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/

(This article is from the book "Good and Evil: Two Sides of the Same Coin". Please visit http://awdheshsingh.com/book/11/Good-... for more) 

Clear Thinking – Happy Living

We are in the era of information explosion. We are bombarded with information by electronic, print and social media 24x7. Every piece of information seems to be valuable and true. While it is good to be informed but excess of information like excess of food can only harm our body and mind. We get confused by the abundance of information since these are contradictory and we are not sure what is truth and what is false.
The solution is not to avoid information and close our eyes and ears to what is happening in the world but to develop the ability to see the truth clearly by developing clear thinking. Following rules may be useful in developing clear thinking.
1: Discover Truth Yourself
Truth is like a shy maiden. It is always hidden behind the veil and its face is revealed only when the veil is removed. We have to always search the truth as it never comes to us following our desires. What comes to us of its own is not truth. We often consider the news items of the print or electronic media as true while most information is only half-truth.
There is a famous saying in media that if dog bites a man it is no news but if a man bites a dog that is news. What we see on the different types of media is nothing but a second hand truth which contains the prejudices and vested interest of the people through whom it has reached us. If there are thousand good acts by people, you may never know from media but one bad act is reported to us 24x7. This disproportionate coverage of evil gives us the impression that the world has become extremely evil while the reality is quite different which can be ascertained only if you take the pain to know the truth yourself. We are also often enamored by what we read in the different books in our schools and colleges thinking that every world written there is true. We must remember that all knowledge acquired from other people is second hand and we must develop the habit of learning the knowledge first hand, particularly if it is important for us.
2: Learn To Think Clearly
Most colleges teach us ‘what to think’ and not ‘how to think’. The difference between the two is that of day and night. If you think only what you ought to think, you only know what is already known before. Such knowledge is hardly of any use because what has worked in earlier situation on a different set of people can’t work now. Unfortunately most of the collages in India want the student not to think independently and promote rote learning by awarding highest grades to those who reproduce the tutored answers instead of answers that comes from their own mind.
We are so much accustomed to the pursuit of our second hand knowledge that when we come face to face with the real life problems, we want others to help us solve our problems as we can’t think of a creative solution. Our weakness is then exploited by many Gurus and experts in the business and religious field who often make us their slave by deciding our course of life.
It is therefore important to learn ‘how to think’ because if you develop this habit you can find solution of all problems using the expertise and knowledge of the self and others.
Let us take an example. We are often impressed by the motivational speaker who provides us the example of few successful people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Narayana Murthy, Amitabh Bacchan or Nareredra Modi who rose from their humble background to become extremely successful in their lives. While it is good to get motivated by their powerful speeches, let us also remember that if being successful would have been that easy to know, the speaker would have been running a billion dollar empire rather than motivating others for few thousands rupees.
We must learn to face the reality, even if it is bitter. You must know that according to the statistics, only one in five ventures survive beyond five year, and only one in a million becomes a Bill Gate or Steve Jobs. For every book that is a great success, there are hundreds of books which can’t recover even their printing cost and behind every book that is published there are hundreds of authors whose books are never published. Yet every budding author expects to become a best-selling author like Chetan Bhagat or Amish Tripathi in India. In reality most creative efforts fail and the leaders, entrepreneurs, artists or writers suffer great pain and disappointment. Yet no one tells you about the failures and no case studies are done on ‘failures” and the failure punches your face when you are least prepared for it.
So whenever someone give you a great motivational speech, don’t just trust them blindly but get the facts before you accept any claim.
3: Beware of the Illusions
We are attracted towards the successful people and try to copy them in the hope of repeating their success in our life. However, almost all copycats are disappointed. To understand their failures, we must understand what is called ‘Swimmer’s body illusion’.
We are quite attracted to the body of the professional swimmer’s because it is proportionate and streamlined. Hence many people start doing swimming regularly in the hope of developing similar bodies. However, they soon understand that however hard they try, their body does not become any closer to the body of professional swimmer. The reason is simple. You can’t get a streamlined body because you swim best, you swim best because you have streamlined body. Unless your body is designed in a particular manner you can’t become a great swimmer.
This illusion is there in many other fields. You don’t become beautiful, like the model, by using the cosmetic products because the truth is that the model was already beautiful and hence she was selected for the advertisement. Yet we believe the illusion created by the advertiser that the cosmetics are responsible for the beauty and our weakness is exploited by the companies all over the world.
4: Know Yourself
There is nothing in this world which is source of happiness or sorrow for everyone. We all have different likes and dislikes. What you like most is hated by someone. When you go to a shop, you find some cloths extremely attractive and some extremely repulsive. However, remember that even those cloths, which you would not wear even if someone pay you for it, are liked by some people—otherwise mills would not have made those cloths.
We all like something and dislike something. If you do something which you don’t like, you can’t focus on the work and you will also get tired very soon. When you like something, you automatically remain focused on your task and you also do not get tired while working for long hours. That is the reason why some students perform poorly and some very well in classes even though they study for same number of hours. Your success or failure is a result of the fact if your aptitude matches with what you do.
Your happiness increases when you do what you love and decreases when you are forced to do what you hate. Hence, try to discover what you love to do like writing, reading, music, art, sport or anything which you love to do. The best would be choose a profession where you can devote more time on what you love and least time on what you dislike instead of thinking about the remuneration. Even if you can devote only little time everyday on such activities, you shall always have joy in your life.
You must therefore know yourself from your experience and contemplation. Once you know yourself well, you are already on the road to happiness.
5: Learn to Appreciate Your Culture and Traditions
Man is a social animal. He can’t survive independently. In the modern world, the entire world is interconnected but we are most connected to the society in which we live. We inculcate the values of the society at such an early age that it goes into our subconscious mind and become part of our consciousness.
Every society has certain values which are passed on from one generation to another. Many of these values are not rational, yet these are the values which are common in the society and connect all people in one thread.
We must understand that rational thinking can only tell us ‘what the reality is’ and not ‘what it should be’ or ‘what it could be’. The values of the society are created by religions, culture, traditions and mythologies which have penetrated into the deepest consciousness of people over generation and they deeply believe these values. If you remove common belief in people, the society shatters and every individual becomes free caring only for themselves.
This is what has happened in most developed countries. Let us take the divorce rate which reflects the sanctity of marriages in different societies. The divorce rates of most western countries and East European countries are quite high: Belgium (71%), Spain (61%), France (55%), USA (53%), UK (47%). The divorce rates in India are still less than 1%.
In fact, divorces have become so common that couples prefer live-in relationship or cohabitation rather than marriage in West. Between 1960-2010, the number of cohabiting couples increased 17-fold in USA. While Norway tops the list with more than 50% live-in relationship, it is 23% of relationships in USA. Among women, 68% of unions formed in 1997-2001 in USA began as live-in relationship rather than as a marriage. In India, such relationships are virtually nonexistent as of now.
While being faithful is a cherished value of our country and we call our spouse as life-partner, fidelity has become an exception in most developed countries. According to one survey conducted by Durex in 2007, the average male has 29 partners in Australia while in New Zealand females have as many as 21 partners in their lives.
It would be shocking to know that in the United States of America, almost half of the children are born today from unmarried mothers. The number of live births to unmarried women in 2012 was over 1,6 million which was 40.7% of the total births of children in USA.
Hardly 10-20% of the children in developed countries have the benefit of living in unbroken families, a privilege which most children in India enjoy.
Hence, when we are impressed by the glamour and development of the Western World, we must also understand the price to be paid for individualism and breaking from our cultures and traditions. The reality of the Western World must serve us a warning not to imitate them as we too are bound to meet the same fate if we follow them blindly.
Conclusion
It is important for us to learn how to think clearly and accurately. We must not follow anyone or anything blindly lest we are exploited due to our ignorance which is like darkness. Only by clear thinking, we can see the reality as it is and achieve our goals successfully.

Clear Thinking-Happy LIving

We are in the era of information explosion. We are bombarded with information by electronic, print and social media 24x7. Every piece of information seems to be valuable and true. While it is good to be informed but excess of information like excess of food can only harm our body and mind. We get confused by the abundance of information since these are contradictory and we are not sure what is truth and what is false.The solution is not to avoid information and close our eyes and ears to what is happening in the world but to develop the ability to see the truth clearly by developing clear thinking. Following rules may be useful in developing clear thinking.1: Discover Truth YourselfTruth is like a shy maiden. It is always hidden behind the veil and its face is revealed only when the veil is removed. We have to always search the truth as it never comes to us following our desires. What comes to us of its own is not truth. We often consider the news items of the print or electronic media as true while most information is only half-truth. There is a famous saying in media that if dog bites a man it is no news but if a man bites a dog that is news. What we see on the different types of media is nothing but a second hand truth which contains the prejudices and vested interest of the people through whom it has reached us. If there are thousand good acts by people, you may never know from media but one bad act is reported to us 24x7. This disproportionate coverage of evil gives us the impression that the world has become extremely evil while the reality is quite different which can be ascertained only if you take the pain to know the truth yourself. We are also often enamored by what we read in the different books in our schools and colleges thinking that every world written there is true. We must remember that all knowledge acquired from other people is second hand and we must develop the habit of learning the knowledge first hand, particularly if it is important for us.2: Learn To Think ClearlyMost colleges teach us ‘what to think’ and not ‘how to think’. The difference between the two is that of day and night. If you think only what you ought to think, you only know what is already known before. Such knowledge is hardly of any use because what has worked in earlier situation on a different set of people can’t work now. Unfortunately most of the collages in India want the student not to think independently and promote rote learning by awarding highest grades to those who reproduce the tutored answers instead of answers that comes from their own mind. We are so much accustomed to the pursuit of our second hand knowledge that when we come face to face with the real life problems, we want others to help us solve our problems as we can’t think of a creative solution. Our weakness is then exploited by many Gurus and experts in the business and religious field who often make us their slave by deciding our course of life.It is therefore important to learn ‘how to think’ because if you develop this habit you can find solution of all problems using the expertise and knowledge of the self and others.Let us take an example. We are often impressed by the motivational speaker who provides us the example of few successful people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Narayana Murthy, Amitabh Bacchan or Nareredra Modi who rose from their humble background to become extremely successful in their lives. While it is good to get motivated by their powerful speeches, let us also remember that if being successful would have been that easy to know, the speaker would have been running a billion dollar empire rather than motivating others for few thousands rupees.  We must learn to face the reality, even if it is bitter. You must know that according to the statistics, only one in five ventures survive beyond five year, and only one in a million becomes a Bill Gate or Steve Jobs. For every book that is a great success, there are hundreds of books which can’t recover even their printing cost and behind every book that is published there are hundreds of authors whose books are never published. Yet every budding author expects to become a best-selling author like Chetan Bhagat or Amish Tripathi in India. In reality most creative efforts fail and the leaders, entrepreneurs, artists or writers suffer great pain and disappointment. Yet no one tells you about the failures and no case studies are done on ‘failures” and the failure punches your face when you are least prepared for it.So whenever someone give you a great motivational speech, don’t just trust them blindly but get the facts before you accept any claim.3: Beware of the Illusions   We are attracted towards the successful people and try to copy them in the hope of repeating their success in our life. However, almost all copycats are disappointed. To understand their failures, we must understand what is called ‘Swimmer’s body illusion’.We are quite attracted to the body of the professional swimmer’s because it is proportionate and streamlined. Hence many people start doing swimming regularly in the hope of developing similar bodies. However, they soon understand that however hard they try, their body does not become any closer to the body of professional swimmer. The reason is simple. You can’t get a streamlined body because you swim best, you swim best because you have streamlined body. Unless your body is designed in a particular manner you can’t become a great swimmer.This illusion is there in many other fields. You don’t become beautiful, like the model, by using the cosmetic products because the truth is that the model was already beautiful and hence she was selected for the advertisement. Yet we believe the illusion created by the advertiser that the cosmetics are responsible for the beauty and our weakness is exploited by the companies all over the world.4: Know YourselfThere is nothing in this world which is source of happiness or sorrow for everyone. We all have different likes and dislikes. What you like most is hated by someone. When you go to a shop, you find some cloths extremely attractive and some extremely repulsive. However, remember that even those cloths, which you would not wear even if someone pay you for it, are liked by some people—otherwise mills would not have made those cloths.We all like something and dislike something. If you do something which you don’t like, you can’t focus on the work and you will also get tired very soon. When you like something, you automatically remain focused on your task and you also do not get tired while working for long hours. That is the reason why some students perform poorly and some very well in classes even though they study for same number of hours. Your success or failure is a result of the fact if your aptitude matches with what you do.Your happiness increases when you do what you love and decreases when you are forced to do what you hate. Hence, try to discover what you love to do like writing, reading, music, art, sport or anything which you love to do. The best would be choose a profession where you can devote more time on what you love and least time on what you dislike instead of thinking about the remuneration. Even if you can devote only little time everyday on such activities, you shall always have joy in your life.You must therefore know yourself from your experience and contemplation. Once you know yourself well, you are already on the road to happiness.5: Learn to Appreciate Your Culture and TraditionsMan is a social animal. He can’t survive independently. In the modern world, the entire world is interconnected but we are most connected to the society in which we live. We inculcate the values of the society at such an early age that it goes into our subconscious mind and become part of our consciousness.Every society has certain values which are passed on from one generation to another. Many of these values are not rational, yet these are the values which are common in the society and connect all people in one thread.    We must understand that rational thinking can only tell us ‘what the reality is’ and not ‘what it should be’ or ‘what it could be’. The values of the society are created by religions, culture, traditions and mythologies which have penetrated into the deepest consciousness of people over generation and they deeply believe these values. If you remove common belief in people, the society shatters and every individual becomes free caring only for themselves.This is what has happened in most developed countries. Let us take the divorce rate which reflects the sanctity of marriages in different societies. The divorce rates of most western countries and East European countries are quite high: Belgium (71%), Spain (61%), France (55%), USA (53%), UK (47%). The divorce rates in India are still less than 1%. In fact, divorces have become so common that couples prefer live-in relationship or cohabitation rather than marriage in West.  Between 1960-2010, the number of cohabiting couples increased 17-fold in USA. While Norway tops the list with more than 50% live-in relationship, it is 23% of relationships in USA. Among women, 68% of unions formed in 1997-2001 in USA began as live-in relationship rather than as a marriage. In India, such relationships are virtually nonexistent as of now. While being faithful is a cherished value of our country and we call our spouse as life-partner, fidelity has become an exception in most developed countries. According to one survey conducted by Durex in 2007, the average male has 29 partners in Australia while in New Zealand females have as many as 21 partners in their lives. It would be shocking to know that in the United States of America, almost half of the children are born today from unmarried mothers. The number of live births to unmarried women in 2012 was over 1,6 million which was 40.7% of the total births of children in USA. Hardly 10-20% of the children in developed countries have the benefit of living in unbroken families, a privilege which most children in India enjoy. Hence, when we are impressed by the glamour and development of the Western World, we must also understand the price to be paid for individualism and breaking from our cultures and traditions. The reality of the Western World must serve us a warning not to imitate them as we too are bound to meet the same fate if we follow them blindly.ConclusionIt is important for us to learn how to think clearly and accurately. We must not follow anyone or anything blindly lest we are exploited due to our ignorance which is like darkness. Only by clear thinking, we can see the reality as it is and achieve our goals successfully. 

An Stream of Experiences called Life

“How are you?” is often the first question, we ask while starting a conversation with our friends and even strangers. We often hear replies like “I am fine,” “Great”. Are we really fine when we are saying “I am fine”? Let us ask this question to ourselves; “Are we fine”? “Are we happy?”We know that we are not always fine. We are feeling good, bad, bored, angry, hopeful, hopeless, frustrated, joyful, loved, hatred at different point of time. Rarely is a person in the same mood or in the same state for very long time. Even when we are hearing a song, our pleasure is wavering depending continuously. We may just stop listening when the song becomes too boring or irritating. You go to a beautiful hill station and get enchanted by the beauty of the hills, purity of the air and peace of the valley. How nice it feels to be out from the madness of the city and relax in this beautiful divine place? Yet if you stay a little longer, just for few more days, all the charm starts vanishing like molten wax and soon the same boring and mad city life starts calling you. You are now in hurry to go back to your place once again.Wise men have said that life is a “stream of experiences” (Hindi-anubhav -dhara). We are experiencing a new life every moment and no two moments are same. We are experiencing this world though individuals, society and media. Every moment is a new experience. Even when you are looking at the sunrise from a beautiful hill, it is not same as the position of sun is changing and the colour of the sky is getting transformed. Soon the cool lights of the sun would become brighter and you would find it difficult to stand there and stare at the sun. You are watching television and the screen is changing with new people, new faces and new dialogues every moment. We are experiencing a new world every moment and this stream of experience is what is called life..


Imagine yourself as a stream of a river flowing at different speeds towards the sea where you are going to merge with it and lose your identity. On the way, every moment, the experience is different, the scene is different and the landscape is different. Sometime you are moving fast, sometime slow, and sometime stagnating before a large dam - waiting for your turn to start moving again. Sometime, you are seeing beautiful sky, sometime clouds cover the sky and sometime you witness a bright sun. Sometime you are still and sometime you are moving peacefully enjoying the scenery on the way. Sometime you are angry and agitated as torrent. Joy and PainWe are always in touch with life and our feelings depend on our experiences with life. If the experience is pleasant, we feel happy and if the experience is painful, we are unhappy. Sometime, we have the feeling of indifference when there is neither happiness nor pain.  A happy life is one where we have more moments of happiness than pain or indifference. Some people say that happiness is state of mind suggesting that we create our own happiness and misery without any concern with outside world. This statement is only partly true. Is it possible to be happy when your beloved in unhappy or your children are sick or you are yourself treated ill by your boss or family?  We can’t be indifferent to our surrounding as we are part of the world having hardly any choice of being alone.You can avoid all these pains by discarding the worldly life and becoming a monk. Yet you can’t avoid world as you need people to provide you food, shelter, water and other physical necessities of life. You have to deal with people whether you like them or not. And when you are dealing with people, you have to have the stream of experiences i.e. your life.Do we have any control over the experiences we have in our life? The Power of Imagination We often have the experience of the world in our imagination much before we actually experience them in reality. Before, we meet any person or situation; we already visualize them in our imagination. We rehearse everything if it is an important event or we are going to meet an important person. We create a living image of the person or situation beforehand. So when we meet the person, our joy or pain would depend upon the accuracy of our image as compared with the reality.  If the image is accurate, we enjoy the meeting and the experience is bliss. However, if our image is inaccurate then the experience could be positive or full of joy if the experience turned out to be better than expected or that of pain when the experience happened to be worse than what we expected.It, therefore, seems to be good idea to be pessimistic, prepare for the worst by having a negative image of the person which may lead to joy as in most cases our interaction would be better than what we expect. While it may true at the time of final meeting but we have suffered much more pain in the process of imagining. We suffer all the way during the rehearsal from the pain that comes through our wrong imagination. Hence, if we are in the habit of living with a negative image of people or world, we are suffering all the time instead of few moments of actual experience.So many experts advise people to “think positive” i.e. to be optimistic, think for the best and enjoy the journey. People with great expectation who are filled with the positive thoughts only, are shattered when they face failure. If there is only one vacancy for a top job and there are thousands of people queuing up for the post with positive hopes, there is no doubt that most are going to be disappointed when the results are announced. Here, the pain is much more as you quickly lose esteem and also feel let down by the world. The result is bitterness and pain that lingers for long time giving rise to extreme pessimism.Hence, only when your imagination is close to the reality, you have least chances to feeling pain in the process or at the end. You learn from your success and failure and change your perception about yourself and the world. Gradually, you develop even more accurate model of the self and the world. You are neither optimist nor pessimist but a realist whose thoughts accurately mirrors the reality. The result is neither great joy nor much suffering but a feeling of bliss which comes from contentment and wisdom. You are able to take temporary success or failure with equal ease as you learn from each experience and learning from life is the hallmark and the greatest joy for the man of wisdom.

False Images-Real Conflicts

It is extremely difficult to see the reality as it is. Stephen R. Covey, the author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.” We are conditioned to see the world based on the mental pictures, we have created for our own selves, other individuals and the society in general. All our conflicts arise due to our wrong perceptions of these due to our erroneous images.In the article “Whatis Preventing Our Clear Thinking?”, it was discussed that when we meet even an unknown person,  we see the person from multiple lenses like Name, Surname (Caste/Family), Religion, Country, Region, Educational Qualification, University etc. There are many other factors like sex, cloths, appearance, height, weight etc which further distort the image. The problem with images of the reality is that they are not false but actually have some truth in them. When you take a image (picture) of a person, it is not false. Yet, it is true only for that moment from some angle and captures the feature/mood of the person in that moment. The image does not change even after years while the person is changing every movement. Let us analyze some factors that cloud our understanding due to creation of images.1: Image of self-We all have created an image of the self based on the same factors by which we create images of others. These images can be positive or negative. For example, surname representing caste/family may be a factor which may give you a feeling of superiority or inferiority. We are all conditioned from our childhood to consider our religion as the best, our country to be the greatest and our culture to be the ideal. This convincing is done through highlighting the positive and best things from what is belongs to us and at the same time focusing the negative traits of what belong to others. As we grow older and develop capability to develop our own images, our mind plays the same trick with our own selves. We think too much of our positives, suppress our negatives while we do just the opposite for others. This makes us feel good as we gain self confidence and desire to achieve great things in life. Some experts call such type of thinking “Positive Thinking”.2: Image of others:  We also make the image of others by the same brush as we make ours. When we like someone due to some attribute like beauty, education, style, family background, or intelligence, our image of the person become bright and we attach almost every good thing with that person. We do just the opposite for the person whom we do not like. So we see some people better than us and feel inferior and see others as worse and feel superior.  Rarely do we see people as they are.3: Image of Society:In the earlier times, when the media was not there, we knew the people personally and made our judgments about people based on our personal experience with the person. In tribal and rural areas, it may still be done on the same way. However, in the modern world, we know very limited people personally but know almost the entire world through others. With the advent of electronic, print media, internet and social networks today, we see much bigger world and we develop an image of group of people based on country, region, profession (politics, businessman, government officials etc.), culture etc. Since these images are based on the perception of others/media and not by direct experience, we pay the price for their error of judgment. Since the media is interested in sensation to increase their viewership and the negative news sells better than positive, we often see the negative sides of the world only with occasional glimpse of the good side of humanity. The image of all sections of the society, (except the one which we actually belong to and have the benefit of direct interaction with the people), are negative. However, the group which we belonged to is based more on reality as it is from direct perception not tainted by additional perception of the others. Conflict of ImagesMost of us build images of the self, others and the society which are far away from the reality. Yet the error is not uniform. Most of us have much positive image of ourselves, positive image of people whom we like and negative image of people whom we dislike. Similarly, we have much better image of the society/group/sub-group which we belong to and much negative image of the rest.  This result is the prevalence of conflicts in the society.At the individual level, when we have positive image of those whom we love, we want to see only good qualities in the person. We have very high expectation from them whether they are our spouse, children, parents or the leaders whom we admire. So we can’t tolerate their shortcomings at all and quite disturbed when they fail to live to their image. In the same way, we condemn the people or group which we hate. Since we are not in a position to change them for better, we feel frustrated and angry. We are unable to see any good thing in them and dismiss all their good deeds as illusion.Reducing the conflictsOnce we understand that the root cause of conflict is the type of images we carry for everyone, we can also find ways to resolve the conflict. We can easily see that we paint the picture of others by the same brush from which we draw our own image. So if we are proud/ ashamed of our caste/religion and have an image of caste/religion for the self, we can’t avoid the caste-religion-image of others. Hence, we must first eliminate this colour from the self image from our own mind. In the same way, if you have a great image for your country and you are a nationalist, there is no way, you can avoid the image of others based on their nationality. The image of education/University too can take root only when you consider that as an important factor in your life. Otherwise you can also see that many great saints, wise men and even great scientists like Thomas Edison or great entrepreneur like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had no affiliation with any great university.We have to first break all the images of our own selves before we can think of breaking image of others. Every colour of the image that you drop for the self (like caste, religion), you do the same for others. Finally when we have no image of the self, we have no image for others and then we develop the vision to see the reality as it is as we have become self-realized by connecting to our deepest self-Atman or Self which is the spark of (the same) God and all differentiations disappear. At this stage, all conflicts are eliminated forever. We know yourself clearly and that give us the vision to see the world clearly.

What is Preventing Our Clear Thinking?

We know the importance of thinking clearly for achieving success in our life and enjoying a happy life.  All good and evil, all our joys and sufferings are due to our thoughts as William Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”A person with clear thinking sees the world “as it is” and knows the “real world” while a person lacking this ability sees “conceptual world” based on his “concepts”. These concepts are not reality but like an image or colored lenses which prevent us seeing the reality clearly.  It is like seeing a white cloth with a green color lenses. You do not see the white cloth but see “red cloth”.
When we see the world, we see it using our perception, understanding, images which has become so deeply interwoven in our minds that they have become our  “commonsense” and we do not even realize that we are making a mistake. If it is external lenses, we can perhaps remove it to see clearly but the commonsense is so much ingrained within our mind due to the conditioning of our minds since childhood that it is very difficult to get rid of it. Einstein said rightly said, "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
The Reality of Distorted VisionLet us try to understand our inability to think clearly by an example. You are a CEO of a company and you are going to appoint a person for your Sales Department in your office. The person who is being called for the interview is named Mr Ram Sevak Pandey, from Bihar (India) with a Bachelor of Science from Delhi University (India). We have yet to meet person but we have already formed the image of the person based on the images we have developed in our mind since our childhood. Let us analyze these images one by one1.       Name:“Ram Sevak” is a name which is quite ancient (Hindi) meaning “Servant of (Lord) Rama”. The name perhaps gives you a feeling of his rural/traditional back ground.2.       Surname:“Pandey” is surname belonging to “Brahmin caste”, which is on the top of the caste hierarchy.  The image of the caste is different in the mind of different people. For Brahmins, he may be one of them while for lower caste people; he may be an exploiter of their people for thousands of years. For some people, the caste is elite as represents intellectual bent of mind while others may be indifferent to the caste.3.       Religion:The name indicate the religion of the person as “Hindu” and you may have a typical image of people of Hindu religion like orthodox, idolater, corrupt, unprincipled, flexible depending upon your experience of life or the experience of others/media. Your image also depends on your own religion and the relationship of your religion with Hindu religion.4.       Country:One who knows “India” has an image of the country which is based on the limited information about the country based on the media reports or personal experiences of friends. This image is different in every person. If you are Indian, it may be positive and if you are from an Islamic country, it could be a great negative.5.       Region:While those who are not familiar with the intricacy of India may pay no attention to the region “Bihar”, but those who know the place have an image of Bihar. It is different if you are a “Bihari” (Resident of Bihar) and different if you are an outsider. It depends on your personal experience with a person of Bihar origin.6.       Qualification:You may have an image of the students of B. Sc. And hence their suitability for the present job. The image may be based on the observation of just one person or purely on heresy and even on hypothesis based on your like/dislike of science as a subject.7.       University: We have all images of the university based on the knowledge available to us. For example, we may consider Harvard University graduate smarter than Delhi University. It also depends on our image of the place Delhi and our experience of the students of Delhi University.The Distorted ImageWe all have the tendency to judge the person based on our images rather than judging the person who he or she is. In this case, we are seeing the person from multiple images (Name)(Surname)(Religion)(Country)(Region)(Qualification)(University). We are hardly able to see the real person.The worst part is that we are not even aware that we are not seeing the reality and judging the person based on our prejudices/images. So even before we meet the person, we view the person from our images. Naturally, this image is quite incorrect which we realize when the person appears for the interview. He does not look, dress, speak or walk like what we imagined. Still instead of changing our image, we often try to change the reality of the person to fit into our image. So if we do not like the person based on our image and consider him to be unsuitable for the job, we ask more difficult questions to him as compared to one whom we have thought to be the right candidate. There is an unconscious attempt to validate our preconceived image of the person and prove that we were right in our perception. We are more likely to ask difficult questions from the person whom we don’t like as the candidate would fail to answer these questions and our image is validated. We “desire” (unconsciously) to reject the person as we have already rejected him based on his image.Once in a while the candidate may turn out to be too smart and we are forced to change our image. Yet the more he proves us wrong, the higher we raise the bar till such time the person fails and we are proven right.
Seeing the RealityIt is not easy to break all the images we have gathered in our life and see the reality as it is. Yet the very knowledge of the existence of these images in our minds and its effect on “clear thinking” can help us in correcting the defect. We must challenge the images in our mind by by gathering more “facts” and by proper reasoning and logic. Only when we are free from all images, we can develop the vision to see the reality and develop clear thinking.

The Real Meaning of Freedom

There is nothing as valuable in the life of a man as freedom. If you give the man all the wealth of the world, make a palace of gold for his residence and provide him the best food available in this world but take away his freedom, his life is miserable. There is no happiness in life, if we are dependent on others as Saint Tulsidas had said, “One who is dependent, has no happiness even in his dreams.” (Hindi-Paradhin Sukh Sapneu Nahi). It is, therefore, no surprise that the ultimate goal of human life is said to be Mukti which means liberation or freedom.  Though, we often understand the meaning of Mukti as the freedom ‘from this world’ i.e. from the cycle of life and birth, it can also be inferred as freedom ‘within this world’.Freedom is also important for love. Only when people are free, they can love. There can be no love between the capture and the captive, master and the servant. The desire of freedom is there in every human being. Yet freedom means different things to different people and the same person has many meanings of the word “freedom”. Let us understand what freedom means.1: Freedom from Something:People are suffering from different problems in life. They want freedom from pain (physical and mental), injustice, hatred etc. Some people do not like their spouse, their job, their bosses, their subordinates and they want freedom from them. Some people want freedom from corruption that is prevailing in their country. Some people want freedom from ideas like socialism, capitalism, democracies, reservations etc. They feel that their suffering has a cause and they want to become free from such causes.2: Freedom to be Something: The second type of freedom is to become something. We all have some desires like to be become a writer, painter, Prime Minster or President of our country, a film star but we are constraint by the rules of the world or the pressure from our parents, society, peer group etc. So we want freedom to become what we wish to be in life.3: Freedom to Choose:We all have different choices in our life. What is desirable for one is not desirable for other. We want to choose our cloths, our jobs, our girlfriend/boyfriend, our lifestyle etc. We want freedom to visit the place of our choice, follow the religions which we like and so on.  We want freedom to choose our governments.4: Freedom to do Everything: For some people, the meaning of freedom is to do everything they want. They want to break free from everything and wish freedom to smoke, take drugs, alcohol, indulge in sensual activities, and drive as fast as they want, drink and drive and so on. They are suffocated by the laws and moral values that restrict their freedomThe Illusion of FreedomOur concept of freedom remains an illusion throughout our life. It is because; when we get freedom from something we get trapped in another thing. We are so much integrated with the world that there is hardly any existence of man as an individual. We choose socialism over capitalism and now we are suffering from the problems of socialism. It is same for those who have chosen the opposite. We chose a job which we aspired and still we are unhappy since the job too restricts us and we want freedom from that job for yet another. Even when we have the freedom to choose our government, we find that our freedom has no meaning since most other people chose the other party which we detested. Even if by luck the party which chose is elected, we find that their people do not deliver what they promised. We often chose the career for ourselves and become writer, politicians or painter but we are still quite unhappy as we are not very successful in our chosen field and unable to earn money or fame as we thought. We are trapped in our ambition and we spend our life chasing our dreams and like most people end up failing to achieve what we desired.What is Real Freedom?The real freedom can never come from anything as we just choose between devil and the deep sea. You leave one woman/man to choose another woman who turns out to be equally bad. There is also no possibility of any country allowing its citizen unlimited freedom of indulgence. Let us realize that our ambition, ideologies bind us rather than make us free as our ambitions are in respect to the ambitions of other people.  So the clash of ambition is unavoidable and everyone can’t be victories in such conflicts.  All writers can’t be best-selling authors nor all politicians can be PM or President. All actors can’t be Superstars. There is just one slot on the top and everyone can’t be there.The real freedom is the freedom of mind. When our mind is free from all ideologies, persons and situations, then only there is real freedom. You can be free even when you are working in your office ten hours a day if your mind is free to take decisions and accomplish your goal by self-discipline and knowledge. On the other hand, you may lead a life of monk and yet may not be free as you need food, water, shelter and company of people to live your life.The Way to FreedomMost modern societies provide us the freedom to choose our career, life, friends and governments. Many of us freely exercise this freedom also but we don’t take the responsibility. Hence, if our choice is good, we take credit for the choice. But when it is bad, instead of blaming ourselves for taking wrong decision, we are quick to blame others. Most people refuse to exercise the choice and they want someone else to solve their problem and to tell them what is right for them. This gives them advantage of blaming others when they fail. Yet they only fool themselves as any amount of blaming can’t convert your failure to success not can reduce your suffering. So freedom must be exercised with responsibility and one must bear the consequences for his choiceWe are also captive of the ideologies and ideals which divide the society to different denominations like Hindu, Muslims, Christians, Communism, Capitalism, Indian and American, violence or nonviolence. Each ideal in its attempt to unite people under one umbrella also create discord and division with others. You can’t be Hindu and Muslim at the same time. You can’t be Indian and American at the same time nor can you accept Communism and Capitalism simultaneously. One who is tied with any ideology is never free. Only when we go beyond these ideologies and ideals, we can claim to be free as our mind then shall have the ability to think freely and clearly.It is important to realize that freedom is never free. We have to earn freedom through different means over a period of time to enjoy freedom later. For example, when you work for many years, you may earn enough money to have the freedom from work as you can live a comfortable life without working everyday. The freedom of mind too comes from disciple that comes from within. When you are self-disciplined and perform your job without anyone telling you to do so, you need no external person for disciplining you and hence you acquire freedom.  The currency of freedom is self-discipline that comes from self-knowledge which is the most difficult and courageous task. Carrie Jones has rightly said, “The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”

Shared Responsibility or Janata Darbar?

How much weight can you lift? If you are strong, you may lift 50-100 Kgs. Even Hossein Rezazadeh  of Iran who holds the world records for lifting weight could lift only  472 kgs. Now suppose you wish to lift a weight of a ton (1000 Kgs) or may be a hundred tons? If you commit the mistake of lifting the entire weight alone, you are likely to be totally crushed under the weight. Yet any amount of weight can be lifted if you have the support of a large number of people and you have the powerful machines like cranes with you for assistance.Sometimes, political leaders, in order to reach to the people try to lift the entire weight of the administration  on their shoulders which is other held by thousands of people in the Government.  Recently, Arvind Kejriwal government organized ‘janata durbar’ (public hearing) on the streets across the Delhi Secretariat where many thousands people gathered to submit their complaints to the Chief Minster directly. The result was a scene of utter chaos with uncontrollable crowds thronging the venue. The Chief Minister had to disappear on the advice of the Delhi Police, leaving his Cabinet colleagues to handle the swelling crowd. 
 Great works can never be performed by a single person. An old Hindi song says “Sathi hath badhana. Ek Akela Thak Jayega, Mil Kar Jor Lagana” (Friends extend your hands for support. One person will get tired. Let’s all work together).However, in order to ensure many people to work together, you need trust. If you believe that other people are not trustworthy,  corrupt and inefficient; you can never take them along with you and perform great task. A Chief Minster (CM) is supported by a large number of officers and staff and many of them are competent and willing to work with the CM for the welfare of the people.It would be better that each person is made responsible for his job and each Head of Department must take responsibility of his/her department. They may conduct public meetings every day or every week to listen to grievance of the people. They may be directed to solve the problems within stipulated time of say 15 days- 1 month. If the problems are not solved within the period, the aggrieved public can appear before the public meeting of the concerned Minister. When even Minister is not able to solve the problem, then the citizen must approach in the Janata Darbar of the Chief Minister. In the process, it should be ensured that the officers/staff who deliberately delay the work or refuse to do the work as per the law are punished severely.A prudent approach is required to solve the problems of people, which is enormous. It may be dangerous to increase the expectation of people to a level which can’t be met by any human effort.

The Multiple Dimensions of Corruption

We commonly believe that for corruption, only the government officers are responsible. They are the centre of the attack by the media and public alike forgetting the role of others in the act of corruption. Almost always, in the act of corruption there is collusion between of the common people and the government officer. Let me explain this with few examples.Take the case of RTO (Regional Transport Office) office in India where we go to make our driving license and its renewal. Many people complain that they have to pay bribe to get the work done. But the fact is that there are many statuary requirements by the law before a license can be given and most citizen are interested in getting the license as quickly as they can without getting into the drill of passing the requirement of the law. Getting driving license requires tests of driving, knowledge of road rules and so on. Now most people who desire to have license actually are often not competent enough to really pass the test or they do not want to waste their time to go through the drill. They find it cheaper and better to spend few hundred or thousand rupees rather than their time to get the license. If RTO officer really wants to enforce the law, the same people complain harassment and blame the officers for following the procedures too strictly. In fact, most people would not get licenses but for many hours/days of additional efforts. So they prefer paying bribe and bypass the procedure.The same can be said to almost all cases. People make illegal construction in their houses and then pay bribe so that legal action of penalty/demolition of house is not taken against them. If people pay bribe to the TT in a railway train, it is mostly because they do not have the ticket or have a waitlisted ticket which prohibits their entry to reserved compartments. One who has proper reserved ticket would hardly pay anything to him. People often pay bribe to tax departments so that their tax evasion is overlooked by the tax official.Hence, corruption can’t be removed by the efforts of government officials alone unless citizens too play their role in this regard.  We must understand the complete dimension of corruption and understand a common citizen is not merely exploited in the corrupt system but he is also exploits the system for his advantage. Hence, his battle against corruption is much larger than few thousands of government officers. It is easy to get influenced by the films like Nayak where the hero removes the corruption in just one day but in reality removal of corruption is a long battle. The films and media show only one dimension of the problem as they can’t speak anything against public (who are their customer). Let us know our role in removal of corruption and fight jointly to create a corruption-free society.

Why Politics is more Complicated than the Rocket Science?

"To run the government is not rocket science. If you have clear intentions, you will have solutions to solve the problems. Only if you are not one of the beneficiaries, you solve problems." said Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recently. He is not alone in thinking that politics is an easy task. Apparently, politics looks so simple that even an illiterate and uneducated think that he can run the government better than the present regime. However, the illusion is broken when even the most difficult person has to administer the people who have elected them to be their ruler. You can not know the people accurately unless you know yourself clearly and accurately. Knowing the self is the most difficult job as J Krishnamurthy,  one of the greatest philosopher of twentieth century said, “You know, it is comparatively easy to go to the moon and beyond-as they have proved. But it is astonishingly difficult to go within (to know the self)”. Hence most of us do not know either ourselves well nor the people whom we are going to govern and hence fail miserably. In reality the running of Government in a democratic is far more complex than the rocket science. It is because rocket scientists know the laws of nature which are eternal and does not change with every rocket while men changes their colour every moment and there is no law that governs all men. They are not same inside what they seems from outside. They say something and do something.
It is for this reason that when the greatest scientist Albert Einstein when offered the Presidency of Israel humbly refused saying, "I know a little of science, but nothing about men."
Come to think of the difficulty of governance in democracies like India. Leaders have to go door to door to poor people, middle class people and beg for their votes to "serve them" and promised them all they want in exchange of their votes. Then they have to rule the same people. Once they are elected to power by the people, they have to change side and become from "Aam Aadmi" to "Khas Aadmi". Many of voters may be living in unauthorised colonies, many would be defaulter in payment of their bills, many are unemployed, and many are temporary employees who want to have permanent jobs. A politician has often taken so much credit/responsibility from the people for their vote, that fulfilling those may take a lifetime. But people have no patience. They all want their promises to be fulfilled immediately. 
Those people think that they have purchased the leader by their vote and made the Chief Minster (CM) and now he must serve them irrespective of his compulsion. How can he now take action against them and put them behind the bars for violation of law which he himself defied along with the people at the time of agitation against the then government? It is extremely difficult to play the role of both servants of the people as well their ruler which is inevitable in democracies. Politics, is thus far more complex and difficult than rocket science.