Book Excerpts

God's Debris Excerpts

2010-11-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

“No,” he replied, in a manner that seemed suddenly
coherent. “Every other question has an answer to why. Only
probability is inexplicable.”
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and his posture was an ongoing conversation
with gravity. He wasn’t old. He was ancient.
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He continued, “Let me ask you a simple question: Did
you deliver the package or did the package deliver you?”
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“Then you would agree that delivering the package
required the participation of the package. The package told
you where to go.”
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The old man’s face revealed a life of useful endeavor.
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Is awareness like intelligence?” I asked.

“No. Intelligence is a measure of how well you function
within your level of awareness. Your intelligence will stay
about the same over your life. Awareness is entirely different
from intelligence; awareness involves recognizing your
delusions for what they are. Most people’s awareness will
advance one or two levels in their lifetime.”
(chapter 122)
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“Awareness is about unlearning. It is the recognition
that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew.” (122)
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the first level of awareness
at birth. That is when you first become aware that you exist.
In the second level of awareness you understand that
other people exist. You believe most of what you are told by
authority figures. You accept the belief system in which you
are raised.
At the third level of awareness you recognize that
humans are often wrong about the things they believe. You
feel that you might be wrong about some of your own
beliefs but you don’t know which ones ! Despite your doubts, you

find comforts in your beliefs ! ( chapter 123)
The fourth level is skepticism. You believe the scientific
method is the best measure of what is true and you believe
you have a good working grasp of truth, thanks to science,
your logic, and your senses. You are arrogant when it comes
to dealing with people in levels two and three. ( chapter 124)
The fifth level of awareness is the Avatar. The Avatar
understands that the mind is an illusion generator, not a
window to reality. The Avatar recognizes science as a belief
system, albeit a useful one. An Avatar is aware of God’s
power as expressed in probability and the inevitable recombination
of God consciousness. ( chapter 124)

“I think I’m a fourth-level,” I said, “at least according
to you.”

“Yes, you are a fourth,” he confirmed.
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" How to jump from 4 th level of awareness to 5 the level ? " I asked.
awareness does not come from receiving
new information. It comes from rejecting old information.
You still cling to your fourth-level delusions.”
“I feel vaguely insulted,” I joked.
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People at all levels have the same potential for
being useful.” (125)
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“No. Happiness comes more easily at the other levels.
Awareness has its price. An Avatar can find happiness only
in serving.”
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They ( most effective leaders) convince people to
act against self-interest and pursue the leaders’ visions of the
greater good. Leaders make citizens go to war to seize land
they will never live on and to kill people who have different
religions.”

“Not all leaders are irrational,” I argued.

“The most effective ones are. You don’t often see math
geniuses or logic professors become great leaders. Logic is a
detriment to leadership.” ( 126)
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The Avatar keeps it so by occasionally introducing
new ideas when needed.”

“Do you think an idea can change the world that
much?” I asked.

“Ideas are the only things that can change the world.
The rest is details.”
( chapter 126)
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We talked more about life and energy and probability.
At times I lost the sense of belonging to my own body. It
was as if my consciousness expanded to include items in the
room. I stared at my hand as it rested on the arm of the
rocking chair and watched as the distinctions between wood
and air and hand disappeared. ( 127)
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At times I felt like a kitten
lifted by the fold of skin on the back of my neck, helpless,
safe, transported. (127)
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I don’t remember leaving his house or walking to my
van, but I do remember how everything looked. The city
had bright edges. Sound was crisp. Colors were vivid.
Objects seemed more dimensional, as if I could see the sides
and backs from any angle. I heard a phone call being made
a block away and knew both sides of the conversation. I
could feel every variation in airflow. ( 127)
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“Do you believe in God?” the old man asked, as if we had
known each other forever but had somehow neglected to
discuss that one topic. I assumed he wanted reassurance that
his departure from this life would be the beginning of something
better. I gave a kind answer.
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“If God knows what the future holds, then all our choices
are already made, aren’t they? Free will must be an illusion.”
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“God lets us determine the future ourselves, using our free
will,” I explained.

“Then you believe God doesn’t know the future?”

“I guess not,” I admitted. “But he must prefer not
knowing.”

“So you agree that it would be impossible for God to
know the future and grant humans free will?”
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“If God exists, his motives are certainly unfathomable.
No one knows why he grants free will, or why he cares
about human souls, or why pain and suffering are necessary
parts of life.”
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“A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of
the brain controls the ability to love. If it’s damaged, people
are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others.”
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---------

If you were omnipotent, why would you limit
yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little
clump of neurons?”
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“So you believe God wants things. And he loves things,
similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe God
experiences anger and forgiveness?”

“That’s part of the package,” I said, committing further
to my side of the debate.
“So God has a personality, according to you, and it is
similar to what humans experience?”
“I guess so.”
“What sort of arrogance assumes God is like people?”
he asked.
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“Are you saying you believe in God because there are no
other explanations?” he asked. ( because Google cannot answer

everything nor answers.yahoo.com)
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“Yeah, I know. You’re going to say that if he sees his
own future, then his choices are predetermined. Or, if he
can’t see the future, then he’s not omnipotent.”

“Omnipotence is trickier than it seems,” he said.
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“Can you imagine bent space?” he asked.

“No, but just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean
it’s not true. You can’t argue with Einstein.”

He looked away.
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Words such as dimension and field and infinity are nothing
more than conveniences for mathematicians and scientists.
They are not descriptions of reality, yet we accept them as
such because everyone is sure someone else knows what the
words mean.”
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“String theory says that all of physical reality—from gravity
to magnetism to light—can be explained in one grand theory
that involves tiny, string-shaped, vibrating objects. String
theory has produced no useful results. It has never been
proven by experiment, yet thousands of physicists are dedicating
their careers to it on the faith that it smells right.”
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“Every generation of humans believed it had all the
answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed
would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their
ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds
that you are the first generation of humans who will understand
reality?”
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He paused. “Your soul, according to you, knows the difference
between your brain and everything else that is not
your brain. And it never makes a mistake in that regard. That
means your soul has structure and rules, like a machine.”

“It must,” I agreed.

“If the soul is the source of free will, then it must be
weighing alternatives and making decisions.”

“That’s its job.”

“But that’s what brains do. Why would you need a soul
to do what a brain can do?” he asked.
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“It is absurd to define God as omnipotent and then burden
him with our own myopic view of the significance of
human beings. What could possibly be interesting or important
to a God that knows everything, can create anything,
can destroy anything. The concept of ‘importance’ is a
human one born out of our need to make choices for survival.
An omnipotent being has no need to rank things. To
God, nothing in the universe would be more interesting,
more worthy, more useful, more threatening, or more
important than anything else.”
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“The steering wheel and the engine are of equal importance.
It is a human impulse—composed of equal parts arrogance
and instinct—to believe we can rank everything in
our environment. Importance is not an intrinsic quality of
the universe. It exists only in our delusion-filled minds. I
can assure you that humans are not in any form or fashion
more important than rocks or steering wheels or engines.”
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“Omnipotence means that nothing is a challenge. And
what could stimulate the mind of someone who knows
everything?”

“You make it sound almost boring to be God. But I
guess you’ll say boredom is a human feeling.”

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God's Debris consists of 2 things.
“Everything is made of some other thing. And those things
in turn are made of other things. Over the next hundred years,
scientists will uncover layer after layer of building blocks, each
smaller than the last. At each layer the differences between types
of matter will be fewer. At the lowest layer everything is exactly
the same. Matter is uniform. Those are the bits of God.”

“What’s the second part of the debris?” I asked.

“Probability.”

“Probability is omnipotent and omnipresent.

Probability is the guiding force of everything
in the universe, living or nonliving, near or far, big or small,
now or anytime.”

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"Our existence was programmed into the
universe from the beginning, guaranteed by the power of
probability. The time and place of our existence were flexible,
but the outcome was assured because sooner or later life
would happen. We would be sitting in these rocking chairs,
or ones just like them, having this conversation. You believe
that DNA and probability are opposites. But both make
specific things happen. DNA runs on a tighter schedule
than probability, but in the long run—the extreme long run—

probability is just as fixed and certain in its outcome.
Probability forces the coin toss to be exactly fifty-fifty at
some point, assuming you keep flipping forever. Likewise,
probability forced us to exist exactly as we are. Only the timing
was in question.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“As

we speak, engineers
are building the Internet to link every part of the
world in much the same way as a fetus develops a central
nervous system. Virtually no one questions the desirability
of the Internet. It seems that humans are born with the
instinct to create it and embrace it. The instinct of beavers
is to build dams; the instinct of humans is to build communication
systems.”
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“Humanity is developing a sort of global eyesight as
millions of video cameras on satellites, desktops, and street
corners are connected to the Internet. In your lifetime it
will be possible to see almost anything on the planet from
any computer. And society’s intelligence is merging over the
Internet, creating, in effect, a global mind that can do vastly
more than any individual mind. Eventually everything that
is known by one person will be available to all. A decision
can be made by the collective mind of humanity and
instantly communicated to the body of society.

“In the distant future, humans will learn to control the
weather, to manipulate DNA, and to build whole new
worlds out of raw matter. There is no logical limit to how
much our collective power will grow. A billion years from
now, if a visitor from another dimension observed humanity,
he might perceive it to be one large entity with a consciousness
and purpose, and not a collection of relatively
uninteresting individuals.”

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“Would you? Your skin cells are not aware that they are
part of a human being. Skin cells are not equipped for that
knowledge. They are equipped to do what they do and
nothing more. Likewise, if we humans—and all the plants
and animals and dirt and rocks—were components of God,
would we have the capacity to know it?”

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“The trouble with your theory,” I said, “is that matter
doesn’t pop in and out of existence. Scientists would have
noticed that by now.”

“Actually, they have. Matter pops into and out of existence
all the time. That’s what a quantum leap is. You’ve
probably heard the term but didn’t know its origin.”
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“Imagine a copper penny that is exactly like an ordinary
penny except that for this discussion it has consciousness. It
knows it is a coin and it knows that you sometimes flip it.

“If the penny’s consciousness were like human consciousness,
it would analyze the situation and conclude that it
had free will. When it wanted to come up heads, and heads
was the result, the penny would confirm its belief in its power
to choose. When it came up tails instead, it would blame its
own lack of commitment, or assume God had a hand in it.
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“The imaginary coin would believe that things don’t
just ‘happen’ without causes. If nothing external controlled
the results of the flips, a reasonable penny would assume
that the control came from its own will, influenced perhaps
by God’s will, assuming it were a religious penny.
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Probability—the essence of God’s power—dictates that the penny

must sometimes come up tails even when the penny chooses to be

heads.”
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(read up to chapter 70 : 17.oct.2010)

"The events of the past appear to cause the present, but every time

we pop back into existence we are subject to a new set of

probabilities. Literally anything can happen.”
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"Skeptics are not exempt from
normal human brain functions. It is a human tendency to
become what you attack. Skeptics attack irrational thinkers
and in the process become irrational.”
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“But probability avoids in-between conditions. It favors
heads or tails. Evolution also avoids in-between conditions.
Something in the nature of the God-dust made growing
two eyes likely and growing two heads unlikely. More to the
point, there is something about eyes that supports God’s
inevitable reassembly. ( chapter 71)
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"“It is literally true that no two people share the same
reality. Einstein proved that reality is not one fixed state.
Instead, it is an infinite number of unique realities, depending
on where you are and how fast you are moving. " ( chapter 84)
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By analogy, think of earth’s horizon. The horizon
is not a physical thing. It is a concept. If you tried to
put some horizon in a bucket, you couldn’t do it.

“Yet the horizon is observable and understandable. It
seems to be physical and it seems to have form and substance.
But when you run toward the horizon, no matter
how fast you go, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same
distance. You can never reach the horizon, no matter how
fast you move.”

He continued. “Light is analogous to the horizon. It is
a boundary that gives the illusion of being a physical thing.
Like the horizon, it appears to move away from you at a
constant speed no matter how fast you are moving. We
observe things that we believe are light, like the searchlight
in the night sky, the cloud-red sunset. But those things are not light;

they are merely boundaries between different
probabilities.
(chapter 86)
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“There are plenty of nonphysical things that affect the
world,” he said. “Gravity is not physical, and yet it seems to
keep you from floating off the Earth. Probability is not
physical, but it influences a coin toss anywhere in the universe.
An idea is not physical and it can change civilization.”
(chapter 87)
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“When we feel the warmth of sunlight, we are feeling
the effect of increased probabilities and, therefore, increased
activity of our skin cells, not the effect of photons striking
our skin. Photons have no mass, the scientists tell us. That
is another way to say they do not exist except as a concept.”
(chapter 87)
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“We like to believe that other people have the same level
of urges as we do, despite all evidence to the contrary. We
convince ourselves that people differ only in their degree of
morality or willpower, or a combination of the two. But
urges are real, and they differ wildly for every individual.
Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being,
the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into
it. Willpower is a delusion.”
( chapter 87)
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“The concept of location is a useful
delusion when applied to real estate ownership, or when
giving someone directions to the store. But when it is
viewed through the eyes of an omnipotent God, the concept
of location is absurd.
( end of chapter 96)
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“Probability is the expression of God’s will. It is in your
best interest to obey probability.” ( chapter 97)
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“How do I obey probability?”

“God’s reassembly requires people—living, healthy people,”
he said. “When you buckle your seat belt, you increase your
chances of living. That is obeying probability. If you get drunk
and drive without a seat belt, you are fighting probability.”
(chapter 97)
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“Life has a feel and flow to it. Usually you know instinctively
when you are working with probability on your side and
when you are fighting it. When you take your education seriously,
for example, you are greatly increasing your probability of
contributing to God’s reassembly. When you love and respect
others and procreate responsibly, you are living within the safety
cone of probability. You are, in a sense, fulfilling God’s will.”

“That sounds like karma,” I said. “When you do good
things, good things come back to you.”

“Yes, but good things do not return in a one-for-one
manner. Individual actions are not directly rewarded. It is
only on average that doing good improves the quality of life
for you and the people around you.”
(chapter 97)
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God controls
the averages, not the individuals. Your short-term payoff for
contributing to God’s consciousness is fewer problems in
your daily life, less stress, and more happiness. (chapter 100)
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“Not exactly. I’m saying a replica of your mind and
body will exist in the distant future, by chance. And the
things you do now can either make life more pleasant or
more difficult for your replica.” ( chap 101)

In your current life,
every cell in your body has died and been replaced many
times. There is nothing in your current body that you were
born with. You have no original equipment, just replacement
parts, so for all practical purposes, you are already a
replica of a prior version of you.” ( chapter 101)
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“There are two types of people in the world, my young
friend. One type is people-oriented. When they make conversation,
it is about people—what people are doing, what someone
said, how someone feels. The other group is
idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about
ideas and concepts and objects.” ( chapter 102)
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“If I gave you advice, would you follow it?”
“Maybe. It depends on the advice.”

( chapter 102) ( even after spending so much time with the Avtaar,

the boy is so skeptic ? Awful ! )
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"........pretend to be interested in the answers. If he turns out to
be some shoe salesman living with his mother in Albany, my
eyes will glaze over.”

“It would seem phony to you while you asked the questions,
but it would not seem that way to the stranger. To
him it is an unexpected gift, an opportunity to enjoy one of
life’s greatest pleasures: talking about oneself. He would
become more animated and he would instantly begin to like
you. You would seem to be a brilliant and talented conversationalist,
even if your only contribution was asking questions
and listening. And you would have solved the
stranger’s fear of an awkward silence. For that he will be
grateful.” ( chapter 108)
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“Have you ever been in traffic behind someone who
doesn’t move when the light turns green, so you honk your
horn, then you realize the car is stalled and there is nothing
the driver could have done?”

“Yeah, I’ve honked. It’s embarrassing,” I said.

“Most disagreements are like my example. Two people
have different information, but they think the root of their
disagreement is that the other person has bad judgment or
bad manners or bad values. In fact, most people would share
your opinions if they had the same information. If you
spend your time arguing about the faultiness of other people’s
opinions, you waste your time and theirs. The only thing than can be

useful is examining the differences in your
assumptions and adding to each other’s information. Sometimes
that is enough to make viewpoints converge over time.”
(chapter 109)
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“Women define themselves by their relationships and
men define themselves by whom they are helping. Women
believe value is created by sacrifice. If you are willing to give
up your favorite activities to be with her, she will trust you.
If being with her is too easy for you, she will not trust you.
You can accomplish your sacrifices symbolically at first, by
leaving work early to buy flowers, canceling your softball
game to make a date, that sort of thing.” ( chapter 109)
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“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.” ( chapter 109)
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“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is
also a way of signaling the importance of another person by
showing your willingness to give that person your rarest
resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation

reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in
some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.
Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”
(chapter 114)
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the next few hours the old man revealed more of his
ingredients for successful social living. Express gratitude.
Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch
people. Remember names. Don’t confuse flexibility with
weakness. Don’t judge people by their mistakes; rather,
judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remember
that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others.
Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will
not be useful to anyone else.
(chapter 114)

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Yes, probability is still involved. But fescue and foosball
were only a few of the unusual words and ideas that you
tuned your brain to this week. The others didn’t cross your
path again so you took no notice of their absence. When
you consider all of the coincidences that are possible, it is
not surprising that you experience a few every day.

“A person who does affirmations takes mental tuning to
a higher level. The process of concentrating on the goal
every day greatly increases the likelihood of noticing an
opportunity in the environment. The coincidence will create
the illusion that writing down the goal causes the environment
to produce opportunities. But in reality the only thing
that changes is the person’s ability to notice the opportunities.
I don’t mean to minimize that advantage because the
ability to recognize opportunities is essential to success.”
(chapter 117)
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“The subconscious is an odds-calculating machine.
That’s what it does naturally, though not always to good
effect. If your subconscious notices that you lost money on
your last three business dealings with people who wear hats,
you’ll never trust people in hats again. Your subconscious
isn’t always right; it depends on the quality of the information
you feed into its odds-calculating engine. Luckily, the
topic your subconscious knows best is you, because it has
known you since you were in the womb. If your subconscious
allows you to spend ten minutes out of every busy
day writing, ‘I will double my income,’ your subconscious
likes your odds and it is qualified to make that prediction.”
(chapter 118)
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page 476 -- 488 : ' Assassins'

2009-12-31T03:49:00.000-08:00

Page 476
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" This is India, my friend ! Why, do anything simply if you can do it in a complicated way ? Have you ever been to get a driving license or a ration card ? Have you even filed a complaint at a police station ? Have uou ever got a child admitted to school ? It's the brahminical brain , so wily, so twisted, it draws a straight line by making circles ! "
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Page 487
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Guruji to Narrator : Dont' make things complicated. It's ok for human being to Want. It's ok too, for human beings to move on . Like desire, movement too, is the essence of the world.

" Everything must be continually in a state of movement. Sun, Moon, Stars, Air, Water, Earth : men, women, animals, Germs. Everything must be in flux.

"And, as you pay a price for Want, you pay a price for Movement, too ! But you need not be afraid of losses. At the end, at the VERY end, it will all be squared up. Till it is not, the journey will go on ! Finally, everyone will end up in the same place, everyone's balance sheet perfectly balanced.

"The only difference is - how, each of us got there ! We will be distinguished and separated NOT by the final destination, but the quality of our journey. The choices we made : the paths we took.

" That is the miracle of free will ! That is the miracle of being human ! Moksha is not the opportunity : Life is ! Moksha is the same for everyone and we will all eventually get it. But Life is discrete, several and separate : it is our indulgence and our gift. Hence, my son, do not be afraid of Wants, do not be afraid of Moving on, do not be afraid of the prices to pay for both. "
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Page : 488
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Guruji to our Narrator : Men make the great mistake of thinking that, every woman's karma revolves around her man ! The Truth is - a woman's Karma is far more varied and much more complex than a man's.

" Children, parents, servants, in-laws.
The ceaseless war against the small injustices of the world, of small animals and small people.
The quiet breaking down of walls
The quiet location of compassion.
Being the sail that catches the wind of good fortune.
Being the cushion that breaks the fall of hard fate.
Being the poultice on injury.
The pill against disease.

" In contrast, Man's Karma is nothing but the pursuit of money and power, whose accumulations know no limit ! It's the reason , most men soon think their lives are a failure, while women never cease to strive ! "

Narrator's monologue : The peasants and villagers left. They were given small , quick pills of wisdom and sent away. The full treatment is reserved to the City Folk, whose resistance to illumination had become dangerously high ! Still, Guruji enjoyed us. We were a challenge !

Page 378

2009-12-30T04:12:00.000-08:00

Narrator's monologue on Sara : " Guruji was right. Too much reading, too many books, were a dangerous thing. No conversation culd be simple : no response , uncalibrated. Everything had to be fashioned into an elaborate constgruct : of motives and postures and neweroses and failings. "

------------------------

page 381
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When Sara attacked him ( the lawyer) for being money minded, he said - I could just see him, with a cinematic cock of his head, his finger tips priming his collar - " Madam ! Who doesn't like money ? But here , there is no case and there is no money ! I have studied at it and I know. We are both wasting our time. These men ( the assassins) are like rando stalks of sugarcane. Powerful men cut them, chew them , and spit them out. No one pays to kill them : no one pays to save them. You must spend your time on better things. Bride burning, child labour, witch-hunting, sati, dowry deaths, female foeticide, cholera, tuberculosis, polio, tree-felling, pollution.. "

Yes ! The whole fucking world is waiting to be saved. From itself !

But Sara was not the one to take anything at face value. She was too full of grand education for that ! The American university had taught her things like deconstruction and subtext. Instead of the cunning of the sub-literate, she had the supicion of the over educated.

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Page 384
------------------------------------

Guruji said, beaming, " If she ( Sara ) means, innocent because they ( the assassins ) are the victims of their circumstances, then, of course, they are innocent ! Just like the Police are, and SHE is, and you and I are ..... and Ravana was , and Duryodhana was and Pakistan is ! "

Narrator : That leaves me no wiser, Guru ji !

Guruji : Of course it won't. And in any case , this is not what she means. This is njot the way to look at the world. Only holy men and fools are supposed to find everyone blameless. And you all are , neither ! Trust is NOT like love. It is good to give love freely to everybody, but trust is like good karma - it must always be earned.

" Men must remember that, they live among men. There is no wisdom in forgetting that. For men, we know, are the least reliable of all animals. For money and power, they can forsake the womb that birthed them. Remember, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu and Jesus was betrayed by his own followers and was nailed to the cross. The Universe manufactures more bad people than good people because, the good is always tested. Continually tested. Because, it's not enough to be good once or twice : it's not enough to get the better of one bad man - the warriors of God need to best, battalions of the bad, in the course of their lives'.

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Page 402
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" All you had to do , was to remember their favour ( the dons' ). To never lose your sense of gratitude. Nothing more. No favours were asked in return. There was very little that the majority could possibly give them ( the Dons ) in return. In truth, the Dons were just like powerful men elsewhere. They wanted, not just money and influence, but also , the affection and admiration of people.
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420 ( an asshole of iron)
--------------------------
that night, Rajbir Gujjar told Hathoda Tyaagi : " Rememer, beta the final seat of all achievement is neither the Head nor the Heart nor the Muscles. It is the Ass ! Courate and determination lives in the ass ! When the odds stack up against men, when the challenges mount, it is the ass that gives way first ! All my life, I have seen it. The asshole opens up and bleasts like a goat ! The head aned the heart and the muscles see it, and follow suit ! " ( LOL)
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Page 444
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Ali wore a green monkey cap pulled so low down over his face, with just his eyes visible, that Hathoda Tyaagi could not recognize him.
Ali : Hah ! Didn't recognise me ? Not even my wife would ! Might even open her legs because of that ! hah hah !
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Page 444
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Ali would be dead before long. So would be the other hitmen he worked over, in the coming years. As a rule, triggermen were picked for their dispensability.
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Page 455
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" Hathoda Tyaagi, with his growing reputation, was a hulking presence at these summits. He neer spoke and he seldom followed the train of the conversation. What he did was - to observe with fascination , the fear that gripped rich men in the face of physical violence. Men, who would have been ruthless and dismissive with underlings, men with fortunes they could not burn in 3 lifetimes, wheedled and whinged in the presence of Donullian's men. And yet, the moment they had to commission the killing of another, the acquired a rare bravura !
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Page 458
----------------------

" Along the plinth of the temple sat, a long line of beggas and alm-seekers - cfripples, lepers, the blighted and the cursed : limbs missing, limbs glarled, eyes gouged out,: men, women, children. Hathoday Tyagi walked down the hellish ranks , doling out ten - and twenty-rupee notes, sparking a ripple of cries and blessings. it was what he did whenever he got the opportunity. He had no real use fo rhis money. Some of it went to his family, some was swuandered on meat for the dogs, doles to the old man, and alms to all manner of fakirs and beggars.

For, Hathoda Tyagi knew, that all blessings ned to be secured and kept whole by concinual acts of generosity and kindness. In the company of vileness, the greatest boons were leachd of their potency. He gave what he had little need of - his money - and tried to keep what he needd - the benedications of the wretches - which were the benedictions of the Gods !
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Page 467
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Jai to our Narrator : Power is the Engine of the world. Sex and Money, its oil and lubricants. God is, at best, the invocation before you start the engine - meaningless if you have no engine to start ! God is a Goli, a multi-flavoured pill, invented by those who have power, money, and sex, to give to those , who have none ! Love is another goli. Some days, we too swallow these golis. They feel good, like a joint, a temporary high. But they are not the reality. The reality is power , money , sex. And yes, here is anohter Goli - Morality! "
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story of my assassins : page no.326

2009-11-22T01:18:00.000-08:00

Story of my assassins
--------------------------
These college boys , sons of influential parents, played basket ball. They were full of quick feints, loud abuse, and aggresive elbows. Some were accompanied by ripening girls. At the end, they sat huddled together and shared cigarettes. I wanted to slap their smug, confident faces. These were kids for whom, India was just a vast amusemetn park, set up by some earnest gold geezers after kicking out some whte men. they all neeed a fucking craxsh course in the Vedanta and a stint in the Army. Three months in Siachen, and 6 months in Imphal. Then, they would gain a perspective on the fadeaway jumper.

( Page 293)

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( After Chini's first adventure of stealing a woman's hand bag ; the gang leader Dhaka, after seeing the items rolling out of the handbag : remarks philosophically )

" There is no difference between a woman and her hand bag. The exterior may have no relation to what is inside! "

" From the many stomachs, small and big, of the bad emerged a mountain of jumple. Kaalia pulled up each item with seremonial slowness and held it up for all to see.

" 3 sticks of Lipstick. Red,Pink and Pinker.
A round handled hair brush with a plastic teeth.
A small , mud brown bottle, its cap, stained, its sharp smell, pleasant.
2 plastic ball pens. One short pencil.
A slim book of thick paper leaves, which, Dhaka explained them, can be exchanged for money ( cheque book).
A small yellow towel.
A pair of pale dark glasses.
A nail cutter, a nail file , and a fat, multipurpose knife.
A small , maroon color , leather diary , held together by a string.
Many thick black rubber bands.
A soft white cotton pad, with a bullet of a Tampon.
A Shining compact of a face powder.
An eye liner pencil.
A small beautiful tottle of sweet perfume.
A foil of some tablets, old and battered.
2 thin silver bangles. 2 thick glass bangles.
A tiny tin of some creams.
A lump of white cotton in plastic pouch.
A bar of chocolate and a fistful of toffees.
A thick paper card picture of Goddess Lakshmi.
A pair of silver ear rings.
A brown tube of cream.
A tube of some sweet white liquid.
A disposable safety A razor.
A litter of coins.
A pack of condoms in black plastic casing.
And finally, a bag within a bag, containing,
credit cards, debit cards, photo of a man and
2 children. Seven hundred and seventy two rupees !

( After a number of items that come out of that stolen handbag of a woman, Dhaka says ; sagely, like a philosopher ) : " A woman's handbag is like her Pussy. It's so small, Prima Facie, that you think only piss can come out of it : but then, one day, it throws out a whole fucking baby ! "

( page no.326)

"assassins " page 131 --> 293

2009-11-21T02:08:00.000-08:00

Page : 131 ( tope the chaaku)
----------------------------

" The true measure of things.
The tyrant after the court has vanished :
the policeman shorn of his uniform :
the man who is no longer is minister :
the school master in the Bazaar :
The tormentor bereft of his trappings :
The molester leached of his tumescence.

Nothing to make the juice rise, nothing to inflate the mind and the flesh with power and passion.

To strip Bhupi of his conceit - all it tok was a knofe ! A Rampuria. Not the size, not wealth, not numbers. Not caste, not creed, not class. Just a knife !

( page 134)
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" The hallmark of a robust relationship is - knowing how to act in a crisis without anything being said. There would be no time to talk. "
( page 132)
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" Chaaku told his uncle, he knows how to use his weapon in a way that married meance with restraint. He would slice skin, never artery : he would put in the fear of life, never take it. People wrongly assume that , men are either fearless or fearful. The turh is, like most thinkgs, courage has many degrees. Chaaku did not, yet, have the nerve to kill.
( page 136)
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" Chaaku learnt that, almost all the world lived in colossal and constant fear. Afraid of everything - the police, officials and courts, the thugs, criminals and mafia ; afriad of the establishment and the anti-establishment : afraid of failure and of criticism , of being humiliated and of being mocked, of being ugly and of being bald, afraid of cockroaches and of cats, of the seas and the skies, of lightening and of electricity : afriad of priests and phuysicians : afraid of dying and of living. More than hope, people's lives seemed to be defined by fear. Most hope, it seemed, was only about somehow being able to negotiate fers successfully.

( page 157)
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" Most businessmen who came to visit us had this quality - an ability to walk into a space and intuit the true lay of the land. A quality of contained watchfulness, of shrewd assessment - vested in just their eyes - which saw them give away very little while soaking everything in. Of a piece with a commercial metabolism : always letting LESS flow out , than was flowing in. And each one had his own pattern of mono-syllables. "
( page 179)
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" These successful businessmen, these were all, the men of the world. These men existed outside the grand vocabulary of state and governance and citizenship and the ideas of privilege and responsibility. They were all worldly wise - uncontaminated by any sense of larger agency or of greater good. They were driven , each moment, by self-interest, by the primal need to protect and expand their turf and that of their families. It was very basic stuff, with narrow and insular horizons, and yet, I could see , these were not men, to be dismissed : they shaped the world by the simple act of continual endeavour. Not one of them, I thought, would ever hit a state of stasis, or be crippled into inaction by the size and scale and unknowability of the universe. And with them, Jai struggled to find the language that would connect him to them. "
( page 179)

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Bhall snubbing both of them : " Everything in this country is ' insider trading '. What do you think politics in this damn city is ? What do you think your fucking journalism is ? There is no truth in this fucking country except for the poor bastard on the street who has to carry the load of all of it, and of you and me ! Have you ever really looked at this poor bastgard ? next time you are fucking around on the roads, look at him ! He knows everything is insider trading ! And he knows he's outside of it ! And you know something ? He's happy for it! He knows all of us great inside traders are doomed ! We are busy scribbling out our misery ! He's fucking happy, the Universe is on his side ! He knows - the joke is on us ! "

( page 183)

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" The kind, gentle, Tiwari sahab, the head warder in the jail, used to say, " In the world , there are only 2 kinds of people , the jailor and the doctor, who know the truth - that most men are punished for no fault of theirs! "

( page 258 )
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Story of my assassins page 94

2009-11-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

If Sara had listened to the inheritance of her blood she would have known the world does not need to be fixed, it only needs to be balanced !

And the Art of Aalance demands - you tread lightly, not leap about in a continual frenzy.
The art of balance demands -- you know your designated role in the game of life, not start muscling in on everyone else's.
The art of Balance demands - absence of panic, a rippleless internal calm.
The Art of Balance demands -- knowledge of timelessness, of birth and death and rebirth.
The Art of Balance demands that - you know the world cannot be fixed, it must be endured : it must, simply, be kept forever in splendid play !

But, Sara wanted to Fix the World !

She wanted - action, answers, victories,solutions, resolutions, liberty, equality, fraternity. She wanted final solutions !

Story of my assassins - upto page 84

2009-11-01T04:35:00.000-08:00

Sara said, " Wystan's telling us that fascism is creeping up all around us, and we don't even know ! He's telling us that, we suffer from the Illusion of Normalcy. He's telling us that the worst horrors take place around us while we go happily about our everyday lives. Just because the newspapers keep coming, the televisions keep humming, the planes keep taking off, the trains keep running - just because our daily crap goes on deosn't mean all is well. My dear phallo-foolish friend, Icarus has plnged into the ocean and is drowing while we are chattering away merrily on the sailing ship ?

( page 24)
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( Mr.Lincoln Meets Frock Raja)
---------------------------------------------

At each stage Jai had addresses the staff as if he were Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, assuring them that immortality and the turnaround would bothe be theirs, in fact, were just days away. All, each of us had to do , was to resolutely stand by our posts and keep firing. At what, he didn't say. The fucker was so eloquent, with his burning eyes and waving arms, that even I fell for his talk ! Each time, when the trance broke, I thought : ' through millennia, men like him have led thousands to their untimely graves !
(page 52)
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Guruji said, the covenant of spiritual power was unchanging, and clear : he could protect others but not himself ; he could always enrich others but not himself ; he cold heal others but not himself . He alone could take care of the multitudes ; but the multitudes, collectively, needed to take care of him.

It was the answer I would have given to the cynicisms of Sarah and Jai , if I could be bothered about them. The vanities - and limitations - of reason.
( Page 59 )

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Guruji : ' the wise traveller uses any horse to rach his destination. He doesn't agonize about who owns the animal. He only thinks about the pleasure of riding it, about getting it to take him where he wishes to go.
(page 69)
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I didn't want to enter an argument with her - about
you didn't call !
why didn't you call ?
where are you ?
With who, are you ?
do you feel ?
what do you feel ?
you don't care !
Why can't you come ?
why can't we go ?
why can't you say something ?
What are you saying ?
you only want ' that' ?
you don't want anything ?
whre is this thing going ?
this si going nowhere !
I thought you were strong !
I know you are strong .
You are making me weak.
I am not weak.
you dont' want to change.
You have changed !
you make me sick !
you are sick !
you don't really love me.
I really love you.
How can anyone love you ?
actually you hate me !
actrualy you hate yoruself.
Actually, I hate you !

I had discovered, over time, that the workable cycle of an affair was about 16 weeks. 2 weeks of wooing ; 4 weeks of passion ; and 10 slow and painful weeks of disengagement. By the time it ended there was POISON everywhere, with every fine feeling in tatters.

When the last lingering tendon was finally snipped, with one of us, saying something so barbaric, that could easily have gone unsaid, there was a euphoria not dissimilar to that of weeks of passion.

Some times the process was less corrosive, whe she too understood , like cops and doctors do , that the world is what it is, ephermeral, luneven, to be squarely dealt with, and not to be conjured out of weak romantic novels.

But FEW seems to possess the gift of leaving the room while the laughter was still in the air and the spirits high. For the most, everyone seemed to be committed to creating a heap of debris before walking away from it !

( page 84)

"The story of my assassins" by Tarun J.Tejpal

2009-10-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

Page 5 : " I waited - as the icons lined themselves up at the top and bottom of the screen, like two teams of toofball players before the start of a match. After the great era of literacy, the world was going back to the pre-literate stage. For centuries , there had been the hunt to find a word for every image, every sensation, every feeling, now, we were working at finding an image for every word, every sensation, every feeling. Advertising, television, cinema, photography, computers, mobiles, graphics, animatronics - every thing is geared to turn the squiggle of the word into the splendour of image !

Across the globe, Photoshop Picassos crouched at their machines marrying unlike images to produce such unlikely images as no word could hope to withstand. The imagination now longer needed to word to negotiate its darkets recesses. The imagination having its most fantastical meanderings served up in prefabricated images, for all to share ! Our Mordor was the same. Our Frankenstein ws teh same . Our Tinker Bell was the same. We didn't have to Davy Jones - the graphics company in Silicon Valley was manufacturing him for us. We all picked our visuals from the univarsal pool. The individual monster was dead. private passion ws dead. Personal grief was dead. Ager was an icon. Love , an image. Sex, an organ. The future , a matrix. If you could imagin it or feel it, it would be shown to you - in any colour, from every angle - without the exertions of the word. Even God would , finally, be shrunk to size. No larger than the screen. No denser than a pixel.
Page 5-6
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Man's Search for meaning.

2009-09-04T01:55:00.001-07:00

They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way, can one explain the apparant paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make up often seemed to survive camp life better than those of a robust nature. In order to make myself clear,I am forced to fall back on personal experience. Page No.56 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Dr.Frankl an authors cum psychiatrist, sometimes asked his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, " Why do you not commit suicide ? " . From their answers he can often find the guideline for his psychotherapy : in one life , there is love for one's children to tie to ; in another life, a talent to be used ; in a third, perhaps only a lingering memories worth preserving. To be weave these slender threads of a broken life, into a firm pattern, of meaning and responsibility is the object and challenge of Logotherapy, which is Dr.Frankl's own version of modern existential analysis. " ( Page no.09 ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " In Europe today, there is a marked turning away from Freud and wide spread embracing of existential analysis, which takes several related forms - the school of Logotherapy being one. It is charactaristic of Frankl's tolerant outlook, that he does not repudiate Freud, but builds gladly on his contributions ; nor does he quarrel with other forms of existential therapy , but welcomes kinship with them ! " (Page 10) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do net search : Dr.Gordon W.Allport, professor of psychology. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and America : " Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it, and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued ; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success : you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to your best of your knowledge. Then , you will live to see, that in the long run - in the Long Run I say ! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. ( page : 17 ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this incident now, because there was so little feeling involved in it. ( page 42) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " I did not know what was going in the line behind me, nor in the mind of SS guard, but suddenly I received 2 sharp blows on my head. Only then did Ispot the guard , at my side, who was using his stick. At such moments , it is not the physical pain which hurst the most ( and this applies to adults as much as to punish children) ; it the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. (page no.42) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Humour was another of the soul's weapons in the fight of self preservation. It is well known that , humour, more than anything esle in the human make up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation , even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine, who worked next to m on the building site, to develop a sense of humour. I suggested to him that, we would promise each other to invent at least amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation." ( page no.63) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But those who stayed behind in camp, who were still capable of work, had to make use of every means, to improve their chances of survival. They were not sentimental. The prisoners saw themselves completely dependant on the moods of gurads - playthings of fate and this made them even less human than the circumstance warranted. ( Page no.74) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The purpose of my words was to find a full meaning in our life, then and there, in that hut, and in that practically hopeless situtation. I saw that my efforts had been successful. When the electric bulb flared again, I saw the miserable figures of my friends limping towards me to thank me with tears in their eyes. But I have to confess here, that only too rarely had I suffering that I must have missed many opportunities for doing so.

( page 105)

“ The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. It made good use of the new freedom from the first moment on. It began to eat ravenously, for hours and days , even half the night. It is amazing what quantities one can eat !

(page 110)

“ Just as the physical health of caisson worker would be endangered if he left his driver’s chamber suddenly ( where is under enormous atmospheric pressure) , so the man who’s suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.

During this psychological phase, one observed that, people with natures of a more primitive kind, could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed, for them, was that, they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects of wilful force and injustice. They justified their behaviour by their own terrible experiences. This often revealed in apparently insignificant events.

( page 112)

Only slowly, could these men be guided back to the common place truth , that, no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousands stalks of oats.

(page 113)

Apart from moral deformity , resulting from sudden release of mental pressure , there were 2 other fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the character of the liberated person : bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life.

(page 113)

When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded that, life still waited for him, that a human being waited for his return. But after liberation ? There were some men who found them, who found that , no one awaited them. Woe to him, who found that, the person whose memory alone had given him courage in camp did not exist more !!  Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he longed for ! Perhaps, he boarded a troelly, travelled out to the home, which he has seen for year in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he longed to do in thousands of dream, only to find that, the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again. 
We all said to each other in camp, that there could be no earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had suffered. We were not hoping for happiness – it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet, we were not prepared for unhappiness. 
( page 114)
 

The crowing experience of all, for the home coming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered , there is nothing he needs to fear anymore – except his God.

( page 115)

“ Can you tell me in one sentence , what is meant by logo therapy ? “ he asked. “ At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logo therapy ? “

“Yes” I said, “ But in the first place, can you tell me one sentence, what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is ? “

This was his answer : “ During psycho analysis, the patient must lie down a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell . “

Where upon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation : “ Now, in Logo therapy, the patient may remain sitting erect, but he must hear things which are sometimes very disagreeable to hear ! “

(Page 120) 

Another stastistical survey of 7,948 students at 48 colleges was conducted by social scientists from John Hopkins university. There , preliminary report is part of a 2 year study sponsored by the national inst of mental health. Asked what they considered ‘ very important’ to them now, 16 % of students checked ‘ making lots of money’ : 78% said , their first goal was ‘ finding a purpose and meaning to my life’. Of course, there may be some cases, in which an individual’s concern with values is really a camouflage of hidden inner conflicts ; but, if so, they represent the exception from the rule , rather than rule itself.

(page 122)

“ Logo therapy regards its assignment as that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life. In as much as Logo therapy makes him aware of the hidden logos of his experience, it is an analytical process. To this extent, logo therapy resembles psycho analysis. However, in Logo therapy ‘ s attempt to make something conscious again it does not restrict its activity to instinctual facts within the individual’s unconscious but also cares for essential realities, such as, the potential meaning of his existence to be fulfilled as well as his will to meaning.

( page 125)

To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather an inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that, there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietsche, ‘ he , who has a why to live for, can bear almost any ‘ how’. ‘ I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psycho therapy Nazi concentrations camps, one could have witnessed that , those who knew that there was a task, waiting for them to fulfil were most apt to survive. The same conclhusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietanam prisoner-of-war.

(page 126)

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygience to assume that, what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘ homoe statis’ , for example, a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather , the striving and struggling for a worth while goal , a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeo statis but what I call ‘ noo-dynamics’ . For Example, the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfil it.

And one should not think that, this holds true only for normal conditions : neurotic individuals, it is even more valid .

( page 127)

Flow - 10 onwards

2009-04-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

All things considered, it cannot be said that humankind has lacked the courage to back its resolutions. Billions of parents, in every age and in every culture, have sacrificed themselves for their children, and thereby made life more meaningful for themselves. Probably as many have devoted all their energies to preserving their fields and their flocks.

But as the complexity of culture evolves, it becomes more difficult to achieve this degree of total resolve. There are simply too many goals competing for prominence, and who is s o say, which one is worth the dedication of an entire life ? Just a few decades ago, a woman felt perfectly justified in placing the welfare of her family as her ultimate goal. Partly this was due to the fact that she did nto have many other options. Today, now that she can be a business woman, a scholar, an artist, or even a soldier, it is no longer " obvious" that , being a wife and mother should be a woman's first priority. The same ' Embarrassment of riches' affects us all ! (224)
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But how do we know, where to invest psychic energy ? There is no one ' out there' to tell us " here is a goal worth spending your life on ! " . Because there is no absolute certainty to which to run, each person must discover ultimate purpose on his or her own. Through trial and error. through intense cultivation. (225)
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Inner conflict is the result of competing claims on attention. Too many desires, too many incompatible goals struggle to marshal psychic energy towards their own ends. ( 225)
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Richard Logan, who has studied the accounts of many peole in difficult situations, concludes that they survived by finding ways to turn the bleak objective conditions into subjectively controllable experience. They followed the bludeprint of Flow activities.
First, they paid close attention to the most minute details fo their environment, discovering in it the hidden opportunities for action that matched what little they were capable of doing, given the circumstances. Then, they set goals appropriate to their situation. (90)
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Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, and reflection , impotent. Before investing great amouts of energy in a Goal, it pays to rais the fundamental qauestions :
" is this someting I really want to do ? Is it something I enjoy doing ? Am I likely to enjoy it in the froeseeable futrure ? Is there price that I - and others - will have to pay, worth it ? Will I be able to live with myself if I accomplsh it ? ( 226)
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# Do net search on ANTONIO GRAMSCI - the humane philosopher who impacted European thought in recent times. ( 238)
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chapters 4-8 Flow

2009-03-29T04:34:00.000-07:00

There is ample evidence that suggests that, how parents interact with a child will have a lasting effect on the kind of person the child grows up to be. The family context, promoting the optimal experience could be described as having 5 characteristics.
1.Clarity. The teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them – goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous.
2.Centering. The childrens’ perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job.
3.Choice. Children feel that, they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules – as long as they are prepared to face the consequences.
4.Commitment. The trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defences, and become unselfconsciously involved in what ever he is interested in.
5.Challenge. The parents dedication to provide increasing complex opportunities for action to their children. (page 88)
( studies by Chicago psychologist Kevin Rathunde)

Do some net search on Richard Logan.

CHAPTER 5 : THE BODY IN FLOW

“ A man possesses nothing save a brief loan of his own body. Yet, the doby od man is capable of much curious pleasure. “ J.B.Cabell.

The almost unlimited potential for enjoyment that the body offers often remains unexploited. Few learn to move with the greace of an acrobat, see with the fresh eye of an artist, feel the joy of an athlete who breaks his own record, taste with the subllety of a connoisseur, or love with a skill that lifts sexs into a form of art ! ( page 94)

The easiest step towards improving the quality of life consists in simply learning to conrol the body and its senses.

Every thing the body can do is potentially enjoyable. Yet, many people ignore this capacity, and sue their physical equipment as little as possible and leaving its ability to provide flow unexploited.

To break the bonds of gravity is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. (96)

Every person, no matter how unfit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow to be a little stronger. The joy of surpassing the limits of body is open to all ! ( 97)

The urge to have sex is so powerful that, it can drain psychic enery away from other necessary goals. Therefore, every culture has to invest great efforts in rechanneling and resraining it, and many complex social institutions exist only in order to regulate this urge. The saying that, “ Love makes the world go round” is a polite referne to the fact that, most of our deeds are impelled, either directly or indirectly, by sexual needs. (101)

CHAPTER 6 : FLOW OF THOUGHT

To remember a long list of elders, going back a dozen generations, is particularly enjoyable in that, it satisfies the need to find a place in the ongoing stream of life. To recall one’s ancestors places the recaller as a link in a chain that starts in the mythical past and extends into the unfathomable future.
Net search : Johann Huizinga, the great Dutch cultural historian.

People lost the ability for a good conversation , which is a pity. Because, it could be argued that , the main function of conversation is not go get things accomplished, but to improve the quality of experience !

Do some net search on : Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the influential phenomenological sociologists.

The major creative use of language, already mentioned several times in earlier contexts, is poetry. (130)

# Do some net search on : Kenneth Koch, the New York poet and social reformer.

Observing the events of life and preserving both the larger and smaller events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness. ( 132)

There are several levels at which, ‘ history as a flow’ can be practiced. The most personal involves simply keeping a journal. (133)

In the 20 th century, Science has become a highly institutionalised activity. (134)

The basic framework that makes science enjoyable, is available to everyone. It involves curiosity, careful observation, a disciplined way of recording events, and finding ways to tease out the underlying regularities in what one learns. It also requires the humility to be willing to learn from the results of past investigators, couples with enough scepticism and openness of mind to reject beliefs that are not supported by facts. (137)

CHAPTER 7 : WORK AS A FLOW

# Do some net search on : Professor Fausto Massimini and Dr.Antonella Delle Fave , the Italian psychologists who did research on Work aspect of life.

To read books like ‘ How to win friends and influence people’ and yearning to be accepted by the ‘in’ crowd – reflects an extrinsically motivated desire to manipulate others. But people are not important ONLY because they can help make our goals come true ; when they are treated as valuable in their own right, people are the most fulfilling source of happiness ! ( 167) <>

The way to grow, while enjoying life is to create a higher form of order out of entropy that is inevitable condition of living. This means, taking each new challenge, not as something to be repressed or avoided, but as an opportunity for learning and for improving skills. When physical vigor fails with age, for example, it means that, one will be ready to turn one’s energies from the mastery of the external world to a deeper exploration of inner reality. It means that, one can finally read Proust, take up chess, grow Orchids, help one’s neighbors, and think about God – if these are the things one has decided , are worth pursuing. But it is difficult to accomplish any of them , unless one has earlier acquired the habit of using solitude to good advantage. ( 172)

No social change can come about, until the consciouness of the individuals is changed first. When a young man asked Carlyle how he should go about reforming the world, Carlyle answered, ‘ Reform yourself. That way, there will be one less rascal in thew world”” The advice is still valid. Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first, usually end up making things WORSE all around !

Flow - Chapter 3

2009-03-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

Wealth , status, possessions and power, have become in our culture, all too powerful symbols of happiness. But symbols can be deceptive. They have a tendency to distract from the reality they are supposed to represent. ( page 44)

PLEASURE : Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself, it does not bring happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return the consciousness to order , after the needs of the body intrude and cause Psychic Entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the Self. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself, cannot create new order in consciousness. ( page 46 )

To gain personal control over quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out. ( page 48)

PHENOMENOLOGY OF ENJOYMENT : has at least 8 components.

1.Enjoyable experience usually occurs , when we confront tasks , we have a chance of completing.
2. WE must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
3 & 4. Concentration is usually possible , when the task we undertake has clear goals and provides immediate feed back.
5.One acts with deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
6. Enjoyable experience allow people to exercise control over their actions.
7.Concern for the self disappears, yet, paradoxically, the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
8. Finally, the sense of duration of time is altered ; hours pass by in minutes, the minutes can stretch ot to seem like hours.
(page 49)

COMPETING : The challenges of competition can be stimulating and enjoyable. But when, beating the opponent takes precedence over performing as well as possible, enjoyment tends to disappear. Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills ; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.

In a conquest, you don’t conquer anything except things in yourself.

Objective and Subjective dangers : Objective dangers are outside dangers that are beyond our control ; such as sudden storm, floods, earth quakes etc. Subjective dangers arise out of our own lack of skill.

Loss of consciousness does not mean loss of Self. Being able to forget who we are, seems to be very enjoyable. When not preoccupied with ourselves, we have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness leads to self transcendence, to a feeling that, the boundaries of our Being are pushed forward.

Afterwards, when the self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon, is not the same as the self that existed before the FLOW experience. Now it is enriched by new skills and fresh achievements. ( page 66)

AUTOTELIC EXPERIENCE : The key element in optimal experience is that, it is an end in itself. Although initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding. ( page 67)

Most things that we do are neither purely Autotelic nor Exotelic ( activity undertaken for purely external reasons and goals and rewards) but are the combination of the two.
Some things that we are initially forced to do against our will, eventually turn out to be intrinsically rewarding. ( page 68)

Much of what we label as ‘ Juvenile Delinquency – car theft, vandalism, rowdy behaviour in general – is motivated by the same need to have flow experiences not available in ordinary life. As long as a significant segment of society has few opportunities to encounter meaningful challenges, and few chances to develop the skills necessary to benefit from them, we must expect that, violence and crime will attract those who cannot find their way to more complex autotelic experiences. ( page70)

Flow Chapter 2

2009-03-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

“ The simple truth . ‘ Control over consciousness determines the quality of life’. This has been known for a long time.
(page 20 )

The last great attempt to free consciousness from the control of impulses and social mores, was – psycho-analysis. As Freud pointed out, 2 tyrants that fought for control over the mind were, the ID and the SUPER EGO, the first, a servant of the genes, and the second, a lackey of society – both representing ‘ the Other’. < page 20 >

The Yogic approach of India, the Taoist approach to life developed in China, and Zen varieties of Buddhism of Japan, all seek to free consciousness from the deterministic influence of outside forces- be they biological or social in nature.

Why are we not happier than our ancestors, with all this progress ? There are 2 explanations here.

One. The kind of knowledge, or wisdom , that one needs for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative. It cannot be condensed into a formula ; it cannot be memorized and then routinely applied. It must be earned through trial and error by each individual , generation after generation. Control over consciousness is simply not a cognitive skill.

Second. The knowledge of how to control consciousness must be reformulated every time the cultural context changes ! The wisdom of the mystics, of the Sufi, of the great Yogis, or of the Zen masters might have been excellent in their own time – and might still be the best, if we lived in those times and in those cultures.

But when transplanted to contemporary California, those systems lose quite a bit of their original power. They contain elements that are specific to their original contexts, and when these accidental components ar not distinguished from what is essential, the path to freedom gets over grown by brambles of meaningless mubo jumbo. Ritual forms win over substance, and the seeker is back where he started.

Control over consciousness cannot be institutionalised. As soon as it becomes a part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceased to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be. Routinization, unfortunately, tends to take place very rapidly.

( page 21)

Consciousness has developed the ability to override genetic instruction and to set its own independent course of action. ( page 24)

We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the sheer force of their personalities. The ability to persevere, despite obstacles and setbacks , is the quality that people most admire in others and justly so ! It is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well. ( page 24)

The information we allow into our consciousness becomes extremely important. It is, in fact, what determines the content and quality of life. ( page 24)

My ‘ Self’ exists solely in my consciousness ; and in that of others who know me, there will be a version of it. Most of them probably unrecognisable likeliness of the ‘ original’ – myself as I see me. ( pae 34)

Every piece of information we process, gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral ? ( page 39)

Differentiation and integration : Complexity often has negative connotations. But, a complex engine, for instance, not only has many separate components, each performing a different function, but also demonstrates a high sensitivity because each of the components is in touch with all the others. Without integration, a differentiated system would be a confusing mess. ( page 41)

A self that is only differentiated – not integrated – may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. But, by the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.

Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of action itself rather than for any ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were ! ( page 42)

FLOW - CHAPTER 1

2009-03-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

" The best moments of our lives, are not the passive, receptive,relaxing times - although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

Optimal experience is thus, something that we make happen ! For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far ; for a swimmer, it could be trying to best his own record ; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical pasage. For each person, there are thousand of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.

Such experience are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue - yet, these could have been the best moments his life !
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To achieve greater precision we developed with time, a new method for measuring the quality of subjective experience. This technique is called ' Experience Sampling Method'. This involves asking people to war an electronic paging device for a week and to write down how they feel and what they are thinking about when ever the pager signals.
( do net search on ' Experience Sampling Method' )
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Optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is ORDER in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match with the opportunities for action !
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The primary reason it is so difficult to achieve happiness centers on the faact that, contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself, the universe was NOT created to answer OUR needs ! Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of our Life. and when ever some of our needs are temporarily met, we immediately start wishing for more ! This chronic dissatisfaction is the second obsstacle that stands in the way of contentment.

This universe was not designed - with the comfort of human beings in mind ( !!?? Whose 'mind' ?).

It is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold. It is the setting for great violence, as when , occasionally, a star explodes, turning to ashes - everything within billions of miles ! The rare planet whose gravity field would not crush our bones is probably swimming in lethal gases ! Even planet Earth, which can be so idyllic and picturesque, is not to be taken for granted !

To survive on earth, men and women have had to struggle for millions of years , against ice, fire, floods, wild animals, and invisible micro-organisms that appear out of nowhere and snuff us out.

( Now , where does that leave Rhonda Byrne's " Law of Attraction" ? Which tries to 'sell' us the idea that, we can get all we want by ' just sending our wish to the Universe ( with capital U ) ? )

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" The universe is not hostile towards us, nor is it unfriendly. It is simply indifferent ! " J.H.Holmes.
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Whether or not we are happy, depends on our inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the greater foreces of the Universe !
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As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they soner or later face an increasingly nagging question : " is this all there is ? "

Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all , there is teh expectation that, after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood, the future still looks promosing, the hope remains that , one's goals will be realised. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that , those extra pounds are not about to leave ; inevitably, eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains to begin to shoot through the body. Like waiters in a restaurant, starrring to place breakfast settings on the surrouding tables while one is still having dinner, these intimations of mortality plainly communicate teh message ; " your time us UP, it's time to MOVE ON ! ! When this happens, few people are ready. " Wait a minute, this can't be happening to ME ! I haven't even begun to live. Where is all that money I was supposed to have earned ? Where are all good times I was going to have ? "

A feeling of having been cheated by Life, is an understandable consequence of this realization. From childhood, we have been conditioned to believe, that a benign fate would provide for us.

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Peter Fingar in Extreme Competition.

2007-07-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

"The knowledge society is one of seniors and juniors rather than bosses and subordinates. The information society is more than just technology; it includes social, cultural, institutional, moral, and political dislocations during our transition from a brute-force industrial society,"
says Peter Fingar in Extreme Competition

It wasn’t the invention of the computer that triggered a great 21st century transformation, says Peter Fingar. “It was Sputnik in 1957, and the beginning of global telecommunications,” he adds, in Extreme Competition ( www.mkpress.com ). “Now all the world’s computers are linked by the Net, shrinking the planet to the size of the screen on your cell phone.”

To him, the dotcom crash of 2000 was not the signal for the beginning of the end. “It was a signal that we had reached the end of the beginning. The tinkering phase of the Internet was complete, and now it’s time to get on with the real transformation of business and society.”

The next big thing in business, according to Fingar, is not about dotcom booms. It’s about operational innovation and business transformation, driven by the emergence of a wired world, he declares. Discomfortingly for many, “the days of market stability and competitive advantage from a single innovation are over.”

So what is the path of salvation? “Today, companies must respond to new entrants in their industries that come from nowhere,” advises the author. “And they must not just innovate, they must set the pace of innovation, gaining temporary advantage, one innovation at a time, and then move on to the next.”

In the new breed of companies, the Internet is ‘a digital nervous system’ that makes “deep structural changes in their core business processes. They innovate not just with clever new products, they innovate with services wrapped around these products.”

Meanwhile, employees of modern corporations are not bound by the master-servitor bond, as earlier. Fingar cites the example of Ford Motor Company that once had its own ‘factory police force’ to monitor the men, and keep away people related to unions! “Today, specialised knowledge workers are, in growing numbers, not even employees of he corporations they serve. They are equals in creating the means of production, not indentured minions.”

Knowledge as business capital is the first of the five transformers that the book discusses. “The knowledge society is a society of seniors and juniors rather than bosses and subordinates.” The information society is more than just technology, explains Fingar. “It includes social, cultural, institutional, moral, and political dislocations during our transition from a brute-force industrial society to a brain-force economy.”

The Internet is the second driver. The author speaks of the Executable Internet or X-Internet as the next giant leap: Not page-by-page download as we’re accustomed to, but programs that execute on the users’ desktops. “The X-Internet is precisely why Google strikes fear in the heart of Microsoft, for Google isn’t basing its future on its search engine, it’s building the next-generation computing platform, wanting to supersede today’s dominant Windows platform.”

Heard about Ajax?

“Internet creative destruction, round two,” reads a quote of George Colony, Chairman and CEO at Forrester Research, that Fingar cites. “Now, you’ve got brains at both ends of the wire, resulting in a high-IQ, interactive, valuable conversation…”

Extremely important read.

The Goldilocks Enigma

2007-07-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

PAUL DAVIES is an internationally acclaimed physicist, cosmologist and writer. He is the author of over 200 books, including The Mind of God, About Time, The Origin of Life, The Big Question, More Big Questions, and How to Build a Time Machine. Davies has been honoured by the UK’s Royal Society and the Institute of Physics for his talents as a communicator of science
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This is a science book in which God makes frequent appearance. It is written in a simple language that readers with some background in physics and maths can easily understand. It asks fundamental questions about life, universe and the purpose of everything. It can be a primer for those doing advanced spiritual studies. It also opens up business opportunities in ‘scientific spiritualism’.

The publishing industry can churn out ‘for dummies’ books with titles like Schrodinger’s God — Is He or is He Not?; Heisenberg’s God Uncertainty Principle, which would convey that God can be analysed or experienced, but both cannot be done simultaneously, and so on. Then there could be the megabuck business of scientific spiritualism malls that offer more technologically advanced products than currently provided by the religion businesses. That is the problem with Paul Davies’s book. It can be admired at the science level and trivialised at the God level. The author’s presumption is that we know enough science now to ask questions about the purpose of everything. Twenty thousand years ago, the wise ones among cavemen must have made a similar claim. But we consider them primitive with no knowledge of science. And 20,000 years from now, wise ones will laugh at our ignorance and claim that they know enough science to ask fundamental questions. Scientists don’t seem to learn anything from the history of science which gives us a basic rule: The more we know, the more we realise how little we know. Scientists, ignorant of the rule, become fundamentalist either/or missionaries.

The Goldilocks Enigma is a good illustration of the western scientific struggle that began as a revolt against the bullying of the Church. The Popes and their bureaucracies were like President Bush and his cabinet. They said: “Whatever we tell you is the only truth. Anyone who questions it will be sent to a Guantanamo Inquisition.” If the Church had been liberal, western science might not have progressed as it did. Western scientists should be frequently exclaiming, “Thank you, God, for creating Popes!” An elementary law of Nature that is not covered by physics is this: orthodoxy provokes protestant unorthodoxy, which eventually becomes another orthodoxy, which provokes... Science was unorthodoxy in medieval times and is orthodoxy now. It is divided into believers and non-believers who ridicule each other. They just can’t leave God alone, poor thing! The title of the book is simultaneously clever and ridiculous. Goldilocks was a dumb blonde who couldn’t do simple mental physics and maths to conclude at a glance what was just right for her. She did physical tests. In complex real life, everyone goes through the Goldilocks process in search of what is just right for him/her. Not everyone succeeds; too many somehow survive in too big or too small universes.

Davies has already written several books. In a couple of years, Davies will realise that The Goldilocks Enigma is not quite right and will write another. And then another… as part of the Goldilocks process. But he will never find what is exactly right because more choices will be offered. That is the fun of science. It is an endless, unbounded game, even without invoking God.Davies’s conclusion is that this universe, out of the infinite number of theoretically possible universes, is just right for everything. Perhaps another Davies in another universe has also proved that his universe is the only right one for life and is designed with a purpose. At the end, Davies says, “I do take life, mind and purpose seriously, and I concede that the universe at least appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. I cannot accept these features as a package of marvels that just happen to be, which exist reasonlessly. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things — the universe is ‘about’ something. But I am equally uneasy about dumping the whole set of problems in the lap of an arbitrary god, or abandoning all further thought and declaring existence ultimately to be a mystery.” Yet, in the last sentence of the book, he says that most scientists get on with their work, leaving the big questions to philosophers and priests. Precisely! That is what Davies should have done. But Intelligent Design is a hot topic in the West, and Davies had to make his contribution to the discussion.Since the book is about science and Intelligent Design, it is about thinking: questioning, testing, speculating, finding proof, the ecstasy of great proofs and the despair of wrong ones.

All this activity requires the brain. It is the brain that makes science possible. But the brain, which is as big a mystery as the universe and which will be the biggest area of scientific inquiry in the future, does not figure in Davies’s book. Strange, indeed! It is absurd to claim to know about life and the universe without knowing how the knowing process works so that God can be given an IQ test. That’s worth a laugh.Nevertheless, the book is a must read. It is a brilliant exposition of the maths and physics of the universe. You either nod in agreement by the end, or get furious. Either way, you are provoked to think. That energises the brain.

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-" I began this book by saying that religion was the first great systematic attempt to explain all of existence and that science is the next great attempt. Both religion and science draw their methodology from ancient modes of thought honed by many millennia of evolutionary and cultural pressures. Our minds are the products of genes and memes. Now we are free of Darwinian evolution and able to create our own real and virtual worlds, and our information processing technology can take us to intellectual arenas that no human mind has ever before visited, those age-old questions of existence may evaporate away, exposed as nothing more than the befuddled musings of biological beings trapped in a mental straitjacket inherited from evolutionary happenstance. The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of."

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World is Flat

2006-12-05T21:32:00.002-08:00

GREAT SORTING OUT : As the world starts from moving from primarily vertical ( command and control ) value-creation system to an increasingly horizantal ( connect and collaborate ) model , it doesn't just affect how business gets done. It affects every thing !!
( to be continued)

World is Flat

2006-12-05T21:32:00.001-08:00

World is Flat

2006-12-05T21:32:00.000-08:00