Why we need to understand our origins and history before building artificial intelligence

According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:

1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us

2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.

Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.

Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.

When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past. 

Human destruction of nature – a historical and religious angle

I was on my regular morning walk yesterday looking to photograph anything interesting happening in nature when I suddenly heard a short whirring sound which sounded familiar. I looked around and saw a huge mounted electric transformer on the side. It was the deathly sound of a bird getting electrocuted. Because of overhead transmission cables and transformers kept in the open, house crows keep getting electrocuted all the time.

The crow that was with the one that died was in total shock and was making different kinds of sounds. Helplessly I stood there for a while wondering why do we create and construct things that we know will harm animals but do not care. So many different types of birds die every day because of our fishing nets alone. Why do we have scant respect for nature and animals?

When we look back at our history, we start from the point where we were afraid of everything we did not understand. We do not know when and why but we started worshipping natural elements like fire, rain, thunder and lightning and animals by creating Gods for them. The most probable reason is lack of scientific understanding of natural elements and the higher sensory abilities of animals. This is what became known as paganism. Though we started cultivation and raising livestock with time, in the name of worshipping all the Gods, we conserved and protected nature.

But pagan cultures developed deep flaws with time. To understand and relate to Gods, we started reducing Gods into human forms which resulted in idol worship. Emperors and Kings started calling themselves as Gods on Earth who could communicate with the Gods that were being worshipped. All of these eventually led to the evolution of monotheism, the concept of one God. Monotheism, introduced by Christianity became dominant with the advent of Islam and spread all over the world. As the world gradually moved away from pagan culture, it has had a significant impact on our perception of nature and wild animals.

Then, there is this critically important part in the Bible.

Genesis 1:26-28

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (3533): and have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

First of all, the first 5 days of creation as explained in the Bible does not have scientific merit. The Earth and everything we see about it has evolved over billions of years. Then, God says Let “us” make man in “our” image, after “our” likeness. So “God” apparently is made of blood, muscle and bone and looks just like us. Note the usage us and our. So it was not just one God. There were others who were equally powerful as the God and powerful enough to create us. This is a question mark over the concept of one God espoused by Christianity.

Then comes the most important part of giving us the control (dominion) over the planet and all other living beings. To have such control, we needed to possess far greater intelligence than all other living beings on Earth. We have to notice here that we have been given the ability to control only the living beings, not the ability to control nature and natural elements. This could be the reason why we cannot understand natural disasters in advance and cannot escape from them. To understand nature through animals may be the reason why we were given control over them. It may have been left to our interpretation and could be the decisive factor in determining the survival or extinction of our species. We cannot destroy nature and other living beings and survive on the planet. We were given intelligence so that we can understand this as we evolve. This is why by destroying nature and wild animals we are setting the premise for our own extinction.

While I do not intend to state that the Bible is the reason why we are destroying nature and killing off wild animals, the shift from pagan culture to monotheistic belief has definitely had it’s influence on how we see and treat nature. With the tremendous growth we have achieved in science and technology especially in the last few decades, we need to urgently start looking at nature through the lens of logic, commonsense and rationale and understand ancient texts from the scientific perspective.

Christianity needs to shed its age old male dominated Orthodoxy to stay relevant

The Church has crossed all boundaries of blasphemy with the recent revelations about the string of sexual abuse cases in Kerala. I am writing “The Church” to represent all churches in India and across the globe. Accusations of sexual abuse from inside the hallowed walls of the Church have been flying thick and fast from across the world in recent times. I am not a Christian but I have very good friends who are Christians and I do not intend to hurt their religious sentiments in any way with this article.
I had come across an article sometime back stating that religions and especially Christianity is dying in 10 countries. When I was in the Netherlands I had noticed that people were mostly not inclined towards religions and did not engage in discussions about religions. So why is this radical shift happening now? Here is my take on it. Netherlands has a progressive and prosperous society and as they reached the present level of maturity as a society, their tendency to attribute the highs and lows in their lives to external influences must have also decreased. Every religion advises us to live good lives, work hard and become successful and not hurt anyone intentionally. These are basic human values and need not be associated with any religion which is what I observed during my time in the Netherlands. Further and latest endorsement of this is Canada banning all teachings of Christianity from classrooms.
The crux of the matter goes far deeper though. There was no religion called Hinduism till idol worship started in the Kali Yuga as mentioned in ancient Indian texts. None of the Hindu Gods have created Hinduism. Vedas were written to define and streamline the erstwhile society but they do not define Hinduism as claimed by the proponents of Hindutva. Similarly Jesus Christ did not create Christianity and the Church, his followers did. Now here’s the thing. Jesus is referred to as the son of God, so there is God, Jesus and then the Church in Christianity. Jesus never claimed to represent God and neither created a religion called Christianity nor the Church so I believe the Church cannot claim to represent him just like Hindu temples can have idols of Gods but cannot claim to represent any of them. It is a known historical fact that Constantine, the Emperor of Rome integrated the followers of Jesus into Rome and gave shape to what would become a new religion called Christianity. Now the question is, where to put our beliefs. Before Lord Krishna left earth, he had advised that in Kali Yuga, only He can hear people’s prayers so people need to pray to Him. Since Jesus is mentioned as the son of God, praying to him will be the way to reaching out to God. But going by my statement that the Church cannot claim to represent Jesus, is adhering to the diktats of the Church the way or the only way of reaching out to him?
There have been many issues attributed to or plaguing the Church through the course of it’s existence. Thousands of free thinking women were supposedly branded as witches by the Church and burned on the stakes during the Dark Ages, best exemplified by the story of the Joan of Arc. The Church also ignited the Crusades by persuading Britain and France to send their armies to Jerusalem to free the supposedly Holy Land from Muslim rule. Jerusalem was portrayed by the Church as a land flowing with milk and honey but was actually the barren arid land it still is. But the most contentious one I believe in the present times is the rule of confession. The neighborhood around every Church is under the hegemony of the Church’s priest, commonly addressed as father. The fathers are supposed to know everything that is happening in every Christian household under their watch. Done wisely and honestly, this practice amounts to uniting all those families into a community. Treating the father as a mentor and guide and confessing to him about our circumstances and actions, taking his advice and him praying on our behalf are all great practices. But to me, making confessions mandatory is nefarious and not well intended. Religions are never supposed to enforce any rules on its followers. The risk is always there that we could become hostage to our own words in case the father we are confessing to turns rogue. This is exactly what has happened in one of the latest sex abuse scandals to hit the Church. A union minister in the capacity of being a Christian has waded into the issue and is trying to gain consensus to rebuke the attempt by the National Women’s Commission (NCW) to ban the practice of confession in churches (https://thewire.in/women/reject-ncw-recommendations-to-ban-confessions-in-churches-alphons-to-pm). My take here is that the practice of confessions should only be by the free will of people and enforcing it upon them amounts to controlling and enslaving them to the Church which is draconian and law of the Dark Ages and should not be allowed to continue.
I have always felt a sense of vulnerability at young girls and women joining or made to join nunneries under the Church and spending their lives supposedly in the service of God. It places far greater moral virtuosity on the male dominated structure of the Church than is logically comprehensible. Now that this incident of sexual abuse of one nun has come out in the open, the premise opens out that more nuns could have been the prey of sexual abuse for decades or even centuries and they were hushed up and made to suffer silently in the name of Jesus and for the sake of Christianity. Though many serious and satirical movies about the state and affairs of the Church in Kerala have been made in Malayalam, one movie, The Romans, deserves special mention here and is worth a watch.
I am wondering what might Jesus be thinking if he is indeed watching all of what is happening from somewhere. My heart melts at the thought of a poor shepherd who had chosen to teach people to live well, not hurt each other and had died for them and what has got created over the centuries in his name. True followers of Islam have always maintained that none of them can indulge in violence especially against their own kind and the ones who use violence are not followers of Islam. I am inclined to believe this because no human being who prays diligently for 5 times a day can detach himself/herself from the spiritual world and embrace violence. Similarly, the Church can no longer hold on to it’s claim of representing Jesus and continue with it’s orthodox, male dominated structure and let damning incidents such as sexual abuse of women and children happen under it’s umbrella. Every organization and practice needs to be revamped and revised to stay relevant as the society evolves and no religions are exempt from it.

Jesus Christ deserves far better for giving up his life for our sins.

The inverse relationship between intelligence and sex

I came across this thought provoking article today morning.

http://iheartintelligence.com/2016/02/09/intelligence-sex-drive/

The fascinating bit is, higher the IQ, higher the sex drive but lesser sex. This has been explained away by reasoning that people with higher IQ are more focused on gaining knowledge than having sex, but it does not get into the details as to why.

People with all levels of IQ are interested in sex, but higher IQ means more neuron connections inside the brain which translates into deeper connectivity in relationships with other people. This is why these people make lesser friends and prefer to be social outcasts because they simply desist being in superficial relationships. Such people simply cannot be in casual relationships or one night stands because they find no mental connectivity in such short time. They would rather prefer to stay away from sex completely or be monogamous if they come across that person with whom they find the deep connectivity they are looking for. This could explain the higher use of sex toys among people with higher IQ as mentioned in the article. They would rather use the toys rather than being in meaningless relationships.

But there is a deeper reason for giving up on sex for gaining knowledge. People in ancient times used to do penance to reach out to God for superior knowledge and powers. Ancient Indian texts are replete with the tales of such numerous yogis. Why did they leave their lives behind and walk into the deep forests to do the penance? They wanted to be away from all relationships and distractions because they had to channel and focus their entire energy into reaching out to the higher powers. They needed all their energy to interact with the supremely higher energy source that is God. There are two activities in our daily lives that are the most resource intensive, digestion of food and sex. Both require the maximum blood in our body to complete the tasks. The more food and more sex we have, the more exhausted and drowsy we become. That is why yogis used to live on fruits and berries and observe complete abstinence from any sort of contact with women. Some of this is still in vogue. In my native state, Kerala, before we go to a certain temple called Sabarimala, it is required to abstain from meat, alcohol, women and even cutting of hair and nails for 41 days. Our ancestors used to walk to the temple through forests for weeks and months. They used to carry machetes to clear the forest area they were walking through. When they leave, their families used to light oil lamps and used to ensure that the lamps burn till they return. 41 days was probably the average time taken by people to walk forth and back and if they did not return in that time period, they were presumed to be dead.

Animals have been considered at a lower order than humans in ancient Indian texts and there are reasons for that. Animals exist to maintain the equilibrium of the planet’s ecosystem and we do not belong to the food chain because we were given intelligence and knowledge to cultivate our own food, domesticate animals and use fire and metals. Unlike us, animals have no taste buds. They do not need to seek higher knowledge so that’s why they have not been given intelligence. It is said that when the Gods created us, we were not supposed to be made intelligent. But some among the Gods defied the rule and passed on intelligence and knowledge to us. The Forbidden Apple eerily resembles the shape of the vagina which could mean that we were told not to get into the infinite loop of procreation like animals and we were meant to use our intelligence to seek higher knowledge.

I do not believe that anyone is born with higher IQ than others. It is said that we are listening and feeling from the time we are in our mother’s womb. What we experience right from our mother’s womb through our infancy and in our growing up years affects our mental makeup positively or adversely. The well-being of relationships between couples could determine the makeup of children even when they are conceived. Ancient Indian texts describe in detail how to live our lives and all these factors have been taken into consideration when writing them down. We overlook everything because of our ignorance and this is precisely why the apple was forbidden.

An objective look at God, Universe and creation

More than enough has been said and written and everyone is trying to find out the truth about our origins and about the history of our planet and the Universe. This is all leading to one point, the creator of the cosmos and everything in it. I have been baffled by this all along because it is extremely weird why we would want to know about that entity or whatever is out there and how would that knowledge make any difference to our lives, but it is getting clearer for me now. I am starting to believe that we have been looking at the wrong things and asking the wrong questions all along.

 

Fundamental to all of this is our flawed assumption that whoever created us also created the Universe. Ancient Indian texts, largely ignored as a collection of mythical fantasies are actually a lot more than that. They say we were created by someone called Manu and ancient Sumerian texts say we were created by someone called Anu.  Coincidence? But is it mentioned anywhere that Manu/Anu created the Universe or our planet? No. I believe we are looking at the word creation from all the wrong perspectives. Do we have the ability to create? Yes, we procreate so we are able to create our own beings and we are also creating other living beings now. We also have the ability to create non-living things and we have filled this planet with them. So if we have the ability to create so much, what about the abilities of the entity that created us? What if we find this entity and then come to know that this entity is also searching for the one that created it?

 

When it comes to creation, I have never come across anyone asking one question. We all know atoms are the building blocks of everything in the Universe. Question is, where do atoms come from and how do they get created? Ancient texts say all of us have an element of God in us and in scientific terms, this is nothing other than atoms. So when we make a car or a TV, it is basically atoms manipulating atoms, correct? Similarly, someone manipulated atoms and created us. This means creation has been delegated across the Universe. According to Indian texts, the Universe is created at the dawn of a Brahma day and destroyed at the end of the day. The span of a Brahma day/night is about 311 trillion earth years. During the period of Brahma night, there is nothing or there is absolute void. So does this mean no atoms exist in that state? If this is true, then during dawn, one of the below two things are happening to kick start the creation of the Universe:

 

1. Atoms are being released from somewhere or by someone and the source is also created from atoms.

 

2. Atoms are getting created from some other fundamental cosmic particles.

 

In both cases, this is just plain manipulation of atoms. So the question we should be asking here is, how can atoms manipulate atoms or what is it that enables atoms to manipulate one another?

 

What is our purpose for the search of God or our creator? We were created by someone or something whose powers and abilities were beyond what we could fathom and we ended up worshipping it, just like we were worshipping everything in nature in our early days when we did not understand nature. We have always needed someone beyond our comprehension to look up to for us to keep believing that this entity will solve our problems when we cannot. The question here is why can’t we make our lives better ourselves when all it should really take is to change the vibrations of the atoms in and around us?

 

Trying to understand the Universe and its creation is like peeling an onion. By the time we reach the core of the onion, our eyes will become so watery that we will not be able to see anything. We know about 2, 3 and more dimensions so how many dimensions might exist? My grandma used to say there are 2 x 7 = 14 worlds. Did she mean dimensions or Universes? What did she mean when she said 2 x 7? Do dimensions exist within the realm of a Universe or outside of it? Does our Universe have 14 dimensions? In which Universe or dimension do we exist now? Is it possible to travel from one dimension or Universe to another? When we die do our souls travel into another dimension or to another Universe? All of this is always going to be beyond our realm of understanding.

 

Creation, destruction and recreation of the Universe can be substantiated from the fact that this process is mirrored across the Universe. Everything in the Universe has a start date and an end date which is life and death for us. If the Universe can be recreated, so can we be reborn which proves reincarnation of our souls. At the lowest level, we can simply say atoms are being reused. This is where it gets interesting. Why does everything that happens in the Universe happen? Why do stars disintegrate? Why are black holes formed? Why do planets collide? Why are we born? Why do we experience all that we experience in our life time? Is it that the information from everything that is happening in the Universe is being recorded and stored which can be used for the further evolution of this Universe or even for the creation of other Universes? There is something called Akashic records which has been mentioned by many as a repository of knowledge of the Universe that exists in another dimension. The fundamental question here is why, why all of this happening. The objective of any investigation is to find the motive and that is exactly we need to find here as well. If we find out the why, everything else will fall in place.

 

If we start looking for answers to these questions, we will have no time left to quarrel and squabble with one another because from the perspective of the Universe and creation, the life we live now will not make any sense. Though we are all made from atoms we are all unique in our own ways. This is true for the animal world as well. Similarly, what we experience in our lives is also unique. This is the real beauty of creation and the most intriguing aspect of the Universe. Once I realized this, whatever is happening in our world, be it with politics, murders, rapes and everything else has stopped affecting my mind. The Universe is learning and evolving and it is gathering information from every possible means. No God is coming to save people from getting murdered and raped. It is for us to decide what information do we want to pass on to the Universe and lead our lives accordingly.

 

Finally, when someone says God, think atoms.

 

 

My shot at decoding destiny

Probably the two words I have heard more than any other in my life are destiny and fate. I don’t know if the concept of destiny is localized to the Indian subcontinent and to people who are descendants of ancient civilizations. When I was in Europe, I heard no one speak about destiny. It was as if such a thing did not even exist in their world. The context in which the word is used is in itself ironic. When we succeed in achieving something, it is because of our hard work and when we don’t it gets attributed to destiny. Well, first of all, working hard will only take us from point A to point B in life because when we invest ourselves completely into something, we must have usually decided what we want and how to get there. For me, working smart is what reveals to me what is out there other than point B. So when we fail in getting or doing something, there might be many reasons for it. Maybe we did not do the appropriate things when they were supposed to be done, we were blinded by someone’s perception and so on. Then what must be destiny?
This question has vexed me for the longest time primarily because I am simply not able to accept that everything in my life has been decided in advance. It makes me feel like I am a preprogrammed robot. Then how do we explain emotions and unique experiences we go through? When the entire cosmos can be defined and explained using numbers and probability, why are they not applicable to our lives as well? What if we are presented with choices continuously in our lives and what we choose defines our life ahead as well as the lives of other people? Let me substantiate this with an example from my life. When my grandfather retired from his job in India, he was given an offer to work from London for 2 years. It was the early 1970s and it was a very easy time to relocate. He chose not to. Fast forward to 2010 and there was an opportunity for me to get a transfer to my company’s office in the UK but I couldn’t go because company was not ready to apply for my work visa. My point here is, life could have been so different for the entire family if he had chosen to go. He went back to where he was born and had struggled for a long time, struggled again in his old age and passed away with a lot of regret. I have never seen anything preordained here. It was the choices he made that defined his life and is probably defining my life now.
But then there is a mystery here. The unique personalities we all have. This is where it gets tricky. Our soul is pure energy which powers our entire body. At the moment we are conceived in our mother’s womb, we cannot be defined in any way which can be equated with our interpretation of God. As we grow in our mother’s womb, we start becoming aware of the world outside the womb through her feelings and emotions. Our personality development starts from that point. We lose the purity of our souls when we are enveloped with all the social constraints of the world. Here is where the conflict is. Our bodies are supposed to be reflections of our pure souls but they end up becoming representations of our personalities that are defined by our evolution through our experiences. So death is detaching our personality from our soul and reverting the soul to it’s pure form again. So when we speak about reincarnation, it should be the rebirth of our personality.
No matter if we are aware of this or not, we are all learning from our experiences and everything that we learn is what is causing our personalities to evolve. Is destiny something that defines what a personality has to experience to move from point A to point B in it’s journey? Maybe the soul is the engine that powers the personality’s journey and our body is just a mode of transportation for the personality. Probably this is why we get connected to some people so well and sometimes so quickly. Our personalities must be crossing paths in our travel through time.
So where does all of this leave us with destiny? Blissfully resting the accountability of our actions and choices on something that we cannot even define has probably made our species so dangerous. Aren’t we using destiny as the fall guy for all our wrongdoings? Aren’t we using destiny as a license to not make the right choices? A woman gets raped because she was destined for it? Someone gets killed by a suicide bomber or in road rage because it was his destiny? Unbelievable. Does whatever we experience and go through as a result of the wrong decisions we take add value to us? Is there a higher power that is judging us on our actions and choices? Again, hard for me accept. This looks more to me like extremely complicated and intricate mathematics at play. Then did someone create all of it? Maybe yes, but did that entity define our destiny? Definitely no. It just has to be one of the outcomes of what we call as creation.

A disguise beyond comprehension

I believe it’s high time we started looking at our world, at our history and at humanity as a whole from new perspectives. There are many things about us and our world which are not right. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who must be having the same feeling as me. This assumed much greater significance for me when a daming revelation detailed how Indian governments have been funding separatists in the Kashmir region. Kashmir has been on the precipice from the time Pakistan was carved out of India and both countries gained independence from British colonial rule. To which country should Kashmir belong has been the bone of contention between the two countries with separatists, presumably with the support of Pakistan governments have been creating unrest in the region with terrorism. This latest revelation has come as a shocker, because it defies logic that Indian governments have been supporting the very people who are infusing trouble and killing fellow Indians. The question to ask here is, who benefits from this.

The answer is spread out all over our history. I have always wondered how could Adolf Hitler, a virtual nobody, rise up enough to become the undisputed leader of Germany and wage war with the world for 6 long years. Sure, he had Italy and Japan for support, but we also need to look at other pertinent facts as well. Germany was thoroughly defeated in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles had humiliated them and stripped them off a lot of their money and resources. Then followed the Great Depression of 1929. So the question is, where did Hitler find this phenomenal amount of money to fight such a massive war. For all that he has done, I used to admire him for rallying a country around him. But turns out that there is a lot more to it. I have been reading many articles lately which are putting the blame for all conflicts on the banking and financial institutions. Come to think of it, who benefits more than them from conflicts and wars? From making every bullet to guns to military tanks to figher jets, everything costs money. Then the elephatine cost of rebuilding after a war. This would make a lot of sense when we look at every conflict the US has been a part of. Why would they go all the way to Afghanistan to train and arm the resistance fighters waging war against the Soviet Union and leave behind so much of arms and ammunition behind in Afghanistan and Pakistan when they knew what could happen when these arms end up in the hands of Afghan and Pashtun warlords? All of this was shown clearly in the first movie of the Iron Man series, that the same company which manufactures and supplies weapons to the US government is supplying weapons to the very terrorist groups against whom the US is fighting. Looks like the truth is not far from it. Undoubtedly, the US government must be knowing about this, then why are they powerless to stop it? Simply because the stakes are much higher. A simple question is, why are all countries in the world in so much debt? The US has debt that runs into trillions of dollars. Whom do we actually owe all this money to?

When we look back at our history closely, interesting details emerge. We have seen new religions spring up from time to time which have claimed their origins to offset the negativities of older religions and improve mankind. But has that been the case? We have been fragmented further in the name of religion and God. Every religion has it’s own interpretation of God, but how was it that we ended up fighting one another in the name of God? It is said that Jesus and Prophet Mohammad received divine instructions from God to separate a group of people from the rest and lead them into a new way of life. If this was indeed done by God, why would God fragment us in His name rather than uniting us? Why would we have a few people like Newton, Einstein and others who would just pop out of nowhere and change the course of mankind’s history with their discoveries? Doesn’t all of this look suspicious when put together? Is mankind’s history being managed and manipulated by someone or something beyond our realm of understanding and knowledge? Are we being led to a certain point where we will self destruct and end? Are there powers that want us to stay fragmented and keep fighting one another so that they can conquer and rule over us? Or are there benign forces that are testing our character and resilience and want to see if we can survive all the odds and become better beings?

Are we living in a Matrix or a world of Maya as ancient Indian texts say? It is a question that has challenged many minds. Even if we are, there are no red and blue pills like it is shown in the movie. The pills are human intelligence and commonsense. I am sure there are people who will say, “we are not affected by anything so why should we care”? Well, everyone in the world is. Is there a single human being having no issues, physically or financially or in any other ways? The eyes of dogs on streets do not show fear or pain, rather it is bewilderment and confusion. There is chaos and sorrow everywhere and no one is able to figure out why. We are living totally detached lives from one another where there is no time for love and companionship. Are we the creators of this disillusionment or are we being led into this? There is no doubt that a system exists to monitor and control us, that’s why we have a life-death cycle. It will be ridiculous to even think that the consequences of our actions will be limited to our planet. We are all made of star dust and we are connected to the Universe, so the consequences of all our actions will be felt throughout the Universe. When the negative energy we create ultimately causes imbalance in the Universe, order will be restored. I believe the real challenge for us is whether we will be able to shed our differences and unite and find the balance with Mother Nature. This may be the ultimate test we are being put to and it may be upon us to prove that human beings as a species is worthy enough to be a part of the Universe.

Realms of business at the cost of humanity

So, the 7th and possibly the last of the Fast and Furious franchise garnered a billion dollars at the box office in 17 days and the whole world let out a collective groan of awe through the print and social media. Money is what we discuss about the most every day in our lives. Apart from all that we see and hear on print media and TV, on social media we keep coming across articles like “How to become a millionaire before 30”, “How to become successful like Richard Branson”, “10 investment tips from Warren Buffet” among countless others. I read them too, not to learn or get inspired from them, but to understand the way people think and approach life. Every year, Forbes releases the list of the wealthiest people in the world and I can’t help but smile at it every time. Almost every year, Bill Gates tops the list. When the world is in awe about his fortune, little do people realize how much money Microsoft and he is actually losing. In third world countries like India, software piracy is so rampant that at least 6 out of 10 computers running Windows must be using pirated version of Windows. What could Microsoft have done? It would be impossible for them to catch up with individual users. So they let it be. Why? If they had done anything to prevent it, someone else would have taken over that space with their operating system. I had consciously kept myself out of finance and stock markets until I got exposed to the dizzying world of corporate finance during my MBA. What I learnt in a nutshell is, whenever people talk of money they are only talking about one thing. Return on Investments (ROI). I get really struck by the fact that money is concentrated in the hands of a few people and the majority of the people are eking out a living compared to them. The rich keeps getting richer and the fish monger I first saw when I was five years old was still a fish monger 20 years later. When it comes to money, I have learnt a valuable lesson from my dad. Whenever we see people spending money beyond their means and abilities, it means they are using devious ways to earn their riches. I usually do not care a hoot about how people make money, except in two cases.

Money in the name of God. My amazement never ceases when I wonder how a few billion beings in a remote corner of the unimaginable expanse of the Universe can conjure up the belief that pieces of paper they make with the picture of their leaders in them are needed to sustain the power that has created the Universe itself. The irony is, people dole out money in the name of God only with the expectation of making more money. The financial statistics from Hindu temples are themselves staggering. These temples would have beaten top companies hands down if they were registered in the stock markets. By God, they would have been the best companies to invest money in, no losses and exponentially rising profits every year. In a way, people are doing just that, by donating money in the name of God. Those investments do not have any market risks. Priests have to pay in millions in bribes to get a job in one of these temples and once they are in they earn several times more than what they invested in a couple of years’ time. It all comes down to who gets the lion’s share of money that is invested by us in the name of God.

We all know by now that humanity can never stay united. From within the walls of our homes to between boundaries of countries, we are always in conflict. In the name of religion, race, caste, skin colour and so many other reasons, we have been shedding the blood of each other. But a certain group of people among us saw a business opportunity in this, to make money by putting weapons in our hands. This is the biggest business in the world now, not gold or technology or drugs. Do we ever take a pause to realize this? No. Why? This is not anything new or recent. Winchester and Gatlin are two companies in the US who were manufacturing extremely good rifles and machine guns respectively way back in the 19th century. When was the last time we saw the name of a weapons manufacturing company in the list of top companies or the CEO of such a company in the Forbes list of wealthiest people? Those names will never be revealed. They are infinitely more powerful than even the President of the US. Why else would the US leave all the military equipment behind in Pakistan and Afghanistan after their conflict with the erstwhile Soviet Union got over, when they fully knew the consequences of leaving behind the weapons in the hands of blood thirsty Afghan warlords? Why is the US still supplying arms to Pakistan when they know fully that Pakistan is one of the biggest nurturing grounds for terrorism in the world? The objective is nothing other than creating and maintaining conflict zones around the world so that the clandestine business of weapons manufacturing can thrive. Most of the weapons that are sold through government deals are also sold to terrorist organizations through the black market. This is the true premise of the first part of the Iron Man movie franchise, but it got drowned out in the thrill of Tony Stark building his shiny Iron Man suit and flying around in it. The weapons manufacturing industry is also part of the service industry. Where there are guns, bullets are needed and guns need to be repaired and replaced. The additional benefit in this industry is, the moment someone picks up a gun for a fight, it gets stuck to that person’s hand forever. Live with bullets and die by one. Death by a bullet will only instigate more such deaths, so more guns and bullets are needed. The growth in business is exponential.

What I cannot get to wrap my brain around is the fact that when I have a problem with my friend or neighbour, total strangers are waiting to put weapons in our hands. Now it has become so brazen that in places where no conflict exists, situations of conflict are first created and then weapons are introduced there. What happens when two people are equally armed? They always keep trying for one upmanship by buying more weapons. Who becomes happy? Once it escalates past a point there is no looking back. This is how arms race has been triggered time and again. I am pretty sure there are places where buying guns is easier than buying groceries. Our world has always been on the brink of another war after World War II and so many conflicts are going on right now in different countries. Why don’t we see any of these conflicts escalating into a war? Conflicts are only meant to create more opportunities for the business community and should not become detrimental to them, so even though we will see plenty of posturing by different countries to start a war, we need not fret over the possibility of one happening. Our society’s steady descend into chaos will trigger our annihilation some day and that will be nature’s way of cleansing herself from the dirt called humanity. Till then, some among us will keep making money at the expense of the lives of the others.

PK – a sensible satire to savour

HELP!!! The story of the movie PK was actually stolen from my mind. Just joking. But to be honest, I have wondered many a time about what the beings of another planet would be thinking about us if they were watching us. The writers of PK went a step further and put such a being on our planet. It is a delightful comical satire but the comedy is not lost on us because we live hilarious lives in our indigenously built comical society. This is a movie the whole world should watch because it questions the very foundations of our society in the most outrageous ways.

There are some superbly thought out and crafted scenes that are seriously rib tickling but also shines light on the multifaceted Indian society. Like the alien keeping the sandals safe outside the temple by tying it to a post using cycle lock because he is told that outside places of worship, sandals are freely exchanged. His confusion with the Rupee notes and taking the photos of Gandhi for shopping. Taking money from the vessel of the blind beggar thinking it is freely available money. Stealing clothes from “dancing cars” in isolated locations where amorous couples are having secret romps. Questioning why people show apprehension at a pack of condoms and at the same time announce to the world when they get married. Love for chicken and fish means people are going to eat them for lunch or dinner. Each one of them hits the sweet spots perfectly.

Questions on God has irked people across all religions around the world time and again. Be it the story of PK or the satirical drawings of Charlie Hebdo, some people have always lived in the belief that they should stand up for their religions. This brings us to a very valid question that is asked in PK. Which God? The one that created this Universe or the ones that we have created? Everyone who doesn’t have an answer for something says God knows and everyone has their own God. So what would someone do who has no idea about our society and beliefs? He takes coconut to church and wine to mosque. Every scene in the movie has a serious message wrapped in delightful satire. Consider this. All religions are based on fashion as per the understanding of the alien. How? A man with a moustache, beard, hair and turban is a Sikh, remove the turban and he becomes a Hindu, put a chain of cross around his neck and he becomes a Christian, remove the cross and the moustache and he becomes a Muslim. We can really feel sorry for the alien for all this confusion. Why should we whiplash ourselves or roll on the ground to please our creator? Will our creator ever want to see us in pain? It is us rather than the alien that are confused beings. It is amazing how the alien’s communication device which is incomprehensible to humans becomes a divine object sent by God and is worshipped.

Be it the uproar at the movie by some Hindu religious leaders and the consequent violence and destruction caused by fanatics or the fatal shooting of Charlie Hebdo journalists, one factor stands out. Every religion has it’s roots buried in blood and violence. There was no religion called Hinduism till idol worship started, Aryans brought it to India, drove the native Indians beyond the Western Ghats and settled in the northern plains. Christianity took roots by driving out Jews from Palestine, forced conversions, suppressing free thinking through violence and later when the Vatican incited the Crusades by persuading the French and English kings to “liberate” Jerusalem by terming it “the holy land flowing with milk and honey”. Islam began as a religion based on aggression and believed in religious dominance by increasing it’s population and slaughtering people belonging other religions. Sikhism evolved as the sword arm of Hinduism to combat Muslim rulers. Question is, who created religions? Jesus? Mohammad? Buddha? All they tried to do was to forge stronger communities through better defined rules in changing times to improve society. It is their followers who glorified them and built religions around them. Would the God that created us ever want us to hurt our own kind in His name and for His sake? Does God need us to stand up and protect Him? These are the most significant questions being asked through this movie. If the God that created us has created this Universe, then that power needs no protection and we humans are too insignificant to protect that infinite power. The increased intelligence we have compared to other beings on our planet has created a false sense of belief in us that we can speak to God, but that source of energy will always be beyond our comprehension.

The message passed on through the movie is simple. There is a spiritual awakening sweeping through humanity which is creating higher awareness in us. Such movies being made is in itself a clear sign of this. It is time to stop manufacturing Gods and saints. Lord Brahma is supposed to be the creator of the Universe as per ancient Indian texts. Then why don’t we have temples of Him? Because it is commonsense and simple logic that such an infinite source of energy cannot be represented in any form. We have always worshipped what we could not understand. Thats why we worshipped thunder and rain. Now we worship Krishna, Jesus and Buddha. But what are we actually worshipping? Their higher cognitive abilities which allowed them to do deeds that are beyond our comprehension. When we pray to them, are we wishing to be like them or are we trying to tap into their energy or are we seeking their intervention to solve our problems? For me, none of the above. I just remind myself about the things that are most important to me, keep my focus on them and try to harness my own inner energy the way they did to fulfill their deeds. But what is baffling is in the way temples are built by people for film stars and politicians. We don’t even know when our adulation for fellow beings turns from getting inspired by them to worshipping them.

The Gods we created does give us hope to hang on in tough times, but tough times come to us mostly because of our unwise decisions and lack of vision. Neither do our Gods create recessions nor do they intervene to alleviate the fallout of recessions. We do. Anyone who has been successful in life has found success not through divine intervention, but with wise decisions and most importantly, in the company of right people. It means humanity has to stand together irrespective of all our differences to succeed and have a better understanding of our creator through higher consciousness.

Kudos to Rajkumar Hirani, Aamir Khan and the rest of the PK crew for creating such a bold movie and standing by what they believe in. They have made the point that we do not need to become priests or saints to attain enlightenment, just commonsense is enough. These are the people who can usher in higher consciousness to humanity. Religious fanatism couldn’t stop the movie from touching everyone’s hearts because people stood together beyond all their differences to appreciate it. Religious fanatism did rob the heart and soul of Charlie Hebdo, but all that the fanatics could manage was to make Charlie Hebdo and the spirits of the dead immortal. All we need to do is to break down the walls within which our minds are trapped and start thinking freely to unite and liberate us.

Deciphering death with a dash of science

Death, the final frontier. Something we have no answer to. The biological clock keeps ticking, no matter what. As we age, the rate of regeneration of our body cells slows down as against it’s rate of death. I read recently that scientists are working on ways to decrease the rate of death of body cells which can possibly increase our lifespan. This is science which most people do not understand or care about. We have in a way accepted that some day our bodies will return to nature. What is mysterious and what matters is our soul and what happens to it after we die.

Scriptures of ancient religions have their own definitions of death. I am clueless about where the concept of afterlife came from. Then it was quite easy to build up the afterlife worlds of heaven and hell. The question we need to ask is why was all this created? To draw the boundaries of society and to create and maintain a sense of fear. If we do not live our lives as per the norms of the society, our actions will be weighed and then it will be decided if we go to heaven or to hell after we die. Do we have any definite proof of this? No. So logic says heaven and hell was a result of an intense and sustained drive of certain concepts into our psyche.

The concept of life, death and afterlife is one of the backbones of Hinduism and rebirth or recycling of life is it’s fulcrum. Apparently life takes the human form after many cycles through animal lives and the life of a human is ordained only to the purest of souls. The natural transition from a human life to the next life is freedom from the cycle of rebirth and the merger of our souls with the Almighty. This was lost as we descended into the age of Kali when our souls were engulfed by the seven sins. Similar and elaborate accounts of life, death and afterlife abound in all other ancient cultures. Vikings believed that death while sleeping or when their eyes are closed will take them to hell. So they always looked for ways to die in battle.

Let’s put science to work here and see how it stacks up against these timeless concepts. Our soul, like everything else in this world is made up of energy. I have first hand experience of it when I did acupuncture for my troubled back. According to the chinese concepts of medicine, when flow of energy stops through a part of our body, it is when that part becomes sick. Acupuncture simply releases that energy. I was sleeping away wherever I went for the next four days. This proves energy exists and powers our body. Suppose, like a nuclear fusion reaction, the fusion of sperm and egg produces energy that envelopes the embryo. The energy grows along with us and reaches an optimum state where it can sustain our body. As long as the rate of regeneration of our cells is greater than it’s destruction, our soul keeps powering our body. As we grow older, our body cells wither and die and does not get replaced. When our body can no longer hold on to the energy, it exits our body and we die. Now to the concept of rebirth in Hinduism. Let’s say every good deed adds more energy to the soul. But there will be bad deeds as well which will diminish the energy. So the good deeds should outweigh the bad ones. Such a soul will be on the ascendancy through it’s several lives and will finally reach a human. Any more addition to this energy would mean that there is no body on earth to hold on to so much energy. If we correlate this with the age old concept that the best souls become stars in the sky, it could mean that the energy of the pure soul is massive enough to create a star. Sankaracharya, the great Indian sage and scholar disappeared from the earth. Does that mean the energy of his soul may have engulfed his body? Conversely, when a human with his measuring pan tilted towards bad deeds die, the diminished energy can only enter an animal and the whole cycle has to be repeated.

Now what is it that we are really scared about death? In the hindsight, our age old belief that our souls are monitored and regulated. Simple energy management is done and maintained in the universe by default. What intimidates us is that the impression of the physical life we lead may be passed on to our souls and carried into our next lives. This is where the concept of heaven and hell instills fear and uncertainty. This requires an elaborate energy management system in place. Should we live in the fear that someone is out there managing all this energy and weighing every action of our lives? Isn’t this the God we are actually seeking?

The key question is, do we have to worry about any of this at all? Do we know how to make our souls pure? No. Is there anything called pure black or pure white? No. Everything is in shades of grey. What is right for me may be wrong for someone else. So can we ever control how our deeds will be judged in our afterlife if at all it is happening? No. If we decode death, will the concept of God lose it’s relevance? If we want to indeed believe that there is a super power controlling our energies, why can’t we believe in it with respect rather than fear? Isn’t it easier to lead a life devoted to making the world a better place for all living beings and go? Isn’t that much easier to do than live with the seven sins and all the baggage that comes with them? The choice ultimately is between celebrating every passing birthday and as a friend says, mourning the approaching death with each passing year.