Life and Spirituality

Artist: Pompeo Girolamo Batoni “Your task is not to seek love, merely to seek barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ― Rumi, the prophet of love A t times, some of my younger and not so young friends ask how to find romantic love that they are missing in their lives, based on my experience in the journey through life, at a time when I have seen what I wished to see and have nothing more to seek in this lap of an eternal journey, this life, and have come to the end of the road to share and reflect on what I saw. I did a post on this topic a long time ago in this blog. However, since a visitor to this blog raised a comment on the issue to the last post, I had promised that I shall do a post on it again. Especially, because to be frank the earlier post was primarily directed at an older friend with a philosophical bent of mind and the answer in the older post was therefore philosophical and somewhat advanced. Other younger persons wish for simpl...

A view of Childhood home of author from afar. I n some spiritual discussion with friends, some mentioned that they do not like the idea of fear being used in the scriptures and that god should be all about love. But dear friends, there is a time and place for everything under the sun and there is a time when fear has a role to play. Some female cats frequently roam around my home and every some months a male cat from an adjoining block, when he is in heat, moves in and produces the most irritating of mournful sounds to attract the females. It goes on day and night and if shooed away he is back at it after a bit. Yesterday I threw some large pebbles at him and that has scared him away for now. Fear has worked. Humans too when blinded by things like excessive lust, greed and anger often need fear to knock them out of it. What happens when ego becomes excessive? Well the guy becomes such a megalomaniac that even fear may not work then. Dictators frequently get into this s...

CAANS system color of inner wear for President Obama A new piece of research has determined what the most attractive color of President Obama’s underwear is. Personally, I think that this is a bit too intrusive especially if the person concerned is a distinguished leader of our world even if it is just a fun game to pass time, but then again it may be fitting retribution for perhaps having spied on the private affairs of another distinguished leader – Angela Merkel : - )   (UPDATE: A new edition of the book has given a second favorable color for President Obama's inner wear that is chocolate like, LOL. It is illustrated below ) A CAANS System Dress Color for President Obama (Lower inner wear) Researchers at universities, even as I was one once, often have to come up with new research projects all the time, in order to apply for research grants that government agencies are obliged to disburse to impress the public for a good use of their tax contributions...

Often when something is posted in an internet platform or blog one feels it may be relevant for another platform one works on too. Here is a discussion I posted on Noetic.Org for its Nerd Members :) A philosophy of our times suggests that, one must attempt to live in the moment, since the past has gone forever and the future may never come. In the main this philosophy has value because far too many of us tend to spend far too much time fretting about what has happened and worrying about a tomorrow that may never come, losing valuable moments of our lives thus and bit by bit most of it. If you keep fiddling with you computer partitioning when would you have the time to play that nice computer game? However, the philosophy must not be carried to the extreme because time has to be set aside to make future plans and the past never really goes. Every thing we experience with any emotional value attached to it becomes our personal memory and remains stored up in the caches...

A View of Main Building, IIT Delhi I t has been mentioned in ancient literature that a man or woman is fortunate if he or she can spend their last days in their country of birth. In fact the source ( I forget which now) listed dying in a foreign land as one of the great misfortunes of life that can fall upon a person. I have tried to relate this piece of ancient wisdom with my own experience of life as described next, even as I am reminded of the Prophet of Khalil Gibran and his tearful departure to the land of birth in his last days. India is a country of vast diversity. Even hundred years ago, India had the most modern of cities and towns such as Lahore, Bombay, Simla and Nainital that competed in their quality and modernity with most modern cities and towns of our world of those times. On the other hand, there were until recent times, areas inhabited with fully nude tribes such as the Angami Nagas, Andaman tribes and a whole lot other half naked or topless tribes. These...

Economics of Greed and Exploitation E ver since the financial crisis of 2008,  economic news from around the world has been enlightening. From time to time, my reaction to some of the reports have been published as blog posts. Recently I combined some of the more important ones into a single document. After editing, what emerged was a brief booklet of fifty pages entitled ‘A Brief Introduction to the Economics of Greed and Exploitation’.     I tend to regard anything under 75 pages as a booklet rather than a book although the publishers tend to classify it as the latter. The booklet is published in full color so that some of the associated color graphics could be included from earlier blog posts that seem to have inspired changes from Japan to Switzerland and also perhaps USA and parts of Europe. The contents consist of seven chapters. The Blogger editor does not seem to reproduce tables faithfully but nevertheless I have copied and posted it here for whatever i...

The Palash Tree Flower B efore modern medicines became prevalent, humans treated many ailments with flowers, leaves, roots and barks of plants and trees. Ayurveda,  an ancient Indian medicinal science, makes use of many herbs and plant materials without substantial extraction of active ingredients as modern medicine does. The idea is that additional compounds in a medicinal or edible plant is an organic whole and a part of life that supports other life.  The complimentary compounds appear to play a useful balancing role whereas individually extracted and isolated compounds can be harmful. A modern example in wide use as food is sugar, a pure chemical isolated from the juice of sugar cane. Indeed there is no food or herb that does not contain a compound or two that could be from mildly to extremely dangerous if isolated and consumed but is beneficial as a group with other compounds. That is the reason why alcohol distilled from a natural fermented fruit juice and ...