Sympathy or Empathy

Well, life is weird. It was 1999; I went to Hyderabad to attend my cousin’s marriage. I was there wandering and enjoying every part of it. It was as usual an extravagant Hindu marriage. We have this tradition of dancing and throwing money to show our happiness but basically we show our opulence. There were few poor daily laborers carrying the decorative lights along with us. I saw a women in early twenties pregnant and carrying one of the lights. Whenever we threw some money, she tried to pick it up but because of the decorative light, which she carried on her head and her pregnancy she was not able to. All the other laborers being male were able to do so. I could feel her desperation for the money. She tried many times but all her efforts went in vain. I don’t know what her family and financial situation was but it seemed it was not good, otherwise who will have the courage to do such a daring thing. Well, what could I say, that was one of the most horrendous experiences of my lifetime. Here we were enjoying the pageantry of Hindu marriage and there that woman was dying for a bill of ten rupees, risking her life and her unborn child. My dad gave her some money seeing her condition but did it really helped. I suppose not.

Don’t sympathize but empathize. Try to imagine the mental and physical trauma she was going through, hoping to get that thrown money so she could help support her and her family. I have no words how I feel about that woman and if given a chance I want to meet her, see what she is going through and help her if I could.

I realized that this is how life goes in India. Rich become richer and poor become poorer. People are dying just because people like us waste much of our time in either writing these blogs or reading them. People go and watch a three hour melodrama like Rang De Basanti. The Rang De Basanti phenomenon is a waste of time. How can it appeal to people. Go and kill, kill and kill. This is not going to solve the problem. There is a need to change one’s own thinking. One should be ready not to look at these politicians and ask them to redeem themselves but to help people who really need your help. Working at the root level and helping the “real” poor, that is what going to change the society and create a better world where there will be no such horrendous experiences. Each one of us should take a vow to eliminate the sufferings of the people to the best possible. Once again, when you see somebody in real pain, just empathize and not sympathize and I am sure the “real” you is going to help them “really!”

Common Goal

The goal of humans, it seems, is that to work for a greater cause. That cause can be personal, social, religious, nationalistic or ethical. But it is one of them. The cause for the humanity is the cause which is missing. Everyone is working nowadays and fighting to achieve that greater goal. A personal cause leads to working for just himself. It seems to be the least destructive cause among all the others. The other causes has caused the world what we see today. Each one of us having conflicting ideas and different views about other religion, nation and races.

The world will continue to see much of the conflicts, terrorism, wars, persecution untill the humans have humanity at stake. We have lost the feeling that we had common ancestors. All our roots go back to Africa from where we migrated around 70,000 years ago. "Genetic Data show that a small group of modern humans left Africa for good 70,000 to 50,000 years" (National Geographic March 2006). We are from a place which is today one of the most backward areas in the world. We don't realize that we can only survive thinking ourselves as humans and not as different races depending upon religion or nation.

Our problems will not be solved untill there is an alien contact. They may be friends or foes, but then only we will realize and comprehend the term humanity. We will understand the importance of our planet Earth. The contact might gives us the motivation to glorify or defend the humanity. That might become our common goal and lead us to the road to proseperity, peace and "humanity."

Persistence of Illusion

A sequence of reality frames (16 per second?) formed by momentary flashes of consciousness (or cognition by a mind) that work in apparent continuity with a time stream of “physical” existence – that is what “presents” is. Since these reality frames are a confluence points of a wave extending from past to the future accepted in the present by a counter wave traveling from future to past, therefore the “reality frames” are fictional rather than real. “Now” is therefore fictional situation of Real life, a page that turns only because of a chapter already and always in conceptualization by some cognitive mind.

This makes man (an observing mind) the real creator of the Universe. God, after saying “Let then be light” wasn’t required further it would seem.

The fact that “concept analog” reality does not hear too close scrutiny, and the fact that there will never be laboratory conditions in the fundamental Quantum physical world in an axiomatic (same) points to the view that the world we now see recognize and accept; the Universe we imagine as a projection in space time of this world reality even the Ultimate reality we are trying to define (with the Unified Field of Eternity Cycles) are all FIRST projection of our mind. We have rationalized our local space by cultivating our scientific outlook, we have yet to cope with a Universe that may have no rational nor a need for me. Our mind sees a reality only in relation to what can sustain life on this planet in an entirely objective sense (the brick and matter solidity is just as relative as our organism’s sense of strength and fragility is. There must be other world where life forms like fish think water is the only atmosphere there can be). The reality we accept has to maintain life as we know it (not what our mind by itself can “see” or “imagine”).

True “reality” can only be as “relative” as everything and if there is a reality that only a mind can understand (irrespective of the body or planet it inhabits). Such a reality can traumatize the mind of any specific life form. If the ant could think in cosmic terms, it would roll over and give importance to its life form (that has been the true thrust of Karma theory in Hinduism).

Our mind and this mind’s eye, is as much a creation of evolution as the rest of us and will only see what it can recognize as safe or as threatening, as good or as bad. Relatively and only relatively to itself as subjects.