Immortality Pill.

During our usual lunch conversation, we came across a topic in which we were talking whether the medical science is in the right direction. I was in the position that even if it is in the right direction it is not in the right interests. My friend asked me what if the medical science can discover an immortality pill which can keep us physically alive eternally. The topic shifted direction when I told him that it is possible to be alive for a long time using some yogic methods - with total control of prana. And then I told him that there are yogis who live for more than 200 years in Himalayas and the right approach for the medial science to understand immortality is not through fragmentary and divisive studies but through a unified understanding of what consciousness means.

On retrospect, I think that we don't need to go too far on the idea of immortality and the magic pill the medical field can possibly discover. Even if the medical community discovers a pill that could make us immortal, how does it help from the social conditioning that we find ourselves today? I can still shoot a person at will, can't I?

Vernon Howard

Vernon Howard - It was only last week that I came across this wonderful person. He is one of the enlightened masters and his philosophy looks similar to Jiddu Krishnamurthy's. Here are some YouTube links in which he speaks.

Right Ideas for a Right Day

Way to True Command (3 part series)

Inner Power for Today (3 part series)

Sense of self.

Ultimately everything depends on from where we derive our sense of self. It could be from our culture, religion, political affiliation, nationality, our dress, new hair style and all things external to us - the world of forms. Or it could be from deep within, from our very existence or the feeling of I. In this case, our sense of self is not actually derived from an external entity but it is the feeling of being or completely present. Even the thought can be considered as something external since its away from the feeling of being. Ego is nothing but the derivation of the sense of self from anything away from the complete presence. Being in thought is being in ego. There is nothing wrong to be in ego (we will be forced to) but we will just miss the wonderful feeling of being present, of being alive.

Big Bang in Your Closet?

For long I knew that all the problems of the mind cannot be solved in the level of the mind. For instance, the question of death. Mind as I has envision is like a field which is not algebraically closed just like how the real numbers are insufficient to solve the equation x*x + 1 = 0. However, I did think that the mind is capable of solving almost all analytical questions. By analytical questions I mean the ones that are put forth by science. But yesterday, I had this incredible revelation about a question in science that the mind won't be able to arrive at a solution.

Modern science tells us that there was Big Bang from which the visible universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense singularity at some finite time in the past. Now we can ask a legitimate question within the domain of science on where was that singularity present - I mean the spatial coordinates of the dense particle. Once we pose this, we realize that the question depends inherently on the notion of distance. Now the concept of distance is a relative measure - we need at least two objects have a distance measure. When all the objects are condensed as a single small package, where does the concept of distance come in? In other words, the Big Bang singularity can never be traced to a specific location in space. Assuming such a thing happened, all we can say is that the singularity could have been anywhere in space. Who knows, it could have been in your closet too.

The Eternal Warrior

Charma Slokam.

sarva-dharman parityajya
mam ekam saranam vraja
aham tvam sarva-papebhyo
moksayisyami ma sucah

Yesterday I was in a lecture by a ISKCON Maharaj and he spoke about this famous Charma Slokam in the Gita (since I requested). I found that the interpretation is different from the one in the Sri Sampradayam. In the ISKCON phylosophy, the word dharman refers to duties of all kinds including any religious obligations one may have. However, in Sri Sampradayam, the word dharman (in Pravritti maargam) refers to all prayaschitta-dharmas, or all obligations taken to compensate for our wrong doings, but the essential dharmas should not be renounced. Bagu (short for Bagavaan) takes care of all the prayaschittas, thus paving the way for bhakti to emerge. In light of Eckhart Tolle, the Sri Sampradhayam interpretation seems right, at least when following the Pravritti maargam.

On Growing Old.

I think I heard this idea somewhere as almost everything for me now looks familiar. Anyway, I will come to the point. The reason for our physical growth is because of the flexibility of our body to cope up with the mind's energy. As soon as our bodies become stiff and inflexible, aging starts, as our mind still works with the same energy. Probably that's why yoga-aasanas helps in slowing the aging process!

Sunset House.

My new painting - (paint by numbers, of course). The original doesn't have the sun like bright spot in the middle - that's the flash glare. It looked nice and I left it alone.

Truth is a Pathless Land - Really?

Happy New Year Folks...

For sometime I have been reading Jiddu Krishnamurthy's works (and watching his videos) and have been terribly impressed by his philosophy and his views. He is an amazing person. To summarize, the core of his teachings are as follows:

Truth, which can be thought of as something beyond time and cannot be measured (or divisible), is a pathless entity. It cannot be reached by any intellectual analysis or introspection. Nor it can be attained by any self-effort. No religion, dogma, spiritual practices or rituals (and equally political, cultural, social alliances) can lead to this entity. To make the matters worse, these personal affiliations will put oneself into more misery by "conditioning" the mind. The human mind has already been conditioned through several centuries and we are adding "more stuff" to it by involving in such false security measures - religion, politics etcetera. In a nutshell, only when the mind is "empty" of its contents, can the real Truth be known ('known' as in observed and not as in understood).

I love this philosophy and I think one has to leave aside his/her prejudices to see that this is true. And I respect this great man for his wisdom who never claimed himself to be a spiritual teacher, guru or even a philosopher. He was nobody in his opinion and he dismissed the Order of the Star under his leadership.

However, to all the people who are influenced by JK and value his teaching, I have a question. Is JK conditioned by his thoughts on Truth? This I think is a mind boggling self-loop on what could be one of the greatest theories on Truth (remember, mind has to empty its contents to verify the theory's validity!). If JK is conditioned by his own thoughts, there is nothing to argue - his teaching can only be appreciated like a poem or a painting and that he himself has fallen into the trap (on his defense, he never claimed anything and could have equally dismissed his teaching). On the other hand, if he is not conditioned by his thoughts, there cannot be any core principles in his teaching. Having a fixed set of ideas - devoid of any vitality is a conditioning by itself! In fact, we do see some central message in his teaching. Is he conditioned by his ideas? How do we break from this self-loop that his teachings create?

In my opinion, there is no way one can be out of this loop and JK fell in his own trap (unknowingly, of course). This is not surprising, after all, we all know (and it is his thesis) that the process of thinking is limiting and fragmentary. His teachings being a product of thought has to contradict itself at some point. In that case, what is the validity of the statement that Truth is a pathless land? - which I think is true. The only way to keep this thesis intact is to allow some pointers in the direction of that (Truth) land. The land may not be accessible through any path, however there could be some sign posts saying the land is there. Well, what are those sign posts? - read Eckhart Tolle.

Melting Pot and Salad Bowl.

Yesterday I was watching Charlie Rose interviewing Ramachandra Guha and Guha was explaining the main difference between the heterogeneity found in India and in the US. He was saying US is like a melting pot where several cultures mix and try to find a unique identity among themselves whereas India is like a salad bowl where all the cultures co-exist without losing any of their identity. Thought this was a cool analogy.

Google Book Search Result.

This was interesting.

My Recent Painting

Of course, the usual paint-by-numbers.

Furniture Making Workshop

The 10 week course got over and I managed to complete this.

Photostich from SD630

A view from my office window. I am not happy with the shots though (the real view looks beautiful as opposed to this).

Digital Macro on Canon SD630

Sketch of the Day

Eckhart Tolle

I am really amazed by the clarity of Eckhart Tolle speeches and writings (for speeches see YouTube videos searching for Eckhart Tolle). It has a transforming effect. His ideas are not new - for that matter no ideas can be new. But, it is the best synthesis of Eastern philosophies (especially Buddhism and Vedanta) I have come across. It's practical - very, very practical. Long live Eckhart Tolle.

Survey of the Quantum World - 2

In the previous post, I had written about three experiments, namely spraying bullets (several at a time) through the double slit and recording the pattern on the wall, keeping a candle instead of the machine gun and recording the pattern and in the third experiment, shooting a bunch of electrons (in this case we may need a detector instead of the wall) and observing the effects on the detector. Not surprisingly, in the case of the first experiment (with the machine gun bullets), we get the following pattern in which the bullet marks are around the places opposite to the two slits. i.e., we get two distributions on the wall exactly around the places corresponding to the slits.

But, in the case of the second and the third experiment, we get a pattern which is not discrete as above but shades of dark and bright bands like the following figure shows.

One can imagine this kind of dark and bright stripes correspond to the different levels of water that reach the shore on the beach. This is a clear indication that the light and the electrons do not come in discrete packets like the machine gun bullets (otherwise we would be getting two distributions) but they have some sort of a continuous ("wave-like") behavior. Let us now leave the candle light for some time and just concentrate on the electrons. We know that electrons are particles. Numerous experiments show that electron behaves like particles. But then, how do we have dark and bright bands instead of two dark bands like the one we got for the bullets? How do we test the difference between bullets behavior and electrons behavior? That's very simple. Check the behavior bullet by bullet and electron by electron. Its like coding a difficult software. When you don't understand the logic, just break it into modules. Execute it line by line and see where you are going wrong. So, we do the first experiment again this time by just shooting one bullet at a time. Again no surprises here - same pattern with two distributions correspond to the slits. But what about electrons? What will happen if we shoot them one by one and see what pattern it creates when the time progresses? To our surprise, we don't have any surprise - we still get the same dark and white bands, same as what we got when we shoot a bunch of electrons. How can that be possible? This is the beginning of one of the beautiful areas of physics - the Quantum Physics which gives life and meaning to the Hilbert space theory, which otherwise would have lived only to satisfy the whims of the so called "pure mathematicians".

To be continued.

Survey of the Quantum World - 1

In my previous blog, I had talked about several things, namely, Copenhagen interpretation of the Quantum Theory, Schrödinger's cat paradox, the famous Einstein quote "God does not play dice" and the collapse of the wave function. Frankly speaking, until recently this Einstein's quote was over and above my head although I kept saying the quote several times to myself just because it sounded "high funda" (I know it had something to do with the probability but nothing more!). Similarly, the Schrödinger's cat paradox was no paradox to me - just some strange words beyond the scope of my understanding. By this time, I guess I don't need to say anything about my ignorance of the wave function collapse or the Copenhagen interpretation. But when I managed to sneak into the world of Quantum Mechanics (QM), some of the things were clear as a crystal - especially the Einstein quote and our cat. Of course, there are several things that are still hazy and they are bound to be. Even the great practitioner of QM, Richard Feynman had said "No body really understands Quantum Mechanics". I will discuss later in what spirit he had said that but in the meantime, in the series of blogs to continue, I want to discuss QM. The idea behind writing these series of blogs are two fold:

1. To share the joy and excitement that I have had so far had in my little understanding of this amazing world.

2. To travel more closer to this world and have a 'aerial look' of the much nicer things that are abound.

I was careful when I said 'aerial look'. I will not land into this world to look at the landscapes and sunrises. That job is for the experts. They are specifically for the people who go by the Feynman words "just shut up and calculate" and I am positive that these people will have a nicer (and a closer) look of the beauties that escape the aerial survey. Having said that, by aerial survey, I don't mean the philosophical speculation of the QM alone. Although any thought out QM discussion is bound to contain quite an amount of philosophy (I am tempted to say QM itself is a philosophy, but let me not go into that right now), I don't want to ignore the beautiful white clouds of mathematics (especially, the infinite dimensional Hilbert space theory) that envelope the rich quantum world. So, without any more ado let me begin my journey. Oh and by the way, by QM I mean the traditional way (or Copenhagen interpretation) as it is typically understood.

At the heart of QM lies this famous experiment called the double-slit experiment. It is one of the most amazing and a remarkable experiment in the history of physics. In September 2002, it was voted as the "most beautiful experiment" by readers of the Physics World. It is indeed. Quite fairly one can say that this one experiment shaped the modern theory of Quantum Mechanics and still keeps baffling physicists. The philosophical implications of this experiment are abound. Feynman had remarked that this single experiment contains everything that one needs to know about Quantum Mechanics. I will briefly describe the experiment here and give the statistical interpretation (or postulates) of Quantum Mechanics completely based on this. This is the crux of the Copenhagen interpretation that I had mentioned in this blog and the Schrödinger's cat paradox is the outcome of this interpretation.

The Double-Slit Experiment

The origin of this experiment dates back to 1801 when Thomas Young wanted to study the behavior of the light and determine whether the light is a wave or a particle. The experiment is quite simple. There is a machine gun which can spray either bullets or electrons, a barrier with two slits and a wall (or a detector) which can record the place where the bullets or electron hits the wall. Something like the one shown in the figure. We now conduct three experiments.

Experiment 1: We spray the bullets from the gun and record the pattern on the wall.

Experiment 2: Instead of the gun, we keep a candle and record the pattern on the wall.

Experiment 3: We spray electrons instead of bullets and record the pattern on the wall.

To be continued...

Collapse of the Wave Function.

I was contemplating about the collapse of the Schrödinger's wave function and trying to see what it could really mean while I happen to engage in a conversation with a friend of mine. He is a physicist and he asked me two questions.

1. Suppose I have an upright glass containing water and I tilt the glass to a 90 degree so that the glass is horizontal and the water is now on the floor. Why is that we don't expect the water to get back to the glass when leaving the glass (horizontal to the floor) and the water as such? By the way, I am not holding the glass and it rests on the floor so no gravity business.

2. Why is that all the air molecules around my location move out to somewhere else so that I die by not able to breathe in any oxygen?

His point was that these things don't happen just because the probability of these things happening is very small. In other words, nature by itself is probabilistic. So does that mean the Copenhagen interpretation of the Quantum Mechanics and the collapse of the wave function is justified? How does it then answer the Schrödinger's cat paradox and the realist views of scientists such as Einstein, who famously declared "God does not play dice".