Love and Truth

Wow, what a journey. Love came pouring in giving immense freedom, as one unconditonally accepted the shadow self - tasted true freedom for the first time it seemed. Love comes before truth, because truth reveals itself only when fear transforms itself into love. Love remains the same always, but what is true changes as our world changes with love. When we fully transform with love, there is no more a need to be untrue. But just being truthful does not guarantee love. We always face a choice in every situation - we can choose to see the higher out of love, or we can choose to see the lower out of fear. Truth is a journey made on the vehicle of love. The journey goes through many landscapes, it shifts directions, and it transforms, but the vehicle remains the same.

Why consumers in a free-market society should meditate?

The mainstream economic models typically assume that preferences or utility functions of human beings are static and unidimensional. Hence, actions of others never influence or change the shape of our utility function. Though exceptions exist, for example, the work on conspicuous consumption by Thorstein Veblen as far back as 1899, and Kenneth Galbraith’s ideas on want creation, most of the mainstream general equilibrium and game theoretic models continue to use static and unidimensional utility functions. For readers with no background in economics, a utility function is just a relationship that tells us the level of satisfaction or happiness derived from a given set of actions, consumptions, or relationships.

In reality, our utility functions behave in a far more complex manner. Our stochastically evolving multidimensional utility functions are influenced by thousands of subtle messages received daily by our brain from our peers, media, and society. In fact, almost every person and institution that we interact with is engaged at some level in "changing" our utility function. Hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions all over the world, are spent in trying to change our utility functions.

Here are some examples:

1. Tapes by Bin Laden are designed to increase hate in the utility functions of extremist Muslims.

2. Ads of "beautiful and cool" people drinking coke or smoking cigarettes are really less about communicating information about these products to our logical upper brain, but MORE about influencing our emotional middle brain (i.e., amygdala, the center of the emotional brain) by associating "beautiful and cool" with coke and cigarettes. Even if we, or our kids, don't think much when we watch these ads, these deceitful ads (ugly people smoke and drink too) succeed in changing our utility function at least at a subconscious level. Empirical evidence suggests that weights related to preferences reside much more in the middle brain than the upper brain (i.e., the neocortex, or the logical brain). The huge marketing industry is continuously targeting the middle brain, using beauty, humor, or anything that works, in the most deceitful ways, as we all know.

3. This type of deceitful advertising is especially troublesome when big pharmaceutical companies like Merck market their drugs directly on TV with images of cures totally dominating the images of side effects. Do these companies ever show someone suffering from the side effects? Basically, these companies succeed in making one give more weight to the cure and less weight to the side effects (which are very often dangerous for many drugs) by using these ads. These companies wouldn't be spending billions on these ads if these ads didn't work to influence the weights in our middle brains. After all, our doctors have all the "logical" information about drugs.

4. When we say a nice Hello to someone without 100% meaning it, we often do this to make sure that their utility function does not alter its weight towards us, and keeps thinking of us in a positive manner. Much social etiquette is designed to help us influence the utility functions of others, to make them think of us in a positive light.

5. Much expenditure we engage in like buying a convertible BMW or a cool looking house is often to influence the utility functions of "others." I am not saying that some of us don't derive any pleasure out of living in a huge house. But much of this pleasure has also to do with making others utility function VALUE us, based on what we own. So much of our unquestioned life style is basically to change the weights in the utility functions of others whom we interact with. This is also called peer pressure.

6. Churches and Temples are places where we are persuaded to change our utility function, by putting more weight to "good" actions, good relationships, and good consumptions, and less weight to the "sinful" ones.

7. Parents, Teachers, friends, society, media, almost everyone is trying to change our utility function.

Despite the fact that almost every person or institution we interact with, is busy changing the weights in our middle brains using subtle ingenious methods, the mainstream general equilibrium and game theoretic models assume static and unidimensional utility functions related to our "small individualistic non-changing selves."

If we already know that part of living with other humans on this earth is to get totally bombarded with everyone's efforts to change our utility function, then we have two choices:

1. Live "unconsciously" so that anyone can enter our middle brain anytime using devious methods and influence us in very subtle, but politically correct ways, which make us think that "we" are in charge.

2. Live consciously by going deeper and exploring our middle brain using techniques such as introspection, meditation, reflection, reading, etc.

If we follow the first method, then we are at the mercy of everyone telling us how to live and how to be happy. If we follow the second method, we can perhaps learn how happiness is always within us if we understood who we really are (the big selves) regardless of superficial changes in our outer circumstances. Then our middle brain learns to follow a utility function that implicitly gives more steady weights to people and things that really matter and remove all the superficial things that it is bombarded with all the time.

The Sacred Union Within OneSelf

The inner and the outer worlds are reflections of each other. Similar to the outer world, the inner world is a society crowded with many small selves. The inner male and the inner female, the purpose driven mind and the loving heart...the Yin and the Yang of our fragmented selves. For many, the inner polarities are felt as opposing forces, that fragment and destroy oneself. For some this inner war becomes so violent, that it drives them insane. However, with awareness and meditation, the inner polarities start recognizing, and then slowly supporting and loving each other. As the inner male starts loving the inner female, and the inner female starts loving the inner male, an immense freedom arises within oneself. This spiritual alchemy, the sacred union within, gives birth to the Big Self.

The small self loves by filling its emptiness.

The big self loves by sharing its fullness.

The Game of Love and Freedom

Most people understand only two types of games. Games in which competition wins, and games in which cooperation wins.

The more gross games of life on the lower levels of maslow hierarcy are best played with the spirit of competition in which free markets do well. The subtle games of life on the higher levels of maslow hierarcy are best played with the spirit of love in which cooperation wins.

But games dont have to be divided only between cooperative and non-coopearative game theory models.

By allowing "multi-dimensional utilities," one can play a third type of game in which cooperation results endogenoulsy even from non-cooperative game theory. This game encourages both love and freedom.

Communism is a game in which "love" is forced by the method of cooperative game theory. Capitalism is a game in which "freedom" is sold to individuals with unidimensional utilities using non-cooperative game theory. Since love can never be forced, and unidimensional utilities are unreal, neither system has brought lasting peace and well-being to humankind.

Allowing the third type of game using non-cooperative game theory with multidimensional utilities allows freedom and love to co-exist. In this game one loves out of one's freedom, and feels free because one is loved.

Sooner or later humanity has to shift to the third type of game. This game is a lot of fun, as games were meant to be!

Poverty of the Soul

At a Hindu ceremony held on April 19th, on the Virginia Tech campus, 33 candles were lighted, including one for Mr. Cho, who shot himself after his deadly killing spree.

“He also was a lost soul,” said Kusum Singh, who helped organize the Hindu ceremony to memorialize G. V. Loganathan, 52, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Minal Panchal, 26, an architecture student from Mumbai, India.

Is it simply the lack of love and belongingness that allows extreme psychological poverty to arise in some cases, which leads to crimes such as murders and mass killings? Do happy and loving people ever go on a killing spree? Extreme psychological poverty exists in all nations - and perhaps even more so in richer nations, as they get obsessed with material well-being.

The End of Poverty

In contrast to the failed small-self "structural adjustment" economic programmes of the World Bank and the IMF, Jeffrey D. Sachs offers a new paradigm of Clinical Economics based on his work in Bolivia, Poland, India, China, and Africa. In his book, The End of Poverty, he offers big-self solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that affect the world's poorest nations. This book is one of my all time favorites.

In April 2004, and again in April 2005, Professor Sachs was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time.

The Other Omar

He who knows not, and knows not he knows not, is a fool...shun him.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not, is a child...teach him.
He who knows, and knows not he knows, is asleep...wake him.
He who knows, and knows he knows, is wise...follow him

Omar Khayyam, Philosopher


Here is my exposition of the wisdom of Omar Khayyam, the great mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and a poet from the 11th century Persia, especially applicable in these times of insane rulers and warmongers.

1. Fool. Fools have either been not exposed to the world so they are innocently foolish, like a 3-year old child who burns himself by climbing on to a burning stove, or they are people with petty egos or small selves. Once the small-self shell becomes hard, it is hard to penetrate the shell. Then the small self lives in its own world, and has no clue about what others think of the self or how others think of the world. Most fundamentalists living in different parts of the world from Afghanistan and Iraq, to the deep red states of America, are either innocently foolish and/or are trapped in their small selves. They don't know that they don't know.

2. Child/Student. How does a child/student come to "know" that he does not know? Lets say a child puts his finger on a burning stove, but for some reason the finger either does not burn (the child is gifted), or the finger burns, but the child experiences no pain (e.g., some problems with nerves). In either case, the child does not learn that a burning stove can hurt. The child does not know that he "does not know." But if the child had experienced some pain, he would have come to know that his knowledge of burning stoves was incorrect. So life is a great teacher and experiencing life in a normal manner allows one to become a student, both humble and aware. But what if one could not experience life in a normal manner? What if one grew up like George W., and didn’t have to pay for the mistakes made in one's younger years? Then one would lose the opportunity to transform oneself from a fool to a student.

3. Asleep. As a student, one accumulates much knowledge. But now the danger is that one may fall asleep with that knowledge. One may no longer remember that one knows. This happens to people, who after graduating from school don't use much of what they learnt. One has to actively apply one's knowledge either consciously or subconsciously to not fall asleep. Also, some basic instinctual knowledge is simply wired in our brains, but still some encouragement is needed for its fuller development. One may also be born with some innate talents, but restrictive economic/political systems, authoritarian upbringing etc., can prevent these talents from coming out. In this respect, the free market system in America with much focus on individual freedom allows the talents of some of the population to be realized. There are many talented people "asleep" in other nations ravaged by war, poverty, dictatorships, communism, and other authoritarian regimes. We need to have a foreign policy that empowers the moderates around the world including in nations like Cuba and North Korea for these talented people to wake up. That is our biggest hope for transforming these nations from the inside, like we transformed China with Nixon's policies.

Finally, many accomplished people in science, business, media, and politics tend to fall asleep. For example, many reporters and editors of the mainstream media are simply asleep. They learnt a lot in their schools, but have satisfied themselves by reporting and writing just to make money without going after the most accurate and important stories, which require much effort and integrity. Similarly, many orthodox medical practitioners (not the researchers) are asleep. Doctors hardly read new research on a regular basis and often prescribe "new" drugs based on the sales pitch of the pharma representatives. Then, after side effects or injuries are revealed, they switch to prescribing the next brand of profitable/patentable drugs.

4. Wise. Few in this world are wise. One has to go through all other stages of being a fool, a student, asleep, and perhaps then wisdom dawns. Being wise is a continuous process, one has to be continuously aware of the whole process of life. Simply playing out one's small self-drama does not allow one to be wise. Having intense awareness about life at many levels, both from within and without, allows one to be wise. And, its not just the awareness about the observed world, but also the observation of the "observer," that allows wisdom to get rooted. And, much wisdom simply comes from experience, and making peace with one's own life. Interestingly, many fools think that they are wise. This is because when you do not know that you do not know, then it is much easier to fall in the trap of thinking that you know that you know.

Campaign for a Violence-Free Stress-Free America

The Art of Living Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary gala on March 28 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to highlight the critical role human values play in the eradication of violence and stress. The event is a platform for prominent leaders and decision makers in the fields of politics, business and civil society to draw attention to what leaders and ordinary citizens can do together to achieve a Violence-Free, Stress-Free America.

Vacation for the Soul

Looking for an exotic and affordable vacation? Indulge your body and soul living in an open Casita in the tropical hills close to a virgin beach with the most amazing and beautiful people from around the world. Try soccer, yoga, cleansing, meditation, delicious raw foods, silent retreats, massage, dancing, horse riding, swimming, loving, and living in a magical place called...
Pachamama

Transformation by Death

Death comes in many forms, a divorce, losing a family member, an insult by someone, or living with a disease. Can one die to the past moment by moment, so that every new moment is fresh and alive? Learning to die gracefully, without fear, without emptiness, without hatred, and without anger is the quickest way to discover the big Self.

How to Change the World?

Spiritualize Politics, Socialize Business, and Secularize Religion

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Humanitarian

Truth is a Pathless Land

Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection

Man has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems, for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity

J. Krishnamurti, Philosopher
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Expressing the Infinite

A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean.

Ken Wilber, Philosopher
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Metaphysics of the Infinite

Zero and the infinite are two sides of the same coin. The utlimate reality includes all, and is made up of nothing. Enlightenment is finite disolving into the infinite, either by becoming nothing or by becoming everything.

Small self belongs to the finite. No self belongs to the infinite.

So how can one reach the infinite?

There are two paths. One can become smaller and smaller and simply disappear into nothingness. This is the approach of Zen, which through insight negates all identification in order to experience the ultimate nothingness or nirvana.

Or one can expand oneself and become bigger and bigger, until one loses all identification with anything smaller than the infinite. This is the approach of christianity, which through love can make one infinite and experience I AM everywhere.

Mathematics of GOD

The mathematics of GOD is based upon three premises.

Premise 1: Existence is Infinite
Premise 2: The total Joy and Pain in existence are equal and opposite
Premise 3: GOD experiences infinite joy

Let the word Joy signify all positive states of being (like love, happiness, bliss, etc.), and the word Pain signify all negative states of being (like fear, anxiety, suffering, etc.). Under the above three premises, consider two types of existences.

Under existence A, God and Devil exist as equal and opposite. Though, both are infinite, God experiences infinite joy, and Devil experience infinite pain. However, such an existence would be devoid of any compassion for the devil, who would suffer eternally.

Under existence B, the infinite universe is made up of time, space, and other dimensions, in which joy and pain are distributed across infinite living beings (bacteria, plants, animals, humans, etc.) over infinite time and space. Each of these living beings experiences finite amounts of joy and pain.

Under existence B, all living beings, except GOD, on avearge experience x units of joy and x + e units of pain, where e is a very small number close to zero. For example x = 100, and e = 0.00001. Since 100 is almost the same as 100.00001, living beings on average experience almost the same amount of joy and pain. Without experiencing the pain, they could not know joy (premise 2, above), so they don't mind experiencing both in almost equal amounts.

Since the universe has infinite living beings, and since each living being on average has a deficit of e, representing a little extra pain over joy, GOD must experience infinite joy to balance out the infinite pain resulting from the product of e and infinity. This makes premise 3 consistent with premises 1 and 2, and yet no single living being experiences infinite pain under existence B.

This is the magic of GOD's mathematics. It explains how the infinite joy consciousness of GOD is created from a finite joy/pain consciousness of living beings. Under existence B, there cannot be a hell of eternal suffering (Christianity is wrong about this), as it is not needed for the existence of GOD.

Finally, as mentioned in many spiritual traditions, the inifnite living beings can get enlightened and merge into GOD.

The consciousness of the infinite living beings separated from GOD to allow the game of joy and pain.

Since, we are all GOD separated from itself, we go back to GOD, upon our enlightenment.

We as finite beings are necessary for the infinite GOD to be.

Big-Self Capitalism

The poem I wrote in the previous post captures the essential reality of all great civilizations, from Hindu (the “untouchables” suffer even now after three thousand years), Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Mogul, to the modern European/American. Each and every civilization was built using the blood and sweat of the lesser human beings. Modern nations and modern economic systems evolved from this broad human reality. The original cause behind the fatal attraction of the proletariat to communism was centuries of exploitation by feudalism and capitalism. Communism was simply a revolt by the masses. Like any revenge of the mobs, it was a release of anger, hate, and insanity by big parts of humanity. And, of course, revenge is often crueler than the exploitation that causes it. Science, communication, and weapons made it possible for the proletariat and the insane rulers in their “name” to kill twenty million in Soviet Russia, sixty million in China, and few more millions in other countries. Trying to achieve the impossible task of making all human achievements equal, communism led to the repression of all freedoms, economic, social, and spiritual.

In contrast, free-market capitalism worked well in spreading democratic values and general uplifting of the living standards of many people, though many were exploited and left behind. Two essential instruments of capitalism were innovation and exploitation. Historically, exploitation was not only its main instrument, but was often used as the bow that shot the arrow of innovation. Some men could think because others toiled in slave labor. The biggest exploiting groups gave birth to the greatest innovators. This continues even today, may be in more subtle forms, even though after FDR’s New Deal and advancements in technology, there was hope that innovation would replace exploitation as the main instrument of capitalism. Curiously, libertarians such as the famed economists Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and the pop philosopher Ayn Rand spent their whole lives preoccupied with the instrument of innovation, never acknowledging seriously the instrument of exploitation in the success of early capitalism.

The interaction of innovation and exploitation creates three forms of capitalism. Small-self capitalism, which increases efficiency mostly by exploitation (of workers, customers, and the environment). Modern capitalism which increases efficiency using both innovation and exploitation. And, big-self capitalism which increases efficiency mostly by innovation. The influence of money on government is highest in the stage of small-self capitalism, and lowest or non-existent in the stage of big-self capitalism. Only a complete elimination of the influence of money on law-makers can guarantee that laws against exploitation can be effectively passed without being blocked by the exploiters. In the 20th century, the western countries moved from small-self capitalism to modern capitalism. The big question confronting most industrialized nations today is whether we can move from modern capitalism to big-self capitalism in the 21st century?

Wounds and Scars

Once upon a time lived two tribes
The men of first tribe were unhappy and evil
The men of second tribe were happy and noble
One day the evil struck the noble
Took over their land
Raped their wives
And enslaved their men

The happy tribesmen now worked twelve-hour days
Under the threats of hunger, fear, and pain
The physically strong were kept alive with food and shelter
The weak ones abandoned without any care
The unhappy tribesmen were freed of bodily labor
They could now pursue thinking and contemplation

To the unhappy tribe were born the children of privilege
To the happy tribe were born the children of misfortune
Over time these children bore more children
The bodies and minds of the two tribes adapted to their new roles
Institutions developed to help strengthen the new realities
Both tribes forgetting how they came to be

The children of the unhappy tribe had minds full of wonder
The children of the happy tribe had hearts heavily burdened
The children of the unhappy tribe created science and technology
The children of the happy tribe watched with envy
The children of the unhappy tribe celebrated life
The children of the happy tribe feared for their lives

Centuries later children of the unhappy tribe discovered
The many injustices of their ancestors
Their hearts filled up with undeserved emotions
Of sadness, remorse, guilt, and anger
They freed the children of the happy tribe
And shared with them a piece of their pie
But their acceptance came from a heart of contrition
Not a heart flowing with love and benediction

The children of the happy tribe wanted affection
Not the pity arising from the historical infraction
Though their wounds were beginning to heal
They could not see blinded by the scars
Some children of the unhappy tribe saw the scars
Quickly announced that sharing of pie created scars
So the children of the happy tribe were abandoned
With their partially healed wounds and their visible scars

The Intellectual and the Wise

An intellectual circles around and around to prove a premise hidden in the emotional middle brain.

The intellectual is very skilled at hiding the "emotional" origins of the premise, not only from others, but even from himself, by using logical arguments of the upper brain.

The premise invariably is rooted in some small-self identity of the intellectual (i.e., American, conservative, liberal, etc.).

But how long can one move in circles? Five years, ten years, fifty years? Whole life?

A wise person quits circling around, and moves inward, towards the very center of the circle, right into the middle brain.

The wise one sees the small self.

In that seeing both the small self and the premise lose their grip.

Meditation is seeing directly into one's middle brain, with a silent upper brain. It is the journey of a small self into the big self, a transformation of the intellectual into the wise.

Living 100%

A divided Self consists of many small selves pulling the consciousness in opposing directions. The consciousness of a divided self may range from simple indecisiveness, to chronic procrastination, to paranoid schizophrenia.

Insanity is total separation of small selves. Self-actualization is total integration of small selves. A self-actualized human being is fully integrated in body, mind, and spirit. Such a being lives 100% moment by moment.

The small selves must be loved unconditionally for them to die and merge into the big Self. For example, the gluttonous over-eating self must be loved unconditionally for a compulsive eater to go beyond the guilt of overeating and thus, attaining freedom from addiction to food. The guilt of eating too much keeps one trapped in eating without awareness. By enjoying food 100%, eating slowly with full awareness of the taste buds, allows one to eat less. This applies to all mental addictions from food and love to money and career. Enjoying life 100% is the easiest way to find the balance and harmony that is beyond the grasp of small selves, but is the very nature of the big Self. Loving a small self unconditionally and totally is the way to allow the small self to merge into the big Self. Conscious death of the small selves is the birthing of the big Self. Loving every single small self within, deeply and unconditionally, however bad, ugly, evil, unworthy, the small self may seem, is the quickest path to big Self-realization.

Only a big Self can live life 100%

YEEEESSSSSSSS!

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