Evolution of God III

   Why the concept of God is so strong, how it persisted through the test of time. It must have some great utility otherwise it would not be an integral part of our society. Two causes, love and fear may cause one to believe in God. We find solace in God from all the unknown dangers and uncertainties. But in our daily life, how the God helps. Even if one doesn’t believe in God the way religions propagate it, there is such a great utility in an impersonal concept of God that one can hardly ignore. It takes pressure out of you. If you are a creative person, you can attribute cause of your creativity to the God, and will it cost anything? No. But it will save you from the pressure to perform. If you do well, it’s God’s grace, if not, God didn’t want it to happen. There are so many uncontrollable and uncertain things in this world that limit us and no matter how much effort we make, we cannot do everything.  And when we fail, we need to attribute those failures caused by the external variables to some other entity. Otherwise we will have to bear the burden of failure unless we attribute that to God. And if we win, the vanity may attack us so we attribute that too to God’s grace. That’s what probably learned people would have tried to suggest when they said to submit oneself to the lord or God. But unfortunately many a times it is misinterpreted by leaving everything on God. When the concept of God, being a mean of our psychological well being, becomes the end in itself and the purpose of our existence, we are in trouble. We are not here for God; we have created or assumed a God to be there so that we live happily. But when we start living to achieve or reach God, we are missing the point. We are making our means, our end.

    However, this means-end-displacement is a very common phenomenon. Another example is money, which is a necessary tool for a comfortable life but we end up losing all our comforts just to earn money. So as far as God is to keep us humble and sober, save us from vanity and depression, we are good. But when we get obsessed with this human created concept, going to the extreme of its interpretation as if God is everything and we are nothing, we demean the very existence of ours. And of course when a belief or faith comes into picture, we can’t talk about rationality. Can anyone argue why so many bad things happen in this world if there is a God? No. Some say that it’s the result of their bad karmas. But then why God let them do those bad karma’s in the first place. Some says it’s not God’s job to take care of everything, well, then why is he therefore? These arguments are of no use as soon the logic goes miles away and people get sentimental. On the other hand so called atheist ignore the utility of the concept of God. If a person is so mature and psychologically sound that he can bear responsibility for everything and bear the pressure of success and failure equally and easily, he or she may not need a God. But not all have that power and capacity, so it’s easier to leave it on God.

    It’s difficult to take a balanced view here. That’s why people are so confused, that’s why there are so many religions, so many types of God.  Sometimes they exploit people by frightening them in the name of God. God and religion can be tools of power politics also. No one knows about God but all claims their version to be right despite the fact that it is imaginary. But by misinterpreting this concept, we can do a lot of harm to self and others. Anything based on fear and force cannot be right. Religion has its cultural value and it should remain so. It is not transcendent to the human existence itself. We should not blindly believe anything. It should be backed by reason and should not be detrimental to humanity itself. It is difficult to agree with a view that demeans being human and sees human life a sin and only objective of it being with the God again. If there is a God, why would he make this world and us only if we are supposed to leave this world and get assimilated in Him? If He is arbitrary, then he is hardly a God. If He is omnipresent, then why we need to go elsewhere to meet him. If he is omnipotent, then why so much chaos in the world. There are numerous inconsistencies in religious dictums and their concept of God, but we can’t argue as people have forgotten that we have created those concepts and they didn’t come from the heaven. It is almost impossible to argue against a belief system. Whatever serves the purpose of those in power, they will defend it with all means. Very few religions allow dissent. If something is static and doesn’t change with time, how can it be called alive. And how can we follow a dead thing!

The Life particle

The Life is an active force. It is not passive like gravity and electromagnetic field. It gives us choice, ability to think and consciousness.
    This "activeness" and choice is required to enable life to propagate itself in future. As all forces of physics are following their basic natural attributes, life also has a natural instinct, which is, to exist, to survive, to adapt, to propagate and go on. It tries all possibilities and take a suitable form to adapt in that environment. Once our earth had life, it reached down there in volcanoes at thousands degree temperature and even at poles at sub zero temperature and even at the ocean bed and everywhere it can be in whichever form. We don't know the origin of life but neither do we know about the origin mass of the matter!
    Just like we are hunting for higgs boson, which gives mass to the matter, there may be some dark matter like element, which we can't see or detect, which makes a difference between living and dead, which may be the life particle, which is even more important than so called God particle. Because we don't know whether there is a God or not, but we certainly know there is life, just like there is matter and the dark matter. The quest for life will go on, it is in all of us and yet is so illusive. This real world is made of things which are so surreal, the solid mass is made of hollow atoms and the living things are made of non-living things. Who says there is no universal theory of the world, the life itself is the Grand Unified Theory of the Universe.

Note: I am NOT talking about the life particle mentioned in the so called The Secret or law of attraction which I do not believe at all. They anyway take that only in context of humans, not as life in general. That's unscientific and bullshit! I am talking about all life in general, be it a microbe or a whale or a tree or us. I just checked on google if anyone has used this term before and its just a coincidence that the term is same.

Is religion good or bad?

Is religion god or bad? Can one ask this question? Or merely questioning religion is blasphemy and a crime. I don't believe in religion the way generally people do. But I have no intention of hurting any belief of those who does. Religion is a very powerful thing. It is like nuclear power which can be used constructively to make electricity and light up our homes or destructively to make atomic bomb and destroy everything.
When religion inculcate values like humanity, kindness, equality, hard work, respect, knowledge, innovation, compassion and individual freedom, its a good thing. But when it differentiate people, it make people blind follower or make them do certain things out of fear or blind faith or make them superstitious taking out control of their lives from their hands and putting it at mercy of some masters of religion or people claiming to be closer to God than others, when it cause hate, violence and helplessness, nothing is more dangerous than it.
The most dangerous thing is that you can't question why something should be done just because some hundreds or  thousands year ago someone said or wrote something. Doing something without knowing why, not being able to think away from what is prescribed takes away individual freedom. How can God, if there is one, be specific to a religion? How do different Gods coordinate with each other? If all those who don't follow some religion are bad, than certainly all would go to hell of some other religion. And if God is one, why so many religions, and at least then they should not be so different. But we can't question this or we are either hurting some one's belief or its blasphemy. Religion is a social phenomena, its a tool of organizing society and of power sharing. Whatever is based on fear and ignorance or blind belief, is dangerous and takes away individual freedom. Any ideology which allows exploitation of one by other, which make one smaller or greater than other, which limits itself within a dogma, can never be a good thing. It only allows some to rule others. I don't hate religion or those who are religious. Religion is very important for many. I just can't accept the way it is misused to exploit people, violate human rights, demean lives of some, and mostly to kill each other. 

Any one living in poor condition is susceptible to fall in trap of fatalism and superstitions. One who have no choice need to find a solace in the belief that their is some power who will make everything fine. But If everyone else who is better off, who can do something about that poor person also leave it on that supernatural power instead of doing something to make this world better by our own actions, then nothing can be worse. We can't wait for an avatar to come and solve our problems, we better work hard and help each other. But the negative side of religion is too deep and so much into us that most can't even see that. But there is no magic remedy for this. Choice is in our hand whether to make light or a bomb!

Life and Death

‘Death’ is the biggest ignorance and the ultimate truth. Knowledge of death teaches us value of people around us and hence that of life. All the things, we fight over or struggle for, becomes trivial and we understand the importance of love, companionship, faith, trust, relation, happiness, sharing…..all that we ignore in the blind race for material possessions of our so called modern life.

'Life' : The mysterious illusion, with its indefatigable instinct to exist and continue, a path, a journey or a destination? Who understands life?


P.S.: I wrote this on 22nd Jan 2010 in a thought to post when I write more, but a year passed in that thought. May be a larger essay some other time when i understand this duo better.

Science and Religion

There is one religion which tells that people are different and those who dont follow your God are not good. and their is this other which says that we are all one. Which one shall I choose?

We all originated from forests of Africa so we are compatriot in the sense that even after taking American citizenship, an NRI is called Indian American.
We all evolved from the same unicellular protozoans and thus all species are one. 

We all share same electron protons and neutrons and are thus build by same material hence are inherently same. 

What a unifying experience science is. It is all about what is naturally there. Its pure and not limited some man made rules. It does not discriminate between man and among, between different cast, color, creed, race, species or anything.  It has no man made limits. It is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Its thus the most divine. Science is at a much higher plane than religion.

Many times science is misrepresented as anti-nature. But that's only when we put out greed or stupidity before it. Science is all about nature. We are supposed to live together in harmony, taking care of everyone's need, even when in this cycle (like food chain) one is fed by one above it but in the end thats makes the whole life possible on earth. Had it not been a cycle but a singular chain, as we are making of most of things using our unnatural and unsustainable linear exploitative methods, we would end up killing us all (like killing the hen for all golden eggs) . We are exploiting the resources with out giving anything back. We ate most of fish making many species extinct , polluted all rivers and consumed most of the oil and still think that we are going to survive this way. Life and Nature has its own survival instinct and if we don't align ourself to this cycle, its a matter of time when the world with end. But that would only end this greedy humanity and not the world. It wil come back but may be we might end up doing a permamnet damage to it. 

We are in a unique position , we are the only life in so called advance form in this universe. Even if there is some life , its not near, not within many thousands light years. So we are the only hope of taking this miracle of evolution, called humanity, further. or as like other species that went extinct, we would also be one failed attempt of nature to create a species that can carry life further so that when after millions of years later when our sun is no longer able to support life, we have advanced enough to spread in other part of the universe. who knows this is the first time the life has advanced so much , at least not in this galaxy. we should not be in so hurry to kill ourself. Life is so hard to kill. Its instinct to exist and go on will keep doing something and we better move in that direction instead of our self destructive methodology of killing nature.
 

So coming back to religion, the religion that unifies all, that teaches all to love and take care of each other and every species and everything on the planet, that is in conformity with nature, is true religion. and that is the religion of science. The statements like "my country is best or my religion is best" are like the statement like "my home the sweetest or my dad is the best". Of course we all love our family and home but we don't hate or look with disdain other people and still make friends and other relations. We are not confined to just our house. We need to have wider vision. Its ok if you don't love the other country or people as much as yours but don't hate that just because its not yours. Everyone is someone's father, mother brother or sister. So no one can go start hating others.
The rigidity of a religion kills the very spirit it is supposed to exist, the dignity of human life..and not just human but of every living being . Any philosophy or thought that brings rigidity is destined to rot with time.
Now coming to Atheism. Atheism is not anti-theism, its just absence of dogma but not rejecting the utility of religion! Its like just going back to the basics. Religion originated with culture, the nature way of living and respecting nature. But then it turned into scripture and become rigid..and now....when we are trying to understand it again...instead of blindly following the dogma..we are getting closer to the "righter" or "purer" and "rational" form of religion.  Religion was supposed to be the "means" for having a good life...but some selfish people turned it the other way round and people got confused and we started "living" (mostly dying and killing) for religion (that too in the name of God) and made it an "end" rather than "means". This means-end reversal can be corrected with atheism 2.0

But its really difficult to take away religion from society, as pure rationalism is colorless for a common man. Culture and art fill life into it. Very simple example, its difficult to follow the advice of a doctor to avoid junk food or do exercise...but people walk miles on pilgrimage and stay hungry for days for religious festivals. People donate billions in religious institutions but otherwise a common man is not so generous. Religion is not a thing to reject but to reform. We need faith and religion and we want a God to be there for us..even if we are atheist and our God is not a deity but a force inside subatomic particles.

some dohe from kabir, rahim

पाहन पूजे हरि मिलें तो मैं पूजूं पहाड़
ताते तो चाकी भली पीस खाए संसार!
( If one can reach God by worshiping stone, i will worship mountain. Even millstone is better as which is used to feed the world by grinding grain)


काकर पत्थर जोरि के मस्जिद लयी बनाए
ता चढ़ मुल्ला बांग दे क्या बहरा हुआ खुदाय!
( you build a mosque from stone and the Qazi shout on loud speaker from there as if God is deaf)


बुरा जो देखन मैं चला बुरा न मिलया कोय
जो मन देखा आपना मुझसे बुरा न कोय
(I was looking for evil in this world but couldn't find any, but when i looked into myself, i found myself the most evil)


बानी ऐसी बोलिये, मन का आपा खोय।
औरन को सीतल करै, आपहु सीतल होय॥
( Speak good so as to make others happy as well yourself)


पोथी पड़ पड़ जग मुआ हुआ न पंडित कोय

ढाई आखर प्रेम का पड़े सो पंडित होय

(True knowledge is that of love and not of the books and letters)


रहिमन धागा प्रेम का, मत तोड़ो चटकाय।
टूटे से फिर ना जुड़े, जुड़े गाँठ परि जाय॥
( Never break the bond of love as its very difficult to join again and even if you do there is a joint (which takes away smoothness of the relation) )


जो रहीम उत्तम प्रकृति, का करि सकत कुसंग।
चन्दन विष व्यापत नहीं, लपटे रहत भुजंग॥
(People of good character cant be corrupted by bad company as sandalwood don't lose its coolness with snakes all around it)

रहिमन देख बडेंन को लघु न दीजिये डारि |

जहाँ काम अवे सुई कहा करे तरवार ||

 (don't neglect small when you see big as sword can't be used where you need a needle)

Evolution of God - Contd...

    The idea of God have many perspectives. Its not just that our fears and ignorance take us to the refuge of God, its a psychological need too. There is no doubt that there is some power which is omniscient and omnipotent, be it spiritual, supernatural or metaphysical or mythical...makes no difference as all are equally beyond definition. We need to have faith in this world and show gratitude towards that supreme power  and this need drives us to find a suitable model of God. This also helps us to keep us modest. Otherwise how will one explain MS Dhoni shaving his head after winning the world cup for India? Its not that the God only made that happen..it was certainly the team's true effort. But this idea of faith and gratitude towards the almighty saves us from developing false pride.....vanity or Ahankar. We know that its was our hard work but we also know that we are nothing before that supreme power. But we are anyway nothing if we dont do anything and leave everything on God. But when we put ourself at God's disposal, we free ourself from pressure of performance....we do our duty fully without being attached with result. Ofcourse winning matters but being attached with the result put immense pressure on us and deteriorate performance. The idea of Nishkam karm keeps us at our best to perform our duties. That's close to the Karma that is preached in SriMadBhagwatGita that is Karmanyewadhikaraste Ma faleshu kadachan. (Do you work and don't worry about the result). But when we become fatalistic and lose faith in ourself...the faith in God is a vain attempt. That's why we say...the God lives within us.

    My understanding of God is developing with time. We can't be atheist or theist without fully understanding the philosophy of God. The blind faith leads to superstition and rationality take us closer to the understanding of that supreme power. But for a destitute, that faith is probably the only hope..as there is no choice otherwise. God is simplistic. All complex forms with all those complex rituals and rules are self-interest driven ideas serving a few and probably exploiting many.

That would be enough for today. May we find the God within.

my favourite quotes 2

The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.
Amelia Barr

We either make ourself miserable or we make ourself strong, the amount of work is same.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

A man is what he thinks the whole day!

Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.

Life is run on heuristics , not on algorithms!

A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
Voltaire

The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.
Andre Maurois

Communication gap is the root of every problem.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
-John Dewey

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
-John Dewey

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
Thomas A. Edison

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison

What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
Thomas A. Edison

The Man and the World!

    This world is full of paradoxes, and the Man, I guess, is the biggest paradox of all. He is both the best and the worst. Its the reason of disasters and also the savior. He is like nuclear energy, in fission it can be an atomic bomb and in fusion it can be the very source of energy and the life, the Sun, and as a matter of fact, we are still struggling to get a hold on fusion while the disasters of fission are as obvious as air pollution. This species, considered to be the most advanced and the ultimate evolution, is the reason of biggest wipe out of other species, be in animal, bird, plant of anything and yet he is the only hope to save the planet too. We are here, to kill each other and also to save us from ourselves. 

    Human is probably the only developed species that kill its own type. The differential value of human life is so baffling.  Man is considered the conqueror of the world and we know about whats happening in stars too but we know so less about ourselves. We don't knows yet where we came from and where are we going. We have such a destructive instinct as wherever we go, all others are in trouble.

    I really am not sure whether to call our "intelligence" a boon or curse to the world. With our developed mind, we are finding new ways to destroy the planet. Just withing few thousands years of our existence, which is not even one-thousandth one percent of the time since the life evolved, we have created so much trouble in the world. The world is not even ten percent as diverse as it were before homo erectus evolved into homo sapiens. Yet we are supposed to be having inbuilt good in ourself. We are both the daemon and the god. We are the classic example of the misuse of power. We keep showing  that the power corrupts. We are like the Bhashmasur of Hindu mythology. The daemon, who wherever put his hand, cause it to get bhashm (burnt down). The power of fire we use not in lighting (illuminate) but in lighting (burn) .
    The power of thinking we use more in harming others in an attempt benefit ourself. How paradoxical it is. We all know life is one and we are all same. We also know the economics that the best is what is best for everyone as a whole and not just for individual. But yet, one try to single out oneself in order to exploit every resource we get, in a fear of scarcity or may be just out of greed. It reminds me of a story of heaven and hell.

    Once in the heaven and the hell, big sticks were tied to the hands of the people so that they could not bend their elbow and thus their hand could not reach their mouth. When super was served, in hell there was chaos. People were trying eat their food by all means like throwing the meal in the air and trying to catch it in mouth but could not succeed. But in heaven, it was all calm. Everybody happily had food. How?? Because their everyone fed each other sitting in front. Their hand could not reach their mouth but could reach the others. The simple act of serving others satisfied them all.

The moral is , we can survive only when we help each other rather than compete or serve only our mean interest. This world will be a beautiful place the day people will start thinking about others and not just about themselves. When we will consider ourself as the part of the universal life . The differential value of life will then be one....just like the almighty is.

value of money!

I was wondering why Gold is so precious. ..generally we cant do anything with it. we can't eat it and can't produce energy with it. Its just a"SYMBOL" of wealth...a converter ..using which bartering is easy...people can exchange goods and services ..but I think its too over priced because it has no inherent value. a kg of wheat or coal or a liter of milk or even a gram of uranium ..these can be used to get energy.. these have an inherent value..but gold..its just a mediator . its symbol of the mediator/broker/contractor class..or symbol of capitalism, who takes the product from the producer and supply it to end user..and for that it takes huge margin making fool of both customer and producer. Unfortunately poor producer is most disadvantaged! The high value of gold represent our social structure. The whole world is governed by few and the larger section is poor and powerless.

Why i wrote about the evolution of God

     Why a middle class Indian youth constituting our country’s intelligentsia is so indifferent to the burning issues around. Be it starving poor, or naxals or Kashmir or corruption. I get probably the answer by looking at my own past. During my college days I was bothered by disarrangement at hostels and pathetic conditions of toilets and labs. But I knew I could not do anything about it and I ignored it with my helplessness.( I said I could not because we tried and failed.) Then I got into job and got busy with life. And in rest of the time thinking about a good pass time, so called enjoyments...making friends and socialising. Still not much concerned about the society and having no tension from the family.  When did I have the time from my leisurely luxurious time schedule to think about others? As the psychological principles say that we don’t feel empathy for the event happening at distances far away. Like we may not kill a person in front because of our human instinct but we may not hesitate much in firing a missile that would kill hundreds of man a thousand miles away. Even the animals don’t kill their own species. This instinct is unique to the great highly developed human. Till I had  job/family/friend/social networking related responsibilities and pursuing my hobbies, I hardly get time to think about any issue bigger than the traffic jam on way to office or bad food at office canteen. I never bothered about political, economical and social problems of the world or the nation. May be I was not aware of or may be my psychological defence mechanism to save myself from the frustration and information overload avoided any attention to these issues. We, specifically people earning good enough like bachelor software engineers seems to be living in a pseudo reality....a world of the air conditioned offices or the big Malls or multiplexes and we think that everything is so good....we don’t see the things happening outside.)

But now, now I am in an identity crisis. What I am here for! What’s the purpose of my life...why I am what I am? What role I am going to play in this world. If things keep going like this, what will be the future or will there be any future at all? This put a big question before me questioning significance of every moment of my life...for me and for others.

 I can feel a little pulse of how the youth might have felt during the British rule. ..The frustration and the helplessness...the quest to find a way to do something...to make a change! But it all looks in continuity. Oppression and exploitation be it by British or American or our own natives, how does it make any difference to the poor. May be that’s how life is. Or maybe now the rosy picture of the world is getting clear and it’s not so colorful at all. Now I understand why the subjects like religion and philosophy are so important. We can’t make sense of our life without them. That probably why we created the thing we need most..... the concept of God..to save us from ourselves!

Evolution of God

God, a term which is most difficult to define but exist, even before we, the Humans, came into existence. A word, mostly used by all and believed to exist even when how, what, who and where GOD is , is beyond our imagination. God is defined by nothing but ‘faith’. God exist only for we have faith in that supreme entity. We defined God as per our own convenience to make it easy for us to present all our grievance and wishes to, to ask those questions which no one has answers of, to have a sense of security that someone is there to take care of us, to bless us, to control this very world we live in, to punish daemons and to reward the righteous, to help the helpless and to give us luck and prosperity. If human is most splendid extraordinary superior creation of GOD, God is the most selfish creation of human.

The idea of God originated from the ignorance about this world. We had no idea why we exist, why the sun rise and sets, why the rain, thunder, storm is there, from where river, mountain, sky and the stars came and the ultimate mystery of Life and Death. This ignorance, which gave birth to fear, made us to derive the idea of an almighty: The God.

So all that we need, we ask God for it. In the prehistoric times, we found God in Nature. Our Gods were as simple as Fire-God, Rain-God, Sea-God and Wind-God. God is so beyond our conception that we simplified God in Human like forms. God existed even before Ram, Christ or Mohammad. We believe in God’s human incarnation or Avtar. Almost all religions have ‘Avatar’ or ‘Son of God’ or ‘prophets’. And here comes the religion. The Religion, which probably was not something that originated from the God, rather, the religion, which was man-made and which made the concept of God narrower and rigid. Some mighty people of the society defined the norms of society and imposed there definition of ‘God’ to the people. So as our society progressed, the God and the Religion, both became complex. New Gods got introduced as per the need of society. The idea of ‘God’ evolved further.

As we became a more sophisticated society, the selfish man started exploitation of the God and the religion. Then we needed reforms, and some enlightened souls gave us better ideas of God and religion. We needed to come out of this rigid concept of God as restricted by the dominant high classes. These reformers redefined religion and re-simplified the idea of God. The modern religions like Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism looked for simplified and less orthodox ideologies that came in the ancient religions as a result of selfish strategies and politicization of religion. The Protestantism, Zoroastrian, Confucianism and others forms also looked for maverick ideas.

As our knowledge of this world increased, we started questioning more the idea of God. The science became the answer to a lot of our questions but still the idea of God remained because many questions were still unanswered. God is a traditional idea and largely depend on faith. God is knowledge. The faith of humanity gives shape to the concept of God. May be God is also trying to tell people to think about what, who, where and how the God is. All we need to do is to look inside and think over. The quest for the God made me write this. There has to be some God, or how else will we get the solace in this world of mystery and misery. Let there be God. May God Bless all!

The Pale blue dot : This is our world!

Here is one of the most profound speech in the history of Earth. Which tells are how important The Mother Earth is for this world.
That small dot in this picture is our Earth!
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken by Voyager 1 from a record distance, showing it against the vastness of space.
The details are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot

And the video on your tube:
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=tJE_Ld-UyCk

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

A bit of philosophy about friendship and love

I am notorious being a preacher. Willingly or unwillingly.. in need or not in need.. my friends has to bear my own philosophical preaching. But at the other end I myself don’t prefer anyone else to preach me ( yes , only I am allowed to lecture myself).

However, sometimes I feel like being a really strong philosopher come preacher and I really try hard to fight the problems of life with some fundas. So this time I take this opportunity to write about a very sensitive topic, which I myself found very relevant and has lectured myself a lot.

“What to do when a opposite sex friend start mixing friendship and love???”

Hello!! What you will find here is not the straight answer to this question. And as it’s supposed to be, the philosophy is not to solve the problem but to find the way to solve it.

And one more thing is that, my thoughts here are applied for both boys and girls. So it’s not that I am just putting my own thing when i got confused about being in love with some female friends. (I really mean that plural marking ‘s’ in friends :-)). Actually problem with people like me is that being a “nice guy” , we end up being a “nice friend” cum “best friend” cum “special friend” but NOT “boy friend” ( phewww....Thank God..) . And and and, in all conversation like this blog, i have a habit to talk and comment to myself (you see all that text in ()), please bear with that.

Enough prologue, let’s start now. So the first and foremost is that Try to keep things simple. If something is really bothering your mind, just be honest to that, think about it from an outer perspective*. So once you have thought enough about it, talk to your friend. But be bit careful here. You gotta be bit causal and very simple. Don’t forget to make him/her believe that you are and will always remain good friends.

I really don’t like the thoughts about risking a friendship for love. I am sure there will be lot of quotations on this topic. Now i think this theory is old when people used to say that a boy and a girl can’t be just friends, come on.. look around. .. Do you still think so?? Probably that would have been the time when there used be a minimal interaction between young boys and girls and so the so called friendship was the first step towards love.

Coming back to the context, the problem is that we get pre-occupied with ideas like “what if she said no”, how will she react”, “do he also feel the same about me” or “will be ever be that good as we are”. I think a friend is the only person with whom you can talk about anything without having much risk. So there might be little bit confusion and turbulence in the beginning but things settle down with time. So give yourself time. Don’t rush to get something, you have nothing to loose and you still have a good friend out there, s/he is not going anywhere. Sometimes you may get a very positive and encouraging response, may be your friend is also bit confused**. Or it may be just opposite also, you may end up in a fight and come back with your head full of frustration. So give things time let him/her think about it. Believe me, no one want to lose friends.

Now here are lot of possible scenarios. The extreme being simple and all intermediate states being chaotic. I have this habit of taking scientific or mathematical explanations. So if he and she are x and y coordinates, here is how i think things may go.

1. (+,+): both have similar emotion and feel that they are in love.

2. (+,-):boy is in love ( by this i mean he “think” that he is in love) but not the girl.

3. (-,-): both are not in love

4. (-,+): girl in love (again this is what she thinks) but not the boy.

I will explain this some other day that what is the difference between “thinking” that you are in love and actually “being” in love.

So for case1, congrats.. what best you can get as a life partner other than your best friend. Lucky you. You have a 2-in-one companion. J.

The only possible problem, which can be not only is this case but always, is that there might be social constraint like cast and social status etc. We are not going to talk about that.

Case2: hmmm.. here comes the complicated case.. you think you are the best for her. You do anything more than a boyfriend could ever do, but alas, you are not the one!!! She never felt that for you. Now first thing that will bother you is a big “WHY”. So my friend.. please don’t think about this ‘why’ so much. And a warning, don’t even think about discussing this with other friends or never about talking to her family directly. You can't take here the advantage of being friend. However, sharing with some very trustworthy friend (other than her) will help you feel better. Winning a girl’s heart is not easy, and let her decide it. Don’t let this friend factor come here telling what is good or bad for her. May be you can give yourself and also to her more time. And if you find it very difficult , take a break, limit your interaction ( of course temporarily ) and try to get involved in other things to get de-focused from this. I am not going to tell how to make her fall in love with you. That’s a completely different story and out of scope here. Don't expect she will get enlightened about your love! Here taking the simplest and perhaps the pessimistic approach, Simply accept the fact that she doesn’t love you. You can still be good friends.

Case3: Well.. again a simple case. No problem. We are not at all talking about this case in this whole theory!!

Case 4: Oh my dear. You are such a sweet nice girl the best that idiot can ever get. But he never thought it that way. Now what. Again here the same thing as case 2 applies. But as a girl psychology is considered to be complex, I don’t think a small paragraph will suffice. Again, give yourself time. I believe that girls are stronger in this case and can control their emotions.However, things can be really complicated here.But please don't forget that life existed with happiness even before you fell in love. There are people in this world who cares for you and you are a really meaningful asset and an important person. Be brave to accept this. Again i am not going to talk about how to make him fall in love with you. I am kind of believer of "let the things happen".

Ah.. enough for today.. may be some other day i will add to this. May be i can have different chapters as i have left so many pointer here :-)

*By saying ”outer perspective”, i mean thinking in a way that you are not ‘in’ the situation, but out of the situation. Take it as being an external observer instead of one being in the context.

**Well, the response strongly depends on the current mental state of your friend. He/she might be feeling lonely and may get carried away finding love coming his/her way. Or in contrast one may having some really bizarre situation in life ( which even you may not know) and when you come with your view, one may get irritated taking this as another stupid problem. Or depending on someone’s psyche, any kind of response in possible and i believe that should not be taken as final one.