Number of heart beats a constant?

Animal Planet's show 'Predator's prey' says the elephant, and the elephant shrew, both live for a 800 million heart beats. Because they beat at different rates, their life spans are different. But according to this observation, humans should only live for 21 years. I guess there is something we need to take into account. Instead of assuming that the heart rate of humans is constant throughout their lives, which is not, we should also take into account the varying heart rate. To confirm the hypothesis that the total number of heart beats has the largest correlation with the life span of any being, we must know the heart rate versus time curves for the being under consideration. That will give us more confidence and better correlation values.

Is not war violent, and hence against non-violence?

Not at all. Why? Because we are civilians, and we tend to think that way. Ask the son of a cop if he thinks his father is a bad man, because he kills bad guys. You know the answer even before you ask that question. So, what makes war non-violent?

One person is enough to make us think that war is not violent. That is a commanding officer that orders around a military unit. His judgment and attitude decides the fate of his entire military unit. The entire unit does not even question the philosophical nature of war itself, but only judges and questions its commanding officer. Thus, whether or not war is violent rests upon the judgment of one person, the commanding officer. Similarly, whether or not war is violent depends upon your judgment too. If you stick to one side and don't think from the other, you will always try to defend yourself saying war is violent, and people who voluntarily refrain from war are true heroes. Gandhi, a paragon of non-violence, when in South Africa, looked to recruit men to fight for the British empire, because he understood the difference between non-violence and dharma. He saw no hypocrisy there. If you still think war is violent, I will leave you to your one-sided, and hence biased, judgment. Also, there is no reason for you to stop thinking, just because you think war is violent.

After you cross the 'all war is violent' mental hurdle, you can step into the fields of war, where the beauty of war is fully expressed in the bonds of brotherhood between men fighting for survival, and some for a virtue. This "beauty of war" concept will lead us to so many analytical thoughts about war, and it is very essential for us get over this hurdle, to understand the life of warriors and soldiers. This will help us understand that soldiers are no different from civilians, and there are cowards and heroes among soldiers, just as there are cowards and heroes among civilians.

Why is an introvert better than an extrovert?

Because if he ever turns evil, he will kill himself, rather than killing multiple others. This is good reason for rationalists to trust introverts, because they argue that one life is less valuable than a plural number of lives.

Proof of existence of the spiritual world

Assuming the existence of souls, we can raise a question, "What does a soul do after it finishes one life and before it takes birth in another body?" This shows that the soul does something, just like an actor searches for his next role, when he finishes playing in one movie and before he takes up another role. At any given point of time, there are an infinite number of such souls who haven't taken up a body yet, and who are in the process of searching.

You do see a hint of another world existing beyond this physical world, don't you? I think it's proof enough to see that the spiritual world is reined by big and small gods, and full of souls and spirits.

Just like many actors don't learn a lot of lessons from their unreal roles in most movies, souls only remember what they want to, and forget the inessentials, from their previous lives. This is proof for the behavioral instincts of a new-born, which science calls genetics and heredity.

Enter the spiritual world of small gods

Hearing voices? You should conclude that they are either spirits or gods. The intensity of a voice indicates the spiritual distance between the god and you. The power of analogies can be fully understood only when one realizes that analogies are not only used to relate two physical entities, but also two spiritual entities. Using this analogy, it can be proved that just like the earth is organized into religions and nations, further divided into castes and states, sects and districts, the spiritual world also has its own hierarchical organization - its tree structure.

If someone yells at you from a close distance, you are startled at the loudness, but if the same person is yelling from a distance, you sometimes don't even know they are yelling. Applying this analogy to the well-organized spiritual world, the intensity of the god's voice can be used to measure it's distance from you.

Deloitte Fast 500

Rahula: What do you have against the Fast 500 awards? Isn't it good to see what technology companies are growing fast and are catering to the growing technological needs of people around the world?

Rahuli: I don't have anything against rewards and satisfying the needs of the people.

Rahula: Then what are you angry about?

Rahuli: I think it's wrong to reward only companies that grow fast. I think one should reward companies that grow steadily and consistently. It's very easy to see speedy growth, it's hard to see consistency and steadiness, because it takes much longer time to observe and evaluate, and no one has the time to do that, during dotcom booms and recessions.

Rahula: There, you said it yourself! During times of booms and recessions, no one cares about long-term plans and evaluations, everyone wants immediate results and solutions. If one can't do that, why shouldn't Deloitte Fast 500 reward fast-growing companies?

Rahuli: I told you, I have nothing against speed, but I value consistency and steadiness much more than I value speedy growth. So, instead, I think Deloitte should reward companies that maintained their stead during booms and recessions.

Rahula: Well, now that the economy is in a recession, maybe Deloitte will find a way to reward stability, like it found a way to reward speed during the dotcom boom early this millenium.

Rahuli: I don't think it will be possible for Deloitte to do that.

Rahula: Really? Why not?

Rahuli: Because most people don't see the other side of the coin, especially those people who have already displayed their clear perception of one side of the coin. It would take extraordinary character and moral strength to also see the other side, and such people are rarely found in big companies that are well established.

Rahula: I don't understand a word you said.

Rahuli: I will give you an example to demonstrate this using free asssociation. Do you think Gandhi is bad and Hitler is good?

Rahula: That's outrageous! Gandhi is good and Hitler is bad. Everyone in the world who have heard about them knows that.

Rahuli: I would disagree, for the purpose of this discussion of rewarding stability instead of speed, and at the cost of my life, that Gandhi is good and Hitler is bad. I know both of them are long gone, but if one were to engage them both in a hypothetical philosophical debate about good and bad, he would demonstrate to the world that both Gandhi and Hitler were both great thinkers, but only that Gandhi was fearless, and Hitler was a coward.

Rahula: That's what I said - Gandhi is good and Hitler is bad.

Rahuli: No you didn't, and it's illogical to assume that goodness and badness are the same as fear and courage. Gandhi encouraged people to suffer and die for his cause, but Hitler forced people to suffer and die for his cause. Neither Gandhi or Hitler is good or bad, but both of them are paragons of courage and fear respectively.

Rahula: I am beginning to understand this, but how does this tie in to our discussion about speed versus stability?

Rahuli: Very good question, Rahula. People usually give up the discussion at this point. You have demonstrated a fine mental acumen and persistence of thought during our discussion. I commend you.

Rahula: Thank you, but you didn't answer my question about the relevance of one discussion in light of another.

Rahuli: OK. Do you think Hitler might ever have admitted his wrongdoings if he were forced to suffer persecution in one of his own concentration camps?

Rahula: Never in an aeon would he have done that. Didn't he actually kill himself when his empire was falling?

Rahuli: This proves that it takes an exceptional character to "see" the other side of one's own actions. Just like Hitler wouldn't see the wrongs of his actions, whoever devised Deloitte Fast 500 would probably never see the other side of the coin. It's good to reward fast-growing companies during economic booms, but it's better to reward steady and stable companies during recessions and depressions, because it would then highlight to and teach the world what it takes to live through suffering and death.

Rahula: I understand now. You are saying that even if someone does devise an award for steadiness and stability, it wouldn't be the same person who would reward speed and fast growth. Am I right?

Rahuli: Yes, you are. It's rare that two-person discussions and debates end in a mutual understanding of an impersonal concept, and in my opinion, I think you should be rewarded for your persistence of thought. How about I take you out for dinner tonight?

Rahula: Well, to further demonstrate the strength of my character, I would politely deny this reward, because I don't claim the rights to the fruits of my own actions.

Rahuli: That concludes our wonderful discussion. See you sometime later then. Bye.

Rahula: Bye.

Rahula and Rahuli both signed out of chat.

The atheist's God

Rahula: It's day now.

Rahuli: It's night now.

Rahula: No, it's day now.

Rahuli: No, it's night now.

Rahula: Where the hell on earth are you?

Rahuli: I am back in my New York apartment.

Rahula: Oops, I forgot that. When did you go back to the US from China?

Rahuli: Two days ago, after I finished my project with our China team.

Rahula: That's why you were saying it was night.

Rahuli: Yes. This reminds me of a parallel. An atheist and a theist were standing on a circle, facing each other. The atheist was arguing that the theist was to his right, and the theist argued back saying the atheist was to his right. Both of them only saw that they were on a straight line in their immediate surrounding, but both of them missed that they were both standing on the same circle, the center of which is God.

Salvation 101

Say you are an up and coming actor who have just finished the most famous film, that brought you great accolade and wealth. You remember playing very hard and tortuous roles in some films, and moments where you thought you never wanted to play another role in a film again, and probably give up acting and finding a job and settling down. Even though you are now famous and without too many big worries about your acting career, you still remember your arduous struggles for fame. They will always remain in your memory, always guiding your judgment and future actions that lead you to success.

The soul also goes through similar struggles throughout its existence, and there are times when it wants to give up an inevitable circle of life and death (acting career), and only wants salvation (finding a job and settling down). Keeping aside your close-mindedness while reading this article and if you think just hard enough, you will see that just as the actor wanted to release himself from a cycle of struggle and fame, the soul also wants release from a cycle of suffering, death and life, and hence it wants salvation.

What does a soul do when it achieves salvation? You have probably heard this a hundred times but refused to believe it and dismissed it as mad nonsense, but the soul joins God, and no longer exists as itself, but exists with God.

--More for the interested--
That leads us to a discussion about the birth and death of souls, which I shall write about later, so as not to distract the uninterested.

Saving yourself during free fall, without a parachute

Imagine you are taking a sky-diving lesson, and your instructor lets you dive alone this time. Both your parachutes don't work, either because you could not operate them properly due to lack of experience, or because they are actually faulty. Who knows? What do you do now?

Say your height above the ground satisfies the minimum requirement for achieving terminal velocity during free fall in earth's gravity, still leaving more than enough height for our little thought experiment. The moment you realize you are on your own without landing support, you open up your limbs to a suitable posture to achieve this terminal velocity with minimum time/distance loss. After you achieve terminal velocity, slowly bring your limbs to a position where you can maneuver your body to glide at this constant velocity. Position your body to glide in a forward direction so you can see where you are going. Stay in this position until you reach the ground. In my estimation, you will travel in a sort of parabolic path with this constant terminal velocity. As you get closer to the ground, you must assume the original "limbs-outstretched" position which brought you to zero acceleration while in the air. This will further retard you from the terminal velocity right before you land on the ground, bringing you to a speed close to running speed in the exemplary case, or to only where you break one or more limbs in the worst case.

In the exemplary case, you will land like a hawk or an eagle that grabs a rat from the ground, or if you are too afraid to even carry out this little thought experiment in reality, may God be merciful enough to let you take up a bird's body in your next life, to teach your young soul how to glide and land without killing yourself.

God and circular arguments

Circular argument, also called "Begging the Question" is proof of existence of God and the Soul. Believers of logic will very often deny that circular argumentation is also a form of pure logic, because then it can be proved that all logic is subjective, and the existence of pure logic itself is debatable. While they might, inside their minds and hearts, accept that circular arguments sound true, they will never openly accept it, for fear of being called names, like hypocrites. What is the purpose of accepting that circular arguments are also logical?

Self-realization.

This is the essence of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", which took him, one of the greatest philosophers I have ever read, a decade of self-isolation to come up with. This led me to believe that Western Philosophy, which can be called a tree born from the seed of Greek Philosophy, is very primitive compared to most Eastern philosophical schools of thought.

Why is God in suffering?

There is dignity in suffering. There is self-respect in dignity. There is compassion in self-respect. There is God in compassion. Hence, by the rules of set theory, there is God in suffering too.

Also, if one has to find God through suffering, one has to suffer with dignity. Suffering is commonly equated with hell, and because God is in suffering, God is in hell too, not just in heaven or above.
Then what is the devil? Devil is just God's other side of existence. If God has to be good, he has to be bad also, due to the law of balance. Extreme goodness and universal compassion is construed as Godliness, and extreme badness and lack of care for all forms of life other than oneself is devilry.

What is the purpose of suffering?

A dad says to his young son, "Go tidy up your room", and the son responds, "What does it matter? It will get dirty again." The father can argue saying that if he keeps it tidy every minute, he never has to tidy up, and the son can argue saying that if he never tidies it up, he never has to tidy it up again. Even though both of them know the truth, they argue against each other, because the discussion is not about cleaning the boy's room, it's about winning the argument, and not having to suffer a failure in front of an over-bearing father.

I remember thinking in my childhood, when I knew nothing about biology and metabolism, that if we keep excreting everything we eat, why do we have to eat at all?

A snake regularly sheds its skin after it grows a new one inside the old one.

What do all these three arguments have in common? Change.

We have to suffer to change ourselves and become better people. By tidying up his room unwillingly, the boy realized that happiness lies neither in winning the argument with his father, nor in following orders, but in doing his work in peace. Even though the boy won't admit, he knows that he feels peaceful while he is immersed in the task of cleaning up his room. There lies the purpose of suffering. Inner peace.

Why does God need incarnation?

There are people who don't believe in God, and don't see a God in themselves. He has to prove them wrong. That is why he incarnates.

How does he do this?
Because people who don't believe in God will question his existence, he has to prove his existence, and takes up a life form.

Why does he take up a life form?
Some will always exist who will say, "What does God have to bother? He neither suffers or dies."
To prove them wrong and help them see Him, he will have to show them that he can also suffer and die.

How does he prove that he can die too?
If one has to die, one has to take birth, and that is how he will incarnate. If one has to suffer, he must be sometimes happy too. That this temporary happiness is misconstrued as selfish service, is only a misconception, and it has to be uprooted.

That is why God will incarnate to show himself to people who don't believe in him.

Then what is the difference between incarnation and re-incarnation?
Even though he incarnates once and dies, there will be people, again and again, who still don't believe in him, because they are not the same people to whom he once proved his existence. So, will have to incarnate again and again, which is why he re-incarnates.

This is logical proof of the theory of re-incarnation in Hinduism.

Meaning in a language

Who gives meaning to a language? Who invents words and new languages? Can one find the answers to these questions, ever?

Here's my answer: It's the writer-reader and the speaker-listener relationship that gives meaning to a new word and language. It's not an unknown entity like God that creates new words and languages. It's in the minds of the people.

Thoughts and actions

All thoughts are actions, but not all actions are thoughts. These actions that are not thoughts, are a result of all thoughts that are not just thoughts. They are the thoughts that are translated into actions, through will, and that's where the human body comes in. One should see Unity in thought and action, and question it only when lost, not for the sake of thoughts or actions themselves.

Who is a restaurant?

I was at a restaurant for lunch, and this question came to my mind. Who is the restaurant to the customers? Who runs it? Who represents it? The manager? The cashier? The owner? All these are superficial. The real person who the restaurant is, is the one person who gives you exactly what you go to the restaurant for. You go to the restaurant for food. Does the manager give you food? No, he manages people. He has nothing to do with food. He does the same job a manager of a company would do. He needs the exact set of skills for that job. Does the owner bring you food? No, he is the person that makes profit and claims legal rights to the restaurant. It has nothing to do with food. He does the same thing the owner of a store does. Make money. The cashier too, is no different from a bank teller.

Then who is the restaurant to me? The waiter is the restaurant to me. He is the person that brings me what I need the most at a restaurant. He is the only person to the customer, that's more important than owners and managers. He is the connection to the outside world, and the most important one. He is the representative. And yet, all the customers' prejudice and frustration with the restaurant is directed at him. He is not responsible for the restaurant, but he is powerful. He is powerful in the same way a citizen is powerful in a country. It's his fate that he has to be at the bottom of the ladder, and yet he is powerful in a way no one can imagine.

How often do you complain to the manager, in person? How often do you complain to the head chef or the sous chef, in person? It's the customer's responsibility to follow the customs: to respect the waiter. He deserves more respect than the owner of the restaurant. He is the one that demands no fruits of his labor. He is the one that gives away all such fruit, for minimum wage that is essential to maintain the health of his body.

Respect the waiter, as he is your friend.

Why DO?

A reporter was once interviewing Gandhi about one of his national fasts, and was very interested to know why he chose this way of life to cause change in the world.

R: People are interested to know what thoughts guide you, and how you keep going despite the fact that no one understands you.
Gandhi: Let me explain, using a metaphor, for the mind can only understand other people's thoughts by free association, a Freudian term in Psychology.

I am a stone, that God threw into the pond of the world. It's my fate, and the bottom of the pond is my destiny. I can not blame God for it, for I understand that he reserves his own judgment for his actions, and he must be trusted. Inevitably, I cause ripples on the surface of the pond. I can not control that either, for every person affects another in one way or another, if not through words, through actions and ideas. If the pond I fall into is small, the ripples will come back to me in no time, before I even sink below the surface, after they bounce off the edge of the pond. If I fall into a huge pond, the ripples will never come back to me, and I will have long before reached the bottom of the pond and died. The only choice God has given me is the size of the pond, and I chose the sum of all oceans, for I realize that the bottom is inevitably reached and I can not wait for every ripple of my own to come back. That would be selfishness. That is why I go on, without any desire for any ripple of my own generation. That is why I go on, without any desire to try to stay at the surface of the pond, for God will keep throwing stones, and I have to make way for more.

Love and Attachment

Consider a fishnet whose four corners are fixed, but the fishnet itself is free to move up and down, like a large piece of cloth. It can be interpreted as an unrooted tree in Graph Theory. Pick a vertex, and then pull it up using two fingers. The entire fishnet will rise, but not all the vertices rise at the same speed, or to the same height. The force you use to pull the fishnet up is your Motivation, and you give your own Direction to that single vertex you are holding. Using Newton's Third Law, you can say that the fishnet also pulls you down with the same force. But, what keeps you going is your Motivation.

This fishnet is your Life. The vertices nearest to your vertex are your friends and family, and it's your responsibility to keep going despite all drag, and you will actually begin to notice that it's not just you that's moving forward, it's also your entire network. The force that pulls them along with you is called Unselfish Love, and the force that pulls you back is called Attachment. If you want to prove the world wrong, your Love, coupled with Motivation, has to overcome the sum of your Selfish Love and all Attachments in Life.

How do I become great?

The question is being asked in a wrong manner.
Wrong: HOW do i become GREAT?

The right question one has to ask oneself is this:
how DO i become great?

The simple left-to-right writing shows you that Doing comes before Greatness, and the not doing on your part is not making you great.

Man and child

If a man is better than a child because he can speak, is he not being
hypocritical when he is at a loss for words, looking at his first child?