The Gods must be crazy

There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a purpose. You attract what you think. If sometimes you do not get what you want very much, the reason can only be good.

The Secret, Deepak Chopra, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Eckhart Tolle, Bhagavad Gita, The Bible. I haven't read the Koran, but I am sure the same must be written there too.

I believe them completely. Too many events have occurred in my life to not believe them. I am an atheist turned believer. The process started some 15 years back and the facilitator, unknown to him though, was a junior PG in my department Dr Indrajit Kalita. If Indrajit was my facilitator, my support system was another junior PG Dr Srilekha Deka. Indrajit used to do transcendental meditation. I got to know about it and compelled him to introduce me to the meditation form. I made him sit on the back seat of my Kinetic Honda and take me to the centre that taught this meditation form.

Srilekha was a couple of years junior to me but we hit off very well and I asked if she would attend the sessions with me. She readily agreed and both of us would go on my scooter to the TM centre after college hours and attend the sessions. I saw a Pooja room there with Lord Krishna's statue in it and told the Teacher that if we had to pray, I would not attend the course. He said that that there was no need to pray at all. I was relieved. We were given a form to fill up. One question with multiple choices of answers asked why I wanted to learn meditation. I ticked 'for peace of mind.' I used to be very disturbed in those days.

Indrajit also introduced me to Deepak Chopra (not literally, but through his books!) and his book the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I was hooked. I used to read the book again and again. Just reading a few paragraphs on a randomly opened page of the book gave me answers to the questions I had in my mind at that point in time. It was a small book and I kept it with me all the time. Till Indrajit asked me to return it to him. I then went and bought my own copy and have since gifted this book to others too.

I had been an atheist all my life. It was difficult for me to believe in a God that seemed impossible to exist when you applied the knowledge of Science that you learn in school to come to a logical conclusion of His Residence in the Universe. Different religious books told us about different Gods. Each book claimed their God was superior to other Gods. It was confusing. God would punish if you didn't obey. He would come to guide a particular tribe but not the others. He didn't want women to pray to him when they menstruated. He lived in heaven, which was above, but where was above? The expanding Universe had no above or below. The earth was round. At any point of time above was below and below was above and gravity kept the creatures on earth from flying away from a perennially rotating earth.

My son asks the same questions now. I have tried my best to make him a believer. Faith is important. In Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says God is within all of us. Deepak Chopra says we are all divine beings having a human experience. The Bible says the Kingdom of God is within us. Stephen Hawking has informed us that experimental physics has revealed that a single particle can exist in two different places at the same time. Einstein has professed his belief in God.

Reading contemporary writings of physicists and mathematicians in easy to read literary form for the non geniuses like us reveals an amazing fact. That most of the so called science is theory and conjecture. Most of the advanced scientific knowledge known today has no proof as in our definition of proof. We can't see it or touch it or hear it. We only have complicated mathematical calculations by genius physicists and mathematicians who make these theories as 'proof'. There is more in the Universe that we do not know about, than that we know about.

I started believing in the divine, present somewhere, most likely within ourselves, and in the power of all the statements written in the first line of this blog when I started experiencing the truth in those lines. Why am I suffering so much, you might ask, after I have turned believer? I do not know. But I am much more peaceful now than I ever was. I have started getting much more love, prayers, goodwill than I ever did. There is clarity of thinking. Tough decisions are being made almost by a divine intervention without my having to trouble my brains too much.

And everytime the Arjuna in me gets lost, a Krishna arrives to guide my Chariot.






 

10 classes of the modern world

Why doesn't the American government want  its citizens to go to college? Please someone answer this question for me.

Ninad and I had been to visit Oxford a few months back. Ninad was smitten. We had stayed in London with my friend Dr Ephia Yasmin who is a gynaecologist specialising in infertility and she had prepared the most wonderful itinerary for us, as meticulously as her preparation of her cases for In Vitro Fertilisation. The last audit in her hospital had revealed a success rate of over 90% in her patients. Which is actually almost miraculous in IVF.

My sister Jumi had to move to Houston about 4 months back as her husband had got a job posting there. Houston is all about Texas which is all about NASA. Texas also has a large number of world class educational institutes and therefore when my son said he wants to do aeronautical engineering and join NASA, I thought why not Texas. I am a firm believer in the power of dreams.

Only some dreams are so expensive that, well, in our society which claims to be classless, but has actually become a globally uniform class system based on the economic strength of the individual, people of my social class have to tell our sleeping and conscious minds the impracticality of some dreams.

You don't think there is a class system? If you can afford such and such amount of money you can travel first class and get served in nice china cutlery and use the loo in the front of the plane. You have wider seats, which become beds and you can sleep during journeys. You get limousines for airport transfer and a special buffet  in the first class waiting lounge.

If you can afford only second class, you sit in smaller seats, called economy class. You squeeze past your neighbour sitting on the aisle seat and any seat in between you and the aisle to go to the loo. If you are on the aisle seat, you keep being requested to excuse people and pull in your legs or get up from your seat depending on how large you/the person wanting to get past is.

Then you have economic classes that can travel in their own private jets, classes that can afford travel in AC coaches in trains, a class that can only travel 2nd class by train. A class that can afford to travel only on public city buses, a class that save money by not travelling even on city buses, a class that travels by  bicycles, a class that cannot afford even bicycles.

A class that does not travel at all, that sits and sleeps on the same pavements 24 x 7, begging for coins and food. And you thought the Indian Varna system divided society. In an Assamese village, one will find the class system still being followed. A Brahmin will not marry a Kshatriya. But they will socialize, the poorest and lowest social class will sit with the richest and highest social class on the same bench at a wedding feast and be served the same food, and all social classes have a roof over their heads and get to eat at least 2 square meals a day.

Can't say that about the urban globalized world of today with at least 10 social classes I have outlined above. And I have digressed. Ninad took one look at my blog page and told me that my blogs are too long and who would therefore read them? I have digressed once again.

College education in the USA is soooo expensive, based on my internet searches for Ninad, that I have deep suspicions that the American government wants a country of high school graduates with no further education. Whatever the reasons might be. I do not want to risk a controversy at this stage by speculating on the reasons.