We are what we are !!

 Plato in his magnum opus Republic has given an Allegory of the Cave which is widely called Cave Theory to emphasise on the lack of education on our nature which is similar to the prisoners inside the cave .Prisoners inside the cave see only images of reflection which are only shadows of the reality in the dim light.Plato being the disciple of Socrates has written this as a dialogue between his brother and Socrates. The prisoners free themselves from the bonded chains in the caves and come out and see that what they have experienced is not reality but reality outside the cave exists. This allegory shows that the human senses when chained to the cave do not allow humans to think beyond the cave images. In this allegory Plato keeps mathematics, geometry and deductive logic at the third and highest level of education. There is a similarity of this to Indian philosophy of Advaita, in which in simple terms it is said that what we experience is not the reality and it is more like an illu...

 Minimalism is an old concept but is gaining ground these days when Covid 19 pandemic is trying to devour the entire world. Minimalism is all about living with less. This is not a fad but a way of life of renunciation and deep withdrawal from worldly pleasures, which has a profound effect on the psychology of humans. In India, many of our Saints and philosophers have talked about leading life of penance ,sacrifice and total detachment. Even wealthy persons of yester years led a life like that of a Trustees of their wealth. Gandhiji also said this in his seven sins of life: "Wealth without work; Pleasure without Conscience;Science without humanity;Knowledge without character; Politics without principle; Commerce without Morality; Worship without sacrifice" It is said that Gandhiji also laid lot of stress on wealthy businessmen and persons to remember that they are Trustees not owners of their wealth which provide them an opportunity to serve the people at large and for social ...

Whenever any discussion happens on the human mental states, usually the discussion starts with Sigmund Freud. His Id, Ego and Alterego interpretations of the human mind in both conscious and subconscious levels have been the subject matter of debate throughout the world. If you construct a matrix grid with Child, Parent and Adult ego states of Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis of social behaviours exhibited by human beings,  blended with Freud's human personality types of psycho analysis , then the two-axis grid will present what Eric Berne envisaged. However, I went one step further and tried to blend the basic gunas as outlined by the Indian philosophy of yonder: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. The complex matrix will be like the above. According to me the middle axis of a combination of Ego, Parent and Rajas will give a stability to the human life and existence through the ages. It is Sattva which will primarily drive the Adult behaviour and bear on the Alterego for the so...

"Putting fruit at the eye level" is a Nudge. Nudge proposes positive reinforcements  to influence the behaviour and decision making at individual level and at a societal level. Richard Thaler   and Cass Sunstein in their book  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happines s have written on Nudges as the key method for influencing the human behaviour which has huge ramifications for the economic and political spheres of every country. Thaler won Nobel Prize for this path-breaking behavioural economics concept. The theory itself was built on the heuristic human behaviour concept of Daniel Kahnemann-Tversky model.Daniel Kahnemann in his book Thinking: Fast and Slow mentions System 1 and System 2 of human thinking process in which System 1 is quick, fast, hunch-based,heuristic and System 2 based on some primitive level analysis to arrive at prefered choice or option. When people have to contend with many choices/constraints or facing time constraint, S...

The four states of Consciousness or is it five states really: 1) Jagrat- when we are fully awake and when all our 5 senses are active and mind and the body work in tandem. What we do in this state of wakefulness has been described in all our philosophies and Katho Upanishad's story of Nachiketa's dialogue with Yama gives a glimpse. When the young boy Nachiketa asks Yama for the third boon asking him to explain the mystery of what happens after death, Yama after showing reluctance initially ,answers and blesses Nachiketa for his steadfastness .Yama says the Self/Soul is the lord of the chariot, the body is the chariot, the intellect is the charioteer, the mind is the reins, and the five senses are the horses leading the chariot wallowing through the desires of life. The same is also told by Bhagawan Krishna in Chapter 3 verse 43 indirectly when he said "jahi Shatrum kama roopam dhurasatham" -that for slaying the lust and desires, one should control the senses thro...

The great Tamil writer  சுஜாதா(Sujatha) once wrote that our lives are one of Progressive Compromises of unfulfilled wishes and wants. When we are born, Sigmund Freud said ,that we are born with Id, Ego and Alterego-the three states of our subconscious existence and the interplay between these three manifests in our personality and reflect in our behavioural traits. Eric Berne wrote a famous book "Games People Play:The Psychology of Human Relationships" where he described how Child,Adult and Parent ego states play and he described it in terms Transactional Analysis for interpreting all the social interactions.He also went on to say that people also play mind games with hidden motives,desires etc. and described such negative behaviours in terms of the ego states dominating the individuals. For solving the life's problems Thomas Harris wrote a practical guide "I'm Ok, You are OK" by doing  the Transactional Analysis of the behavioural pattern of individu...

I had the privilege and honour of attending "Art of Living" sessions for 4 consecutive days. the sessions were very informative, opening many doors for me even though known to me. There were exercises for the conscious, subconscious and superconscious levels. One of the tasks given to us was to do 5 random acts of Kindness by each one of the participants. This was thought-provoking for me ,since I wanted to continue with it every day. Feeding a dog, crow, helping your wife in household chores(Is it an act of kindness!!), making a small donation, etc. But sustaining this on a day to day basis every day is highly demanding. So I have reduced it to at least 2 acts of kindness per day!! There are a few important powerful messages I received: 1)Opposite values are complementary- day/night, ugly/beautiful, good/bad- one cannot exist without the other. Somebody said Opposites merge in Oneness like Seshnag and Garuda exist in one abode with Bhagwan. Thiruvalluvar said "...

Humans are students of life with the ability to help others in every possible way, however small may it be, day in and day out and go up in the ladder of evolvement of their individual souls. In this process they realise that they are preprogrammed machines with same set of Operating Systems  of mind and senses ,but with a discerning intellect guided by the Paramatman from deep inside. Some may agree that the "inner voice" of conscience, as Gandhiji would put it,  is God speaking to you or through you and many may disagree with this. Let us not digress into that.Let us keep it aside as this is a black box about which discussion can go on endlessly. But the elephant in the room is that we have limited cognition of both our external  universe i.e physical outer world as well as, of the inner mind space world. We are only tuned into certain frequencies or preset softwares, for the purpose of our existence in this earth. We are daily shaped by our observations cum exp...

Kubler-Ross Change Curve This Curve theory explains the process as to how people cope up with significant upheaval or life-changing or threatening situations. link The process explains that people undergo five/six stages: the first stage is that of Shock, then going into Denial, then to Anger, moving into Depression. Up to this stage the performance of the individual or group of people will continue to deteriorate as time progresses. Once the inevitability of the Change dawns, then the people move to Acceptance and finally into Integration when the performance will again start regaining the original position or sometimes exceeding it if there are supporting enablers or incentives. This is true for individuals as well as for a country or economy. Since the nation received the pandemic shock in March middle, you may recount we have seen at least the first four stages. We start denying that this pandemic will affect us and once we realised that it is spreading we showed ...