The Illusion of Reality

In this post, i shall show you that the idea of our reality is a great illusion. The truth is that we are designed to see the world and universe as we are rather than as it is.
We all believe that we live in a true world. We also believe in the existence of all objects that can be perceived by our senses and we feel surprised when we are forced to accept that which cannot be easily deduced by our senses like electro magnetic radiation, bacteria, virus, radio waves etc.
The fact is that our reality lies only in our senses and the existence of the same is because of our evolutionary conditioning necessary for our survival.
The reality as we believe today is nothing more than a sum total of our sensory perceptions and beliefs formed by our mind over long period of time.
Reality can also be defined as a result of electrical impulses of your subconscious and conscious mind.
Imagine when you are sleeping and you have a dream, you are able to touch, smell, see, hear and do everything that you can do in the real world, you may never realise that it is a dream untill you wake up. How does this happen? It happens because your mind has manipulated your subconscious mind and recreated those electrical impulses.
You will never know you are dreaming untill you wake up. The entire reality had been created for you when you were sleeping. This is the poverty of reality.
It is equally true that the senses we are blessed with are a very poor tool to ascertain the truth of our natural world or reality of life.
What if i tell you now that we are all blind and deaf. Deaf and Blind not by a small measure but by a very large measure. Blind beyond our own beleifs. Impossible you say. Let me prove it.
Consider the fact that the visible spectrum that the naked eye can observe lies between the ultra violet and infra red. In other words colours of light beyond ultraviolet and infra red are completely blind to human vision.
This is not a small measure by any stretch of imagination. Isn't it an irony that millions of colurs, designs that depict the beauty and grandeur of the universe has been kept purposefully hidden from our eyes? Many insects and animals can see the beautiful designs in ultra violet light that is present on flowers and plants which we cannot.
Consider the fact that we are also deaf by a very large measure because we cannot hear sounds beyond 20hz and 20khz of the auditory spectrum.
There are many sounds that are produced continously in the natural world which are far beyond this frequency limits.
Imagine how beautiful would it be if we could hear the sound of buds blossoming into a flower or the musical sounds made by tiny insects and plants in the nature.
And too much has been said about human mind and its abilities, let me show you why common sense is also a weak tool in the wide arena of universe
Imagine a piece of rock, common sense tells us that it is solid and it is not hollow. Nuclear physics and quantum mechanics tells us that a piece of rock is
completely hollow from within and is full of empty space.
This has been ascertained at the atomic level by indepth research and repeated experiments so if rock is hollow and full of space then why does it appear to be solid to us. This is because of force fields between the molecules that are tigtly packed. Now these force fields are packed only to the extent that they can prevent our hands from passing through but why?
One way to look at it is that these forces of field has been especially created for our existence. These force fields are necessary for human survival because concept of solidity and impenetrability is essential for our to existence. How else would we be alive and pass through life?
To look at the broad picture of life, every organism has been given a world model that it perceives and believes to be true.
This specific world model is necessary for its survival and growth. Many insects can see the beautiful flower designs in ultra violet lights by naked eye because it is necessary for their survival, we dont because it is un necessary for our existence.
The same is true of ultra sonic sounds, and other things invisible to us. If this be true our reality is extremely petty, small and poor.
Now is it just a co incidence that we live in the middle world? By middle world, i mean the world in between the vastness of space and universe and sheer smallness of size of atoms and molecules?
We cannot see molecules and atoms because we dont need to see them. We cannot venture into space unaided because it is not meant for us.
Science has opened flood gates to our understanding and is constantly pushing the bar to explore new worlds that we were not designed to understand and see.
The famous biologist Halden had once said that universe is not just queerer than we suppose but queerer than we CAN suppose.
If this be true of our petty and insignificant existence in the vast grandeur of universe what else is our reality but an illusion?

Lets learn to say NO

I am not exactly a globe trotter but this year i had got a opportunity to travel to China. I met people of different nationalities Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, British and Italian. Young and smart business people with noteworthy skills and sharp acumen.

One distinct and striking fact that i noticed when i spoke to them was that they plainly refused what did not appeal to them. They could easily say a clear NO straight across my face without any scruples of emotion or hesitation.

Now i really appreciate this attitude. To me this shows honesty, pragmatism and a clear sense of purpose and balance. I personally and deeply appreciate a NO because of my experience of doing business in India.

In India things are different, a clear NO is generally considered to be highly impolite and a mark of grave disrespect.

We Indians think that we must respect people and must not say a NO unless it is absolutely necessary. What we conveniently ignore and overlook is something called honesty.

Ask a person in business or in any profession, he will tell you it is true. We Indians live by unstated rule, the rule says that if you ask a help or favor or even a business quotation, don't listen to what the person replies, because he will always be polite to you and fake his words. Look at his action and judge whether it is yes or no.

Silence and no followup or no reply from a person usually means NO, this is irrespective of the fact that he would have shown interest when he spoke to you.

Now this inability to say NO is not restricted to our professional lives alone. Even in our personal life we have this problem.

Consider this example:

Suppose i am in dire need of some money and i ask my friend 'Can you lend me some money?' In case he doesnt want to lend me, his answer will be evasive. May be something like this 'can i get back to you in some time?' can i check and let you know? Can you give me some time? This is notwithstanding the fact that he had a clear NO in his mind.

His evasive answers is nothing but a clear NO according to unwritten Indian laws.

Now there is a serious problem with this approach, our assumption that a clear NO is bad and it will hurt the other person is wrong. Infact it is good for him. A mature person will not be offended by a NO but will actually appreciate it. This is because NO is a gift that will save his time.

Consider in the example above had my friend said a clear NO, it would have saved my time and would not wait for him to get back to me. Its a different thing that i would not have in any case because i already know he cant say NO.

But the idea of evasive response or evasive behaviour in place of a clear NO isnt good for us. Now what happens if a foreigner interacts with an Indian, People in britain or europe choose their words very carefully.

If someone there says i will think and get back to you, it really means he is going to think deeply on the subject and will definitely get back to you. It doesn't mean he isn't interested or NO.

Words like excellent, awesome, great and fantastic, are used to denote real emotions not as a filler words when you dont know what to say. In the same way words like Yes and No are used to denote real agreement and disagreement.

Another bad habit is not to respond when it is no. If you receive an order outside of your product line, why respond saying not available to him. Let him wait and realise we didnt have it.

If you ask anyone for something, he will just ignore and you will understand its NO. This is stunning behaviour Indeed.

A yes and NO has to be clearly communicated as a matter of basic personal and business ethics in place of evasive or disguised response.

Trust me, the other person will not feel disrespected but will appreciate you for your straightforwardness, immediate response and decisiveness.
So people lets learn to say NO.

Consider the below for practice now.
NO i will not...
NO i cannot...
NO i should not...
NO i am not...
Regards
Imran Hussain

Power of Insight

I shall try to explain what is Insight is in this post. Insight is simply another way to look at the problem. It is to discover a unique way of solving it.
Lets take an example. I am giving you this math problem to solve.
Consider that there are two cars facing each other and are 100kms apart.
The constant speed of car A is 60kmph. The car B has a speed of 40kmph. Exactly above car A is an eagle which has a constant speed of 80kmph.

The cars decide to crash into each other.

The eagle wants to touch each car alternatively and die when the cars crash. Assuming that there is no time lost when the eagle turns and all three travel at constant speed and all the three start at the same time, what will be the total distance travelled by the eagle untill it finally crashes between the two cars?

To most people, its a complex problem, the only way to solve it is to develop many simultaneous equations taking eagle distance as x and then solve it. Thats a complex and long route. Let me show you a shortcut. This shortcut is based on insight into the problem.

Simply ask a question how long will the eagle travel. Untill the cars crash. How long will it be untill the cars crash? 1 hour because they are located 100kms apart the sum total of their speed. How much distance can an eagle travel in 1 hour. Bingo you got the ans it is 80kms.

Lets take another example to understand Insight, There was a mid size soap manufacturing company which had completely automated its entire process from dough making to final packing of cakes. The packed boxes were automatically re-packed in large cartons and the cartons had to be just delivered to customers.

The company started receiving complaints that some individual soap boxes were empty, since the entire process was automated, nobody removed them from packed large cartons and it was delivered directly.

The management decided to purchase a new computerised machine that will do as follows:

a) Send very low frequency sound waves targetted at every individual small soap in quick succession. Aimed at the boxes moving towards the final packing area.

b) The empty boxes will reflect the sound waves but soap filled boxes will not reflect the waves to same extent. This is because soap cake inside will tend to absorb most of the waves.

C) based on the reflected waves, the computerised machine will recognise the empty boxes and a robotic arm will push it outside the line from going to the final packing area.

This was a customized machine to be built for the company and it cost them a fortune. They decided to hold all employee meet to explain their decision.

After the director made a brilliant presentation about the technicalities and features. One employee got up and said

Sir this is very simple problem. Why should we purchase the big machine. There is an old table fan in the factory. Why not keep it near the production line.  All empty soapboxes will be just blown down because of no weight inside them. Only filled ones will reach the packing area

Such is the power of Insight. The most complex problems can be solved with amazing and staggering simplicity...

Evolution by Natural Selection (part - 2)

In our last blog, i raised a question of how seemingly impossible is the idea of a super complex human being evolving from a single cell of a replicator bacteria over a period of 4.6 billion years.

In this post, i shall explain the key idea of evolution which is called
Natural selection that resulted in creation of the impossible.
Let us take the watch example that we discussed earlier. We said that it is simply impossible for broken pieces of a watch to assemble itself by pure chance no matter how many times we shake the box. This is absolutely true.

Had the process of evolution been dependent purely on chance or accident, no creatures would have ever evolved. Evolution has little to do with chance and more to do with process of natural selection.

To understand it, firstly one should get an idea of how the Natural world operates. Its an animal world out there. There is no rules in the forest. The Might is right and the powerful can do all he pleases. Every creature has to protect itself from predators of various types and also from the destructive forces of nature like rain, wind etc. Each creature has to find its food and survive. The goal of each animal is survival and the finishing line for its ultimate success is reproduction of its species. Any creature that survives the onslaught of natural world and reproduces is a successful creature. In other words the fittest of the lot. Others who are unable to adapt themselves to the natural world with all its cruelties and struggle lose the race and become extinct. The process by which the creatures adapt themselves by altering their physical and genetic form is through natural selection. Ie selection of best qualities of survival and reproduction for protection in the natural world. The struggles in the natural world is the invisible hand that has shaped evolution process and has created most powerful creatures of today. This process is what we call natural selection. This is very different from accident or chance, this is a purposive development.

Let us take an example to understand the difference between natural selection and chance based selection.
Suppose your friend hides a gift in one of the trees in the forest and you are required to find it. But he wont tell you where it is. Now there are many many trees in the forest so if you started out by chance alone, its very unlikely that you will find it. But if your friend agrees to say hot hot hot when you near the tree and cold cold cold when you go farther the game becomes easier. Or your friend could also say, if you move towards the right direction of the tree, i will give you a chocolate and if you move towards wrong one a whack with a stick on your back. Now the game is simple as your friend is actually guiding you, your selection of path to the tree is guided not randomly but by purposive action. This is the crux of natural selection process. The complexities present in every creature is guided by pressing needs and rewards of the natural world. The struggle inside the natural world acts as a guide to help and tell the evolving creature what features it should add and what it should not in the process of evolution, this way many complexities can be added. if it does it right the gift is survival and reproduction, the hallmark of success, if it goes wrong, then the failure called extinction into oblivion.
Let us try to understand this by a direct example say during evolution some fishes arrive on the shores of sea, if they have to survive on the shore they have to develop air respiration system, if the fish has to develop into a new animal, then it needs legs to move around to increase probability of finding food. So the creature already knows what it needs to have at each stage of evolution, the creature slowly adapts itself by developing the organs needed at each stage.

The genetic and physical structure of the animal is slowly and imperceptibly modified towards a purposive and predetermined goal and needs of the natural world. This happens over a million years of time, if it succeeds it is rewarded by survival.

To come back to the broken watch example, firstly it is ill suited and not at all related to how evolution actually takes place.  The watch examples explains impossibility of randomness which is unrelated to evolution.  But my feeling is that had there been an invisible hand inside the box which guided the parts of the watch to its right destination and helped them to move towards the right area.  Over a long period of time, it is possible that the full watch can emerge completely.

Some of us may still have doubts as to how transmutation of species is possible and if so why cant we find intermittent creatures in that case? Like a mix of fish and a fox or human and monkey.

The reason is because the intermittent creatures which are in the transitional stage do not survive the onslaught of natural world and become extinct. We know transmutation is a fact because the building blocks of one creature (dna) is found in other and highest resemblance are found in the closest animal cousins.

We human beings are animals of the highest order, the best and possibly the brightest products of evolution process that lasted over 4.6 billion years on planet earth. Each complex organ that we have like eyes, nose, ears have been shaped slowly and imperceptibly by the same process.
Natural selection over such a long period has finally discovered that brain is the most powerful organ that is required for conquering the challenges of Natural world.

Therefore we exist and now we even disown the very natural world that created us by saying we are a different species unrelated to animals.
surprisingly with our intelligence we have now modified and slowed the very process of natural selection that created us. For eg survival is a goal of the natural world, so a creature that finds a food and is hungry, would jump at it and devour it but we have social manners to wait for guest to serve no matter how hungry we are. Mating and Intercourse as a means of reproduction of species has been hard wired in our genes for nearly 4.6 billion years but we now use contraceptives and also follow moral, social and ethical behaviour of the society and prevent/ curtail these natural urges. The forest life had taught us that survival of fittest is the rule and creatures don't care for the weak and its genes should perish as punishment. But we care for the sick, the downtrodden and the poor people and in effect completely destroyed the path of natural selection and made it artificial selection. The genes that survive today in humans not necessarily the strongest or the fittest ones.

Theory or Fact of Evolution (part 1)

We all have heard of Theory of evolution but most of us do not believe in it. Most people think its just a theory and has no relevance to Truth.
After all how can man come from Monkeys? If so why are monkeys now giving birth to Monkeys and not men. And then why has evolution stopped now? Why are men not evolving into some new creature? These are the questions with which most people rubbish the idea.

Another reason they enthusiastically do this is because of its conflict with their religious beliefs. If evolution is true, then where does god come into the picture? And most importantly people think its simply impossible for a super complex being like a man to have evolved by sheer accident?

People explain it as follows.  Lets take a watch as an example. Take a hammer and break the watch into bits and pieces.Put it in a closed box and shake it vigorously. Will it ever in any possibility become the same watch again? Never because it is so complex and so intricate that only a creator can fit things in the right way. If a watch with simple parts cannot evolve by accident, how can man who is million times more complex evolve automatically by accident? That justifies the presence of a creator.

Fair enough...

Let me tell you a story. You will be the main character of the story. Imagine that you are a small child living near a river. The river flows behind your house. It passes through rocky contours where you play with your friends. There is a small rock which waters slowly touch and you use it as a sitting area. The rock is a part of your childhood so you remember it well. Now imagine a 100 years have passed from the time, in these years you had grown up, got job, got married, and even became old and have retired but stayed in the same place.

One fine day in your 100th year you go back to the rock and you find some people are looking at the very rock. Viola a very beautiful design has emerged on the rock.

You immediately look at it and say water in 100 years has done a beautiful design, which people do not agree. They say there was never a water in the place and even if it was its too complex for flowing water to do it. They say there has to be a designer because the design is so complex and so beautiful. Now the river dried some years ago and a road has been laid in its place, you simply cannot prove that flowing water had made the design which you were witness to for 100 years. End result is that we have given birth to an unknown rock designer/ sculptor who never existed.

Now, we have just learned a beautiful concept, every complexity is a sum of many small simplicities, greater the complexity, greater will be the no of simplicities that have combined over a period of long time.

Small strokes of water over 100 years can make beautiful, mind boggling structures is a fact, if you doubt it how else do you explain the formation of Grand Canyon and its carved beautiful structures by the flow of River Colorado?

The crux of evolution theory is that simple forms of lives over a very large period of time can evolve into a super complex being not by accident but by a deliberate process called Natural Selection. Evolution like the rock design is simply un-ascertainable and unbelievable at a particular point of time till the design is complete.

Life on planet earth started with a single bacteria which could replicate itself, it slowly developed over a period of time into aquarian creatures like fishes and whales etc and some cells into plankton of sea which lateer developed into plants.  Some of the fishes touched the shores and they slowly adapted to the shore and became some other creatures like turtles who can live on both shores and land. The land turtle evolved into forest animals and so on.  Finally came the monkeys and viola you are reading this blog, the latest product of evolution is man.

It is extremely difficult to believe the above process but if one looks at the mountains of evidence available today to support this, a man with open mind will be convinced. 

To start with, planet earth is 4.61 billion years old and it took 1 billion years for the first bacterial cell to be made by forces of nature, in the next 3.6 billion years, life has emerged in many forms most of it destroyed some of it remains now in various forms.

Evolution happens all the time but we cant observe it because its too slow like the rock design in our example.

Evolution never says men evolve from monkeys, it says we are animals like monkeys and monkeys are our distant cousins because we have evolved from a common ancestors. The Common ancestor was neither a man nor a monkey.

Now how are we very sure about this?  Consider for example that the DNA of Human being and a Chimpanzee is 98.6 percent same. Consider that the DNA, which is the simplest form of life inside a cell has similarities in almost all forms of life.  Which means a part of a Donkey is Inside me and a part of a banana tree is inside you.  Serious.

The greatest similarities are between creatures that had a common ancestors like monkeys and men.  Like Cats and Foxes.  Like Fishes and various sea animals.  This fact is further accentuated by the evidence of fossils which are dead animals that once existed, their DNA if examined completes the mystery of evolution and all things fall in the right place in the tree of life.  Each branch leads to a new form of life and it goes without any break. 

The idea that an invisible designer created human beings is further made implausible by the fact that we still have tail bones and vestigial organs like appendix an organ used in animals to digest raw grass as a proof of our evolution.  To put tail bones in man isn't an intelligent idea to me.  The fetus inside the mothers womb develops hairy structures which disappears when the person is born, an evidence of our relationship to Chimpanzees. Tats not intelligent either.  The strongest evidence is possibly the vestigial genes found in our cells.  Vestigial genes are those genes that serve no purpose in our body but reside inside.  These genes are very similar to those found in animals.  We today have technology to study the genetic codes inside each gene and they open before our eyes the ultimate truth of life.  The codes inside the genes are so similar that one has to believe that all forms of life should have evolved from a single source.  Let me explain this further.

lets say there is a gene called B inside a Human being and the code goes like this AATTGG.  The code of the chimpanzee gene will be AATTCC. The code in distant creatures like a fox will be AATBBB.  Observe the commonalities in the code and one will start believing in evolution
The idea of a intelligent designer doesn't solve the mystery of creation but opens it, if religious zealots claim that every complex thing must have a much more complex intelligent creator, then by the same logic there has to be a creator for that creator also because the designer of such complex things has to be much more complex and intelligent.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is possibly the strongest and most potent blow to the idea of Intelligent design, today evolution is not a theory, its a fact an irrefutable fact of life, the British museum of natural history has enough fossil evidence to prove the point and so does the evidence from DNA research prove it.

(I shall discuss the concept of Natural selection in the next blog along with the watch question that remains to be answered)

Do Babies have something to teach us?

Do Babies have something to teach us?
I believe Babies have lot to tell us by their actions because their minds are free of indoctrination or influence by parents,society or our educational system.

Their actions represent the most honest and most natural form of human behavior.  The fact that a baby cannot cheat, plan or manipulate gives us an enormous opportunity to study their behavior as a means to better understand the natural world around us in truest of light.

No wonder the great scientist Albert Einstein had once said "Look closely for the actions of the small child, this is where the search for knowledge is the freshest".

The actions of a child if studied can reveal who we really are and what exactly is our relationship with the natural world around us.  It can tell us startling facts that we are not privy to or have no knowledge about.

I shall try to explain my point through simple experiments conducted by renowned Psychologists and scientists around the world.  These experiments were conducted repeatedly again and again and have yielded the same results.

Experiment 1:
Take a baby to the edge of a large cliff with ravines below.  Place it in such a way that it can fall down in the deep ravines below after some crawls. Let the baby crawl to the edge of the cliff on its own.  Do not disturb the baby let it move on its own.  Watch the actions of the baby with a closely observing its every action and every move.

Result:
In most of the cases, the baby either crawled to the edge of the cliff and stopped but did not fall down or it turned and started crawling towards the other direction after reaching the edge of the cliff but never fell down.
Now how did this happen?  Nobody taught the baby about the cliff or the dangers of falling down into the ravines.  Scientists discovered that babies are born with the inner sense of DEPTH Perception.  This is inborn to most higher animals including human babies. 

When the baby reached the edge of the cliff, it was able to automatically perceive danger by perceiving the depth of the ravines. Yes Amazing indeed.  The scientist also noted the change in iris of the eye, slight tightening of nerves of skin an other changes that are related to danger perception in human beings.

For those of you who are bothered about cruelty of this experiment, let me assure you that all safety precautions were taken to not let the baby die by actually falling into the ravines.  Some people repeated this experiment with on wall less terrace of buildings extended with transparent glass floor to fool the baby that it will fall down.  Since the baby couldn't recognize the glass floor, it never stepped on it.  wow...we just discovered that human beings are born with Depth Perception by birth.

Without going into the details, i shall explain in short the other experiments on babies:

1.A baby was allowed to be present in the dark place for small period of time, then a small streak of light was allowed to enter the place, the baby started moving towards light as it is essential for its living.  This proved that babies have inborn Light perception.

2.This is a very cruel experiment.  A head of a baby was held and slowly dipped inside the bucket of water.  No force was applied on the head of the baby.  The scientist observed that the baby tried slowly to push the hand backward.  The scientist observed that babies had air perception. It would move towards area where with oxygen to breathe and would even use physical force to get it.

There are many other experiments of this nature that confirm the facts that
most essential things for living in this planet has already been ingrained and implanted into our system by birth.  Things like depth perception, light perception, air perception are necessary for human survival so they are already present in our system.  Nobody teaches them to us. 

Now my core point here is not to discuss experiments in psychology, neither it is to showcase my bookish knowledge.  It is to ask a humble and honest question on religion and belief of God in light of the knowledge that we have gained above.  My question is very simple.

When all things essential for human survival like depth perception, light perception, air perception are already present in our system by birth, why are the signs of the Lord Almighty not so obvious in Man like one of them?

Why are babies atheist till one teaches them about God, religion, holy books and divine procedures? Why can't we feel the presence of Lord like hunger, thirst or Pain?

Why is religion an accident of birth? Your religion mostly depends on the geographical area of your birth on earth like you would be a Muslim if you were born in Saudi and some other religion if born elsewhere.

Your religious affiliation also depends on the religion of your parents without any exception.  Doesn't it tell us that religion and god are creations of man rather than vice versa?

Doesn't it tell us that the idea of religion and god is not only unnecessary but also unnatural in human survival? This is because a man can live his entire life without ever discovering god or religion.

My only point is why isn't such an important fact which is necessary for our survival and development plainly obvious like others facts of life?
Why should it be taught?