Namaste.

Namaskar or Namaste - What does it mean? 

The word Namaskar means "I bow to you". In the Yogic culture, the practice of bowing down is given great significance and is seen as a fundamental step towards one's spiritual growth. 

The Spiritual Meaning

When you see a person, whether it is in your workplace, on the street, at home or anywhere else, the nature of human intellect is such that the moment it sees, it will make a judgment - "This is okay in that person, this is not okay in that person. He is good, he is not good, he is beautiful, he is ugly" - all kinds of things. You do not even have to consciously think all these. These assessments and judgments happen in a moment and your judgments may be completely wrong because they all are coming from your past experiences of life. They will not allow you to experience something or someone the way they are right now, which is very important. If you want to work effectively in any field, if someone comes in front of you, it is most important to be able to grasp them the way they are right now. How they were yesterday does not matter. How they are at this moment is important. So, the first thing is you bow down. Once you bow down, your likes and dislikes become mild, not strong, because you recognise the source of creation within them. This is the intention behind doing Namaskar.

There is no piece of creation without the hand of the creator operating in it. The source of creation is operating within every cell and atom. This is why in Yogic culture, if you look up at the sky, the culture taught you to bow down. If you look down at the earth, you bow down. If you see a man, a woman, a child, a cow, a tree or whatever, you bow down. And it is a constant reminder that the source of creation is within you too. If you recognise this, you are paving the way towards your ultimate nature every time you do Namaskar.

The Science Behind Namaskar

There is another aspect to this. Your palms have a lot of nerve endings - something that medical science has also discovered today. Actually, your hands speak more than your tongue and your voice. There is a whole science of mudras in Yoga. Just by holding your hand in certain ways, you can make your whole system function in different ways. The moment you place your hands together, your dualities, your likes and dislikes, your cravings and aversions, are all levelled out. There is a certain oneness to the expression of who you are. The energies are functioning as one.

Namaskar is not just a cultural aspect. There is a science behind it. If you are doing your sadhana, every time you bring your palms together, there is a crackle of energy - a boom is happening. On the level of your life energy, there is a giving or you are making yourself into an offering to the other person. In that giving, you will make the other being into a life that will cooperate with you. Only if you are in a state of giving, things around will work out for you. Only if it gets the cooperation of all life around itself, it manages to prosper.

Namaskar is the simplest form of yoga. The entire physical world is a product of polarities. There is masculine and feminine, yin and yang, Shiva-Shakti, whatever you want to call it. Just put these two hands together and look upon something or someone that matters to you - your wife, your husband, your child, your mother, your father, a tree, a rock, a cloud, sun, moon, whatever you like - look upon something with loving attention for three to five minutes, you will see your system will begin to harmonize in a wonderful way.

- Sadhguru

Tailpiece.

Got up at our usual time, the chores and was ready by a half past 9.

Lekha and her sister went to the town to get the handles of a few utensils fixed. They had paid a visit to the temple too. 

Bibinlal, the hardworking and refreshingly simple youngster from the PCI had come by around 1100 hrs to carry out the quarterly pest control activity in The Quarterdeck. Through his disarmingly straightforward and simple outlook towards life, he has endeared himself to me. Would like to have him in the Foundation!  

On being the Devil's Advocate.

Have been following the news these days and a lot of queries have cropped up. Wonder whether these doubts have formed only in my mind or do many others have the same? Anyways, I'm gonna put them down so that I make my position clear which is the least I can do. 

1. The Farmers' Agitation at the Delhi Border

The farmers' agitation has been going on for over a month. Why the poor, genuine farmer is taking on the brunt of the harrowing and harsh wintry cold beats me? He doesn't have any problem with the three new farm laws that Prime Minister has provided him. My queries begin from here which are :-

* How can the unions ask for repealing the laws when the farmers of the other states are happy with them? The agitation is restricted to the farmers from Punjab predominantly * Why aren't many of the farmers from Haryana not part of the agitating group? * What business does Sikh parliamentarian, Ramandeep Brar, from Canada have in stoking the farmers' agitation? * Who's funding and provoking this agitation?

Are the Khalistani forces, at work, along with the Islamic jihadis? Why are these guys being given a free hand? Why are they being allowed to stoke anti-India sentiments when they should be put behind bars for anti-India activities on this country's soil?

2. The Vaccines India have Made

The Covishield by the Serum Institute of India and the Covaxin by the Bharat Biotech are ready for administration on the people - as per the priority decided by the government of India, beginning with the Covid-fighters - beginning next week. A political slug fest - the ugliest and surely avoidable - has begun, which directly questions the integrity of the government, the scientists, the doctors and the drug manufacturers. 

My first and foremost query on this is as to which self respecting government, scientist, doctor or drug manufacturer will make available a drug that will harm the entire population?

And as of now, everyone seems to be aware of the clinical trials and the tortuous path a new medicine takes before it's available for use in the market. To my mind by doing so, the naysayers are trying hard to bring about doubts about the medicine's efficacy in the common man's mind.

I would like to ask those fear mongers two questions which are * Aren't you proud of the fact that our country has come to the forefront in the fight against Covid? * Don't you want our vaccines to acquire an international clientele? 

The guys, politicising the issue, must be whipped and made accountable. 

3. The Wind is Changing in West Bengal

As a young cadet from the NDA, my ship was tied up alongside at the Man-o-War jetty in Calcutta, during mid-1977. I'd gone out for sight seeing in the evening and was returning by a cab when I asked its driver as to what he thought would be the results in the forthcoming Assembly elections, which was due. Without batting an eyelid he'd said, "Sahib, Congress Bay of Bengal mein doobega aur Communistwaale raj karenge". And sure enough, when the results were out, he was bang on target!

After 30 years of the communist misrule, I happened to be back at Calcutta again, on official work and this time yet another cab driver answered my question, "Sahib, communistwaale Bay of Bengal mein dubega iss bar Didi our TMC raj karenge". He was spot on, yet again, when the results were out!

I'm very keen to listen to the Calcutta cabbie's next prediction at this juncture.....because he knows the pulse of the Bengalis and he gets it right......always.  

Tailpiece.

Got up at 6, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. 

Suma had come by after the removal of the stitches from her finger. Meanwhile, she has been keeping herself busy towards getting ready for her daughter's wedding, next week. 

Spoke to Shishir 'Dadu' Ghosh, Ashok Kumar Singh and Bhupi Upadhyay who were fellow Divisional officers with me, way back in 1982, at the NDA Wing, Ghorpuri. It was great to catch up with them after what seemed to be a long time.  

A Simulated Universe? - Part II.

 .........contd

"Just as you can simulate anything else, you can simulate brains", Bostrum says. True, we don't yet have the technology to pull it off but he says there's no conceptual barrier to it. And once we create brain simulations "sufficiently detailed and accurate", he says, "it is possible that those simulations would generate conscious experiences".

The search for evidence

Will we ever learn whether the simulation hypothesis is correct? Bostrum says there's a remote chance that one day we might encounter a telltale glitch in the simulation. "You could certainly imagine a scenario where a window pops up in front of you, saying, 'You are in a simulation; click here for more information", he says. "That would be a knock-down proof".

More realistically, physicists have proposed experiments that could yield evidence that our world is simulated. For example, some  have wondered if the world is inherently "smooth" or if, at the smallest scales, it might be made of discrete "chunks" a bit like the pixels in a digital image. If we determine that the world is "pixelated" in this way, it could be evidence that it was created artificially. A team of American and German physicists have argued that careful measurements of cosmic rays could provide an answer.

What if we did confirm that we were living in a simulation? How would people react upon learning that our world and thoughts and emotions are nothing more than a programmer's zeroes and ones? Some imagine such knowledge would disrupt our lives by upending our sense of purpose and squashing our initiative. Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb says the knowledge could even trigger social unrest. Knowing that our thoughts and deeds aren't our own could "relieve us from being accountable for our actions", he says. "There is nothing more damaging to our social order than this notion".

Others imagine evidence in support of the simulation hypothesis could engender a new fear - that the creators might grow tired of the simulation and switch it off. But not Bostrum. "You could similarly ask, 'shouldn't we be in perpetual fear of dying?' You could have a heart attack or a stroke at any given point in time or the roof might fall down", he says.

Whatever we might think of the simulation hypothesis, Bostrum thinks the mere act of pondering it provides a welcome dose of humility. He cites Hamlet's cautionary remark to a friend in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" : "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

And Bostrum insists that he takes the simulation hypothesis seriously. "For me, it's not just an intellectual game", he says. "It's an attempt to orient myself in the world, as best as I can understand it".

- Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto. His books include "The Science of Shakespeare" and "In search of Time".  

Tailpiece.

Had an early morning haircut; Sajish gave me a good massage after clipping my hair. The chores and was ready by 1000 hrs.

Had gone to pull out some money from the ATM and picked up fruits.

A Simulated Universe? - Part I

Background 

After having spoken to you about the 'Many worlds' concept of Quantum Physics I thought I must give you this input too! 

Are we living in a simulated universe? Here's what scientists say, "If we are in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence". Believers in the simulation hypothesis say our world may have been created by beings more technologically savvy than ourselves.

What if everything around us - the people, the stars overhead, the ground beneath our feet, even our bodies and minds - were an elaborate illusion? What if our world were simply a hyper-realistic simulation, with all of us merely characters in some kind of sophisticated video game?

This of course, is a familiar concept from science fiction books and films, including the 1999 blockbuster movie "The Matrix". But some physicists and philosophers say it's possible that we really do live in a simulation - even if that means casting aside what we know (or think we know) about the universe and our place in it.

"If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence", Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom said in a 2003 paper that jump-started the conversation about what has come to be known as simulation hypothesis. "While the world we see is in some sense 'real', it is not located at the fundamental level of reality".

Simulating worlds and beings

Rizwan Virk, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's PlayLabs program and author of "The Simulation Hypothesis", is among those who take the simulation hypothesis seriously. He recalls playing a virtual reality game so realistic that he forgot that he was in an empty room with a headset on. That led him to wonder : Are we sure we aren't embedded within a world created by beings more technologically savvy than ourselves?

That question makes sense to Rich Terrile, a computer scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Detailed as they are, today's best simulations don't involve artificial minds, but Terrile thinks the ability to model sentient beings could soon be within our grasp. "We are within a generation of being those gods who create those universes", he says.

Not everyone is convinced. During a 2016 debate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Harvard University physicist Lisa Randall said the odds that the simulation hypothesis is correct are "effectively zero". For starters, there's no evidence that our world isn't the array of stars and galaxies that it appears to be. And she wonders why advanced beings would bother to simulate Homo sapiens. "Why simulate us? I mean, there are so many things to be simulating", she said. "I don't know why this higher species would want to bother with us".

Echoes of Genesis

Yet, there's a familiar ring to the idea that there's a simulator, or creator, who does care about us. Similarly, the idea of a superior being forging a simulated universe parallels the notion of a deity creating the world - for example, as described in the Book of Genesis. 

Some thinkers, including Terrile, welcome the analogy to religion. If the simulation hypothesis is correct, he says, then "there's a creator, an architect - someone who designed the world". It's an ancient idea recast in terms of "mathematics and science rather than just faith".

But for other scholars, University of Maryland physicist Sylvester James Gates, the similarity between the simulation hypothesis and religious belief should be taken as a warning that we're off track. Science, as he said in a recent radio interview, has taken us "away from this idea that we are puppets" controlled by an unseen entity. The simulation hypothesis, he said, "starts to look like a religion", with a programmer substituting for god.

Who, or what, is the godlike entity that may have created a simulated universe? One possibility, supporters of the simulation hypothesis say, is that it's a race of advanced beings - space aliens. Even more mind-bending is the possibility is that it's our own descendants - "our future selves", as Terrile puts it. That is, humans living hundreds or thousands of years in the future might develop the ability to simulate not only a world like ours but the bodies and minds of the beings within it.

..........to be continued.  

Tailpiece.

Got up at 6, the chores and was ready by a half past 9.

It was a quiet Monday!

 

Interesting!

An interesting point of view on the philosophy of life based on the Mahabharata war.

It is said in the texts that 80% of the fighting male population of the civilization was wiped out in the eighteen days of the Mahabharata war.

Sanjay, at the end of the war went to the spot where the greatest war took place; Kurukshetra. He looked around and wondered if the war really happened, if the ground beneath him had soaked all that blood, if the great Pandavas and Krishna stood where he stood.

"You will never know the truth about that!"said an aging soft voice. Sanjay turned around to find an Old man in saffron robes appearing out of a column of dust. "I know you are here to find out about the Kurukshetra war but you cannot know about that war till you know what the real war is about" the Old man said enigmatically.

"What do you mean?"

The Mahabharata is an Epic, a ballad, perhaps a reality but definitely a Philosophy. The Old man smiled luring Sanjay into more questions. "Can you tell me what the philosophy is then? Sanjay requested.

"Sure", began the Old man.

The Pandavas are nothing but your five senses - Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch and Sound and do you know what the Kauravas are? He asked narrowing his eyes.

The Kauravas are the hundred vices that attack your senses everyday but you can fight them! Do you know how? Sanjay shook his head again.

"When Krishna rides your chariot!"

The Old man smiled brighter and Sanjay gasped at that gem of insight.

Krishna is your inner voice, your soul, your guiding light and if you let your life in his hands you have nothing to worry.

Sanjay was stupefied but came around quickly with another question.

"Then why are Dronacharya and Bhishma fighting for the Kauravas, if they are vices?"

The Old man nodded, sadder for the question.

It just means that as you grow up, your perceptions of your elders change. The elders who you thought were perfect in your growing up years are not all that perfect. They have faults. And one day you will have to decide if they are for your good or your bad. Then you may also realise that you may have to fight them for the good. It is the hardest part of growing up and that is why the Gita is important.

Sanjay slumped down on the ground not because he was tired but because he could understand and was struck by the enormity of it all.

What about Karna? He whispered.

"Ah!" said the Old man. "You have saved the best for the last. Karna is the brother to your senses, he is desire, he is a part of you but stands with the vices. He feels wronged and makes excuses for being with the vices as your desire does all the time.

Does your desire not give you excuses to embrace vices?"

Sanjay nodded silently. He looked at the ground, consumed with a million thoughts, trying to put everything together and then when he looked up the Old man was gone......He disappeared into the column of dust........leaving behind the great Philosophy of Life! 

Tailpiece.

Got up half an hour later than usual, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. Washing machine of clothes were carried out.

Sunday morning calls to my sisters were made.

Endless worlds with countless versions of you (Part II).

 .........contd

In the familiar, human scale reality, an object exists in one well-defined place : Place your phone on your bedside table and that's the only spot it can be, whether or not you're looking for it. But in the quantum realm, objects exist in a smudge of probability, snapping into focus only when observed.

"Before you look at an object, whether it's an electron or an atom or whatever, it's not in any definite location", Carroll says. "It might be more likely that you observe it in one place or another but it's not actually located at any particular place".

Nearly a century of experimentation has confirmed that, strange as it seems, this phenomenon is a core aspect of the physical world. Even Einstein struggled with the notion : What happened to all of the other possible locations where the object could have been and all other different outcomes that could have ensued? Why should an object's behaviour depend on whether or not somebody was looking at it?

In 1957, a Princeton student named Hugh Everett III came up with a radical explanation. He proposed that all possible outcomes really do occur - but that only a single version plays out in the world we inhabit. All the other possibilities split off from us, each giving rise to its own separate world. Nothing ever goes to waste, in this view, since everything that can happen does happen in some world.

For decades, Everett's colleagues mostly brushed aside his explanation, treating it more like a ghost story than serious science. But nobody has found any flaws in Schrodinger's equation; nor can they explain away its implications. As a result, many contemporary physicists - including David Deutch at Oxford University and Max Tegmark at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - have come to agree with Carroll that the many worlds interpretation is the only coherent way to understand quantum mechanics.

A field guide to many worlds

The many worlds interpretation raises all kinds of puzzling questions about the multiple versions of reality and about the multiple versions of you that exist in them. Carroll has some answers.

If new universes are constantly popping into existence, isn't something being created from nothing, violating one of the most basic principles of physics? Not so, according to Carroll : "It only looks like you are creating extra copies of the universe. It's better to think of it as taking a big thick universe and slicing it".

Why do we experience one particular reality but none of the others? "It's like asking why you live now instead of some other time. Everyone in every world thinks that they're in that world".

Carroll also has a disappointing response for one of the most compelling questions of all : Could you cross over and visit one of the other realities and compare notes with an alternate-world version of yourself? "Once the other worlds come into existence, they go their own way", Carroll says. "They don't interact, they don't influence each other in any form. Crossing over is like travelling faster than the speed of light. It's not something that you can do".

War of the many worlds

One criticism of the many worlds interpretation is that while it offers a colourful way to think about the world, it doesn't deliver any insight into how nature works. "It is completely content-less", says physicist Christopher Fuchs of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Fuchs favours an alternative called Quantum Bayesianism, which offers a path to an old-fashioned single reality. He argues that the universe changes when you look at it not because you are creating new worlds but simply because observation requires interacting with your surroundings. No coffee dates, no other lives for you. "In this way, measurement is demoted from being something mystical to being about things as mundane as walking across a busy street : It's an action I can take that clearly has consequences for me", he says.

- Corey S Powell

Two observations of the day

(a) The representatives of the striking farmers have said that in the event of the talks, scheduled with the government on 04 Jan, failing they would be marching with their tractors on the Rajpath on 26 Jan. So two things are getting clear :-

      (i) They don't intend coming to an agreement during the discussions on the 4th. 

     (ii) Their intention is to disrupt the Republic Day parade - where the British PM, Boris Johnson is the chief guest - so that they deride the government and Modi, in particular, to get publicity and score brownie points! Don't they love their country?

(b) Akhilesh Yadav has issued a statement that he'll not let the BJP's vaccine to be administered on himself. What a cheap and narrow minded political statement? By saying so, he has questioned the professionalism of the scientists who have worked hard to make the vaccines a reality.

Tailpiece.

Got up at 6, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. 

Participated in the Aazhchakkoottam : Life beyond Covid in 2021 by PP James, Editor-in-charge, 24 News (Flowers TV) from 1600-1730 hrs. It was interesting.

  

Endless worlds with countless versions of you(Part I)

According to the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics, there may be multiple copies of us living in multiple worlds.

Ever wonder what would have happened if you'd taken up the "Hey, let's get coffee" offer from the cool classmate you once had? If you believe some of today's top physicists, such questions are more than idle what-ifs. Maybe a version of you in another world did go on that date and is now celebrating your 10th wedding anniversary.

The idea that there are multiple versions of you, existing across worlds too numerous to count, is a long way from our intuitive experience. It sure looks and feels like each of us is just one person living just one life, waking up every day in the same, one-and-only world.

But according to an increasingly popular analysis of quantum mechanics known as the "many worlds interpretation" every fundamental event that has multiple possible outcomes - whether it's a particle of light hitting Mars or a molecule in the flame bouncing off your teapot - splits the world into alternate realities.

Multiple splits, multiple worlds

Even to seasoned scientists, it's odd to think that the universe splits apart depending on whether a molecule bounces this way or that way. It's odder still to realise that a similar splitting could occur for every interaction taking place in the quantum world.

Things get downright bizarre when you realise that all those subatomic splits would also apply to bigger things, including ourselves. Maybe there's a world in which a version of you split off and bought a winning lottery ticket. Or maybe in another, you tripped at the top of a cliff and fell to your death - oops.

"It's absolutely possible that there are multiple worlds where you made different decisions. We're just obeying the laws of Physics", says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the author of a new book on many worlds titled "Something Deeply Hidden". Just how many versions of you might there be? "We don't know whether the number of worlds is finite or infinite but it's certainly a very large number", Caroll says. "There's no way it's, like, five".

Caroll is aware that the many worlds interpretation sounds like something plucked from a science fiction movie. (It doesn't help that he was an adviser on "Avengers : Endgame") And like a Hollywood blockbuster, the many worlds interpretation attracts both passionate fans and scathing critics.

Renowned theorist Roger Penrose of Oxford University dismisses the idea as "reductio ad absurdum" : physics reduced to absurdity. On the other hand, Penrose's former collaborator, the late Stephen Hawking, described the many worlds interpretation as "self-evidently true".

Carrol himself is comfortable  with the idea that he's but one of many Sean Carrolls running around in alternate versions of reality. "The concept of a single person extending from birth to death was always just a useful approximation", he writes in his new book and to him the many worlds interpretation merely extends that idea : "The world duplicates and everything within the world goes along with it".

How did we get here?

The mind-bending saga of the many worlds interpretation began in 1926 when Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger mathematically demonstrated that the subatomic world is fundamentally blurry.

.........to be continued.

Tailpiece.

Got up at 6, the chores and was ready by 10. Earlier, washing machinex was carried out on the soiled clothes post-trip.

It's dad's 9th remembrance day and Lekha and I had offered 'bali tharpanam' at our courtyard. The crows took a while to peck at it.