While suffering from viral fever last week, I did get some extra time to think and study about viruses. Being a Naturopath and Aromatherapist myself, I usually prepare my own medications. This article is a post viral product when I started comparing the nature of viruses with many real life entities. You may have heard that the virus is lifeless until it is attached to some living entity. For this reason most antibiotics are not able to directly confront the viral diseases. Virus shields itself in the outside world as it is able to pretend that it is a harmless, lifeless cell. There are many people in real life also who pretend to be harmless, but they become devastating when they get the opportunity to find a base. Our political people often provide this base in the urge of getting and holding the power. In the International scenario we can see that fire-arms were supplied consciously to many rebellion groups by the nations which are now most vulnerable against terrorism. Many such viruses take a shelter behind the religious masks to empower themselves and then do all sorts of devastations later on. It is true that without such masks and substrates these viruses are lifeless. An ice-cream distributor finds such a substrate in the instructions of some terror group and he kills hundreds of people on the roads of Nice in France. Some group of viruses found the base in speeches of some self labeled preacher, and they selectively kill many in a restaurant in Bangladesh. Antidote for all kinds of viruses needs to be found. Before the biological virus, we need to do some serious research on this “Thought Virus”. How come some people are able to implant thought viruses so easily? Something in our social systems must have failed in past few years. Governments, legal systems, military forces are not powerful enough to fight this menace. Society need to provide some solutions. History has many examples of social reformers who could make impact in such situations earlier. We know about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Great Jesus himself. I am getting an intuition as if such a reformer is already born. He will give us light to get rid of all such viruses. But this time he will not embody into one individual. Each one of you will get his powers and will be able to rise against the thought viruses. Are you ready? The power will soon be inside you. 

For a very long
period I had a belief that the ranking of money comes much below than faith,
trust, respect etc. I always believed that religious faith is a genuine
attribute found in most human beings. I thought that when people pray, they
pray for wellness of self and everyone around them. The happenings in our
country and globally are forcing me to consider another aspect of faith, which
is money. The only faith seems to be money for a very large chunk in the
current social system. The so called growing religious fanatism is nothing but
a way of earning livelihood for many. Obviously this route does have enough
scope of crossing the limits and it becomes a sort of greed which is no more
for livelihood alone. A king clad like a normal person, decided to stay in an
inn. A priest was also staying in the same inn. By the way the baggage of both
king and the priest were of same shape, size and colour. When they checked out
in the morning there baggage gets exchanged. When the king thought of changing
his clothes while on his way back, he opened the baggage and saw that it was
full of cash and two small clay statues of worship idols. He decided to return
to the inn for returning this bag to the priest. By the time priest had already
returned to the inn with few policemen and with a baggage containing the royal
clothes. He had reported to the police regarding the theft of his baggage along
with the amount it contained. The policemen also doubted the king, if he had
also made a theft in the palace. Finally the king had to come in his royal
avatar to prove innocence. He also asked the priest regarding why he had not
reported regarding the missing statues. The priest answered, “I can buy many
such statues with the cash I had, but statues can’t get me anything”. The king
was surprised with this answer from a priest whose job is to make people,
believers of religion. This is a simple story is without a great climax, but it
does have a message about the realities around us. Now apply these realities to
any and every religion, you will discover the same truth, that “Supreme God is
Money”. No, No! Please do not reach any conclusion about my personality with
this statement. My beliefs are still not shattered, but I must admit that I do
see a lot of foundations being broken all around me. Are you feeling a similar
pain, please do share your pain with me, it will get reduced by sharing.

We either believe in something or we pretend to believe, but one thing we definitely do is to try convincing others that what we believe in is the ultimate way to solve all problems. Some people specialise in the art of convincing a sufficiently large section of people to believe in their beliefs. Sometimes the commerce of convincing starts taking over the system of beliefs itself. Long ago I heard a story of a lady who was recently married and was about to enter her new house along with her husband. A bride entering her new house is in itself one of the marriage ceremonies and some rituals were getting performed. This bride observed an interesting thing. Her mother-in-law who was approaching her for ceremonies did a very unique act. This bride saw a cat being covered by a bamboo basket. It must have been done with the intention that the cat doesn’t disturb the ceremonies. Interestingly the bride took this episode like a ceremony in itself. When this bride grew old and the great moment of welcoming her daughter-in-law came, she decided to repeat all the ceremonies she was subjected to. She became adamant to find a cat and a bamboo basket before she would welcome the new bride. Her requests were fulfilled; she repeated the custom with lot of pride and allowed to let the new bride in. Before I delve deeper into any sensitive issues, I just believe that the way some political, religious and other leaders are running the commerce of convincing others is like circumstantial customs of olden days are still being carried as a heavy baggage. I am not trying to convince you with my belief; I am just sharing my impression and my own perception. If you share a similar opinion, please do give your feedback. 

Human beings have a racial quality of comparing things. While it is common to compare resources amongst different people, some people have made good comparisons for measuring things like beauty and brains. A famous benchmarking system for beauty comes from none other than the creator of “Monalisa” painting, Leonardo da Vinci and for brain it comes from Alfred Binet, the creator of IQ test scale called the Binet Simon scale. Can there be a scale to find out how much religious a person is.

Today the world is full of people doing various things and bluffing people by saying that they are doing everything for religion. People are comparing religious beliefs and are going to the extent of declaring I am more religious than you so I have the right to live and you don’t. Some people have even tried to bring scales to measure religiousity in a personality of a particular Individual, by framing various questions. It is primarily related to faith in certain happenings beyond logic. But what pinches every right minded person is the comparision of one stream of faith with another stream of faith. When I try to discuss these things with youth of today, I clearly find that the aethist nature is growing, but negative instincts still rules the roosts and when situation arises people do depict a confused state of mind. So friends! I urge the “Generation Z’, to ask themselves, whether they are bluffing their beliefs or if there is a solid measureable foundation, similar to measuring beauty and measuring brains.

Human beings have a racial quality of comparing things. While it is common to compare resources amongst different people, some people have made good comparisons for measuring things like beauty and brains. A famous benchmarking system for beauty comes from none other than the creator of “Monalisa” painting, Leonardo da Vinci and for brain it comes from Alfred Binet, the creator of IQ test scale called the Binet Simon scale. Can there be a scale to find out how much religious a person is. Today the world is full of people doing various things and bluffing people by saying that they are doing everything for religion. People are comparing religious beliefs and are going to the extent of declaring I am more religious than you so I have the right to live and you don’t. Some people have even tried to bring scales to measure religiousity in a personality of a particular Individual, by framing various questions. It is primarily related to faith in certain happenings beyond logic. But what pinches every right minded person is the comparision of one stream of faith with another stream of faith. When I try to discuss these things with youth of today, I clearly find that the aethist nature is growing, but negative instincts still rules the roosts and when situation arises people do depict a confused state of mind. So friends! I urge the “Generation Z’, to ask themselves, whether they are bluffing their beliefs or if there is a solid measureable foundation, similar to measuring beauty and measuring brains. 

He was the designated head of the organization, where I went to attend a special function. After few initial ceremonies and brief speeches were over, then came the turn for him to speak. It was a simple topic, where he did explain few standard points, some with regular boredom and some with a little humor. Other speakers in the queue thought that okay the talk would be over soon. But the wait for them was far from being over. It went on and on and became repetitive after first few minutes itself. He being the designated head, no body reminded him about the time. Finally after some deliberations between the anchor person and another senior person an indication was passed on to the speaker. After the indication also the repetitive narration continued on. What a great relief! The speaker asked everyone, “Did you understand?”. Everyone in the audience loudly replied in affirmation. “If you still have any doubts, please ask me now”, again reiterated the speaker. Listeners went numb and finally the time to end the talk came. 
Many of you must have seen a similar situation in your lives too. Some speakers are literally, unstoppable. The message of this post for you is simple. If you are a public speaker, do you understand your limits? If you are one such unstoppable speaker, your public speaking days will surely be limited. As much listeners want interesting content, they also want that such content shall be delivered to them in a particular time that can be within the cognitive abilities of common people. 
And if you have not guessed it by now, let me tell you that, I was the next speaker in the above episode. Fortunately, I had a brief and to the point talk and I got the audience attention I needed. Every such small episode gives me the lessons of life which I share with the “Generation Z”.

I know someone, who is a peculiar personality. If anything is told to him for doing, he always asks, “What is the advantage of doing this?”. The answer to this question is always likely to raise a chain of many other questions and advantage of any such queued question becomes rather difficult to explain. So one gets a feeling that why tell him any work at all. I was discussing this problem with my mentor and Guru. He told me that we are living in a age where every action is valued before taking instructions from someone else. Very often this value is in monetary terms. Explaining advantage further complicates the relationship. It is better that let a person is left to understand the advantages himself. Some time we understand as if this problem is a problem of new generation. In my opinion it is a issue related to specific Individuals and is in a way some instinct developed since childhood. It is sometime seen in very experienced persons also. Sometime there is no matured and convincing person around to explain that many actions do not need such elaborate calculation of advantage and disadvantage. Suppose if I ask someone, what is the advantage of Education, answer could be rather long and queued with supplementary questions. So friends, please do not try to find advantage in reading my articles. Just read them and retain whatever is of your liking. 

This understanding just came when I was co-working with a yoga teacher to create an online course on his request. Actually my yoga friend is too religious and some time he pushes so much religious thoughts into his yoga practice that whether the course we are designing will appeal to international audience or not, becomes my concern. One such discussion day he mentioned to me about the choices he had after retirement. He could have either become a spiritual person or could have taken some work assignments in his field. By the way he is a retired engineer from IIT. He told that he opted for spiritual field and started working for yoga. He also established a full-fledged religious ashram with inspiration from his long time religious Guru. Suddenly a sentence came out of my lips, “But I thought spirituality is just a tool to help us do our work better, the way computer is a tool to do my work little more efficiently”. To my surprise, he immediately agreed. My perception of spirituality is to have strong belief in doing welfare of spirits all around us. These spirits could be people, animals, plants or even the so called non-living world. A carpenter shaping a wood piece is spirituality. I see it in a software programmer, a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, a teacher, a farmer on their regular assignments. I smell it in flowers, I taste it in food, I watch it in the rising or setting sun, I sense it on anything I touch, I can hear it all around me. I know it is there even in those things, which I can’t sense. Spirituality is definitely there in the places where I go with my demands, my places of worship. It is as much there where I leave all my demands, the funeral places. Do I need to learn it to practice it? Probably yes, the way any other tool is required to be learnt to use it correctly, spirituality do require some training. The teacher is our intention to do things upright for the welfare of spirits and not for the destruction of other things around thinking that we will win, if others loose. You are intelligent enough to find examples of situations where spiritual winning is possible, without others spirits being on the losing side. Let us learn this tool together. 
Dr. Sunil Ji Garg

Our film industry legend Mr. Amitabh Bachchan had narrated this incidence many times. Whenever he had any problems and wanted advice from his revered father Dr Harivansh Rai Bachchan, He always got the advice that, “If it happens according to your wish it is good and if it doesn’t happen the way you wanted, it is even better”. It took Amitabh some time to understand the magic behind this unusual advice. When things don’t go your way, then they are probably going the way things are destined to be happening. It is a good way of consoling oneself that destiny judges and controls the event of things better than we are able to control such things. Some people will say that continuous efforts and being passionate about certain actions can also change the course of destiny. I do agree, but with an over rider, that if prolonged efforts are filling us with negative thoughts, leaving things to destiny might give us a temporary relief. This relief helps us to recollect ourselves, change our strategies and then make new, much more vigorous efforts. Legends do fail. For a small period things are left for someone else to decide and then destiny itself provides a better pathways and alternatives to action takers. Alternatives do come in front of lazy people as well but most of the time they ignore alternatives and drop down their guns. So friends! Keep your guns filled, you will surely get more chances. 

Some Tuesdays in summers are considered very very auspicious and special in our town, Lucknow. People call them “Bara Mangal”. Incidentally today also when I am keying in this article, it happens to be one of such Tuesday. On previous Tuesday, when our family was strolling around in the nearby market area, we decided to enter a temple to pay respect to the Tuesday idol “Lord Hanuman”. Suddenly the priest and his allies started sounding the temple bells with full force. It was the time of the evening prayer. It was a small temple and the temple bells were rather large. The thumping sound of the bells made me feel uncomfortable and we came out of the temple room. I did remember the famous couplet from Saint Kabir, who objected to sounds from religious places, arguing if the God has become deaf or what? I narrated the same couplet to my son and he also remembered that he read it in his school days. 
That day itself, I decided to share this episode with my readers. Later, I searched the net for knowing the related facts. With the kind of experience I had, I can tell you that the sound we were forced to listen inside the small temple room must have been in the order of 130 to 140 decibels. It was deafening and made all of us feel giddy. More than 90 db we start feeling discomfort and with every 10 db increase the intensity of sound actually doubles. Sometimes I feel that the custom of making high volume sounds along with religious prayers might have been by design a method to hallucinate the people standing there, so that they give more donations and offerings. The minds become so blank after hearing such sounds, that whatever the priests says appears to be true. When I dig deeper into the ancient history, the custom of making sounds might actually be a way to keep jungle animals away from the place of dwellings. Along with evening food that people cooked on fire, they used to sing and dance around the fire, which was a form of God for them. Then they created clay or stone idols and placed it nearby and started worshipping them. A system that was created due to a need actually carried through centuries and today also we are making unreasonably high decibels of noise on daily basis in the name of worship. We have laws, but implementation is definitely challenging. Even few steps like making smaller bell size, controlling PA system volumes and following strict time guidelines can help a lot. God is already listening to us; we don’t have to awake him by our more than 100 db efforts.