Why Do You Want To Change Me? - Santosh Jha (good non fiction books to read txt) 📗

and ideal. The difference is in the mechanism only. Once we understand the objective and provable mechanism, we shall have ease in understanding the fruition and utility of holism, assimilation and integration of all wisdoms of humanity – old and new.

Reception of pain in mind is a sensor mechanism; one cannot stop that at entry point. However, mind also has ‘processing’ neurons, which is what science as well as religion-philosophy calls ‘higher conscious’. These processing neurons, forming our higher consciousness, can be trained not to react to the pains in usual emotions, rather accept it as an emotion of larger ‘wellness’, thus creating a ‘feeling’ that results in less suffering. Science admits, effective meditation can curb the sufferings upto 70%. Buddhist monks do it 99%. This is mind training, no miracle.

The sensory organs shall automatically inform the brain about the pain and if not trained and attained, the brain shall react to the pain situation in the usual way. However, this reaction to pain by our consciousness is only generic as it is common to all living being. However, when we introduce elements of mind consciousness into it, we have a completely different processing of the same stimulus of pain. The mind consciousness is a functional pathway and handles the intangibles, which are part of our knowledge. This is different processing from what brain does as it is physical pathway and creates generic subject. The mind consciousness introduces intangible elements like determination, perseverance, endurance, imaginative brilliance, past experiences of handling other pains and suddenly, the same pain is accepted and valued by the subject differently. An average person with an untrained and unattained mind consciousness is a generic subject and it shall react to a pain in a generic way, as his or her physical pathway of brain processing shall deliberate. A monk has a trained and attained mind consciousness and for the monk, as intangible elements of endurance, imaginative brilliance et al come into processing of the same stimulus of pain, the specific consciousness overrides the decision-matrix of the generic subject and the same pain becomes a pleasant proposition or the pain is felt less. This is the magic of intangible elements and the specific mind consciousness. We all need to change this generic consciousness into the specific consciousness by imaginatively building up the intangible elements, which form our knowledge.

A situation is not the same for different people. How good or bad one accepts a situation as, depends on his past experience with a same or similar situation as well as the iconic-reaction one had earlier stored in mind as ‘experience’. For example, I fell from my cycle when I was a kid. It hurt a lot but blood did not come out. Therefore, what I said to myself was, “Oh, it is nothing as blood has not come out.” And, I continued with cycling even as it pained a lot. I did say so because my mother would scream at me only when she would see me with a mishap where blood came out. Therefore, it was already there in my mind as ‘referral’ experience that bad is something which has a relationship with blood.

Next time I fell and if again blood did not come out, I would say, the mishap is not bad, even if it broke my bones. However, if I fell and blood came out, I would say, the mishap is a huge one, even when I would feel no or little pain. The feeling I shall have of a pain depends on my ‘particular and subjective’ emotions “learnt” from my experience. This is a cultural burden on my mind-consciousness, as I am being subjective in my decision-making about ‘actual problem’, as against the requirement of being objective.

I need to “undress” my mind-consciousness of my archetypal subjective ‘benchmarks’ of ‘pain-assessment’. It is clear to an outsider that I am either under-assessing or over-assessing my actual pain because of my subjective consciousness. I need to ‘undress’ the element of my ‘mother-factor’ in my ‘assessment’ of pain. This is tough for me, easy for anyone else as the ‘subjectivity’ has now engrained in my mind and has become part of my instinctive decision-making. I can be ‘intelligent’ only when I am able to understand that and do this “undressing”, before it is too late.

Experts say, ‘You’ are a mental function that is filtered through selected memories. ‘You’ have chosen (probably not consciously) these memories to dress up the function that creates you. If the function that is ‘you’ were not dressed up with subjective personality and character, it would be a ghost. The basic function that makes ‘you’ possible is more of what ‘you’ are than how ‘you’ have dressed it up. What we (outsiders, and even ‘you’) recognize about your ‘self’ is your personality and character that manifests in your organism’s internal and external behavior. The function that creates ‘you’ is made apparent by being dressed up with character and personality.”

From the functioning of our minds, we now know that it is instinctive in human neural system to accept training and compete to become better. We also now know that what works for us is instincts. Majority of our decisions are instinctive and intuitive. So, intelligence is in conditioning our instincts through self-control, self-discipline and objectively train it to accept only those values as referral for instinctive value-summation which are proven, measurable, singular and objective. We now have a scientific value matrix, which also must be known, understood and accepted for mind-evolution of a uniform global culture, as against multitude of conflicting and competing ethnic cultures.

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No Truth Is Truth, If Not My Truth

Change has never been that important and option-less as it is now. We all live in a contemporary culture, which needs to change drastically. There are larger issues of hypocrisies and sadomasochism, which have become part of our popular cultures. There are perfunctory pursuits of pop benchmarks of successes, a passion-oriented male worldview of karma and life’s purposes. We need to opt for a journey that takes us far away from the stupidity of self-worth, calculated in terms of personal utility, individualistic possession and unfettered consumption. The hypocrisies, which the popular benchmarks of the societal notions fill up our professional as well as personal universe with, the hypocrisy of art and lies about idealisms are taking a toll on our wellness and personal excellence. This is high time we all need to change.

Interestingly, it is this pop culture and milieus filled up with hypocrisies, which make us defend status quo. It is this inertia of comfort with the current hypocrisy that makes us say, “Why do you want to change me? Why cannot you accept things with me as they are? After all it is my life… and what’s wrong if I live happily with my truths… I do have the right to do so… and why not?...” etc..

One can say, “why not… this looks like a very just desire… a very simple and honest requirement, not to mention that it is the core-idea of modern liberal philosophy”. And, these are not modern words. Since millions of years, man has been mouthing them and today, it is a popular social benchmark of all successful people. The questions have ‘singular’ answer, though not acceptable! The populist mantra, which pampers you saying, “Be Yourself” is something the markets and economics make you believe in. Being yourself is a sure call for you to remain as indecisive as you are and keep drifting with the populist benchmarks of self-worth, calculated in terms of personal utility, individualistic possession and unfettered consumption. This suits the bazaar and liberal economy.

Look at some facts available in public domain:

“The world is facing unprecedented food crisis… about one billion people worldwide are starving and many nations facing unprecedented food-crisis. This despite the fact that global food storage is 1.5 times the food requirement, growth in food production is higher than population growth. Interestingly, many nations, having large chunk of hungry population have surplus of food production & storage and markets are flooded with food stuffs but the buyers have gone away as large many of them can’t afford them… etc.”

The singularity of truth is that the crisis is all man-made, the problem being structural, not real but it has no acceptance with larger population and leaderships. Now, sample some facts that are also common knowledge for almost all those who are aware and concerned:

• 80% of world’s food products are consumed by only 20% of affluent people, rest of 80% people has to struggle with remaining 20% food. One billion people worldwide face starvation and hunger.

• 70% of USA’s food grains are used as cattle-feed to raise beef output for human consumption at cheap rates. Cereal prices have risen many times.

• A large chunk of productive lands of the world are being used to raise sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, and some other products that are largely consumed by 20% of the affluent people of the world. None of them has good nutrient value, rather they are unhealthy, leading to myriad of diseases.

• World’s best lands are being used to produce cash crops at the cost of cereals, making cost of poor man’s food rise beyond their meager purchasing power.

• 5% of developed and developing nations’ grain coverage areas have been diverted to raise biofuels to make fuel for cars cheap. As per experts, this has caused food prices to go up by 75%.

• Large tracts of productive forestlands of poor nations are being cleared to raise cattle to supply them as beef consumption of USA and Europe. Etc.

• Productive agro-lands, hitherto producing cereals are being made available for construction of apartments, malls and multiplexes.

• Farmers providing food to you is now a misnomer. Farming is growingly being overtaken by corporate. Today three big companies control the world’s grain trade. A Chemical giant controls three-fifths of seed production.

• Over 10% of food is wasted globally by affluents as left-overs and selective-eating is on the up. America wastes around 40% of its food.

Still, we can say, “So..?, it is my life, my choice of my truth…! I may like to eat a lot of sugar… the cakes, pastry and sweets… what’s your problem… it’s my life… what harm am I doing to anybody?” The harm is quite visible. It results in one billion people on earth going hungry as they cannot afford rising prices of wheat and rice… we have made something our daily consumption need, which is supposed to be a luxury!

One can say, “What I can do if a billion people are hungry, I did not ask them to come to this world… and, why on earth can they not work out what their problem is? … so foolish of them…!” And then, a quarter of world’s population becomes diabetic… the precious moneys are drained in medicines, hospitalization, lifestyle correction, lost productivities, which is at the cost of withdrawing the precious subsidies on food. Half of USA’s population is facing the epidemic called obesity, many nations have 20-30% population as obese and still, one billion people on this planet are starved and hungry. Another billion is malnourished. This truth is ‘No Truth’ as it is not ‘My Truth’.

A less than two-dollar burger with beef actually costs 35 dollars to the nation (half of USA’s water goes to raise cattle, etc) but then, “it is not ‘my truth’ so cannot be the ‘truth’…” Strange singularity! Billions of individual truths are emanating from the ‘singularity’ of one truth – the base human instinct of self-gratification… the ‘me-my life-my truth’ has 7 billion shades but the parent color is one – ‘self-gratification/Self-importance’… and, why should anyone want to change it… why?

Still, many cannot understand, why some people want to change this all… “God has created this all… whatever has happened, whatever is happening and whatever shall happen… if one billion people are dying of hunger then it is God’s trouble, or of those who say they are world leaders … only God knows