Post liberalization, India has seen some very positive changes in a few fields of public service, the notable being in the retail banking field. Some of these changes have eased the common problems faced by the small individual customers to a greater extent while some other changes have made the people to consider banks as officially patronized looters.

My intention is not to write about all of them. I am just trying to share some of my recent experiences. The banking authorities and the staff could may consider these as some feed backs from an individual customer and may think of taking some lessons for improving their acts, if ever they take these in that manner.

The first experience to share is as a customer of the largest public sector bank of India-the State Bank of India (SBI). I have been a customer of this bank for the last over three decades. In the earlier days the branches of SBI and all other nationalized banks appeared more or less the same manner. Shabby, humid, and crowded with a few caged counters behind which those counter clerks performed their acts as if they were doing some great favor to the customers. They treated the individual customers with contempt especially when the customer crowd was more. Even on those days when crowd was less, the time to get your task done used to be more or less the same. Because on such occasions the clerks did their work at leisure. Those were the days when all works used to be done manually and fat banking ledger books and the various paper instruments had to be moved from table to table by the most important functionary of the bank-the peon.

Then came the early era of computerized banking. Nothing much got changed with regard to the customer friendliness. The time taken for some work to be done in the bank for an individual almost the same as before, because this time the bank staff got various kinds of excuses related to non functional computers and printers.

Banking experience for the individual customers dramatically changed when the government allowed a few private new wave banks to get in to the act of banking. The ICICI bank was the first among this group which made a drastic change in the way the Indian banks worked. All of a sudden, the Indian people saw air conditioned bank branches which treated customers much differently than the existing nationalized banks. Added to this comfort was the ease at which these new banks introduced much efficient and proven computer software as compared to their public sector counter parts. The new wave private banks also implemented recruitment policies in such a way that they almost eliminated the clerical staff and got fresh talents with better educational qualifications and essential training to man their retail banking branches as junior officers. This helped them to implement single window customer relations desks in their branches where each individual customer got some personalized attention. Banking was no more a dreaded experience in India !

Almost all the nationalized banks thereafter have been spending crores of rupees to implement face lifting acts for their branches. Now almost all banks branches in India, at least in the urban areas, regardless of they being in the public sector or private sector, are air conditioned and apparently have good aesthetic appearances. However, the cultural legacy of the public sector banks continue as they could not do much to improve the personal attitudes of their lower level employees.

All these banks together must have installed thousands of ATMs across the country in the last one decade. However, it is a common experience now for the customers that many ATM kiosks are not maintained properly by the respective banks. Non performing ATM machines are a regular feature. Non availability of lower denomination currency notes and delivery of currency notes of shabby quality are all common.[ This blog gives some more insights about the ATM kiosks of India.]

The advent of internet banking in the recent years have made banking much easier and comfortable for people like me. Now-a-days, people like me have to seldom go to the bank branches for routine banking. But if you are required to go for some purposes, the experiences may not be always very pleasant. That is what my recent experiences teach me especially when it is banks like the SBI.

I have been a customer of the SBI in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh for about three decades where in one of its branches I had my savings bank account to which my salary used to be credited from my employer. Through the same branch, I took a housing loan and the loan account also was linked to the same account and the EMIs used to be deducted regularly as per standing instructions. Then my work place changed to Ranchi and the SBI branch in Ranchi duly got my account transferred to their branch on my request. But, the the loan account was non-transferable due to some administrative problems and that account got remained at Bhilai. However, as an internet banking customer, my account showed all details at one place and I never felt any discomfort. A few months ago, my loan was fully paid back and was duly discharged. Now my problem was to take back my security documents from the bank. To be fair enough, this should be done by my branch at Ranchi. They should be in a position to get my documents from their counter parts at Bhilai and deliver the same to me at Ranchi.

But the SBI does not operate that way as I have been told. I had to go all the way to Bhilai and spend a few days to get me back the papers ! A spent customer is of no value to this bank ! Once their purpose is served, they would simply discard you without providing the final relief. Okay, I took the pains to travel to Bhilai and had to spend nearly two days to get a simple discharge memo issued from my original bank. Remember, it is just a matter of three minutes for the staff to get the same and give it to me. But they would not do it so easily, even when they knew that I had come all the way from a distant place for that purpose. The culture of this bank is to create problem to the customer if it is possible and get enjoyment from that small sadism.

However, with the help of some helping friends, I got the discharge certificate issued from the concerned branch at Bhilai. Now, this bank has a centralized loan processing office in Bhilai which they call by some alphabets which is not so easy to remember. This is the place where they keep the security documents under lock and key under the custody of a document custody officer. Now I was required to go to this person with the certificate issued by one of their branch located a few kilometers away. It is worth noting here that some of my friends had to spend a day to find out the procedure of getting the documents returned back from this bank. They seldom give such information in their website !

When I reached the document officer, there were another two customers with him. He was an young man. Though he did not show the type of nasty face some of his older colleagues in similar situations would have done ( usually they ask the customer to come the next day even if the work involves just a few minutes !) he was also not very enthusiastic to give a quick service to any one. All the three of us, one an old lady, were waiting patiently for almost an hour for him to complete the tasks. By this time his assistant had located the document file and brought it to his desk and he had made us sign few forms as a preliminary to return the documents.

The events that happened in the same place a couple of year ago while was working in Bhilai at the same place flashed through my memory. That time I was required to take back the security documents related to my car loan. That time another man was there. There were at least five persons waiting. But I got the papers back within about 20 minutes. But this time, I had come all the way from a distant place and that fact I had already told this young man, who is perhaps of lesser age than my children. He was showing that he was working hard, but the time was running out and the time was very precious for me that moment. I had other works also to do before I returned to Ranchi ! The time is already 6.00 pm and as scheduled the pick up car had come to the bank and the driver phoned me for me to come out to be dropped in my hotel. The young bank man told me that it is going to take some more time and informed me that I could go and return after an hour or so as his office would remained opened upto 8.00 pm in the night ! So, I decided to leave then and come back after an hour or so.

Around seven I get a call from this SBI officer. Initially I thought thanking him for calling me to tell that my work is completed. But no ! He called me to tell me that it would not be possible for him to return my documents. Because, he found that my security documents that I had given in the bank as a security for my loan had the name of my son too as a co-owner of the property and hence my son too should come to the bank to receive the documents. A new strange demand indeed. Evidently displaying the sadism of the employees of the bank to harass unprepared customers to the maximum. Since I do not live in Bhilai and my son does not live with me, the harassment would have the highest effect ! Imagine, it is my document. I have settled all dues with the bank and a certificate to that effect is duly issued. They should have returned the documents to me through my branch at my place of residence. They have not. And now when I have traveled all the way spending much money and time just to take back my documents, this fellow is making a new excuse. Good customer care by the SBI ? Is n't it ? This is how this bank trains their junior officers !

Okay. There is no point in arguing with such morons. I returned back to the bank hurriedly. It was going to be 8.00 pm. If I did not reach by that time this fellow would go home and I would not get even the discharge papers that I had given him earlier ! That means additional number of stays in the hotel and missing my hard earned railway reservations to return home !

I reached to his desk in time. I tried to reason with him as a last effort. The fellow is not at all considerate. Finally, I asked him to keep my documents in his own custody for some more years ( I had no immediate use of those except that those are some the stamp papers of registration that shows my ownership of the residential property that I acquired with my hard earned savings and paying much of that to this bank as interests !)

But I requested him to write down the reasons for not returning my documents back to me even after my loans are fully settled and discharged a few months ago.

Then I got the next shock. He, being an officer of the bank, refused to write that. He said that would be written by his boss, the head of his loan branch. Had he been a non-officer, I could have understood that. But here he is an officer ! What officer ? I asked my self ! Now, where is his boss sitting ? Already it is the closing time. The boss might have left and I ought to stay back in this place just for nothing !

But fortunately, the boss had not left. It was a lady of my age ! Just then I noticed her name. It sounded familiar. Then I remembered. We knew each other. Yes, she was very happy to meet me. We exchanged a few minutes of pleasantries and then I told her my problem. She was quick enough to write an instruction to her junior officer and was considerate enough to accompany me to his desk to give the personal instructions.

Yes, I was fortunate. I got my valuable documents without future troubles.

But then I was thinking ! What if I did not know some one there personally ? How these bank fellows create trouble to those customers who happened to be of that category !

This is just one such example that I faced from the bank where I have been a customer for thirty odd years. I had much worse experiences there, every time to be sorted out with the help of some known officer. Remember, none of these problems were due to any mistake from my side.

On the other hand, I am also a customer to the new era banks like the ICICI and the Axis bank. Rarely I was required to go to these banks. But whenever I had gone, desk officers were quite unknown faces. But that never caused them to behave strangely. They were comparatively much better in extending the services.

The banks in India are much better in giving out the services, if you compare them with some of the government offices. At the lower levels, the bank staff are not corrupt as well. They do not have a system of extracting money from the citizens in general, unlike some of the notorious government departments where the staff create problems to extract favors.

But then that is life in India. The most corrupt nation on earth now, as per the latest report of Transparency International.

In my opinion this happens due to the subconscious attempt from the side of the staffers to gain attention and importance. If every thing goes smoothly, they feel that their services get neglected and go unnoticed. Create a problem and gain importance. This is the mind set of many employees in India.

Unfortunately, they fail to understand the pleasure of giving and serving. They fail to recognize the importance of getting the long lasting good wishes their customers would bestow upon them silently when they do the work they are supposed to do honestly , earnestly and pleasingly.

To me, it is the greatest opportunity one can have. The opportunity of serving others ! The opportunity to be of some help to others. Even when it is part of your job and even when that is what you are paid for.

My heartfelt sympathies to those ignorant men and women of my country who create such situations to make their beloved country to stoop down in shame by some of their acts of discarding the god given opportunities to serve others in whatever small way they could !

The finance minister of India and the central board of direct taxation authorities of India have very excellent plans for India at least in the area that is in their command- the direct taxation of the tax payers of India.

No one can perhaps find fault with their decision to force e-filing of income tax returns mandatory for those getting more than a few lakhs of rupees per annum as salaried income.

But the only problem is perhaps their ignorance about the poor quality of internet speed and coverage in this country which makes such ambitious plans not go the way they think.

In India, the majority of individual internet users use either old free versions of internet browsers such as Internet explorer version 6 or earlier or free limited versions for house hold use as downloaded from various sites or provided initially by their PC or laptop vendor. Of late, may individual house hold users use other browsers such as Google Chrome, Motzilla Firefox, etc.

In any case there would be only a minority of individual home users who are using genuine certified browser softwares that they had purchased by paying money. This is also true for many commercial users many of them, including government owned ones, use these browsers which are essentially unlicenced.

Of late, the software companies have come up with latest versions of these softwares with certain inbuilt mechanisms which could give them the idea about the user and know whether a particular user is using a licenced version or not.

For normal internet use they do not create any problem. But, when people use it for official or commercial purposes, these softwares start creating problems.

For example, very few people would be in a position to open the official e-filing site of the Income Tax department of India with their browsers.

If you would like to experience it yourself try opening this link by clicking it:

https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in

Many of you won't be able to do it. Some versions of the Internet Explorer (Microsoft) simply do not open it. The Google Chrome would display this message: 'Invalid Server Certification' Return back to safety.

I do not know whether this is a problem due to the browser or it is due to the problem of securtity certification of the server of the Income Tax Department of the government of India. Most likely it could be due to the latter. Because, it is the government departments in India that do not recognize the internet legal aspects and safety norms. There is a likelihood that they are using some software systems that are not with the necessary safety standards.

I and many of my friends could use the Motzilla Firefox to file the return a few weeks earlier. However, now when I try with the same browser for filing the e-return of some other, I find the above said site though opening up initially returns a message which tells that I am using an old version of the browser and I should use instead use some other latest versions ( it specifies the versions and the makes of the softwares) The site simply becomes non cooperative after that.

Another problem which came to my notice is the way the site is designed. If a person has to register for e-filing he or she should have a valid e-mail id. But the funny thing is that this government IT site would not allow any one to enter an e-mail id if it has certain special characters such as the hyphen (-). Ridiculous, is n't it.

While filing the numerous columns in the site for entering data, this site is highly user unfriendly.

It will not allow any one to copy - paste common data. You have to enter data every time with care. If you are not good in data entry into computers you are likely to make gross errors.

The governement of India and the IT department's software designers think that every one in India who get over 5 L salary are employed in the software development companies ! Perhaps, they are right ! That is the general perception in India.

Fortunately, the site provides some relief to the individual tax payers. They can take the help of certified tax filing service providers ! For the time being you may not find the breed of such people in India any where.

This e-filing system has started on an experimental basis last year for those getting over 10 Lakhs per year as salary. That time the system was downloading a predesigned form, filling it up, then coverting it to another form called the xml form (after conversion the individuals cannot see what the said software created as the xml file. There are umpteen examples where the xml so created was with gross errors of which the tax payers came to know only after an year when the Income Tax department started e-mailing them with orders for recovery and the like. Event the functioning of these softwares were not so reliable and were prone to error creation without the person ever knowing it)

Another problem the individuals faced was the total absence of help menu. What help menu being provided are where it is not so required. For serious helps like the meaning of the clauses of the IT rules, there is no help at all. Remember, this is not at all difficult to be provided in the IT site and if so, it would have been a gesture of transparency. But it seems the governement and the IT officials are not interested in transparency.

Last year, the individual after uploading the created xml file was required to print the acknowledgement file (called the IT-V form by the taxmen). But this file would not open if you do not know the in built pass word.
Unless you are very knowledgeable to read and understand the fine legal english language, you are not going to know what is the password required to open it. Incidentally, this password is your date of birth written in ddmmyyyy form without the usual slash (/) Had you accidentally entered a wrong number while entering your return form, your IT-V would never open for getting it printed.

Then, comes the next problem. You should have a high quality laser or inkjet printer for printing your IT-V. Dot matrix printers are a strict no-no. How many persons in India have these high quality printers in their homes and office ? But the government assumes that if you get over 10 L salary you should have these in your office or home ! Many employees of PSUs and government departments and even private employees do not have such facilities in their offices. The government should have done a survey initially or they should have made and order to make these mandatory facilities for all employees getting more than 10 Lakh annual salary !

You should not ask what would happen to those people who work in remote areas, mines and such other places where internet facility and computer peripherals and accessories do not exist for all practical purposes.

Then comes the next problem. Even if you had printed your IT-V as specified, you are required to sign it and post it to the IT departments central e-processing facility at Bangaluru. You should only post it by ordinary post. No courier business ! Whether, the Indian Postal department is efficient to deliver all these signed documents back to Bangaluru from all over India is another question. (We know what had happened with the aadhaar cards !)

Even for this year (AY 2013-14) e-filing for some can be direct online. There are problems and perhaps no one in this country could solve those. You are required to get IT-V printed and posted as was done last year. If your signed form do not reach the central processing people, your IT return would not be taken for processing. You may not get back your refunds.

As far as refunds are concerned, it seems the IT department people had been instructed not to do so. Because now every person is going to get demand notices and not refunds. Demand notices with hefty penal interests and fines for no fault of theirs. Because, now the government has linked your bank accounts with your PAN and all the interest accrual information is known through what is now called the 26-AS form. The banks have taken the 10% from those 3.5 % to 8.5 % interest your balances have gained and have remitted it to the IT department. But that is not the end. Once you have got more than 10 L as salary, you owe another 23 % tax to be given on those peanut interests. If you have not paid it, then the IT is waiting for penalizing you later. The more the delay, the more the government of India is to gain by way of penalties and penal interests.

So, now comes the game plan. A faulty IT return system is in place. Even if you honestly want to pay your taxes and file you returns, you cannot perhaps do it properly. The system would not allow you to do it. And the government's system failure is not admissible as an excuse. Because, after all government is the one who wields the lathi, or the power. In a lathi wielding governmental system, citizens have no rights !

The government is not bothered if you do not have any job tomorrow and you no longer earns the 10 L. The government of India is not bothered whether you worked in a PSU or private sector where there is no pension for surviving your after job life. They would not even allow you to get even the simple 3.5 % interest from your bank account. They will tax it with out any sympathy ! Neither they would think of implementing any practical social security system as that is with the progressive nations of the world.

Because of all these, even those Indians who get more than 10 L a year as salary, much better than lakhs of their other fellow Indians, could not live happily in this country. That is why they are eagerly trying to send their children to become citizens of USA, Canada, Australia and such other progressive nations. Regrettably that is what most of the political leaders of India who are responsible for making ridiculous rules and laws are also doing !

It is like burning your home and running away to take shelter in your neighbour' home !

Is this country ever escape from these kind of ridiculous taxation rules and such other things which make life in India a horror for law abiding citizens ?

Though I had written a few blogs in Malayalam language in Malayalam font in this site ( You can see that list here - രാജന്‍ സി മാത്യുവിന്‍റെ മലയാളം ബ്ലോഗുകള്‍ ! ) I thought it a good idea to start a new site using blogger for dealing exclusively topics that could be of interest to those who can read Malayalam.

The blog site would appear in the name :

ഇലന്തൂര്‍ അച്ചായന്‍റെ അഭിപ്രായങ്ങള്‍ !

I would request all those who can read Malayalam to have a look in to these blogs dealing with contemporary issues that is of interest to Keralites, especially those from the central Travancore area.

For reading and writing malayalam font, you may have to install malayalam unicode software in your laptop or PC.

The best way of doing that is to install the Google language input tools for Windows ( if you use Windows as your operating system)

You can go to this site, select your option as Malayalam and agree to Google terms and conditions to visit the page that gives further directions to download and install the required language tool. Once you did that, you have to watch the language icon at the botton right corner of your task bar where you normally see the language tab as EN (for english) You can click this to change to MY (for Malayalam) . Once this is shown in MY form, whatever you type in english would get changed to equivalent Malayalam font. A little trial and work out, you would become an expert in typing in Malayalam.

Please do that for typing your comments in Malayalam.

During my early childhood, I still remember the way my grandmother (mother of my father) taught me to pray to God. I was too young at that time and was perhaps just a toddler. I was just beginning to understand and talk in my mother tongue, Malayalam. Yet I remember the day when she attempted to teach me the prayer and continued to pray that way later for many years. Often silently before I go to sleep in the night !

That prayer was simple and I demanded nothing much from the unseen God but just a request to take care of me and those in my family.

Later in the adolescent years partial learning of science and the readings of the writings by the so-called rationalists made me confused about the existence of God to some degree, though not fully. But yet I remembered God in my thoughts quite often. My prayer had now become shortened to just a salutation, that too in my thoughts. And it remained that way later for many years so long as I faced no threats and troubles.

But during the days of problems and sickness, I used to pray to God for his help and often I found that His comfort reached me miraculously.

For me God was like an unseen father somewhere and I was just comfortable not to have any form of image of Him in my mind while I thought about Him. The Creator of the Universes cannot be comprehended and encapsulated in the form of some image of His creations. That reasoning was quite logical.

Though the religion of my parents, Christianity and the writings of its holy book, Bible initiated and enhanced my concepts of God, it was never complete or perfect. In reality, it was also some cause for me to doubt in the existence of God.

As I have explained in many of my earlier blogs in this site, the Urantia Book was the source ( and it still is) that gave me the opportunity to view life altogether differently and in a wholesome manner. The encounter with this source of information I consider as the greatest fortune I got in my life. The immense treasure of revealed knowledge in this book has been the agent that allowed my imperfect concepts of life and God to advance and progress to much refinement.

My belief in God has now become stabilized and I have no doubts about that now. Besides, I understand why this world is like what it is now. The immense plans of God are getting more and more clear to me and I am able to appreciate and admire it even with my limited mind capacity.

My prayer too have evolved. I realize the importance of keeping in touch with God through my prayers. But I do not pray to Him for worldly pleasures and material goals ! He knows what I need !

Now, I spend some time every day almost always in the evening to have our family prayer. The prayer, translated in English, is something like the following:

" Our Heavenly Father !

This time we come to your presence, O God. Thank you for the opportunity that You have provided for that.

We thank you and praise you for keeping us well under your care and protection.

We thank you and praise you for keeping us under your protection for all these years right from our childhood.

We thank you and praise you because you are the source of our lives.

We thank you and praise you because you have given us the right to be considered as your children and the right you have given us to call you as our father.

We thank you for keeping us protected from all the dangers and sicknesses and other troubles that we face now in this world. We thank you for giving us the strength to over come such problems. We thankfully remember the times you have provided us comfort during the times of our miseries.

We thank you for giving us all that material things that we deserve to live in this world so far even at times when there are problems and turmoil all around us.

We know, God, that we live in an imperfect world of evil and we have the faith in you that you will not allow us to be perished here.

We believe in your eternal plans for us which give us the confidence to live peacefully and confidently in this world.

God, we know and admit that we are imperfect humans of limited knowledge and capacity. We know that we have human weaknesses that cause us to commit errors in our lives. We earnestly pray for forgiveness for all the errors and sins that we might have committed in our lives knowingly or unknowingly.

We pray for your forgiveness for all errors that we have committed in our words, thoughts and deeds.

We also pray to you for strengthening us in our body, mind and spirit so that we could live a life in accordance with your wish in this world.

Father, keep guiding us daily so that we live according to your wish. Give us the wisdom to know what is good and what is bad always.

God, we pray for all in the family and our dear ones. Keep them under your watch and protection.

We pray for all individuals in our family. Provide each one what is needed. Strengthen each one in body, mind and spirit.

We pray for our world and all the people of this world. Have your mercy and providence to all in this world.

Do not allow evil to pervade this world. Give us the knowledge and the wisdom to transform this world to one as per your liking just as those others in the heavens.

Teach us to live following the good path.

Give us the mental strength to forgive those who might work against us and do harm to us either knowingly or unknowingly.

Strengthen us to do our daily works sincerely and truthfully and in a manner that is pleasing to you.

We know God that our lives in this world are only for some years. But we also know about your promise of giving us a future life of eternal adventure even after our material deaths in this world. Make us God, worthy of that future everlasting lives.

Keep us God in your protection and care in our future days and years so long as we live in this world.

Give us all the good that we may need.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray.

Amen. "

Dear reader, you might wonder why my prayer ended in the name of Jesus Christ. As a person born in a Christian family and as per the Christian traditions we used to pray that way earlier. But to admit frankly, I was not sure of its purpose. But now, the book I have mentioned above removed all those doubts. I now know who is Jesus Christ for sure and why I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Elsewhere in my other blogs you could read much about those.

A few years ago, I had a friend who was a senior officer in the security forces. He was a gentleman according to my assessment. But some time later I met a jawan who used to be in the same security organization and he too became a bit close to me. The latter one knew that I was an acquaintance of his superior officer and so he disclosed certain things he was not liking about his boss. According to him, his boss was a terror and a person with no feelings to his subordinates. He took sadistic pleasures in troubling those under him. It was news to me. I never thought this officer could be like that to his subordinates within his domain.

But then some day I was purchasing some fruits from the road side vendors who used to sell their merchandise on hand pulled carts. All was going on well with the poor roadside vendors doing pretty good business. All of a sudden there was a commotion among the vendors and the vendors began to run, some pulling their carts at their top speeds and some without bothering to pull their carts. The clients like me could not understand the reason for this sudden panic among the vendors. Then suddenly I observed a uniformed jawan of the security in his Khakhi approaching the scene on his bicycle. He quickly approached the scene and began to get in to action. He overturned some of the carts, wielded his cane randomly on some of the vendors who moved out and were watching from a distance, hitting a few while yelling abuses at them. In this commotion we the clients too quickly moved in to our cars parked by the side. This jawan was the same one whom I knew and some how he did not see me. Here in this act he was unleashing a terror and I could not believe that this fellow whom I knew earlier as a harmless and innocent human could be like this ! He too was just like his boss! Under favorable situations he too was a terror ! And he used to complain about the inhuman behavior of his boss !

I had a subordinate officer who used to get too annoyed and shout when this person's subordinate committed some mistake or did not observe punctuality. But what was interesting is that this officer was not at all a role model for anyone especially when it comes regarding punctuality !

I have seen people who are fortunately positioned in society with such lucrative jobs which provided them very high incomes who are so reluctant to give even a fifty or a hundred rupee note to the coolies or laborers who did some service to them. Were these people not helping them physically, life would would not have been very comfortable for these affluent class. But the irony is that they do not feel ashamed for bargaining for five or ten rupees with these poor country cousins of theirs ! At the same time they might tip in hundreds to the bell boy of the five star hotel who just kept their hand baggage in their car in the porch ! They would bargain for reduction of the price of a kilo of veggie from twenty to ten in the local farmer's weekly market but are very comfortable to pay more than a fifty for the same kept in an upper market stall ! Double standards ? Isn't it ?

Have you not seen people criticizing others for their mistakes while these critiques themselves have done such mistakes many times !

You expect others to be polite and friendly with you, but you personally are not like that to others !

Many of us cannot forgive those who have knowingly or unknowingly did some wrong to us. But we expect others to be forgiving us always ! I did not do such a grave mistake that he or she took it so seriously, you might say !

Many of you reading this are both a boss and a subordinate at the same time. Likewise we all have many kinds of interpersonal relations. It is a good idea to find out our double standards. The standards that we have knowingly or unknowingly set for us and for others !

Have you not noticed our political leaders ? When they are in the ruling side their opinions and standards are likely to be just the opposite while they are not in power. Don't we keep wondering about this? But have you ever thought of the situation when we are in their roles, even if it is just for an imagination ?

Again, I would like to mention about another double standard syndrome that we humans are likely to fall into. That is about our standards and attitudes when we are ordinary fellows and when we happen to be blessed with power and money. Most people when they are in the former state would not have any difficulty in maintaining their friendship and love with their old friends and companions even when they are not in contact for a long period. But would it be the case when the latter is the case ? When power and money come in, friendships are gone for ever ! It is extremely difficult for many of us to acknowledge our old friends and relatives if some how our position has relatively improved as compared to them. The more this relative difference, the more we fail to recognize our old companions !

Have you not heard the story of Lord Krishna and Sudama (Kuchela) in the great Indian epic of Mahabharata? Lord Krishna did not forget his childhood friend, the poor brahmin Sudama, when the latter in his later day difficulties decided to approach the former who had become the king. Sudama, was apprehensive but Krishna did not behave the way others in power and position used to do. The poor brahmin got all the help, love and respect from his old childhood friend.

On the other hand, Mahabharata also has another story of two other childhood friends, Drupada and Drona. Prince Drupada and the brahmin boy Drona were good friends and the prince even had promised half of his kingdom to his friend Drona. But, Drupada when he had become the king, insulted his childhood friend Drona who approached him for help- the incident that sowed the seeds for the great Mahabharata war that destroyed all !

Some days ago, a friend of mine was telling me an incident of how an old friend of him, now in some top position, refuse to recognize him when he chanced to meet this big fellow. One thing I am sure. It is not that this 'big fellow' now in big position is not remembering his old pal. He remembers everything, but he is afraid to show the same friendly relation to his old pal. This situation is due to the lack of confidence and courage of the 'big fellow'. Perhaps, this big fellow subconsciously recognizes his weaknesses that are known to his old friend ! I am not sure. But this kind of a situation is quite common now-a-days ! Perhaps more and more narrow minded and incompetent people are managing to get to become 'big fellows' ! Is the society is slowly and slowly getting degraded by our collective acts ? Would you make some one who is likely to run to safety first, the captain of your ship ?

I had asked a few people why they are reluctant to treat their servants or those who do some manual labor for them, well. Their answers and logic have surprised me a lot. Those who do the lowly paid works will not work if they are paid well, some argue. If their tummies get full, they are going to be disobedient, others argue. But what if these so-called affluent person some how looses his or her affluence due to some reason and had to do some job of that nature for survival ? But those in power and affluence, to my surprise, refuse to accept the possibility of such a thing happening to them.

For that matter did Saddam Hussain ever could have thought of the time when he would be caught like a rat in the hole ? Does it ever occur to the other man now repeating the same mistakes ?

But it has nothing to do with the anyone's actual power and position. Just a relative power and position difference would make the change in attitudes ! That is a reality with most of us ! Why does such a thing happen ?

I was just thinking ! I have no concrete answers. But, perhaps we would be able to discard these double standards that cause us to swing between animal and human tendencies if we pause for a moment to think, retaining our sanity.

Perhaps we would progress in civilization.

After all, civilization is that which makes us migrate from animal tendencies to real human nature !

That humanized nature is what God wants us to achieve and not the beastly behavior that Satan wants us to retain !

But the rewards of retaining the beastly nature apparently appear as too tempting. That is the cunning temptation of Satan that misleads gullible humans ! Again you need a sane and intelligent mind to understand it !

During school days, we used to learn our mother tongue Malayalam as a language. The Malayalam language teachers used to teach us the higher levels of the language and its grammatical rules that the ordinary folks never understood or needed for normal verbal interactions.

One of the things that the teachers tried hard to drive home was the use of metaphors, a phrase or a sentence which literally meant something but conveyed some deeper meanings for those who could understand it.

One of these used to be pronounced in Malayalam like this : Thana nilatthe' neerodoo ! [ താണ നിലത്തേ നീരോടൂ !} Literally translated it meant the title of this blog above.

While we were learning these in the lower classes, it appeared as a difficult thing to understand. We were required to write a page or so to explain its hidden meanings in an explicit manner.

Water flows to low lying fields. It is a universal truth observed by humans over the centuries. One can check its scientific validity by conducting experiments.

But the metaphor conveyed a deeper meaning that cannot be so easily proved by experimentation or casual observation.

So this metaphor has some thing more to understand, we were told. Only those who are low in their egos (self importance) can learn new knowledge from those who have already acquired it. In other words, only humble fellows desirous to know more only can enhance their knowledge. Here water is equated to knowledge and lower fields are equated to the ego-less minds.

My life observations for the last many years have made me to realize this much better.

The biggest self realization is the realization of one's own ignorance. If we do not feel the emptiness of some knowledge in our minds, then we are not going to feel the desire to fill that void with additional knowledge.

When our stomachs are full, we do not feel hungry to eat further.

When our mind is full, we cease to have the curiosity and desire to learn more. Our minds then get bloated with the so called high feeling or ego.

Such a situation sets in when a person completes some so-called high qualification degrees or gets in to some higher posts of authority.

At that juncture the mind gets saturated to accept further knowledge due to a self induced mind limit switch.

This kind of a situation not only happens to those of high formal education and those so called high achievers, but also to ordinary beings, students, housewives, workers and just any one.

Then such persons land into the I-know-all syndrome.

When the majority of people are inflicted with this mind disorder the society suffers. This society cannot be taught to discard its foolish preconceived ideas. It ceases to learn from the history and the experiences of others.

The progressive nature of society ceases.

Are we Indians developing such a syndrome ?

If a government fails in its duty to safe guard some security to its old people who are no more in a position to earn a decent livelihood, such a government cannot be considered as a government for the people. In a democracy, if the government is not for the people, it simply ceases to be a democracy.

Governments of olden days and some present day governments of nations, where civilization has not matured enough, could be made of people whose qualities are more or less matching with the selfish beasts. Here they come up to occupy the ruling positions by using instruments of terror and hold on to their positions for exploiting their country men. Such systems are bound to be dictatorial and there is no way that the people can expect some thing good from them.

Dictatorial governments composed of selfish and authoritarian people cannot be expected to do any good to the common citizens. They use all kinds of tactics to control the citizens for getting benefits for them by extracting a portion of the toils of the citizens. That is understandable.

But when that happens in democracies, citizens have to do some introspection. After all, democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people !

Our democratic systems, of late, seem to run away from peoples' problems. They are made so complex that on one can get any worthwhile solutions from them. And who is making them complex? The irony is that the complexities are made by the elected representatives of the people themselves.

Suppose that you are entangled in a trap of strings. If you do not know how to come out of it by removing those looped up and knotted strings, you are likely to move here and there in panic making those strings to strangulate you to death. Our law makers seem to make the present day laws in this fashion. They seem to make laws that are going to strangulate them and others some time later. Every time when they try to untie a knot, the knot further tightens !

I have written this much as I watch the sorry state of affairs in this country where newer and newer laws make things more complicated.

Of late the government seems interested in making more and more autonomous controlling authorities in each an every field. It is the licensing raj in its latest avatar allowing the elected government to wash its hands if something worse happens. These autonomous controlling bodies would be responsible and not the government !

Latest in this series now is the National Pension Regulatory Authority. Its official name is Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). With the passing of the bill this body has become a statutory one. It has now some teeth to bite ! The only thing to be seen is how it is going to bite and how such bites give the pensioners the protection !

But unfortunately, the government (the people who form the government and those drafting the rules) have not possibly kept the interest of the people who are the pensioners or the would-be pensioners. People who have retired from active work should have some income to live comfortably and that income should reach them at their convenience on a regular basis.

Wise people who are smart enough in financial matters know well how to save for the difficult years and use their saved funds wisely.

But a good majority of people do not have such a wisdom or the financial discipline to manage their own funds. So, many people even with good accumulated funds could lose their savings making them in great financial difficulties.

Pension schemes come to help in such a situation.

Let us imagine a situation like this: Suppose that you have saved 5 % of your monthly income in a recurring deposit of the bank with for the entire period of your active working life of say, 35 years at an interest rate of say 8.5 % per annum. Suppose that this 5 % of your monthly income is Rs.1000. So for 35 years or 420 months you will save at the rate of Rs.1000 per month making your total contribution Rs.420000. But you would be surprised to know that your total savings would come to over Rs 24 Lakhs at the end of 35 years.

Now if this corpus fund of 24 lakhs is invested at the same interest rate, it would be sufficient to give you a monthly return (or pension) of Rs.17000 without any interruption for the rest of your life. That means your pension is 17 times the monthly contribution you have made. Moreover, your corpus fund of 24 lakhs remains intact and can be handed over to your legal heirs !

You can still do this without the government help. Only problem here is your own temptations which may tempt you to break your recurring deposit and use that money for some emergencies that you think as more important than your future pensions.

Now had the government simply made a small change in the existing laws that allowed the banks to create such schemes it would have been possible. Already the Public Provident Fund and such other schemes exist. But the PPF does not have an annuity payout system attached to it. All you have to do is take out your corpus (accumulated fund) and deposit in a bank as a fixed deposit with monthly interest payout option. Here too, the problem is control of your temptation to withdraw the corpus fund.

Now if the government allows the banks to prevent your temptation (of withdrawal of the already saved fund or allowing any withdrawal other than the monthly payment of interests except return of the corpus fund to the legal heirs at the time of death of the depositor) and make some deposit schemes similar to this mode, it amounts to a simplified pension scheme. Remember, the government can instruct the banks to deposit all these collected savings in government bonds so that the government gets thousands of crores of rupees for running its business as well.

The above scheme has a guarantee attached to its just as we have the guarantee on the fixed deposits of the banks. As long as the banks run, there is no problem of our funds that are invested. Normally, the banks work for generations, unless the governments make foolish policies to ruin them or they allow them to be managed with out proper checks and balances.

Now it is again possible for the government to give some income tax benefits for such bank run pension deposit schemes because they are long duration deposits. Moreover it is possible for creating bank run pension deposit schemes for all people irrespective of the number of years that they have for active work and also allow people to contribute to their pension funds in irregular frequencies as well. The idea is to create an individuals pension corpus fund which will allow annuity payments on a monthly basis to them once they achieve their universal retirement age of say 60 years. The annuities will be payable to them during their life time and there after to their spouses and after that the entire corpus fund is returnable to their legal heirs.

But the government has now come up with the creation of an authority which will do the supervision and regulation of various pension funds to be created by financial companies. And these financial companies will do the investment of the funds mostly in the share markets which allow the funds to be drained out without anybody ever realizing it. If that happens the investors can simply curse their bad luck !

In this context, I remember the bad fortune I faced when some two decades ago, the same people in the present government allowed the banks to come up with mutual fund related savings schemes to be offered by government owned banks. I had invested some hard earned money a scheme called IndraPrakash floated by Indian Bank. I remember this bank sending me my account details, pretty impressively through out the entire 7 year investment period only to be told in the last that they do not have the money to make the repayments. The money was gone ! The government did nothing ! So many financial scams happened there after in this country with thousands of people losing their hard earned money and savings.

When the government is yet to move forward with such a scheme for the people who save for their hard times is unimaginable. It is simply anti people when pension funds are allowed to be run with no guarantees of returns. And that too when there are options for guaranteed returns !

Only when those in power feel authoritarian just as in autocracies such situations can happen. In true democracies, the prime concern of those elected representatives and those who are paid servants should be to serve the people and to work for the benefit of the people.

They should never think of making rules and laws which are anti people ! They also have a responsibility to alleviate the fears and apprehensions of the people !

[The following are some concluding remarks made by the authors of my favorite book of life guidance, which I reproduce below in part and with some minor editing. Click on the book link to visit the site which gives more information on the book and its authors. This book's original manuscript in English was provided some time in the beginning of the 20th century while it got printed in 1955. The passages below may not be illuminating the ordinary people, but it should do so for a few of those with a superior mind level concerned with science, humanity and religion who happen to read these. Those few of the latter kind may also be inclined to find the book and read it in whole. The link above would help them to find the book for an online reading. You would also find many blogs based on this book which you can find and read by clicking the Blog Archive on the right side of this page.]

The twentieth century has brought new problems for Christianity and all other religions to solve.

The higher a civilization climbs, the more it becomes the duty of man to 'seek first the realities of the Kingdom of God' which means putting efforts to stabilize the society and facilitate the solutions for its material problems.

Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker accurately only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art.

Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be distinguished from man’s other high forms of thought, such as:

1. His logical attitude toward the things of material reality.
2. His aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.
3. His ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.

Even his sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.

Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.

A lasting social system without a morality founded on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.

Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent adventure that rise up within your mind in one short life in the flesh. Be patient! Do not get tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure. Harness your energies and restrain your passions; be calm while you await the majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling discovery (awaiting you ahead, even after your short life in your material world)

In confusion over man’s origin, do not lose sight of his eternal destiny. Forget not that Jesus (the sovereign of this universe when he lived among you as one of you) loved even little children, and that he forever made clear the great worth of human personality.

As you view (your) world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil.

When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.

In religion, Jesus advocated and followed the method of experience, even as modern science pursues the technique of experiment. We find God through the leading of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to real insight.

(Your) scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race.

No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of Jesus will fully triumph.

In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things.

Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.

The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting (or a cause of emotional disturbances).

At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings.

But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.

Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of the ultimate and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause—the Universal Father (God).

The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions.

The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances.

One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.

Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe.

But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls—it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.

But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages.

Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans.

Neither democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress.

False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual progression.

To say that mind “emerged” from matter explains nothing. If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were not separated from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon.

The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.

Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once super-material.

Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities.

Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.

Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing 'the Father’s will' (God's will). And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.

The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God.

And every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity in the universe.

The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become known as a thing.

Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be devoted to the destruction of superstition rather than attempting the overthrow of religious faith—human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.

Science should do for man materially what religion does for him spiritually: extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality.

True science can have no lasting quarrel with true religion.

The 'scientific method' is merely an intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material adventures and physical achievements. But being material and wholly intellectual, it is utterly useless in the evaluation of spiritual realities and religious experiences.

Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious experience is something in human life which is truly super-mathematical.

In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism, while the words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas, and noble ideals—of love and hate, of cowardice and courage—represent the performances of mind within the scope defined by both material and spiritual law, directed by the assertion of the will of personality, and limited by the inherent ability as per situation.

The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities which the scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but rather like the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and discriminating scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies the mathematical facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side of creation.

The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and advancing universe of energy and matter. The religionist, not religion, proves the existence of the spirit realities and divine values which are to be encountered in the progress of eternity.

Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.

The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century humans killed more human beings (e.g the first and second world wars) than were killed during the whole of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible destruction is yet to come.

Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth.

But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus’ teachings will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.

A historical narration of some events that happened in some dates, that are part of some pre-historic times recorded with a high degree of accuracy after an elapse of nearly 2000 years and at a time when there were no easy means to verify the validity of those dates, is an impossible task for human authors to create.

My favorite book of life guidance- the Urantia Book- has many such dates dating back to times when Jesus Christ began his earth mission.

Till the times of publication of the Urantia Book, the historical aspects of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ never existed except those given in the Bible or the Apocrypha Books. And there were nothing for the modern day historians to verify these biblical narrations, except that they are recorded in many books and some have originals which had been carbon dated for their probable period of creation.

Moreover, no known books existed earlier which gave a date and day for an event that happened during the days of Jesus Christ.

Under such circumstances, when an author narrates an incident with its day and date according to the Common Era calendar that we use today internationally, it is nothing but a miracle.

But when this book got published in the year 1955, the few readers of the book could not have possibly verify those because there existed no known method commonly known to even the most learned people to cross check those dates easily by manual calculations. Moreover, the idea of computers and computer programs were just getting initiated in the minds of the scientists at the time when the Urantia Book got published for the first time.

Thus if the Urantia Book's authors wrote some thing like this:

'On Sunday night, January 9, A.D. 7, his (Jesus Christ's) baby brother, Amos, was born', [The Urantia Book, Paper 124, 5.2]

we the readers had to just take that statement for granted.

There was no way that we could spent days and days doing the calculations to find out whether January 9th of AD 7 was indeed a Sunday!

But suppose that we could check that now and find that it was indeed a Sunday, we are bound to salute the super intelligence and meticulous accuracy that the authors of the Urantia Book had maintained.

We would wonder how the author/s could be so meticulous and accurate when he/they wrote this book when it was impossible to back calculate and maintain that kind of an accuracy!

We might even be forced to deduce that the author/s had some personal diary with them with the chronological events recorded accurately.

Personally speaking, I find this something extremely noteworthy and this aspect together with many such things, make the Urantia Book not a book of the other kinds to be discarded as a hoax or a huge work of rubbish. Many thinking intellectuals who are careful readers and students of this book have come to the same conclusion.

That conclusion is that it is humanly impossible to create a literary work of knowledge and facts, as the Urantia Book. It is indeed a revelation from superhuman sources as the authors of the book repeatedly tell the readers.

Now coming to the verification of the historical dates and days, by people like us.

I have come across the work that got created by a computer software specialist, named Mr Scott E. Lee. He had made a website for a calendar conversion service some time in the 1990's.

His website is named : Rosetta Calendar [click to visit it]

It now gives the conversion of dates for the Gregorian, Julian and the Hebrew calendars online by just a click. For example, you could enter the date of the Urantia Book that I gave above (9th Jan AD 7) in the Julian calendar and click the convert button to find whether it was indeed a Sunday. Simultaneously you could also get the corresponding dates in the other calendars as well. Isn't it great ?

Now use this facility to check some more statements such as these from the Urantia Book:

In January of this year, A.D. 21, on a rainy Sunday morning, Jesus took unceremonious leave of his family, only explaining that he was going over to Tiberias and then on a visit to other cities about the Sea of Galilee. [ the Urantia Book Paper 129, 1.1 ]

Jesus and the two natives from India — Gonod and his son Ganid — left Jerusalem on a Sunday morning, April 26, A.D. 22. [ The Urantia Book, Paper 130, 0.1 ]

Sunday morning, February 24, A.D. 26, Jesus took leave of John the Baptist by the river near Pella, never again to see him in the flesh. [ The Urantia Book, Paper 137, 2.1 ]

My dear reader, there are too many such examples which were humanly impossible at the time the Urantia Book's manuscript was written and given to mankind for publication.

Such humanly impossible things and knowledge that are contained in the Urantia Book, with extreme consistency and grace make the book totally different from all those humanly created books that we have! Some thing that makes the right thinking humans pause a moment to give attention to what it says !

As for me, I have no doubt that this book was authored for us by invisible celestial beings as the authors themselves introduce themselves. And that is very very important for me. Because, that information logically compels me to believe in the existence of invisible intelligent beings. They are a reality. If they are real, then God is real. And if God is real, my faith in God is with a real foundation!

And if that is so, the truths that are revealed through the Urantia Book cannot be discarded. I have to read carefully what these celestial personalities have to tell me !

So I read and study that. I find it a great guidance, indeed !

I wish all in this world were given those guidance ! And it is not that difficult.

Provided that they are willing to listen to those truths and guidance!

Provided that they have a desire to know !

Before answering those questions, let me tell you some fundamentals that my favorite book of divine revelation taught me. Note that some of these fundamentals have been known to human kind for the last hundreds of years or perhaps even thousands of years. But at the same time, I consider it very important that we recapitulate some of the key knowledge pieces once again. Please go through the following and see whether they match with your concepts fully or partially:

1. The material universes as we know today comprising of our planet earth, our solar system, our galaxy and millions of other such galaxies and dark bodies all came into existence at some point of time billions of years ago as physical or perceivable or visible energy and matter due to an act of some intelligent mind which existed beforehand. At that moment of time, space and history as we know today also came into existence. Time before that , which we cannot comprehend is called eternal time.

2. There existed only one pre-existent energy not comprehensible to us, which we may denote as spiritual energy and one infinite mind energy pervading over this spiritual energy forming an infinite Personality and certain intelligent creative actions of this infinite Personality that happened, during the eternal times. About the creative actions that happened during eternal times, we have only vague ideas. The Original Infinite Mind or Personality that has been existing eternally is our Universal Father God, because we all exist in life, intelligence and personality due to Him. From Him all things and personalities came in to existence later.

3. During eternal times, the Universal Father God created other Spiritual Personalities like Him and distributed Himself to them his attributes and powers for various purposes including further creative actions. The first eternal personality formed from the Universal Father may be identified as the Eternal Son and the next one as the Infinite Spirit. These three there after acted independently and jointly to create other spiritual personalities and spiritual materials during eternal times. The original three together is God, the Trinity. There are yet other divine beings originating from the original Trinity, who too could be deemed as God for all practical purposes. But it is a wise decision to keep the concept of the Universal Father God in mind whenever we give our reverence to God in general.

4. All spiritual energy, spiritual material and spiritual gravity are concentrated at the Centre of the Universes that we perceive now as space, though we may not be able to perceive its existence. The abode of the eternal God and his associative spiritual personalities are predominantly in this region. The Universes around it are growing in space and material as a result of the continued creative actions of the God or His high spiritual associates. The fundamental particle that makes up the fundamental material particle, electron, is the ultimaton, which is formed out a pimordial force drawn from the spiritual energy realm. Spiritual energy is predominant (the major constituent) if we take up all energy, spiritual and physical, together.

5. There are innumerable spiritual personalities who exist from eternity or are created later. All of them are immortal beings, unlike beings who are created in physical material by different techniques including we the human beings, who are mortals ( i.e, those who cease to exist in their physical form after some time).

6. Personality and life of any living being, divine or otherwise, is a direct gift of the Universal Father God.

7. All living beings have a form or body made of either spiritual matter (spiritual beings) or physical matter (material beings) .It is difficult for beings in physical body to perceive or see beings in spiritual form or body under normal circumstances unless they are provided with some special prerogatives. The reverse is also true. But some of the spiritual entities are capable of making their presence perceivable to physical beings while the physical beings do not have any such powers inherent in them.

8. Both spiritual and material beings require some form of energy, either spiritual or material, for sustaining their lives.

9. Immortals who deviate from perfection can lose their immortality. Similarly, mortals with personality attributes who aspire for perfection by doing the will of God may attain immortality. All mortal material beings and many immortal beings in the lower orders can be in the presence of the Universal Father God and 'see' Him only if they attain certain perfection levels.

10. God is not a respecter of persons or individuals; He loves everyone impartially and according to His universal laws.

11. All living beings in physical material form do not have God gifted personality attributes. For examples, plants and animals. They exist for a while for certain limited purposes only. But mortals like human beings have God gifted personality attributes which can survive death under certain conditions. According to the universal laws of God, mortals too can gain immortality and become like one of the spiritual personalities of high power and abilities, provided they live according to certain universal laws of God while they live in mortal form. Otherwise they too will perish as plants and animals.

12. Human beings have an additional God gifted power, in addition to life, intelligence and mind, which ensures personality survival even after physical death. This power is called the Thought Adjuster which is a direct gift of God which is equivalent to a micro mind of God Himself. This power resides within the human mind. This spiritual power is the one that compels man to seek God and develop those qualities that are liked by God.

13. When the human mind accepts the feeble leading of the God gifted mind or the Thought Adjuster and live according to that leading, then we can say that this human being is living according to the will of God. All humans who live according to the will of God are likely to survive death and their personalities would survive the physical death to advance to become immortal spiritual personalities.

14. Advancing spiritual personalities such as those human beings who have survived physical death are called the ascending sons of God, unlike those spiritual personalities who have a different kind of origin. The ascending sons of God progress towards perfection through varying levels of universe experiences. When they attain perfection, they would be in the direct presence of God where they are likely to be assigned high responsibilities in the worlds that are under the process of creation or evolutionary progress. During this process of progress in intelligence and mind capacity, they may exist in various forms, while their basic personality remaining intact.

The above are some essential information to be understood.

Now comes the question of doing the will of God while we live our lives on earth. We may live in any physical condition, rich, poor, privileged, underprivileged, short lived, long lived, with high abilities or with lower abilities, facing problems always or leading a good life always, etc., etc.

Whatever be the case, we are likely to perish as plants and animals unless we live according to the will of God. We do not require any one's help to know the will of God now as the will of God is perceivable by us from the Thought Adjuster that is already within our mind.

Now to understand the leading of the Thought Adjuster that is within us, our own mind should not get elated by self importance called our own ego. I think this is a situation we can know our self if we are a bit attentive to our own inner consciousness.

All human beings are likely to face this difficulty. The moment their own abilities make them elated in mind, they fail to recognize the feeble voice of the God given mind residing deep in their own minds. That causes the danger of not living according to the will of God, while their own mind might justify otherwise.

If this is so, would it be practically possible to live according to the will of God? I think it is possible. Only thing here is that one has to make some conscious efforts not to allow the self importance that develops within the mind to envelop the whole mind subduing even the Thought Adjuster.

Doing the will of God, does not mean that we can live without any errors in our own judgement while we live. Errors do happen in human life, because God has not made us as perfect beings. We humans are imperfect beings in the process of advancement towards perfection. But committing errors always and willfully with no regard to the guidance of the Thought Adjuster is some thing that is regarded as disobeying the will of God.

Those humans who are guided by the will of God exhibit certain qualities.

They are too willing to seek the true God. Their inner self would not accept just any one or any thing as the Universal Father God. For them God is much beyond any human being that they know, however superior they might appear to be. They keep loving and worshiping that God in their mind always and submit to Him for his guidance always.

They also recognize that other human beings are also the children of God and they too have the God given power of the Thought Adjusters residing in their minds. So they love their fellow beings unconditionally.

So, enmity, envy, hatred and selfishness have no place in their minds. While they pray to God, they pray for the well being of all and not for only their selfish needs. They would never try to exploit underprivileged human beings. They would use their abilities to be of some use to others. In other words, those who are living according to the will of God are willing to serve others.

Material and physical well being, though important, are not the priority for such humans. They seek to develop themselves to attain spiritual progress so that they could be in the presence of God some time.

They know that those who do not do the will of God are going to perish for ever, even when some of them may appear as very successful or powerful humans on earth. So they do not have any anger towards such people, but only sympathies. They understand the meaning of what Jesus taught some 2000 years ago: If one gains the whole world, what good it for him, when he is losing his life ?

Those who live according to the will of God would not like to live as lazy or foolish beings. They know pretty well that their God given abilities are to be used wisely for the benefit of their world in some way or the other.

Those who are doing the will of God realize what is the true will of God. They will not create situations where those who do not do the will of God become more and more successful in perpetuating their deeds.

They will not force their ideas on others, even while they are willing to give good advice and possible help to those who seek it. They realize pretty well that each and every human being has a God given free will intelligence to adopt right or wrong or good or bad.

They would not encourage others to praise them and adore them for whatever good qualities or capabilities they posses, because they know that they are humble humans like all others and only God is to be adored and worshiped. But at the same time they understand the mature way of honoring , respecting and loving others.

They will never use their abilities and powers for the purpose of their own pleasure or satisfaction. Neither those who work for them are their slaves, nor for whom they work are their gods. They will never ever exploit the weak nor they would be sycophants for personal gains.

They are not zealots to deny any material pleasures, but they know how to indulge in those wisely so that they seldom create any harm to either themselves or to others.

They know how to use their God given intelligence and wisdom. They would never close their minds to any new idea or knowledge, because that they know is important for progress. In other words, they are broadminded. They are open to criticisms, but would not argue endlessly to push their ideas on others.

They know religion is essentially a personal experience of knowing God and developing in spiritual growth. While recognizing all religions as some man made arrangements for realizing the love of God they appreciate all religions and faiths but would not allow the errors of those religions and faiths to disturb their personal spiritual convictions. They are perpetual seekers of God.

My dear reader, do you think it very difficult to live according to the will of God ?

Doesn't your inner mind accept the possibility of the benefits I mentioned ?

Is your intellect refusing to accept what I wrote or try to convince you as rubbish ?

It is wholly up to you decide.

Best wishes.

The page views of my blogs hit the 100,000 mark a couple of days ago. Not a small thing for a blog site using the Google's blogspot / blogger platform considering the fact that this has happened in just over a year's time. Besides, the blogs are not on popular topics such as food, lifestyle, sports, politics, gadgets, cooking and the like.

I do not know, how many of the site visitors stay there to read the blogs in total. Such readers could be very very few. I know the majority of the page visitors are visiting those blogs which I consider as not so important. The visitors to the topics which I consider as important are only a minor fraction of the total visitors. I know the reason and I am not surprised.

I do not know how many of my readers have read the caption that appear at the top of the blog page. It reads like this:

'View Points and Commentaries from an Open Minded Indian Engineer - A Silent Observer of Human Achievements, Trials and Tribulations. A Fascinated Indian Student of the Urantia Book, writing Blogs based on the Universal Truths Revealed in this Book, realizing pretty well that these won't make any difference unless the Reader has a Desire to seek Truth and Goodness !'

As very few readers use the comment facility or the 'Join this site' facility, I have no idea regarding what the readers might be thinking. Most likely, the majority might be considering these as 'rubbish'. I am not surprised.

But there are a few, who gives positive and encouraging feed backs. I am happy that their minds get positively inspired to think, regardless of my poor writing with no real consideration to literary aesthetics. Regrettably, I type the blogs directly the input editor and do not get more time to do the fine tuning. I do wish some readers would give me some feed back on that, so that I could give some more attention.

The writing style I adopt might appear a bit complex. I realize that. I should make some future attempts to make them simpler to understand and read.

For those readers who find my topics interesting, I have a suggestion. I have recently included the 'search' facility and the 'Google Translate' facility on right side. I do not know how far the machine translation would be useful to the non-English readers. But the search facility would be helpful to find other blogs written by me which deal with similar ideas.

A few of the readers would be interested to know more about me. A Google search for my name would give most of the desired information. Those interested to contact me may also use the comments facility. I would try to respond or communicate with them personally. My personal website link given on the right side also could be used.

I am thankful to the handful of the Urantia Book Readers' world community who read my blogs a bit carefully. They are the few spiritually starved people of this world who are thirsty for spiritual truths.

I do hope that more and more of such people would devote some time to spread the light of spiritual light in this world by being real examples of living a fruitful life in accordance with the will of God.

May the Grace of the Universal Father God prevail on this world to progress materially and spiritually in the generations to come !

According to the Urantia Book, material planets suitable of sustaining material life forms come in to existence following an evolutionary development process running in to billions of years. Though the process is evolutionary, it is not automatic. The evolutionary process is initiated, supervised and controlled by invisible agencies of God, which might consist of innumerable invisible, immortal personalities, deriving their power and abilities from God.

The material life sustainable planets which are located in innumerable planetary systems more or less similar to our solar system are in trillions. We are not able to count them because they are all many many light years away from our earth. Moreover, none of these planets are luminaries such as our sun or the stars to be detected by our telescopes.

No two life sustaining material planets have the same features. But, the general pattern of progress of life and civilization in them could be similar.

Notwithstanding these many diversifications of planetary development along physical, intellectual, and social lines, all evolutionary spheres progress in certain well-defined directions.

Under the careful and periodical supervision of the agencies of God, the mortal races on an average world formed in time and space will successively pass through the following seven developmental epochs [stages of time period]:

1. The nutrition epoch. The pre-human creatures and the dawn races of primitive man are chiefly concerned with food problems. These evolving beings spend their waking hours either in seeking food or in fighting, offensively or defensively. The food quest is paramount in the minds of these early ancestors of subsequent civilization.

2. The security age. Just as soon as the primitive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns this leisure to augmenting his security. More and more attention is devoted to the technique of war. Homes are fortified, and the clans are solidified by mutual fear and by the inculcation of hate for foreign groups. Self-preservation is a pursuit which always follows self-maintenance.

3. The material-comfort era. After food problems have been partially solved and some degree of security has been attained, the additional leisure is utilized to promote personal comfort. Luxury vies with necessity in occupying the center of the stage of human activities. Such an age is all too often characterized by tyranny, intolerance, gluttony, and drunkenness. The weaker elements of the races incline towards excesses and brutality. Gradually these pleasure-seeking weaklings are subjugated by the more strong and truth-loving elements of the advancing civilization.

4. The period with quest for knowledge and wisdom. Food, security, pleasure, and leisure provide the foundation for the development of culture and the spread of knowledge. The effort to execute knowledge results in wisdom, and when a culture has learned how to profit and improve by experience, civilization has really arrived. Food, security, and material comfort still dominate society, but many forward-looking individuals are hungering for knowledge and thirsting for wisdom. Every child is provided an opportunity to learn by doing; education is the watchword of these ages.

5. The epoch of philosophy and brotherhood. When mortals learn to think and begin to profit by experience, they become philosophical -- they start out to reason within themselves and to exercise discriminative judgment. The society of this age becomes ethical, and the mortals of such an era are truly becoming moral beings. Wise moral beings are capable of establishing human brotherhood on such a progressing world. Ethical and moral beings can learn how to live in accordance with the golden rule.

6. The age of spiritual striving. When evolving mortals have passed through the physical, intellectual, and social stages of development, sooner or later they attain those levels of personal insight which impel them to seek for spiritual satisfactions and cosmic understandings. Religion is completing the ascent from the emotional domains of fear and superstition to the high levels of cosmic wisdom and personal spiritual experience. Education aspires to the attainment of meanings, and culture grasps at cosmic relationships and true values. Such evolving mortals are genuinely cultured, truly educated, and exquisitely God-knowing.

7. The era of light and life. This is the flowering of the successive ages of physical security, intellectual expansion, social culture, and spiritual achievement. These human accomplishments are now blended, associated, and co-ordinated in cosmic unity and unselfish service. Within the limitations of finite nature and material abilities, there are no bounds set upon the possibilities of evolutionary attainment by the advancing generations who successively live upon these supernal and settled worlds of time and space.

The seventh stage is the highest level of civilization and material progress that a world like earth can achieve. The authors of the above book says that at this era, humans would satisfactorily advance in the knowledge of science, medicine and other such aspects that the average life span becomes around 500 years. Moreover, the spiritual knowledge level during this time would be so high that people no longer would be afraid of material death (because, they are confident with the knowledge of life even after their material life ends on their material world!)

Now what would you think about the stage of our earth now?

[See and read from the scan of the originally printed Urantia Book here!]

If you have to purchase a TV, refrigerator, air-conditioner or a car, what will you do ? You can take the purchase decisions as you wish. It is your money and no one is going to question your decisions, except perhaps your spouse or some one in your family who could dare to do it.

There are hundreds of models and several manufacturers. The costs also vary widely. Now-a-days, many final products, for example, say the home PC, is an assembly of so many well known parts, both hardware and software. How can you assess the qualities of all those and their effects on the final product ? As an individual customer, you are bound to get confused. The money, model, make, looks, service, spares, are all important to be looked into. But, comparing and comparing, you are likely to get fed up. Finally you take your decisions from your assessment based on what is called your gut feeling !

And perhaps your decision was neither wrong nor right. No one, including you, can prove it either way, even if the product did not give you full satisfaction. On the other hand, you and your near ones could keep finding fault with the product you have purchased. If it failed in some aspects, you may or may not play the blame game. But, no one can hold you responsible and initiate a criminal prosecution procedure against you for the decision that you had taken. After all, you are the sole authority for your decisions and the sole recipient of the results.

But this is not the case when you take decisions on behalf of a group of people. You could be an elected representative or an official holding a public trust office. If the group you are representing is going to find fault with your decisions, you are likely to be discouraged from taking any decisions. By taking decisions or by not taking decisions you are likely to antagonize some of those in the group you are representing.

Unless all in the group have a common mindset, it is extremely difficult to arrive in any decisions which are acceptable to all.

And this is the great problem of democracy and democratic institutions, at present. A democracy for unequally developed persons with unequal mind qualities could create chaos and anarchy. You are likely to get disillusioned with the non performing democratic systems that you have today.

Imagine the situation when a public trust official has to purchase a PC for his office. How could he do it satisfying each and every one, ensuring the most appropriate purchase decision? Whatever he does, there could be some some grievance for some one. In many instances, when he is out from his position after some time, the blame game can go to such an extent that his seemingly innocent decision could be termed as a criminal offence !

The more you make procedures to make your decision making system transparent, the more it becomes complex and counter productive! The reason for such an outcome is because of the unequal competencies and characters of the people involved.

A democratic system incorporated for a group of people with varying mind capacities is bound to become an antagonistic one towards the progress of the same people.

And the mind capacities of people in an era of material comforts are not going to improve in one or two generations. It might take several generations before the majority of persons become advanced in mind capacity. When such a situation evolve, we can perhaps say that our civilization is one which respects wisdom and knowledge. That would be the time when the majority aspire for wisdom and knowledge.

There would not be much dilemma for public decision makers in a civilization of people respecting wisdom and knowledge. From this time onward, democracy and democratic institutions are bound to leap forward.

So, presently we cannot be satisfied with our democratic institutions and our democratic representatives who are there to take the decisions for us.

Because we all are presently in an era of material comforts and we have not yet developed our minds collectively to that of wisdom and knowledge. We cannot expect the democratic representatives different in mind capacities augmented by wisdom and character, than what we ourselves are.

We have not yet learned the benefits of achieving wisdom, even while we might have achieved certain levels of knowledge ! Unless our knowledge is polished by experience, we cannot possibly attain wisdom.

And when we are in our lazy comfort zones of material pleasures, we are not going to acquire the much needed experiences. And generations are ahead of us for gaining the required levels of knowledge and wisdom !

No point in worrying about the failures of our democratic institutions and those representatives of ours who make those democratic organizations.

Without the necessary levels of knowledge and wisdom for the majority of us, we are not going to resolve our present day problems in our present generation.

But surely, we need not be pessimistic. Our future generations are going to resolve these issues. That is the manner in which our world is designed by the Original Designer of our evolving world.

Time is the sure shot healer of our problems. We need to learn the benefits of patience.

And that too is part of our learning experiences!

[Read the previous blog for knowing more about the eras of human progress !]

The last book of the Bible is the mysterious book of the Revelations. This book was written by the youngest disciple of Jesus Christ. What he describes in the book is about the visions that he had while he spent his time as a lonely prisoner in one of the islands called Patmos. The book is perhaps considered as the most mysterious books of the Bible about which Christian scholars have been debating for centuries.

I too have read this book many times and was laboring hard to know more about many of those visions about which St.John had written.

I was too puzzled to know more about the 'Sea of Glass' about which John wrote twice in his book:

" Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back."[Revelations 4:6]

"And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and its image and over the number of its name. They held harps given them by God" [Revelation 15:2]

And what is this, this sea of glass ?

I searched the internet to know what knowledgeable scholars say about it. And I got some answers like this:

[Click this link to read one such opinion here!] But the author obviously does not have a clear answer!

But fortunately, I have found the answer.

Again through a Book of Revelation now known as the Fifth Epochal Revelation (FER) to mankind. Just as some celestial beings were responsible for showing the visions to St.John some 2000 years ago, this time too, some celestial beings had been responsible to make us understand these things.

The new book of revealed knowledge is my favorite book of life guidance now, about which I had written many times in my earlier blogs.

Now let us see, what my favorite book tells us about the sea of glass. Let me reproduce some of the quotations from this book for you:

" John the Revelator saw a vision of the arrival of a class of advancing mortals from the seventh mansion world to their first heaven, the glories of Jerusem. He recorded: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and those who had gained the victory over the beast that was originally in them and over the image that persisted through the mansion worlds and finally over the last mark and trace, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God, and singing the song of deliverance from mortal fear and death.” (Perfected space communication is to be had on all these worlds; and your anywhere reception of such communications is made possible by carrying the “harp of God,” a morontia contrivance compensating for the inability to directly adjust the immature morontia sensory mechanism to the reception of space communications.) [The Urantia Book 47:10.2]

" The Edentia sea of glass is one enormous circular crystal about one hundred miles in circumference and about thirty miles in depth. This magnificent crystal serves as the receiving field for all transport seraphim and other beings arriving from points outside the sphere; such a sea of glass greatly facilitates the landing of transport seraphim.

A crystal field on this order is found on almost all architectural worlds; and it serves many purposes aside from its decorative value, being utilized for portraying superuniverse reflectivity to assembled groups and as a factor in the energy-transformation technique for modifying the currents of space and for adapting other incoming physical-energy streams."[ The Urantia Book 43:1.10-11 ]

" As you ascend the mansion worlds one by one, they become more crowded with the morontia activities of advancing survivors. As you go forward, you will recognize more and more of the Jerusem features added to the mansion worlds. The sea of glass makes its appearance on the second mansonia."[The Urantia Book 47:4.3]

Perhaps you felt some difficulty in understanding some new words in the above quoted passages. Of course, they are new revelations and one can know and understand those new revealed names and words by learning and reading this great book of revelation that mankind has ever got.

And my attempt is to make this book known to those who are desirous of knowing those knowledge.

Does such a desire got initiated in your mind ?

You may visit my Urantia-India Website for more information.

I purchased my first scooter way back in 1981 and it was an yellow Lamby-150, which was a modified version of the good old Lambretta originally made by Innocenti of Italy. At that time, it costed me about Rs.8500. During those days, the other scooters in the Indian market were the bulky, imbalanced Bajaj scooters, following the designs of Vespa of Piaggio, Italy and the Indian version of the Lambretta made by the Public Sector company, Scooters India Limited, in the desi name , Vijay Super.

During those days, the common men of India were just experiencing the pleasure of motorized self travel. There were a few motor cycles as well such as the Royal Enfield, the Java and the Rajdoot, the latter being the most preferred means of transport for the farmers of North India.

All these models of scooters and bikes had their dedicated customers. Scooters were for the urban class and bikes for the rural folks used to be the unwritten rule. Perhaps, the rural roads were not good for the small wheeled scooters.

Being in a well planned city with relatively good roads, it was a pleasure for me riding my Lamby and I liked it very much. It was a perfect, well balanced and sturdy one. The only problem encountered at times was its starting trouble. Perhaps, this one aspect made the unbalanced Vespa models of Bajaj, the most preferred scooter in India at that time. These scooters did not give much starting problems. All one had to do was to tilt the machine to one side for the petrol to flow to the carburetor before attempting to kick the start pedal. With such an advantage over the other few scooters, the common man at that time was ready to pay almost the equivalent of a new scooter as premium for a second hand one even when it was almost a decade old. The Vespa never failed in starting, though proud owners of these scooters tilting them to one side before attempting the kick starter, used to be a common sight on the roads in those days. My Lamby too was not so unreliable. Only thing needed was to know the trick of starting its engine without the petrol flooding its cylinder causing an embarrassing delay in starting. Somehow, I knew the trick !

The only harassment the two wheeler owners of India faced from their democratic government used to be the insulting manner in which the policemen stopped them on the road for checking the 'papers' which meant the license, registration book and the insurance policy. What they gained by checking these papers used to be an unsolved question for most of the owners and the non-owners of these vehicles alike. Perhaps the ruling class wanted to show their existence and power to harass those not in power ! Perhaps, they wanted to show that they are with the genuine owners and not with those thieves riding these machines without the papers in proof of legal ownership in their possession. Frankly, I have no idea ! But, it is widely talked in private that these vehicle checks are for aiding another form of forcible tax collection in the form of penalties specified in the motor vehicles act. It acted as a means of filling both the official and unofficial coffers!

I was fortunate that I escaped from these police men's traps during those many years when I owned my scooters, the Lamby and then the modern gear less Kinetic Honda. I normally avoided those routes and times where these policemen in groups wait and catch their preys. Yet, I was caught one day.

It was an evening. A friend of a friend came to meet him. At around 9 PM, my friend came to me with a request of dropping his friend at the railway station to catch the late night train. In those days, perhaps even now, this city where I lived, did not have any worthy public transport. Interestingly, this city is a modern city of 1.5 Million people in central India. During those days, the population was around 0.4 Million.

My friend too wanted to see off his friend. Thus, it was inevitable that we three make the trip on my Lamby. Though my Lamby and I were capable of doing that, the police did not allow such things. And I told my reluctance to break the law to my friend. But, the situation was such that there was no other way than to break the law. The police would not be there any where at this time, was the assurance given by my friend.

So, we three proceeded to the station on my Lamby. For the first five kilometers nothing happened. Then, suddenly on an unlit square, they appeared, stopping me. We three tried to plead, argue and beg with the officer. No use. My friends decided to walk the other 2 kilometers to the railway station in the night leaving me alone with the policemen. After harassing me for about half an hour, they agreed to leave me making me poorer by Rs.100, a good amount in those days. The money obviously did not go to the official chest as the uniformed men were kind enough not to give me a receipt. If they make it official, it would give me more trouble in the courts ! That was their reasoning ! With the ordeal over I felt relaxed and was happy even with the loss of the money. More than the money, it was the mean minded looks and talks that these government officials mete out to the public that is common knowledge to all. The policemen are not normal humans who can recognize other normal humans. That is what I felt that day !

So, whenever I see these uniformed men on the road, a kind of panic sweep my whole body. I have not broken any law and I am no criminal. But, a law breaking policeman could easily make me one if he so desires. That is my worry. I have known senior police officers, many of them perfect gentlemen and I have known many policemen as well who are also good people. Just as there are good and bad people there are good and bad policemen. Yet, my worry remains. In these days of democracy, many people take the troubles of gaining power through their involvements in the so called politics and try clinging to such political powers for getting some influence over this tactical government machinery. All over the world, it is like this ! They make rules to create a vicious organization with whimsical powers thinking that it would do good and then keep amending it thousand times for controlling it, making it a double edged sword that harms the good and the bad equally and always. A ferocious dog might give a pseudo security feeling to its master, but when masters keep changing, the dog becomes confused and no more be willing to obey some of its masters any more !

It is the invisible power of God that has been protecting me from such visible and invisible forces. That is what I believe. Yet, it is not wise to get in to the traps of such dark forces, knowingly.

And that is the reason, I decided to sell off my last scooter and decided not to ride one any more. The authorities introduced a new rule which made wearing crash helmets compulsory for bikes and scooters. The authorities are wise men and women. They know better than common people like me. They introduce rules and laws for the benefit of people like me. That is what we are all supposed to believe! But in a society composed of a mixture of good and bad, semi-perfect and imperfect beings, perfect rules and perfect justice can never arise !

They have found that riding scooters and bikes cause accidents. A good percentage of accidents become fatal for the rider. And the major reason for fatality is head injury. So, wearing a helmet can reduce the head injury and the fatality. That is the simple logic. Scooter and bike riders should be happy to wear the crash helmets to save their own lives.

But, given a choice, most riders do not wear the crash helmets that are now available in the market. Initially, I too purchased one helmet.

To my horror, I find wearing a helmet enhances my chances of making and accident. Without a helmet I am clearly conscious of the surroundings and the vehicles nearby. There is little chance that I hit someone or someone hit me. But with the helmet, my vision is hindered, my hearing is tampered and my perception is lowered. My chances of making accidents enhance many fold. Besides, my perspiring head keeps me irritated always. If I do not make an accident, it is only the providence of God !

So, I considered it wise not to wear the helmet while I ride my scooter. For me, prevention was better than a cure. Wearing a helmet increased the chances of an accident and also improved the chances not losing life due to head or spinal injuries. But it will not prevent you from getting other injuries and fractures. You can still be in the hospital bed for days or months. So, how do you make the choice ?

I had experienced the difference of riding a scooter with and without the helmet and I took a considered decision that not wearing the helmet was better for me. Because in this case my chances of making an accident is reduced. Unfortunately, it is difficult to prove this, unless the researchers take honest feelings of the riders into consideration instead of relying on statistical accident data for conclusions.

Regrettably, the authorities go by the latter route and preferred to take away the choice of the riders. They made it compulsory and empowered their police to harass those riders without wearing these helmets.

I did not want to get into troubles with the police again. You see, there are good and bad ones there. The latter in more numbers !

So, I sold off my last scooter and became a four wheeler driver instead for my personal movements in and around. I know, it is not an energy efficient decision. Nor it is one I enjoy much.

There are many like me and now the roads are no more good for any smooth traffic.

The wise authorities are perhaps thinking to empower their police with yet other restrictive rules !

I am waiting to leave my four wheeler and walk for good ! I do not know whether that too could make me safe !

Long ago, when computers and computer programs were not so common , no one, even those somewhat familiar with these modern day marvels, never imagined the future scope of these to revolutionize the way businesses would be carried out. Besides, no one could foresee the huge money making potential that computers had in store.

I remember a small engineering industry giving me a task of making a FORTRAN program to calculate the thermal design parameters of a shell and tube heat exchanger that the chemical process industry commonly used. The manual calculations used to take days and the said program I developed using my little knowledge in that programming language could do the task in seconds. Moreover, one could check various alternatives for the equipment design so easily.

The effort I put to make the program was a few hours a day for a couple of days. I gave the program write up and the IBM punch card pack that contained it to the user free of cost. I felt shy to ask a remuneration for that work. I being just a budding student in the academic field at that time was not a business man to ask for a remuneration for my work. I knew making the program, but I did not know how to work out the price for my labor.

The well known billionaire of USA who made computer software an industry worth more than the much more complex hardware too was in his college at that time. He applied a different formula to evaluate the cost of his software programs that made software business of later days the top money spinning activity.

The simple trick was to evaluate the cost of the software in a different manner. Software production involved intelligent manpower. If you evaluate the cost based on that, the cost of a software pack could be to the order of say $ 1000. But the said software when used in another business had the potential of making a substantial profit of say $100000 for the end user. So, why not link that profit potential as the determining factor for pricing the software that was otherwise profitable for selling at $1000 for its maker. It the maker of the software could convince the end user of it money making potential then it was possible to strike a deal. Even a 50:50 profit sharing deal would have provided the software developer a clean profit of $50,000. Where is $1000 and $50,000 ?

See, the difference the approach makes in determining the price of a product ?

The world now moves adopting these two basic strategies. Prices of items, objects and services can be determined based on the cost plus profit basis or on the basis of profit potentials. The latter is a complex affair. It depends essentially how people get hooked up to certain ideas and concepts, not necessarily always wise!

For example, business and money making for some are like the games that people play in the casinos. In this kind of business money simply flows massively from one end to the other without any one doing much efforts. Time, luck and mind play the tricks. This is the area of business where the customers are those who have made enough money that money no more have much value for them in life.

Let me explain this with another example. There are thousands of artists in this world who can make paintings much better than many of those names whom we now know as world celebrities. When the good art work made by an unknown artist can never fetch a reasonable price even to provide its creator a day's food, some thing that is much inferior, but attributed to a so-called celebrity artist can fetch billions in some art auctions. Now the question is what essentially has determined the prices? I would rather say it is the foolish thinking of the billionaire buyer that determined the price of the painting in billions than the beauty of the painting in itself. It is yet another matter how to make this billionaire or others like him foolish ! There are people capable of doing that !

Easy money making happens due to mind corruption. It is another form of corruption. It affects the society dangerously, but in a subtle manner.

I do not want to explain all the sub forms of pricing strategies adopted by people who are concerned only with profiteering.

Even then, it adds color and contrast to life. If those billionaires in whose control billions have accumulated easily, would wisely channelize those billions for creating opportunities for the deprived people, then the matters would be different altogether.

Instead, if they prefer to buy gold, land and other properties and keep those things as future treasures hidden from every one without any useful purpose for anyone, it is a grave sin that they do to the society at large.

I do not consider money making and wealth generation as sins. But, money made and wealth created should not be made static. There is no harm in sinking some money when it accumulates too much in one hand by buying some art works. But use that money to buy the art works created by all artists. Not from just one or two.

Those fortunate billionaires should think of spending their easy money for promoting such businesses and human activities that are not conventionally profitable.

The neo Indian billionaires of India can do wonders for their country if they decide to do some thing of that kind, instead of spending their monies to buy castles and yachts in foreign lands.

Let the monies that got accumulated in their hands not make them foolish cowards finding interested only in those activities and things conventionally designed or intended for such people ! Let them realize that there are things much more desirable than their 'pseudocratic' life !

Of late I am losing my interest in watching the News TV channels and reading the Print Media. I do not know the situation in other countries. But in this great nation of so-called pacifists, veggies and 'Ahimsawaadis' (proponents of non-violence) violence, cruelty and hatred are getting undue importance in the news media in recent years.

It is a time of making material business benefits from even those activities that used to be considered semi-divine in some years ago. Yes, I am talking about journalism, teaching, preaching, healing and the like.

Creating awareness about the evils of the society for possible eradication of such things in future may be a good idea. To that extent, propagating news about evil happenings might be tolerable.

But any thing in excess is bad and poisonous. Anything without applying the wise balance of mind is destructive.

'Breaking News' in red has become a continuous feature in the Indian TV channels that I am not able to differentiate the 'break' or the 'news'. And in reality, these neo news editors of these countless channels are breaking the heads of the viewers with these gimmicks which has lost its ingenuity.

Most of the media men and women associated with the so-called national news channels seem to loiter around the metros only with their cameras and microphones to look for road accidents and such human mishaps and disasters to be beamed to the millions of Indian households with such absurd impunity.

They have now made the unfortunate sorrows of humans beings as a means of making money. They break the pathetic human agonies in to millisecond clips and beam it 24x7 with those ad-clips that run in to hours!

What kind of a media journalism is this ?

They have to be practical and cost effective, they might say. They give what the public want to see and listen. They go by the viewership statistics. News about bad things and evil incidences are what thrills the Indian viewers, they argue !

That reminds me of another story. Decades ago, a south Indian community in a central Indian city made repeated appeals to the railway ministry for linking their city with their south Indian home state with the convenience of a direct express train service. But the railway babus repeatedly rejected their genuine plea on the ground that their records showed no passenger demand on this route.How could that happen when there was no direct train service ? From where these babus could have got the relevant data of passenger load ?

So, when the TV fellows keep showing the those head breaking news of nonsense always, there is no escape for the viewers. The viewership would be cent percent on news highlighting the evil character of the Indian society.

If feature films depicting evil stories are going to influence the minds of the majority people, especially the children, as told by some of the wise social activists and psychologists, then the evil news propagation day and night would do more harm than that.

Why do these media men and women flock around some peculiar characters associated with politics, cinema and sports and try to make them celebrities ? Are they getting some indirect benefits for glamorizing such men and women? Media plays to make some people celebrities and celebrities add to media popularity. It is a double benefit game. Only the common people are be-fooled in this game!

Media is called the fourth estate (read estate of power!) in a democracy. Yes, they are the ones who make and break deals. They are the ones who think that they are above all. They can break and make governments. Is it not something great ?

But in the process they seem to forget their duties and responsibilities to the society. Just as the people who form the courts, the people who are the eyes and ears of the society also have to work with some self imposed ethics and codes of conduct. If not they are bound to perish some day together with the society they belong.

Why are they not projecting the good things from their society ? Why don't they project those good things with prominence ? Human achievements are much more desirable to be projected than human disappointments and troubles. The former propagates positive energy and helps in positive progress. The latter is negative energy that destroys!

Let us hope that our media men and women come out of their biasing influences and learn to do their duties and responsibilities the way it should be !

Let me conclude this by quoting an admonition to mankind from the superhuman authors of my favorite book of life guidance:

"As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil.

Very late on Sunday night, February 26, [ AD 30 ] a runner from Bethany arrived at Philadelphia,bringing a message from Martha and Mary which said,

“Lord, he whom you love is very sick.”

This message reached Jesus at the close of the evening conference and just as he was taking leave of the apostles for the night.

At first Jesus made no reply. There occurred one of those strange interludes, a time when he appeared to be in communication with something outside of, and beyond, himself.

And then, looking up, he addressed the messenger in the hearing of the apostles, saying:

“This sickness is really not to the death. Doubt not that it may be used to glorify God and exalt the Son.”

Jesus was very fond of Martha, Mary, and their brother, Lazarus; he loved them with a fervent affection.

His first and human thought was to go to their assistance at once, but another idea came into his combined mind. He had almost given up hope that the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem would ever accept the kingdom, but he still loved his people, and there now occurred to him a plan whereby the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem might have one more chance to accept his teachings; and he decided, his Father willing, to make this last appeal to Jerusalem the most profound and stupendous outward working of his entire earth career. The Jews clung to the idea of a wonder-working deliverer. And though he refused to stoop to the performance of material wonders or to the enactment of temporal exhibitions of political power, he did now ask the Father’s consent for the manifestation of his hitherto unexhibited power over life and death.

Accordingly, early on Wednesday morning he said to his apostles:

“Let us prepare at once to go into Judea again.”

And when the apostles heard their Master say this, they drew off by themselves for a time to take counsel of one another. James assumed the direction of the conference, and they all agreed that it was only folly to allow Jesus to go again into Judea, and they came back as one man and so informed him.

Said James:

“Master, you were in Jerusalem a few weeks back, and the leaders sought your death, while the people were minded to stone you. At that time you gave these men their chance to receive the truth, and we will not permit you to go again into Judea.”

When they could not persuade him to refrain from going into Judea, and when some of the apostles were loath even to accompany him,Thomas addressed his fellows, saying:

“We have told the Master our fears, but he is determined to go to Bethany. I am satisfied it means the end; they will surely kill him, but if that is the Master’s choice, then let us acquit ourselves like men of courage; let us go also that we may die with him.”

And it was ever so; in matters requiring deliberate and sustained courage, Thomas was always the mainstay of the twelve apostles.

On the way to Judea Jesus was followed by a company of almost fifty of his friends and enemies.

It was shortly after noon when Martha started out to meet Jesus as he came over the brow of the hill near Bethany.

Her brother, Lazarus, had been dead four days and had been laid away in their private tomb at the far end of the garden late on Sunday afternoon. The stone at the entrance of the tomb had been rolled in place on the morning of this day, Thursday.

When Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus concerning Lazarus’s illness, they were confident the Master would do something about it. They knew that their brother was desperately sick, and though they hardly dared hope that Jesus would leave his work of teaching and preaching to come to their assistance, they had such confidence in his power to heal disease that they thought he would just speak the curative words, and Lazarus would immediately be made whole. And when Lazarus died a few hours after the messenger left Bethany for Philadelphia, they reasoned that it was because the Master did not learn of their brother’s illness until it was too late, until he had already been dead for several hours.

But they, with all of their believing friends, were greatly puzzled by the message which the runner brought back Tuesday forenoon when he reached Bethany. The messenger insisted that he heard Jesus say,“...this sickness is really not to the death.”

Neither could they understand why he sent no word to them nor otherwise proffered assistance.

Many friends from near-by hamlets and others from Jerusalem came over to comfort the sorrow-stricken sisters. Lazarus and his sisters were the children of a well-to-do and honorable Jew, one who had been the leading resident of the little village of Bethany.

And notwithstanding that all three had long been ardent followers of Jesus, they were highly respected by all who knew them. They had inherited extensive vineyards and olive orchards in this vicinity, and that they were wealthy was further attested by the fact that they could afford a private burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their parents had already been laid away in this tomb.

Mary had given up the thought of Jesus’ coming and was abandoned to her grief, but Martha clung to the hope that Jesus would come, even up to the time on that very morning when they rolled the stone in front of the tomb and sealed the entrance. Even then she instructed a neighbor lad to keep watch down the Jericho road from the brow of the hill to the east of Bethany; and it was this lad who brought tidings to Martha that Jesus and his friends were approaching.

When Martha met Jesus, she fell at his feet, exclaiming,

“Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

Many fears were passing through Martha’s mind, but she gave expression to no doubt, nor did she venture to criticize or question the Master’s conduct as related to Lazarus’s death. When she had spoken, Jesus reached down and, lifting her upon her feet, said,

“Only have faith, Martha, and your brother shall rise again.”

Then answered Martha:

“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day; and even now I believe that whatever you shall ask of God, our Father will give you.”

Then said Jesus, looking straight into the eyes of Martha:

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. In truth, whosoever lives and believes in me shall never really die. Martha, do you believe this?”

And Martha answered the Master:

“Yes, I have long believed that you are the Deliverer, the Son of the living God, even he who should come to this world.”

Many of those present were Jesus’ bitter enemies. That is why Martha had come out to meet him alone, and also why she went in secretly to inform Mary that he had asked for her. Martha, while craving to see Jesus, desired to avoid any possible unpleasantness which might be caused by his coming suddenly into the midst of a large group of his Jerusalem enemies. It had been Martha’s intention to remain in the house with their friends while Mary went to greet Jesus, but in this she failed, for they all followed Mary and so found themselves unexpectedly in the presence of the Master.

Martha led Mary to Jesus, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet, exclaiming,

“If you had only been here, my brother would not have died!”

And when Jesus saw how they all grieved over the death of Lazarus, his soul was moved with compassion.

The human mind of Jesus was mightily moved by the contention between his love for Lazarus and the bereaved sisters and his disdain and contempt for the outward show of affection manifested by some of these unbelieving and murderously intentioned Jews. Jesus indignantly resented the show of forced and outward mourning for Lazarus by some of these professed friends inasmuch as such false sorrow was associated in their hearts with so much bitter enmity toward himself.

Some of these Jews, however, were sincere in their mourning, for they were real friends of the family.

After Jesus had spent a few moments in comforting Martha and Mary, apart from the mourners, he asked them,

“Where have you laid him?”

Then Martha said,

“Come and see.”

And as the Master followed on in silence with the two sorrowing sisters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who followed after them saw his tears, one of them said:

“Behold how he loved him. Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?”

By this time they were standing before the family tomb, a small natural cave, or declivity, in the ledge of rock which rose up some thirty feet at the far end of the garden plot.

It is difficult to explain to human minds just why Jesus wept. While we have access to the registration of the combined human emotions and divine thoughts, we are not altogether certain about the real cause of these emotional manifestations. We are inclined to believe that Jesus wept because of a number of thoughts and feelings which were going through his mind at this time.

Did the divine mind of Jesus know, even before Lazarus died, that he would raise him from the dead? We do not know. We know only what we are herewith placing on record.

And so, on this Thursday afternoon at about half past two o’clock, was the stage all set in this little hamlet of Bethany for the enactment of the greatest of all works connected with the earth ministry of Michael of Nebadon, the greatest manifestation of divine power during his incarnation in the flesh, since his own resurrection occurred after he had been liberated from the bonds of mortal habitation.

The small group assembled before Lazarus’s tomb little realized the presence near at hand of a vast concourse of all orders of celestial beings assembled under the leadership of Gabriel and now in waiting, vibrating with expectancy and ready to execute the bidding of their beloved Sovereign.

When Jesus spoke those words of command,

“Take away the stone,” the assembled celestial hosts made ready to enact the drama of the resurrection of Lazarus in the likeness of his mortal flesh.

Such a form of resurrection involves difficulties of execution which far transcend the usual technique of the resurrection of mortal creatures in morontia form and requires far more celestial personalities and a far greater organization of universe facilities.

When Martha and Mary heard this command of Jesus directing that the stone in front of the tomb be rolled away, they were filled with conflicting emotions. Mary hoped that Lazarus was to be raised from the dead, but Martha, while to some extent sharing her sister’s faith, was more exercised by the fear that Lazarus would not be presentable, in his appearance, to Jesus, the apostles, and their friends.

Said Martha:

“Must we roll away the stone? My brother has now been dead four days, so that by this time decay of the body has begun.”

Martha also said this because she was not certain as to why the Master had requested that the stone be removed; she thought maybe Jesus wanted only to take one last look at Lazarus. She was not settled and constant in her attitude. As they hesitated to roll away the stone, Jesus said:

“Did I not tell you at the first that this sickness was not to the death? Have I not come to fulfill my promise? And after I came to you, did I not say that, if you would only believe, you should see the glory of God? Wherefore do you doubt? How long before you will believe and obey?”

When Jesus had finished speaking, his apostles, with the assistance of willing neighbors, laid hold upon the stone and rolled it away from the entrance to the tomb.

As this company of some forty-five mortals stood before the tomb, they could dimly see the form of Lazarus, wrapped in linen bandages, resting on the right lower niche of the burial cave.

While these earth creatures stood there in almost breathless silence, a vast host of celestial beings had swung into their places preparatory to answering the signal for action when it should be given by Gabriel, their commander.

Jesus lifted up his eyes and said:

“Father, I am thankful that you heard and granted my request. I know that you always hear me, but because of those who stand here with me, I thus speak with you, that they may believe that you have sent me into the world, and that they may know that you are working with me in that which we are about to do.”

And when he had prayed, he cried with a loud voice,

“Lazarus, come forth!”

Though these human observers remained motionless, the vast celestial host was all astir in unified action in obedience to the Creator’s word. In just twelve seconds of earth time the hitherto lifeless form of Lazarus began to move and presently sat up on the edge of the stone shelf whereon it had rested. His body was bound about with grave cloths, and his face was covered with a napkin.

And as he stood up before them—alive—Jesus said,

“Loose him and let him go.”

All, save the apostles, with Martha and Mary, fled to the house. They were pale with fright and overcome with astonishment. While some tarried, many hastened to their homes.

Lazarus greeted Jesus and the apostles and asked the meaning of the grave cloths and why he had awakened in the garden. Jesus and the apostles drew to one side while Martha told Lazarus of his death, burial, and resurrection. She had to explain to him that he had died on Sunday and was now brought back to life on Thursday, inasmuch as he had had no consciousness of time since falling asleep in death.

As they walked toward the house, Gabriel dismissed the extra groups of the assembled heavenly host while he made record of the first instance on earth, and the last, where a mortal creature had been resurrected in the likeness of the physical body of death.

Lazarus could hardly comprehend what had occurred. He knew he had been very sick, but he could recall only that he had fallen asleep and been awakened. He was never able to tell anything about these four days in the tomb because he was wholly unconscious. Time is nonexistent to those who sleep the sleep of death.

Though many believed in Jesus as a result of this mighty work, others only hardened their hearts the more to reject him. By noon the next day this story had spread over all Jerusalem. Scores of men and women went to Bethany to look upon Lazarus and talk with him, and the alarmed and disconcerted Pharisees hastily called a meeting of the Sanhedrin that they might determine what should be done about these new developments.

Lazarus remained at the Bethany home, being the center of great interest to many sincere believers and to numerous curious individuals, until the week of the crucifixion of Jesus, when he received warning that the Sanhedrin had decreed his death. The rulers of the Jews were determined to put a stop to the further spread of the teachings of Jesus, and they well judged that it would be useless to put Jesus to death if they permitted Lazarus, who represented the very peak of his wonder-working, to live and bear testimony to the fact that Jesus had raised him from the dead. Already had Lazarus suffered bitter persecution from them.

Soon after this Martha and Mary disposed of their lands at Bethany and joined their brother in Perea.

He ultimately died, when 67 years old, of the same sickness that carried him off when he was a younger man at Bethany.

[Adapted from the Urantia Book]

Some time ago, in one of my blogs I shared with my readers about some concepts of human progress that I learnt from my favorite book. In that blog I had reproduced the twenty eight highest concepts of human philosophy that advanced human minds could appreciate well. Let me reproduce it once again:

1. A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity. Cleverness is not a substitute for true character.

2. Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.

3. Inherent capacities cannot be exceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into the material memory mold.

4. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it.

5. Difficulties may challenge mediocrity and defeat the fearful, but they only stimulate the true children of the Most Highs.

6. To enjoy privilege without abuse, to have liberty without license, to possess power and steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement—these are the marks of high civilization.

7. Blind and unforeseen accidents do not occur in the cosmos. Neither do the celestial beings assist the lower being who refuses to act upon his light of truth.

8. Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort.

9. Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in charm.

10. Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the recognition of the Infinite.

11. The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God's.

12. The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.

13. Stars are best discerned from the lonely isolation of experiential depths, not from the illuminated and ecstatic mountain tops.

14. Whet the appetites of your associates for truth; give advice only when it is asked for.

15. Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the attempt of the barren soul to appear rich.

16. You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity.

17. Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.

18. Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest.

19. Anxiety must be abandoned. The disappointments hardest to bear are those which never come.

20. Only a poet can discern poetry in the commonplace prose of routine existence.

21. The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.

22. The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

23. Death added nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual endowment, but it did add to the experiential status the consciousness of survival.

24. The destiny of eternity is determined moment by moment by the achievements of the day by day living. The acts of today are the destiny of tomorrow.

25. Greatness lies not so much in possessing strength as in making a wise and divine use of such strength.

26. Knowledge is possessed only by sharing; it is safeguarded by wisdom and socialized by love.

27. Progress demands development of individuality; mediocrity seeks perpetuation in standardization.

28. The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained.

In the coming days, I propose to write a few explanatory blogs on a few of the above philosophical statements that I consider very important for everyone.[Please click the statement above if it is hyper-linked! Else you may use the blog search facility on the left column top to find blogs that contain an idea or key word, instantly.]

By the way, think it over. If you find success in finding its deeper meanings it would be nice.

If those meanings are fully acceptable to your mind, then it would be nicer.

Read and try yourself !

Yesterday I have brought to your notice a list of twenty eight philosophical statements which the authors of my favorite book want us to give some special attention. Today, I want to discuss about the first statement from this list.

This statement in full is like this :A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity; cleverness is not a substitute for true character !

It is not very difficult to digest the universal truth that this philosophical declaration contains. But just as there are people who can understand truths fully, there are people who do not get it so easily. Forget those people who do not try to understand or those who are with bloated egos and self pride that do not allow them to listen and tune to any other truths other than what they feel like agreeing. Forget also those who do not have any mind capacity or basic intellect to understand philosophical truths.

Now coming to the statement as above. It is not so difficult to understand that we humans exist in this world with varying levels of skills and abilities. We all have varying levels of abilities or talents. It could be physical, intellectual or philosophical.

Some are extremely good in some sports and games. Some have much greater physical strength than many others. Some have much superior and beautiful bodies. Some are with high intellectual abilities in mathematics, physics and such other sciences. Some are very good inventors and may be owners of many patents. Some have acute business knacks and might have amassed money and wealth even they cannot measure or know.

During my school days, I used to wonder about the mathematical ability of a lady hailing from my neighboring state, Karnataka, in India. She is no more now, and her name is Shakuntala Devi. She never had any formal education, but she possessed a brain that was even faster than modern computers in arithmetical calculations. Indeed her ability even made our renowned physiologists wondering!

I watch those Karate black-belts break tiles and bricks with their bare hands, in awe. How is it that their hands become harder than rocks in a fraction of a second? How do their soft tissues change their softness to such awesome strengths?

I had a lovely pet dog named, Sonu. She was a pure white Pomeranian , though not as pure in her breed. She was our faithful companion and ferocious protector of our home for more than a decade! While her body and paws used to feel like soft cotton to us always, I used to marvel at her extra ordinary steel like strength her soft body acquired when need arose. She used to kill rats, house lizards and also some clever crows in just one blow with her otherwise soft paws. Is it not something exciting our curiosities?

No doubt, these abilities could be some extra ordinary gifts from the various agencies of God for enabling humans (and animals) not only to facilitate their material living, but also to make a few of us to think, explore and wonder about the supreme designs in the Nature that are presented to us by the agencies of God.

But a mere possession of some of these extra ordinary gifts does not make any human being any special one for God. Because, such special gifts and abilities are abundantly provided in varying degrees to animals and humans. In the case of animals, the special abilities are for their natural survival and existence. But for human beings these abilities are not only for their own survival, but for them to care for others and also for realizing the existence of God from whom these talents come, with utmost humility.

If the individual who possesses the special gift, instead of using it for his own selfish satisfaction, tries to find out what God wants him or her to do with that gift, he or she is making an effort towards enhancing his or her spiritual capacity. The person is aspiring to find out the unseen spiritual existence and desire of God!

Such persons would recognize the need for living according to the desire of God. The most essential feature of this recognition is the desire to love and serve other human beings, without the desire for gaining some personal benefits.

But a good majority of people forget this. Their special gifts soon transform and get augmented with cleverness. Cleverness is that special ability to cheat or hoodwink others. In that process they lose their spiritual capacity to love and serve others.

If our world appear as a world of partiality, injustice, envy, hatred and exploitation, it is because of the clever acts of such people.

A mere possession of some special talent does not automatically ensure possession of a desirable and good nature that is known as character. Remember, most animals have some special abilities that are not found in humans. Many of these animals may pose a threat to our lives if we are not careful. They need not have a character that is too good for us! But humans are not to be like the unthinking animals. That is the reason why we are different. Character is what make us different from animals. But yet we find many human beings who are similar to animals. They are the characterless people. They just live like animals without using their superior abilities of mind which are not in animals. They refuse to recognize the existence of God and give reverence to Him, just as the animals. Many of them take undue pride in their abilities and the pride ultimately becomes the cause for their fall and destruction. How sad!

They have been privileged persons. But they refuse to realize the existence of the spiritual force that maintains every thing material and physical in this world.

They refuse to enhance their spiritual capacities of coming near to God, a pre-requisite to progress in life even after their material existence in this world for some years.

They become too pre-occupied with their special skills during their material existence that they forget to board the ship that could have taken them to the other shores of abundant life and everlasting adventure!

Character development while living a material life is essential for enhancing spiritual capacity.

Spiritual capacity means the degree of nearness to God. Nearness to God provides the much desired potential for overcoming the dangers of personality destruction after material death.

Material abilities and skills, though good while living in this world, do not ensure spiritual capacity or possession of a good character. Physical and mental abilities and skills do not make a person special for God. But spiritual nature makes a person special for God; a special feature that enhances the bond of love between man and God. The higher the spiritual ability, the more the person becomes humble! Because, with spiritual nature developing, the person begins to develop character and recognizes his or her insignificance before the Supreme existence of God. Selfishness and ego begin to vanish in such persons. In other words, animal nature begins to fade and the human becomes more like real humans instead of being like animals.

More and more people with good character make this world transformed to a world with divine presence. Just as the heavenly worlds !

If you have some special material skills or abilities, you also have some additional responsibilities to use those in the manner in which they should be utilized.

Mere possession of those special skills and abilities does not make you a desirable person for God. It has no significance in the long run !

So, if you think that you are a very clever person, beware of the dangers. Your cleverness for you would earn you only short term gains in this world. After all, your life span of a few decades is not at all a long term!

It would be preferable to discard that cleverness for character. But building a good character together with the possession of those skills and special abilities would make you not only desirable for the people of this world but also for God.

But when you are not very sure of the afterlife, you are bound to become anxious of getting the maximum and enjoying the maximum during the short span of life in this world.

Let us drink and enjoy, you might think! Let me take advantage of my skills and my cleverness to the full, you might reason with your soul!

But when you are in your clever act, what could be the feeling of others who watch you from all around ?

No doubt, the spectators might laugh and clap just as they do while watching those skillful circus clowns.

But are you living just to be laughed and clapped for a while ?

Are we living to show off our skills and talents for getting clapping from our fellows?

Do you want to be like a circus clown during the entire life span?

Is it not worth to think seriously?

My Heartfelt Sympathies to these Ignorant Men and Women of My Country Who Discard their Opportunities to Serve Others !

Income Tax e-Filing in India : Did Anyone Foresee These Problems Before Making it Mandatory ?

A New Malayalam Blogsite and Some Tips for Making Your PC Malayalam Enabled !

ഇലന്തൂര്‍ അച്ചായന്‍റെ അഭിപ്രായങ്ങള്‍ !

I Pray Now This Way Everyday to God (The Brief Story of the Evolution of My Prayer ! )

Our Double Standards : Think of These for A Moment if Your Mind is Sane !

Water Flows Only to Lower Fields !

National Pension Scheme of India: Why The Banks Cannot Be Entrusted to Handle Peoples' Savings ?

Something to Think for Those Seriously Concerned with Science, Humanity and Religion !

Historical Dates Recorded in the Urantia Book: Now We Have Software To Confirm Those !

Would It Be Practically Possible To Live In This World Doing God's Will ? Any Benefits ?

More About the Author of Rajan C Mathew's Blogs and A few Words About the Blog Too !

The Seven Stages of Evolutionary Progress of Human Beings in an Evolutionary Planet !

The Dilemma of Public Decision Makers of Democratic Institutions in an Era of Material Comforts!

The Sea of Glass that was Revealed to the Author of the Revelations of the Bible: Know More About It !

Compulsory Crash Helmets For Two Wheeler Riders:Reason Why I Left Riding Those Cute Machines !

Analyzing the Pricing Strategy of A Profiteering Mind!

News and Media : Perpetuating Pessimism in the Guise of Creating Corrective Awareness !

The Why and How of Jesus Bringing Dead Lazarus to Life: What is not Written in the Bible !

The Twenty Eight Supreme Philosophical Statements Over Which You May Think Over for Acceptance !

Are You Just Living to be Laughed and Clapped for a While Displaying Your Skills and Talents ?