Light for Life: Spiritual Insights for Contemporary World [First ed.] 9789388945639

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Light for Life

Light for Life Spiritual insights for Contemporary World

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Contents

Light for Life

Light for Life Spiritual insights for Contemporary World

Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ

Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth 2020

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Contents

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Light for Light: Spiritual Insights for Spiritual World – Jointly published by the Rev. Dr. Ashish Amos of the Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (ISPCK), Post Box 1585, 1654, Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006 and Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV), Pune.

© JDV, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The views expressed in the book are those of the author and the publisher takes no responsibility for any of the statements. Online Order: http://ispck.org.in/book.php

ISBN:978-9388945639 Sketches by Tonio Mathew SVD, Shamil Joseph, Prabin RS RCJ and Ashlin Abraham

Laser typeset by ISPCK, Post Box 1585, 1654, Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006 Tel: 23866323 e-mail: [email protected] • [email protected] website: www.ispck.org.in Printed at Saurabh Printers, Noida.

Light for Life

Dedicated fondly to Ayona and Aiden

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Contents

Light for Life

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Contents

Dedication

... v

Foreword

... xiii

Introduction

... xv Part I The Spiritual Adventure

1. Making a Move Towards Newness

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3

2. The Happy Wisdom of the Elderly

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6

3. The Galaxy as a Spiritual Adventure

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9

4. Moving towards Mysticism

... 12

5. It’s Time to Start All over Again

... 15

6. Growing Towards Spiritual Resurgence

... 18

Part II Yearning of the Divine 7. Letting God Live in Us and Grow in Us

... 23

8. The Cosmic God Must Lead to a Personal God

... 26

Contents

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9. The Miracle of Miracles

... 29

10. The Silence of and the Silencing of God

... 32

11. Believers of the World Set to Rise

... 35

12. The Great Awakening

... 38 Part III

Experiencing the Divine 13. Promoting Religious Literacy

... 43

14. Growing a Big Soul

... 46

15. God Is No Thing

... 49

16. Complex Societies Create Bigger Gods

... 52

17. Only Good Religion Can Defeat the Bad

... 56

18. Resurrection: God on the Hook

... 59

19. Interspirituality and the Quest for Life

... 62

20. Islam and Society

... 65

21. King Abdullah: Promoting Peace and Harmony

... 68

Part IV Social Commitment 22. Seeing the Best in the Other

... 75

23. Being Social may Help You Live Long

... 78

24. Between Introverts and Extroverts

... 81

25. Expressing Our Feeling of Sadness

... 84

26. Where Knowledge is Priceless

... 87

27. Public Philosophy and Public Welfare

... 90

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28. Non-violence as the Best War Strategy

... 93

29. Spiritual People Are More Liberal

... 96

Part V Realising Human Values 30. Promoting Peace through Psychology

... 101

31. Can We Pop a Pill for Compassion?

... 104

32. The Rewards of Attentiveness

... 107

33. How Do We Explain Pain and Passion?

... 110

34. Bored out of Your Wits? Get Creative

... 113

35. Human Brain and Core-Values

... 116

36. Prompting Generosity in a Child

... 119

37. Only Unconditional Love can Bring Change

... 122

38. Our Mood Effects our Walking Style

... 125

39. Finding the Missing Child of Christmas

... 128

40. The Transforming Qualities of Love

... 131

Part VI Living Creatively 41. No Better Substitute to Human Touch

... 137

42. Understanding the Game of Life

... 140

43. Charity with Clarity of Purpose

... 143

44. Rhythms of Prehistorical Sleep

... 146

45. Letting Time Breathe in Our Lives

... 149

46. Wired to Save Energy

... 152

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47. Children, Religion and Altruism

... 155

48. Making Decisions Collectively

... 158

49. The Downside of Being an Expert

... 161

50. More Real than the Real

... 164

51 Start Meditating to Preserve Grey Matter

... 167

Part VII Light and Shadows 52. The Choice between Best and Worst is Ours

... 173

53. Anxiety and the Sixth Sense Theory

... 176

54. Imperfection Makes Us More Human

... 179

55. All about Pain and Empathy

... 182

56. Anticipation of Temptation

... 185

Part VIII Psychological Depth of Being 57. Five Personalities

... 191

58. Tracking our Personality

... 194

59. The Conservative and Liberal Values

... 197

60. Fading of Memories

... 200

61. Digital Addiction Causes Depression

... 203

62. Religious Insights on Mental Well-Being

... 206

63. Religious and Mental Well-Being

... 209

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Part IX Learning from Life 64. Truths of Existence

... 215

65. Deeds than Words

... 218

66. Leaves, Branches and Roots

... 221

67. The Universal Force of Love

... 224

68. Approaching Suffering Together

... 227

69. Criticism and Cynicism

... 230

70. The Newness of Life

... 233

Epilogue

... 236

Bibliography

... 238

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Foreword

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am happy to know that Prof Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ is writing the book, Life for Light: Spiritual Insights for Contemporary World. The book asks fundamental questions on life and light in the background of Christian life and commitment. Some of the questions the book poses are:

How can we love? Why do we live, love and die? Can we be true to our own selves? Do we necessarily make compromises in living? How does God accompany us in our life journey? What is the role of spiritual depth in encountering our lives in its intensity? Can non-believers live spiritual and authentic lives? How does faith in God help us relate to fellow human beings better? These are some of the issues we take up in this book, meant to encourage us to live genuinely and authentically? This book is basically contemporary spiritual insights meant for ordinary people, who genuinely seek God or the deepest meaning of their lives. I have known Prof Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ for more than 25 years. He is a committed Jesuit, and a person of faith, who wishes to integrate faith and reason into his philosophical and theological quest. He has been actively involved in bringing together science and religion in his reflections on philosophical anthropology. So, he deals with the topics

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Foreword

critically and creatively, bringing the latest scientific insights to the perennial wisdom of philosophy. He has succeeded in interpreting the basic Christian experience of life and love to the contemporary context. So, I am very happy to recommend this book to all students who seek knowledge, love and wisdom from life. As director of Institute for Theology, I am very proud to be associated with Prof Kuruvilla and this book. Prof Yong Hae Kim SJ Dean of Graduate School of Theology, Sogang University Seoul, South Korea October 10, 2019

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Introduction

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hat is life? How can we love? Why do we live, love and die? Can we be true to our own selves? Do we necessarily make compromises in living? How does God accompany us in our life journey? What is the role of spiritual depth in encountering our lives in its intensity? Can non-believers live spiritual and authentic lives? How does faith in God help us relate to fellow human beings better? These are some of the issues we take up in this book, meant to encourage us to live genuinely and authentically? In this way these are spiritual inputs for contemporary men and women.

As we know, life is a series of experiences contributing to our own self-understanding. This helps us to embrace the whole of reality gradually. The light that comes to us helps us to live our lives more deeply and fully. Thus the enlightened people were those who lived their ambiguous lives deeply and fully. They embraced the pain and found it deeply satisfying and painful. They rejoiced in everything including in suffering and pain. Thus, to be alive is to be open to the tragic and ecstatic dimensions of our day to day life. Such an experience, even in its bitterness, will enlighten us. The light that emerges from life is symbolically seen as leading to our own fullness. These articles try to convey this sense of a committed and concerned spirituality that does justice to living together.

Introduction

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Some of these essays have appeared in Financial Chronicle, from the Hyderabad-based Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd, which was launched on 16 April 2008. As such, these short essays are meant for a general audience, who may or may not be organisationally religious. They are meant to inspire a band of young men and women to think deeply about themselves, leading to deeper insights and wisdom. Open-minded and visionary, these articles are meant to touch the daily life of busy people who are fully involved in the struggle and success of daily life. Mostly limited to 625 words, these articles attempt to provide them with both roots and wings: roots that will give them a sense of belonging to the rich Indian heritage and wings that will take them forward based on the spiritual depth. Though the author gladly acknowledges his Christian commitment, he does not impose it on the audience. Trying to be objective and philosophical, as much as possible, the articles are an open invitation to search for deeper meaning and widen vision. For clarity and convenience, these articles are roughly divided into nine approximate parts. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

The Spiritual Adventure Socially Committed Yearning for the Divine Experiencing the Divine Realising Human Values Living Creatively Light and Shadows Psychological Depth of Being Learning from Life

These articles presuppose that spiritual life has to be based on day to day experiences of ordinary people, and so God has to be found in

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our daily life. When we reflect on daily events, we can indeed be open to the most profound mystery that guides us forward. A cautious and courageous attitude is necessary for this search. Truly optimistic and open-ended, these articles urge the readers to find the depth of existence in the ordinary things of the world and thus make the sacred emerge from the mundane. In that sense, even though some of us refuse to believe in God, as a species, we can claim to be a sacred species capable of experiencing the depth of light and love: the only one who can and needs to make such a claim. Thus, the title Light for Life implies that we can always find traces of light even in the utmost darkness that we experience, which is the basic claim and understanding of the Christian faith. This gives us hope and joy in the shadows that accompany us. May the insights in this book offers rays of light in our lives, sometimes burdened and heavy! For we are always in search of the Divine. Or more correctly, the Divine is in search of us! At every moment! In all situations! So, the glimpse of light at every moment of life (and death)! That keeps us hopeful and joyful all the time.

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Part I

The Spiritual Adventure

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Part I: The Spiritual Adventure

Every day, every moment, can we discover the newness in our lives? Can we find the goal of our life not just at the end of our journey, but during it?

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Making a Move Towards Newness

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n our way to a spiritual adventure, we ask some basic questions. How can we start all over? How does a fresh start help us to rediscover ourselves? How can we learn from others in our spiritual journey both within ourselves and outside of ourselves? So we shall begin by understanding newness and new beginning. We often feel inspired to make a fresh start at the beginning of a New Year or New Beginning. So everyone has many New Year resolutions around this time. Freshness and newness are Every day, every moment, can we two invigorating qualities that discover the newness in our lives? keep us young, enthusiastic Can we find the goal of our life not and dynamic. It is natural to just at the end of our journey, but feel the need for refreshing and during it? renewing ourselves. “When the New Year dawns, we have to make ourselves conscious of the fact that we have to transcend ourselves this year. We have to go beyond our present capacity, beyond our present achievement,” writes Sri Chinmoy, the world-renowned Indian spiritual master (Chinmoy 2015).

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God once again inspires each human being, each creature, with new hope, new light, new peace and new joy. God says, “The new year dawns and a new consciousness dawns within you. Run toward the stated goal.” We listen to God, to the dictates of our inner pilot, and we run toward the ultimate reality. The New Beginning energises us, encourages us and inspires us to reach closer toward that ultimate goal. The New Beginning makes us conscious that we need to continuously move on and transcend ourselves. “We have to go beyond our present capacity, beyond our present achievement.” When we have that kind of firm determination, God showers his choicest blessings upon us, assures Sri Chinmoy. God urges us to move ahead, to move on. He does not want us to get stuck. Sri Chinmoy uses the image of a runner (Chinmoy 2015). While she is running fast, if she looks back, she will stumble. Similarly, if we are constantly looking behind at the past year, we will immerse ourselves in sorrow, misery, frustration, failure and hopelessness. But if we look forward, we will see hope dawning deep within us, each day of the New Year. Suppose the runner has to run 100 metres to reach the goal. After covering 20 metres at top speed, she cannot afford to relax. But once the starter has fired the gun, if the runner from the beginning to the end maintains top speed, then only is she able to win the race. Or, only then will she really be pleased with her pace of life and proud of herself. When we want to achieve our life-goal, we need to progress gradually and consistently. But during this gradual journey, we have to maintain the same sense of direction and aspiration. Suppose a runner is going to run five miles and runs very fast the first mile. But after that, she becomes very tired and running becomes tedious and difficult. If the runner gives up because of tiredness or lack of motivation, she does not reach her goal. But if she continues running, even through difficult and challenging times, she will finally reach the goal. When she tastes the victory, she realises that the struggle was worth the success.

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Every day, when morning dawns, we need to feel that we have something new to accomplish. We are advancing every day, even through our missteps and failures. If we hold on, we shall reach the goal. When we re-start our journey everyday morning, we can be sure that today is the continuation of yesterday’s journey. Then we can perceive the dynamics of newness. And tomorrow we should feel that we have moved ahead. Then, we know one day that we will reach our goal. Even if our speed decreases, we have to continue our striving and never give up, advises Sri Chinmoy (Chinmoy 2015). Every day, every moment, can we discover the newness in our lives? Can we find the goal of our life not just at the end of our journey, but during it? Can we cherish newness every moment, even in our routine and mundane steps of our life? Can reading this book be made a new beginning that refreshes and rejuvenates us? [This article was originally written for the New Year and this could be used for any new beginning or initiatives, including reading this book. May the reader experience freshness and newness at every moment of her life!]

Part I: The Spiritual Adventure

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The Happy Wisdom of the Elderly

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fter experiencing freshness and newness, we see what we can learn from the others, especially the elders. How can we learn from them wisdom and happiness? When are we the happiest? “What I have lost with age in my When researchers ask people to capacity for hard mental work, I assess their well-being, people seem to have gained in my capacity in their 20s rate themselves for instantaneous, almost unfairly highly. Then there’s a decline easy insight.” as people get sadder in middle age. But then, happiness levels shoot up, so that older adults are in fact happier than young people. The people who rate themselves most highly are those ages 82 to 85. The New York Times columnist, David Brooks, notes that psychologists who study this U-curve pointed out that old people are happier because of neurological changes in the brain (Brooks 2014). For example, when focussing on people’s faces, young people unconsciously tend to look at the threatening faces, but older people’s attention gravitates toward the happy ones.

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On the whole, older adults are more relaxed. They are spared some of the burdens of future planning. So they get more pleasure out of the simple and ordinary activities of the moment. Such studies, according to Brooks, are deterministic: “It treats the ageing of the emotional life the way you might treat the ageing of the body: as this biological, chemical and evolutionary process that happens to people.” Brooks thinks the elderly “get better at living through effort, by mastering specific skills” (Brooks 2014). Generally, people get steadily better at handling life’s challenges. In middle age, they are confronted by stressful challenges they cannot really control, like dealing with children or financial burdens. As they get older, they have more control over the obstacles and get better at addressing them. Aristotle teaches us that being an honest person is not mainly about learning moral rules and following them. It is about performing social roles better or more adequately. Similarly, Brooks speaks of four qualities that make the elderly wiser. First, there’s bifocalism, the ability to see the same situation from multiple perspectives. “Only with experience can a person learn to see a terrible situation both close up, with emotional intensity and far away, with detached perspective,” he says. The second quality is lightness, the ability to be at ease with the downsides of life. He quotes from the book Lighter as We Go, by Jimmie Holland and Mindy Greenstein, which claims that “while older people lose memory they also learn that most setbacks are not the end of the world” (Greenstein & Holland 2015). So “the ability to grow lighter as we go is a form of wisdom that entails learning how not to sweat the small stuff “learning how not to be too invested in particular outcomes” (Brooks 2014). The third quality is the ability to balance tensions. Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, in their book Practical Wisdom or Phronesis (Schwartz and Sharpe 2010), hold that performing many social roles means balancing competing demands. You can’t find the right balance

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in each context by memorising a rule book, but can only earn it “by acquiring a repertoire of similar experiences.” Finally, experienced minds have “intuitive awareness of the landscape of reality, a feel for what other people are thinking and feeling, an instinct for how events will flow.” Elkhonon Goldberg (2005), the author of The Wisdom Paradox, shows that brain deteriorates with age. But a lifetime of intellectual effort can lead to more empathy and pattern awareness. “What I have lost with age in my capacity for hard mental work,” Goldberg writes, “I seem to have gained in my capacity for instantaneous, almost unfairly easy insight.” The role of religion is to convey that wisdom from old to young; to put that thousand-year-heart of wisdom in a still young body. Unless we carry on this wisdom, we may forget it at our own peril. The next articles invites to first focus on our own earthly experience. From this down-to-earth existence, we can soar high and attain our spiritual height.

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3

The Galaxy as a Spiritual Adventure

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ow much do we know about our earthly neighbours? What can we learn about the vast universe, measuring our tiny planet earth? What is the nature of the outer space? As part of her attempt to answer some of these questions, 35 years old Nitya Kallivayalil, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia became the recipient of a special award, worth Rs 4.6 crore, for astronomical research spread over five years (George 2015). Kallivayalil studied the Orphan Stellar Stream, association of stars, which is in the process of merging with the Milky Way, and the dark matter content of our galaxy. “Her work on the motions of the Magellanic clouds revolutionised our understanding of the origin of these companion galaxies to our Milky Way and is widely regarded as a technical tour-de-force. She is one of the world leaders in ‘near-field cosmology’, using nearby galaxies to constrain the global properties of the universe and the origin of all large structures,” states Craig Sarazin, astronomy department chair at her university. “The distance between our sun and our next neighbouring star is huge; within a given person’s lifetime, there’s no way we could get to the next star. But I think our understanding of the types of systems around which planets such as our

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earth form, has gone through huge advances, because of various recent experiments. We have found out that planets are ubiquitous, and she has been studying these planetary systems elaborately (George 2015). “I think I got into science from purely intellectual curiosity,” Kallivayalil opines. “Always as a kid, I was fascinated by the big-picture questions: how will it begin, end? I got these books when I was quite young by Richard Feynman, and specifically, he investigates what caused ‘The Challenger’ to crash. I remember loving those books as a kid. I made up my mind then and there that I was going to become a scientist, whatever that meant.” She focused on physics and astrophysics early on. “I was really interested in particle physics as well. What are the actual particles the universe is made up of? I was really taken with the perhaps simplistic “I think I got into science from notion that there could be one purely intellectual curiosity. grand unifying theory for the whole Always as a kid, I was fascinated universe. I thought astrophysics was by the questions.” the best combination of practical physics and big-picture questions.” It is difficult at times to explain what she is doing. “One thing people might find hard to relate to is the huge variation in distances involved in astrophysics. There are so many different length scales involved” she says. This scale might be intimidating, especially to the layperson, suggests journalist Rajni George in Open Magazine. “I am trying to measure small displacements in the sky – the displacements are small because these objects are very far away and therein lies the technical challenge. I don’t find it daunting. You have to come with new ideas. What’s new technology or a new approach which will allow us to measure these displacements in a novel way; is there some sort of new idea we could make use of, which could lead to a major change in the way we make these types of measurements? The goal is to do really creative research” (George 2015).

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Original research leading to furthering of human knowledge is useful in itself. It is a spiritual quest. It widens our horizon knowledge and helps us to situate ourselves concretely. Modern cosmology has succeeded in revealing to us so many paradoxes in the outer space, which should help us to wonder at the larger world outside and inside of ourselves!

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Moving towards Mysticism

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fter being rooted on the earth, we can think of a spirituality and mysticism that takes this world seriously. That takes science earnestly. That takes our human yearnings sincerely. So, we ask: What is the relationship between mystical depth and scientific experiments? How can science enhance our spirituality? Science has not replaced religion, nor does it have the potential to do so. Science and religion are different ways of knowing and experiencing objective and subjective; ascending and descending. Science pursues knowledge of the objective realm in order to master it, while religion pursues knowledge of the personal realm to serve therein. Science can tell us much about the objective world in great detail, and this, in turn, gives it credibility. Religion, on the other hand, can tell us much about the subjective world, which is naturally more elusive and challenging in comparison to the objective realm. However, the fact that the subjective – consciousness proper – eludes even definition, given that there is nothing similar to compare it with and thereby define it, does not in any way make it less significant. Indeed, its elusive nature speaks loudly as to the folly of attempting to reduce it to matter. We will never get the first-person experience

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out of brain matter anymore than we will get it out of a set of billiard balls. They are both only parts of earthly matter and therefore, nonexperiential. And while matter is experienced, it is consciousness that experiences. “It has always existed, and it always will exist. It is firstperson experiential existence, without which matter does not matter. While consciousness does science, real religion undergoes a study of consciousnessess,” writes Swami BV Tripurari poet and guru in The Huffington Post (Tripurari 2016). “Science is a smaller circle of concern, concern for material things, while the most important Modern science was born as a things in life are not things at Christian. In its adolescence, it became all. That which assigns value an agnostic. In its adult life, it might to things is more important have become atheistic. But if science is than things unto themselves,” adds Swami Tripurari. Real to live into old age, it must become a spiritual practices like yoga or mystic. Mysticism is the meeting point meditation afford the tangible of real religion and real science. experience of the enduring nature of consciousness. In fact, no observable evidence conclusively demonstrates that consciousness is reducible to matter, and thus to believe so requires “a leap of faith.” Such a leap is an unreasonable one, “because to believe that consciousness does not matter, that it is not a causal agent, is to contradict the way we live our lives.” According to Swami Tripurari, it “constitutes a performative contradiction in that it proposes an idea that is contradicted by the very act of proposal” (Tripurari 2016). Scientifically speaking, observable evidence leads us to assume that there is nothing in matter like experience. Atoms do not produce experience. Experience does not come from non-experience. But it is an experience that consciousness is all about. While consciousness expresses itself through matter, and thus, there is a correlation between consciousness and the brain, correlation is not causation. Such correlation or association is a given, while causation is another thing altogether.

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“And if there is a causal relationship between matter and consciousness, it is more reasonable to conclude that consciousness is the causal agent” (Tripurari 2016). Modern science was born as a Christian. In its adolescence, it became an agnostic. In its adult life, it might have become atheistic. “But if science is to live into old age it must become a mystic. Mysticism is the meeting point of real religion and real science,” affirms Swami Tipurari (Tripurari 2016). When “science is engaged in primarily to facilitate humanity’s pursuit of plumbing the depths of consciousness, proper science finds true meaning, and at the same time religion becomes well informed about the natural world.” Can we together undertake this typical journey to genuine and collective mysticism?

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It’s Time to Start All over Again

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genuine spiritual attitude helps us to appreciate the past and be open to it gratefully. It helps us to have an overview of our whole experiences in a spirit of joy and gratitude. At the end of our journey, we can look back and see the setbacks and new openings. Where did we get stuck? What lessons can we learn from it? How should we go on? Differently?

It is joy in the little things of life This part of the journey is that adds colour to our lives. Hope coming to an end. It’s worth taking is not running away from the some time out to reflect over the part of our adventure. Just observe present into an imaginary past. and feel all that has happened to us. A panoramic view. Without judging, without wishing that things had happened. Think about the bitter experiences. Regrets and tragedies. The joyous and very joyous ones too. Success and glory. Without judgement. With a composed mind and a calm heart. After the panoramic look, let us treat ourselves and the last year with greater compassion. Then we can surrender ourselves and the past year into the loving hands of God who guides our destiny every moment.

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Then let us focus on making this coming year a much gentler, kinder one. This might include letting go of things that are causing us anxiety or worry. Let us start fresh. Let us recall the words of the German mystic Meister Eckhart, “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” We shall listen to the American talk show host Oprah Winfrey: “I want every day to be a fresh start on expanding what is possible.” Abandoning ourselves to the divine, let us await the New Beginnings with hope and joy. While welcoming any New Beginning, it is apt to decide to change ourselves a better, so that we can become more compassionate in Newness. It is helpful to make about three general and manageable resolutions, which could be broken into short term and long term milestones. Having too many resolutions can backfire. Since our intention behind the decision is to make ourselves more compassionate and inclusive, we must invoke our total self – body, heart and mind – in fulfilling these new resolutions. Then, it is good to look into the human need to look for a better tomorrow with gratitude, joy and hope. Gratitude makes us feel humble and realise our dependence on our fellow-human beings. We recognise their share in sharping our destiny. Joy – in spite of moments of sorrow or tragedy – enables us to feel at home with our own selves and with the larger world around. It is joy in the little things of life that adds colour to our lives. Hope is not running away from the present into an imaginary past. Celebration of Newness (birthday, new year and other functions), with new hope, invites us to ponder on the mystery of time. Time is an essential and mysterious part of it. We do not possess it. We flow into the larger canvas of time, which shapes and makes us. Time lives primarily in the heart. Therefore, it is both healing and energising. “You know what I like about time. Time heals everything. As time passes, you don’t feel the hurt as much as you used to. The pain has become so light you forget it was even there. See time heals everything. Give yourself time, and you will see happier days,”  says Darnell Houston, a motivational

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speaker. Since time is a mysterious and complex phenomenon, which we understand only partially, it is good to set milestones. New Year is such a milestone, which we have collectively resolved to celebrate. When we bid farewell to the old with a grateful heart, let us open ourselves to surprises and embrace the future with passion and compassion. Let us be born again. “The greatest of all capabilities of a human being is to become born again,”  claims J.R. Rim, a Canadian writer. Being born again and renewing ourselves makes us fresh and rejuvenated. Then we can genuinely experience newness, freshness and hope in our old friends, routine and day-to-day chores! [Adapted from Reflections for the New Year 2018]

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Growing Towards Spiritual Resurgence

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hat is the role of materials possessions on your spiritual adventure? Can we live without things? How can we learn to use objects for the higher spiritual journey?

Our world takes it for granted that material acquisitions, such as latest high-tech gadgets, are very significant for our lives. Most of us today are not as much enamoured with conventional wisdom as the iPod or smartphone, the computer or laptop, in our daily life – which also extends to the wee hours of the morning (Zickuhr 2011). A lot depends on which part of the globe we live but work. As human beings, we have surely evolved. We still do not yet know where we are heading in the future. Imagine this – we have ‘data mined’ the genes in us, we have done cloning, and made super-speed travel, the microchip, and the nanoparticle, household words. In other words, we have achieved what was once thought to be the domain of God! To some extent we think we have replaced God with our own capabilities. We no longer express that innate, deep-seated craving to know of divine intervention or act of God. We are, on the contrary, smitten and propelled by functional exemplars. We have a ravenous

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appetite today for materialism, not spiritual hunger, so long as we do not encounter extreme difficulties. It is only when our ‘safety valve’ goes kaput in the wake of enormous stress or problems that we realise the need for a spiritual experience. Then we go for spiritual retreat, a yoga or meditation camp gets into the skin of one’s thought. The quest for the divine, a voyage into rediscovering oneself emerges. It is true that Google has taken the pursuit for the spiritual or divine to a new level, in terms of eastern thought, including yoga and transcendental contemplation. Google’s search engine is something that one trusts and believes in to embark on an expedition into spiritual consciousness – learning and dabbling in the frills and extending them to a knowledge centre that ‘coaches’ one to be a seeker of spiritual knowledge, its understanding and truth. All of us, whatever our standing in life, are known to seek assistance, or direction, from a divine source. From time immemorial, our sages In times long gone by, it was and philosophers have extolled seeking spiritual refuge in religious traditions, or finding a ‘guru’ who what constitutes the core of human taught sacred traditions – and, spirituality: relationships, values, carving one’s spiritual path that and a purpose in life. resides in each of us. Not so today, where commercialisation is the name of the game and scandals of the ugliest variety are being fanned by so-called ‘Godmen,’ who are also ‘milking’ fortunes from millions that are either insecure or believe they can amass wealth, happiness and contentment, at the drop of new-found mantra. Call it the ‘charlatan enterprise’ that peddles ‘spiritual hard sell.’ From time immemorial, our sages and philosophers have spoken of what constitutes the core of human spirituality: relationships, values, and a purpose in life. The triad is everything that one would need to understand our higher consciousness or the divine, albeit the whole premise is challenging to articulate within the framework of spirituality. However, it is a fact that divinity always prevails.

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When a self-proclaimed ‘Godman,’ for instance, falls flat on his face, most devotees have a change of heart. As a result, they come close or reemerge from their self-glorified shadows, to seek a better understanding of God and spiritual mysticism at a more intimate level – in conjunction with a natural spiritual hunger – not bankruptcy – juxtaposed by a fraction of moral resurgence, thanks to a firm, transformed belief. That loads of material possessions cannot appease one’s ego and bring in eternal happiness, or bliss. Nor can false Godmen and their therapies! But the essential urge for a deeper spiritual connection in terms of genuine values, authentic relationships and discerned purpose of life opens our lives for a deeper spiritual adventure. Religions and religious institutions can help in this. Material possessions and things can pave the way. They can never replace genuine spiritual adventure and encounter.

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Yearning for the Divine

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Modern science was born as a Christian. In its adolescence, it became an agnostic. In its adult life, it might have become atheistic. But if science is to live into old age, it must become a mystic. Mysticism is the meeting point of real religion and real science.

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Letting God Live in Us and Grow in Us

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he spiritual adventure that is part of our human journey yearns to experience the fullness of life, which is found only in the Divine. This deep yearning and longing for the Divine has many facets. Maybe Easter celebrations, the meeting of the fully human and fully divine could be the starting point for such an encounter.

Easter celebrations of Christians last week reminds us of the resurrection of the body. Jesus rose from the dead and he appeared to his disciples in a transformed body. The Christians believe that after death, they too will be risen in their body. It would have been far easier to believe that the soul will be saved and will live forever in the presence of God. But Christianity is clearly for the resurrection of the body, which includes the soul. Since God created everything, including the physical matter, it is good. God did not make it just to destroy it later. He will keep the physical world in a renewed form, in a new heaven and new earth. This faith in the resurrection of the body presupposes that physical body is not some evil thing that we need to escape from. To be human is primarily to be embodied. Truly, Jesus was made flesh for the very purpose of redeeming all things. God is not abandoning the physical

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world – he is rescuing it. The Christian faith assumes that the physical creation will be liberated from its bondage when we are transformed into glory. This salvation involves the “redemption of our bodies” (Tkach 2000). Yes, our bodies will be redeemed, not discarded. Our bodies will be raised immortal and imperishable, freed from the decay that affects the physical world today. Transcends the limits of space and time, the new body is exceptional and extraordinary! The fact that the physical world will be redeemed, the fact that our bodies will be raised, means that we must value the physical world that God has placed us Resurrection of the body implies that in and made us part of. everything that we do here on earth This implies that we are to matters very much in our march towards care for the creation and the fullness of life. Our history, memory, to care for our bodies. We disappointments and joys are part of God’s are to have environmental plan to make us fully divine. The tears that c o n c e r n s a n d h e a l t h we shed, the joy we share and our minor concerns; we are to have interests in the biological failures and success matter very much in and physical sciences. We our fulfilled life. are not to abandon the world we live in, but we are to improve it in whatever small ways we can, says Joseph Tkach Jr, president of Grace Communion International (Tkach 2000). Similarly, we are not to abandon the social world we live in but are to improve it when we can, working against evil and promoting justice. The fact that our bodies will be redeemed and raised emphasises our need to be involved in the world positively. We are not escapists, merely biding time until time ends, but we are concerned, letting God live in us and grow in us until we are raised with him in glory and we see Jesus as he is and we share in his eternal joy.

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So Christian belief in the resurrection of the body implies that everything that we do here on earth matters very much in our march towards the fullness of life. Our history, memory, disappointments and joys are part of God’s plan to make us fully divine. Our own identity, our relationship and our efforts are significant in the final realisation of our own destiny. In this sense, nothing that we are committed to on this earth will be in vain. The tears that we shed, the joy we share and our minor failures and success matter very much in our fulfilled life. Every encounter that we have, every decision we make and every pain we endure is truly part of our human body. We are saved by such bodily experiences and encounters. Thus, our physical body, including our earthly lives, will not be discarded but transformed and realised. So, the faith in the resurrection of Jesus invites us to take our present life seriously and commit ourselves to make this place truly a heaven on earth. This helps us to experience the God who lives and grows in us.

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The Cosmic God Must Lead to a Personal God

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uch a God who lives and grows in us raises the question: Is God only a human creation? A human adventure? Is there something in God that is distinctly different from human beings? The following book questions our concept about God! In her latest book, A God that Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science and the Future of Our Planet, Nancy Ellen Abrams (2015), philosopher of science and attorney specialising in international science law, claims that God emerges from us, not the other way around. Abrams’ book is rooted in scientists’ discoveries in cosmology, the study of the origins of the universe, inspired by her astrophysicist husband, Joel Primack. She expands her theory of God by detailing a God that she could believe in after leaving Judaism and embracing atheism (Grossman 2015). This God is definitely no relation to the loving, comforting, guiding and consoling God. Instead, Abrams says, the real God worthy of our attention is an “emergent force” generated by the collective consciousness of human beings. So she writes: “Collectively, we are influencing God.

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The worse we behave, measured against our deepest aspirations, the weaker God becomes, not only for us but also for future generations. The better we act, the richer God becomes and the more useful to future generations. We have the power to strengthen the very God we turn to.” So she says that the spiritual challenge for us is to accept the scientific picture of the universe in every way, “not just technologically but sociologically, psychologically, spiritually, educationally, politically and every other way” (Grossman 2015). Thus, Abrams writes, we can use our “God-capacity” to save the still-evolving cosmic clan in which each of us is a living organism. “We have an urgent need to identify the cosmic beings we are with “We have an urgent need to identify a huge role in the cosmos. We the cosmic beings we actually are all have an identity and what with a huge role in the cosmos.We all happens when people don’t have an identity and what happens use it is a terrible waste and when people don’t use it is a terrible we endanger ourselves,” said waste and we endanger ourselves.” Abrams, whose book is full of warnings about the need to care for creation, however, you think it got here, personal salvation is irrelevant, as is the concept of grace. “We have a God emerging from all our good aspirations – the urge to love more, do more, be more. The best part of us is God,” she said in an interview (Grossman 2015). Author Cathy Lynn Grossman, writing in The Huffington Post, holds that Abrams understands prayer, not as petitions for miracles, or requests for the intervention of an omnipotent force in one’s personal drama or trauma. Prayer is “putting myself imaginatively into the reality I know to exist, feeling what it is like to be part of the earth, part of the astonishing universe.” Finally, she concludes: “The emerging God, after all, is the source of all meaning, old and new, and can be understood this way in any religion that doesn’t require taking its teachings literally” (Grossman 2015).

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Definitely, it is insightful to think of a God as the force or power behind the enormous and adventurous cosmos. The awe-inspiring, gigantic and mysterious cosmos leads to a religious and even spiritual sense. This is the realm of the cosmic God which Abrams deals with. Moving on, we also need to understand how human emotions – love, joy, laughter and evil – came to be part of our world. How do we make sense of our own personal failures, disappointments and success? What about my individual self and unique identity? What about my personal story, where I am related to so many fellow human beings? It is here that the personal God – one who is directly involved in the life of me – come to the picture? The cosmic God must necessarily lead us to a personal God, who is involved in my personal aspirations and hopes, here and now.

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The Miracle of Miracles

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he cosmic God that we perceive dimly in the universe challenges us to rethink our faith in a personal God! Science seems to be offering us a miraculous glimpse of a God who is all-pervasive and ever-elusive!

In 1966 Time Magazine ran a cover story asking: “Is God Dead?” Many have accepted the cultural narrative that God will be replaced by science to explain the universe. Today we find that traces of God’s existence come from science itself. That same year the well-known American astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet at the right distance from that star. Given roughly the octillion – 1 followed by 27 zeros – planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion – 1 followed by 24 zeros – planets capable of supporting life, writes Eric Metaxas, author of Miracles (2014a) in The Wall Street Journal (Metaxas 2014). The Search for Extra terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), an extensive, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to yield result. Scientists listened with a vast

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radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. The American government defunded Seti in 1993, but private search still continues. As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially lifesupporting planets decreased accordingly. As new factors “We have an urgent need to identify continued to be discovered, the cosmic beings we actually are the number of possible planets with a huge role in the cosmos.We all hit zero and kept going. Today have an identity and what happens there are more than 200 known when people don’t use it is a terrible parameters necessary for a planet waste and we endanger ourselves.” to support life – every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface (Metaxas 2014). Yet here we are, not only existing but talking about existence. What or who can account for it? The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces – gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak nuclear forces – were determined less than one-millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction – by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000 – then no stars could have ever formed at all, writes Metaxas. Fred Hoyle, the atheist astronomer who coined

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the term ‘big bang’, said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question” (Metaxas 2014). Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor John Lennox has said, “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a ‘creator’ gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.” Our universe is the greatest miracle! It is truly the miracle of all miracles, “one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something – or someone – beyond itself.”

“The more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a ‘creator’ gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

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The Silence of and the Silencing of God

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e have seen that though God is cosmic and universal, there is a personal and intimate aspect to him. Such a God is involved in our daily struggles? But what do we make of the absence of God that many of us experience?

Why the silence of God? How do we silence God? What are the idols that theists and non-theists use today? These are some of the questions that we raise here. We seek to explore the silence of a hidden God and invite the readers to be actively open to the God of surprises, even in his silence. Inside each one of us, there is a deep emptiness or silence, which we can feel but not fully fathom. This emptiness or vacuum makes us restless, uncertain and indecisive. That is something most of us are uncomfortable with. So we find different ways of filling this emptiness. The one approach may be to fill our void with distractions or appropriating ourselves with many false egos. We may fill this emptiness with a thirst for power, prestige, pleasure or money. We may also fill this vacuum with work, words or people. We may prevent getting in touch with our own selves

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by controlling or manipulating others. Anything that prevents us from reaching the bottom of our empty hearts is alright for us. On the other hand, very few of us have the real courage to open ourselves to this inner emptiness, to let go of our false egos or masks and abandon ourselves to the uncertainty. Someone who has explored the depth of their own soul sincerely is ready to accept the inner silence. This makes life uncertain and, at the same time, genuine. Living with their uncertainties and ambiguities, they open themselves to their own inner selves, which is both painful and liberating. Just as most of us fail to encounter our own deep-seated inner emptiness, most of us fail to encounter the divine. The divine is an invitation to encounter our genuine self and the whole reality, which most of us are afraid of. God comes to us most God comes to us most of the time in silence, of the time in silence, dryness and in a ‘still small voice’ which dryness and through the is most of the time ‘far from the madding ‘still small voice’ which is crowd’ of our daily activities that are too most of the time ‘far from loud and distracting. Instead of abandoning the madding crowd’ of ourselves to the living God, we want to our daily activities that are control him or manipulate him. too loud and distracting. Instead of abandoning ourselves to the living God, we want to control him or manipulate him. Instead of letting him shape our life and destiny, we want to make him ‘in our own image and likeness’. Thus, God becomes a convenient scapegoat to serve our collective and unconscious human interests. There are two ways of creating such idols of God. One is not to be open to the silence of God and other is to actively silence God. The living God, just like any living person, is unpredictable and is open to surprises. But in our desire to control everything – including the other person and ‘Wholly Other’ – we fashion many schemes and images that prevent us from listening to his fertile silence. Instead, we think

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that we know his will definitively and do things self-assuredly which make a mockery of his love. We create different ways of avoiding the uncomfortable silence, which is somehow part of God’s way of talking and dealing with humans. Further, we try to actively silence God and his elusive presence either by eliminating him fully or controlling him totally. These are the idols we make of God. The theistic temptation is to know him and his will so well that we refuse to leave God as he is and dictate terms to him. The atheistic temptation is to know sufficiently well his nonexistence, thereby making him totally silent. Both seem to be too sure of God’s existence or non-existence, leaving no room for uncertainties and surprises, which are necessary part of life. Can we truly trust a God who is unknown and elusive?

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Believers of the World Set to Rise

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here is an element of absence and elusiveness in God. Still, faith in God is on the increase. There are exceptions in some geographical areas. How do we understand this situation?

The world is set to become more religious as the number of agnostics and others who don’t affiliate with a certain religion shrinks. By 2050, just 13 per cent of people in the world will be religiously unaffiliated, compared with 16 per cent in 2010, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Numbers for all of the world’s major religions, except Buddhism, are expected to rise. Islam will grow faster than any other religion, and at a higher rate than the world population balloons, the survey found. In fact, Muslims are projected to increase by 73 per cent between 2010 and 2050. Christianity will also grow, though at a slower rate, rising by 35 per cent by 2050. That is about the same rate as the world’s population overall is expected to grow by 2050 (CORI 2016). If those predictions turn out to be right, then for the first time in history, there will be nearly equal numbers of Muslims (2.8 billion) and Christians (2.9 billion) in the world by 2050. Increases in other religions are also forecast: Hindus are projected to rise by 34 per cent from just

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over 1 billion in 2010 to 1.4 billion in 2050; Jews will grow from just under 14 million in 2010 to 16.1 million by 2050. Also, by 2050, some 450 million people in the world will be affiliated with various folk religions, such as African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions, the survey projected. That represents an increase of 11 per cent relative to 2010 numbers. People who don’t believe in any Gods and not associated with a particular religion will become smaller. Though this unaffiliated group will increase in numbers. These shifts in the world’s religions are the result of several factors, including differences in fertility rates, the size of the youth population and people switching faiths, Pew said. For instance, a good chunk Does our religiosity help us to live of the growth in Christianity and with each other as brothers and Islam is expected to happen in sisters? Does our religion help us to sub-Saharan Africa, where birth reach out to the non-religious and rates are high. Fertility rates the differently religious? varied by religion, according to Pew, with Muslims having the highest fertility rate, of 3.1 children per woman; Christians coming in second, with 2.7 kids per woman; Hindus and Jews with average fertility rates of 2.4 and 2.3, respectively; and Buddhists having one of the lowest fertility rates, at 1.6 (CORI 2016). “Today’s religiously unaffiliated population, by contrast, is heavily concentrated in places with low fertility and ageing populations, such as Europe, North America, China and Japan,” according to a statement by Pew. The number of Muslims in India is likely to exceed 18 per cent while Hindus will comprise 77 per cent of the country’s population. The Muslim population in India, will overtake Indonesia and so India will have the distinction of being the nation with the largest Muslim

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population in the world. As of 2010, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population followed by India and Pakistan (CORI 2016). It may be noted that the religiosity or spirituality may not be measured by the number of people adhering to organised religions. Will the world of the future see a population that is truly religious and spiritual: that is, more compassionate, concerned or committed? Does our religiosity help us to live with each other as brothers and sisters? Does our religion help us to reach out to the non-religious and the differently religious?

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The Great Awakening

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he rise in the number of religious believers point to a deeper issue? Are we prepared for a deeper encounter with the Divine? Are we ready to surrender ourselves – both individually and collectively – to this God, who demands everything from us? What about a spiritual renewal? Is the next spiritual awakening happening among us? Are we really ready for it? James A Harnish, protestant pastor, writer and United Methodist preacher, asked this question as he watched and listened to Pope Francis as he made visits to Cuba and the United States (Harnish 2016).

As Harnish watched and listened,  he began to wonder if God has called this particular pope to this moment in time to bear witness to religion in a particular way that will awaken us to a way of witness that transcends “the often mean-spirited, contentious, politically-polluted ways of some of the supposedly religious figures who have dominated the news in our time.” Writing in his personal blog Harnish says that both in his words and his life, Pope Francis demonstrates a way of witness that is (Harnish 2016): Rooted deeply in the past, speaks courageously to the present and points prophetically to the future: Everything about Francis grows out

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of the long traditions of the church while connecting with the needs of the present and calling us toward God’s vision of the future. Nurtured in and by the church: Francis is not making this stuff up on his own the way political candidates frame their message to impress the constituency  they are trying to win.  Everything he says and does is grounded in the faith and social convictions of the Catholic Church. Lives into the vision of God’s kingdom revealed in Jesus Christ, coming on earth as it is in heaven: He shows us what it We bear witness to religion that will looks like to take the gospels awaken us to a way of witness  that seriously, particularly the transcends “the often mean-spirited, Sermon on the Mount and contentious, politically-polluted ways the parables of Jesus – words of some of the supposedly religious that are noticeably absent figures who have dominated the news from some of the politicians w ho supp os e d ly are t he in our time.” representatives of Christianity in America today. Draws people in rather than driving people out: The massive crowds that were drawn to him, make it certain that religion can and should bring people together, rather than drive them out. Consistently directed toward the “least of these”: Consistent with his chosen name, Francis consistently challenges those of us who ‘have’ to be personally engaged with the ‘have-nots.’ Some of the most moving moments were the times he took children into his arms the way his master did. Works relentlessly for reconciliation and peace: His message to the United Nations was a prophetic witness of Jesus’ call for his followers to be peace-makers. Respects national loyalty without surrendering to it: Pope Francis

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is the same person in every nation he visits, never allowing any nation’s flag to take priority over the cross. He challenges every political party without becoming the possession of any of them:  Politicians who attempt to co-opt Francis for their agenda are consistently frustrated by the consistency of his message. Maintains the integrity of his own faith tradition while providing space for others:  The interfaith service at the 9/11 memorial was a powerful witness to the common values that are shared by every major religious body in our nation. The author reaffirms that as a convinced protestant, there are points at which he would disagree with the pope. But if God can use him as the harbinger of the next  ‘great awakening,’ we can all join him! At least it’s worth praying for, he holds. Only such a ‘great awakening’ can save humanity.

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Experiencing the Divine

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“The more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a ‘creator’ gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

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Promoting Religious Literacy

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earning for the divine leads mostly to the experience of him. Anyone who seeks God sincerely cannot but find him. This is because he is closer to us than we are to ourselves, as St. Augustine holds. One of the ways making which makes the religious experience easier is to learn about him or to be educated about him. Does religious literacy deepen religious faith? Does promoting religious literacy help religious tolerance? Recently the prestigious Harvard University has launched free online classes to promote religious literacy in our contemporary times. Such a venture increases the possibility of religions helping each other to live sustainable lives. In fact, it was noted that sales of the Quran skyrocketed in the United States following 9/11, 2001. Perhaps it was a search for answers, or a desire to understand our certain stereotypes, that made some people turn to the Muslim holy text. Unfortunately, the increased circulation of the Quran due to the recent Paris and Brussels attacks and the rise of the Islamic State have not always helped people to understand better and respect the faith. If anything, fear and prejudice toward Islam are on the increase (Blumberg 2016).

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This is one example of the “widespread illiteracy about religion that spans the globe,” opines Diane Moore, director of Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy Project. To combat this illiteracy, Moore and five other religion professors from Harvard University, are initiating a free, online series on world religions open to the masses, with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The timing is ripe for such a course, Moore feels. Religious illiteracy “fuels bigotry and prejudice and hinders capacities for cooperative endeavours in local, national, and global arenas,” Moore told Antonia Blumberg Ass o c i ate R el i g i on The very survival of humanity is dependent Editor, The Huffington on religions coming together and helping Post (Blumberg 2016).

human beings to draw from their rich wisdom traditions, so that we can live as brothers and sisters. For this deeper and critical knowledge of different, divergent and even conflicting religious experiences and traditions are necessary.

The religious literary series will include six classes on different subjects that will each run for four weeks. Moore is teaching the first course in the series on “Religious Literacy: Traditions and Scriptures,” beginning on March 1, 2016. The next five will dive into specific faiths, covering Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism. Religious literacy “entails more than just knowing the Five Pillars of Islam or Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths,” Moore said. Such an approach “reinforces the problematic assumption that religions are internally uniform and ahistorical,” she added. Instead, Moore suggested that religious literacy should include an understanding that religious traditions are “internally diverse,” ever-evolving, and play complex roles in people’s lives, writes Blumberg (Blumberg 2016). To achieve this purpose, the course aims to offer participants an understanding of the history and interpretations of religious texts and why

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some were designated as “sacred.” Students will also dive into contemporary and historical interpretations of the texts to get a feel for just how “internally diverse” the traditions are. Moore said she and the other facilitators anticipate up to 50,000 people will enroll for the series, given that it is online and free for students who audit the courses. For those interested in earning a certificate of achievement at the end of the series, they can pay a nominal fee and obtain the certificate. The course is especially aimed at educators, Moore said, as well as members of faith communities interested in multi-faith engagement and dialogue. “I’m excited to provide a platform for more informed discourse about religion,” she maintained. Unfortunately, most of the religious believers are not well-versed in their own religious tradition and literature, leave alone those of other traditions. Given the way religion is abused for ulterior purposes, need today a critical and coherent understanding of one’s own religions and that of the other. Such knowledge based not just on the books, but also on the living and evolving religious traditions, will help us appreciate one’s own religion deeper. One we appreciate one’s own religion authentically, we can respectfully be open to other traditions and differing worldviews (Blumberg 2016). The very survival of humanity is dependent on religions coming together and helping human beings to draw from their rich wisdom traditions so that we can live as brothers and sisters. For this deeper and critical knowledge of different, divergent and even conflicting religious experiences and traditions are necessary. That is the starting point for a healthy dialogue and mutually enhancing religious living.

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Growing a Big Soul

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nowledge about religion and religious education meet the test in the crucible of life – in the trauma of our daily existence. Trauma and tragedies are everywhere, always. Most of us have to deal with people with trauma both in our personal and professional lives. It could be soldiers when they return from combat, who have suffered agonizing psychic wounds. It could be women struggling with the aftershocks of sexual assault. Wherever service providers go deeper, they confront levels of trauma that their training has often not prepared them for. Our society has tried to medicalize trauma, writes columnist David Brooks in The New York Times. We call it Post Traumatic Stree Disorder or PTSD and regard it as an individual illness. Brooks holds that trauma, with its betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury, is a moral and spiritual issue as much as a psychological or chemical one (Brooks 2018). • Medication can rebalance chemicals in the brain, but it can’t heal the inner self. People who have suffered a trauma – whether it’s a sexual assault at work or repeated beatings at home – find that their identity formation has been interrupted and fragmented. Time doesn’t flow from one day to the next but circles back to

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the bad event, says Brooks in his article, “Fighting the spiritual void: a soul big enough to hold the trauma inside” (Brooks 2018). People who endure trauma feel morally tainted. They need others’ forgiveness, acceptance and affirmation. As a culture, we do not really know how to deal with moral injury and spiritual vacuum. “Sometimes I look at the rising suicide and depression rates, the rising fragility and distrust, and I think it all flows from the fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void. When you privatize morality and denude the public Trauma, with its betrayal, an abuse square of spiritual content, you’ve of authority, a moral injury, is a robbed people of the community moral and spiritual issue as much resources they need to process as a psychological or chemical one. moral pain together,” says Brooks (2018). In his book War and the Soul,  Edward Tick (2012), a practising therapist, writes that PTSD is best understood as a “soul wound, affecting the personality at the deepest levels.” One of his patients told Tick, who a machine-gunner, repelling wave after wave of North Vietnamese’ assault, killing many of them said: “My soul has fled” (Brooks 2018). People who are recovering from trauma often embrace the language of myth, offering us moral progress. In the tribal societies, we see their lives as a hero’s journey with three stages: from Separation through Initiation and then back to Return. When we see our lives in mythic terms, we can see that life still offers a chance to do something heroic. “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life,” Joseph Campbell, a specialist in comparative religions, opined (Brooks 2018). Tick points out that most ancient cultures put returning soldiers through purification rituals. They came back from battle and the terrible

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things they had done there, and they were given a chance to cleanse, purify and re-join the community. The community would take possession of the guilt the soldiers may have felt for the things they had to do on its behalf. Similarly, most of the tribal societies have initiation and purification ceremonies. These ceremonies, like most rites of passage, have a sacred space, training by the elders, ordeals that prepare and test the initiate, rituals that symbolize the transformation taking place. Brooks pleads for such rites and celebrations of moral transition today. “There could be a communitywide rite of passage for people coming out of prison, for the forgiveness of a personal wrong, for people who felt they had come out the other side of trauma and abuse.” It’ll take a lot to make our culture a thick moral and spiritual one. But one way or another, nations and people have to grow a soul big enough to enclose the traumas that haunt them. We need to deal creatively with our personal and collective traumas, which include moral and spiritual ones. Not just psychological and medicinal ones.

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God Is No Thing

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n our experience with trauma which leads us to God, we need to ask ourselves: Is God another thing that we encounter? Is God one of us? How can we meaningfully speak of God and transcendence in a world obsessed with money and matter? What is the role of thinking in fostering religious life?

Rupert Shortt’s (2016) God is No Thing is a proof that philosophy has an important role to play in public debate about the continuing significance of God in a culture obsessed by markets and targets, saleable commodities and measurable outcomes, writes Michael Barnes, Professor of Interreligious Relations at Heythrop College, University of London (Barnes 2016). He is not the first to note with exasperation that some high-profile atheists insist on arguing against propositions that no  serious believer would endorse. But he has provided in this brief

Shortt’s book is in fact a powerful indirect commendation of religious faith, insofar as it lays out some of what it looks like to think in a religious way, how the system works – in such a way that it is possible to see that religious “thinking is not automatically stupid or incapable of being used as a resource in handling complex current issues.”

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book one of the most concise and  sophisticated of recent protests against this tendency. He patiently explains, for example, what’s wrong with at least one argument still advanced as a clincher by anti-religious polemicists. Everything must have a cause and the cause of everything must be God: so the atheist paraphrases the religious case. But, the atheist continues, if everything has a  cause, so must God also. This argument about the idea of God cannot function so as to avoid an infinite regress, so the religious case falls to the ground. But Shortt points out that, whether or not you accept the argument in anything like this form, the secular advocate has misunderstood a basic point. Whatever can be said of God, God cannot by definition be another item in any series, another “thing” (hence the book’s title). The claim made by religious philosophers is not that God can be invoked to plug a gap, but that there must be some fundamental agency or energy which cannot be thought of as conditioned by anything outside itself if we are to make sense of a universe of interactive patterns of energy being exchanged. “Without such a fundamental concept, we are left with energy somehow bootstrapping itself into being,” writes Rowan Williams,   the former archbishop of Canterbury, in The Guardian (Barnes 2016). He refers to the difficulty in talking of the origins of the universe out of “nothing”. And Shortt is rightly cruel towards those who wriggle out of problems by slipping disguised constants into the “nothingness” out of which the universe comes – primitive electrical charges, quantum fields, timeless laws or whatever. He quotes the British scholar Denys Turner to good effect on the fact that “nothing” ought to mean what it says – “no process … no random fluctuations … no explanatory law of emergence”. The problem of origins cannot be defined out of existence, and the highly complex notion of creation by an act that (unlike finite agency) is not triggered or conditioned needs to be argued within its own terms, not reduced to a mythical picture, writes Rowan Williams. Shortt’s book is in fact a powerful indirect commendation of religious faith, insofar as it lays out some of what it looks like to think in a religious

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way, how the system works – in such a way that it is possible to see that religious “thinking is not automatically stupid or incapable of being used as a resource in handling complex current issues” (Barnes 2016). God is revealed not as the figure who expels us but as the one whom we expel, and who allowed himself to be expelled so as to make of his rejection an example of what he is really like. This book shows the significance of hard thinking for life and religious commitment. Philosophy as the analysis of arguments and the use of logical techniques is always at the service of philosophy as a form of life, a practice of self-transcendence. This helps us to respond generously to what is always Other. The other as something we cannot (fully) grasp or ever imagine!

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Complex Societies Create Bigger Gods

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f the Other (God) cannot be fully grasped, is it created by human beings? Do societies create God? If so do complex societies creates more complex gods? Complex societies gave birth to big gods, finds Big data analyses. They suggest that moralizing gods are rather the product than the drivers of social complexity.

An international research team, including a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, investigated the role of “big gods” in the rise of complex large-scale societies. Big gods are defined as moralizing deities who punish ethical transgressions. Contrary to prevailing theories, the team found that beliefs in big gods are a consequence, not a cause, of the evolution of complex societies. The results are published in journal  Nature, is reported in ScienceDaily (Complexity Science Hub Vienna 2019). For their statistical analyses, the researchers used the  Seshat: Global History Databank, the most comprehensive, and constantly growing collection of historical and prehistorical data. Currently, Seshat  contains about 300,000 records on social complexity, religion, and other characteristics of 500 past societies, spanning 10,000 years of human history.

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“It has been a debate for centuries why humans, unlike other animals, cooperate in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals,” says Seshat director and co-author Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Factors such as agriculture, warfare, or religion have been proposed as main driving forces. One prominent theory, the big or moralising gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were vital. According to this theory, people are more likely to cooperate more reasonably if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don’t. “To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis,” says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. “In almost every world region for which we have data, moralising gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity” (Complexity Science Hub Vienna 2019). Even more so, standardised rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality. Such rituals create a collective identity and feelings of belonging that act as social glue, making people behave more cooperatively. “Our results suggest that The more complex the society and its thinking collective identities and experience, they are capable of experiencing are more important to gods who are more complex! God, who is beyond facilitate cooperation i n s o c i e t i e s t h an everything (and everyone) can be discovered at religious beliefs,” says different levels, depending on the complexity of Harvey Whitehouse. the collective subject experiencing (not creating,

but discovering) it! Seen thus, the more complex Until recently, it societies can experience God with much more has been impossible to nuance and subtility! distinguish between cause and effect in social theories and history, as standardised quantitative data from throughout world history were missing. To address this problem, data and social scientist Peter Turchin, together with Harvey Whitehouse and Pieter

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François from the University of Oxford, founded  Seshat  in 2011. The multidisciplinary project integrates the expertise of historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, social scientists as well as data scientists into a state-of-the-art, open-access database. Dozens of experts throughout the world helped to assemble detailed data on social complexity and religious beliefs and practices from hundreds of independent political units (“polities”), beginning with Neolithic Anatolians (today Turkey) in 9600 BCE. The complexity of a society can be estimated by social characteristics such as population, territory, and sophistication of government institutions and information systems. Religious data include the presence of beliefs in supernatural enforcement of reciprocity, fairness, and loyalty, and the frequency and standardisation of religious rituals. “Seshat allows researchers to analyse hundreds of variables relating to social complexity, religion, warfare, agriculture and other features of human culture and society that vary over time and space,” explains Pieter François. “Now that the database is ready for analysis, we are poised to test a long list of theories about human history.” This includes competing theories of how and why humans evolved to cooperate in large-scale societies of millions and more people. “Seshat is an unprecedented collaboration between anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and evolutionary scientists,” says Patrick Savage, the corresponding author of the article. “It shows how big data can revolutionize the study of human history” (Complexity Science Hub Vienna 2019). The basic assumption of the study is that gods are created by complex societies. The more complex the society, the bigger and more powerful the gods. I tend not to agree with this conclusion. Can we consider the other way: the more complex the society and its thinking and experience, they are capable of experiencing gods who are more complex! God, who is beyond everything (and everyone) can be discovered at different levels, depending on the complexity of the collective subject experiencing (not

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creating, but discovering) it! Seen thus, the more complex societies can experience God with much more nuance and subtility!

God comes to us most of the time in silence, dryness and in a ‘still small voice’ which is most of the time ‘far from the madding crowd’ of our daily activities that are too loud and distracting. Instead of abandoning ourselves to the living God, we want to control him or manipulate him.

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Only Good Religion Can Defeat the Bad

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he complexity of societies and God leads to another complex and related problem. That of violence in the society, and worse, violence in the name of God! The terrible violence leashed out by the Islamic State in the name of religion makes us ponder: Does religion do any good? Can we justify religion at all? Atheists like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens claim that the problem is religion itself.

When we recall that some of the iconic horrors of the twentieth century were carried out by committed atheists who first expunged religion, we need to be a bit more circumspect.

What we need to remember is that in spite of the terrible and tragic violence, religion still remains the greatest force for peace available to humanity, writes the British writer Austen Iveregh in CRUX (Ivereigh 2016). So Pope Francis has frequently pointed out, Islam is, “on the whole and most of the time, a religion of values and of peace.” But religion surely can go wrong; it can be perverted. Religious people are

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not immune to violence, and faith can be deployed in the service of destruction. Understanding why, now, Islam is being corroded from within, is to realise that both the virus and its antidote lies within religion itself (Ivereigh 2016). In one of Pope Francis’ favourite books, Hugh Benson’s (2017) apocalyptic  The Lord of the World, it is Catholics, not Muslims, who are the suicide bombers. Francis points to the dystopian novel of 1907 to show the grim consequences of “ideological colonisation,” when a materialistic, secularist, technological paradigm seduces even religious people. This helps us understand why young western-educated Muslims who turn themselves into weapons of mass destruction. They tell us very little about Islam, but a lot about Muslims’ particular vulnerability to what Francis calls the “technocratic paradigm.” The term is first used by Romano Guardini in his “To mourn the dead, forgive the 1950 text,  The End of the perpetrators, and to dissolve the divisions Modern World (Guardini in humanity through concrete acts of 1998), to describe the mindset mercy,” by not giving in to helplessness. wrought by the erosion of the religious by rapid technological development. The technocratic paradigm sees other people (and nature itself) as instruments and objects, rather than deserving of our reverence and respect. The technological paradigm is the exact opposite of the religious paradigm in which “God, not we, are sovereign; in which reality is received as a gift, rather than manipulated for our own ends; and in which we achieve greatness not through dominion over others but by service of their needs,” leading to God’s mercy (Ivereigh 2016). So we can understand that despite its medieval ideology, Islamic State is a product of western technocracy; it is run by engineers and

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technocrats, who are totally at home with social media and contemporary technology. This ideology has made bowed-down Muslims in the west feel strong, just as Nazism made subjugated lower-middle-class Germans feel strong. IS worships technology and power. “It hungers for genocide, for a final showdown. It considers itself an instrument of the end of the world, triggering apocalyptic violence that will purify the world through the killing of vast numbers of people, including, incidentally, roughly 200m Shia Muslims and almost all Sunnis, claims Ivereigh. So, it is definitely “not a religion but ideology, one that reduces God to a vengeful lawyer” (Ivereigh 2016). Politics and state can only help to prevent it to some extent. It can be eliminated “of its own internal contradictions, and only then if we stand firm, and do not surrender to our own scapegoating violence.” Thus only genuine “true religion can drive out bad. Only forgiving victims can defeat the persecutors. Only by abandoning our illusion of power can we defeat the power-hungry IS.” There is, finally, only one way out, the path indicated by Pope Francis. In the face of the murderous, ruthless provocation of ISIS, the only ultimate response is “to mourn the dead, forgive the perpetrators, and to dissolve the divisions in humanity through concrete acts of mercy,” (Ivereigh 2016) by not giving in to helplessness. We cannot play the game of violence with violence.

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18

Resurrection: God on the Hook

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ne way of not “playing the game of violence with violence” and getting out of the “spiral of violence,” is through Unconditional Love, as experienced in the Resurrection of Jesus. As Christians celebrated their greatest feast of Resurrection every year, it is useful to dwell on the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. Christians believe that by dying, Jesus paid the price for sin and Jesus cannot sit in heaven and ignore our opened heaven to us; rising, tears. There is one good reason for not he transformed death from believing in God: evil. In the resurrection an end into a new beginning. of Jesus, God himself has answered this Thus, resurrection makes objection not in words but in deeds a crucial difference in our and in tears. Jesus is the tears of God. understanding of God. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate Truly in the world of pain triumph of love – human and divine. and suffering, resurrection makes more than all the difference in the world. A difference between “infinite and eternal joy and infinite and eternal joylessness” (Kreeft 2018).

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Resurrection was so important to Jesus’ disciples that Paul preached: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. ... If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:14). Because of resurrection, when all our tears are over, we will, incredibly, look back at them and laugh, not in derision but in joy. After a great worry is lifted, a great problem solved, it all looks very different as past, when we look back, notes the well-known philosopher Peter Kreeft (2018). If we find that hard to believe, too good to be true, let us remember that even the atheist Ivan Karamazov of the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, understands this. He acknowledges: “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened” (Kreeft 2018). Why then does Ivan still remain an atheist? Because though he believes, he does not accept. He is a rebel, who is still angry at God for not being kinder. That is the deepest source of unbelief: not the intellect but the will. The story of the life, suffering and resurrection of Jesus, is one of the best known of stories of humanity. It is the primal love story, the story we most love to tell. So the British author J.R.R. Tolkien holds: “Here is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath” (Kreeft 2018).

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Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard retells this in the story of the king who loved and wooed the humble peasant maiden, by renouncing his kingship (Nick 2011). And the very loveliness of it is an argument for its truth. Indeed, how could this crazy idea of resurrection, this crazy desire, ever have entered into our hearts? So God’s answer to our human suffering is Jesus, who died and rose. “Jesus is not God off the hook but God on the hook,” claims Kreeft. Jesus is truly God on the hook. Since God is on the hook, he cannot be off the hook. So he cannot sit in heaven and ignore our tears. There is one good reason for not believing in God: evil. In the resurrection of Jesus, God himself has answered this objection not in words but in deeds and in tears. Jesus is the tears of God. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate triumph of love – human and divine.

“To mourn the dead, forgive the perpetrators, and to dissolve the divisions in humanity through concrete acts of mercy,” by not giving in to helplessness.

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Interspirituality and the Quest for Life

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rom the unique Christian experience of Resurrection, we move on to reflect on inter-religious life and mixed spirituality. Can one be interspiritual? Can one be deeply rooted in one’s own spirituality and at the same time open to the others’? Writing in the religious online magazine, Patheos, Jim Burklo of University of Southern California, says, “Every time I learn something new about other faiths I learn more about my own” (Burklo 2009). Burklo deals intimately with students of different religions. The group of 15-20 students from many different religious backgrounds gathers every week for an evening of discussion over dinner. The students share about their faith traditions and spiritual journeys, and with fascination learn a great deal from each other. These meetings, spread over the past two years, have taught him many spiritual insights. They have been playing their favourite spiritual music to each other on their computers and phones. Further, they listen to “black spirituals, Coptic Easter anthems, Arabic Muslim and Indian Sikh chants, and rock tunes in which students find soulful inspiration” (Burklo 2009).

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Most of the students in group identify with one or another recognisable faith tradition. But several do not and claim to be agnostic or irreligious and spiritual. These students are nonetheless intensely interested in religion and spirituality. In the course of their meetings, one of the unaffiliated students described himself as ‘interspiritual.’ Since then, some other students in the group have adopted this identity of being inter-spiritual. The intriguing term ‘interspiritual’ is different from the word ‘interfaith.’ People sometimes struggle to understand what interfaith spirituality is all about. Interfaith worship – what can that possibly be? A formless mush of scrambled Interfaith relationships are richest when doctrine? A theological curry? A cacophony of conflicting people bring to the table the distinctive chants? If ‘inter’ means uniqueness of their religions, while being between, does that mean deeply intrigued by the particularity of that ‘interfaith’ is nowhere or the faiths of others. nothing in particular? According to Burklo, interfaith relationships are richest when people bring to the table the distinctive uniqueness of their religions, while being deeply intrigued by the particularity of the faiths of others (Burklo 2009). That place of fascination, curiosity, and soulful engagement is the ‘somewhere’ of interfaith work. It includes beautiful, meaningful worship events that do not gloss over the significant differences among faiths, even while celebrating the commonalities. But almost a quarter of the young American adults have no traditional religious identity. What do they bring to the dinner table on Tuesday evenings at these religious or spiritual meetings? They bring their own stories of engagement with the ultimate questions: why am I here? Who am I, really? How shall I live, and for what/whom? They bring their own language, imagery and expressions of their souls’ journeys.

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They bring a willingness to try out disciplines of spirituality they’ve never experienced before. They may not be ready to commit fully to one traditional path. But they aren’t afraid to risk that outcome by exploring existing faith traditions. They’re eager to know the souls of other people, and the great soul at the heart of all. When we ask these questions, surely our own faith tradition will help us. But the answer to these questions may also come from other religions and even non-religions. Once we experience reality at the deepest level, the answer provided by one’s own tradition may be sufficient. But till we reach that deepest level, we also need to be open to other traditions, even if they conflict with our own. When it comes to the ultimate questions and concerns each religion should help one another to reach a nuanced and adequate answer for our generation.

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Islam and Society

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his Ultimate Love experienced in the Resurrection and interspirituality between human beings and God has to be shared with fellow human beings. Especially with people who are different from us. This takes us to the question of dialogue with other religions, especially with Islam.

In February 2019, a historic meeting of faiths took place in Abu Dhabi. This is how we fight extremism and promote tolerance. Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, shared how we can fight extremism and promote tolerance. Otaiba recalled how in 1960, two American missionary doctors went deep into the harsh desert of “These ideas and principles of mutual the Arabian Peninsula to set respect and genuine tolerance should be up a hospital in a mud block building with dirt floors and universal. Faith and belief are instruments a palm frond roof. For the of good for noble goals – not the pretence Bedouins who lived there for death and destruction. The voices of and practised Islam, it would moderation and acceptance must be lifted be their first experience with over those of division and hatred!” modern medicine – and

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their first contact with Christianity. Over the next few decades, with the encouragement and support from local tribal leaders, the husbandand-wife medical team would grow the hospital, save many lives and cement a lasting legacy of respect and admiration between Christians and Muslims in what would later become the United Arab Emirates (Otaiba 2019). That legacy was honoured when Pope Francis travels to the Arabian Peninsula – the first such visit for any pontiff.  The pope’s visit sent a strong signal across the region and world: “People with different beliefs can live, work and worship together. Reverence, respect and compassion are core common values. Prayer is both uniting and unifying.” But not everyone will welcome or embrace the message, admits Otaiba. Across the Middle East, we face the menace of extremism. Radical interpretations of Islam represent a tiny minority of those who practice the faith. But often the shrillest voices shout the loudest! On TV, on the internet or in a mosque. They twist and obscure the fact that Islam is a religion of peace. For instance, an article from  Dabiq, the English-language magazine of the so-called Islamic State, declared to its secular readers, “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah – whether you realize it or not” (Otaiba 2019) These extreme voices seek to incite crazed followers to do their bidding. They give rise to zealots like who carry out hateful, violent deeds against religious and ethnic minorities. Christian Coptic churches are attacked in Egypt. The Yazidi homeland is destroyed in Iraq. The Jewish Museum is bombed in Brussels. And fatefully, it is Muslims – Sunni and Shia – that suffer the heaviest price of all from the murderous fundamentalists. Ignoring the threat or being complacent about is too dangerous and will only feed the cycle of sectarian violence that has gripped the region for more than a generation. Removing the extremists by force is

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also not the answer as long as the poisoned ideology and the conditions that nurture it endure. So how can we break this cycle? How can we encourage people to accept, not demonize, “the other”? (Otaiba 2019). The pope’s visit can highlight one approach close to the centre of the Muslim world. Today, the UAE is home to 200 different nationalities, more than 40 churches and approximately 700 Christian ministries. Sikh and Buddhist temples welcome multinational congregations. Beyond ensuring an open environment for religious practice at home, the UAE also advocates for freedom of worship and interfaith exchange globally, says the Ambassador in The Politico. During his visit, Pope Francis participated in an interfaith forum with the Muslim Council of Elders and other religious leaders. And he will meet with Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s foremost religious institution. “These ideas and principles of mutual respect and genuine tolerance should be universal. Faith and belief are instruments of good for noble goals – not the pretence for death and destruction. The voices of moderation and acceptance must be lifted over those of division and hatred,” writes Otaiba (2019). As the birthplace of the three Abrahamic religions, the Middle East today has become a cauldron of conflict among and within them. Religion today is a treacherous fault line that divides the region. But the true faith of Muslims, Christians and Jews has never been about hate or fanaticism. “There is no clash of civilizations or ideas – only a rash of ignorance and a deficit of courage and moral leadership.”

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King Abdullah: Promoting Peace and Harmony

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nother prominent figure in religious dialogue and harmony is his Majesty, King Abdullah. He has been relentlessly trying to clear Islam from bigotry and desecration, reaffirming the Jordanian tradition of promoting full understanding among followers of all faiths. He has been combatting discord and hatred, particularly when on religious ground, anywhere in this world. So, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for 2018. This Prize established in 1972 by John Marks Templeton, is an award presented annually to a living person “who has made a significant contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works” (Nimah 2018). When it comes to the promotion of peace, stability and religious harmony, King Abdulla has contributed more towards these values. A leader today who can be described as the embodiment of wisdom and humility, a recipe for effective leadership, is the Jordanian Monarch and he has proven this time and time again through his effectiveness in maintaining Jordanian peace and stability, in the midst of the world’s

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most volatile region. Jordanian security is always considered key to regional stability. King Abdullah is chosen for his work promoting religious harmony and cooperation within Islam, promoting dialogue between Muslims of differing traditions and harmony between Islam and other faiths. Following the announcement, the John Templeton Foundation explained that the King “has led a reclamation of Islam’s moderate theological narrative from the distortions of radicals”. The foundation cited specific works by his Majesty, for which he was honoured. His 2004 “Amman Message” was cited as one of the reasons for his award. The foundation explained that this message was developed when relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims deteriorated due to the Iraq war, and was expanded the following “They are the very ground of the coexistence year when the King invited and harmony our future depends on. And 200 Islamic scholars from 50 this is why I feel it is so urgent to promote countries to Jordan. Those consultations resulted in tolerance and mutual respect, support the “three points of the inclusion and hope, speak out against Amman Message”, which Islamophobia and other wrongs and make recognised the validity of all our values a real force in the daily life of eight of Islam’s legal schools the modern world.” and explicitly forbade declarations of apostasy. In 2007, the King advocated for and funded an initiative called “A Common Word Between Us and You”, in which Muslim leaders addressed their Christian counterparts, calling for cooperation between the two religions based on the shared traditions of the love of God and love of neighbour. From that initiative came a 2010 proposal at the United Nations: The World Interfaith Harmony Week, which the UN now marks during the first week of February “to stress the moral imperative of promoting and understanding the values of peace inherent in all religions”, the foundation explained (Nimah 2018).

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The foundation acknowledged that for his Majesty, these and other efforts have come with a “great personal cost, including condemnation and death threats from radical terrorist groups”. “As a result of Jordan’s key geographical location, [the King’s] efforts have required extraordinary courage to advance cooperation within Islam and between Islam and other religions.” Upon accepting his prize, King Abdullah called on the world to “confront challenges to our shared humanity and values”. “They are the very ground of the coexistence and harmony our future depends on. And this is why I feel it is so urgent to promote tolerance and mutual respect, support inclusion and hope, speak out against Islamophobia and other wrongs and make our values a real force in the daily life of the modern world.” He added: “I am especially moved by this prize-giving, because I feel it as a true hand of friendship to all those who share in the work for tolerance and mutual respect, my fellow Jordanians, Muslim and Christian, and Muslim men and women around the world, 1.8 billion people, who play a vital role in humanity’s progress and future.” Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation and the granddaughter of Sir John Templeton said “King Abdullah offers the world the true definition of a spiritual entrepreneur, a person shaped by temporal and political responsibilities, yet who holds both the belief and free expression of religion as among humankind’s most important callings.” She called his work “inspiring” adding that “he has underscored the importance of Islam’s diversity rather than seeking to invent or enforce uniformity where none exists, he has built upon the power of principled pluralism to extend religious harmony among the 1.8 billion followers of Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, so that each can recognise one another as Muslims”. Dill highlighted that “The Amman Message, the Common Word and the United Nations Interfaith Harmony Week” stress the importance of understanding the values of peace inherent in all religions.

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the King an “outstanding statesman, the messenger for peace”, as well as “a very dear friend”. The Secretary-General also remarked, “In this world where we see, unfortunately, proliferating both hatred and chaos, there are a few pillars of wisdom and compassion, and one of the most solid of these pillars is the awardee of this year’s Templeton Prize” (Nimah 2018). In a resounding speech, The King told those assembled that he was “truly humbled” and went on to praise Jordanians for their openness, “Everything you honour me is for simply carrying onward what Jordanians have always done, and how Jordanians have always lived – in mutual kindness, harmony and brotherhood. And so, I accept this extraordinary prize, not on my own behalf, but on behalf of all Jordanians.” Being the custodian of the Muslim and Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem, his majesty has allocated part of the prize money for restoring and renovating the religious sites in Jerusalem, including Al Haram Al Shareef and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. His majesty declared: “The entire remaining sum is also being donated to humanitarian, interfaith and intra-faith initiatives, in Jordan and around the world.”

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When we recognise our emotions and allow ourselves to feel them in a healthy and safe capacity, we feel more grounded, more ourselves and even more resilient. On the contrary, suppressing emotions can actually make us feel more depressed

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Social Commitment

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Seeing the Best in the Other

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fter exploring the possibility of our spiritual adventure and experience, this Part deals with social commitment, since very genuine spiritual encounter leads to care of the fellow human being and their concerns. We believe that an encounter with God that does not help us to reach out to our sisters and brothers is not genuine. The underlying assumption to reach out to the other is to find goodness in others, especially in those we dislike. How can we see the other person, our enemy or rival, for instance, as God sees her? When two people initially develop a loving relationship, the bond seems almost complete. But all too often, the love melts away, leaving behind an ugly puddle of contempt. Why do we end up in a situation, where, in spite of searching, we are unable to find a single good quality in the person we once loved? “Love ripens when we identify commonalities, but it rots when we only see the differences,” writes Shubha Vilas, spiritual seeker and a motivational speaker, The Huffington Post (Vilas 2015). When two people love each other, they admire each other – almost as Gods – and consider the other to be infallible. When the focus is purely on the good, the vision is always divine, and the experience of the relationship

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is heavenly. This glimpse of divinity in the other person, however, is fleeting. It can only be sustained within a limited period and boundary of a limited medley of events. As life progresses and taxing events unfold, the person’s response mechanisms manifest in the form of less desirable qualities. When such qualities surface, it almost seems that the person has been replaced by his or her diabolical doppelganger. These detestable behaviour patterns then lead to doubt. And doubt is a seed, that eventually grows into a tree of separation. High expectations are products of the imagination. The mind fools us into expecting perfection in every sphere. But relationships “Love ripens when we identify that are expectation-oriented commonalities, but it rots when we normally fail. On the other only see the differences.” hand, relationships that are discernment-oriented last. Discernment or the ability to judge helps us evaluate people, based on realities and not imagination. Most people want to deal with successes and not failures. Similarly, most people want to deal with the strengths and not the weaknesses of others; their stabilities and not their idiosyncrasies; their good and not evil natures. “Everyone expects a perfect masterpiece in others, while they are happy to be deformed relics” (Vilas 2015). Vilas refers to Ramayana, where we find that Rama and Lakshmana had diametrically opposite personalities and yet, were the closest of associates. Rama not only knew the sweet side of Lakshman but was also fully aware of his angry and violent side. With genuine care, Rama not only appreciated his good side but assisted him in dealing with his wrong side. Rather than rejecting a person due to his bad side, the need is to provide empathic assistance in dealing with his shortcomings. With those, whom we love over relatively more extended periods, it is essential to remember that people seldom change, but our perceptions base on our steady expectations. When you look for a perfect God, you meet with imperfection and, naturally, disappointment follows. When

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you look for a mortal, you meet with someone struggling to overcome shortcomings. Shubha Vilas further adds: “When you look for good qualities, you find people resembling gold mines, with invisible nuggets of gold enclosed in massive amounts of dirt. It’s worth shovelling away heaps of dirt to uncover one piece of gold. Appreciation of others’ good qualities is not just lip service, but a meditation” (Vilas 2015). Thus, discovering the best and the worst in the other – and in oneself – is the prelude to love. After having discovered the best, we need to emphasise the best and revere the other for it. From this point of strength, without denying the worst in them and us, we can reach out to the other tenderly. Such a bond of love lasts because it is based on the best and the worst in our hearts.

Non-violence is the best and only strategy for a humane society.

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Being Social may Help You Live Long

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ow does our own personalities inhibit our reaching out to others? How does being social help ourselves? How can we get out of our own lonely existence and make others’ lives better? These are some of the questions we ask in this essay. We may be introverts or extroverts by nature. Even if one enjoys being alone with oneself, if we are not in constant contact with others, it just might kill us or at least shorten our life-span, according to a recent study. A team led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychology professor of Brigham Young University, Utah, USA, showed that living alone, or simply spending a lot of time on ourselves, can compromise our physical and psychological resilience (Holt-Lunstad et al 2015). Their data and study indicate, how much real social interaction we get, is a good predictor of how long we will live, writes psychologist Susan Pinker, author of The Village Effect (Pinker 2014), in The Wall Street Journal. According to their research, if we fall into one of this three categories – living alone, spending much of your time alone or often feeling lonely – the “risk of dying within the next seven years is about 30 per cent higher than it is for people who are otherwise.” Based on a meta-analysis comprising 70 studies and over 3.4 million

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adults, the team’s findings reinforce a growing consensus: “In-person interaction has physiological effects” (Pinker 2015). Scientists have long known that loners are likely to die well before their more gregarious and social neighbours. A landmark longitudinal study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1979 followed nearly every resident of a northern California town for nine years; its results showed that people “who not only had intimate partners but met regularly with others to play bridge or volunteer at church were twice as likely to outlive those who led solitary lives” (Pinker 2015). Holt-Lunstad’s team explored these findings and wanted to study these confounding factors. “We used to think that subjective experience was all that mattered. You could be single or married, spend your days alone or in a throng of “Just having someone around to call people; if you often felt lonely, for an emergency can be a matter of the thinking went, your blood life or death.” pressure would spike and your immune function would suffer,” writes Pinker (Pinker 2015). The new research found that objective measures of the actual amount of human contact we get are as critical to our survival as the subjective feeling. “I’ve spent almost my whole career studying social support, and I absolutely know the strong effects that our perceptions have on our physiology,” Holt-Lunstad said. “But there are other determinants of health that are independent of our perceptions. Even if we hate exercise or broccoli, they’re still good for you,” she added (Pinker 2015). In a related 2010 study in PLOS Medicine, Holt-Lunstad showed that “our social lives are more faithful predictors of how long we’ll last than our eating and exercise habits” (Pinker 2015). Pinker tries to find the reason for it. “One piece of the puzzle has to do with hormones. Oxytocin and vasopressin are secreted when we are near enough to hug someone – even if we just shake hands. These hormones reduce stress, kill pain and allow us to let down our guard, all of which contribute to

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long-term resilience. Real encounters can also switch on and off genes that control our immunity and the rate of tumour growth. But it isn’t all about neurochemistry. As Holt-Lunstad claims, “just having someone around to call for an emergency can be a matter of life or death.” For our physical and psychological well-being, real physical presence and contact are essential. So, is it for our spiritual well being? We are not individual monads who are called to be ‘alone with the alone.’ Connectedness does matter very much!

“It is not surprising that our mood, the way we feel, affects how we walk, but we want to see whether the way we move also affects how we feel.”

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Between Introverts and Extroverts

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ow does it feel like an introvert? Do extroverts feel happier? How does my personality help me to learn from others and reach out to them? The personality traits of extroversion and introversion fall on a spectrum, and most of psychologists focus has been on the two ends. Now, social psychologists are rediscovering overlooked category in the middle being ambiverts. Ambiverts, in contrast to introverts or They hold that people with this trait may have some personal extraverts, have a wider range of skills and professional advantages and can connect with a wider range for being adaptable, writes The of people in the same way someone Wall Street Journal columnist, who speaks English and Spanish can”. Elizabeth Bernstein (Bernstein 2015). The well-known psychologist Carl Jung popularised the concepts of extroversion and introversion in the early 1920s; he identified a third group but didn’t name it or write much about it. Only in the 1940s psychologists began to use this term.

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Experts believe that the personality traits on the introvert-extrovert spectrum remain stable throughout life – they appear as early as infanthood and are difficult to change. On one end are extroverts who become energised externally. “They love to have lots of people around them and to be the centre of attention. They enjoy brainstorming with others. When by themselves, they easily become bored.” Introverts, on the other end of the spectrum, become energised internally. “They prefer to spend time alone, with one other person or with a small group. They feel drained by a lot of social interaction or a crowd. They gather their thoughts carefully before they speak,” writes Bernstein (Bernstein 2015). Ambiverts have introverted and extroverted traits, but neither trait is dominant. As a result, they have more balanced, or nuanced, personalities, claims Berstein. Ambiverts move between being social or being solitary, speaking up or listening carefully with greater ease than either extroverts or introverts. “It is like they’re bilingual,” says Daniel Pink, an author who has studied ambiverts. “They have a wider range of skills and can connect with a wider range of people in the same way someone who speaks English and Spanish can” (Bernstein 2015). We can find out if one is an ambivert by asking ourselves how one behaves in familiar situations. “What do we crave after a long day at work when you need to refuel – a happy hour with friends, or your couch and the remote control? At a social event, at what point do we want to leave – as soon as you get there or after the last person has left?” In a conversation, do we prefer to think through the answers before speaking, or “throw out whatever idea comes to mind and bat it back and forth?” If one is an ambivert, one chooses to have a drink with a friend after work but then afterwards go home and spend a long time with oneself. A study of ambiverts, published in Psychological Science, looked at 340 outbound call-centre representatives. It showed that the social and emotional flexibility of the ambiverts in the group made them superior

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salespeople. The participants filled out a 20-measure personality test, then the researcher assessed each person’s sales revenue for the next three months. The employees with the highest revenue per hour were ambiverts who had a personality test score exactly between extroversion and introversion. “Ambiverts are like Goldilocks – they offer neither too much nor too little,” says Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (Bernstein 2015). In our personal relationship with the Divine, are we introverts, extroverts or ambiverts? In the presence of the Divine, do we recharge ourselves primarily through inner silence, external activities or both?

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Expressing Our Feeling of Sadness

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ne way of truly reaching out to the others is sharing our sadness. It may help us sometimes to put on a smiling face. Not always! Especially when we want to share ourselves with others and be reached to reach out to others. We instinctively avoid sad feelings. From a very young age, we try to avoid sad feelings. We tell children and ourselves: “Don’t be sad. Cheer up. You’re fine. Stop crying.” Unintentionally, we pass on the message that sadness is bad. Recent research shows that sadness can be an adaptive emotion with real benefits, writes Lisa Firestone, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author, in Psychology Today (Firestone 2015). Sadness is a live emotion that can serve to remind us of what matters to us. As psychologist and author Robert Firestone, has pointed out, “When we feel sadness, it centres us.” In general, when we recognise our emotions and allow ourselves to feel them in a healthy and safe capacity, we feel more grounded, more ourselves and even more resilient. On the contrary, suppressing emotions can make us feel more depressed (Firestone 2015). Throughout our lives, we confront pain from our interpersonal relationships, rejections, frustrations and incidental. Further, “we face

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the pain of existential issues, loss, diseases and deterioration and, ultimately, death. Also, most of us harbour a lot of old pain from our past and have implicit memories of difficult emotions we experienced but were too young to make sense of. As children, we depended on others for survival, making many things feel scary or even life-threatening” (Firestone 2015). At this early stage, we couldn’t verbalise or articulate our pain and fear. Yet, we carry this sadness with us In general, when we recognise our emotions throughout our lives.

and allow ourselves to feel them in a

Most of us are, to varying healthy and safe capacity, we feel more degrees, fearful that “tapping grounded, more ourselves and even more into any sadness will strike resilient. On the contrary, suppressing into our well of buried emotions can actually make us feel more emotional life. This fear can depressed. drive us to seek methods to cut off our emotions.” As children, we develop certain psychological defences to adapt to painful circumstances, so life may feel more bearable if a bit duller. Often, “the methods we use to cut off or dampen down our pain, in actuality, end up being harmful to us and those we care about the most,” writes Firestone (Firestone 2015). Sometimes we go to any lengths to numb the emotions that we do not like. The actual problem is we can’t selectively numb pain without numbing joy, points out firestone. Our ability to feel emotion is part of our human heritage. Emotions provide us with information and help us survive and thrive. When we suppress “negative” emotions, we lose touch with our adaptive emotions like love, passion, warmth or desire, and, therefore, lead a much more deadened life. When we feel our feelings, our lives have meaning, texture, depth and purpose. As the author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, “Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living” (Saint-Exupéry and Howard 2000). When we avoid feeling, we often lose touch with our positive attachment to it. “When we feel our emotions, our lives tend

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to hold more value to us. We care more, want more, love more, grow more and aspire more. The fuller we live our lives, the happier we are, and yet, the more poignant sadness we feel. This adds a dimension of meaning to our experiences.” If we own up our emotions – to let them move through us – we make better choices about our actions and lead a more goal-directed and deeper life. We can learn to affirm and accept our feelings, including sadness and ecstasy, because “they connect us to ourselves, what we love and what we want.” Owning up our sadness makes us delve deep into our sacred self! That will help us to grieve over and go beyond!

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Where Knowledge is Priceless

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n our attempt to be socially useful, we may have to make sacrifices. We may be called to give up when we consider very precious, for a larger good. Imparting education to others is certainly such a larger good! Let us listen to the story of a talented and selfless young person.

He cracked his medical exams at the age of 16 and went on to become a junior resident doctor at AIIMS. At 22, he cracked the civil services entrance exams to become an IAS officer. And now, after two years as an assistant collector of Jabalpur, Roman Saini has resigned from his services. He has now decided to venture into a profession where he may neither earn like a doctor or wield clout like a powerful bureaucrat. Saini quit from services to teach students for free. The 24-year-old wants to ensure he gets past the various academic hurdles that stand in the way of youthful ambitions. Four years ago, he launched a YouTube channel with his friend Gaurav Munjal, the former CEO of Flatchat. They uploaded lectures for those aspiring to become doctors, civil servants, computer programmers, even experts in foreign languages, writes Adrija Bose, senior journalist, writing in The Huffington Post (Bose 2016).

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Now, Saini committed himself full time to this noble cause. “For him (Gaurav Munjal) it meant that he would have to step down as the CEO of Flatchat, for me sadly it meant resigning from the services.

We need to remind ourselves: knowledge is priceless. Life is precious. Saini challenges us to rediscover the soul that we are losing in our commercialised dealings.

We are together joined by Hemesh Singh, who was also a co-founder at Flatchat and Sachin Gupta, as cofounders at Unacademy who was experimenting with his own education startup,” Saini wrote on his Facebook page.

“Personally, it was a difficult decision to quit the civil services, as I have utmost respect for it. But I believe in Unacademy’s vision of free education and hence, will be pursuing it full time from now,” he wrote (Bose 2016). In his Facebook page, Saini writes: “In 2011, Gaurav Munjal, whom I have known since school as the closest friend called and spoke about his new idea Unacademy which he had started on YouTube and posted a bunch of videos. He had a vision of free education – and he asked me to join him.” Four years later Unacademy is now one of India’s largest YouTube channels with 1.1 crore lessons delivered and benefitting 5 lakh students Its motto is insightful: “Unacademy, because learning is priceless” They have more than 500 free lessons from top educators of the country. “If you are passionate about teaching and want to be a part of this revolution do apply to be an educator on our platform,” the site invites us (Ojha 2016). Roman Saini is a smart and intelligent entrepreneur, who is deeply and passionately committed to a cause. For him, education is a priceless value.

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In our culture, where everything tends to be counted by its cash value, Saini is an inspiration to cherish the preciousness of our knowledge and our own lives. In spite of the glamour of today’s world, people like him remind us that we cannot afford to sell our soul to our culture. We need to remind ourselves: knowledge is priceless. Life is precious. He challenges us to rediscover the soul that we are losing in our commercialised dealings.

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Public Philosophy and Public Welfare

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y sharing our knowledge with others, we enable them, empower them. How can we engage ourselves with the public, the common people? How can the elite and learned learn from ordinary people and contribute to their own well-being?

Public philosophy’ is philosophy meant for the common people. It demands research collaborations between academics and non-academics and strengthens the capacity of non-academics. Thus, public philosophy wants to reach out to the ordinary people, talk to them, reflect with them, learn from them and share the fruits of philosophy with them. This implies that as thinkers and teachers, we find innovative ways of reaching outside of the university, for the people to engage in philosophical concerns. When we consider that public philosophy refers to the philosophy under which public issues are addressed, such as poverty issues, political legitimacy, social justice, war, peace, the welfare of citizens and the collective memory. We know that it is possible to find equivalents in classical western thoughts as well as in the Indian thoughts, said Deepak Tilak, vice-chancellor of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, while inaugurating a seminar at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

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He recalled the contribution of his great grandfather Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a thinker, statesman and philosopher, “The fundamental problems before all the who has done yeomen philosophers is to understand and actualise service to the general public. truth and freedom. This can be achieved Though he did not use the through dharma and religion. Dharma word ‘public philosophy’, includes ethics, truth, rights, whereas, he translated his vision religion consists of doctrines and rules.” Lokasamgraha (welfare of (Deepak Tilak) the whole world) to the common men and women and thus transformed their lives, recalled Deepak Tilak. Tilak’s Gita-Rahasya helped Indian common man to find ultimate truth (Tilak and Sukthankar. 2007). During last decade, we have observed big changes in informationtechnology, which have affected almost all spheres of life. This has resulted in changes in social problems and conflicts in the society. Though globalisation and communication have helped us in coming together and have facilitated to bridge the gap between each other, we are still facing conflicts and unsafe atmosphere between society and nations. The fundamental problems before all the philosophers is to understand and actualise truth and freedom. This can be achieved through dharma and religion. Dharma includes ethics, truth, rights, whereas, religion consists of doctrines and rules, said Deepak Tilak. Because of recent technological developments, society and social behaviours have changed drastically. As the society changes, it becomes necessary to modify the rules and regulations to sustain social political complex of the community. Today the idea of applied ethics is recognised as a legitimate way of science of morality. It is based “on the implicit understanding that rational man is free to choose between the right and the wrong or good and evil.” When there is loss of morality and ethics, one can see the development of selfishness which ultimately results in conflicts, crises, discomfort and frustration in the society.

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Lokmanya Tilak, a commentator of the Bhagvat Gita, understood public philosophy as Loksamgraha. He awakened the Indian masses from lethargy and motivated them to work for the betterment of nation. Many nationalist and revolutionaries were deeply impressed by the lion’ roar: “Swarjya is my birth right and I shall have it”. For him swaraj is not limited to political freedom. It embraces the “spiritual, moral and metaphysical aspects of life.” It also includes “man and his place, his duty to his fellow-beings, to understand right and wrong approach and principle of Lokasamgraha or public welfare.” According to Tilak, our actions should be performed in the spirit of devotion and dedication without desire and attachment. This helps us to fulfil the divine will.

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Non-violence as the Best War Strategy

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uch dedicated action for the welfare of the whole stems from our desire to change the society and make it better. In such social transformations, non-violence (or ahimsa has proved to be the best and only strategy! According to Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic, leaders of Otpor, a student movement in Serbia that was instrumental in overthrowing dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 (Rosenberg 2015) non-violence can work wonders. They founded the Center for Applied Non-violent Action and Strategies (Canvas), and have travelled the world, training democracy activists. In a new book, Blueprint for Revolution, (Popovic and Miller 2015) Popovic recounts Canvas’s strategies and how people use them to bring about radical changes in society without using violence. Popovic cheerfully discards every idea most people hold about nonviolent struggle. Here are some myths that the book shatters: Myth one: Non-violence is synonymous with passivity. No, nonviolent struggle is a strategic campaign to force a dictator to cede power by depriving him of his pillars of support. They are here not to request the ruler to give up power voluntarily. Just the opposite, affirms Djinovic: “We’re here to plan a war.” Non-violent struggle, Djinovic

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explains, is a war – just one fought with means other than weapons. It must be as carefully planned as a military campaign. Myth two: The most successful non-violent movements arise and progress spontaneously. No general would leave a military campaign to chance. A non-violent war is no different, writes Popovic (Rosenberg 2015). Myth three: Non-violent struggle’s major tactic is amassing large concentrations of people. In very harsh dictatorships, concentrating people in marches, rallies or protests is dangerous, because many will get Non-violence is the best and arrested or shot. It’s risky for other only strategy for a humane reasons. A sparsely attended or a society. failed march is a disaster. So they have to plan differently. Maybe tactics of dispersal, such as coordinated pot-banging, or traffic slowdowns in which everyone drives at half speed. These tactics show that you have widespread support, they grow people’s confidence, and they’re safe. Otpor, which went from 11 people to 70,000 in two years, grew like this: three or four activists staged a humorous piece of anti-Milosevic street theatre. People watched, smiled – and then joined. Myth four: Non-violence might be morally superior, but it’s useless against a brutal dictator. In fact, non-violence is not just a moral choice; it is also the best strategic choice. As Popovic writes, violence is what every dictator does best. If you’re going to compete with David Beckham, Popovic says, why choose the soccer field? Better choose the chessboard. Myth five: Politics is a serious business. According to the Pixar philosopher James P Sullivan, laughter is 10 times more powerful than scream. Nothing breaks people’s fear and punctures a dictator’s aura of invincibility like mockery or Popovic calls “laughtivism” (Rosenberg 2015). Myth six: We motivate people by exposing human rights violations. Most people don’t care about human rights. They care about having

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electricity that works, teachers in every school and affordable home loans. They will support an opposition with a vision of the future that promises to make their lives better. Focusing on these ordinary, important things is both more effective and safer. Talking about the miseries of life under a dictator is also a bad strategy for mobilising activists. People might be angry, but they are not going to act on it. Anger is not a motivator, only a destroyer. Inspired by Gandhi and Otpor, can religions use the power of nonviolence, love, compassion and laughter creatively to usher in a more humane society?

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Spiritual People Are More Liberal

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hen we are with the people, our social and political attitudes matter! Are we conservatives or liberals? Though these categories are too broad, it helps us to reflect on our political attitudes and our spirituality. Of course, we cannot absolutise these findings!

People become more politically liberal immediately after practising a spiritual exercise such as meditation, researchers at the University of Toronto have found. Moments of spirituality can induce liberal attitudes; the study has indicated.

“Spiritual experiences seem to make people feel more of a connection with others.The feelings of self-transcendence make it easier to recognise that we are all part of the same system, promoting an inclusive and egalitarian mindset.”

“There’s great overlap between religious beliefs and political orientations,” claims one of the study’s authors, Jordan Peterson of University of Toronto’s department of psychology. “We found that religious individuals tend to be more conservative and spiritual people are more liberal. Inducing a spiritual experience through a guided meditation exercise led both liberals and conservatives to endorse more liberal political attitudes” (University of Toronto 2013).

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“While religiousness is characterised by devotion to a specific tradition, set of principles, or code of conduct, spirituality is associated with the direct experience of self-transcendence and the feeling that we’re all connected,” says lead author Jacob Hirsh of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. In three studies, the researchers investigated the participants’ political views about their religiousness and spirituality. In the first study, they asked 590 American participants whether they identified as Democrat or Republican. In the second study, they measured 703 participants’ political orientations and support for the major American and Canadian political parties. They found that religiousness was associated with political conservatism, while spirituality was related to political liberalism. While conservatism and religiousness both emphasise the importance of tradition, liberalism and spirituality stress the importance of equality and social harmony (University of Toronto 2013). In the third study, researchers recruited 317 participants from the US and asked half to complete a spiritual exercise consisting of guided meditation. Those who watched the video were asked to close their eyes and breathe deeply, imagining themselves in a natural setting and feeling connected to the environment. They were then asked about their political orientation and to rate how Compared with those in the control group, participants who meditated felt significantly higher levels of spirituality and expressed more liberal political attitudes, including reduced support for “tough on crime” policies and a preference for progressive political candidates. “Spiritual experiences seem to make people feel more of a connection with others,” says Hirsh. “The feelings of self-transcendence make it easier to recognise that we are all part of the same system, promoting an inclusive and egalitarian mindset.” “The conservative part of religious belief has played a key role in holding cultures together and establishing common rules. The spiritual part, on the other hand, helps cultures renew themselves by adapting

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to changing circumstances,” asserts researcher Jordan Peterson. “Both right and left are necessary; the dialogue between them produces the best chance we have at getting the balance right” (University of Toronto 2013). We must acknowledge that there are differences between spirituality and religion and between liberal and conservative attitudes. It is also true that religion influences our political preferences and opinions. At the same time, we need to be cautious in equating spiritual persons as liberal or open and religious persons as conservative or closed. There are too many grey areas that separate these categories. But the study has done an excellent service in checking one’s own religious, political and social orientation so that we become aware of how our religious and political identities are closely linked.

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Realising Human Values

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The feast of Christmas reveals to us the most wondrous mystery: the mystery of freely given love. A love capable of recognising and accepting the child-God in the children around us.

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Promoting Peace through Psychology

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eing socially concerned of others is a noble choice. At the same time, we need to promote individual and collective values. Our values, visions and dreams make us what we are. They can transform us and make our lives more in-depth, authentic and sacred. More peaceful and harmonious.

Looking around the world of violence and bloodshed, we are tempted to believe that war is inevitable; conflict is unavoidable. It is true that “If you want to make peace with humans have fought since the early your enemy, you have to work days of their existence. So, most with your enemy.Then he becomes people assume that humans will, your partner.” by nature, continue their violent conflicts in the name of religion, nationality or ethnicity. A recent scientific study has shown that humans can truly live in peace and that psychology can promote peace. Three political psychologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US, show that war is not really inevitable. The authors noted in American Psychologist that political leaders are “crucial” in showing others how different ways of

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thinking can prevent violent conflicts and find alternative means to solve problems. They pinpointed Nelson Mandela, who helped defeat apartheid, as an example of a leader who focused on an alternative to violence, making statements like, “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner” (University of Massachusetts at Amherst 2013). “In summarising psychological perspectives on the conditions and motivations that underlie violent conflict,” lead author Linda Tropp said, “We find that psychology’s contributions can extend beyond understanding the origins and nature of violence to promote nonviolence and peace. We oppose the view that war is inevitable and argue that understanding the psychological roots of the conflict can increase the likelihood of avoiding violence as a way to resolve conflicts with others” (University of Massachusetts at Amherst 2013). Lecia Bushak, writer and reporter focusing on medicine and science, notes in Medical Daily that this is not the first-time psychologists have researched peace and conflict. There have been many studies that attempt to “increase and apply psychological knowledge in the pursuit of peace” (Bushak 2013). So, psychology should not focus only on “abnormal psychology” but on “normal psychology” where people learn to live with each other amicably. Some psychological factors cited by social psychology researchers include intergroup threat, uncertainty, group identity, emotions, and moral beliefs. They have also identified how inter-group conflict can affect a person’s view of the world and themselves as factors contributing to harmony. The authors noted that conflict is a way for people to address emotional and psychological needs for “identity, safety, security and power” (Bushak 2013). And while conflict has received much research and media attention, the authors point to the fact that non-violence should be studied as well. “Research that investigates how to mitigate negative consequences of war and violence is valuable,” they concluded. We contend that “psychology can and should be applied to promote

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peace, not war.” They have given many instances of psychology positively enhancing the project of peace. In general, it appears that evil is louder than the good. That should not blind us to the fact that there is so much of goodness around us. There are so many instances of people co-existing harmoniously. Focusing on peaceful living and understanding their dynamics will foster peace. That will make people believe that peace is possible. Together with psychological insights, religious and spiritual ideas can also promote peace in communities. We need to refocus on peace as the normal way of life.

Religion carries two sorts of people in two opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty.

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Can We Pop a Pill for Compassion?

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romoting peace is surely principled and honourable. But can we promote peace and compassion artificially? Can altering brain chemistry make us more sensitive to inequality? What if there were a pill that made us more compassionate and more likely to give spare change to someone less fortunate? Scientists in the US have taken a step in this direction. A study by UC Berkeley and San Francisco researchers indicates that giving a drug that changes the neurochemical balance in the prefrontal cortex of the brain causes a greater willingness to engage in prosocial behaviours, such as sharing resources more equally (University of California - Berkeley. 2015). “Our study shows how studying basic scientific questions about human nature can provide important insights into diagnosis and treatment of social dysfunctions,” said Ming Hsu, co-principal investigator and assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Our hope is that medications targeting social function may someday be used to treat these disabling conditions,” said Andrew Kayser, another co-principal investigator and an assistant professor of neurology at UC San Francisco (University of California - Berkeley. 2015).

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In the study published by the University of Berkeley, participants on two separate visits received a pill containing either a placebo or tolcapone, a drug that prolongs the effects of dopamine, a brain chemical associated with reward and motivation in the prefrontal cortex. Later, participants played a simple game in which they divided the money between themselves and an anonymous recipient. After receiving tolcapone, participants shared the money with strangers in a fairer, more egalitarian way than after receiving the placebo. “We typically think of fair-mindedness as a stable characteristic, a part of one’s personality,” said Hsu. “Our study doesn’t reject this notion, but it does show how that trait can be systematically affected by targeting specific neurochemical pathways in the brain” (University of California - Berkeley. 2015). In this double-blind study of 35 participants, neither participants nor study staff knew which pills contained the placebo “Studies in the past decade have or tolcapone. Computational shed light on the neural circuits modelling showed Hsu and his that govern how we behave in social colleagues that under tolcapone’s situations.What we show here is one influence, “game players were brain ‘switch’ we can affect.” more sensitive to and less tolerant of social inequity, the perceived relative economic gap between a study participant and a stranger.” By connecting to previous studies showing that economic inequity is evaluated in the prefrontal cortex, a core area of the brain that dopamine affects, this study brings researchers closer to pinpointing how prosocial behaviours such as fairness are initiated in the brain. “We have taken an important step toward learning how our aversion to inequity is influenced by our brain chemistry,” said the study’s first author, Ignacio Sáez, a postdoctoral researcher at the Haas School of Business. “Studies in the past decade have shed light on the neural

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circuits that govern how we behave in social situations. What we show here is one brain ‘switch’ we can affect.” Is it legitimate to alter the brain chemistry to make ourselves more prosocial, compassionate and loving? Can we use the latest technologies to change our consciousness level? If done with sufficient care and respect, we believe that such techniques will be beneficial to humanity. Extreme caution is called for, though. Collective debates arriving at consensus are needed on this issue. The common good of human beings must be the primary goal of such treatment. If drugs make us more cooperative, compassionate and self-giving, they may be cautiously encouraged.

Empathy is strongly and directly grounded in our own experiences. This might be one reason why feelings of others can affect us so immediately – as we literally feel these feelings as if we were to experience them ourselves, at least partially.

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The Rewards of Attentiveness

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ooperation and compassion help us immensely. So is also our capacity to pay attention. How is paying attention related to being spiritual? Many thinkers believe that one who is attentive tends to be more compassionate and spiritual. Among recent philosophers, Simone Weil (1909-1943) has placed attentiveness at the centre of formative and educational concern. According to Weil, attention represents the supreme act and virtue of the mind. Even when we fail to find the correct solution, an hour of attentive study of a mathematical problem places us humbly but firmly before the truth and reveals to the mind the silver vicissitudes of the quest for the truth, writes John J Conley, professor of philosophy and theology at Loyola University, Maryland, USA (Conley 2015). Attentiveness is not limited to intellectual pursuits. Authentic friendship is built on careful attention to the words, silences and needs of the other person. Social activism demands solidarity, as we choose to share the lot of the oppressed group we have carefully observed. Prayer is the ultimate act of attention, as we choose to listen to God, whether God decides to speak or not. “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

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Centuries ago, Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) similarly placed attention at the heart of his philosophical system. For Malebranche, most human beings live confused lives, erroneously believing that human nature is only a tumble of sense impressions and passions. Careful attention to the real will disclose that the most fundamental part of our nature is our rational soul and that God alone is the true cause of all mental and physical change. According to Malebranche, our confusion is moral as well as philosophical. Only by being attentive to the moral order prevalent in the world, do we begin to glimpse the conversion required to replace our disordered passions with durable virtues. “Attention is the natural prayer of the soul,” claims the author (Conley 2015). Looking back into our own lives, our greatest educational debt is often to the teachers who doggedly taught us to pay Authentic friendship is built on careful attention. It could be a school attention to the words, silences and needs of teacher showed us how to the other person. Social activism demands read a poem. This reading solidarity, as we choose to share the lot involved actually listening of the oppressed group we have carefully to, savouring, wondering observed. Prayer is the ultimate act of about and pulling apart the attention, as we make the choice to listen verse. An art teacher taught to God, whether God decides to speak or us how to see a painting. We learned how to notice not. “Attention is the rarest and purest colours, contrasts and form of generosity.” composition of which we had no previous knowledge. A music instructor can show us how to listen to a piece of symphonic music. We suddenly heard the mandolin and guitar gambolling into the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler’s symphony seven, writes Conley (Conley 2015).

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True, initially the stretches of boredom may discourage us. In fact, persistence pays. The hard labour of focussing on a few things ultimately yields a spiritual joy of which the beginner has no idea. In the world full of various distractions, like text messages, homework and chores, we need to multitask to survive today. Still the challenge before us if we can indeed pay attention or dull this attention in favour of many distractions. Attention is related to mindfulness, awareness, concentration, recollection. It is staying alert and active. It is opening ourselves to moments of grace, opportunities for gratitude, evidence of our connections to others and signs of authenticity around us. Being attentive implies that our mind is focussed on whatever is happening at the moment. It is by being attentive to the mundane and the familiar that we discover a world of ceaseless wonders. Moving away from scattering, stress and disorientation limits that stimuli we are continuously bombarded with. Attention helps the spiritual clutter around us to disappear.

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How Do We Explain Pain and Passion?

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aying attention is not always easy. It leads to terrible consequences. Specially paying attention to the suffering of others and to the cross of Christ can lead us to intense pain and sorrow. The holy week that the Christians celebrate this week recalls the excruciating pain and passion of Jesus. Traditionally it is thought that Jesus suffered for the sins of humanity. Hence some thoughts on the meaning and purpose of suffering in our lives. Jonathan Romain, a Jewish rabbi, writing in The Guardian, asserts forcefully (Romain 2010). “There is no divine purpose in suffering whatsoever. The idea of a God who sees some use in people being in physical pain, or traumatised emotionally, or having their lives wrecked by natural disasters or fellow human beings is warped theology. Selfinflicted suffering is even worse.” Further, he despairs at those who claim that through suffering God is teaching us something significant – whether of the fantastic powers of endurance of those affected, or the hidden depths of compassion of those who respond. Yes, these may be incidental by-products of suffering, but Romain does not believe in a God who uses individual lives as a blackboard for lessons about the human condition (Romain 2010).

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He quotes the 10th-century Babylonian Jewish scholar Saadia Gaon, who declared that “the main cause of irreligion is the weak and ridiculous arguments advanced in defence of it.” Romain holds that many modern people – believers and non-believers – “prefer to admit that suffering is without reason, happens because it happens, is often random and unfair and do not seek to justify it, merely to deal with it – whether in their own lives or those of others” (Romain 2010). They do not look “The main cause of irreligion is for silver linings but just get on the weak and ridiculous arguments with trying to lift the cloud as advanced in defence of it.” soon as possible without quoting God as either author or rescuer. He holds that those who voluntarily take suffering upon themselves are merely adding to human woes rather than minimising them. He asks: “Why to harm oneself when one could instead help others?” For Jews, “suffering is always an affront to the ideal human condition of one’s own personal happiness alongside that of others. The religious duty is not to impose it further upon oneself or others, but to alleviate it as soon as possible.” Tragic and painful sufferings happen to us many times. Sometimes we find it impossible to cope with one’s significant other’s death if it was totally random, unfair and meaningless. Jesus’ cruel death was one such case. In such circumstances, it becomes difficult to “live with an exclamation mark but not with a question mark” (Romain 2010). It is here that we can bring in the insights of the Austrian Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who has suffered in Hitler’s concentration camps. Frankl has called human’s “last and greatest freedom” —that freedom which no one can take away from oneself – the freedom to make meaning. A person can be unjustly imprisoned, deprived of freedom of speech and one’s most fundamental rights, but one is still free to make some sense of their trauma.

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Together with Rabbi Jonathan Romain we can firmly believe God is not the cause of our suffering and suffering is not his will. And that self-inflicted suffering, in the name of God is truly worse. But unlike Romain we may hold God, the God of love, is directly involved in the sufferings of human beings. He suffers with us. In this sense, though we may not really know the purpose of pain, God is surely part of the answer. He is part of the purpose of the suffering, though we do not comprehend it now.

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Bored out of Your Wits? Get Creative

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assion and suffering are challenging. Equally challenging is our ability to deal with passivity and boredom? Have you been truly bored? “Bored your mind churns through every chore you have to complete, every aspiration you have yet to accomplish, every fear and every dread, every flaw in your character.” When Manoush Zomorodi, online reporter, anchor and video consultant, New York, was eight years old, she walked around her house gathering up all the houseplants. She arranged them in rows, gave them all nametags and then performed a concert for their benefit. Why? Because she was bored (Wernick 2015). And now? “I suddenly realised I haven’t really been bored in about seven years,” Zomorodi says. “That was when I first got a smartphone.” That realisation prompted Zomorodi to undertake a project called Bored and Brilliant, designed to explore the intersection of boredom and creativity. For the project, she has created an app called Moment, which measures how much time we spend on the phone and also logs how many times you pick it up “just to check it” (Wernick 2015). Zomorodi is creating a set of challenges for her listeners to follow, a different one each day. “As we go through the week, we’re going to

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start giving them assignments to help them be creative in some way. We’re going to ask them to get bored and then complete an assignment.” The project is based on conversations Zomorodi had with scientists who are examining the issue of boredom and creativity. While science hasn’t proven that looking at smartphones inhibits our creativity, there is research suggesting that unstimulated, unengaged states of mind can prompt more creative, divergent thinking, writes Kurt Andersen of the American based Public Radio International. Zomorodi uses the term ‘default mode’, which was first coined by Marcus Raichle in 2001, to describe a network in the brain that gets activated when we are bored. She spoke with Jonny Smallwood, a neuroscientist in the UK who studies ‘mind wandering’. He saw the same kind of ‘default mode’ activity Maybe boredom, isolation and in the brain when he asked test loneliness help us to get in touch subjects to lie in a scanner and with ourselves helping us to be more just look at a fixed point. When they did so, the brain exhibited brilliant, authentic and deep. “very organised spontaneous activity,” Smallwood says. “When you’re given nothing to do, your thoughts don’t stop. You continue to generate thoughts even when there’s nothing for you to do with those thoughts” (Wernick 2015). Zomorodi uses ‘positive, constructive daydreaming’, a term coined by the renowned psychologist Jerome L Singer, to describe the state of mind that occurs when our brain gets bored. “You start to do things like problem solve and have original thinking and do ‘autobiographical planning,’ where you make sense of all the things that are happening to you in your life and you set your goals and you figure out ways of getting to those goals,” Zomorodi affirms (Wernick 2015). This is precisely the kind of thinking many psychologists think leads to creative ideas, intuitive insights and “a-ha” moments – the kind

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of thinking that may become a thing of the past if we are addicted to smartphones. Zomorodi found a different perspective on this issue from an unlikely source: Buddhist monks. Alex Pang, the author of a book called The Distraction Addiction (2013), talked to monks who are active on the internet and social media. Maybe boredom, isolation and loneliness help us to get in touch with ourselves helping us to be more brilliant, authentic and deep.

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Human Brain and Core-Values

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oredom can be healed by creativity. Creativity helps also in our moral lives, separating the important values from the general ones. What is the role played by essential and principled values in our lives?

Everyone has at least a few non-negotiable values. These are the cherished principles that no matter what the circumstance, we would never compromise for any reason – such as “I’d never hurt a child,” or “I’m against the death penalty.” Brain studies have thrown more light into these deepest convictions. Real-time brain scans show that when people read stories that deal with these core, protected values, the “default mode network” in their brains activates. This network was once thought of as just the brain’s autopilot, since it has been shown to be active when we are not engaged by anything in the outside world – but studies like this one suggest that it’s actually working to find meaning in the narratives, reports ScienceDaily (University of Southern California. 2016). “The brain is devoting a huge amount of energy to whatever that network is doing. We need to understand why,” said Jonas Kaplan of the USC Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute and the lead author

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of the study. Kaplan thinks that it’s not just that the brain is presented with a moral quandary, but rather that the quandary is presented in a narrative or story format. “Stories help us to organise information in a unique way,” he said (University of Southern California. 2016). To find relevant stories, researchers sorted through 20 million blog posts using software developed at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “We wanted to know how people tell stories in their daily lives. It was kind of like finding stories in their natural habitat,” said Kaplan, an assistant research professor of psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. That 20 million was pared down to 40 that each contained an example of a crisis involving a potentially protected value: cheating on a spouse, having an abortion, crossing a picket line or getting in a fight. Those stories were translated into Mandarin, Chinese and Farsi, and then read by American, Chinese and Iranian participants in their “Stories help us to organise information native language while their in a unique way. Stories appear to be brains were scanned by fMRI. a fundamental way in which the brain They also answered general organises information in a practical questions about the stories and memorable manner.” while being scanned. Stories that participants said involved values that were precious to them activated the default mode network in their brain to a greater degree. In addition, the level of activation varied from culture to culture. On average, Iranians showed the greatest level of activation in the study, while the Chinese participants showed the least, reports DailyScience. “Stories appear to be a fundamental way in which the brain organises information in a practical and memorable manner. It is important to understand the neural mechanisms required to do this, and this study is a step in that direction,” said Antonio Damasio, senior author of

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the study. Damasio is co-director of the Brain and Creativity Institute, holder of the David Dornsife, chair in Neuroscience and a professor of psychology and neurology (University of Southern California. 2016). It is essential to understand what biological processes that lie at the root of these values and how stories connect to our values. “People will often hold political values as protected values and protected values are at the root of many political conflicts around the world,” Dornsife said. If we realise the firm biological connection between brain, stories and the core-values, we are in a better position to respect other’s core values, without sacrificing our own. The challenge confronting us to hold on to some non-negotiable values for oneself, without imposing it on others.

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Prompting Generosity in a Child

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on-negotiable values are helped by stories. For humanity to flourish, generosity and forgiveness are such non-negotiable values. How can we promote sharing or generosity, especially in children? Developmental neuroscientists at the University of Chicago have found specific brain markers that predict generosity in children. Those neural markers appear to be linked to both social and moral evaluation processes, writes science journalist Traci Pedersen in PyschCentral (Pederson 2015). There are many sorts of prosocial behaviours. Although young children are natural helpers, their Young children’s brains process perspective on sharing resources moral situations presented to tends to be selfish. Jean Decety, the Irving B Harris professor of them and links to actual prosocial psychology and psychiatry, and behaviour in the act of generosity. Jason Cowell, a scholar in Decety’s child neurosuite lab, wanted to find out how young children’s brains evaluate whether to share something

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with others out of generosity. In this study, generosity was used as a proxy for moral behaviour. “We know that generosity in children increases as they get older,” said Decety. He added that neuroscientists have not yet examined the mechanisms that guide the increase in generosity. “The results of this study demonstrate that children exhibit both distinct early automatic and later more controlled patterns of neural responses when viewing scenarios showing helping and harmful behaviours. It’s that later more controlled neural response that is predictive of generosity” (Pederson 2015). The actual study, published in Current Biology, included recording brain waves by EEG and eye tracking of 57 children, three-to-fiveyear-old, while they viewed short animations depicting prosocial and antisocial behaviours of cartoon-like characters helping or hurting each other. Following that testing, the children played a modified version of a scenario called the “dictator game.” The children were given 10 stickers and were told that the stickers were theirs to keep. They were then asked if they wanted to share any of their stickers with an anonymous child who was to come to the lab later that day. They had two boxes, one for themselves and one for the anonymous child. To prevent bias, the experimenter turned around while the child decided whether or how much to share. On average, the children shared fewer than two stickers (1.78 out of 10) with the anonymous child. There was no significant difference in sharing behaviour by gender or age. The authors also found that the nature of the animations the children watched at the outset could influence the children’s likelihood of behaving in a generous way, writes Pedersen (Pederson 2015). The study indicates how young children’s brains process moral situations presented in these scenarios and the direct link to actual prosocial behaviour in the act of generosity by sharing the stickers. “The results shed light on the theory of moral development by documenting the respective contribution of automatic and cognitive neural processes

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underpinning moral behaviour in children,” Decety affirmed. The developmental scientists found evidence from the EEG that the children exhibited early automatic responses to morally laden stimuli (the scenarios) and then reappraised the same stimuli in a more controlled manner, building to produce implicit moral evaluations. “This is the first neuro-developmental study of moral sensitivity that directly links implicit moral evaluations and actual moral behaviour, and identifies the specific neuro markers of each,” said Decety. “These findings provide an interesting idea that by encouraging children to reflect upon the moral behaviour of others, we may be able to foster sharing and generosity in them” (Pederson 2015).

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Only Unconditional Love can Bring Change

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long with sharing and generosity, unconditional love is another non-negotiable value. Can we love everyone, independent of our personal attachment to them? Whether they are strangers or relations? Whether they belong to my group or not? My religion or not? An old story, written by an anonymous author, that has become classic is worth reproducing. A soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from a far away place. ‘Mom and Dad, I’m coming home, but I’ve a favour to ask. I have a friend I’d like to bring home with me.’ ‘Sure,’ they replied, ‘we’d love to meet him.’ ‘There’s something you should know the son continued; he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live.’ ‘No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us,’ he insisted. ‘Son,’

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said the father, ‘you don’t know what you’re asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can’t let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He’ll find a way to live on his own.’ At that point, the son hung up the phone. For some days, the parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the police station. Their son had died after falling from If we realise that we ourselves are a building, they were told. The loved unconditionally, we are ready police believed it was suicide. The to accept people as they are. Then grief-stricken parents flew to the we become more compassionate, place and were taken to the city especially to those who are different morgue to identify the body of from us! their son. They recognised him, but to their horror, they also discovered something they didn’t know, their son had only one arm and one leg (Moral Stories 2015). The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around. Unfortunately, we don’t like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather keep a safe distance from people who aren’t as healthy, beautiful or smart as we are. The religious people believe that there’s someone who won’t treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us all the time, regardless of how messed up we are. It is consoling and comforting for us to know that God accepts us as we are. With our physical, mental and spiritual weakness, he loves us. He loves us for our strengths as well as for our failures. If we realise this unconditional love, our lives will automatically change. We know we cannot force change. Genuine change comes from

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an inner conviction that we are truly loved. From that acceptance of unconditional love, we are urged to love the other, also unconditionally. When we realise that we do not deserve his love, then it becomes easy to love those who do not deserve ours. Of course, such genuine love is painful and so does not come naturally. Still we can be genuinely interested and involved in the well-being of the other (Moral Stories 2015). The other, who does not love us and whom we do not love, is loved by the same God. Thus the power of experiencing unconditional and total love is the power to affirm and accept others, with all their own quirks. If we realise that we ourselves are loved unconditionally, we are ready to accept people as they are. Then we become more compassionate, especially to those who are different from us! Thus we realise that each one us is like that unfortunate soldier who has lost one leg and arm. Only by loving and being loved unconditionally can we are made whole.

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Our Mood Effects our Walking Style

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he values we hold dear are also related to our moods and emotions. We are essentially emotional beings more than rational. The way we move around, we interact and deal with others shape our mood and our being. It is a two-process. One scientific study regarding mood and physical activities is insightful.

Our mood can affect how we walk. We walk lazy or slump-shouldered if we’re sad and bouncing along and floating around if we’re happy. Now researchers have shown it works the other way too also. This implies that making people imitate a happy or sad way of walking actually affects their mood. Subjects who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and their shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style, according to the study published in the  Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry and reported in Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).CIFAR Senior fellow Nikolaus Troje, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada and co-author on the paper, has shown in past research that depressed people move very differently than happy people. “It is not surprising that our mood, the

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way we feel, affects how we walk, but we want to see whether the way we move also affects how we feel,” Troje says (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2014). He and his colleagues showed subjects of a list of positive and negative words, such as “pretty,” “afraid” and “anxious” and then asked them to walk on a treadmill while they measured their gait and posture. A “It is not surprising that our mood, screen showed the subjects a gauge the way we feel, affects how we that moved left or right depending walk, but we want to see whether on whether their walking style was the way we move also affects how more depressed or happier. But we feel.” the subjects were not informed what the gauge was measuring. Researchers told some subjects to try and move the gauge left, while others were told to move it right. “They would learn very quickly to walk the way we wanted them to walk,” Troje adds (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2014). Afterwards, the subjects had to write down as many words as they could remember from the earlier list of positive and negative words. Those who had been walking in a depressed style remembered many more negative words. The difference in recall suggests that “the depressed walking style actually created a more depressed mood.” The study builds on the investigator’s understanding of how mood can affect memory. Clinically depressed patients are known to remember negative events, particularly those about themselves, much more than positive life events, Troje holds. And remembering the bad makes them feel even worse, making it almost a vicious circle. “If you can break that self-perpetuating cycle, you might have a strong therapeutic tool to work with depressive patients,” Troje concludes (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2014 ). The study also contributes to the questions asked in CIFAR’s Neural computation & adaptive perception programme, which aims to unlock

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the mystery of how our brains convert sensory stimuli into information and to recreate human-style learning in computers. “As social animals, we spend so much time watching other people, and we are experts at retrieving information about other people from all sorts of different sources,” Troje says (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2014). Those sources include facial expression, posture and body movement. The above study indicates the mutually dependent relationship between the physical and emotional dimensions of our lives. Maybe, we can find a similar relationship between the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of ourselves. The physically alert and emotionally flexible we are, the more spiritualty vibrant we could be. Thus, one way of fostering spiritual depth and significance may be to promote the physical and emotional balance.

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Finding the Missing Child of Christmas

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ur mood and emotions are changed by external activities and occasions. Christmas is such an event that shapes and changes our emotions. Christmas is basically the feast of a helpless child. The Nobel Prize for Peace jointly awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai in 2014 invites us to reflect on the missing children around us and in our hearts. The brutal murder of 132 children in Peshawar challenges us to focus on missing children within and around us. “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” One of the main hymns of Christmas ends with these words, “The eternal God was born as a little child.” It considers the helpless child as “the eternal God.” According to the Russian priest, Alexander Schmemann, the message of Christmas is: “The child as God, God as child” (Schmemann 1994). Why does joyful excitement build over the Christmas season as people behold that unique, incomparable sight of the young mother holding the child in her arms, and around them the wise men from the east, the shepherds fresh from night-watch in their fields, the animals, the open

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sky and the stars? Why do we feel so much at home there and return to this joyful scene again and again, in spite of our daily tragedies? The words “child” and “God” give us the most striking revelation about the mystery of Christmas. Truly this is a mystery “directed toward the child who continues to secretly live within every adult, to the child who continues to hear what the adult no longer hears, and who responds with a joy which the adult, in his mundane, grown-up, tired and cynical world, is no longer capable of feeling.” Yes, Christmas is a feast for children, not just because of the tree that we decorate and light, but in the much deeper sense that children alone can accept a God who comes to us as a child. This image of God as the child continues to shine on us through various gifts and symbols that The feast of Christmas reveals to us Christmas offers. The most the most wondrous mystery: the mystery essential and joyful message of freely given love. A love capable of of Christmas is the eternal childhood of God. Adults recognising and accepting the child-God normally desire religion to in the children around us. give explanations and analysis; they want it to be intelligent and serious. “What are adults missing, or better, what has been choked, drowned or deafened by a thick layer of adulthood?’ asks Schmemann. A child’s capacity “to wonder, to rejoice and, most importantly, to be whole both in joy and sorrow” is remarkable. Choking “our ability to trust, to let go and give one’s self completely to love and to believe with all one’s being,” (Schmemann 1994) adulthood makes us incapable of believing in our own dreams. It is through dreams that the deepest mysteries of the world are revealed to children, saints and poets. If we can rediscover the child hidden within us, we experience the joyful mystery of God becoming a child. A child has neither authority nor power, yet the very absence of authority makes him genuine. His

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defenselessness and vulnerability are precisely the sources of his power. The child enters our hearts not by frightening us, but by cajoling. Since God is given to us as a child, only as children can we give ourselves to him. All that the child-God desires from us is our heart, which keeps on trusting and loving. Waiting and longing. So the feast of Christmas reveals to us the most wondrous mystery: the mystery of freely given love. A love capable of recognising and accepting the child-God in the children around us. Can we collectively listen to the tragic cry of the 132 missing children of Peshawar? Can we discover the missing child in our hearts? Can we recognise God in the 90,000 Indian children who go missing every year?

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alues of love, compassion and tenderness which a child possess have tremendous capacity to change the way we live. It helps us to appreciate better others and especially the differently-abled. Need to treat in a just, inclusive and humane way. An example follows. The 2015 Templeton Prize has been awarded to Canadian thinker Jean Vanier for his “innovative discovery of the central role of vulnerable people in the creation of a more just, inclusive and humane society.” At 86, Vanier joins a pantheon of past winners such as the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Widely regarded as a saint. Vanier’s work is not a book – though he has written about 30 of them – but a community, L’Arche, where the disabled are welcomed JeanVanier is a witness to the transforming and treated as being of equal qualities of love, vulnerability, forgiveness worth, perhaps of greater and simplicity: spiritual qualities that worth, than their helpers. He teaches that the strong must are seldom heralded today. let themselves be rebuked by the weak. “People who came to do good discover that the people they came to help are doing

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them good,” he said. “As we come together to listen we become, all of us, more human” (L’Arche. 2015). Besides L’Arche, Varnier has founded Faith & Light that exist for people with intellectual disabilities. The 147 L’Arche communities in 35 countries and 1,500 Faith & Light communities in 82 countries are living laboratories of human transformation. He has spent more than four decades as a genuinely radical advocate for the poor and the weak in our society. These people reveal to him that any person who has been previously rejected, when welcomed, becomes a source of dialogue, of healing, of unity and of peace for our societies and our religions. Through his life, Vanier invites us to recognise the profound gifts and lessons that people who have been rejected by society can offer when they are appropriately supported and included. His leadership, writing and practical works cross religious and cultural boundaries. He is a thinker who is fully engaged with the ordinariness of everyday life and from whom people from all cultures sense a deep and honest empathy for how hard it is to be, and to do, good in a complicated world. As a practitioner, he is a witness to the transforming qualities of love, vulnerability, forgiveness and simplicity: spiritual attributes that are seldom heralded today. Where society asks to privilege personal mastery, progress and doing big things, Vanier’s experience of living with people with impairment lead him to focus on being with and for others, especially disadvantaged others: to cultivating sincere presence to others’ desires, being attentive to the beauty in all of our ordinariness, and being of meaningful service to others. “Love is to recognise that the other person is a person, is precious, is important and has value,” this humanitarian said while accepting the Templeton Prize. “Each one has a gift to bring to others. Each one has his or her mission in the larger family of humanity.” Today, he sees a world teetering between love and fear, where cultures erect walls of distrust against people who are different. Such distrust, he said, can too

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easily, turn to hate, and then to war. “We have a fear of being loved, and a fear of not being loved” (L’Arche 2015). His journey has not been easy. Some individuals long abused and abandoned may initially respond with anger. But as people with and without such disabilities get to know one another, the curtain of each person’s fear and vulnerability is pulled back to reveal the basic need they share with all humanity: To be loved for who one is. What we all desperately want are “relationships where we can be loved unconditionally, to be valued simply for ourselves,” holds Vanier. Can religion truly provide such unconditional relationship of love?

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Studies show marrying someone high in conscientiousness increases your chances of workplace success. A conscientious spouse can boost your productivity and help you achieve the most.

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Living Creatively

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Loneliness is partly a consequence of replacing face to-face interaction with a form of communication where body language and other signals cannot be interpreted.

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No Better Substitute to Human Touch

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he human values we cherish help us to live creatively and flourish joyfully. So, this section enables us to live our lives creatively and joyfully. With hope and abandonment! One factor that helps us in this creative life is tender and loving touch, which is pure and transparent.

In a process of reconciliation in which Justin Welby, the current and 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, was involved, one of the questions that people were asked was this: “What has this dispute done to your soul?” (Welby 2015). But it is a very valid question: the impact of every conflict is not only external but deeply internal. It causes trauma and lasting damage even where there has been no physical violence. Welby remembers for a long time a letter he received from someone who’d gone through a particularly difficult conflict (Welby 2015). It was full of what can only be described as deep trauma and sorrow. It had been deeply damaging. There were many reasons for this, but one that has been on my mind recently has to do with electronic media that we value enormously -

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Twitter, blogs (this is, after all, a blog), email, text and all the other ways in which our communications have been made more or less global and instant. The trouble is that subtleties, tone and access all get muddled up. That’s not a new comment, it’s been said many times, but every now and then things happen which make it even clearer, writes Welby in his blog (Welby 2015). The subtleties we lose when we communicate electronically have to do with expression, with touch, with the face-to-face aspect of the relationship. Social media does not show tears in the eye, a hand on the arm when saying something “There’s a point at which we need to painful, body language that speaks of inner turmoil, deep leave it to those who know people and to distress – even gentle respect. speak to them personally and quietly – in It is simply there – usually spaces where the tone is subtle and full of forever. Disagreements love.That is how people can be put back always happen: they always together rather than torn apart and left lying around in electronic media space.” have, and always will, even in religious and spiritual communities. It is best to deal with deep disagreements and strain at a personal level. We can start with personal meetings, and go on to wider areas of life. It sets something in motion; a new stage of the relationship. Print and electronic media is often just static and thereby, often indelibly, locking us into a permanent present tense that hinders healing. The tone is equally difficult to achieve in the electronic media, as it has no volume control. The US President Teddy Roosevelt spoke of “speaking softly and carrying a big stick.” Electronic media speaks loudly and carries a big stick – through it, we have no other means of expressing ourselves. To deal with disputes within religious and non-religious communities, it is quite clear that personal interaction is essential – yet all of us feel that when someone has done something wrong, we should all say so! Electronic media breaks through locked

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doors and pierces people painfully. It is not for all of us to set everyone right on everything. “There’s a point at which we need to leave it to those who know people and to speak to them personally and quietly – in spaces where the tone is subtle and full of love. That is how people can be put back together rather than torn apart and left lying around in electronic media space,” writes Welby “Love often says don’t tweet. Love often says don’t write. Love often says if you must rebuke, then do so in person and with touch – with an arm around the shoulder and tears in your eyes that can be seen by the person being rebuked” (Welby 2015). In our world of social media can we rediscover the power of personal touch and presence, which alone can help us deal with conflicts creatively? Without exaggerating the differences, can we truly embrace them, give a human touch and heal them – both externally and internally? Can we truly recover the soul of our inner selves to painful conflicts – both individually and collectively?

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Understanding the Game of Life

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reative life also helps us to understand life as a game, with all the consequences that follow. This takes us to John Nash (19282015) and his famous game theory. The unexpected death of Nobel laureate John Nash and his wife Alicia in a car accident in May 2015 makes us think of the game life is. Professor of economics at Princeton University, Avinash Dixit, who is Nash’s colleague and friend, holds that game theory entails interactive decision-making where the outcome for each participant or “player” depends on the actions of all others. If you are a player in such a game, when choosing your course of action or “strategy” you must take into account the choices of others. But in thinking about their options, you must recognise what they are thinking about yours, and so on. It would seem that “such thinking about thinking must be so complex and subtle that its successful practice must remain an arcane art. Indeed, some aspects, such as figuring out the true motives of rivals and recognising complex patterns do often resist logical analysis.” Still, some of the strategies can be studied scientifically. The game theory got its start with the work of John von Neumann in the 1920s, and Oskar Morgenstern. They studied “zero-sum” games

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where the interests of two players were strictly opposed. Nash treated the more general and realistic case of a mixture of common interests and rivalry and any number of players. The theory constructs a notion of “equilibrium,” or Nash equilibrium, “to which the complex chain of thinking about thinking could converge. Then the strategies of all players would be mutually consistent in the sense that each would be choosing his or her best response to the choices of the others. For such a theory to be useful, the equilibrium it posits should exist” (Dixit 2016). Nash used mathematical techniques to show the possibility of equilibrium. One such example is the famous prisoner’s dilemma. The police interrogate two suspects separately and suggest to each that he should fink on the other and turn state’s Understanding the complexity of human evidence. “If the other does behaviour helps us connect with our not fink, then you can cut own collective and individual conscious a good deal for yourself by giving evidence against the and unconscious selves. Any attempt to other; if the other finks and understand the complex game of life is you hold out, the court will a spiritual endeavour! treat you especially harshly. Thus no matter what the other does, it is better for you to fink than not to fink— finking is your uniformly best or ‘dominant’ strategy” (Dixit 2016). When both fink, they both fare worse than they would have if both had held out; but that outcome, though jointly desirable for them, collapses in the face of their separate temptations to fink. Once we recognise the general idea, we will see such dilemmas everywhere. Competing stores who undercut each other’s prices when both would have done better if both had kept their prices high are victims of the dilemma. The same concept explains why it is challenging to raise voluntary contributions for worthwhile public causes, claims Dixit (Dixit 2016).

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Game theory helps us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. In his own life, Nash suffered much – schizophrenia, divorce, etc. He understood that he would never be able to use merely empathy as a means with which to fathom the behaviour of other people. But he also refused to relinquish his desire to understand human behaviour, and he did this by using his own tools – his mathematical ingenuity and the magical theory. Understanding the complexity of human behaviour helps us connect with our own collective and individual conscious and unconscious selves. Any attempt to understand the complex game of life is a spiritual endeavour!

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Charity with Clarity of Purpose

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long with being a game, life is also a creative adventure in freedom. Our political, economic and philanthropic dimension come to play here. So we explore the life of such a philanthropic adventurer. John “Jack” Templeton Jr (1940-2015), who took over the Templeton Foundation that his wealthy investor father had founded, died on May 2015 at the age of 75. He ranks as one of the greatest We need visionaries and philanthropists, philanthropists today, as who take science, morality and religion his family’s foundation seriously and who are ready to spend handed out nearly $1 billion their time and money on them.The world for research and spiritual growth. The motto of the truly needs such committed and selfless foundation – how little we adventurers. know, how eager we are to learn – was taken very seriously by Templeton, and it led him to fund research outside the conventional boundaries of the foundation establishment. He funded research into what it calls the “Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.” This included how to enhance freedom and the role

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of virtue as well as efforts to learn more about “spiritual realities such as love, forgiveness, gratitude, loyalty and generosity” (Wall Street Journal 2015). After graduating from Harvard Medical School, he became a pediatric surgeon and believed passionately in scientific inquiry. Born to wealth as the son of financial legend Sir John Templeton, Templeton Jr understood the moral foundation upon which free markets depend. His daughter, Jennifer Templeton-Simpson, comments that though Jack no longer practices his medical profession, “his being a doctor influences everything – the way he views things, the way he handles problems, the way he asks a lot of questions before he says anything. He’s basically an investigative person – one who never gives up when he doesn’t have the answer” (Wall Street Journal 2015). Already in 1962, Jack Templeton questioned a “tolerance” which “demands incessantly that one abandons all judgment.” He went on to ask: “Should we tolerate a public education system with its entrenched selfinterest in which virtually every inner-city parent knows is destroying any hope or possibility of their children achieving meaningful opportunity in the 21st century. The foundation supports research that connects science and religious faith. It’s primary funding areas include “science and the big questions, character and virtue development, individual freedom and free enterprise, genetics, exceptional cognitive talent and genius, and the Templeton prize (Wall Street Journal 2015). During his tenure, Templeton Jr guided the foundation to refocus its philanthropy around five areas: science and the big questions; character development; freedom and free enterprise; exceptional cognitive talent and genius and genetics. Under him, the foundation became the largest supporter of innovative efforts to promote free enterprise around the globe. He was convinced that a good understanding of human nature is an essential aspect of all social sciences and the best guide for public policy. In promoting free enterprise and the principles of free society, he held that the vision of human beings promoted by free-market economists tends to be very limited and narrow.

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Jack Templeton’s commitment to his medical profession and moral vision raises exciting issues! People like him indicate that wealth and power do corrupt people. On the other hand, wealth can be a factor in fostering scientific openness and moral commitment. It also tells us that genuine scientific growth can, in fact, foster deep spirituality, which is beneficial to humanity. We need more such visionaries and philanthropists, who take science, morality and religion seriously and who are ready to spend their time and money on them. The world truly needs such committed and selfless adventurers.

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Rhythms of Prehistorical Sleep

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he ability to sleep soundly is another aspect of our healthy and creative lives. Sleep not only refreshes us but also advances our ingenuity and inventiveness. We can learn a lot from the sleep habits of prehistorical people.

During the mid-1990s, sleep researcher Thomas Wehr conducted a National Institutes of Health experiment, that he later called an exercise in “archaeology, or human paleobiology.” Wehr wanted to find out if modern humans still carried within them the rhythms for a prehistoric mode of sleep. Did ancient humans sleep more? Did they sleep differently – or, perhaps, better? Wehr’s logic was simple: Aided by the stimulating effects of all kinds of artificial lighting, modern humans had compressed their sleep nights, like their workdays, into convenient eight-hour blocks (Strand 2015a). And yet, given that light-assisted wakefulness was a relatively new invention, wasn’t it possible that human beings still carried in their DNA the remnants of a more primordial pattern of sleep? The results were mind-boggling. For one month, beginning at dusk and ending at dawn, Wehr’s subjects were removed from artificial light.

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During the first three weeks, they slept as usual, only for about an hour longer. But at week four, a dramatic change occurred. The participants slept the same number of hours as before, but now their sleep was divided in two. They began each night with about four hours of deep sleep, woke for two hours of quiet rest, then slept for another four hours (Strand 2015a). During the gap Aided by the stimulating effects of all kinds of between their “first” artificial lighting, modern humans had compressed and “second” sleep, their sleep nights, like their workdays, into Wehr’s subjects were convenient eight-hour blocks. And yet, given that neither awake nor light-assisted wakefulness was a relatively new fully asleep. Rather, they experienced invention, wasn’t it possible that human beings a condition they still carried in their DNA the remnants of a more had never known primordial pattern of sleep? before – a state of consciousness all its own. Later, Wehr would compare it to what advanced practitioners experience in meditation – what we might call “mindfulness” today. But, they were not the mindfulness practitioners of today. They were simply ordinary people who, removed for one month from artificial lighting, found their nights broken in two. While trying to account for the peace and serenity, that his subjects reported feeling during their hours of “quiet rest,” Wehr discovered that, prolactin (the hormone that rises in nursing mothers when their milk lets down) reached its peak in their bodies shortly after dusk, remaining at twice its normal waking level throughout the full length of the night. Interestingly it is intimately, and biologically, tied to the dark (Strand 2015a). Even during their hours of quiet rest, the prolactin levels in Wehr’s subjects remained steady. Typically, if we wake in the night, those levels will go down – even if you don’t turn on the lights. But, if we turn the lights off at dusk and keep them off, giving our body the full spectrum of

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the night to work from, that more vibrant, deeper darkness will fashion experience so different from our normal daylight consciousness, it is almost a mystical state (Strand 2015a). “This is a state not terribly familiar to modern sleepers,” Wehr lamented when the study was done and he had begun to wrap his mind around the enormity of a discovery, that turned modern consciousness on its head. “Perhaps, what those, who meditate today are seeking, is a state, that our ancestors would have considered their birthright, a nightly occurrence,” writes Clark Strand, author of Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age (Strand 2015). Is mindfulness a natural occurrence to human beings, who followed the rhythm of nature? Given our modern lifestyle, it is impossible to switch off the light the whole night. Still, we can recover the rhythm in our own lives, so that, we can live and act mindfully.

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Letting Time Breathe in Our Lives

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ike from sound sleep of the ancient, we can also learn from the time-habits of the ancients to be more vibrant and creative. How does the proper understanding of time make us more joyous, make our lives true to our being? These are the questions that the American philosopher Jacob Needleman asks. Time is the greatest modern scarcity. What used to be considered signs of success – being busy, having many responsibilities, being involved in many projects or activities – is experienced as afflictions. The American philosopher Jacob Needleman, shows how to take a bold and unconventional approach to time. The aim: to get more out of it by breaking free of our illusions about it. Needleman dispenses with tricks and techniques that only serve to make our obsessiveness more “efficient.” Instead, he shows how we can understand what our days are for. It’s this understanding that allows time to finally begin to “breathe” in our lives (Needleman 2016). People can learn to experience time more purposefully and meaningfully. We need not be at time’s mercy. Needleman rejects timemanagement techniques in order to reveal ancient and little-known modern practices for exploring one’s internal clock. He reveals how

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time is experienced by the soul. Drawing on the wisdom literature that chronicles the ways of Buddhists, poets, and philosophers, Needleman raises the following questions in his book Time and the Soul (2003): What does it mean to chart one’s real past, unclouded by emotions? “How much of what we call progress How can memory lie to us? How is accompanied by and measured by do we experience time so that the fact that human beings need it is not an enemy robbing us less and less conscious attention to of the joy of life? How to have perform their activities and lead more “nonpsychological time,” or “time of the heart [that] does their lives.” not move,” such as moments of ecstasy or joy in which time is cut off from the physical world? How do we experience truly the gifts of time? (Needleman 2016). Needleman does not think that technology itself is not the cause of our problem of time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause – the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner being. This applies to the effect of communication technology (such as smartphones) with its tyranny of instant communication; or to the computerisation which dispenses with the physical presence of so many human activities; or to any of the innumerable transformations of human life that are being brought about by new technology. The essential element to recognise is, according to Needleman, “how much of what we call progress is accompanied by and measured by the fact that human beings need less and less conscious attention to perform their activities and lead their lives.” The real power of faculty of attention, unknown to modern science, “is one of the indispensable and most central measures of humanness – of the being of a man or a woman – and has been so understood, in many forms and symbols, at the heart of all the great spiritual teachings of the world.”

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The effects of advancing technology, for all the material promise they offer to the world (along with the dangers, of course), is but the most recent wave in a civilisation. Without recognising what it was doing, it placed the “satisfaction of desire above the cultivation of being.” The deep meaning of many rules of conduct and moral principles of the past – so many of which have been abandoned without our understanding their real roots in human nature – involved the cultivation and development of the uniquely human power of attention, its action in the body, heart and mind of human beings (Needleman 2016). So the problem is not the rapidity of change as such but the fact that “the being of man is diminishing.” Time is vanishing because we have lost “the practice of consciously inhabiting our life, the practice of conscious attention to ourselves” as we live. In our hectic activities, we are becoming less human.

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Wired to Save Energy

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nother important aspect of our creativity is finding shortcuts to save energy and to reach equilibrium. This is illustrated by the example of normal walking. Those of us who spend hours doing rigorous exercising to burn calories may be disappointed to learn that our nervous system is subconsciously working against us. Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 10, have found that our nervous systems are remarkably adept in changing the way we move to expend the least amount of energy possible. In other words, humans are wired for saving energy or taking shortcuts. The findings, reported in ScienceDaily, says were made by investigating the energetic costs of walking and is likely to apply to most of our movements (Cell Press 2015). “We found that people readily change the way they walk – including characteristics of their gait that have been established with millions of steps throughout their lifetime – to save quite small amounts of energy,” says Max Donelan of Simon Fraser University, Canada. “This is completely consistent with the sense that most of us have that we prefer to do things in the least effortful way, like when we choose the shortest walking path or choose to sit

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rather than stand. Here we have provided a physiological basis for this laziness by demonstrating that even within a well-rehearsed movement like walking, the nervous system subconsciously monitors energy use and continuously optimises movement patterns in a constant quest to move as cheaply as possible” (Cell Press 2015). There is a bright side to this, lead author Jessica Selinger, a research student at Simon Fraser University’s Locomotion Laboratory, Canada, says: “Sensing and optimising energy use that quickly and accurately is an impressive feat on the part of the nervous system. You have to be smart to be that lazy!” Donelan, The energetic costs of our activities Selinger, and colleagues wanted aren’t just an outcome of our to understand why people move movements, but, in fact, play a the way they do, given that there are countless ways to get from central role in continuously shaping one point to another. This is them. partly a question of evolution and learning. But, the researchers wanted to study, to what extent can our bodies adapt movement based on real-time physiological inputs? The researchers asked people to walk while they wore a robotic exoskeleton or high-tech energy-harvesting knee brace. The exoskeleton enabled the researchers to discourage people from walking in their usual way. In other words, the researchers made it more difficult for participants to swing their legs by putting resistance on the knee during normal walking, whereas, the researchers eased this resistance for alternative ways of walking (Cell Press 2015). “We think of our experiment like dropping someone into a new world with all new rules,” Selinger says. “Any walking strategies that may have developed over evolutionary or developmental timescales are now obsolete in this new world” (Cell Press 2015). Thus the experiment helped the investigators to test whether people can sense and optimise the cost associated with their movements in real-time.

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The experiment revealed that in walking, people adapt their step frequency to converge on a new energetic optimum very quickly, within minutes. What is more significant is that people do this even when the energy savings is quite small. The findings indicate that “the energetic costs of our activities aren’t just an outcome of our movements, but, in fact, play a central role in continuously shaping them.” It is incredible to see how biologically and neurologically we are adept at spending the least energy for bodily movements and activities. Maybe our soul is equally adept at finding short-cuts for spiritual growth and vibrancy!

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Children, Religion and Altruism

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reativity leads also to altruism! Does religion help in fostering altruism? One study gives an unexpected result. Since it is generally assumed that religious families foster selflessness and love in children. Many families believe religion plays an essential role in childhood moral development. But children of godly parents may not be as altruistic as those parents think, according to a new international study from the University of Chicago. A team of developmental psychologists led by professor Jean Decety examined the perceptions and behaviour of children in six countries. The study assessed the children’s tendency to share, which is a measure of their altruism and their inclination to judge and punish others for bad behaviour, as reported in ScienceDaily (University of Chicago 2015). Children from religious families were less likely to share with others than were children from non-religious families, the study found surprisingly. A religious upbringing also was associated with more punitive tendencies in response to anti-social behaviour. “Our findings contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others.

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In our study, kids from atheist and non-religious families were, in fact, more generous,” said Decety, the Irving B Harris distinguished service professor in psychology and psychiatry and the college and director of the University of Chicago (University of Chicago 2015). The extensive study, which was published on November 5, 2015, in current biology, included 1,170 children between ages 5 and 12, from six countries – Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. For the altruism task, children participated in a version of the “dictator game,” in which they were given 10 stickers and provided an opportunity to share them with another “Together, these results reveal the similarity unseen child. Altruism across countries in how religion negatively was measured by the influences children’s altruism. They challenge average numb er of the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial stickers shared. For the moral sensitivity task, behavior, and call into question whether children watched short religion is vital for moral development – animations in which suggesting the secularisation of moral discourse one character pushes does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it or bu mps anot he r, does just the opposite.” either accidentally or purposefully. After seeing each situation, children were asked about how mean the behaviour was and the amount of punishment the character deserved. Parents completed questionnaires about their religious beliefs and practices and perceptions of their children’s empathy and sensitivity to justice. From the questionnaires, three large groupings were established: Christian, Muslim and not religious. It may be noted that children from other religious households did not reach a large enough sample size to be included in additional analyses. It is found that in general children were more likely to share as they got older. But young children from households identifying as Christian and Muslim were significantly less likely than children from

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non-religious households to share their stickers. The negative relation between religiosity and altruism grew stronger with age; children with a longer experience of religion in the household were the least likely to share. Children from religious households favoured stronger punishments for anti-social behaviour and judged such behaviour more harshly than non-religious children. These results support previous studies of adults, which have found religiousness is linked with punitive attitudes toward interpersonal offences. “Together, these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism. They challenge the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behaviour, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development – suggesting the secularisation of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it does just the opposite,” Decety claimed (University of Chicago 2015).

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Making Decisions Collectively

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reativity reaches out to decision-making also. Human beings are able to make both individual and collective decisions that affect the destiny of a community. Recent scientific research has concluded that this is applicable also of living cells. To decide whether and where to move in the body, cells must read chemical signals in their environment. Individual cells do not act alone during this process, studies on mouse mammary tissue show. Instead, the cells make decisions collectively after exchanging information about the chemical messages they are receiving, reports ScienceDaily on January 21 (Emory Health Sciences 2016). “Cells talk to nearby cells and compare notes before they make a move,” says Ilya Nemenman, a theoretical biophysicist at Emory University and a co-author of both studies. “Each cell only talks to its neighbour,” Nemenman explains. “A cell in position one only talks to a cell in position two. So position one needs to communicate with position two to get information from the cell in position three” (Emory Health Sciences 2016). “We built a mathematical model for this linear relay of cellular information and derived a formula for its best possible accuracy,”

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Nemenman says. “Directed cell migration is important in processes from cancer to the development of organs and tissues. Other researchers can apply our model beyond the mouse mammary gland and analyse similar phenomena in a wide variety of healthy and diseased systems.” For the last 50 years, scientists have been trying to understand in detail how cells decide to take any action based on chemical cues. Every cell in a body has the same genome but they can do different things and go in different directions because they measure different chemical signals. Those chemical signals are made up of molecules that Just as the cells, humans too make randomly move around. decisions individually and collectively.

We need to evolve strategies for “Cells can sense not just productive, viable collective decision the precise concentration making for our common good, taking of a chemical signal, but into account also the unconscious and concentration differences,” Nemenman says. “That’s very spiritual factors. important because, in order to know which direction to move, a cell has to know in which direction the concentration of the chemical signal is higher. Cells sense this gradient and it gives them a reference for the direction in which to move and grow.” Earlier it was not known that cells can sense signals and make movement decisions collectively. The first paper drew from 3D micro-fluidic techniques, mouse mammary tissue and the quantification methods of cell development. The results indicated that epidermal growth factor is the signal that these cells track and that the cells were not making decisions about which way to move as individuals, but collectively. In the second paper, Nemenman and others looked at the limits to the cells’ precision of collective gradient sensing not just spatially, but over time. They expected that the cells kept on communicating with

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one another for more time, the accuracy will improve. Nemenman says. “Surprisingly, however, this was not the case. We found that there is always a limit of how far information can travel without being garbled in these cellular systems.” He adds: “Our findings are not just intellectually important. They provide new ways to study many normal and abnormal developmental processes” (Emory Health Sciences 2016). Just as the cells, humans too make decisions individually and collectively. We need to evolve strategies for productive, viable collective decision making for our common good, taking into account also the unconscious and spiritual factors.

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The Downside of Being an Expert

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t is generally assumed that creativity and expertise go together. A specialist is someone who learns more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. A generalist is someone who learns less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything.” This popular perception of specialists seems to have a point. One recent scientific study has shown that becoming an expert may make us close-minded. In other words, there is a major downside to having in-depth knowledge of a certain subject.

“We tolerate more forceful and dogmatic expressions of opinion when the speaker is an expert than when the speaker is a novice. So, when the situation makes us feel like we are an ‘expert’, we feel more entitled to think in a dogmatic manner – in other words, we feel more entitled to dismiss, ignore or disparage opinions and viewpoints that differ from our own opinion.”

The research conducted by Loyola University of Chicago suggests that being an expert can make you more closed-minded – and, therefore, less creative – in our thinking. The study found that people who perceive themselves to be experts tend to be less open to new ideas and alternative viewpoints (Gregoire 2015). 

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These findings illustrate what’s known as the “earned dogmatism” effect – the tendency to think in a more closed-minded or dogmatic way, when we consider ourselves to be an expert, writes Carolyn Gregoire, senior health and science writer, in The Huffington Post. “For example, if an individual is told that they performed really well on a test of their political knowledge, they temporarily become more dogmatic in their approach to politics,” Victor Otatti, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author claimed: “When individuals perceive themselves to be an expert, they feel that they have ‘earned’ the privilege of thinking and behaving in a more dogmatic manner” (Gregoire 2015). In a series of experiments, Ottati and his colleagues manipulated participants into feeling either like experts or novices in a given area by asking them either very easy or very difficult questions about that topic. Then, the researchers used various methods of testing the participants’ thinking styles by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “I am open to considering other political viewpoints.” To their surprise, they found that the participants who were made to feel like experts were more likely to exhibit a closed-minded thinking style.  The researchers concluded that when we take on the role of an expert, we tend to think and act in a way that we feel is consistent with the social expectations of that role. “We tolerate more forceful and dogmatic expressions of opinion when the speaker is an expert than when the speaker is a novice,” Ottati said. “So, when the situation makes us feel like we are an ‘expert’, we feel more entitled to think in a dogmatic manner – in other words, we feel more entitled to dismiss, ignore or disparage opinions and viewpoints that differ from our own opinion” (Gregoire 2015). The findings of the study published in Journal of Social Experimental Psychology suggest that the best way to be an expert is to work towards achieving mastery while reminding ourselves of how much we still don’t know. Both intellectual humility and openness to other perspectives are needed today.

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Experts may be less open-minded about alternative viewpoints because many of those alternative viewpoints may be obviously wrong. Being open-minded about things that have been demonstrated false, or that are almost certainly wrong, is specifically what makes someone a non-expert. So we need to recognise the role of experts in all fields, including religion. But we cannot leave everything to experts only. For instance, we need religious experts who are open to other religious tradition and other disciplines. Today we seek more scholars in collaboration rather than geniuses in isolation.

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More Real than the Real

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an we creatively imagine or create reality? What about imagined reality? Virtual reality (VR), a technology that offers a unimaginably altered state of human consciousness, is getting more and more real. In fact, some will say, more real than reality itself. Coupled with a slew of ethical questions it is finally hitting the marketplace. It makes us ask the challenging question: is virtual reality more real than the real? Virtual reality claims to be more than just another advance in entertainment or education or business communication. It plans to be a whole new version of “reality,” writes the editorial column, Christian Science Monitor on January 7, 2016 (“Virtual Reality Gets More Real” 2016). By wearing bulky, wrap-around dark glasses, people can intensely experience two powerful human senses, sight and sound. It is true that the new reality shapes what we see and hear. Video game players might undertake incredibly realistic adventures as the action surrounds them 360 degrees. Or students might “virtually” visit the pyramids or an art museum half a world away. Sports fans could view a big game as though they’re sitting right on the side-lines. Business people in distant cities could meet ‘in person’ with a sense of realism and ‘presence’ that would make today’s video conferencing seem dull and archaic.

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And what if news viewers could be taken by VR to the site of a Syrian refugee camp? Might that change how they feel about the refugees’ plight? Sceptics still wonder about all the fuss. But filmmaker Chris Milk, who is already producing VR documentaries, says that sooner or later VR is going to produce some profound ethical debates. What will be the responsibilities of those creating these ultra-real VR experiences? And what will be the effects on those who use VR?, asks Christian Science Monitor editorially (“Virtual Reality Gets More Real” 2016). “In terms of an altered state of human consciousness being on the horizon, right now we’re still in the darkness of night, poking around with flashlights and trying to Can we human beings retain our sense find our way there,” Milk said. of sanity and still distinguish the real “What you’re talking about from the virtual and imaginary? We at some point is more than a medium, but is fundamentally cannot let ourselves be enslaved by an alternative level of human virtual reality, especially when it affects consciousness.” Today’s VR is our consciousness. still taking baby steps. Using the equipment can cause unpleasant physical side effects, much as early 3D glasses did. And it’s still a sit-down activity. Getting up and physically wandering around in a virtual environment is a far more complicated technological problem, according to Christian Science Monitor. But already the intensity of the experience is a game-changer. “Scares in VR are borderline immoral,” says Alex Schwartz, head, VR maker Owlchemy Labs. But he warns: “We have to be very careful.” Others don’t see what’s so new since people already can get deeply immersed in a movie or video game or an even earlier technology – a book. But Stanford University professor Jeremy Bailenson, who has studied VR for 15 years, says we underestimate VR at our peril. “The question isn’t: Is VR good or bad? You’d never ask that about the

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written word or video,” Bailenson asserts. “But I’m hoping that people are careful. We don’t know what’s going to happen” (“Virtual Reality Gets More Real” 2016). We need not fear VR any more than any other technology. But understanding it will make sure we use it morally and responsibly. So, the challenge before us not to demonise or divinise this tremendously powerful technology. It will necessarily become part of us. Can we human beings retain our sense of sanity and still distinguish the real from the virtual and imaginary? We cannot let ourselves be enslaved by it, mainly when it affects our consciousness.

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Start Meditating to Preserve Grey Matter

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s we know the brain is closely connected to our creativity. Recent experiments have shown that the brain’s creativity can be improved by meditation. Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with people living more than 10 years longer. That’s good news. The corresponding bad news is that starting when people are in their midto-late-20s, the brain begins to wither – its volume and weight begin to decrease. As this occurs, it begins to lose some of its functional abilities. So, although people might be living longer, the years they gain often come with increased risks for mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. Fortunately, a new study shows meditation could be one way to minimise those risks, reports Neurosciencenews (Wheeler 2015). Building on their earlier work that suggested people who meditate have less age-related atrophy in the brain’s white matter, a new study by UCLA researchers has found that meditation appeared to help preserve the brain’s grey matter, the tissue that contains neurons. The scientists looked specifically at the association between age and grey matter. They compared 50 people, who had meditated for years and 50, who

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didn’t. People in both groups showed a loss of grey matter as they aged. But the researchers found among those who meditated, the volume of grey matter did not decline as much as it did among those who didn’t. Florian Kurth, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Brain Mapping Centre, said the researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the difference (Wheeler 2015). “We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” he said. “Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.” “Accumulating scientific evidence that As the young generation meditation has brain-altering capabilities has aged and the elderly might ultimately allow for an effective population has grown, translation from research to practice, not the incidence of cognitive only in the framework of healthy aging decline and dementia has but also pathological aging.” increased substantially as the brain ages. “In that light, it seems essential that longer life expectancies do not come at the cost of reduced quality of life,” said Eileen Luders, first author and assistant professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “While much research has focused on identifying factors that increase the risk of mental illness and neurodegenerative decline, relatively less attention has been turned to approaches aimed at enhancing cerebral health” (Wheeler 2015). Each group in the study was made up of 28 men and 22 women ranging in age from 24 to 77. Those who meditated had been doing so for four to 46 years, with an average of 20 years. The participants’ brains were scanned using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Although the researchers found a negative correlation between grey matter and age in both groups of people – suggesting a loss of brain tissue with increasing age – they

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also found that large parts of the grey matter in the brains of those who meditated seemed to be better preserved, Kurth said. Though we cannot draw a causal connection between meditation and preserving grey matter in the brain, the researchers believe that the results are promising. Luders said. “Accumulating scientific evidence that meditation has brain-altering capabilities might ultimately allow for an effective translation from research to practice, not only in the framework of healthy ageing but also pathological ageing” (Wheeler 2015). Since centuries, we have known the health benefits of traditional practices like meditation and yoga. Maybe it is time to study them scientifically and promote healthy and vibrant spiritual practices.

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“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

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Being human doesn’t happen despite suffering – it happens within it.” When we suffer together with the loved ones, when we lose our loved ones, we reach the depth of our being human.

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The Choice between Best and Worst is Ours

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e can surely admire our creativity and other values. At the same time, we need to acknowledge the dark or shadow sides of our lives. Evil and brokenness are somehow necessary part of our lives. Even when we do not want it, we succumb to sin or evil. Evil can be very devastating. It hurts us and others. It could be traumatic. Still this is our destiny. In this Part, we dwell briefly on this topic. In this essay we look at the tendency of every structure to be a force for good or evil.

The relation between religion and violence has always intrigued humans. Results of a recent empirical study indicate that violence decreases as spirituality increases in persons who consume non-alcohol beverages. However, quite unexpectedly, violence actually increased as spirituality increased in persons indulging in alcoholic beverages. Often, research findings reflect the scientist’s and the public’s expectations. Sometimes, they come close. Other times, research results astound everyone. This study, reported in ScienceDaily, belongs to the latter (University of Kentucky 2014).

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The research was led by Professor Peter R Giancola of the psychology department of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, USA. “Oversimplifying – in many cases, the more religious someone is, the more aggressive they will become after drinking alcohol,” Giancola said (University of Kentucky 2014). For the sake of the study, the researcher defined “Religion carries two sorts of people in two religiosity as someone who “finds meaning in opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the sacred”, regardless of the doctrine they the persecuting people it carries into fiendish follow. sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may

seem to justify the 18th century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organised, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth” to predict alcohol-related violence.

He also warned that his findings are preliminar y and so require further study. Giancola said he was initially trying to create a profile of risk factors

This preliminary study contained 520 subjects ranging in age from 21-35. After determining each individual’s degree of spiritual belief, subjects received either an alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage. Results of the study indicated that alcohol “releases the beast within” in highly religious persons. Here British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s insight comes handy: “Religion carries two sorts of people in two opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the 18th century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organised, gigantic fraud and

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a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth” (cited in University of Kentucky 2014). Whitehead elaborates: “Religion possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn’t seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects.” This assertion is both frightening and sobering. The very religion that can elicit the best and noblest in human lives can also evoke the worst and the bloodiest. Thus we can learn that eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty but also of religion. Humans cannot escape structures like religion or culture. But structures left to themselves tend to fossilise, making it get stuck. In a short time structures can attain the power to sabotage the liberative charisma or experience, the basis of every religion. Unless we are extremely sensitive, religions tend to become inward-looking and selfserving. In this process even the noblest aspirations may be sacrificed at the altar of self-preservation and self-service. Most of the time the turnaround happens collectively and unconsciously. Can we discern the best and the worst in religion, go beyond these binaries and still choose the better at every moment?

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Anxiety and the Sixth Sense Theory

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onnected with evil is our anxiety and fear. They are also a constitutive part of our own lives. A new study has found that being anxious could, in fact, be beneficial in dealing with a crisis. The findings could help explain the apparent ‘sixth sense’ we have for danger in social situations, with the direction of a person’s gaze being a crucial cue. People with non-clinical anxiety are particularly well-poised for action. In the study published in the journal eLife, French researchers show that the brain devotes more processing resources to social situations that signal threat than those that are benign (eLIFE. 2016). This is the first time that specific regions of the brain have been identified to be involved in the phenomenon. The human brain can detect social threats in these regions in a fast, automatic fashion, within just 200 milliseconds. Even more surprising for the scientists was the discovery that “anxious individuals detect a threat in a different region of the brain from people who are not anxious. It was previously thought that anxiety could lead to oversensitivity to threat signals” (eLIFE. 2016). However, the study shows that the difference has a useful purpose.

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Anxious people process threats using regions of the brain responsible for action. Meanwhile, ‘low anxious’ people handle them in sensory circuits, responsible for face recognition. “They found that the direction a person is looking in is key to enhancing our sensitivity to their emotions. Anger, In contrast to previous work, our findings coupled with a direct gaze, demonstrate that the brain devotes more produces a response in the processing resources to negative emotions brain in only 200 milliseconds, that signal threat, rather than to any faster than if the angry person display of negative emotion. is somewhere else. In a crowd, you will be most sensitive to an angry face looking towards you, and will be less alert to an angry person looking somewhere else,” holds lead author Marwa El Zein from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research and the Ecole Normale Supérieurein Paris (eLIFE. 2016). “Similarly, if a person displays fear and looks in a particular direction, you will detect this more rapidly than positive emotions. Such quick reactions could have served an adaptive purpose for survival. Since we evolved alongside predators that can attack, bite or sting, a quick reaction to someone experiencing fear can help us avoid danger. In contrast to previous work, our findings demonstrate that the brain devotes more processing resources to negative emotions that signal threat, rather than to any display of negative emotion,” affirms El Zein. Electrical signals measured in the brains of 24 volunteers were analysed while they were asked to decide whether digitally altered faces expressed anger or fear. Some faces displayed precisely the same expression, but the direction of their gaze was altered. It has often been theorised that elevated anxiety, even in a nonclinical range, could impair the brain’s processing of threats. However, El Zein and her co-authors found that non-clinical anxiety shifts the

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neural ‘coding’ of danger to motor circuits, which produce action, from sensory circuits, which help us to recognise faces (eLIFE. 2016). One thing these studies tell us is that there is much to human life and interaction than that can be analysed by today’s science-based on reason and experiments. We need to accept that we have been driven forward by senses other than the customarily recognised five. Scientific research may throw further light on what drives us ahead, which are the specific areas connected with religion. In spite of our scientific progress, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves that we are not in full control of our own lives.

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Imperfection Makes Us More Human

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losely related to anxiety is our tendency to make mistakes and be vulnerable. For all those who live in fear of making a mistake, take heart. According to research, making mistakes makes us more, not less, likeable writes clinical instructor in psychiatry, Samantha Boardman. Kevan Lee, a positive psychologist, explains: “Those who never make mistakes are perceived as less likeable than those who commit the occasional faux pas. Messing up draws people closer to you and makes you more human. Perfection creates distance and an unattractive air of invincibility. Those of us with flaws win out every time” (Gordon 2013). Lee adds: “This theory was tested by psychologist Elliot Aronson. In his test, he asked participants to listen to recordings of people answering a quiz. Selected recordings included the sound of the person knocking over a cup of coffee. When participants were asked to rate the quizzers on likability, the coffee-spill group came out on top.” So this is why we tend to dislike people who seem perfect. And now we know that making minor mistakes isn’t the worst thing in the world; in fact, it can work in our favour. That said, nothing is charming about someone you don’t hold in high regard spilling coffee on you. For this to happen, one must

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already be perceived as someone special, someone who is significant and praiseworthy! The appreciation of imperfection applies to art as well. Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard, explains: “With writing and art, mistakes tend to make the product more interesting. The major difference between a machine-made rug and a handmade one is that the regularity of the machine-made rug makes it uninteresting. Errors give the viewer something to hold onto” (Gordon 2013). So it is true that when “you make a mistake in a painting, if – instead of trying to correct the mistake – you incorporate it into what you are doing and go forward, you are working mindfully. When we ask viewers to choose between this kind of art and ‘flawless’ works, people say they prefer the mindfully created pieces. Beauty is in the cracks, the smudge, and the imperfect line, though beauty cannot be reduced to these. In an age of machine-made products, the human touch is more valuable. As with people, minor flaws “Those who never make mistakes are can make objects appealing, perceived as less likeable than those writes Boardman.

who commit the occasional faux pas. Messing up draws people closer to you and makes you more human. Perfection creates distance and an unattractive air of invincibility. Those of us with flaws win out every time”

Thus, our likeability will increase if we are already held high and if we are not seen perfect. This is called “the pratfall effect” (Gordon 2013). Those who never make mistakes are perceived as less likeable than those who commit the faux pas. Messing up draws people closer to you, makes you more human. Perfection creates distance and an unattractive air of invincibility. Those of us with flaws win out every time. On the other hand, if we admit our failures to friends, our very humanness will make us closer.

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This is because as human beings, we want to relate to others who are similar and different to ourselves. Our similarity to the others makes it possible to understand and empathise with them. Our difference from them makes them admirable and desirable. So we like others because they are like us and unlike us. It is this creative dynamic that makes human life so beautiful. Thus, there is elegance in imperfection. There is greatness in being human and humane. Sometimes, the weak and vulnerable may become truly precious and so perfect. That is why from a religious point of view, we claim, “every sinner has a future and every saint had a past.” The saint is a saint precisely because he was or could have been a sinner like all of us, and still he became different from us!

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All about Pain and Empathy

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ain and suffering are also part of our intimate life. We can relate our own feeling of pain to the empathy we feel for others. How is feeling pain related to empathising with other’s pain? Reducing our own pain is also reducing empathy for pain in others, claims recent research by Claus Lamm, professor of psychology University of Vienna (Universitaet Wien 2015). The ability to feel the pain of others is based on neurobiological processes which underlie pain experience in oneself. Using innovative methods, an international research team headed by psychologist Claus Lamm from the University of Vienna could show that a reduction of selfexperienced pain leads to a decrease in empathy for pain in others as well. The researchers assumed that this effect is underpinned by endogenous opioids, that reduce empathic reactions. They are peptides produced naturally in our bodies. In a study with more than 100 participants, Claus Lamm and his interdisciplinary team used “an innovative experimental trick, the so-called placebo analgesic effect, to close an explanatory gap in the understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms of empathy” (Universitaet Wien 2015). Experimentally manipulating self-experienced pain, they tested whether this manipulation also leads to an equivalent

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change in empathy for pain. “Only this trick enabled us to conclude with higher certainty that empathy relies on simulation”, explains Claus Lamm. Participants in the placebo group reported significantly less subjective pain experience, which was associated with reduced brain activation in the anterior insula and midcingulate cortex of the brain. “These brain regions are well-known major hubs in the neuronal empathy network. Besides, they are central parts of the endogenous opioid system, which is involved in pain regulation”, affirms the psychologist. In a related study, the research group tested the involvement of the opioid Empathy is strongly and directly system in the previously grounded in our own experiences. This observed placebo-empathy might be one reason why feelings of effect in order to enable others can affect us so immediately – as precise conclusions on the we literally feel these feelings as if we underlying neurotransmitter were to experience them ourselves, at systems. Using a substance least partially. that blocks opioid receptors, Lamm and his team induced a blocking of the placeboempathy effect in 50 participants. “This result strongly suggests an involvement of the opioid system in placebo-empathy”, explains the principal investigator (Universitaet Wien 2015).  Has opioid got a direct influence on empathy?  “We are now wondering whether the observed effects in the opioid system act directly on empathic processes or whether these are only carry-over effects of the manipulation of self-experienced pain”, explains Claus Lamm. The team is thus currently working on a follow-up study which will investigate direct effects of opioid administration on empathy. “The present results show that empathy is strongly and directly grounded in our own experiences. This might be one reason why feelings of others can affect us so immediately – as we literally feel these feelings as if we

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were to experience them ourselves, at least partially. On the other hand, these findings also explain why empathy can go wrong – as we judge the feelings of others based on our own perspective”, elaborates Lamm (Universitaet Wien 2015).Thus, our own experience and interpretation of pain affect our ability to feel empathy and compassion. To respond to the needs of the others effectively we need to have adequate experience (actual or perceived) of pain similar to theirs. Without the real experience of pain, we run the risk of not being empathetic and loving. There is a chance that empathy may be misplaced or misguided depending on how we have personalised and integrated similar experiences in our own lives.

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Anticipation of Temptation

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inally, in this part that deals with the shadow side of our lives, we have a look at the temptations and trials that we all feel. How does temptation lead us to do bad things? New research published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology may offer some insights about when people succumb to temptations. “People often think that bad people do bad things “Unethical behaviour may not be and good people do good experienced as something that needs to things, and that unethical be resisted if people think it’s socially behaviour just comes down to acceptable or does not reflect on their character,” says lead research moral self-image.” author Oliver Sheldon, PhD. “But most people behave dishonestly sometimes, and frequently, this may have more to do with the situation and how people view their own unethical behaviour than character” (HNGN 2015). In a series of experiments, participants who anticipated a temptation to act unethically were less likely to then behave unethically, relative to those who did not. These participants also were less likely to endorse

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unethical behaviour that offered short-term benefits, such as stealing office supplies or illegally downloading copyrighted material. The study was published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2015. “Self-control, or a lack thereof, may be one factor which explains why good people occasionally do bad things,” says Sheldon, an assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Rutgers University! (HNGN 2015). In one experiment, 196 business-school students were divided into pairs as the buyer or seller of some historic homes. Before the negotiation exercise, half of the group was reminded of ethical temptations; they wrote about a time in their lives when bending the rules was useful, while the control group wrote about a time when having a back-up plan helped. The sellers were told that the property should only be sold to a buyer who would preserve the historic homes and not destroy them. However, the buyers were told that their client planned to demolish the homes and build a high-rise hotel, but they were ordered to conceal that information from the seller. More than two-thirds of the buyers lied about the hotel plans so they could close the deal, compared to less than half of the buyers who had been reminded about temptation. Participants, who were encouraged to anticipate temptation and who thought their behaviour was consistent with their future self, were honest. However, participants not encouraged to anticipate temptation and/or who believed that their conduct was inconsistent with their future self, were more likely to lie. People also may be more likely to engage in unethical behaviour if they believe the act is an isolated incident. In an online experiment with 161 participants, people were less inclined to support unethical behaviour in six workplace scenarios if they anticipated temptation through the writing exercise and considered all scenarios, rather than did not anticipate temptation and/or and considered each scenario on a separate computer screen.

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“Unethical behaviour may not be experienced as something that needs to be resisted if people think it’s socially acceptable or does not reflect on their moral self-image,” Sheldon says (HNGN 2015). If people want to avoid unethical behaviour, it may help to anticipate situations where they will be tempted and they will consider how acting upon such temptation fits with their long-term goals or beliefs about themselves.

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Psychological Depth of Being

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Five Personalities

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n the last part we have been looking at the shadows of our own life, with a view to find traces of light and goodness in it. Most of the time we overlook the goodness and complain about the shadows. We forget at times that shadows also contribute to the enrichment of our life. In this part we look at the Psychological depth of Studies show marrying someone high in our lives. We talk about the conscientiousness increases your chances kinds of personalities we are of workplace success. A conscientious blessed with and the role of spouse can boost your productivity and memory and the scope for help you achieve the most. mental well-being. The first article on understanding our own personality and our world.

Your personality influences everything from the friends you choose to the candidates you vote for in a political election. Yet many people never really spend much time thinking about their personality traits, writes Amy Morin author of “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do?” in Success (Morin 2017).

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Properly understanding and appreciating your personality can give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses. It can also help you gain insight into how others see you. Most modern-day psychologists agree there are five major personality types. Referred to as the “five-factor model,” everyone possesses some degree of each. But one of them will be prominent in each one of us. Conscientiousness: People who rank highest in conscientiousness are efficient, well-organized, dependable, and self-sufficient. They prefer to plan things in advance and aim for high achievement. People who rank lower in conscientiousness may view those with this personality trait as stubborn and obsessive. Interestingly, studies show marr ying someone high in conscientiousness increases your chances of workplace success. A conscientious spouse can boost your productivity and help you achieve the most (Morin 2016). Extroversion: People who rank high in extroversion gain energy from social activity. They’re talkative and outgoing and they’re comfortable in the spotlight. Others may view them as domineering and attentionseeking. They are always outspoken, active and involved. If you take note of people who gives a strong and firm handshake, they may fall into this category. Studies show men (not necessarily women) with the strongest handgrips are most likely to rank high in extroversion and least likely to be neurotic. Agreeableness: Those who rank high in agreeableness are trustworthy, kind, and affectionate toward others. They’re known for their pro-social behaviour and they’re often committed to volunteer work and altruistic activities. Other people may view them as naïve and overly passive. If we look for a financial investor who is high in agreeableness, studies show agreeable investors are least likely to lose money from risky trading, writes Morin (2016).

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Openness to Experience: The fourth type of personality are those who rate high in openness are known for their broad range of interests and vivid imaginations. “They’re curious and creative and they usually prefer variety over rigid routines. They’re known for their pursuits of self-actualization through intense, euphoric experiences like meditative retreats. Others may view them as unpredictable and unfocused.” It is to be noted that openness is the only personality trait that consistently predicts political orientation. Studies show people high in openness are more likely to endorse liberalism and they’re also more likely to express their political beliefs. Neuroticism: The final type of people are neurotic ones. They experience a high degree of emotional instability. They’re more likely to be reactive and excitable and they report higher degrees of unpleasant emotions like anxiety and irritability. Others may view them as unstable and insecure. Interestingly, neurotic people seek acceptance by publishing a lot of pictures on Facebook. Studies find they’re less likely to post comments or updates that could be seen as controversial, and much more likely to post lots of pictures (Morin 2016). Personality remains relatively stable over time. The personality traits you exhibited at age seven are likely to predict much of your behaviour as an adult. Surely, you can change some of your personality traits. It takes hard work and effort to make big changes. What is said about these personalities are also applicable to our spiritual life – that is our relationship to God and the deepest dimensions of our life. Understanding these personalities of oneself and others will help us cope better with the world. But we should be careful not to absolutize these traits. Knowing one’s own personality along that of the significant other can help us to understand, affirm each other.

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Tracking our Personality

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n this essay, we elaborate more on personality types. It’s often been said that the eyes are the window to the soul, revealing what we think and how we feel. Now, new research shows that your eyes may also be an indicator of your personality type, only by the way they move.

Artificial intelligence is about to get a lot better at working out human behaviour. Recently Australian researchers have revealed an AI that can predict your personality just by looking at your eyes, as reported by Mark Prigg in DailyMail (Prigg 2018). Researchers say minute movements give away  four of the big five personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The research team claims that the work could revolutionise how we communicate with machines. “There’s certainly the potential for these findings to improve humanmachine interactions,’ University of South Australia researcher Dr Tobias Loetscher said. “People are always looking for improved, personalised services.  However, today’s robots and computers are not socially aware, so they

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cannot adapt to non-verbal cues.” This research provides opportunities to develop robots and computers so that they can become more natural, and better at interpreting human social signals (Prigg 2018).    Developed by the University of South Australia in partnership with the University of Stuttgart, Flinders University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, the research uses state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms to demonstrate a link between personality and eye movements.   Researchers tracked the eye movements of 42 participants as they undertook everyday tasks and subsequently assessed their personality traits using questionnaires.

“Personality traits characterise an individual’s patterns of behaviour, thinking, and feeling. Studies reporting relationships between personality traits and eye movements suggest that people with similar traits tend to move their eyes in similar ways.

Researchers led by Tobias Loetscher from the University of South Australia used machine learning to understand how eye movements and personality are related. Forty-two students wore eye-tracking smart glasses while walking around campus and from this experiment they have created an AI that can predict someone’s personality.   They found that Curious people tend to look around more.  Openminded  people stare at abstract images for longer periods and neurotic  personalities usually blink faster. People who are  open to new experiences moved their eyes more from side-to-side. People who have high levels of conscientiousness have more significant fluctuations in their pupil size. They found that optimists spend less time looking at negative emotional stimuli (such as image of skin cancer) than pessimistic people. This technology could be put in smartphones that understand and predict our behaviour, potentially offering personalised support. They

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could also be used by robot companions for older people or in selfdriving cars. Dr Loetscher says the findings also provide an important bridge between tightly controlled laboratory studies and the study of natural eye movements in real-world environments. “This research has tracked and measured the visual behaviour of people going about their everyday tasks, providing more natural responses than if they were in a lab. And thanks to our machine-learning approach, we not only validate the role of personality in explaining eye movement in everyday life but also reveal new eye movement characteristics as predictors of personality traits (Prigg 2018)” “Personality traits characterise an individual’s patterns of behaviour, thinking, and feeling,” researchers wrote previously in their paper published in  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. “Studies reporting relationships between personality traits and eye movements suggest that people with similar traits tend to move their eyes in similar ways.” Machines, especially AI, can help us to know ourselves better and predict human behaviour. These tips may be helpful in general terms. At the same time, we cannot afford to absolutise it. It is very dangerous to let a machine predict our personality and suggest remedial courses. While appreciating the tremendous growth today artificial intelligence enabled technology offers, we need to be highly sensitive to the transcendental, mysterious and humane nature of human persons. We are “ends in ourselves,” not instrumental means, as the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, reminds us.

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The Conservative and Liberal Values

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ur personality also shapes our political views. “When it comes to moral judgments, we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.” The surprising psychology behind morality is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research. He explains “liberal” and “conservative” not narrowly or necessarily as political affiliations, but as personality types – ways of moving through the world, reports Krista Tippett, host of “On Being,” an award winning podcast (Tippett 2017). In his acclaimed book, The Righteous Mind (Haidt 2013), he examined the conundrum behind good people divided by religion and politics. Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Heidt writes about his life: “As a kid who always loved science, and when I first read the bible in college, the Old Testament, I was horrified when I read the whole thing. And so I went through the phase that many young scientific types go through. I’m the sort of person who would have been a New Atheist if I hadn’t taken a very different turn in my own research.”

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He refers to the negative psychology which focusses almost exclusively on problems. It dealt with pathologies, violence, drug addiction, racism, all those sorts of things. He recalls what Martin Seligman, a psychologist at Penn, said, when he was president of the American Psychological Association, “Well, what about the positive side of life? Most people are doing pretty well. And when they go to the bookstore, all they have on offer are books by Deepak Chopra. So we should be having psychologists researching the positive side of life.” Wh e n He i dt st ar te d researching morality and how it’s based on the emotions like disgust and anger and shame, he asked himself: “Well, what’s the opposite of disgust?” And I started – what do you feel when you see somebody do something beautiful or uplifting? And it felt to me as though there’s such an emotion, but there wasn’t a word for it, at least not in the psychological language – I mean you can say “uplifted” or “touched” or “moved” (Tippett 2017).

People who are liberal and conservative, he says, value two of these in common, compassion and fairness.But conservatives juggle three other moral values – of loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

“So if you go with me that morality is part of human nature, that it is something that evolved in us as our primate ancestors became cultural creatures that lived in larger groups, then these groups competed with each other, and the groups that were able to hang together and cooperate are the ones that succeeded and became our ancestors.” Further, heads: “So if you are with me that morality, just like the love of our children or the sense of humour or language… You begin to see morality as this amazing ability that binds groups together in groups that are larger than kinship.” We cooperate “so brilliantly, and that’s because we have this moral psychology that binds us together.” It’s most effective when we have a sacred value, something that we all worship or circle around. “So it’s clearest in religions, where the sacred value is literally God or the

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Torah or whatever, but you’ll see it in any political group too. So on the left, nowadays, just in the last year or two, it’s become overwhelmingly marriage equality and rising income inequality” (Tippett 2017). Heidt suggests that human beings are born with moral “receptors.” Just as our taste buds organically incline us to like and dislike certain tastes and textures, our minds come equipped to feel pleasure or displeasure at patterns in the social world. He describes five primary moral foundations, accepted by all cultures. People who are liberal and conservative, he says, value two of these in common, compassion and fairness. But conservatives juggle three other moral values – of loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

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Fading of Memories

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nother aspect of our psychological self is memory and its role in our personality development. Memories fade in quality over time - a truly surprising finding for a team of Boston College researchers. They expected recollections would become less accurate but found people also report declines in the vibrancy and visual qualities of their memories with time like old photographs. When people remember the past, they remember it with varying degrees of clarity, said Boston College Assistant Professor of Psychology Maureen Ritchey, a cognitive neuroscientist and co-author of the study, published in an online edition of the journal  Psychological Science (Boston College 2019). Sometimes people remember lots of details about an event as if they are reliving the moment as it happened, said Ritchey. Other times, it seems like the memory has faded, and the details are fuzzy. Prior memory research has shown that emotionally significant events – like a car accident – are remembered more vividly than everyday activities, reports DailyScience (Boston College 2019).

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“We wanted to know whether this feeling of memory vividness is related to not just what is remembered, but how it is remembered – the visual quality of the memory,” said Ritchey, who conducted the study with Boston College Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Kensinger and post-doctoral researcher Rose Cooper. As events are stored in memory or forgotten, the team asked, how do their visual features change? Ritchey said people reported changes to their minds akin to using a filter to edit a picture.

“We found that memories seem to literally fade: people consistently remembered visual scenes as being less vibrant than they were originally experienced.”

“A simple analogy is what happens when you post a photo on Instagram,” Ritchey said. “You’re cued to apply a filter that changes the brightness or colour saturation of the image. In our study, we asked if forgetting is like applying a filter to past experience, and whether or not the emotional significance of the event would change which filter you apply.” In three experiments, participants studied emotionally negative and neutral images that varied in visual quality – luminance and colour saturation. They then reconstructed the visual qualities of each image in a subsequent test. The findings revealed that memories were recollected as less visually vibrant than they were encoded, demonstrating a novel memory-fading effect, the researchers reported. Negative emotions subjects experienced when viewing the images increased the likelihood that images would be accurately remembered but did not influence memory fading. Besides, subjective ratings of memory vividness were lower for less accurate memories and for memories that had visually faded, the team found, according to DailyScience (Boston College 2019).

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These findings provide evidence that the vibrancy of low-level details – such as colours and shapes associated with an event – fade in memory while the gist of the experience is retained. People may remember going to a music festival and watching their favourite band, but the intensity of that sensory experience, including the bright stage lights and strength of the bass, will slowly fade. “We found that memories seem to literally fade: people consistently remembered visual scenes as being less vibrant than they were originally experienced,” said Cooper. “We had expected that memories would get less accurate after a delay, but we did not expect that there would be this qualitative shift in the way that they were remembered.” The fading effect happened less for memories that were rated as subjectively stronger. “We were also surprised to find that emotional memories did not influence the amount of fading, only the likelihood with which people remembered the images at all,” she added (Boston College 2019). Cooper and Ritchey said the team’s next steps are to figure out what exactly drives the memory fading effect – does it stem from forgetting over time or interference from new information? How is it influenced by individual differences in memory for other kinds of event details?

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Digital Addiction Causes Depression

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adly, memories are also connected with depression. Let us look into depression caused by modern life-style and the social network.

Smartphones are an integral part of our lives, allowing us to stay always connected. The downside of that convenience is that many of us are also addicted to the constant pings, chimes, vibrations and other alerts from our devices, unable to ignore new emails, texts and images. A new study finds that smartphone use can be similar to other types of substance abuse. It urges us to outsmart smartphones for our own good.

In a new study published in NeuroRegulation, San Francisco State University Professor of Health Education Erik Peper and Associate Professor of Health Education Richard Harvey argue that overuse of smartphones is just like any other type of substance abuse (Viani 2018). “The behavioural addiction of smartphone use begins forming neurological connections in the brain in ways similar to how opioid addiction is experienced by people taking Oxycontin for pain relief gradually,” Peper explained (San Francisco State University 2018). On top of that, addiction to social media technology may actually have a negative effect on social connection. In a survey of 135 San

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Francisco State students, the researchers found that students who used their phones the most reported higher levels of feeling isolated, lonely, depressed and anxious. “They believe the loneliness is partly a “They believe the loneliness consequence of replacing face-to-face is partly a consequence of re pl a c i ng f a c e - to interaction with a form of communication face interaction with a where body language and other signals form of communication cannot be interpreted. They also found where body language and that those same students almost constantly other signals cannot be multitasked while studying, watching other interpreted. They also media, eating or attending class.” found that those same students almost constantly multitasked while studying, watching other media, eating or attending class” (San Francisco State University 2018) Such constant activity allows little time for bodies and minds to relax and regenerate, says Peper. It results in “semi-tasking,” where people do two or more tasks at the same time - but half as well as they would have if focused on one task at a time. For this situation, Peper and Harvey put the primary responsibility on the tech industry’s desire to increase profits. “More eyeballs, more clicks, more money,” said Peper. Push notifications, vibrations and other alerts on our phones make us feel compelled to look at them by triggering the same neural pathways in our brains that once alerted us to imminent danger, such as an attack by a tiger or other large predator. “But now we are hijacked by those same mechanisms that once protected us and allowed us to survive - for the most trivial pieces of information,” he explained. There is a way out! Just as we can train ourselves to eat less sugar, for example, we can take charge and prepare ourselves to be less addicted to our phones and computers. The first step is recognising that tech companies are manipulating our innate biological responses to danger. Peper suggests turning off push notifications, only responding to email

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and social media at specific times and scheduling periods to focus on essential tasks. Two of Peper’s students say they have taken proactive measures to change their patterns of technology use. One student, Khari McKendell, closed all of his social media accounts about six months ago because he wanted to make stronger face-to-face connections with people. “I still call and text people but I want to make sure that a majority of the time I’m talking to my friends in person,” he said (San Francisco State University 2018). Another student, Senior Sierra Hinkle, says she has stopped using headphones while out walking in order to be more aware of her surroundings. When she’s out with friends, they all put their phones in the centre of the table, and the first one to touch theirs buys the drinks. “We have to become creative and approach technology in a different way that still incorporates the skills we need but doesn’t take away from real-life experience,” said Hinkle. Can we be creative enough not to be enslaved by our own products? Can we outsmart smartphones? Can we overcome loneliness and become creative and vibrant? How can we move out of the depression caused by digital gadgets?

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Religious Insights on Mental Well-Being

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ogether with our personality and well-being, our mental health is also essential. Religious contributes significantly to our mental stamina and resilience.

On World Mental Health Day, October 10, it is apt to reflect on the intimate connection between religion and mental health. Studies indicate that devout and religious people have fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as a better ability to cope with stress. Certain religious practices may even change the brain in a way that boosts mental health!  However, religion could also be a double-edged sword: Negative religious beliefs – for example, that God is punishing or abandoning you – have been linked with harmful outcomes, including higher rates of depression and lower quality of life, writes Rachael Rettner, Senior journalist in LiveScience (Rettner 2015). “If people have a loving, kind perception of God,” and feel God is supportive, they seem to experience benefits, said Kenneth Pargament, a professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But “we know that there’s a darker side to spirituality,” Pargament said.

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“If you tend to see God as punitive, threatening or unreliable, then that’s not very helpful.” A large body of research has tied religious beliefs with positive outcomes for mental health. A 2005 study of older adults found that being religious served as a buffer against depression among people in poorer health, with the highest levels of depression among those who were in poor health and not religious. Further, a 2013 study found that religious patients who are being treated for mental health issues such as depression or anxiety responded better. “People who are more involved in religious practices and who are more religiously committed seem to cope better with stress,” Koenig said. “One of the reasons is because (religion) gives people a sense of “People who are more involved purpose and meaning in life, and in religious practices and who that helps them to make sense of are more religiously committed negative things that happen to them,” seem to cope better with stress!” Koenig said. A person’s religious community can also provide support and encouragement through hard times, writes Rettner (Rettner 2015). Brain studies may explain the link between religion and mentalhealth benefits. Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia says that meditative prayer, activate areas of the brain involved in regulating emotional responses. A 2010 study by Newberg and colleagues that included brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist and Franciscan nuns found that these long-term meditators had more activity in frontal-lobe areas such as the prefrontal cortex, compared with people who were not long-term meditators. Strengthening these areas of the brain may help people be “more calm, less reactionary, better able to deal with stressors,” Newberg said. It’s also possible that the practices advocated by a religion – like forgiveness, love and compassion – may “become integrated into the

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way the brain works,” Newberg added. The more often certain neural connections are used, the stronger they become, so if a religion advocates compassion, the neural circuits involved in thinking about compassion become stronger (Rettner 2015). “So you keep coming back to these positive feelings and emotions, and that reduces stress, anxiety, and can lead to a reduction in stress hormones,” Newberg said. However, religion doesn’t always have a positive effect on mental health. if instead of advocating love and compassion, a religion advocates hatred and violence, these negative beliefs would also become part of the way the brain works, Newberg said. Pargament has also found that when people believe that God has abandoned them, or when they question God’s love for them, they tend to experience greater emotional distress and increased tension. “These kinds of struggles have to do with the aspects of life that you hold sacred,” Pargament said. “When you get shaken to that level, then … it’s going to be very distressing” (Rettner 2015). Since religion affects the most intimate part of ourselves, it can shape our mental well-being, both positively and negatively! Religion need not be seen as the only answer to mental challenges. But it is one of the most important factors.

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Religious and Mental Well-Being

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e have one more article on the relationship between religion and mental health. What do we know about the relations between religious factors and mental health? It would be impossible to attempt an exhaustive list. We highlight a few issues – the consolations of religion, religious stress, and anomalous experiences.

Some aspects of religious practice

It is well documented that, usually, that appear unequivocally many religious beliefs and practices benign may have harmful are associated with lower levels of effects in some circumstances. depression and anxiety, and higher levels of positive affect though the effects are not universally reported. Important beliefs seem to be those involved in religious faith and trust – ‘God is supporting me in this’, ‘This is ultimately for the best’. An important practice is prayer: Kate M. Loewenthal, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of London and Christopher Alan Lewis Professor of Psychology at Glyndwr University, Wrexham, North Wales, writing in The Psychologist shows that that prayer was an important predictor of well-being. The general effect – that religion can be consoling and supportive – has been

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demonstrated in a range of cultures and religious groups including North American, European, Afro-American, Arab, South Asian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim (Loewenthal and Lewis 2011). Religious factors, it has been suggested, are not always beneficial. For example, those who believe in a punishing God tend to have poorer mental health outcomes than those who believe in a benign, supportive God. However, some common suspicions about the harmful effects of religion have not always been borne out. For example, it has been suggested that religion often fosters guilt, and this may serve to raise levels of anxiety, depression and obsessionality. Empirically, the effects are not so straightforward (Loewenthal and Lewis 2011). True, generally there is an association between religiosity and measures of guilt and obsessionality, particularly in religious traditions that encourage scrupulous detailed observances, such as some forms of Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam. However, measures of guilt do not predict anxiety and depression, and measures of religiosity do not predict clinical obsessionality (obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD). It is perhaps surprising that religious guilt may not play a causal role in mental health problems. Equally surprising is the finding that some aspects of religious practice that appear unequivocally benign may have harmful effects in some circumstances. For instance, although meditation has been claimed to have, and shown to have, calming effects, and mindfulness (said to be based on meditative techniques) is an increasingly popular technique in cognitive therapy, there have been some puzzling suggestions that meditation may precipitate manic episodes in those who are prone to bipolar disorder. What about voices, visions and demons? Do religions encourage such experiences and beliefs, and thereby foster psychotic episodes? The short answers are, yes to the first part of the question – many religions do indeed encourage or support voices, visions and beliefs in malign spiritual forces, but no to the second question – religion is unlikely to

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foster psychotic illness. However, voices, visions and other exotic religious practices, beliefs and experiences may lead to the mistaken belief that a person is suffering from psychosis (i.e. misdiagnosis). To amplify these points, several studies have generally shown zero or negative correlations between measures of religiosity, and standards of psychological disorder write Loewenthal and Lewis (2011). Scientific studies have examined delusions and the experience of voices among groups of individuals diagnosed as psychotic, nonpsychotic individuals who are religiously active, and non-psychotic individuals who are not religiously active. Generally, the religiously active are more likely to experience visions, voices and ‘delusions’ than others, though the religiously inactive may also have such experiences. The crucial features that distinguish psychotic experiences of visions, voices and the like from non-psychotic religious experiences are that psychotic experiences are generally more unpleasant, unwanted and uncontrollable. We cannot leave our discussion of mental health, religion and culture without at least a brief look at spirit possession and spells. Are malign spiritual forces outmoded and primitive explanations for mental illness? They are widespread in many cultures. Many transcultural psychiatrists and psychologists find that it is crucial to incorporate patients’ beliefs about the causes of their disorders into treatment plans. Regardless of any personal scepticism, a respectful, postmodern acknowledgement of the validity of alternative explanatory frameworks may be essential for therapeutic progress. There are religious beliefs and practices that have been shown, across all the cultures studied, to have some salutary effects on well-being. Other ways in which culture may impact on the relations between religion and well-being have been less consistently documented. The recent growth of interest in positive psychology, and in the relationships between religion and spirituality, and maturity, morality and virtue has not yet incorporated a marked focus on cultural issues. Religious

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beliefs and practices supported in one culture may appear disturbed to people (including mental health professionals) from another, affecting diagnosis and treatment (Loewenthal and Lewis 2011). Many commonly held ideas about the role of religion in shame, guilt and anxiety (including obsessive-compulsive disorder), voices, visions and spirit possession require closer examination in the light of evidence from different cultural groups. We surely need to free religion from guilt, shame and anxiety. We need to foster a religion that frees, liberates and humanises.

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Truths of Existence

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fter having exposed ourselves to our own mental well-being, in the final Part, we are open to learning some crucial lessons from life: lessons that will foster love, joy and compassion for one another. That will help us approach “We’re a mixed grill of happy anticipation  and dread,” holds American novelist, Anne Lammot in her Ted talk. “People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what’s true.”  So she provides “some basic operating instructions  to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered.” The first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox.  Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the punk side of things.  It’s been a nasty match  for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. “It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder  if we’re being punked.  It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don’t think it’s an ideal system” (Lammot 2019).

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The next truth of life: Almost everything will work again  if you unplug it for a few minutes – including you.  Thus the need to relax, reflect and retreat, in order to feel whole. The next lesson: There is almost nothing outside of you  that will help in any kind of lasting way unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth.  It’s an inside job. So  we can’t arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world. They have to find their own ways, their own answers.  You have to release them. It’s disrespectful not to. And if it’s someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the answer, anyway.  Our help is usually not very helpful. Our support is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don’t get your help and goodness all over everybody.  This brings us to the next truth: All of us are “screwed up, broken, clingy and scared,  even the Grace is always available to us. To people who seem to have it most everyone. The mystery of grace is together. They are much more like that God loves everyone. … When you than you would believe,  so try not to compare your insides all is said and done,  we’re really to other people’s outsides.” It will just all walking each other home. only make you worse than you already are. Her  acronym for God is the “gift of desperation,” (Lammot 2019) G-O-D. So God might mean, in this case, “me running out of any more good ideas.” Then one can help oneself. While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical selfcare is quantum, and it radiates out from us into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It’s a huge gift to the world.  The next lesson: Grace is always available to us. To everyone. The mystery of grace is that “God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as he or she loves your new grandchild.”

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The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, just ask for it and wait. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn’t leave you where it found you. Maybe the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you’ll get your sense of humour about yourself back. So “Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves,  and this gives us faith in life and each other.  And remember – grace always bats last” (Lammot 2019). Lammot gives another truth: God just means goodness. It’s really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence. Finally, she urges us to befriend death. “It’s so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You’ll never get over these losses.” The first thing that God said to Moses is: “Take off your shoes. Because this is holy ground.” All evidence to the contrary it is true. It’s hard to believe, but it’s the truest thing I know. When we are a little bit older, we realize that death is as sacred as birth. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need.  As the American guru Ram Dass said, “When all is said and done, we’re really just all walking each other home.” Can we really experience this and embrace everyone with genuine love?

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Deeds than Words

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he truths of our lives are not “taught, but caught.” In fact, “walking the talk” makes us more genuine and our religious life more authentic. So the questions: How do we become more religious? How can we really change other’s religious views and convictions? How do our lives affect those around us?

A recent study in the prestigious journal Religion, Brain & Behavior, found that what matters most in shaping others religious views are the religious practitioners, who could be regarded as role models. More than what they say, what they do really affect the religious view of their colleagues and friends (Baer 2017). Scholars and researchers, Jonathan Lanman and Michael D. Buhrmester, from the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, found that the more people were exposed to “credibility-enhancing displays,” or CREDs, the higher their religiosity, the more likely they were a theist, and the more certain they were of God’s existence, writes author Drake Baer in New York Magazine (Baer 2017). CRED not only adds credibility to what we say but reflects our beliefs vibrantly to those around us.

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In the research conducted, 316 participants took a seven-item CREDs assessment, where they rated on a seven-point scale their answers to questions like “To what extent did your caregiver(s) act fairly to others because their religion taught them so?” and “To what extent did your caregiver(s) live a religiously pure life?” These participants, all recruited online, also took a 20-item measure on “religious emphasis,” for which participants reported how much their caregivers told them it was wrong to sin against a loving God and what the moral do’s and don’ts of religion are, and then finally a quiz on their current religious status. A full 66 percent of the participants confessed their belief in God. The research found that people “who “Preach the Gospel at reported being exposed to lots of CREDs all times.  Use words if were the most likely to believe in God necessary.” with a high degree of certainty, and those exposed to few were the most certain about the opposite.” After analyzing the details, the researchers declared that CREDs exposure “accounted for the variance in belief associated with religious emphasis.” They added: “[W]hen we put both our measure of general religious socialization (the talking the talk) and our measure of CREDs (the walking the walk) into regression models, the CREDs measure held all of the predictive power” (Baer 2017). Lanman  is convinced: “Actions matter more than words, but the evidence here suggests they matter dramatically more in convincing cultural learners of the existence of God.” When we talk about God, we are talking about the most sacred dimensions of our life. Therefore, it is natural to expect that we walk the talk. Further, religious experiences and convictions do have tremendous transforming power. Unfortunately, such experiences can also be covered up by the overuse of words. Therefore, the popular quote attributed to the medieval saint, Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Too many words, instead of committed actions, may, unfortunately, hide the deepest of our religious experiences (Baer 2017). So the best way to

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change others is through our sustained and committed actions, which will have a deeper impact on the lives of others around us. Such actions of service and compassion can truly make us people who are more authentic or genuine. Instead of using pompous words, they know to reach out to others in need. Such actions will help us to be in touch with our deepest self and the Divine. This experience of the Divine may lead to words, but rarely. Mostly it leads to inner silence and sustained commitment to others. Service with joy! Those who talk too much may be unconsciously trying to coverup their lack of religious experience! Mahatma Gandhi is right: “A rose does not need to preach that it is the most beautiful flower.” We need to walk the talk. Then we do not need pompous rhetoric to convince others and ourselves!

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Leaves, Branches and Roots

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he fragrance of the flowers and the scent of good deeds are for all to see. Here it is good to reflect on how religion gives us strong roots so that we can branch out and spread the fragrance of life and love to others.

Recently I came across the parable of leaves, branches and roots on the internet, which may be applicable to our life in general and spiritual life in particular. These three symbols represent different kinds of people who enter into our own lives and shape us differently.

When it comes to God most of us see God as the root, on whom we can entirely depend on. He accepts and affirms us unconditionally.At the same time, God can also be branches and leaves, changing us through fleeting people and events.

When some people come into our lives and they are like leaves on a tree. They are only there for a season. We can’t depend on them or count on them because they are weak and only there to give we shade. Like leaves, they are there to take what they need and as soon as it gets cold or a wind blows in our life they are gone. We can’t be angry at them; it’s just who they are.

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There are some people who come into our lives and they are like branches on a tree. They are stronger than leaves, but we have to be careful with them. They will stick around through most seasons, but if we go through a storm or two in our life it’s possible that we could lose them. Most times they break away when it’s tough. Although they are stronger than leaves, we have to test them out before we run out there and put all our weight on them. In most cases they can’t handle too much weight (Cincotta 2016). We can also find some people who are like the roots of a tree then we have found something special. Like the roots of a tree, they are hard to find because they are not trying to be seen. Their only job is to hold us up and help we live an active and healthy life. If we thrive, they are happy. They stay low key and don’t let the world know that they are there. And if we go through an awful storm they will hold we up. Their job is to hold us up, come what may, and to nourish us, feed us and water us. People who are like the roots of a tree are permanent. Friendships who go through everything, hell and back, and still stand strong are friends worth keeping. They’re friendships worth fighting for. We can fully count on them since they are totally dependable. People, who are roots, are ready to give us everything and we are truly changed because of them. We need a few such people. On the other hand, the branches support and hold us when we need them most. They can be counted on. But they are not always there for us. The leaves are people whom we meet casually and some of them affect us significantly and others not so. Just as a tree has many limbs and many leaves, there are few roots. Look at our own life. How many leaves, branches and roots do we have? The more important question is: How many people feel that I am root, branch or leaf to them. In actual life, we need all three types of people. Some people we can count on fully, others partially and still some others not so much.

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Only when we learn to deal with these three kinds of persons can we be able to live fully (Cincotta 2016). Only when we know how to be roots, branches and leaves to different people, according to the roles assigned to us, can we really radiate trust, love and joy to people. When it comes to God most of us see God as the root, on whom we can entirely depend on. He accepts and affirms us unconditionally. At the same time, God can also be branches and leaves, changing us through fleeting people and events.

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The Universal Force of Love

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od as our root and foundation affirms us unconditionally. and love us absolutely. So we can dwell on the universal force of divine love. There has been a letter on the force of love found in numerous internet sites, claiming that it is a letter written by the best-known scientist Albert Einstein to his daughter Lieserl (Einstein n.d.). On further research it becomes obvious that the author is not Einstein. Still, the insight contained in this letter is worth rereading. The letter begins cautiously. “When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.” Then it asks his daughter “to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.” The letter elaborates on the universal force of love. “There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is

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even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us. This universal force is LOVE.” It reminds the readers that when scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe, which Einstein spent the last twenty years of life, “they forgot the most powerful unseen force. Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it. Love is gravity because it makes some people feel attracted to others. Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals. For love, we live and die. Love is God and God is Love.” The alleged letter from Einstein elaborates: “This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that “This force explains everything and we have ignored for too long, gives meaning to life. This is the maybe because we are afraid of variable that we have ignored for too love because it is the only energy long, maybe because we are afraid of in the universe that man has not love because it is the only energy in learned to drive at will.”

the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.”

It also brings in the most famous scientific formula to connect it with love. “To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation. If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.” The warning is typically Einsteinian: “If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.” It adds: “Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet” (Einstein n.d.).

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There is also an assurance: “However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released.” It elaborates: “When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything because love is the quintessence of life.” The letter ends on a personal note: “I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologise, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer!” Though not belonging to Einstein, the message is a powerful plea for love. The ascription to the wrong author should not deter us from its powerful message. Love is the most powerful force on earth! Even more than gravity!

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Approaching Suffering Together

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here there are firm roots and openness to love, suffering becomes bearable. Through suffering our life and being develops. This is a paradoxical lesson we learn from life.

In a deeply moving TED talk, Lucy Kalanithi, wife of Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon at Stanford University, USA, who turned to writing after his terminal cancer diagnosis stated, “Engaging in the full range of experience – living and dying, love and loss – is what we get to do.” He continued, “Being human doesn’t happen despite suffering – it happens within it” (Kalanithi 2018). She recalls that she fell in love with Paul as she watched the care he took with his patients. He stayed late talking with them, seeking to understand the experience of illness and not just its technicalities. He later told Lucy he fell in love with her  when “he saw me cry over an EKG of a heart that had ceased beating.” Even in their days of young love, “we were learning how to approach suffering together” (Kalanithi 2018). They got married and became doctors.  Soon after, they had to live together with Paul’s cancer for 22 months.   “We learned directly how to struggle through really tough medical decisions.” The day she

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took Paul into the hospital for the last time was the most difficult day for her. In the hospital, the most important thing to Paul was to hold their baby daughter.  Like most physicians, she thought of herself as a caregiver and taking care of her husband deepened that experience. “Watching him reshape his identity during his illness,  learning to witness “Being human doesn’t happen despite and accept his pain,  talking suffering – it happens within it.”When together through his choices we suffer together with the loved ones, – those experiences taught when we lose our loved ones, we reach me  that resilience does not the depth of our being human. mean bouncing back to where you were before, or pretending that the hard stuff isn’t hard. It is so hard. It’s painful, messy stuff. But it’s the stuff. And I learned that when we approach it together, we get to decide what success looks like” (Kalanithi 2018). One of the first things Paul said to me after his diagnosis was, “I want you to get remarried.”  It was so shocking, heart-breaking and comforting because it was so starkly honest. “That honesty turned out to be exactly what we needed.”  As physicians,  the couple understood and even accepted his diagnosis. “We weren’t angry about it, luckily, because we’d seen so many patients in devastating situations, and we knew that death is a part of life. But it’s one thing to know that; it was a very different experience to actually live with the sadness and uncertainty of a serious illness.” Paul wrote about his transition from doctor to patient. He talked about being at crossroads. Rather than a path,  Paul wrote, “I saw instead only a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert. … I had to face my mortality and try to understand what made my life worth living.”

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Paul died at the age of 37 in 2015. Just a two-sentence poem by W.S. Merwin captures how Lucy felt about Paul. “Your absence has gone through me/ like thread through a needle.  Everything I do is stitched with its colour.”  That poem evokes her “love for Paul,  and a new fortitude that came from loving and losing him.” In the process they “learned to accept both joy and sadness at the same time;  to uncover beauty and purpose  both despite and because we are all born  and we all die.  And for all the sadness and sleepless nights, it turns out there is joy” (Kalanithi 2018).  They learned that cancer isn’t always a battle. “Our job isn’t to fight fate but to help each other through. Not as soldiers but as shepherds. That’s how we make it OK, even when it’s not. By saying it out loud, by helping each other through.” When we suffer together with the loved ones, when we lose our loved ones, we reach the depth of our being human.

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Criticism and Cynicism

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ogether with suffering, another lesson we learn is the role of criticism. It is the law of life that we shall always be criticised, for good as well as bad deeds. How do we deal with it healthily? How do we find a balance between criticism and cynicism? When does critical thinking, that centrepiece of reason so vital to human progress and intellectual life, stops mobilizing our constructive impulses and topples over into the destructiveness of impotent complaint and embittered resignation, begetting cynicism?

Maria Popova, Founder of BrainPickings, urges us to maintain the “fine but firm line between critical thinking and cynical complaint” (Popova 2016). To cross it is to exile ourselves from the land of active reason and enter a limbo of resigned inaction. But cross it we do, perhaps nowhere more readily than in our capacity for merciless self-criticism. We tend to go far beyond the self-corrective lucidity necessary for improving our shortcomings, instead of berating and belittling ourselves for our foibles with a special kind of masochism. The English psychoanalytical writer  Adam Phillips  explores in his magnificent essay “Against Self-Criticism”, found in his insightful collection Unforbidden Pleasures (Phillips 2017). 

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Phillips writes on the diversity of our psychic experiences as the importance of “fertile solitude,” the value of missing out, and the rewards of being out of balance  – examines how “our virulent, predatory selfcriticism [has] become one of our greatest pleasures,” reaching across the space-time of culture.” He elaborates: “In broaching the possibility of being, in some way, against self-criticism, we have to imagine a world in which celebration is less suspect than criticism; in which the alternatives of celebration and criticism are seen as a determined narrowing of the repertoire; and in which we praise whatever we can” (Popova 2016). Our masochistic impulse for self-criticism, he argues, arises from the fact that ambivalence is the basic condition of human lives. The paradox of life is that frustration is necessary for satisfaction. Phillips elaborates on Freud’s ideological legacy: “In Freud’s vision of things we are, above all, ambivalent “Our virulent, predatory selfanimals: wherever we hate, we criticism [has] become one of love; wherever we love, we hate. If someone can satisfy us, they can our greatest pleasures,” reaching also frustrate us; and if someone can across the space-time of culture.” frustrate us, we always believe that they can satisfy us. We criticise when we are frustrated – or when we are trying to describe our frustration, however obliquely – and praise when we are more satisfied, and vice versa. Ambivalence does not, in the Freudian story, mean mixed feelings, it means opposing feelings” (Popova 2016). In our familiar and simplistic terms, love and hatred are the elemental feelings with which we apprehend the world; and they are interdependent in the sense that you can’t have one without the other, and that they mutually inform each other. The way we hate people depends on the way we love them, and vice versa. This leads to the ambiguous situation: “Where there is devotion there is always protest… where there is trust there is suspicion.”

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This presupposes that criticism is a necessary dimension of our lives. Thus, we need to criticise ourselves and others, keeping in mind the self-love that is always involved in this criticism leading to self-criticism. Phillips adds: “Self-criticism, and the self as critical, are essential to our sense, our picture, of our so-called selves.” Further: “Self-criticism is nothing if it is not the defining, and usually the over-defining, of the limits of being. But, ironically, if that’s the right word, the limits of being are announced and enforced before the so-called being has had much of a chance to speak for itself ” (Popova 2016). Franz Kafka, the great patron-martyr of self-criticism, captured this pathology of merciless self-criticism perfectly: “There’s only one thing certain. That is one’s own inadequacy.” So, the challenges before us are: Can we criticise ourselves and become aware of our inadequacy? Can we go further and employ creative self-criticism so that we do not become completely cynical and self-defeating? Can we employ realistic and creative criticism, leading to mercy, compassion and trust!

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f we have learned the lessons from life, are open to truth, love, suffering and criticism, that we can always begin new. We can refresh ourselves and make of our lives an ever new offering to the one who is our beginning and end, our everything.

“Ring out the old, ring in the new,/ Ring, happy bells, across the snow:/ The year is going, let him go;/ Ring out the false, ring in the true,” wrote the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. For thousands of years, “The object of a new year is not humans have marked the beginning that we should have a new year, of a new year with sacred festivals. but rather that we should have January is named after the Roman a new soul.” god, Janus, whose two faces looked to both the past and the future. Janus god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. As we enter the new year and new month, we can welcome the newness gently and warmly. Carol Kuruvilla, Associate Editor of HuffPost Religion, gives some tips to make the New Year more meaningful (Kuruvilla 2015). She

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recommends that we choose a word of the year. The word or motto, like a chapter heading for the book, can give a new direction to your life. It can set the tone for each day and guide our action. Next, she suggests that we resolve to be grateful, not just for the old year, for everything that happens in our lives. It is worth spending some time focusing on gratitude. There are many acts of kindness, which we experience but not fully integrate into our own lives. Slowly we need to realise that besides the very gifts we have received, our life is the greatest gift for which we can be grateful always. It is recommended that we write a journal, where we can remember people, events and experiences which have been sources of blessings for us. She also suggests that we can pen a letter to ourselves. Writing a letter allows us to be focused and to reflect more on our present lives. I would suggest that at least three letters. One to the person I was ten years ago, another to the person I shall be after ten years. The third letter could be written to the present me, by the person I would be at the moment my life comes to an end. In the letters we can reflect on three things that work best for me and resolve to carry on. The letters also can reflect three things that did not work well for me, which I can improve (Kuruvilla 2015). We can also resolve to carry out one small act of kindness. Preferably it can be done anonymously. If we can cultivate the habit of at least doing consciously one act of kindness, that will surely boomerang on me and make my own life more worthwhile. These tips and resolutions is, in fact, to change ourselves and not the world. As the British writer, Gilbert K. Chesterton, reminds us “the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.” The celebrations associated with the New Year are to be welcomed. But woe to ourselves if we restrict ourselves to the external celebrations only. The external celebrations should lead us to a deeper change within our own being. A change in our vision, values, commitment and concerns. Such a change can make our lives

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more life-affirming, peace-promoting and other-centred (Kuruvilla 2015). Such a lifestyle makes our life genuinely joyous and authentic. Then we can resonate with the insight of American romantic poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” By being grateful for everything and by being open to everyone in this new year, we can make every day the best day for ourselves and, still better, for others. Then we can perceive newness in the new, in the old and at every moment. For newness drives us on to the noblest! Can every morning usher in a new life?

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hrough these brief columns (some of which appeared in The Financial Chronicle), I wanted to convey mainly three experiences concerning the depth and beauty of our lives: 1. Finding God in Our Daily Lives: Our spiritual life and aspirations are not separate from things that happen to us every day. This implies that if we observe carefully and compassionately at our everyday happenings then the Divine emerges. So God or the divine is not to be sought in some esoteric experiences but in the normal events of our life. Thus, God is to be found in our life, including in the shadow dimensions of our life. 2. Deepening of Spirituality is for All: It is the experience of God that matters primarily in our spiritual growth. Unfortunately, it is generally assumed that God experience is limited to a few mystics, who have the luxury for sustained and disciplined exercise. While not refuting the merits of such continuous activities in experiencing the Divine, I firmly hold that God experience can be found both in the typical sunset as well as in the ordinary flower that struggles to blossom. Such experiences, sometimes even trivial ones, in fact, point to the “deeper” or tender aspects of human experience that enriches our lives and makes us more compassionate and loving. Precisely through these experiences, we

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get in touch with our depth and this is necessary part of our spiritual evolution and growth. 3. Matter and Spirit are Mutually Enhancing: The ordinary material or the secular world have much to offer to our spiritual world. If spirituality has to be lived in this world and God is to be found in the ordinary experiences of life, then contemporary science has a lot to offer to our own self-understanding and spiritual growth. Without daring to absolutise science or empirical world – or for that matter religion or transcendental world– we need to maintain a sensitive balance of openness and critique towards the world of science and spirituality. Such sensitive criticism and balance are necessary for the survival of humanity. In this book, we first dwelt on our spiritual journey as an adventure. Then we spoke of our deepest yearning for the divine. This takes us to the different and incomplete ways of experiencing the Divine or at least having glimpses of him. Such an experience, we have shown, necessarily leads to concern for fellow human beings. Then we talked about social values and virtues, which helps us to live joyfully and creatively. Then we dwelt on the evil and sin in our lives. This leads us to understand our own inevitable psychological death of our own precious selves. Finally, we explored the creative and paradoxical lessons we draw from life, especially that of love being the ultimate goal of our lives. The lesson we learn by living enrich us so that we can truly live lives that are joyful, authentic, hopeful and compassionate! Through these articles, I have been trying to communicate such spiritual experiences that enable us to reach out to the others, to perceive the depth in ourselves and thus to embrace the whole reality – including the Divine. My growth and evolution lie both in the success and the failure of this attempt. We may be sources of light to all around us. To life itself!

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