***Perceiving Emotions***

Please read slowly.

Recently, i had an intense conversation with my mother. It all started with a TV Ad.

We both were watching TV and there was a fairness cream ad. The company publicized that people who use the cream will get fair in 10 min and visible difference could be seen in 2 weeks if used regularly.

I asked a question to my mom "how white is white? and how dark is dark?". I ask the same to you readers as well. How do you quantify fairness or darkness.

Take for e.g. percentile. a person who got the max mark is considered 100 and all other marks are calculated relative to it. so if u say you are darker, you are darker with reference to someone. so if the entire world should be evaluated on a fairness scale, there should be a person who is the fairest and darkest of all and everyone should have a percentage of fairness/darkness based on it.

If the above concept is true, though i use a lot of costly cream i still will be dark when standing besides an average European. Also now two new questions arise.

1. If i use the cream constantly will i end up being equal in color to Europeans.
2. If Europeans use the same cream will they become even more fair.

One thing all who read will appreciate is, all our perceptions are always relative or in other words with reference to something. Take a simple case.

One speaker said "Finish your job before you sleep". How will the following people in the audience perceive it?

a. Student
b. Businessman
c. Prostitute
d. Teenager.

Though everyone listed above are humans, they perceive a given sentence in their own sense. This subjective listening and perception is borne out of the experiences they have gained through their life in their selected fields as businessman or student at large. Cant we listen without our experiences in mind to perceive.

In biological terms perception is a material with which we coat our external signals that are sent to brain via sense organs. Take an example.

I used to travel via Anna university to my office. Now think that i am travelling on that way for the first time and i see the building. These are the steps that follow if i travel daily through it.

1. I see a building named Anna university.
2. It comes on the left of road when travelling to guindy.
3. It is a topmost univ for engineering and entering it is competitive.
4. My friend's cousin studied here and said it has a big auditorium.

and so on and so forth. As you may see from above, everything except point 1 is your experience specific information building on a primary information (which is point 1). If i come from a different location i would see the building on right side and not on left as in point 2.

Another point to note is, if you go through the same building again and again over the year, your brain would have gathered enough experience specific information regarding it and would be stagnated.

i.e., if i go through the same building everyday, after a week my brain would perceive only the building and its name  (point 1 above) at first glance. rest all points above will be recollected only if i think of point 1 over and over again inside. Your thought perception stagnates.

we can easily come to conclusion that perception is experience specific and stagnates over time.

This understanding is very important for handling emotions in life. Why ?

All our emotions are born out of perceptions and the same are modified by our personal experiences. We should train ourselves to perceive things as they are in life without our personal experiences coming into play. This results in channelizing our emotions, which in essence decides what we are as a person.

This also is equally important for relationship building and to avoid conflicts and quarrel.

How?

1. You won't fight with your near and dear,  as you know that their life experiences are different. You will start appreciating differences.

2. You will not be bored with relationships as you know that perceptions gets stagnated and that you should and will start having deep conversations for maintaining relation which helps you understand them better.

3. Lastly, you won't complain as you are not under the compulsion of a relationship but under compassion of it.

Learn to handle perception, emotions will handle themselves.

With love from Chennai..

( PS: Now don't perceive the above line in your own terms, its just my signature).

Concept Of Time

I guess everyone should have watched Nat Geo. one among the many amazing channel TV relays. When i was in 11th grade, there was a show called "Time". The show essentially involved discussions from world renowned experts on the concept of time and how time evolved.

Till date many of the particle physicists like Dr. Michio kaku and Astrophysicist like Dr. Hawking repeat these lines when it comes to time "It all started with Big Bang". How many of you would agree that time originated at the moment of Big Bang. If that is so is Big Bang really the beginning of universe and hence time. What if there are parallel universes. Are there human races far advanced in time than us in other universes?

These are few of the many questions that the show discussed upon. Somehow i was not convinced with their explanation. I hoped that there should be something which is more reliable and old and which is accepted widely.

I was recently chatting with my cousin who just graduated as a doctor and he was very much against homeopathy. I asked him why? He said practitioners of homeopathy always rely more on aesthetic sensibilities than medicine and cure. Which means they try to make their patients believe that they are feeling well, rather than giving them medicines and make them feel well in real sense.

I did not care much about his statement but struck me a thought about my beliefs. Immediately i recollected that we all believe Time came into existence and started with Big Bang. We were made to believe that this is true just because experts and channels say this repeatedly. I retorted "Why cannot there be an alternative explanation?" well i referred web, astoundingly not many alternative explanations from scientists, but many from philosophers.

Without any further way i just referred books in Philosophy and all were diverse with explanations on origin of universe. I read a book called "Sribhashyam" which explained the origin of universe and the position of earth and how was it created. I cannot give a scientific explanation to all the ideas in the book; i should say some were beyond the reach of science. Nonetheless like playboy, party whirl in Deccan chronicle or chennai times (metroplus) it was fun reading it and i also loved to believe the universe to be in that way.

The first part of the book explains the concept of time, which essentially bowled me down. It goes like this

"Time is an eternal curtain using which god has subdued our minds" i was taken aback and realized how truthful the statement is? Just think of it... we do not do a job just because we do not have time mostly or that the day is ending (night or day which in essence is time). Think that a day has 48 hrs. can we all work for 40 hrs. and then sleep for 8hrs? The point is we are tuned to the concept of time as 24 hrs. per day that all our activities invariably depend on it.

What if i say you are now in a world where 6 months is 1 day and the rest 6 months is one night. essentially now 24 hrs is equal to 1 year and we have more time, will we be able to achieve a lot?

We all read from our own religion that god holds the elixir of life and those gods live forever and they never age. This book says gods do have age like all of us. Can u believe this? As this book is in line with the Hindu philosophy it elaborates that age of people living in various lokas (i.e. planets).

Pitru Loka (where our ancestors live) - 6 months in earth is 1 day there and other 6 months is 1 night. So 1 year for us is 1 day for our ancestors.

From this point the math becomes big and is based on scale called yugas. Like how we have eras in geography (Cambrian, Precambrian, Mesozoic, Palaeozoic etc...) we have yugas in Hindu philosophy. They are four in ascending order.

1. Kali Yuga (we now live in this, which is 4,32,000 years in time).
2. Dwapara Yuga (krsna lived in this yuga, which is 4,32,000 x 2 years i.e. 8,64,000 years).
3. Tretha Yuga (Rama lived in this, which is 8,64,000 x 2 years).
4. Kritha Yuga (which is 8,64,000 x 4 years)

Now adding all this the total years is 43,20,000 years (43 lakh 20 thousand years) this is called one maha Yuga i.e. the additive of all four yugas. here comes the result. As you may know Hinduism has 3 major gods - Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.

Shiva and all other gods are classified under devas. For devas One maha yuga is 1 day and 365 maha yuga (i.e., 43,20,000 x 365 years) is i year for them. Based on this time scale they live for 100 years.

Now it gets even bigger for Brahma. For him 1000 maha yugas is one day and other 1000 maha yugas is one night. therefore 2000 maha yugas (i.e. 43,20,000 x 2000, is one day). Like this he has 365 days a year and lives for 100 years.

PS: The book says the current brahma is 51 yrs. old and is living the first day of his 51st year!!!!
and Vishnu's age is not discussed

Pheww. The point is we need not get astounded by their time and age. All we will take is, think that you have time equal to brahma which is essentially very huge. Spend more time with family, friends and loved ones. The moment you remove the curtain that 24 hrs is one day, everything seems possible and you will have time for everything and everyone.

Human race stands apart not because we have sixth sense but we have sensibility...

If you are reading this line, you probably have spent a huge amount of TIME in my blog. click next to read other blogs...

With love from Chennai....