Train of thoughts.. Thoughts have layers. You do not believe me? They do. At least from now on they will have. Because once you learn something you cannot unlearn it until it happens naturally. Just like layers of a drawing program we can use the analogy to understand thoughts. Train of thoughts - Trans American Type Where do you think the phrase "Train of thoughts" come from? We kind of knew it from early days. Imagine the engine of a long, long trans American cargo train, is like the initial thought. And followed by this there will be a lot of follow up thoughts. And just like a train, once started to move thoughts will carry on like a train without brakes! Exactly like in the film Unstoppable! It might crash on the platform either killing half a dozen people or breaking into tears. But now we have established thoughts have layers, we can see this phenomenon carefully to improve our understanding of them. Why? Because we are naturally inclined for truth. Most of our minds are just work like that. They are in search of some truth, in a sea of lies. Summary so far. Thoughts are like a train. First thought is like an engine. Next thoughts are like carts And more the momentum engine gives longer the train of thoughts would stretch It's difficult to stop once they start to get going Deeper understandings on train of thoughts. Imagine you took a walk in the park. There is a little pond in the middle of it surrounded by green bushes. In the pond you saw some ducks. Some were black. Some were white some were small. Some were big. It was a sanctuary for the ducks. Unlike the last summer where you went with your office colleagues for duck hunting with a group of hunting dogs in high mountains. These were not afraid of humans. Yesterday you were singing the duck song with kids in the back of your car driving from the school. How does that stupid little cartoon get a million views? And you notice the bush where two ducks just went in and maybe they are mating. Is it the mating season? Now lets analyze.. the Train of thoughts Duck in the pond -real or Imaginary? Seeing some ducks in the lake was the engine. Thinking about duck hunting, duck songs and duck mating were the carts. And if you look carefully, you would appreciate the experience only belong to the so called "Now" moment in mindfulness. Rest of the things we imagine is either past or the future. More importantly our values are associated with these follow up thoughts. Just like valuable cargo is carried in carts of a train. Values can be either positive or negative even neutral. If you do not have these follow up thoughts, you would not be able to enjoy ducks. Or be sad about them even. But the engine of the train, or our observation is inherently valueless. It is the past or the future, which is not there, creates a value for the present experience. That is simple and easy to understand 😌 explanation of train of thoughts. Sea of lies. Watching over the Mountains in Mindfulness But there is more depth to this. Some do tend to understand this truth and lose all values and try to live with the experience. As they find peace there, in the present moment. Without judgement. Yet the truth is even the duck that we first saw is there due to the previous ducks that we have seen in life. If we have never seen a duck before, and came from a different planet we would not see a duck. Just something which moves and quacks. If we forget all our past, we would not even be able to walk, in the park, just waddle like a newborn duck. So, living in mindfulness in the present moment isn't possible technically as we need past to interpret the present moment. It's just logic, but still we do live in a relative true reality made by our own minds.

Humble beginings of Money I am going to write a little story about money. As I have mentioned earlier, finance is the main driving force of modern world, for anything massive. Maybe it is the war, maybe it is the religion, maybe it is skyscrapers or environmental protection mega projects, even the trajectory of our space race is even determined by the modern finance. And fundamental to the process is money? I know you are interested in Crypto, yet we can assume this also has the properties of a printed, traditional bank note. Let's go back to the humble beginnings of money. Fish Market. A bucket for a fish - exchange of goods Well, we do not have to time travel. You just have to watch a film on Netflix, on medieval times. Maybe one episode of Robbin Hood series, where there is a market. And in these markets, the exchange of goods was the norm. You exchange whatever your excess production, with someone else. You give your fish in exchange for a bucket. And fish and bucket, both served the purpose of money. As you can understand there were no, rules. So people needed standardization. It makes no sense, when you can exchange fish with a bucket and you can exchange same bucket with two fish with the next vendor. There is no specific "Value" for a fish. Which is the fundamental problem solved by "money". Story of Tobacco and inflation In some colonies of ancient USA, people solved the problem, by using Tobacco leaves as money. So instead exchanging your fish for a bucket. You can standardize your price of a fish with two tobacco leaves, and price of a bucket as three tobacco leaves. Then from any vendor, will have the same price, and you are guaranteed not to be scammed. However, there were more problems to come. As some landowners, started to grow some Poor-quality tobacco in large quantities, and this leads to the "Inflation". As you would need ten tobacco leaves to buy a fish now. The problem was sloved by authorities. They banned growing large quantities of tobacco. And gave license. Inflation Gecko What is money? Storekeepers would store your pile of tobacco and give you a note. Where the amount of your tobacco and the quality is printed. You can now walk to the market and buy some fish in exchange for this note. And these became form of "Bank notes" or money. Later tobacco was replaced by gold, and the security notes, became printed money. I am sure, there is more to the story. By the way I am not a historian. I just wanted to understand money, just for philosophical reasons. Let's look at the money to understand its value. As an introduction we can assume, money has value as long as it has the ability to buy something. Let's take a different angle to understand money. What is worth? Apples or dollars? If you give a 100 dollar note to a toddler and an apple. What would he choose? Let's assume you present this to a freshly captured tribal man from the heart of Amazon jungle. I am sure this hungry toddler, or the tribal man would choose the apple. Not the dollar bill. As he doesn't know that the dollar bill, can be used to buy dozens of apples. For someone who doesn't have some knowledge, and social agreement that we have on money, or the trust, money has no value. Infact, even you would choose an apple over a dollar bill if you were stranded in a middle of a desert for days in thirst and hunger. Money has no inherent value. You simply cannot eat a dollar bill. Inflation in modern world. The natural way of this happening is the inflation. If there is less production of items, and abundance of money, either way this artificial value of money will start to decrease, and we would need a half a barrel of notes to buy a half a loaf of bread. This almost happened to us in massive scale when there was covid, as all the production lines were stopped, people had less value for money and prices suddenly sky rocketed. Fortunately, it stopped before people start to kill each other for a bag of rice. And exactly what happened in the island nation of Haiti, after it was hit by a hurricane Mathew in 2016. With already plummeted economy, I saw group of people gather to grab a bag of rice with a club in the other hand to kill each other if wanted. Apple on a dollar Where do our values come from? Now to the most interesting part of our argument. I have showed you money is just a number in your bank, or more precisely in your memory. It is just a social convention, which can be broken in extreme situations. We can apply this knowledge to anything. Value of a diamond is a social rule. Value of a Ship is a social convention -> as it can be converted to dollars in your bank. Value of a Swiss watch for that matter any branded or non branded item is a social convention. What I want you to do is to apply this principle even to other things you value. An experience, a relationship, a family.Point out exactly to where is the value? I have previsouly done a case study of a Pot , and a Shmidth Tunnel. If you are finding it hard to imagine I suggest you imagine an extreme situation. Imagine you are on a ship in a boat, which is sinking, like a titanic, with all the family members of your extended family. And there is one who will come out alive. And you are given the task to choose by God, and you are included in the cohort. Who would you choose to live? It is natural you would choose, the most "Valuable person" from the lot. Maybe it is your parents, or you, or your children. And see the value of others "disappear". And your friend would choose otherwise. And make an eternal argument with you as, nobody knows true value as it is just relative.

The first and Greatest victory is to conquer yourself. - Plato. No doubt about Plato is one of the greatest philosophers of his era. Followed by a long line of his disciples, philosophy is a massive tree which flourishes generations. I am here to drink a drop of wisdom which it provides, and to understand the meaning of life. Let's look at the above quote with mindfulness wisdom we have to understand it better. Why? Because we should not believe anything anyone say without thinking for ourselves , and that goes to Plato as well. I am sure you are in fear to think, So, I will help you with imagination. You cannot step into the same river twice. How to conquer something? Let's look at conquering, for that matter countries. Latest, example is provided by Putin. He would tell that is not easy to conquer countries and he learned it the hard way. My personal opinion on that matter is the war is absurdism and stupidity at its bet. But that is for the discussion on another day. As Putin is not good at conquering countries we will ask from Napolean Bonaparte. He will tell us if we need to conquer a country, or for that matter enemy, you have to know as much details as possible about them. You have to know their move, their tactics, their weaponry and their plans. Allow them to make mistakes and strike them when they are weak. Even in modern warfare, information plays a huge role. Unless it is a nuclear war . So, the bottom line is we have to know our enemy if we want to conquer them. Why should you conquer yourself? This raises two more questions for me. First one is why should we consider ourselves as enemy? Answering this will also provide us information on why Socrates wanted us to conquer ourselves. I am sure we all have some Idea on this. Our minds do not behave the way we want it to be. Sometimes, it is like dealing with a monkey. Monkey mind. It jumps when we want it to sit, and it laugh when we want it to cry. There is no limit to the stupidity it does when we closely follow up its actions throughout the day. This is why we are ended up in places where we are now. It has been like this in the past, and in the future, I see no better, unless I follow wisdom of Plato. Maybe when Plato uttered these words, he may have just realized his mind is no other than a monkey mind. If this is true for me and Socrates, I can assume this is the case with every mind, hence yours as well. Fortress How can you conquer yourself? The second question this arises is, how can I conquer myself? And there is the problem. With the wisdom of Napolean, we can understand first we have to know the enemy. In this case it is me, and for you its yourself. If we do not know who we are there is no point trying to conquer anything as we will be battling in the dark waving our swords while the monkey mind plays havoc with its night vision goggles and cut everywhere killing everyone. As we can see, to do what Plato said we first need to understand ourselves. I can refine the quote now to a better version. First and Greatest victory is to understand yourself - magical mindful living Second and next greatest victory is to conquer yourself. - Plato. Now, for countless people who have been searching for the former, they have found nothing. I cannot tell you how and why, because this experiment of finding yourself is totally subjective . But first we have to point out exactly where the monkey hides before striking. I can tell you being aware of yourself, or as we call it mindfulness is the tool which is used to understand yourself. And more and more you are searching more and more wisdom you will gain. Like the brave lion who turn back , or the one who wanted to wake up like Carl Jung suggested, you will dig deep into yourself until you find something. And if you do not find anything I would not be surprised either, as that will nullify the second victory of Plato and leave the first as the first and only victory that is there to have.

Achillis and Trojan War. The great warrior Achillis the son of Nereid Thetis and Peleus, is one of the greatest warlords of the Greek mythology. He fought fiercely in the Trojan war and slayed the opponent prince Hector outside the gates of the Troy. He himself was succumbed to the death at the end of the war, with a deadly arrow to his heel, ending the legend of Achillis. If you haven't watched the movie Troy, I suggest you have a look, where Achillis is pictured perfectly with bravery by Brad Pitt. There, in the movie Achillis reveals his reasons for fighting. He did not fight for his king He did not fight for his country He did not fight for his friends or family He did not fight for the feeling of victory He fought for a legend. why? https://unsplash.com/@frausnippe Why did Achillis choose legend as a reason for his fighting? Because he knew that, kings, would not last long, Neither boundaries, nor countries, not even family and friends, not even victory. But legend will last longer, maybe centuries, and in his case, it lasted thousand and more years! He was right! And who made is possible for Legend of Achillis last for thousand years? Not by himself of course, but by story tellers. Story tellers took the task into their hands and kept the legend alive until it was written in books. Painted on walls and sung in songs. Now we hear the Achillis and continue to watch him alive in movies. Why do we write? There lays one important reason for writing. I can give you benefits of writing, a full list. Like all other articles do. But I believe one good reason is enough for you to start writing. Look at all the thoughts you had today. They will fade away with time, completely forgotten and buried by Duenes of dust of time. Once forgotten they will dissolve and never be found again. There may be treasures that humans can thrive, unless of course. Unless of course you write them down, sing a song or paint it on a wall, nobody would ever see. Not even you will know. That I think, is the most important reason for you to write about it. Make it written in rock solid words, that vague idea, in a blog, in a journal or in a novel, crafted in perfection. Write a mini essay like I call it. Sing a song about it like Anna Kendrick did. It doesn't matter you are a cook in a forgotten busy kitchen, facing the dumpsters in the alley in a crowded city. Your perspective is unique. I've got my ticket for the long way 'round Two bottle whiskey for the way And I sure would like some sweet company And I'm leaving tomorrow. What'd you say? When I'm gone, when I'm gone You're gonna miss me when I'm gone You're gonna miss me by my hair You're gonna miss me everywhere, oh You're gonna miss me when I'm gone -Anna Kendrick Cups song Truth is you would not be missed, unless you write a song about it. People are busy, they rarely find time to concentrate on others. Unless your words are copied in thousands nobody will look at it. But it will matter to you. It will be your legend. You can come back and see how it evolved. How you battelled in your Trojan wars in the past and Won! https://unsplash.com/@shane_young Do not be a crow. Make it easy others to discover. As your mind is the most difficult place to hide something. Have you seen crows or squirrels. I have seen, when they find some tasty food, they go and hide it in some place. Often in pockets of banana leaves, and they forget. They never comeback, and it becomes rotten in a few days. What a waste! So, I suggest you learn the lesson. Forget you have been a crow or a squirrel and make it last a little longer than the few months from your funeral.

Texas Tower mass Murder I'm sure of it, the Texas tower- in university of Texas Austin is associated with many and more triumphs than tragedies. But as majority of all of us are negatively biased most of the world will recognize Texas tower as the place where a mass shooting happened. In this article I am not going to describe brutal killings of a crazy man but how life can change in a matter of few seconds at any time during any day of our lives. To understand better, I recommend you watch animation movie Documentary Tower 2016 . Image taken of the Main Building of UT, as pictured by R. Perryman at 12:53 on August 1, 1966, some 31 minutes before the end of the massacre. - image wiki public It starts with describing lives of few ordinary college students and some men and women who lived nearby. And even an ordinary day of a cop, who finally put an end to the massacre of killing 15 men and women even unborn child on August 1st, 1966. I wondered what could have happened if I walked in the garden that day. With ambitions in my head to become a future artist, trying to be graduated with colors. Trying to be a writer with Shakespear in my hand I would be walking like any other ordinary student that day. And out of nowhere I would feel some pain in my stomach and collapse to the ground like a log with blood. It could have been the end of everything which I call life for myself. Or it could have been worse that I survived with severe injuries and disabled for life. I'm glad that I wasn't there that day. It was even few decades before that incident even happen. Now when I think about it, who walked on the same premises 70 years ago as students, most of them are no longer living. Time is the greatest silent killer. And for this demon which is called time would shoot every one of us eventually one day. So, death is part of life. It can come when we are young rarely, and old, commonly yet inevitably. It's not just in autumn leaves fall. At the times of storms even green leaves does fall . Thinking about life and death Taking Off If time is the greatest killer, how can we avoid him? Where can we hide? Where can we run to? I am sure it will find us if we hide even 100 feet underground bunker. It will happen to dictators, billionaires and Beggers. Temporarily we can forget this fact and get on with life. But when I see the news on TV yet again a Jeju Air, plane crashing onto a concrete wall and turn into a fireball with 180 people in it in Korea, I have to imagine. What am I doing today to understand life. What are you doing today? To understand life? I refuse to accept any temporary solution given by the mind. Like Descartes does, I invite you to question everything. Even the question itself . Ps: As the time of this writing, I noted another mass murder has happened in New Orleans US. Timing of this article is not good I think, yet as always for mindfulness, it is the golden hour for everyone who is living. Not forgetting to pray for the ones who are diseased. The real problem is we see only part of the deaths which happens around us. Which comes to our consciousness by news. Yet if we look at the real numbers time takes out thousands of consciousness daily from a pool of billions (170463 is the exact number per day or 2 per second). It was apparent during covid . Even today. Why anyone is not worried about natural death, more than unnatural death? It makes no sense. This is not to make anyone anxious and Panic so you would even not board an airplane. It is just the opposite. To make everyone a seeker so we seek truths about life, and question until we find out it is nothing but truth. It is to invite everyone to conquer yoursel f like Socrates urged us to do some 2000 years ago. .

Where is consciousness? It was a rainy day. The consciousness was wondering in a park. Looking at everything and thinking about everything which it sees and hears. First it was the Bricks. The bricks laid on the pavement made a nice tessellation. Which reminded you of the same mathematical concept you learned about 20 years back. Which you are sure that the Brick layer had never heard of. On top of that the little bit of rain drops created wet spots making it more artistic in nature. And you just felt the breeze which made the consciousness to move forward like a drifting boat on the lagoon with the fisherman. And the far away, in the lagoon, there is the fisherman. You cannot see what he is doing other than sitting in his boat like a little statue. Which is a scene you have seen numerous times. But this one is fresh, fresh as the breeze which pushed your consciousness. And you wonder what the consciousness on the boat is thinking about now? Hmmmmm.. It's just another floating consciousness Predominently thinking about fish Maybe not fish Maybe it's just water Waves Or nothing Fisherman in the boat - This is the best my not iPhone could do Next is obviously the sky. Sky which is cloudy and full of flying consciousness. They are also thinking about fish, maybe sleep, maybe about sex. Yet you are not sure which one it is and know that this has nothing to do with the two boys. Two boys are there taking photos. At the prime of the youth, they are enthusiastic in the appearance they would make on a photo. More conscious about the appearance of the cover of their consciousness. They really do not know about the little man they carry, and no wonder they are happy. You feel a little jealous, yet you sit down with all the information to contemplate a theory on consciousness. Understanding Consciousness. First when you look at what you have observed you realize, they are outside. The other consciousness is just outside. Like the trees, like the clouds, like the birds and fisherman. Next when you look at carefully you find out that they are not outside at all. It is just ripples of your own mind about a possible outside world created with layers of information from past. About the observations you have made. It is just a story of your own mind. Cream on top by your own consciousness. Finally, you realize, it's all secular. That the Observer and Observed, were born and dead at the same time, inside a single consciousness. And it had been like that, and it will be in the future. What you see is not what it is but who you are. And with this thought, you get insight that if the observer is observed, and the observed is the observer, then there cannot be a truth about either. It is just relative to each other. And you apply this truth to everything you have thinking about consciousness so far. It doesn't make sense. And maybe it doesn't make sense is the correct answer about consciousness, which is again cannot be the truth as it is something you observed. It's about to rain PS: Observer is observed is one of the conclusions about consciousness in understanding it. That everything is just a reflection of an outer world. But mindfulness doesn't let us to stay there. Previously it created two worlds, now it creates a singular world, and both seems to be true at the same time. The inevitable conclusion is that maybe mind is just a magician. It can create both a singular and a dual world. It can create a heaven and hell and give a value to collection of atoms of carbon (called diamond more popularly) which even cannot be eaten. Ha ha ha. I am really not sure how much you understand from the above. It is just an argument which occurred in my mind. And a relative truth for myself. What about you? Have you been thinking about consciousness lately? If you are curious, yes, I saw the bricklayer, yes, I saw the birds and the boys. But they are just different from yours, a relative truth for me, just like conclusions about consciousness , which makes no sense.

Once upon a time there was a wise man who lived on a mountain. He was known to be the wisest of them all and held the truth about the meaning of life. Just like the wise monk who lived on the Himalayan mountain- he knew the telos of life . And in a faraway land there lived a Sheperd, who owned a large group of camels. He made a living out of this heard of camels by selling them to people. And he was proud of his job, and was good at it, and was well to do himself. However, he knew the life is not about making a living. So, he wanted to know the truth and took the long journey across the dessert to meet the wise old man. The journey took days. And he travelled with his herd of camels, as he would not trust anyone. After days of travel, it was dark when he arrived, and did not wait until morning to meet the old man. https://unsplash.com/@_sebastien "Oh, dear wise master, I have come a long way for your advice. I have heard you holds the truth to the meaning of life. Please, be kind, share with me." The old wise master, with a gentle smile, said to him. "Son, it is so wise that you started looking for answers, I have no doubt in your intentions. So, I will give you the truth. But it is too dark. This is not the hour for it, tomorrow, when the first sun rises, you can come and meet me here. I will show it to you- the meaning of life" Story of Camels And he continued. "I want you to do one Favour for me. I see all the camels you brought here; I see you have a hundred odd camels. Can you please make them all lie down for the night, before you sleep?" The Sheperd agreed, and the wise old man, disappeared into the cave. Sheperd was tired, he prepped his Dinner, and had a good shower, before he started to make the camels lie down. Oh boy! he tried. He tried and tried to put all the camels to sleep. Camels, they are good for nothing animals, worse than donkeys. Some did sit down when he commanded. And some did not! stubborn they were. Some did lie down even before he commands. And the ones he previously put to sleep, would rise up again. The stubborn ones would sit down, without any command. Utter chaos. And the moment he thought he is there; it started all over. And he was exhausted after few hours, and then only he asked the question, "what is the meaning of this?" And he thought "What is the meaning of life?" It is just like making the camels sleep. And he rode back next day before even the wise man woke up. -story of camels- https://unsplash.com/@shotoftheday Morals of the story. Everyone should focus on the meaning of life from time to time, before getting too much involved in the problems. And ask the question, why? (otherwise, you might try to travel to mar s, while answers are obviously not there) Like the Sheperd who tried to sleep the camels, we are trying to solve our problems, from the day we were born till we die. How much trivial they are, everyone has one. It's your herd of camels. And only the wise would understand by questioning their own actions and mind, that it is not under our control. Like waves of the sea , ripples of the water , chaos in weather , life is interconnected with reasons beyond reasons . One has to look inside with mindfulness to understand this phenomenon- Carl Jung

Story of the Top "The Sweethearts". Just the other day little girls were watching the "The top and the Doll" by Hans Christian Andersen , my favorite childhood happiness destroyer. It was a cartoon, and it was about a top which was first rejected by a Doll, because he was too shabby. At the end the Doll, ended up in the drain, as the time went by, and Top became popular and ended up not being able to help the Doll's doomed fate. I think this was a changed version from the original story The Top and the Ball or "The Sweethearts". And it seems like something really happened to someone. A top spinning on the table Wisdom Level 1. Next morning, I found a top. It was a broken wheel with an axel from a toy car. Just lying on the table, and I saw the potential in it to be used as a top. And I made it spin in front of the Little one who has never seen a top before until day before and never spun one. And she was amazed. I could see her little eyes glistening in anticipation and joy when it kept on spinning for a half a minute. Moment, it stopped she tried spinning it again and again, failing. I was also in doubt she could do that, as it wasn't a real toy top, and needed a great skill to spin it for someone who has never done it. So, I taught her how to hold the axel and do it in slow motion. And after a few tries 'Voila!' She started spinning it as good as any kid of her age. And that was the wisdom level 1. She came from wisdom 0 about tops, to wisdom level 1 in just a couple of days. First with some information from a little cartoon, and next with some practical application by herself. The important fact is this is just the level 1 about tops. In fact, I am going to show you some more levels of wisdom about tops, before we generalize "Levels of wisdom" Wisdom Level 2. Let's assume my knowledge and skill about spinning a top is at level 2. I easily possess the level 1. As far as information is concerned, I know about angular momentum which keeps the top spinning, and friction and its center of gravity. I have seen the workings of a Gyroscope, and seen how traditional dancers spin a tambourine on a tip of a lengthy pole. I know a top would spin on a hard flat surface without friction longer than on a beach. As far as the skill is concerned, I can spin a book on my finger, for that matter any large even asymmetrical item which I can balance on my finger at the point of the center of its mass! (and I have spent good couple of days of my teenage years practicing this again and again to master) I am sure 99% of the population on planet earth is knowledgeable about at least Level 2 top wisdom. And nobody would go beyond that, except that 0.1%. And I am going to get a peep into the other levels of wisdom just for the sake of this article and that is where Google AI comes handy. Another top spinning on another table Wisdom Level 3. Archeology -> A top is a very old toy, invented thousands of years before the " Rubik's Cube ", and found in many archeological sites across many cultures. Sport -> International top spinners association conducts, world spinning top contests each year, and I am sure the contestants are at a different skill level in spinning a top than any one of us. Mathematics -> Angular Momentum: L = Iω , where I  is the moment of inertia tensor and ω  is the angular velocity vector. Torque: τ = dL/dt , where τ  is the torque vector. Precession: The rate of precession, Ω , can be approximated by: Ω ≈ mgd / (Iω) , where m  is the mass of the top, g  is the acceleration due to gravity, d  is the distance from the pivot point to the center of mass, and  I  and ω  are as defined above. As you can see, Levels of wisdom about a spinning top is vast. And no human is ever able to master everything. A mathematician who is able to figure out the math, would never have the skill to win the world top spinners competition. Levels of wisdom For me as I can see this is a huge problem. There is too much information , just about a simple toy as a top. Image everything you have ever learned. You just learn a minute fraction of the total human consciousness. And if you are not mindful about the fact that there is no limit to the information you seek, you can easily get lost in this stupid streak of information and get stuck. And you will end up spinning a top all your life or struggling with an equation about solving the mystery of a spinning top. But at some point, in your life you will come across articles, quotes or thoughts about life, which will enlighten you. And I will call this a super wisdom, if it happens to you keep it in mind to remind yourself from time to time. As an example, look at the quote from Carl Jung the philosopher. "Who Looks outside Dreams, who looks inside awakens" So, the only way to achieve super wisdom is to look inside and understand the process of thinking. And then only we can understand what happens, in our own world. And fortunately, or unfortunately such information is not so popular, not so abundant and not so glamorous like being successful, or prosperity. If you seek such information I suggest starting with a simple truth . The top (Story) Ironically The top ( Der Kreisel) is a short story written by Franz Kafka between 1917 and 1923, in Germany. It is a story about a philosopher trying to understand a world through a spinning top. He tries to grab a spinning top and believes that it should keep on spinning. However, it stops each and every time. Only thing I can correlate with tis is the Spinning top scene in the movie Inception as forever spinning tops are only found in Dreams !

Dead Fox I am comfortably seated today. Yet one year ago, on the post-Christmas day, I decided to walk on the London Suburbs, as there was no public transport. I have written poems all the way home, stopping by the sights of interesting, and boring. You can read all the poems Here . However, one which I did not emphasize much on that day was the dead fox on the road. That was not the only corpse which I can remember, as I have written about the man who was hanged and the day in a Morgue before. So, it is time put one and one together to make it a Four! and let's look at living once again in the perspective of the dead. Fox on the road On corpses- The drowned Giant - Film Some of you may find disturbing when I describe corpses. However, there is an entire animation film, about a dead Giant. It is called a drowned Giant. If you have no courage to look at a corpse, that is a nice place to start. A dead fox, a dead human, or for that matter a dead ant or a spider. I am sure you have come across some form of corpse, in your life. It is just the size which makes some of them alarming. And apart from the putrefaction, I want you to imagine this and identify what are the differences you make notice of the living. What is the difference between a dead Giant and a living one? What is the difference between a dead fox and a living one? We can say, living would move, but dead would not move by themselves. Of course, dead would also change and move according to the forces of nature. However, fundamental difference of the living and dead would be ability to think, or a functioning brain, or a consciousness . The output of the functioning consciousness is actions, sounds and movements and also thoughts. Although thoughts are not visible to others, this is the fundamental output of a consciousness which only later turns into voluntary actions. Although there are other involuntary actions which are not powered by thoughts called reflections. In summary living would have a consciousness and thoughts. A dead would not have this, just a decaying body. (Read more death of a microbe -> Bucket of water Bucket of life ) If a living loses that consciousness the body that it possessed would start to decay. It will decay so fast that in a few days it will be completely different. And in a Giant, this would lead to disgusting disfigurement. And this is why we cannot stand an elephant corpse but not of an ant. Tulips How to live? The objective of this article is to show you the importance of thinking. And show you that the thinking is the one which keeps us alive. This endless process which gives you happiness and sadness, fear and joy, day in and day out, is the same process which do not let your body become a corpse in a few days. If you understand this fact, you will know what will inevitably happen if you start not to think. Imagine a person, who do not think for themselves. Just float like a leaf . That person would be a living dead. Imagine a society, who do not think for themselves. Just drift like a cloud . That society would be living dead. "You should not be afraid of someone who has a library and reads many books; you should fear someone who has only one book; and he considers it sacred, but he has never read it." – Nietzsche And sooner or later the nature will start to disintegrate such a society, and its individuals. And they will start to stink and rotten. We have seen such individuals and societies from the past. Any country which is under the clutches of a dictator is a society which is dead. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and creativity is killed. Any society where there is blind faith on a single book, or blinded by the mass media, is a dead society, unless people start to critically think about themselves and evolve like a flower, which blossomed in the mud, they are goanna live a dead life. Any individual who accepts everything written in a book, or a verse or a blog post, is a dead one. As there is no empowerment of the consciousness that matters to keep us alive, such a person can be called dead. And I would not hesitate to call such, if you take my words and accept them as true!

Plato and platypus walked into a bar.. No, that is not how this story begins. This story begins with the story of The Ant man. The marvel character who can turn into a microscopic level at will. As we do not possess such powers I will help you with imagination. Becoming an Ant-man Imagine you became small. Small enough to so that you equal the height of an ant. And while in this form if you looked at the glass of wine in front of you It will look massive. And you climbed this glass of wine like tom cruise in a mission impossible. Now you are at the brim. And you try to grab a handful of wine, and guess what. The moment you touched the surface of wine you will be dragged into it with an enormous force. And this force Is the surface tension. Negligible force when we consider our arms strength. Yet a killer force to a tiny ant like you. You will be stuck in the wine glass unless a friendly human decided to put you out of misery. Universe: https://unsplash.com/@nasa Subatomic Ant-man We can go a step further with imagination. Remember when the ant man 🐜 decided to go atomic level to save the world from a raging missile? Let's assume we have the ability to go subatomic. At this level if you jumped into the wine glass, you will just be a black hole if you preserve your human mass. But if your density also reduced, we could assume you will behave like a particle. Hence you will not see wine. You will see protons and neutrons with their clouds of orbiting electrons. And a vast emptiness of the liquid which we call wine. And only thing I can compare your state at this point of time is an astronaut who is floating freely in space. Assuming this is possible, and find some digestible subatomic particles, you could spend your entire time floating in the glass of wine. And I can assume the time also would shrink as the volume and you could breed generations until someone takes the glass of wine and drink it! At this point when we come back to reality you would say, nice story! Sci-fi right? Understanding Universe Let's take a walk in the opposite direction. I assume you have travelled on a plane. And seen the earth from 33000 feet. And last time I travelled I saw huge evergreen container ships in Arab sea. And they were not massive at all. Infact they were tiny. Somehow my perspective has got bigger, and I could not see hundred people who were walking on the deck. Neither the waves of the see. But I see majestic clouds have become smaller and the continents which were never in my perspective now visible. I am sure this is why the billionaires tend to pay a million dollars to travel to the space station. They want to look back at us on earth and laugh how tiny we are because they do not have the imagination you and I possess, but only spare dollars. So, if a view from a space station is worth million dollars what would be the worth of a view from the edge of the milky way? Trillion quintillion dollars. Let's just do that. Voyager has taken such a view, if you do not know there is a photograph of earth from outer edge of the solar system and boy! It's difficult to locate our earth as it is tiny. Now imagine you look back at the milky way from a distance of thousands of widths of it. What would you see? You would see nothing. Just tiny stars barely illuminate you. Hence you would be in a total darkness. If you have spent your entire life, there you would not know you have a color. But that is not the point. Surface Tension Poem Philosophy of space The point Is that you would be just a floating particle in the emptiness. You know what else is a floating particle in the empty space called universe? It's our entire earth! And solar system. I can only compare this into what would you see if you began to float in a glass of wine at a subatomic level. Now I will give you a real question to think about when you consume your rest of the dinner. The question goes like this, if at a fundamental level, the picture of the subatomic Antman floating in the glass of wine is comparable to us floating freely in space, how can we be sure the universe is not a f------ glass of wine? Thank you for reading, philosophy of space.

Silence Oh. I have been running away from you You have been my guidance, to eternal peace it's true When the words play the game of life, on the sandy beaches of mind She gave me the strength to fly away like a wind for a cloud in the sky Why you should visit the beach Reason 1: Because it takes courage to look at the sky. For an ordinary man, or a woman, it takes courage to look at the sky . Remember when we were kids, there was never a day that we did not spot an eagle or a cloud. Now, when we are pressed in between our work and responsibilities there is never a time to look at the sky. But the beach, at the beach you even do not have to look at the sky. The sky meets the ocean at the horizon, even if your neck is fixed with a stable gaze parallel to the ground, you would be able to see the sky and the clouds. Often, I find without an effort the eyes start to drift towards the sky looking for those lost clouds. https://unsplash.com/@pedropiteiramonteiro Reason 2: Watching the waves. It is fun to watch the waves. Do not believe me? I have written a whole article on watching the waves and learning life lessons from this . However, even without life lessons you can just watch the waves. Longer you look at them you will notice they convey the same message as drifting clouds up above . Life is a buoy on a wave. It ups and downs with happiness. Memories fade away like footsteps of strangers on the beach. If you would come back tomorrow even the sandcastles would not be there. I still do feel like a kid playing on the beach, making castles- real ones, only hoping that they would not wash away with time. Reason 3: End of the land. If you want to run away from life, you should run away either into a library or to the beach. If you run into a library, you would improve your vocabulary and come out as a poet one day. If you run away to the beach like when the forest gump did, you would learn the lesson of life. You will learn the lesson of life that there is no place to run away. Nobody lives in the sea, not for long. So, there you will have to turn back. At the beach, you can feel all your problems, all your memories are just behind, on the land. You are at the edge, at the unknown future. Spend some time there, and it will clear your head. It will make you just a little bit wiser a man when you return to your problems back again. Reason 4: Plenty of life. On a busy Sunday, there would be plenty of people, at the beach. You may not seek this company, but I am sure you will still find a peaceful corner. Even if you did not, you can just stay at a one place and watch. You will start to notice, the people, they come and go, come and go like ants. You will start to notice, the sea, remains the same, the sandy beach remains the same, and you and the sky remains the same. There you will find peace, when you are a constant, not a variable in the picture. Do you know who else will be there on the beach? Crabs. Plenty of them. So, truly speaking you can never be alone on a beach. You will have to share the beach with plenty of other life, human or not. If you are an animal lover, you may find many both in the water and on the sand. It might make you smile, a crab crawling out fast before the next waves hit, or spotting a fish in the shallow water. You do not have to do snorkeling or diving, to see life as it is. A pair of good eyes and a childish curiosity is handy. https://unsplash.com/@sotti Reason 5: Golden hour rush Sun is soft, when it just pops up from the far horizon, in the early morning hours. Just like a little child, who smiles and dance innocently, the sun would play some time until it passes into teenage times and into the youth at noon. Like the miracle of life, just to be soft again in the evening, before it hides from our sight. Again, at the end of its death, the sun would be soft, clam and be innocent like a child, forgetting all the havoc it played when it was a bright silver star in midday. Take your time to go through all of it, never in a rush to leave , otherwise you will miss it. Reason 6: natural fan - the breeze The wind at the beach is a natural fan. You can fly a kite even if it is not meant for flying. However, what I like most is how it plays on my face and the body. The wind will touch your face like it does touch on your dog, when it peeps out from the window when you drive it to the wet! Did you see the smile on the eyes of the dog? You really do not have to jump from a 1000m cliff, to feel the breeze, risking your life. At the beach, the feeling would be provided even if you are stationary with zero risk. Try it next time, and smile to yourself when it tosses your hair. Reason 7: natural mindfulness Just like the breeze, the mindfulness is natural on places like beach. Just like James Clear claims in his TEDx talks, changing your environment changes our habits. One thing I noticed when I am at the beach is there is no place in mind, for any hazy thoughts. Just like the ships clearly visible on the horizon, each thought which appears in mind beach is clearly visible when I am at the beach. It has nothing to do with my effort. Because I never try to be mindful at the beach. So, it must be natural. It must be nature doing it. So, if you are finding difficult to start on mindfulness awareness, I suggest try the beach on your next vacation. Or this afternoon if you are close by. That concludes my 7 reasons why you should visit the beach. What are yours?

How many dimensions are there? There are many dimensions. If you are into mathematics or science in general, you would know this by now. And I am sure you have seen a couple of videos to understand the fourth, fifth dimensions. Some argue time is dimension. However, I think time is just an illusion created by mind comparing two events, while actually there is none. I have discussed this phenomenon in the book What is time ? The objective of this article is to illustrate the fact that our blindness to the fourth dimension of in our lives and show that mindfulness is key solution to the problem. There are many dimensions, you can say it is infinite. If you have learned about matrices, we can represent two dimensions in two numbers, three dimensions by three numbers. Hence there is no end to it. In reality we consider ourselves 3D creatures. https://unsplash.com/@markusspiske Flatlanders. Remember the flatlanders (not the band but the book)? In the book "Flatland: Romance of many dimensions" Edwin A. Abbott invites us to imagine two-dimension world. Where there are only lines and even a 3D object passing through this flat world would be seen as a line. I find this a very good exercise for the mind to compare it with imagining a 4D world. How to imagine Fourth dimension? Imagine a square in a flat land. And reduce yourself to a 2d object and look at the square. What you would see is a line. Although you glide all around the square you would not find a way to get into the square. Just like a fortress. If you are inside similarly you cannot go out without breaking it. Now come back to your 3D world and look at a 3D cube. You do not see inside of it right? And if you travel all around this, still you cannot go in, and if you are inside of it, you cannot go out without breaking its walls. The problem is you are in a 3D world. You cannot see inside of it. But imagine you live in a 4D world. Someone in 4D world can see inside of it. Just like we can play magic on flatlanders by taking out something from inside the square without breaking its walls, a 4D man can take something out from inside a cube and keep it outside without breaking its walls. It doesn't stop there. Imagine crazy things that would happen. You would not be able to hide from this 4D man, as he would see everything from inside out in this 3D world. he would see your organs grow inside and how food moves through your Gut. How a cancer develops inside your body. He would be a walking CT scanner. More importantly he could disappear from our 3D world into the fourth dimension and appear again when he wants. It seems very interesting to trying to understand the fourth dimension. However philosophically I use this analogy to what happens when you start mindfulness. This is the simple truth that David Foster Wallace invited us to think about saying " This is water " in his book. https://unsplash.com/@sergei_gussev Consider the following saying. "You go to work, wearing your new cloths, in your car driving through the traffic, leaving your home, just to earn enough money to settle the debts, that you made, by purchasing all this to live a relaxed life at your home." I can't remember who the great thinker was who thought of above, but it is the truth for most of us. What is the alternative? Travelling the world without any money? The problem is if everyone decided not to work, such a system would collapse in few months or years. It seems there is no alternative. We are kind of stuck in a loop of some kind of an abnormal 2D life where we cannot get out. Just like a flatlander stuck inside a square, we cannot see a way out. And that is the problem of our 3D world. I can see some 3D landers, live their whole lives grossly unaware of these problems. But there are plenty who do. For those who wants to break the illusions of a flat land, I invite you to practice mindfulness today. So, you can peek into the 4D world which hides truth from our eyes and find peace in silence. Mindfulness and wisdom is the eyes and ears in the fourth dimension that we all are searching our entire lives. Life as a free fall It is a big risk to take a lifetime of decisions to depend on views which are shaped by our teachings, culture and science. As nobody can answer why we were born, It is a gamble. We have only information, given to us by our own ancestors to make these decisions.There is no difference between someone who gambles at a casino, someone who takes a cigarette for the first time in their hands or someone who wakes up early to go to the job, in his office.  We all take the free jump, pushed by our will. As all those decisions were made possible and limited by the information we received. We are clueless, risking our lives in everyday decisions, as we do not understand the limits of the current understanding in science and nature. What if life is a free fall, what if there is no destination but it's only a journey? What if we all are in a train which never stops?