Book Reports / This is a story about someone I knew [15]

Greetings.

This is the first chapter of the story. My challenge is to develop the character of this individual, the friend, as someone I wish to talk with, and the discussion may sometimes become quite abstract.

Please feel free to comment.

This is a story about someone I knew, in a village in a country not far away.

The village was not very different from anything that one may imagine, not too big, the usual establishments; a town-hall, a community-center, some restaurants, a library and other places one soon begins to expect, where people live together as a community.

A road ran through it, coming from a city close by and went on to the next village and beyond. I would often be at a bus-stop right off this road whenever I had to go to the next village to do some chore, or to the city for one reason or another.

Across from this bus-stop was a restaurant. I never went in, but they had a few tables outside too and when the weather was not too cold, people would be sitting outside. The bus came a little erratically, or just my own synchroniztion to its times was erratic, or maybe I did not mind waiting. I often found myself there with sometimes, 10 or 15 minutes before the next bus.

I wonder if you've been in that situation, you know, just being able to sit somewhere comfortably and watch some things without really wanting to, but because it is happening. That is the way it was with me, and waiting for this bus I became quite familiar with the restaurant across; its atmosphere.

Now, my own situation was definitely singular, or it certainly appeared that way to me. I had been in this village two years, and was a foreigner. But I had been a foreigner for a long time now, having left my native land more than a decade ago. In the country I had lived before moving to the present one, I had not had happy experiences. My memories of them were tinged with some pain and suffering; consequently I was reserved and did not find it easy to develop a relationship or go where I would be among too many people.

All of this held me back as I would wait for my bus, my mind regarding this familiar and warm place across the street.

Two years is a very long time without having a person to communicate with, a friendly person who lets you just speak your mind, so you may get past the initial pointless things and begin to say things from your heart, whatever. So this press of feeling was mounting within and I would watch the people sitting and chatting, and ofcourse they would sometimes notice me looking that way, would look away politely, or just towards me, friendly like, a question as though on their face, did I want to say something?

Then it was, one day that I went inside. You can imagine I was apprehensive. For many reasons, mostly imagined ones, ofcourse.

I had prepared myself for this visit. Had taken a little care to be neatly dressed, not too much, because I also wanted to be comfortable too. I was looking for a feeling of being at home, with the surroundings and the other patrons of the restaurant. I had this little foreknowledge about the customs of the place. In this country, it was customary that you were never hurried along. You did not go to a restaurant to have a meal, you went to become a part of the ambience. It was a respectful attitude towards human character, I thought, this idea.

Walking into an unfamiliar place for the first time is a little like entering a pool, almost. You feel its environment with your senses, your mind, in a rush. You look around for a place, not to push yourself onto someone else's space, just where you find yourself welcome.

Then you're sitting down, putting your coat on the back of your chair. You've brought along a paper to go through while you'll be sitting. It helps to keep from causing some discomfort to others, when they might otherwise see you alone and wonder if you needed some help of any sort, or company?

I remember my first few visits to this restaurant were quite as this, until a pattern sort of developed and people were smiling with a little familiarity when I'd walk in.

Many readers might have started to wonder, how was it that I was even doing this. You think, this is not about you. I accept, my story is different.

It was here that I found one of my best friends. She worked at this place, or maybe owned it. I did not know and never felt the necessity to know about that particular fact about her. The other thing I never knew about her, was her age. I cannot say, if she was thirty, as I once started to think, or much older. I was a foreigner, and this is difficult to say sometimes, even for someone who lives in the place.

'We have this place here', she said, 'and as you can see, people come by and can sit as long as they wish.'

'Feel yourself at home,' she continued ' so, do you live in our village?'.

' Oh yes', I answered. ' I've been living here since two years now. It's a lovely place'.

'Yes. I've seen you, you're familiar somehow. But, you've not come here to this restaurant before, have you?', she asked.

'No. I often wanted to. You've probably noticed me, waiting for the bus across the street.' I said.

And this was the early conversation we had.

Gradually I started to feel myself becoming a part of this place. A gentle smile in greeting always met me when I'd walk in. I'd find a place to sit, pull out my paper, and drink my coffee, which I really started to like the way it was made here.

'You look very young to be leading a retired life.' she remarked one day to me.

' Yes. Life's like that.' This is something I do not have an easy explaination for, how my circumstances, combined with a way I wished to live, brought it about to be in this way.

'So, what keeps you going?' her query was gentle.

'I'm too philosophical, I guess,', I said.
'Too philosophical to work?' she was asking with a genuine interest now.

'Why? Don't you believe that possible?' I asked her in mock reproach.

There's a chasm here, a small one, which opens up. We're talking across different cultures but wondering at the same time, of the individual, his capability. Is everything alright with him.

On the other hand, from the view point of the western side, depending upon your mindset, you may regard this with some curiosity, whether this is tenable at all. This idea of living with a purpose where ostensibly there isn't any. How does it all work out? The dependence on others, the empty hours?

'I do not believe in keeping hours, the necessity of having to do it in a rigid fashion, anything.' I was speaking a little tentatively. I did not wish to make her feel awkward for having caught me with a awkward question. To me it isn't an awkward question at all.

'I found if I did not worry, in a material way, of how I might find the means to manage my life, my living takes care of itself. It's not that I'm irresponsible, I have done and will continue to do, whatever necessary to help others in my family do their things. Their studies, their work, and in return I lead my life free from the bindings of time. As they seem to me.'I continued.

'You must spend a lot of time thinking,' she remarked.

'Yes, I do.' I wasn't going to say too much more, at this time.

'It's not like an effort. Not like work.' I said making a joke. ' It's more about setting something in motion, you know, how I set my life going in this way. Then I am just looking at how the things are playing out, for me, and in general'.

As though life is a gigantic mechanism, and the only way to understand it is to pull yourself out of it, so you can watch. I walked away a little in thoughtful. Something had begun here too. This friendship.

Writing Feedback / Machine Learning versus Learning by Humans [51]

Greetings!

This is a general essay put up for comments by anyone so inclined - Thanks.

automation of learning process?

A study is meaningful if it yields further things of interest. This can be seen in studying Machine Learning. Actual applications of machine learning are trivial, nothing compared to the effort put into it. And yet the subject is interesting because it holds promise, an expectation as the name itself suggests. Someday we may automate the process having understood how we learn, and will have the tools to replicate that process.

In the literature of this subject and others of the genre, one often encounters the admission that goals once thought quite easily within its grasp, are actually proving elusive. And this is in every field of automatic learning, be it robotics, natural language processing and generally artificial intelligence. Not to say that whatever mathematical relations discovered or processing algorithms developed are not of value or are discarded. But like something magical, in spite of all this, the subject of learning is not any better understood than when its study began.

So, scientists and other respected persons in academia have started to wonder if the answers, or the shorter path to understanding learning, may not be a better understanding of the human consciousness. That is, a study of consciousness may really be the study of the subject in more generalization.

For those then, working on the subject, does this pull the carpet from under them ? No, because their interest is making machines that replicate the process which humans learn by. What they wish is that this process become clearer.

The paradigm we follow for developing an understanding of learning in humans is reverse of the one commonly taken. We begin by considering that all knowledge is known. Who by ? We wont answer that, but instead our explanation is that knowledge exists, and ignorance clouds our assimilation of it.

Instead of going into the further exposition of this paradigm, we take another pathway to show how, taken as this, the developments in machine learning follow quite naturally!

Consider movements in both axis, that is lateral and directional, where the later is towards the goal, measurable against some scale similar to how we measure progress in any development, and the lateral movement is one, in which the study shifts by making complementary developments in related areas, to have a better hold by making generalizations and enabling it to move forward confidently.

Within this simple and general framework it is clear to see that any forward progress in machine learning actually happens when it is also validated in the fields around it. Else those findings from other fields themselves become the subject which researchers use to either move everything forward, or simply repudiate the particular finding in machine learning. So learning really happens as a whole, and for the entire community, separated by interval in time which is always becoming shorter.

Turn this over , and this phenomenon is the same that all knowledge seems to converge in differing guises as solutions to problems in different fields. One can speculate of a mind that is fine enough that it can assimilate these common strands. And this is how we understand learning. We call these abstractions or concepts. They exist in a mental space and relate to events of the phenomenal world.

This is a space apprehended by the mind and its entities grasped in the mind alone. What more can we say about it? Not only machine learning, but every field considered a study, is in this space. It is continuous though our perceptions and sense of the phenomenal world conflict with accepting its being beyond space and containment.

Why insist on laws from the phenomenal world. Quantum laws are more appropriate here, but in general, we are in a different realm altogether.

Writing Feedback / Essay: On Artificial Intelligence [8]

A note to a teacher in India asking his comments on some passages which students in US are asked to study as college preparation.

hello Sir,

We have often spoken about a fundamental difference between Western and Indian thought and I remember your saying that you were quite certain of convincing the people in West about the truth of Indian ideas, if you have the chance to do that.

This is a problem which I share your interest in, but I have come across some barriers in trying to make this happen.

You may think it is due to my not understanding the subject well enough myself, or not having the right manner of arguing it. I am sure you see that there is much to the nuances of the language which enables some ideas to be communicated properly. Without sufficient ability such as a native speaker of the language possesses, it is hard to convince someone he understands you wrongly, even though it is obvious.

Living here, learning these subtleties of english, and carrying in my mind always those ideas of Indian thought that I wished to convey, I feel myself like someone who was earlier only seeing some hills from afar and wondering what lay there among its trees, and now I am close enough and can see what lies here.

I find it interesting as I bring up this point with you, as a teacher. I noticed that society here places a very important emphasis on what is taught to which age group. The course work is naturally selected by senior and experienced educators, but the purpose of the material they select is to draw the focus of the upcoming generation to issues which are highly important from the society's perspective. This early exposure to these issues and to engage them in these topics , gives a forward looking direction to their progress as a whole.

If college can be thought of as the time where we turn to developing skills of how ideas are implemented, whether it is engineering, business or any other discipline, then the stage just prior to entering college becomes relevant to where ideas can be planted. Like planting seeds, the choice the community makes is , which crop to plant so that in the ensuing conditions, it will bring the best returns and will also thrive itself.

I have already written so much that I wont be able to discuss the issue I wished to set before you, at least not in this letter. But I came across something in my daughters school work, it's the preparation for SAT. I came across the idea in it's "seed form", where all these young people are bound to pay a lot of attention to it.

The exercise is to read two contrasting passages on "artificial intelligence", the first is by a Nobel laureate and the other is a science journalist. The exercise is to test their comprehension of these passages by answering some 12 questions. I thought this a clever way to have tilled the mind of the students and put whatever was thought appropriate by the educators.

These passages discuss artificial intelligence, the simulation of mental activities by computers. Passage 1 is adapted from a 1985 book review by a Nobel-Prize winning chemist. Passage 2, written by a science journalist, is adapted from a 1996 book.

Passage 1
Artificial intelligence has attracted some of the world's best mathematicians and scientists. They have found it possible to simulate sophisticated activities like playing chess but hard to imitate the simple ability of seeing in three dimensions, as if it took more intelligence for a frog to catch a fly than for a chess player to formulate winning strategies.

Common sense dictates that there is more to the human brain than problem solving and information processing, because with consciousness goes individuality, imagination, love of beauty, tears and laughter, heroism and cowardice, and occasionally artistic talent. Greatness in art and poetry carries with it an idiosyncratic, evocative, often irrational way of looking at the world and expressing its image, as in Paul Gauguin's paintings --- which incorporate nonnaturalistic colors and abstract figures --- or Samuel Taylor Coleridge's dreamlike ballad, " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Irish writer George Moore expressed the distinction best when he said that art is not mathematics, it's individuality. Even so artificial intelligence experts are brilliant at confounding any distinction between humans and computers that a layman raises. For example A M Turing devised a question and answer game between A and B, who are in one room, and C, who is in another, and can communicate with A only by typed messages. C tries to discover whether A or B is a person or a computer, but the computer defeats C's interrogation. When C asks A to write a sonnet, the computer answers quite reasonably, " I never could write poetry".

Will computers ever acquire consciousness? Physiologists have discovered how the eye processes images, and they have mapped areas of the brain where speech and hearing are centered, but the physical nature of consciousness has eluded them. As a school boy I was mystified by gravity, and when I reached college I eagerly attended college lectures in hopes of learning what it really is. I was disappointed when I was merely taught that gravity is what it does, that it is an attractive force between bodies that makes the apple fall with an acceleration of 10 meters per second squared. Perhaps consciousness is like that, and we may get no further than stating that it is what it does: a property of the brain that makes us aware of ourselves and the world around us, " a beam of light directed outward," as the fictional character Dr. Zhivago calls it. in the absence of knowledge of the physical nature of consciousness, the question of whether it will ever be possible to simulate it with a machine cannot be answered.

Passage 2
There is an odd little subculture within science whose members speculate about how intelligence might evolve if and when it sheds its human component. Participants are not practicing science, of course, but wishful thinking. They are concerned not with what the world is, but with what it might be centuries or millennia hence. Their suppositions may nonetheless provide fresh perspectives on some age-old philosophical questions: what would we do if we could do anything? What are the ultimate limits of knowledge? One modern practioner who addresses these questions is robotics engineer Hans Moravec. Moravec is a cheerful man who seems to be intoxicated by his own ideas. As he unveiled his visions of the future in my conversations with him, his intensity seemed proportional to the preposterousness of what he said.

Moravec asserted that science desperately needs new goals. "Most of the things that have been accomplished in this century were really nineteenth-century ideas," he said. "It's time for fresh ideas now." What goal could be more thrilling than creating "mind children," intelligent machines capable of feats we cannot even imagine? In his 1988 book Mind Children , Moravec discussed the possibility of creating such intelligent machines. He assured me that engineers will soon create robots capable of doing household chores. And by the next century, Moravec said, robots will be as intelligent as humans and will essentially take over the economy. " We're really out of work at that point," Morovec claimed. Humans might still pursue "some quirky stuff like poetry" that springs from psychological vagaries beyond the grasp of robots, but robots will have all the important jobs.

But what, I asked, will these machines do with their newfound power? Will they be interested in pursuing science for its own sake? "Absolutely," Morovec replied. "That's the core of my fantasy: that our nonbiological descendents, without most of our limitations, could pursue basic knowledge of things." In fact, science will be the only worthy motive of intelligent machines. "I'm sure the basic labels and subdivisions of the nature of reality are going to change," Morovec added. " Machines may view human attitudes towards consciousness, for example, as hopelessly primitive, akin to the primitive physics concepts of the ancient Greeks."

Poetry / Destined - a poem [10]

It may happen to us as this,
that we might begin to understand our lives,
not as following , as what we did,
but only as is written, on some invisible wall, of destiny.

No more substance to our lives,
not the kind we make so much about,
of our homes, our loved ones,
only a writing on the wall, the one no one can see.

Why this game, this illusion, you may ask,
whom for. What of the pain, the blood,
the grief that is so real, of loved ones
when they are no more, around.

This is what I think, that yes
pain is real. It's like our fingers touch reality.
But only that is real, nothing else
is happening, our breath, our lives, nothing at all.

Who awakes, to every fresh day,
Stretches in the morning light.
Who fends his life, through work, with friends,
who even sits and contemplates?

Who dreams big dreams, of life,
and wealth, abundance of joy and family.
Who applies himself to worldly knowledge,
that he may one day be recognized?

It seems this way to me,
There is little substance in what these we believe to be.
Each day happens, there isn't anyone to see,
Can it be, any other way at all.

Poetry / "It was Good to Have Known you Sarah" - Poem [6]

I met you on this beach of words,
I was moving along and you were curious,
Curious of the movements I made,
Where I looked, where I hopped to.

Perhaps it was just your gentle way,
But slowly my movements were caught by your gaze,
Slowly I was reading from your eyes, your silent gestures,
What I should say, to even say what I may.

Now once again I find myself moving along,
I notice you are not by my side,
Only your encouraging spirit will never leave,
And though I know you acknowledged,
How words are but fetters, of a language,
Our thoughts can rise in any.

What meter, what grammar, what punctuation even,
Someone lives within, lives also without,
You can set Him free, Her free,
Flow not with words of your own,
But from somewhere you'll never ever know.

It was so Good to Have known You Sarah.

Writing Feedback / Some of my thoughts - an essay [8]

Do we really cause things to happen - as, does something within ourselves do this?
Some things, some actions appear natural and correct, and others appear strained. Take something very ordinary like walking along with someone. I notice and I'm sure the other person does too, those things which are not natural. Simple things, not necessarily in what we are talking, but even actions, if I do make them. To bring this out in greater relief, it is most obvious when, these individuals are seeking to impress the other, maybe with some aspect of themselves, that they believe, or maybe they are themselves uncertain about, but wonder if it may be so.

But I am drawing attention to only that which is natural and asking, why is it so?
We are almost always, apparently making choices from a multitude of many - of things we could do, and ways we could do them. I may stop now and make a cup of coffee or, I may get up and go sit elsewhere. Or, that I chose to write.

But later, when someone asks me and I tell them I did this, or I didn't do this, they think of some actions as natural and others may strike them as weird, or they may think, good for you, you finally got around to it. These things appear more and more as only the expected. And growing out in an expected way.

But we're trying to talk about the unexpected happening, in a natural way.
As when considering two varieties of corn, of which we know one has superior growth, we watch them over days and weeks and see this difference, but don't see anything now indicating that it would happen as this.

We think about individuals we've known, those we grew up close with and have seen their traits. Then we come to know about them after a period of many years. That it turned out as such and such is not a surprise to us, but that something in particular happened with them, surprises us and sets us thinking, and we say to ourselves, that's life. It's something totally unexpected, yet we accept it as natural, and even try to take some lesson for ourselves from it.

This is what I am trying to talk about, that nature acts, and acts in a way that is somehow appropriate, befits just who we are, just who we needed to become - which then we do, due to that natural intervention to our life.

Thanks.

Writing Feedback / You know life moves on - doesn't it? ; A Farewell Note to the Class [5]

Greetings.

A note to the class and others running the program mentioned here.

Hello there:

You know life moves on - doesn't it!

Since there isn't likely to be any formal ending to our soon to be concluding program, I feel the need to at least try and sum up. Add the positive and negatives and see in balance what is to be said about the experience these past six months.

It feels so much like an unfinished something at this moment. Something abruptly coming to an end and it's not feeling right. It's almost as though something has gone wrong within the program and I am certain, nothing has.

I am finding this unacceptable that were things left as they are, the impression we all who have attended the program will carry is that something failed, or worse, that in some sense we failed - in achieving some 'undefined' mark. Whereas in reality, I feel we actually met the mark. Truly, we actually made it!

We have achieved a very real and strong orientation to the subject we came to learn. Other than that we also learnt lessons we were not thinking we will be learning here. The reason for that may be the unique make up of this group and the dynamics that came about as a result from that.

Here is what I can say from my own perspective. I stress this because that is a major ingredient to the mood being as it is. I feel others have drawn back slightly from a close sense of camaraderie we once shared. One reason can be that they acknowledge that they are unable to completely comprehend something I wished to communicate to them. Another less pleasant reason is just an intrinsic sense of mistrust, so detrimental to learning something not in the prescribed coursework.

The time for our mutual interaction is coming to a close and there isn't any need to try and say things as gently as possible. I tried to lead my class mates, in the space where I exercised influence, towards an end I saw possible for them. It had to do with learning an attitude, an attitude I think would enable them to be as they are, yet make the impact on people of Western cultures, people who are most likely to be dominating their lives, a fact they cannot as yet see.

Somewhere down the road this exercise came apart and though on the surface, there is an individual, who spoke out against my entire efforts and attempt, I think it as likely that everybody felt secure agreeing with that particular line of thought.

But no one can turn away from -truth-, that is our training through life and childhood. Sometimes the truth is so harsh, we are just unwilling to accept it. Unfortunately that attitude is not going to help, the harsh truth has to be faced, and if that is so, why not be prepared.

It is a fact of life, that those born in the West are at an advantage. It is a fact that in the struggle we find ourselves, they have the high ground. We have also to accept that they realize this better than we do and will like to keep things the way they are. It is not a solution to hate them, but it is 'the' solution to just do those very things which they are doing, and do them better.

The special thing that I have felt in the course has been the continual and genuine attempt by all the teachers to make us understand concepts in a real way. This, they stressed time and again was different from learning for exams. Because when we learn as we have done in our schools, we become someone else's property. We are used as a component in a bigger machine, which does not really improve our own quality of life, but of their country. And this is how the order is maintained as it is now. We end up working against ourselves and do not realize it!

Good luck to the VLSI class of 2007-'08.

Writing Feedback / Tale - Part 2 (jobeless in a foreign land) [13]

Why should a tale of someone's life, or even just a period of it, be of any interest to others? Perhaps if the life is so singular, or could we say, so singularly wrought, that it takes a direction we do not expect. The person himself makes his choices because according to him, there are none other. He hears a different drummer altogether.

He believes that within all circumstances lie their reasons, you reach through them, only to pass through... like doorways.

He saw this in the opportunity that came to his spouse when she sought admission into a university abroad, leaving the country with one of their young children. Later, he did not resist when she asked him to join her there, leaving his employment.

Other things which followed were not in themselves remarkable, till perhaps when he too sought and was admitted into the same university for a one-semester course. He wished to learn more of how programming works. He was a programmer but from practice alone.

This situation is again similar to the one we began this tale with, where he finds himself amongst students younger than himself.

We won't make too much of the difference in the accents he found the other students spoke in, as native speakers of the language. He notices though, a slight sharpness in the teacher's eye as he sees him, because he stands out, being older than the others. Maybe there's something else about him too. He's a little uneasy, and feels so are the others.

The main lecture has nearly a hundred students in the hall. Next, is a smaller class with a teaching assistant, a younger person who was introduced earlier. He notices a person from his own country, and senses him making an effort to fit. He can see the others are easier with him, with what he is trying to be.

'The runtime Organization of Programming languages' -- it really is such an interesting sounding course. Parse it slowly, and it's not hard to see that for a home-grown programmer, who for years has only written programs following rules of the languages in manuals, this is nothing short of the 'key' to understanding what lies beneath the code.

So everything is present, the interest, the setting - all of which could not have been better.

As in every class, there is some earlier work you've only partly done. You are wondering how the others have succeeded and are better tuned to the material of the lecture. The TA makes references to the assignment, giving hints on how to approach it, but you are distracted by the newness of the surroundings, and tell yourself that you need only to put more effort, and can solve the problems on your own.

The class is finally over and you come out in the sunshine. People are in pairs, and threes, heads bowed, some glance towards you. You don't want to appear purposeless, or even looking too hard for companionship. You move out with the bunch, find the path leading back, and reach home slightly disheveled inside, wondering what happened exactly.

It isn't different in the classes which follow. The main lecture is too crowded to articulate your difficulty, it would be embarrassing and awkward. Then wondering how it would be in the tutorial class with the TA, you think you will muster the courage and say ' I just don't understand anything at all. Can you please help me. I notice others form groups and manage to turn in assignments, but I do not know where to begin.' But, you cannot even say this. You want the TA to notice your difficulty and address you directly himself in some way, but for some reason, he does not.

In a fortunate turn of events, a programming job turns up through a person from your own country.

Back home there are these exclusive places, owned by the very wealthy. We looked upon that kind of solid, elaborate construction as meaning - lots of money. Here, everything was as that. You felt like you walked into a designer shop and were only a dumpy tramp.

What would you think of a software organization only miles from the Washington monument, employing 20 people of which all but 3 are Asians. The founder and president of the company, an American ex-professor built up his team as this, picking the brightest of his Asian students, but wisely chose to have the public face of his company represented by three pleasant American women, at the reception, managing the administration and as the financial controller.

I am sure they developed good skills for dealing in the right way with intelligent Asians, given the close contact necessary in the working of this high technology company.

There are custom built cars, custom tailored clothes and there is custom designed software. The makers of these are on the high end of their market and competing fiercely with the mass produced, lesser priced versions of the product. In the end they are driven to such a small niche that they find it harder to keep their specialty exclusive so that customers are still willing to pay for it.

This organization after ten years of fairly successful existence was now in this struggle. Their specialty had become a common enough work space, and other companies were making products that were easy to configure with only little tweaking.

Those which mass produce have a different business model and when they acquire other companies, seek to expand their product range by bringing in technologies, people, products and all, perhaps even the customer base, calling it all a merger. The acquired company is restructured and whimsically, some weight is shed in terms of the employees.

All this happened in a period of three years, so it was a learning of a different kind afforded in these circumstances, if one was inclined to learn from it.

The acquiring Atlanta based company was 400 employee strong and had much less international orientation. Those interacting with us faced difficulties they were hardly expecting or prepared to tackle. Some chose to take a 'nerdy' stance, sticking with only the technicalities of the software, others came across somewhat to their own discomfiture, as conquerors of sorts, not knowing how to converse with us. Often, just being able to articulate well puts one at a disadvantage. The rapid expression dislodges the other's footing whose command of the language is less. But only in their confidence to express themselves, and their reply is coarser than they intend. They hear themselves, the hearer might considerately repeat what he heard, as if to ask, is that what you wished to say, and our non-native speaker unsure he'll get it better the next time mutely acquiesces, accepting reluctantly.

It's obvious that whatever sense holds out, is due to such factors as, which side wields more power in that situation. For from an imagined fear, one may not wish to cause more to be pitted against oneself. But the person is unhappy with the outcome, and with himself, for losing his confidence. It's no surprise he will cast elsewhere to go.

You are in a foreign land, jobless, feeling slightly unwanted, confused and bewildered. You ask your spouse if it isn't a good time to just head back home. She has finished graduating and found a beginning job. Her prospects appear quite different. Maybe it is not fair to ask her to give it all up now. You have instead to make what you can with whatever you have..

It begins to appear not the best solution to find fulltime employment. The children are at that endearing age where, they ask for your love, you don't want not to be there when they do. You take stock and in the back of your mind, you see that however strange your course of action, it's something you really wish to do.

You have time and again felt yourself, your belief in yourself, challenged. Challenged in a fundamental way. However things work out, you have done no wrong, can you not hope for them to work out right. It is hard to see past the bend, there isn't any thing similar that you know of. Yet you strongly feel a call to hold fast to the path opening here. What it will do for you more than anything else is make firm the foundling stone, the one on which rest your other beliefs. Isn't it worth the while for everyone to put their beliefs to this test.

It is more challenging in a way to test beliefs you built in another culture, amongst other people and under different conditions altogether. You will have to let go all you have, assuming great responsibility, and let it ride on your conviction.

At the same time you are drawn to what works here in place of belief. Each step is clearly delineated. The progression of ideas logical. Beyond that nothing is acceptable. Don't talk of your beliefs to people here, they will laugh indulgently. They ask what can you do instead. That is the challenge you cannot pass. You remember your personal experience, of when the world stood still for you and you saw how things just follow a pattern, even your own actions outside your ability to withhold, and everything else of the same nature.

You can listen to the logic screaming outside, or to the drummer within.

Writing Feedback / A tale - part 1 (group of young people) [4]

Not a fairy tale...

The weather was very pleasant where this story begins. It was mid - September and though the land the people lived in, could be very, very warm it really wasn't so now. A description of it's people and history is more interesting. It was a devastated land, limping to recovery, and almost no one was aware of it's history, aware that they were really living it. They just took it's state as granted.

How did all this happen? Ah.. that's the story of the world, in the times we now live we are disconnected from that. We may not find how some things we read about, may actually be the attempt of someone to write what he witnessed as it happened before his eyes.

The roots of these people were deep, really deep, as old as any other living people. Philosophy is a distillation of knowledge, till it no longer refers to a time and it's particular events, but somehow, has reached in to bring into words those things, which do not seem to have a bearing on when, and to whom it happened - but is yet important and of interest for others to know. This kind of philosophy, comes only as a process in time naturally, the distillate of the experience of the peoples.

In the end, you can destroy everything, including most of the people living in the land, you may also as an attacker bent on mayhem, repress the people. The effort to root out their thinking, their manner of thinking will have to be very malicious, because you will make the effort to take their young, and painstakingly work at making them release their hold on what they are bound to in their beliefs.

Ah, this is a very somber tone for any tale, but unfortunately we have to go over all of this to understand the backdrop of our story.

Our story begins with a group of friendly young people, playfully playing their games, unaware of what has happened much before they were born.

Our story gets it's character from a particular fact that, amongst these otherwise unexceptional happenings, that there is nothing here which isn't also taking place in countless other places on that land, there was something different. Amongst them is another person, not so young, in fact of twice their age, and the interesting thing is his own history.

He can remember the time when he was just as old as these young people, and because he too grew up and belongs to this land, their history is his also. Like them, when he was of their age, he was just as unaware of the past of his people, at least he too had no idea that it mattered.

Then something in his life changed. In a way which he was able to make nothing about. It felt like nothing he could understand, reading in books, in his University or elsewhere. All he could tell was that somehow his future was, as though, being devastated even before he could reach it. How is one to grapple with this?

Was there a choice? no obviously there wasn't. Something extremely evil had taken away the picture, the one everyone lives by. It did not feel any less threatening than having one's breath sucked out. With each passing day the feeling of foreboding only increased.

Then he found one release. One place he could find some solace from this wringing of his spirit, and that was where then he placed the roots afresh of his life. Where he would grow up from.

It should not be surprising that this was none other than discovering the philosophy, the distilled philosophy of his people. You may even think that if his circumstances had not been so extreme, he would never have arrived to this point. It is not that people haven't access to the literature which he turned to. But he turned to it with his very person. Every morning he woke up, his mind would find it's way to this way of life and thought, as described in the literature he was reading.

Everything started to come together in a coherent whole. Yet something about his circumstances was disconnected. He could not see how to understand, that which was happening to him. And so it went on, till one day the moment happened. The inner life and thought coincided with his outer life. He saw and understood, what was going on with him, and also, what he needed to do to remove the feeling of being strangled by his circumstances. Actually he saw that he had no choice and everything would follow now on it's own accord, and he had only to wait till that point into the future, maybe some five or seven years out, then he would be released. A totally free person, like everyone else seemed to be..

It would be the matter for another interesting story, the events which followed. But you should not be surprised that they were near miraculous. He did as he had understood in that moment of truth. His conviction was so strong that he could not understand why others did not act with the same kind of conviction. He saw that perhaps the reason people fumbled was only on account of this uncertainty they had. Everybody spoke about what was the right thing to do, but in action, under some confusion they too were carried away from their own direction. They lost a connection with their own minds.

Sad to say that our person, the one whose history we are narrating, did not become a hero as one may think. Why, how come? You may ask. That perhaps is the first lesson everyone learns in adulthood. The lesson of the intrinsic selfishness of human character. This is not a lesson I would happily pass on to friends and those I care about. That do not stretch yourself too much to do something which is someone else's to do. Almost like saying, do not save a drowning man. He will not be willing to live under that obligation. If no one saw you saved him, he will discredit you and the risk you put yourself to. Years later he will even have another picture of the events and you will stand there mouth agape.

The sad fact is that the person who you helped is now embarrassed by your presence and wants you to leave because you remind him, he thinks, of his weakness and his faults which led to his getting into the prediction you found him and risked yourself.

So, we move on, narrating more history of this person who now finds himself with these young friends. Yes life's like that, unremitting. I doubt it is so extreme in what it will dole out to all. I think our person is really being prepared for something equally extreme.

What he had been through prepared him for what followed after another nearly fifteen years.

But for now, he found respite in the life that followed. He could live like others.

Lets gloss over the next ten to fifteen years because they were not remarkable. In time he married and was happy to find himself doing something more current and exciting for those times. Something his friends were doing, which stimulated their minds and intellect, creating a picture of a future which was unbounded.

There is another interesting thing going on which we must also now reckon with.

Without understanding completely why, the people look outwards, that is, to other lands where they see people live better, maybe even are themselves better, as thinkers, and seem to excel at other things. The products they manufacture are better, so is their way of living, and of course their money is almost 50 times more valuable than ours.

Everybody has heard about how the lives of those who left and lived there a while, had changed for the better. With the kind of opportunities offered, obviously nothing better could happen to an individual than to go and live there.

... end of part 1.

Writing Feedback / Memory is an attachment to our physical selves; Reincarnation / Process of memory [3]

We have struggled to define the imprint that we reincarnate into. But lets look at it this way, that it is itself what we have become. It is no longer visible, or there is no possibility of seeing it, as now it is who we are. We are the imprint, manifested.

At any time we make an effort to come to a sense of ourselves, instead of taking our physical selves or even our mind as the point of origin from where we look out, we can take the power of awareness itself, as origin. We make this shift in our frame of reference.

Imagine a process of a coalescing and precipitation taking place in a glassful of liquid. So is this body formed. If we grasp the origin as defined above, there is no specific point where we can really say it is. We do not become aware of ourselves. The awareness exists first, this sense of 'us' ness is floating in it.

What relates one such coalesced form to another, so we can say that it becomes that? They form, they reach some size according to the properties of the liquid and then they break up and dissolve. How may we say that something persisted and became the cause for the next to form?

When I examine the process of memory, I see it has an existence unlike say, thoughts. A persistence even. I can go back to some recent event, say a time when I was waiting for a bus, and can extract further details from it, as though I am looking at a picture. And this picture is imprinted in my mind. In the experience, a physical etching took place in some subtle part of myself that I see only in my mind. And like a written page it revives for me, and I can live again what happened the first time. It belongs to the physical part of myself, and ages with time, and is dissolved with the body.

When considering the idea of reincarnation our greatest doubts arise because we cannot in the faintest way recollect anything of our past life. But, since memory is an attachment to our physical selves, it is not where we should hope to find those details, as we do when revisiting our memories. The imprints instead, is who we are. They shine through us as a mixture of our own characteristics.

We cannot foretell the events to come, or even a predisposition of events to take place, unless we free ourselves from this sense of identity. Then what is to be, comes to us with an assurance. At present we pull away from that projection, and connect the facts to those we know and others we are sure will take place. We may lose this assurance if we see something intervening with which the sequence to the original event is not definite. Yet, even inexplicably sometimes, we know that something will be so. Like flowing into something, somewhere, we haven't been before, and yet were certain it would be there.

We may insist on calling these projections our imagination. But just as easily we could accept their veracity, their existence, an until then un-manifested existence that we have the power to perceive.