25 April 2007

Conditions apply



vox populi vox dei

According to me the most misunderstood person is OSHO (Rajneesh), who somehow at his prime ended up saying – the way to God or moksha is by having great sex!!!!

Can you believe that? When I first read about this I thought I have brain tumor or some kind of unpronounceable brain disease, because of which my eyes are playing this trick!

I am sure he made that statement for the intellectual enlightened 2% of the total population. But the people who made most out of it are the ones like us, ordinary people!

Nevertheless he made that statement and I am sure he might have bit his tongue very hard once he said that. Subsequently I, who used to run away from religion like plague, became an intense follower of his teachings and preaching.

Osho might have had a bad time, because wrong people got wrong ideas! Nothing wrong with Osho though, it is human nature to find loop holes in anything and everything!

I was once working for a company, which as an employee-friendly gesture decided to give tea and snacks for all the employees who stayed back late at work till 7PM. Suddenly almost everybody (who earlier used to leave at 6PM), started staying till 7PM, even though they didn’t have work! Did you get my point? It is almost impossible to make any generalized rules because people almost always find a loop hole.

Much later Osho also said - Beware of the ignorant! I can understand his pain. By now he was well aware of the skills of people, to manipulate anything to their advantage!

I don’t blame our people, because being the most populous country we have been fighting for nearly everything. We have unique problems which other countries don’t have. We spend most of our life in queues and traveling. In most of the countries there are no queues for buses, no queues for water, no queues for trains simply because there are not many people to stand in queues!


In a typical software company there is a development team which creates projects and a testing team which find bugs (short comings) so that the end product is flaw less.

In such an organization management decided to reward the testing team when ever they find a bug. This will not only motivate the testing team but also improve the quality of the product. After this the number of bugs suddenly sky rocketed. Finally management realized for their dismay, that there was an understanding between both the teams. The development team will simply create a bug, and informs the test team which will escalate the same to the management. Subsequently both the teams share the reward!

As Darwin said it is the survival of the fittest and of course it is very true for us. I think it is this tendency for survival, has made us smart (or is it over smart?) and to find loop holes in everything.


Logic
Even logic has loop holes. Consider this, logically half door open is equal to half door closed. To simplify this lets put that as a formula,

½ door open = ½ door closed

If you are a math student you will realize, in the above formula same attributes on both sides of “=” can be deleted! So mathematically you can delete ½ from both sides of the equal sign. Hence the formula will become,

door open = door closed

This may be correct mathematically but is it correct technically?


Barometer problem

"How could you measure the height of a tall building, using a BAROMETER?" this question was asked in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen.

Normally you can calculate the barometer pressure at the top of the building and bottom, using a simple formula you can calculate the height.

Instead one of the student answered, "I would tie the barometer to a string, lower it to the ground and measure the length of the string!!"

The person who said that is Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winner for physics! You may be thinking this kind of reasoning is manipulative, but another person has smartly christened the concept as Lateral Thinking. Edward De Bono has coined this term and has written more than fifty books on the subject.

These guys are not the ones you meet in the market place or in tea shops. Bohr has a chemical element named after him (Bohrium - atomic number 107) and Bono has a planet named after him!


Hand of God

Maradona once scored a goal by Hand in one of the football matches! Can you believe that? He did it with HAND in a game whose name starts with FOOT!!

This is not a match you play in the local church yard with no audience. In stead it was a quarter-final match of the 1986 FIFA World Cup between England and Argentina!

Maradona not only made the goal with hand but also told the media that it was - hand of God! If I was God, I would have burnt this sinner to ashes the moment he made that blasphemous statement!

But God with his infinite mercy must have forgiven and forgotten the whole incident within micro seconds because just after 5 minutes Maradona scored a second goal which is considered as the greatest goal ever in football history!

Eventually Argentina won 2-1.

The point is people go to such an extent, to take advantage of situations, they will even take God for granted! Don't you know people who go to Saturday mass, which somehow they feel equivalent to Sunday mass, a mild adjustment to their needs and a small bribe to God himself!

Even the business people are smart. They know people won’t enter their shop unless there is a phenomenal discount. You enter the 70% off sales shop and find out there is no such thing! Upon enquiring you are redirected to the farthest corner from the entry door, where you find almost all the time, shirts so large (XXXXXL size) that you and your brother can wear them at the same time. Obviously you reject them but now that you are inside, you have to buy something!


The Guru
In the 1950s the Yemeni (Yemen is a Middle East country shares common border with Saudi Arabia and located south of it) administration realized that their main unit of currency Rial was in disappearing. After investigating the matter it was realized that all Rials were routed to a single person. This young man in twenties was placing unlimited buy orders of Yemeni Rials in the news papers.

During those days the Yemini Rial was a pure silver coin and was much in demand at the London Bullion Exchange. What this guy found out is that the monitory value of the coin is more when it is melted!

For example, you found out that the value of 1 RS. coin is 1.25 RS when melted. So you place an ad in the paper for 1 RS coins, in exchange for 1.10 RS. Later you melt these coins and sell with a profit of 15 Paisa. That’s what our guy did!

This guy would buy Rial, melt it in pure silver and sell it to bullion traders in London. He made a good amount of money before the Yemeni government stopped him. Guess who is this guy? You will not believe, it was Dhirubhai Ambani!


Some countries have unattended news paper stands. You can just put a coin in the coin box and pick what ever news paper you want. No one will monitor you, obviously it’s assumed that no one will swindle with such a trivial amount. Can we have the same thing in our country? Initially people will wonder whether there are any hidden cameras. Whether Cyrus Bharocha will suddenly appear from no where shouting –“ MTV Bakra!”, the moment you near the stand. So they will approach with caution, but by 4th day they are sure that this is for real. On the fifth day there is no stand, no news papers and no money all have been simply vanished!


Father, forgive them
Forget guys like us, who will be grateful even if 10 people remember us fifty years from now. But these so called smart guys will not even leave alone a wonderful person like Jesus.

Jewish leaders thought they could trap Jesus. They asked Jesus, "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" And, they thought they had him in an awesome trap, so they brought the Herodians with them. The Herodians were the policemen. If Jesus said, "No, we should not pay taxes to Caesar," they knew that the Herodians would arrest Jesus for sedition to the government.

On the other hand, if Jesus said, "Of course we should pay taxes to Caesar," then they thought it would appear as if he was saying, "It is ok to have false gods and false leaders."

Ingenious two way trap for the son of God!!

Jesus said, "Show me the coin used for paying the tax." And they brought him this coin. He asked them, "Whose portrait is on the coin?"

They replied, "Caesar’s."

Caesar’s image was on the coin. He replied with one of the most famous quotes of bible, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s!"


Saving the sex guru

Coming back to Osho, you can not deny the fact that he was a well read person. He had a hypnotic personality. If you start reading or listening to his tapes, you will finally end up following everything whatever he said.

Even though he discoursed on diverse subjects, only the sex thing finally tagged with him. Many people remember him only as – sex guru.

Lot of people chase lot of things in life. Few people chase God. I think it is a good thing to search for him because if you find him by chance, nothing like it! Even if you don’t, the quest is worth it. Materialistic things make this search for God very difficult. That’s why Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24).

Can you write a poem or create a piece of art when you are hungry? Of course you can not. You need to quench your hunger and then only you can carryon with other tasks.

I think Osho was stressing the same thing. For example if you are having a noble cause of searching God, but also let’s say tempted by needs of the flesh (I am trying to be politically correct). You need to finish your worldly business first before you start seeking God. When you are aloof to materialistic things you can be enlightened. As an ignorant layman I think that’s what Osho meant when he said sex is the way to God! But then of course he is the one who said – beware of the ignorant!

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