"Choosing the right university course for yourself is very important as it will most likely determine what you will be doing for your working life. We've had past students who graduate and go onto doing:
Commerce
Law
Engineering
Medicine
Science
Arts
or combined degrees (combinations) of the above.
We will talk briefly about what career paths each degree tends to lead to, and our recommendations for each degree.
What course should I choose?
Unlike choosing HSC subjects, there is no scaling implications or anything to do with special 'rules'. University is purely about yourself - choose the course or courses that interest you. For example, if in the HSC, you did very well for economics and tend to enjoy the subject, choose Commerce or Economics at university. If you really enjoyed chemistry or biology, aim for medicine, medical science, pharmacy, optometry, physiotherapy or veterinary science. There are many possibilities, each with different goals in mind.
We don't have any specific recommendation of which degree you choose, except that you should definitely choose the course you're genuinely interested in. Whether you want to earn a high salary or contribute to your field, you will do well if you choose something you're good at. There's no point in choosing Commerce/Law or other highly demanded courses, just because your UAI was 99+ but you have no interest in commerce and/or law. Students who do this tend to regret their choices after a year or two, whereas students who choose degrees based on their interests are generally more fulfilled and do better in their degree and future career. There's no substitute for the motivation and natural aptitude you will get from doing something you like, and no matter what you do, if you do it well, you will get what you want (whether it's a high salary, recognition, contribution to your field etc).
Some common degrees
Commerce
Commerce is one of the most common courses students choose. It is a good choice, and possibly has the greatest number of career options. The most common commerce majors at the reputable universities are: accounting, finance, actuary studies (UNSW) and marketing. There are also other, less common majors.
Commerce is the degree to choose if you want to be an accountant, or get into finance (work in a bank) or marketing (work in advertising). The pay for these types of jobs are great and there's an endless variety of jobs to suit all tastes and interests.
Generally speaking, UNSW has the most reputable business school in NSW, so if you're aiming to get into this course, we recommend UNSW as one of the better universities that offer this degree. USYD, Macquarie Uni and UTS are also universities that offer reputable commerce courses.
UAIs required for commerce range from 94-96 for UNSW and USYD, and lower for the other universities. As with all references to required UAIs, check the UAC published UAI cutoffs each year at the UAC website, as they vary a little year to year depending on demand and supply.
Actuarial studies
Actuarial Studies is ideal for those who are good at maths and want to apply this to university study and their future career. Actuaries are people who work at big insurance companies, who use complex mathematical methods to calculate insurance premiums.
A common misconception people have of this course is that they will become actuaries at the end of their degree. This is most often untrue, as actuarial jobs are in low supply, and most graduates end up working in finance, in the field of financial engineering designing new financial products etc. This can be quite a lucrative field, especially if part of a quantitative team in an investment bank.
For actuary, traditionally Macquarie University's actuarial degree is the most highly regarded. However UNSW's actuarial degree is also quite popular, and UNSW being a generally more reputable university (especially internationally), we recommend doing actuary as part of the commerce degree at UNSW.
The UAI required for this is 95+ for UNSW's commerce degree, or slightly higher for Macquarie University's degree.
Law Law leads onto very lucrative careers. Law graduates tend to make the most money out of all degrees in the long run (yes, even medicine makes less!) Students who want to make lots of money in their future careers are advised to aim for Law, even if they won't want to eventually be a lawyer. The reason is because employers of large commercial companies (banks, investment banks, investment firms, accounting firms, trading companies etc) tend to seek out the Law graduates to fill their higher paying graduate positions. Law graduates tend to be high quality, intelligent, social, well-spoken and dynamic people, and employers know this.
Although the skills you pick up in law are largely irrelevant (unless you be a lawyer), employers tend to use the fact that you did law to know that you are smart enough to do law. It's like going to the fruit market and picking apples from the premium bin, because you know that all apples you pick will be high quality apples. For this same reason, sometimes people who do medicine end up being hired by investment banks and management consulting firms (very high-paying jobs), simply because those employers know all students who do law or medicine tend to be very smart and capable.
Therefore we recommend if you get a 99+ UAI and want to do commerce, you may as well combine it with law. It will be a great step forward for your future career.
Law at USYD and UNSW are the same in terms of reputation (they are the best), followed by law at UTS, then Macquarie, then elsewhere. To get into law at UNSW and USYD, you will need to get a UAI in the mid 99s. For UTS law, it is around 97.
Medicine
If you have an especially keen interest in biology, chemistry, and helping others, this is a course you can consider doing. However, we recommend against choosing medicine for the money. We will discuss this point a bit later.
Long ago, medicine entry used to be solely on the basis of UAI. However it has been pushed up so high that the universities have agreed to use the UMAT exam and interviews as additional selection criteria. Officially, the minimum UAI for medicine at reputable universities is 95, however the median entry for medicine at reputable universities has traditionally been in the low 99s. This is in additional to the UMAT and interview criteria, so medicine can be said to be the most competitive course to get into.
However, as mentioned, we recommend against medicine as an optimum choice if you want to make large sums of money in your career. The simple fact is that you will not be making large amounts of money until you are in your 30s, and in present value terms (remember your consumer arithmetic in year 10?) it's just not worth the trouble. For the same UAI (and given that you are bright enough to achieve 99+) you are better off investing your strong skills into a law degree (see above). Jobs in law firms, investment banks and other jobs in high finance can potentially pay multiples of what a senior doctor can make.
Take this advice with a grain of salt, however, because as we said at the beginning of this page, you will only get what you want if you're interested in what you're doing. Therefore, if you enjoy medicine, do it. It is a very fulfilling and the pay is very high in all respects.
Reputable universities that offer medicine include: UNSW, USYD (arguably the best), Monash and Melbourne University. University of Western Sydney recently started a medicine faculty of their own, so if you are dead-set on doing medicine but did not achieve a sufficiently high UAI, that is a consideration. Remember, transferring between similar courses once you enter university is easy (we will discuss this a bit later on).
Other health courses
As we said before, medicine is highly sought after and easily the most competitive university degree to get into. There are alternatives. At reputable universities, Optometry and Vet Science needs about a UAI of 98, Pharmacy needs about 95, Medical science needs about 93, and physiotherapy is much lower and very accessible.
If you want to get into medicine but didn't get the required UAI or UMAT scores, you can get into one of these health courses and transfer via undergraduate or graduate streams, depending on individual universities' rules.
Engineering
Engineering is a more career-oriented degree for quantitatively inclined people. There are many fields of engineering (mining, materials, petroleum etc) and in Australia, mining tends to produce the highest paying and most abundant jobs. Choose this course if you are interested in Physics, Chemistry and / or Mathematics (particular mechanics).
Another particularly popular choice is Aeronautical engineering at USYD. The misconception here is that graduates tend to work for airline companies designing planes and plane parts (called high-speed aerodynamics). This is the obvious career path, but aeronautical engineering also lets you work for car companies, designing aerodynamic external parts for cars (called low-speed aerodynamics).
The UAI required for this course has a very large range. Some of the higher UAI courses are: Aeronautical Engineering at USYD, which is about 92, and Aerospace at USYD, at 99+.
Mathematics
If you have a keen interest in mathematics, choose this course at university. A common misconception is that these types of courses (including science and arts) lead to no definite career paths. This is untrue. For mathematics, there are jobs in finance that pay very well, as mathematics graduates can often become actuaries or financial engineers. The thing is, becoming whatever you want does not require any specific degree (e.g. if you want to be an actuary, you don't actually need an actuary degree). There are professional bodies (e.g. CA, CPA for accountants, AIAA for actuaries, College of Law for lawyers etc) that set exams and their own criteria. Basically if you have the skills to pass their exams and meet their criteria, you can have that career.
Many mathematics graduates also go on to work in engineering, computer science, banking, insurance and other quantitative-analyst type positions. Only a small portion of maths graduates end up being in academia (the field of scholarly pursuits) as lecturers and researchers, as most people tend to think.
The UAI for maths degrees is generally low, as the demand is not too high for these courses. However don't be fooled, as there is absolutely no correlation between entrance UAI and course difficulty. As many people will tell you, maths degrees (along with engineering and science) are very difficult and challenging, but also very rewarding to those keenly interested.
USYD offers a BScience (Adv Math) degree which is highly regarded and is likely to contain the brightest university undergraduates in NSW. Its required UAI is around 98.
Science / Arts Science is a good degree if you're keenly interested in any science (chemistry, physics or biology). If you are more of a humanities person and enjoy subjects like English, ancient / modern history, languages, social sciences etc.
We recommend combining these subjects to more career-oriented degrees like commerce, engineering, law, medicine etc. These courses are great in that they add flavour to your other degree as well as giving you a wider experience gained from university education, which will help your career whatever that may be.
The required UAI for these courses are generally very accessible at even the more reputable universities. Generally speaking, USYD is slightly better than UNSW in terms of reputation for both Arts and Science degrees.
3 year single degree vs 5 year double degrees
Students often consider whether to do a 3 year SINGLE degree, or a 5 year DOUBLE degree during their time at university. In our experience, we recommend combining only if the second degree adds value to your career aspirations. For example, if you choose commerce and are thinking of combining this with Arts for example, you should ask yourself what you intend to get out of an Arts degree. For example, a good reason to combine is if you're learning languages and intend to work overseas in the future.
One thing students need to consider and realise is that combining a degree adds 2 whole years to your degree. Double degrees tend to be 5 years (some exceptions where they are 4 years, and some are longer). The extra HECS fees you incur over the extra 2 years should not be taken lightly. Think of university costing you an extra 60%! Additionally, you need to consider the opportunity cost (lost opportunity) of 2 years worth of working. If you had graduated 2 years earlier, you could have started your career 2 years younger, so we need to also consider whether the final decision of combing is worthwhile or not.
The effect of having 2 degrees on your hireability as a future jobseeker is overrated we think. University graduates with uncombined degrees (e.g. straight BCom) end up getting the same jobs as those who have combined (e.g. BCom / Science).
Therefore we recommend the general rule of combining only if necessary. Ask people who have gone through university and done the degree(s) you're thinking of doing. Ask them about whether there's any tangible benefit from combining degrees, in terms of career prospect, starting position, starting salary etc and make your decision based on the advice you get.
Honours degree If you're still enthusiastic over your university degree, even after 3-5 years, you can elect to do an extra year where you will (usually) conduct research into a specific area of your field, and at the end of the year, submit a long thesis with your findings. Honours degrees are awarded as modified degrees of the normal degree. For example if you did law and honours, it would be LLB(Hons).
An honours degree is looked upon highly favourably by employers as it indicates that the graduate has a deeper and more specialised knowledge of his field. Generally speaking, an honours degree is looked upon better than a combined degree. The view is that anyone can do a combined degree (just get the UAI you need) but not everyone is bright enough to do an honours degree. Therefore this is another reason why we recommend you to choose a course you will genuinely enjoy - because you will be good at it.
What if I don't get the UAI I need?
Fear not. Transferring within university is relatively easy. Transferring between universities or within the same university will involve calculation of a rank-based mark similar to a UAI. 25% of this score will be based on your latest UAI score, and 75% will be based on your university WAM (Weighted Average Mark) which is basically how well you've done at university so far.
Therefore, if you don't get the UAI you need for the course you desire, we strongly recommend that you choose a course that you're good at. If you choose something you are not good at, you won't be able to score a sufficiently high WAM to transfer into the course you want.
Typically for most popular courses at reputable universities, you will need a Distinction average (WAM > 75) after your first year to be able to successfully transfer into your desired course for second year onwards. We also highly recommend you do a course which is closely related to the degree you want to get into.
For example, a highly popular use of this technique to get into law at USYD or UNSW (because not everybody can get 99+ UAI) is to first enrol into commerce at these universities. Once you are in commerce, for your first year, while everyone else is busy partying, study hard and score a Distinction average. After your first year (2 semesters), this WAM combined with a UAI which is high enough to get you into commerce should be sufficient to be able to transfer into law successfully.
How hard is a Distinction average? Surprisingly less hard than people make it out to be. Remember, university is not like the HSC where you are forced to do English and 3-4 other subjects which are totally different. At university, assuming you follow our advice and choose something you'd be good at, all you need to worry about are 4 subjects per semester, each subject being related to the general field that you're interested in. There's no compulsory subjects, and no need to do subjects that have almost nothing to do with each other (e.g. History and Physics), all you need to do is focus on subjects which you happen to be good at. In fact, a High Distinction average (WAM > 85) is well within reach for some students, as long as they study consistently, pay attention in class and seek help when needed.
To our students
All of us have been down this path one time or another and we're always happy to give you advice. Our team consists of people who have done law / med / commerce / arts / science and a variety of others. We can tell you all about transfer criteria and what to do in order to maximise the chances of you getting into the course you want, even after the HSC is over. If you'd like to find out more about anything mentioned in this article, feel free to post a question in the general section of the student forums."
Wednesday, 9 May 2018
Who Are The Heirs Of Seshendra Sharma?
"The literary world is aware that my father Gunturu Seshendra Sharma, eminent poet, litterateur and scholar-critic, died on 30th may 2007. Ever since he expired, there has been no mention of his parents, family members and other personal details in the news and in the articles about him. Not only this, fictional lies are being spread and using money power one shady lady is being propagated as his wife and so on. This has been causing me, as his son, a great mental agony. That is why, through this article, I am revealing certain fundamental truths to the literary field of this country and the civilized society. I appeal to your conscience to uphold truth, justice and values of our composite culture.
Seshendra Sharma's family members are: Parents: Subrahmanyam Sharma, Ammaayamma; Wife: Janaki Daughters: Vasundhara, Revathi, Sons: Vanamali, Saatyaki. Only these two are legal heirs of Seshendra Sharma, socially and morally too.
Street Play and Circus: In 1972, away from the civilized society, without the knowledge of parents and near and dear, in a far flung village called Halebeed in Karnataka a circus, a street play was staged. Let me make it clear that even after this street play my father did not divorce my mother Mrs.G.Janaki legally. He never had even a faint intention of committing such an uncivilized act. On the contrary, in all crucial Government documents he nominated my mother as his legal heir from time to time. During his long career as Municipal Commissioner with The Government of Andhra Pradesh, he retired 3 times. His first retirement came in 1975 by way of compulsory retirement for his anti establishment writings during Mrs. Gandhi's' emergency. His second retirement came in 1983 when the then new chief minister N.T. Rama Rao's government reduced the age of service from 58 to 55 years. The third and final retirement in the year 1985 on attaining 58 years of age. On all these occasions, in all the government documents, my father Seshendra Sharma nominated my mother Mrs. Janaki as his legal heir. This is precisely why the self contradictory 'second marriage' is a circus enacted away from the society and Law does not recognize this type of street plays as marriage.
Lakshmi Parvathi in literature
N.T. Rama Rao, actor turned politician married Ms. Lakshimi Parvathi in 1994 and subsequently in January 1995 he came to power for the second time. She used to act as an extra constitutional power and run the matters of government and the party. She developed her own coterie of cohorts and started dominating the party. After NTR was toppled by his own son- in-law, most of them parted ways with her. And the remaining touts left her for good the day NTR breathed his last. Ms.Indira Dhanrajgir has been playing the same role in Telugu literature over a period of more than 3 decades. In the guise of literature she developed her own coterie of lumpens with extra literary and money mongering elements - Tangirala Subba Rao, Velichala Kondala RAo(Editor:Jayanthi) Cheekolu Sundarayya(A.G.'s Office, Hyderabad et al).
There are a couple[ of dissimilarities between these two instances. After the demise of NTR, L.P's coterie of cohorts disappeared once and for all. Whereas, in Indira Dhanrajgir's case new lumpens are entering the field with the passage of time. Squandering her late father's wealth, she is roping in new touts. Since NTR's wife Basava Tarakam passed away in 1984 and since he was old and sick NTR's marriage with LP has ethical basis and is legal completely. Whereas I.D's is neither ethical nor legal. Hence it is a street play. This is the reason why after my father's death she has been spending money on a larger scale and indulging in false publicity and propaganda. Bh. Krishna Murthy, Sadasiva Sharma (The then Editor of Andhra Prabha:Telugu Daily, presently with Hindi Milap) Chandrasekhara Rao(Telugu lecturer: Methodist Degree College) etc. are indulging in all sorts of heinous acts to prop up I.D as my father's wife.
My father passed away on 30 May 2007. When our family was in grief and I was performing the 11 day ritual as per my mother's wish, the above mentioned Sadasiva Sharma went to Municipal Office on 4th June, created ruckus, played havoc telling them that he is from the Prime Minister's Office , made some 'senior officials' make phone calls to the officials concerned and got my father's death certificate forcibly issued. When the entire family was mourning the death of the family head, a stranger and a lumpen S.S -Why did he collect my father's death certificate forcibly from the municipal authorities? Whom did he collect it for?
THREE NAMES OF THE SAME PERSON IN 3 DECADES
This is perhaps for the first time that the name of a lady appears in 3 forms at a time. Perhaps in 1970, in my father's collection of poems""PAKSHULU'' her name appeared As Rajkumari Indira Devi Dhanrajgir. In 2006 she published a fake version of Kamaostav(Rewritten by a muffian Called Chandrasekhara Rao) . In this book her name appears as R.I.D.D. Prior to 1970 in Maqdoom Mohiuddeen's(Renowned Urdu Poet) anthology of poetry 'Bisath -E-Raks', in Urdu as well as Hindi , at the end of two poems her name appears as Kumari Indira Dhanrajgir. On 15th June 2007 A.P state cultural affairs department and Telugu University jointly held my father's memorial meeting. I.D hijacked this meeting by issuing her own commercial advertisements in English and Telugu dailies. In these advertisements her name appeared as Smt. Indira Devi Seshendra Sharma and again in the commercial public notices made by her in the month of November 2007her name appeared as Rajkumari devi etc. Why does her name appear in different forms on different occasions? Will I.D explain? Will Sadasiva Sharma clarify, who forcibly took my father's death certificate after four days of his death? Or will Bh.Krishna Murthy clarify?
If I.D has even an iota of regard, respect for or faith in love, or relation, the institution of marriage, immediately after'Halebeed Circus', she would have used my father's family sir name and her name would have appeared as Gunturu Indira. Since she was conscious of her goal during all times and conditions she did not take such a hasty and mindless step of change of her name.
WHERE DOES THE REAL SECRET LIE? Her life is totally illegal, anti-social and immoral.
I.D's father performed her marriage with SRikishenSeth, Nephew of the then Prime minister to Nizam, Maharaja Kishen pershad in 1945. On the day of marriage itself I.D beat SrikeshenSeth up and ran away from him. She did not stop at that. She propagated among his friends and relatives and near and dear that he was not enough of a man and unfit for conjugal/ marital life. She filed a divorce case against him and dragged it till 1969/70. Lion's share of her husband's life got evaporated and was sapped completely by then. His parents used to approach I.D's father and plead with him to prevail upon his daughter, put sense into her head and see that she either lives with their son or dissolves the marriage legally so that they can remarry off their son. But I.D did not heed. Raja Dhanrajgir after getting disgusted with her nasty activities stipulated a mandatory condition in his will. He stated that I.D would be entitled to get a share of his property only if she is married.
This is the reason why ID who has no respect for the institution of marriage or regard or desire for marital life , in the guise of love and love poetry inflicted indelible blemish on the institution of marriage which is unprecedented in the literary history of the world. After my father's death she has been indulging in more rigorous false publicity along with her coterie of touts.
KAMOSTAV:STORY OF ID'S SOUL:
With this novel Kamostav, father's literary life came to an end for good. He did not produce literary works worth mentioning in his later phase of life. During those days he asked for my opinion on that novel. I told him clearly that it lacks the form and content of a novel; it does not have a story line, plot, sequences, characters and eventually a message which every novel gives. Hence it is a trash. Several people went to court and got its publication in a weekly stopped. ID got this very trash rewritten completely by Chandrasekhara Rao and printed it. This kind of heinous development has never taken place in the recorded history of Telugu literature till date. A writing which brought disrepute to my father in the literary field and isolated him in the society, why did she get it rewritten by somebody and publish it claiming copyright to be hers? What is her motive? What is her aim? That is why Kamotsav is ID's biography, story of her inner soul.
SESHENDRA'S COPYRIGHTS:
My father gifted away copyrights of his entire works along with their translations to me by way of birth day gift to me on 2.12.1989. Since then I have published several of his works during his lifetime itself. Kamostav, the version that is secretly made available is the dirty work of cheapsters and lumpens under the leadership of ID. It is much worse than violation of copyrights. That is the reason why I have been reluctant to take action so far. If she and her debased henchmen try to violate copyrights of my father's works bequeathed to me, I shall take exemplary legal action against them.
ID made 2 public notices to the effect that my father cancelled all his earlier transfer of copyrights and retransferred all his rights to her. This is a palace intrigue in the modern era in our civilized society.
WHAT DOES LAW SAY ABOUT COPYRIGHTS?
An author can transfer copyrights of his works to any one as per her/his wish. But the Copyrights Act 1957 and the Supreme Court in its various judgments has clearly stipulated a procedure to revoke earlier assignment and transferring of copyrights to somebody else subsequently. The author has to issue a notice to the 1st assignee, giving 6 months time for reply. Depending on the reply the author can take his next step. Where as in my father's copyrights matter he did not even inform me orally of any such cancellation. ID claims that she has a typed document of transfer of copyrights signed by my father on 5.1.2006. Between 5.1.2006 and 30.5.2007, leave alone issuing a notice, he did not even inform me orally.
My father who assigned copyrights to me in his own handwriting, when he was relatively young and physically fit did not require to cancel the 1st assignment when he was totally dilapidated, almost bedridden and was counting his days. Another important aspect of the matter is that I have printed the Xerox of my father's document in his own works as early as 1995 and have been doing so from time to time during his life time. Where as ID claims to possess a document after my father's death and she has not made it public so far. ID tried to get my father's complete works published in different languages by Telugu University (Hyderabad: A.P: India) by paying them Rs. 6 Lakhs. I approached Telugu University and apprised them of facts. On the advice of legal experts, they stopped this project and returned ID's money to her. It is an incontrovertible fact that ID's document is a forged and fraudulent document which does not stand scrutiny before law. Court shall certainly award her exemplary punishment. In all societies and times literature has been social wealth/public property from time immemorial. It should not be used as a mask to grab share of parental property illegally and unethically. I am committed to this cause/ ideal and appeal to the civilized society to strengthen my hands in this endeavor. ID's younger brother Sri Mahendra Pratapgir is the lone legal heir apparent of that family and keeping him in dark, she is squandering her father's wealth in Telugu literature for her nasty propaganda.
FATHER PASSED AWAY:
In 1997 when he suffered the 1st heart attack he was half-dead. Dr.Sudhakar Reddy, cardiologist of Mediciti Hospitals (Native of Warangal.A.P) performed angiogram and diagnosed that he had blocks in arteries and one valve was damaged completely. He advised open heart surgery. But ID averted it and got angioplasty performed. His health declined rapidly since then and was leading the life of virtually an invalid till he breathed his last. He suffered inexplicable mental and physical torture for about a decade. During the last leg of his journey he was isolated from his family completely. He was deserted by one and all in the literary field. When his younger brother passed away, his younger sister passed away he did not visit his ancestral home in his village and call on those families. He became target of jealousy and animosity in the society. He became a victim of false impression with the society that he was an aristocrat and rolling in luxuries. Whereas, he was deprived of even his native vegetarian food for decades together. As a silent and helpless witness to these painful happenings, I was subject to untold mental agony.
In the later half of March 2007 on one of my visits to him, I was aghast at his condition. His entire body was swollen. His appearance was like that of a stuffed gunny bag. I told him to get hospitalized. I told ID to rush him to a hospital. But of no avail. On 30th may 2007 at about 11 pm I got a phone call from her"" Come soon/Serious"" she said. As I entered at 11.15 pm ""Go inside/he is no more' she said.
* * *
One day when swarms of lamps vanish,
in the light of a lonely lamp I ask the dumb pillars
""Can't you liberate me from the disgust of this existence?
I ask those stand still forest flame trees
which blossom flowers at that very place year after year
""can't you rescue me?
I ask those high roof tops and this Venetian furniture
which every one feels are greater than me,
""can't you rescue me from the disgust of this existence?""
All these answer in a melancholic voice
""We have been languishing since more than 100 years
watching the same unchanging scenes
we are older prisoners than you are""
(Janavamsham: Telugu: Seshendra: Page 80-81:1993: Translated by me)
My father's first biography (in Hindi) titled ""Rashtrendu Seshendra: Ashesh Aayaam"" by Dr.Vishranth Vasishth appeared in 1994. Touching upon these very sensitive aspects of my father's life he commented in that book""SONE KE PINJRE ME PANCHCHI"" (A bird in a golden cage). Alarmed and agonized by his rapidly declining health, as early as June 2002, in order to bring pressure on ID, I gave a 2 cassettes long interview to Vijayaviharam of Janaharsha group. Later on when I enquired about that interview they said that in the raids conducted on their premises, they got destroyed.
I wanted to rescue my father and bring him back home when he was in good health. Alas! At last, I took him to the burial ground, laid him on the funeral pyre and consigned him to flames and returned home all alone."
Seshendra Sharma's family members are: Parents: Subrahmanyam Sharma, Ammaayamma; Wife: Janaki Daughters: Vasundhara, Revathi, Sons: Vanamali, Saatyaki. Only these two are legal heirs of Seshendra Sharma, socially and morally too.
Street Play and Circus: In 1972, away from the civilized society, without the knowledge of parents and near and dear, in a far flung village called Halebeed in Karnataka a circus, a street play was staged. Let me make it clear that even after this street play my father did not divorce my mother Mrs.G.Janaki legally. He never had even a faint intention of committing such an uncivilized act. On the contrary, in all crucial Government documents he nominated my mother as his legal heir from time to time. During his long career as Municipal Commissioner with The Government of Andhra Pradesh, he retired 3 times. His first retirement came in 1975 by way of compulsory retirement for his anti establishment writings during Mrs. Gandhi's' emergency. His second retirement came in 1983 when the then new chief minister N.T. Rama Rao's government reduced the age of service from 58 to 55 years. The third and final retirement in the year 1985 on attaining 58 years of age. On all these occasions, in all the government documents, my father Seshendra Sharma nominated my mother Mrs. Janaki as his legal heir. This is precisely why the self contradictory 'second marriage' is a circus enacted away from the society and Law does not recognize this type of street plays as marriage.
Lakshmi Parvathi in literature
N.T. Rama Rao, actor turned politician married Ms. Lakshimi Parvathi in 1994 and subsequently in January 1995 he came to power for the second time. She used to act as an extra constitutional power and run the matters of government and the party. She developed her own coterie of cohorts and started dominating the party. After NTR was toppled by his own son- in-law, most of them parted ways with her. And the remaining touts left her for good the day NTR breathed his last. Ms.Indira Dhanrajgir has been playing the same role in Telugu literature over a period of more than 3 decades. In the guise of literature she developed her own coterie of lumpens with extra literary and money mongering elements - Tangirala Subba Rao, Velichala Kondala RAo(Editor:Jayanthi) Cheekolu Sundarayya(A.G.'s Office, Hyderabad et al).
There are a couple[ of dissimilarities between these two instances. After the demise of NTR, L.P's coterie of cohorts disappeared once and for all. Whereas, in Indira Dhanrajgir's case new lumpens are entering the field with the passage of time. Squandering her late father's wealth, she is roping in new touts. Since NTR's wife Basava Tarakam passed away in 1984 and since he was old and sick NTR's marriage with LP has ethical basis and is legal completely. Whereas I.D's is neither ethical nor legal. Hence it is a street play. This is the reason why after my father's death she has been spending money on a larger scale and indulging in false publicity and propaganda. Bh. Krishna Murthy, Sadasiva Sharma (The then Editor of Andhra Prabha:Telugu Daily, presently with Hindi Milap) Chandrasekhara Rao(Telugu lecturer: Methodist Degree College) etc. are indulging in all sorts of heinous acts to prop up I.D as my father's wife.
My father passed away on 30 May 2007. When our family was in grief and I was performing the 11 day ritual as per my mother's wish, the above mentioned Sadasiva Sharma went to Municipal Office on 4th June, created ruckus, played havoc telling them that he is from the Prime Minister's Office , made some 'senior officials' make phone calls to the officials concerned and got my father's death certificate forcibly issued. When the entire family was mourning the death of the family head, a stranger and a lumpen S.S -Why did he collect my father's death certificate forcibly from the municipal authorities? Whom did he collect it for?
THREE NAMES OF THE SAME PERSON IN 3 DECADES
This is perhaps for the first time that the name of a lady appears in 3 forms at a time. Perhaps in 1970, in my father's collection of poems""PAKSHULU'' her name appeared As Rajkumari Indira Devi Dhanrajgir. In 2006 she published a fake version of Kamaostav(Rewritten by a muffian Called Chandrasekhara Rao) . In this book her name appears as R.I.D.D. Prior to 1970 in Maqdoom Mohiuddeen's(Renowned Urdu Poet) anthology of poetry 'Bisath -E-Raks', in Urdu as well as Hindi , at the end of two poems her name appears as Kumari Indira Dhanrajgir. On 15th June 2007 A.P state cultural affairs department and Telugu University jointly held my father's memorial meeting. I.D hijacked this meeting by issuing her own commercial advertisements in English and Telugu dailies. In these advertisements her name appeared as Smt. Indira Devi Seshendra Sharma and again in the commercial public notices made by her in the month of November 2007her name appeared as Rajkumari devi etc. Why does her name appear in different forms on different occasions? Will I.D explain? Will Sadasiva Sharma clarify, who forcibly took my father's death certificate after four days of his death? Or will Bh.Krishna Murthy clarify?
If I.D has even an iota of regard, respect for or faith in love, or relation, the institution of marriage, immediately after'Halebeed Circus', she would have used my father's family sir name and her name would have appeared as Gunturu Indira. Since she was conscious of her goal during all times and conditions she did not take such a hasty and mindless step of change of her name.
WHERE DOES THE REAL SECRET LIE? Her life is totally illegal, anti-social and immoral.
I.D's father performed her marriage with SRikishenSeth, Nephew of the then Prime minister to Nizam, Maharaja Kishen pershad in 1945. On the day of marriage itself I.D beat SrikeshenSeth up and ran away from him. She did not stop at that. She propagated among his friends and relatives and near and dear that he was not enough of a man and unfit for conjugal/ marital life. She filed a divorce case against him and dragged it till 1969/70. Lion's share of her husband's life got evaporated and was sapped completely by then. His parents used to approach I.D's father and plead with him to prevail upon his daughter, put sense into her head and see that she either lives with their son or dissolves the marriage legally so that they can remarry off their son. But I.D did not heed. Raja Dhanrajgir after getting disgusted with her nasty activities stipulated a mandatory condition in his will. He stated that I.D would be entitled to get a share of his property only if she is married.
This is the reason why ID who has no respect for the institution of marriage or regard or desire for marital life , in the guise of love and love poetry inflicted indelible blemish on the institution of marriage which is unprecedented in the literary history of the world. After my father's death she has been indulging in more rigorous false publicity along with her coterie of touts.
KAMOSTAV:STORY OF ID'S SOUL:
With this novel Kamostav, father's literary life came to an end for good. He did not produce literary works worth mentioning in his later phase of life. During those days he asked for my opinion on that novel. I told him clearly that it lacks the form and content of a novel; it does not have a story line, plot, sequences, characters and eventually a message which every novel gives. Hence it is a trash. Several people went to court and got its publication in a weekly stopped. ID got this very trash rewritten completely by Chandrasekhara Rao and printed it. This kind of heinous development has never taken place in the recorded history of Telugu literature till date. A writing which brought disrepute to my father in the literary field and isolated him in the society, why did she get it rewritten by somebody and publish it claiming copyright to be hers? What is her motive? What is her aim? That is why Kamotsav is ID's biography, story of her inner soul.
SESHENDRA'S COPYRIGHTS:
My father gifted away copyrights of his entire works along with their translations to me by way of birth day gift to me on 2.12.1989. Since then I have published several of his works during his lifetime itself. Kamostav, the version that is secretly made available is the dirty work of cheapsters and lumpens under the leadership of ID. It is much worse than violation of copyrights. That is the reason why I have been reluctant to take action so far. If she and her debased henchmen try to violate copyrights of my father's works bequeathed to me, I shall take exemplary legal action against them.
ID made 2 public notices to the effect that my father cancelled all his earlier transfer of copyrights and retransferred all his rights to her. This is a palace intrigue in the modern era in our civilized society.
WHAT DOES LAW SAY ABOUT COPYRIGHTS?
An author can transfer copyrights of his works to any one as per her/his wish. But the Copyrights Act 1957 and the Supreme Court in its various judgments has clearly stipulated a procedure to revoke earlier assignment and transferring of copyrights to somebody else subsequently. The author has to issue a notice to the 1st assignee, giving 6 months time for reply. Depending on the reply the author can take his next step. Where as in my father's copyrights matter he did not even inform me orally of any such cancellation. ID claims that she has a typed document of transfer of copyrights signed by my father on 5.1.2006. Between 5.1.2006 and 30.5.2007, leave alone issuing a notice, he did not even inform me orally.
My father who assigned copyrights to me in his own handwriting, when he was relatively young and physically fit did not require to cancel the 1st assignment when he was totally dilapidated, almost bedridden and was counting his days. Another important aspect of the matter is that I have printed the Xerox of my father's document in his own works as early as 1995 and have been doing so from time to time during his life time. Where as ID claims to possess a document after my father's death and she has not made it public so far. ID tried to get my father's complete works published in different languages by Telugu University (Hyderabad: A.P: India) by paying them Rs. 6 Lakhs. I approached Telugu University and apprised them of facts. On the advice of legal experts, they stopped this project and returned ID's money to her. It is an incontrovertible fact that ID's document is a forged and fraudulent document which does not stand scrutiny before law. Court shall certainly award her exemplary punishment. In all societies and times literature has been social wealth/public property from time immemorial. It should not be used as a mask to grab share of parental property illegally and unethically. I am committed to this cause/ ideal and appeal to the civilized society to strengthen my hands in this endeavor. ID's younger brother Sri Mahendra Pratapgir is the lone legal heir apparent of that family and keeping him in dark, she is squandering her father's wealth in Telugu literature for her nasty propaganda.
FATHER PASSED AWAY:
In 1997 when he suffered the 1st heart attack he was half-dead. Dr.Sudhakar Reddy, cardiologist of Mediciti Hospitals (Native of Warangal.A.P) performed angiogram and diagnosed that he had blocks in arteries and one valve was damaged completely. He advised open heart surgery. But ID averted it and got angioplasty performed. His health declined rapidly since then and was leading the life of virtually an invalid till he breathed his last. He suffered inexplicable mental and physical torture for about a decade. During the last leg of his journey he was isolated from his family completely. He was deserted by one and all in the literary field. When his younger brother passed away, his younger sister passed away he did not visit his ancestral home in his village and call on those families. He became target of jealousy and animosity in the society. He became a victim of false impression with the society that he was an aristocrat and rolling in luxuries. Whereas, he was deprived of even his native vegetarian food for decades together. As a silent and helpless witness to these painful happenings, I was subject to untold mental agony.
In the later half of March 2007 on one of my visits to him, I was aghast at his condition. His entire body was swollen. His appearance was like that of a stuffed gunny bag. I told him to get hospitalized. I told ID to rush him to a hospital. But of no avail. On 30th may 2007 at about 11 pm I got a phone call from her"" Come soon/Serious"" she said. As I entered at 11.15 pm ""Go inside/he is no more' she said.
* * *
One day when swarms of lamps vanish,
in the light of a lonely lamp I ask the dumb pillars
""Can't you liberate me from the disgust of this existence?
I ask those stand still forest flame trees
which blossom flowers at that very place year after year
""can't you rescue me?
I ask those high roof tops and this Venetian furniture
which every one feels are greater than me,
""can't you rescue me from the disgust of this existence?""
All these answer in a melancholic voice
""We have been languishing since more than 100 years
watching the same unchanging scenes
we are older prisoners than you are""
(Janavamsham: Telugu: Seshendra: Page 80-81:1993: Translated by me)
My father's first biography (in Hindi) titled ""Rashtrendu Seshendra: Ashesh Aayaam"" by Dr.Vishranth Vasishth appeared in 1994. Touching upon these very sensitive aspects of my father's life he commented in that book""SONE KE PINJRE ME PANCHCHI"" (A bird in a golden cage). Alarmed and agonized by his rapidly declining health, as early as June 2002, in order to bring pressure on ID, I gave a 2 cassettes long interview to Vijayaviharam of Janaharsha group. Later on when I enquired about that interview they said that in the raids conducted on their premises, they got destroyed.
I wanted to rescue my father and bring him back home when he was in good health. Alas! At last, I took him to the burial ground, laid him on the funeral pyre and consigned him to flames and returned home all alone."
"Ethics, Energy, Emotion and the Human Condition"
"This article seeks to connect ethics with energy and emotion in order to help humanity reach its optimum state of health and well being. It is crucial that humanity achieves a high level of coherence with the new Platonic--Fullerene Chemistry because if provides a key to human survival on this planet. The reason for this being that PFC is based on ethical science, as opposed to the sterile, entropic chemistry that humanity is currently subject to. An ongoing obsession with this entropic chemistry can only lead to incoherence, disorder and total breakdown. This paper will show how ethics and ethical science are crucial to human evolution. We need to understand how energy and emotion fit into this picture and how to utilise these two forces to bring about ethical behaviour for the betterment of the human condition.
Platonic--Fullerene Chemistry, so named by Professor Robert Pope, director of the Science--Art Centre of Australia, embraces the metaphysical engineering principles of both Plato and Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller, inspired by Platonic geometry, designed geodesic spheres, later replicated by a team of chemists, who named them 'buckyballs' in his honour. They became a scientific sensation, alluding to solutions to the world's energy crisis, as will be explained in this article. The buckyball story is largely about carbon, an extraordinary element, with over 90 percent of all known chemical substances built around it; possibly the most important being, the DNA and its proteins.
However, despite organic chemistry being based on carbon, it wasn't until 1985 that its most extraordinary feature was discovered. Until then the only two known forms that consisted entirely of carbon atoms were diamond and graphite. Graphite carbon atoms (which are formed in stacked sheets of linked hexagons) are each bonded weakly to three other atoms, giving graphite its soft, greasy feel. In 1985, scientists discovered that by using a powerful laser beam they could vaporise graphite in an atmosphere of helium gas. Analysing the resulting carbon clusters, they discovered carbon molecules of a previously unknown nature, of which the most common was a perfect sphere comprising hexagonal and pentagonal geometrical shapes that contained 60 carbon atoms.
After much debate, it became apparent to the scientists involved (Curl, Kroto and Smalley) that these spherical molecules were extremely stable. They then discovered that this combination of geometric shapes formed the basis of the geodesic sphere designed by Robert Buckminster Fuller, for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. From then on, the new carbon molecule was known as the buckminsterfullerene, now shortened to fullerene or buckyball, which chemists write as C 60. After the prestigious scientific journal 'Nature' (Holper & Sarre 1999) published this extraordinary finding, quite a stir took place in the scientific community, once it was realised that buckyballs could be very useful substances. In 1996, for this discovery, Curl, Kroto and Smalley became recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Owing to their unusual hollow cage-like shape, science finds buckyball molecules and other fullerenes intriguing, especially as the carbon atoms can react with other atoms and molecules, while retaining their integrity and shape. Scientists have also discovered tubes of carbon-like rolls of chicken wire by passing an electric current between graphite rods. These carbon tubes, (nanotubes or buckytubes) form a series of embedded cylinders, which when catalysed by a minuscule dose of cobalt, nickel or iron, form a hollow nanotube a mere one atom thick. These tubes can be of great length, comprising up to one million carbon atoms.
Fullerenes are being utilised in numerous ways, perhaps most importantly for their newly discovered energy producing potential. Fuel coated carbon nanotubes are now known to generate an electrical current from a fast moving thermal combustion wave, travelling along its length, by dragging electrons behind. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists have discovered that this energising process produces weight proportionately, 100 times more energy than a lithium-ion battery. Also, unlike batteries, it does not discharge energy while not being used.
Nanotubes, being 50 to 200 nanometres thick, are wide enough to allow the passage of proteins functioning with coherent light waves. According to the German scientist Hans Herman Gerdes, nanotubes span distances of several cell diameters connecting two separate cell interiors, giving the organism a new way of communicating over long ranges. Gerdes colleague, Amin Rustom discovered naturally occurring nanotubes in rat cells and later, together they saw them forming between human kidney cells as well. With the help of video microscopy, they observed adjacent cells reaching out to each other with antenna--like projections, establishing contact and completing the tubular connection. This process goes far beyond previously observed cellular pairing, as the cells send out many nanotubes, forming an intricate and mobile network of linked cells, lasting anything from minutes to hours. By utilising fluorescent proteins, Gerde's team also discovered that relatively large cellular structures were able to commute between cells, through these nanotubes.
Scientists have long known that carbon nanotubes are extremely efficient in conducting heat. New quantum biology research demonstrates that the functioning of carbon nanotubes violates the second law of thermodynamics, as Robert Pope clearly predicted several years ago. The second law has, for a very long time, been held sacrosanct in scientific circles. This is because logic says that hot things can only become cold, not hotter. However, at nano scales. it seems that different rules can apply. Scientists speaking of thermal conductivity, refer to heat as 'phonons' moving through material. Within commonplace materials such as wood, phonons continually bump into things. Collisions scatter the heat packages, slowing their progress in much the same way that a crowded race track would impede the performance of an Olympic runner. This is not so with carbon nanotubes. In contrast to entropic chemistry, heat applied to one end of a carbon nanotube races to the other end 100 times faster than heat travelling through the most conductive metals.
Chih Wei Chang's team at Berkeley University created defects in their nanotubes to slow down the thermal energy process. Surprisingly, this had no affect on their heat conducting powers, leaving their thermal conductivity intact. The fact that thermal waves do not slow down in contorted tubes contradicts second law logic. According to thermo dynamic science, carbon at 1000 kelvins should soon become carbon dioxide. Yet, due to the tremendous speed of the phonons at temperatures in excess of 2,500 kelvins, the intensely hot carbon was left unburned.
Michael Strano, one of the world's top chemists, poured a line of gasoline on the ground, next to a stick of the same length. He lit both at the same end simultaneously, knowing the flame would move much faster through the liquid. However, during lab experiments, the heatwave igniting the fuel--drenched nanotube travelled 10,000 times faster than through the fuel alone. The resulting super fast wave, appeared to be self--propagating. This is not possible according to the second law. However, as the fuel burned it released greater heat into the nanotube, completely violating classical thermodynamics. According to Strano, the heat wave, moving at rocket speed, excites the nanotube's electrons, moving them along with it. This thermal power wave, generates electricity at an amazing rate, indicating new sources of potential clean energy. The principle here seems to be the faster the wave the greater the power. The energy generated by the fuel drenched nanotube, as mentioned, is already much higher than that of a lithium ion battery and this is just the beginning of their enormous potential.
Dr Bruce Lipton made a huge breakthrough in quantum biology with his discovery that the fractal properties of the cell are linked to cellular evolution and hence, the evolutionary potential of the whole organism. His book titled The Biology of Belief, shows that genes and DNA are not the controllers of our biology. Instead, DNA is controlled by environmental signals from outside the cell. Lipton postulated that energetic messages from positive and negatives attitudes in response to our feelings and the way we perceive environmental reality, have a strong effect on our consciousness. In this synthesis of the latest research in quantum cell biology, Lipton posits that our DNA and thus our bodies can change as our thinking and perception is retrained. Robert Pope has obtained experimental evidence that an unconscious optical sensing of reality has been evolving creative holographic perceptions for many centuries.
Furthermore, as both Lipton and Pope predicted, environmental information as quantum waveforms, received by protein receptor bio-photons in the cellular liquid-crystal membrane are transmitted electromagnetically through nanotubes to reassemble protein enfolding in the DNA. The effect of the fractal logic sonic beatings of the heart rhythmically connected with our feelings, formulate the constant re patterning of DNA, contradicting our present understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. This process evolves consciousness to balance entropy, as insisted by the Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Svent Gyoergyi.
The heart beat transforms into electromagnetic energy in the body's glandular system, holographically copying the heart's emotional sound. We experience feeling from incoming environmental light-energy information directed through the cellular carbon nanotubes. This information, as coherent laser light racing through carbon nanotubes modulates the DNA's codons (antenna--like triggers), which are activated by electromagnetic energy passing through the double helix. Accordingly, the number of codons triggered by the wave is determined by the intensity of the emotional experience. Sensually, the more pleasing the experience aesthetically the greater the thermal nanotubule energy, hence the higher the electromagnetic vibration.
Dr Candace pert, in The Molecule of Emotion, posits that consciousness is like light. She explains how emotions exist both in a quantum biological state as energy and matter in the vibrating receptors on every cell in the body. In her scientific work during the 1980's, she theorised how the 'body--mind' functions as a single psychoacoustic network of information molecules that control our health and psychology. When we are in a psychologically healthy and emotionally sound condition we feel good and we can then act in ethical ways. Ethical participation in the evolving health of universal consciousness describes the basis of Aristotle's science to guide ennobling government, in order for humanity to avoid extinction.
Immanuel Kant, like many Enlightenment thinkers, held the mental faculty in high esteem. In his work on aesthetics he argued that our judgment enabled us to experience beauty, grasping such experiences as part of an ordered, purposeful natural world. Aesthetics, however, only accounts for the outer appearance of things and does not necessarily relate to Aristotelian ethics. Although Kantian aesthetics can lead to ethics, it can only do so by defying our incomplete understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. In essence, aesthetics can only perceive beauty within entropic decay. However, the bio-ethics of the late Dr George Cockburn of the Australian Science--Art Centre, in his book about art appreciation, refers to the actual process of ethical beauty, not just snap shots of it. The fractal nature of ethical beauty, seen in the functioning of the 'beautiful attractor' utilises Phi harmonics and related fractal phenomena, to maintain optimum, healthy, evolutionary consciousness.
Phi ratio frequencies, associated with Platonic harmonics, create a vibration that resonates with our hearts, transmitting a high frequency wave to the DNA. As mentioned, up to 60 codon triggers then engage with the heart resonance, allowing the host organism to function at higher energy levels. The higher the number of triggers activated, the higher the signal frequency and the greater the ethical response. Response to ethical universal purpose is intuitive and has nothing to do with learned morality. This understanding was postulated last century by the electromagnetic theories of the scientist educator Maria Montessori.
Intuitive response to universal ethics, which requires a state of higher consciousness, depends upon environmental electromagnetic frequencies (emfs). Mainstream entropic science holds that strong emfs are much more important than weak emfs, the latter having little or no biological effect. However, many scientists believe electromagnetic fields conventionally considered as being thermally weak (or non-ionising) may be high in biological information content. Weak electromagnetic fields are now understood to be both bio-energetic and bio-informational, with measurable biological effects. The Chinese, for example, have known about this for thousands of years with their Yin Yang concept, in which the Yin emf is weak but has a high informational content. From this finding it can be reasoned that high informational content is necessary to provide DNA with the necessary evolutionary, survival data.
In my book Feminine Ethics in the New Measurement of Humanity, (a review of Dr George Cockburn's book A Bioaesthetic Key to Creative Physics and Art, I wrote that Dr Cockburn's work was about how cerebral mechanisms function in response to a universal reality maintained by the balancing of both entropic and negentropic energy systems. Entropic systems, which work on the basis of strong emfs with low bio--informational content, cannot be sustainable. Increasingly strengthening emfs with decreasing biological survival information must, in the long term, result in species extinction. Unless entropic emfs are balanced with weak emfs with the necessary ethical, survival data, it is clear that there can be no long--term future for humanity.
Homoeopathy is a good example of using weak field emfs to achieve biological balance to bring about optimum health. Other examples of thermally weak, but high informational content fields are visible light, healing touch, intuition, and clairvoyance. Concerning this, biological tissues have electronic components that can receive and transmit weak electronic signals that are actually below entropic thermal comprehension. Biological organisms use these weak electromagnetic fields (electric and photonic) to communicate holographically, with all parts of themselves.
German chemist, Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal, while carrying out water property research in South Korea, discovered a whole new dimension to what happens when you dissolve a substance in water and then add more water. Conventional science states that the dissolved molecules simply spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted, weakening any effect it may have. However, these two chemists found that some molecules clump together, in fractal fashion, first as clusters and then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Rather than drifting apart from their neighbours, they actually become closer.
Logic suggests fractal clumping is about memory information ethically balancing the system. This quantum entanglement state of change, from a homogeneous to a non homogeneous condition, occurs by way of the strange attractor linking the living process to infinity by ethically balancing entropy. As it expands, the dissolved substance becomes increasingly less noticeable. However, the beautiful attractor, balanced by the strange attractor, adds new information to the water by joining molecules and catalysing the effect of the substance-water mix, by tapping into its memory.
The scientists stumbled upon this effect while investigating fullerenes at their lab in the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They discovered that the football--shaped buckyball molecules kept forming irregular aggregates in the solution. When they diluted the solution, the size of the fullerene particles increased, a phenomenon new to chemistry. In order to get the otherwise insoluble buckyballs to dissolve in water, the chemists mixed it with a circular sugar--like molecule called a cyclodextrin.
From these results there is clearly a direct link between the functions of the beautiful and strange attractors. Just as aesthetics requires strong emfs and little bioinformation, ethics, on the other hand, needs weak emfs and increased fractal information. These two become balanced and harmonised at a mutual centre, according to golden mean geometries, as Robert Pope has predicted.
The greatest amount of electrical ethical information standing as a wave electron spin function is located in the heart. The heart has seven discreet layers that are arranged to the seven spin angles of the fullerene tetrahedra. As the electron spin activates symmetry, the heart truly can be seen as the beautiful attractor. The golden mean fractal heart--shape is about unfolding this spin into usable wavelengths. In fact, the heart can be seen to be the transformer for maximum entry of spin or energy into the body. All these seven spin geometrical angles focus on a weathervane-like spiral strip of the torus attractor at the centre of the heart.
This dense centre affects the sound of the heart projected onto the wall of the pericardium. The torus attractor affects the phase of the sonic energy vibrating both the pericardium and thymus. The Thymus (also known as the energy centre referred to as the heart chakra), is where immune system instructions are translated. The thymus uses these sonic shadows on the wall of the pericardium cave to ascertain the wave length ingredients to integrate into cellular identity. This appears to occur because phase or wave-sharing coherence makes cell membranes possible. Cellular membranes are liquid crystal, self organising chemical libraries processing environmental signals (phenomena) as well as holographic heart--wave frequencies.
The convergence of electrical and sonic pressure is exemplified by the muscular and toroidal electrical structure of the heart. If the orderliness or coherence of electrical energy grows, then health endorphins result affecting Candace Pert's 'Molecule of Emotion'. The immune system of the body expands, bringing about a state of well being, aligning it with the ethical human condition. This state of optimum health and beautiful/strange attractor harmonics, triggers intuitive awareness translating into ethical behaviour.
The heart, however, is not the body's only beautiful attractor as the centriole, in each mammalian cell, also takes on this role. The function of centrioles has been controversial and remains incompletely resolved because centrioles, in and of themselves, do not directly perform any known physiological activity. Instead, their role is generally seen to be that of a framework onto which other functional structures are built. It is considered by science that centrioles are primarily involved in forming two structures, centrosomes and cilia. However, Dr Johan Callerman, in his book, titled The Purposeful Universe, posits that the centriole has, among it various functions, the role of orchestrating cellular organisation as well as the formation of the whole organism.
This makes sense from the standpoint of its role in cell division during which the centrosome divides and replicates resulting in two centrosomes, each with its own pair of centrioles. The centriole pair, moving to opposite ends of the nucleus, then grows micro-tubules responsible for separating replicating chromosomes into two daughter cells.
However, the centriole's function appears to go much further. According to the latest science on the subject centrioles may be a key element in understanding life and consciousness. Centrioles found in every mammalian cell may be what gives life the dynamism that science is unable to explain. Science cannot simply mix chemicals and create life. It cannot even begin to create life from non living matter. Even if science could do this it still doesn't explain life. However, as science learns more about centrioles entropic world view physics becomes much less credible.
Centrioles, while exercising a high degree of control over the cells, seem to be attuned to some higher ethical criteria, in contradiction to entropic second law understanding. Although,the centriole seems to be no more than an antenna-like structure, transmitting intelligence to the cell, its guidance has to come from beyond entropic logic, as predicted by the Platonic Science for Ethical Ends, belonging to the functioning of the Greek Nous. So, if centrioles and DNA codons act like aerials, what signals are they picking up and responding to?
Science is hard-pressed to explain the source of any animating signal coming from the physical universe. Anaxagoras sought to explain this with his 'Nous', a creative force based on fractal logic. Entropic science may be able to offer an operational description about consciousness, but it does not tell us how life happens or why it happens the way it does.
Although the living cell, an extraordinarily complex structure, cannot be explained operationally by science it is now recognised that the centriole is probably a major key in our understanding of how the inanimate becomes animate and even, to some degree, the source of Anaxagoras' Nous consciousness (an innate intelligent property in the sub stratum of the physical atom). Centrioles, composed of sub structures, called 'micro--tubules' and located in the nucleus of all mammalian cells, may point to the existence of David Bohm's holographic non--physical universe. As science is increasingly being forced to view 'fields' as a basic substance of reality', such a concept has validity.
The initial concept of the centriole being the possible key to consciousness was clearly alluded to by Roger Penrose, one of the world's top physicists. However, the function of the centriole does not fit in with his purely materialist interpretation. Consciousness is not simply a matter of sufficient computer power, which if so, would replace futuristic human potential with artificial intelligence. Centrioles, as basic antennas focusing into existence some sort of life from outside this physical universe, may well provide for dynamical life, as well as being the focus and source of consciousness. If, as Anaxagoras postulated, consciousness comes from within the sub stratum of each atom, holographically it becomes the universal mind. This concept fits well with the generally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, which like Anaxagoras' 'Nous', does not have ethics built into it.
This was a specific problem for the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy, which existed to fuse ethics into the Nous, so that the creative force would not become destructive. Within the enlightenment limitations of his time Plato did the best he could with the idea of ethics. Robert Pope's titling of Platonic--Fullerene Chemistry upgrading quantum mechanics to quantum biology was recognised on the 24th of September 2010 by the Italian Republic, as the Florentine New Measurement of Humanity Renaissance.
The existence of an electrical body or organising field of intelligence (auric sheath) formed around all living organisms has long been proposed and this is now being measured by the Florentine Project. This field is held to contain the system's intelligence that organises the structure of the body down to the atomic level. The fractal structure of the physical heart, receives this field energy and transforms it into electrical energy, reading its encoded information. The brain, acting as a detector of this information, communicates with the cellular systems of the body, causing an information flow to travel up and down the harmonic frequency scale. Each phrase--like heartbeat is part of a song that sends organising instructions throughout the host organism's system. This is explained by Texas University's Dr Richard Merrick, in his book Interference--a grand musical theory, in which he translated this Pythagorean Music of the Spheres into a electromagnetic description of the human cerebral process.
Ethical behaviour is not about doing the right thing for its own sake. In essence, it is about being coherent with universal survival information. As human survival data requires constant updates, like news flashes, increasingly ordered complex information is required. Yet, for it to be useful, it has to be intuitively ordered by the beautiful attractor, and then acted upon by the strange attractor. Therefore, it is the heart, not the brain, that passes this crucial information on to the DNA. For this patterning to be both ordered and irregular simultaneously, the model used has to be of a fractal nature.
Fractal logic, displaying a weak emf with strong biological information, is a unifying concept integrating scale-dependence and complexity, both of which are central to our understanding of biological patterns and processes. Given that fractal and chaos theory are comparatively new fields, it is perhaps not surprising that most biologists are still grappling with these concepts. Recognition of the fractal geometry of nature has important implications to biology, as evidenced by the many examples presented herein.
Fractal logic embraces sub-units that resemble the larger scale shape. This is analogous to looking in a mirror while holding a second mirror in your hand facing the first one. An infinite series of reflections can be seen, with each becoming smaller until the eye can no longer discern it. If we alter the distance between the two mirrors, the scale will change but the ratio will remain constant. Mathematically speaking, as fractals maintain the same ratio while changing scale, their geometric patterning allows electrical and light frequency harmonics to exchange energy across great distances of wavelengths as a function of quantum entanglement.
As mentioned, the heart sends coherent wavelengths to the DNA, which, attuned to its vibrations, receives sonic emotions. Not only do the emotions feed the DNA but also the cellular metabolism. Cells have to carry out vast numbers of chemical reactions to maintain their proper function, all of which need energy from the emotions, causing the centriole to react and drive cell replication.
Some scientists have recently postulated that the centrioles are actually the eyes of the cell. Centrioles come in pairs that are oriented perpendicular to each other. The structure of these pairs strongly suggests that, apart from their wide range of other attributes, centrioles do function as cellular eyes. Each centriole can only map the angle of its source information in a plane perpendicular to its axis. However, as light sources are distributed in three dimensions, the second centriole is at right angles to the first. This embraces the geometry of the plane source, as well as a three dimensional extension.
This 90 degree offset polarisation may well act like Chroma-depth lenses, allowing an evolving 3D pattern recognition of holographic reality. This means that the centrioles, as cellular eyes, are able to perceive depth as well as perpendicular orientation. Such a proposal was used by Robert Pope in his now famous correction to the optical key upholding Leonardo da Vinci's Theory of all Knowledge.
Coherent sonic waves from the heart to the centriole also pertain to the mental and emotional health of the host organism. Research reveals that as long term depression will eventually cause a breakdown in physical well being a definite relationship exists between our mental and emotional state of health. Medical research shows that no matter how well babies are fed and kept warm, without the loving touch of their mothers they can seriously become adversely affected. This is because the loving hugs of the mother are instantly transmitted to the baby's DNA. The ancient Greeks belief that the moon had an effect on the female menstrual cycle led to a science to explain a mother's love and compassion for children. This makes perfect sense when considering the beautiful attractor connection between the moon and the mother. Such heart induced ethical behaviour comes from deep cellular survival data from within the DNA, signalling the mother's intuition to alert her to any threat to her babies.
From this, it can be reasoned that our emotions program our DNA and shape the immune system of our cells. Negative emotions, give out strong thermal signals with little coherent content, damaging the coherence of our immune systems. Counter-wise, positive emotions, which have weak emfs but abundant coherent information, enhance the immune system. The healthier the immune system the healthier the host organism. The amazing thing is that from positive weak emfs we can generate high levels of energy from which we feel a heightened positive sense of self, as part of the holographic universe. This sense of connection helps us feel true 'Epicurean happiness'. Feeling good aesthetically, on the other hand, only connects us emotionally with beauty going into decay. When we feel positively energised and secure in our lives we are much more likely to act in ethical ways. There is, therefore, a definite link between our energy levels and our inclination to act in ethical ways for the betterment of all."
Platonic--Fullerene Chemistry, so named by Professor Robert Pope, director of the Science--Art Centre of Australia, embraces the metaphysical engineering principles of both Plato and Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller, inspired by Platonic geometry, designed geodesic spheres, later replicated by a team of chemists, who named them 'buckyballs' in his honour. They became a scientific sensation, alluding to solutions to the world's energy crisis, as will be explained in this article. The buckyball story is largely about carbon, an extraordinary element, with over 90 percent of all known chemical substances built around it; possibly the most important being, the DNA and its proteins.
However, despite organic chemistry being based on carbon, it wasn't until 1985 that its most extraordinary feature was discovered. Until then the only two known forms that consisted entirely of carbon atoms were diamond and graphite. Graphite carbon atoms (which are formed in stacked sheets of linked hexagons) are each bonded weakly to three other atoms, giving graphite its soft, greasy feel. In 1985, scientists discovered that by using a powerful laser beam they could vaporise graphite in an atmosphere of helium gas. Analysing the resulting carbon clusters, they discovered carbon molecules of a previously unknown nature, of which the most common was a perfect sphere comprising hexagonal and pentagonal geometrical shapes that contained 60 carbon atoms.
After much debate, it became apparent to the scientists involved (Curl, Kroto and Smalley) that these spherical molecules were extremely stable. They then discovered that this combination of geometric shapes formed the basis of the geodesic sphere designed by Robert Buckminster Fuller, for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. From then on, the new carbon molecule was known as the buckminsterfullerene, now shortened to fullerene or buckyball, which chemists write as C 60. After the prestigious scientific journal 'Nature' (Holper & Sarre 1999) published this extraordinary finding, quite a stir took place in the scientific community, once it was realised that buckyballs could be very useful substances. In 1996, for this discovery, Curl, Kroto and Smalley became recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Owing to their unusual hollow cage-like shape, science finds buckyball molecules and other fullerenes intriguing, especially as the carbon atoms can react with other atoms and molecules, while retaining their integrity and shape. Scientists have also discovered tubes of carbon-like rolls of chicken wire by passing an electric current between graphite rods. These carbon tubes, (nanotubes or buckytubes) form a series of embedded cylinders, which when catalysed by a minuscule dose of cobalt, nickel or iron, form a hollow nanotube a mere one atom thick. These tubes can be of great length, comprising up to one million carbon atoms.
Fullerenes are being utilised in numerous ways, perhaps most importantly for their newly discovered energy producing potential. Fuel coated carbon nanotubes are now known to generate an electrical current from a fast moving thermal combustion wave, travelling along its length, by dragging electrons behind. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists have discovered that this energising process produces weight proportionately, 100 times more energy than a lithium-ion battery. Also, unlike batteries, it does not discharge energy while not being used.
Nanotubes, being 50 to 200 nanometres thick, are wide enough to allow the passage of proteins functioning with coherent light waves. According to the German scientist Hans Herman Gerdes, nanotubes span distances of several cell diameters connecting two separate cell interiors, giving the organism a new way of communicating over long ranges. Gerdes colleague, Amin Rustom discovered naturally occurring nanotubes in rat cells and later, together they saw them forming between human kidney cells as well. With the help of video microscopy, they observed adjacent cells reaching out to each other with antenna--like projections, establishing contact and completing the tubular connection. This process goes far beyond previously observed cellular pairing, as the cells send out many nanotubes, forming an intricate and mobile network of linked cells, lasting anything from minutes to hours. By utilising fluorescent proteins, Gerde's team also discovered that relatively large cellular structures were able to commute between cells, through these nanotubes.
Scientists have long known that carbon nanotubes are extremely efficient in conducting heat. New quantum biology research demonstrates that the functioning of carbon nanotubes violates the second law of thermodynamics, as Robert Pope clearly predicted several years ago. The second law has, for a very long time, been held sacrosanct in scientific circles. This is because logic says that hot things can only become cold, not hotter. However, at nano scales. it seems that different rules can apply. Scientists speaking of thermal conductivity, refer to heat as 'phonons' moving through material. Within commonplace materials such as wood, phonons continually bump into things. Collisions scatter the heat packages, slowing their progress in much the same way that a crowded race track would impede the performance of an Olympic runner. This is not so with carbon nanotubes. In contrast to entropic chemistry, heat applied to one end of a carbon nanotube races to the other end 100 times faster than heat travelling through the most conductive metals.
Chih Wei Chang's team at Berkeley University created defects in their nanotubes to slow down the thermal energy process. Surprisingly, this had no affect on their heat conducting powers, leaving their thermal conductivity intact. The fact that thermal waves do not slow down in contorted tubes contradicts second law logic. According to thermo dynamic science, carbon at 1000 kelvins should soon become carbon dioxide. Yet, due to the tremendous speed of the phonons at temperatures in excess of 2,500 kelvins, the intensely hot carbon was left unburned.
Michael Strano, one of the world's top chemists, poured a line of gasoline on the ground, next to a stick of the same length. He lit both at the same end simultaneously, knowing the flame would move much faster through the liquid. However, during lab experiments, the heatwave igniting the fuel--drenched nanotube travelled 10,000 times faster than through the fuel alone. The resulting super fast wave, appeared to be self--propagating. This is not possible according to the second law. However, as the fuel burned it released greater heat into the nanotube, completely violating classical thermodynamics. According to Strano, the heat wave, moving at rocket speed, excites the nanotube's electrons, moving them along with it. This thermal power wave, generates electricity at an amazing rate, indicating new sources of potential clean energy. The principle here seems to be the faster the wave the greater the power. The energy generated by the fuel drenched nanotube, as mentioned, is already much higher than that of a lithium ion battery and this is just the beginning of their enormous potential.
Dr Bruce Lipton made a huge breakthrough in quantum biology with his discovery that the fractal properties of the cell are linked to cellular evolution and hence, the evolutionary potential of the whole organism. His book titled The Biology of Belief, shows that genes and DNA are not the controllers of our biology. Instead, DNA is controlled by environmental signals from outside the cell. Lipton postulated that energetic messages from positive and negatives attitudes in response to our feelings and the way we perceive environmental reality, have a strong effect on our consciousness. In this synthesis of the latest research in quantum cell biology, Lipton posits that our DNA and thus our bodies can change as our thinking and perception is retrained. Robert Pope has obtained experimental evidence that an unconscious optical sensing of reality has been evolving creative holographic perceptions for many centuries.
Furthermore, as both Lipton and Pope predicted, environmental information as quantum waveforms, received by protein receptor bio-photons in the cellular liquid-crystal membrane are transmitted electromagnetically through nanotubes to reassemble protein enfolding in the DNA. The effect of the fractal logic sonic beatings of the heart rhythmically connected with our feelings, formulate the constant re patterning of DNA, contradicting our present understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. This process evolves consciousness to balance entropy, as insisted by the Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Svent Gyoergyi.
The heart beat transforms into electromagnetic energy in the body's glandular system, holographically copying the heart's emotional sound. We experience feeling from incoming environmental light-energy information directed through the cellular carbon nanotubes. This information, as coherent laser light racing through carbon nanotubes modulates the DNA's codons (antenna--like triggers), which are activated by electromagnetic energy passing through the double helix. Accordingly, the number of codons triggered by the wave is determined by the intensity of the emotional experience. Sensually, the more pleasing the experience aesthetically the greater the thermal nanotubule energy, hence the higher the electromagnetic vibration.
Dr Candace pert, in The Molecule of Emotion, posits that consciousness is like light. She explains how emotions exist both in a quantum biological state as energy and matter in the vibrating receptors on every cell in the body. In her scientific work during the 1980's, she theorised how the 'body--mind' functions as a single psychoacoustic network of information molecules that control our health and psychology. When we are in a psychologically healthy and emotionally sound condition we feel good and we can then act in ethical ways. Ethical participation in the evolving health of universal consciousness describes the basis of Aristotle's science to guide ennobling government, in order for humanity to avoid extinction.
Immanuel Kant, like many Enlightenment thinkers, held the mental faculty in high esteem. In his work on aesthetics he argued that our judgment enabled us to experience beauty, grasping such experiences as part of an ordered, purposeful natural world. Aesthetics, however, only accounts for the outer appearance of things and does not necessarily relate to Aristotelian ethics. Although Kantian aesthetics can lead to ethics, it can only do so by defying our incomplete understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. In essence, aesthetics can only perceive beauty within entropic decay. However, the bio-ethics of the late Dr George Cockburn of the Australian Science--Art Centre, in his book about art appreciation, refers to the actual process of ethical beauty, not just snap shots of it. The fractal nature of ethical beauty, seen in the functioning of the 'beautiful attractor' utilises Phi harmonics and related fractal phenomena, to maintain optimum, healthy, evolutionary consciousness.
Phi ratio frequencies, associated with Platonic harmonics, create a vibration that resonates with our hearts, transmitting a high frequency wave to the DNA. As mentioned, up to 60 codon triggers then engage with the heart resonance, allowing the host organism to function at higher energy levels. The higher the number of triggers activated, the higher the signal frequency and the greater the ethical response. Response to ethical universal purpose is intuitive and has nothing to do with learned morality. This understanding was postulated last century by the electromagnetic theories of the scientist educator Maria Montessori.
Intuitive response to universal ethics, which requires a state of higher consciousness, depends upon environmental electromagnetic frequencies (emfs). Mainstream entropic science holds that strong emfs are much more important than weak emfs, the latter having little or no biological effect. However, many scientists believe electromagnetic fields conventionally considered as being thermally weak (or non-ionising) may be high in biological information content. Weak electromagnetic fields are now understood to be both bio-energetic and bio-informational, with measurable biological effects. The Chinese, for example, have known about this for thousands of years with their Yin Yang concept, in which the Yin emf is weak but has a high informational content. From this finding it can be reasoned that high informational content is necessary to provide DNA with the necessary evolutionary, survival data.
In my book Feminine Ethics in the New Measurement of Humanity, (a review of Dr George Cockburn's book A Bioaesthetic Key to Creative Physics and Art, I wrote that Dr Cockburn's work was about how cerebral mechanisms function in response to a universal reality maintained by the balancing of both entropic and negentropic energy systems. Entropic systems, which work on the basis of strong emfs with low bio--informational content, cannot be sustainable. Increasingly strengthening emfs with decreasing biological survival information must, in the long term, result in species extinction. Unless entropic emfs are balanced with weak emfs with the necessary ethical, survival data, it is clear that there can be no long--term future for humanity.
Homoeopathy is a good example of using weak field emfs to achieve biological balance to bring about optimum health. Other examples of thermally weak, but high informational content fields are visible light, healing touch, intuition, and clairvoyance. Concerning this, biological tissues have electronic components that can receive and transmit weak electronic signals that are actually below entropic thermal comprehension. Biological organisms use these weak electromagnetic fields (electric and photonic) to communicate holographically, with all parts of themselves.
German chemist, Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal, while carrying out water property research in South Korea, discovered a whole new dimension to what happens when you dissolve a substance in water and then add more water. Conventional science states that the dissolved molecules simply spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted, weakening any effect it may have. However, these two chemists found that some molecules clump together, in fractal fashion, first as clusters and then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Rather than drifting apart from their neighbours, they actually become closer.
Logic suggests fractal clumping is about memory information ethically balancing the system. This quantum entanglement state of change, from a homogeneous to a non homogeneous condition, occurs by way of the strange attractor linking the living process to infinity by ethically balancing entropy. As it expands, the dissolved substance becomes increasingly less noticeable. However, the beautiful attractor, balanced by the strange attractor, adds new information to the water by joining molecules and catalysing the effect of the substance-water mix, by tapping into its memory.
The scientists stumbled upon this effect while investigating fullerenes at their lab in the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They discovered that the football--shaped buckyball molecules kept forming irregular aggregates in the solution. When they diluted the solution, the size of the fullerene particles increased, a phenomenon new to chemistry. In order to get the otherwise insoluble buckyballs to dissolve in water, the chemists mixed it with a circular sugar--like molecule called a cyclodextrin.
From these results there is clearly a direct link between the functions of the beautiful and strange attractors. Just as aesthetics requires strong emfs and little bioinformation, ethics, on the other hand, needs weak emfs and increased fractal information. These two become balanced and harmonised at a mutual centre, according to golden mean geometries, as Robert Pope has predicted.
The greatest amount of electrical ethical information standing as a wave electron spin function is located in the heart. The heart has seven discreet layers that are arranged to the seven spin angles of the fullerene tetrahedra. As the electron spin activates symmetry, the heart truly can be seen as the beautiful attractor. The golden mean fractal heart--shape is about unfolding this spin into usable wavelengths. In fact, the heart can be seen to be the transformer for maximum entry of spin or energy into the body. All these seven spin geometrical angles focus on a weathervane-like spiral strip of the torus attractor at the centre of the heart.
This dense centre affects the sound of the heart projected onto the wall of the pericardium. The torus attractor affects the phase of the sonic energy vibrating both the pericardium and thymus. The Thymus (also known as the energy centre referred to as the heart chakra), is where immune system instructions are translated. The thymus uses these sonic shadows on the wall of the pericardium cave to ascertain the wave length ingredients to integrate into cellular identity. This appears to occur because phase or wave-sharing coherence makes cell membranes possible. Cellular membranes are liquid crystal, self organising chemical libraries processing environmental signals (phenomena) as well as holographic heart--wave frequencies.
The convergence of electrical and sonic pressure is exemplified by the muscular and toroidal electrical structure of the heart. If the orderliness or coherence of electrical energy grows, then health endorphins result affecting Candace Pert's 'Molecule of Emotion'. The immune system of the body expands, bringing about a state of well being, aligning it with the ethical human condition. This state of optimum health and beautiful/strange attractor harmonics, triggers intuitive awareness translating into ethical behaviour.
The heart, however, is not the body's only beautiful attractor as the centriole, in each mammalian cell, also takes on this role. The function of centrioles has been controversial and remains incompletely resolved because centrioles, in and of themselves, do not directly perform any known physiological activity. Instead, their role is generally seen to be that of a framework onto which other functional structures are built. It is considered by science that centrioles are primarily involved in forming two structures, centrosomes and cilia. However, Dr Johan Callerman, in his book, titled The Purposeful Universe, posits that the centriole has, among it various functions, the role of orchestrating cellular organisation as well as the formation of the whole organism.
This makes sense from the standpoint of its role in cell division during which the centrosome divides and replicates resulting in two centrosomes, each with its own pair of centrioles. The centriole pair, moving to opposite ends of the nucleus, then grows micro-tubules responsible for separating replicating chromosomes into two daughter cells.
However, the centriole's function appears to go much further. According to the latest science on the subject centrioles may be a key element in understanding life and consciousness. Centrioles found in every mammalian cell may be what gives life the dynamism that science is unable to explain. Science cannot simply mix chemicals and create life. It cannot even begin to create life from non living matter. Even if science could do this it still doesn't explain life. However, as science learns more about centrioles entropic world view physics becomes much less credible.
Centrioles, while exercising a high degree of control over the cells, seem to be attuned to some higher ethical criteria, in contradiction to entropic second law understanding. Although,the centriole seems to be no more than an antenna-like structure, transmitting intelligence to the cell, its guidance has to come from beyond entropic logic, as predicted by the Platonic Science for Ethical Ends, belonging to the functioning of the Greek Nous. So, if centrioles and DNA codons act like aerials, what signals are they picking up and responding to?
Science is hard-pressed to explain the source of any animating signal coming from the physical universe. Anaxagoras sought to explain this with his 'Nous', a creative force based on fractal logic. Entropic science may be able to offer an operational description about consciousness, but it does not tell us how life happens or why it happens the way it does.
Although the living cell, an extraordinarily complex structure, cannot be explained operationally by science it is now recognised that the centriole is probably a major key in our understanding of how the inanimate becomes animate and even, to some degree, the source of Anaxagoras' Nous consciousness (an innate intelligent property in the sub stratum of the physical atom). Centrioles, composed of sub structures, called 'micro--tubules' and located in the nucleus of all mammalian cells, may point to the existence of David Bohm's holographic non--physical universe. As science is increasingly being forced to view 'fields' as a basic substance of reality', such a concept has validity.
The initial concept of the centriole being the possible key to consciousness was clearly alluded to by Roger Penrose, one of the world's top physicists. However, the function of the centriole does not fit in with his purely materialist interpretation. Consciousness is not simply a matter of sufficient computer power, which if so, would replace futuristic human potential with artificial intelligence. Centrioles, as basic antennas focusing into existence some sort of life from outside this physical universe, may well provide for dynamical life, as well as being the focus and source of consciousness. If, as Anaxagoras postulated, consciousness comes from within the sub stratum of each atom, holographically it becomes the universal mind. This concept fits well with the generally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, which like Anaxagoras' 'Nous', does not have ethics built into it.
This was a specific problem for the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy, which existed to fuse ethics into the Nous, so that the creative force would not become destructive. Within the enlightenment limitations of his time Plato did the best he could with the idea of ethics. Robert Pope's titling of Platonic--Fullerene Chemistry upgrading quantum mechanics to quantum biology was recognised on the 24th of September 2010 by the Italian Republic, as the Florentine New Measurement of Humanity Renaissance.
The existence of an electrical body or organising field of intelligence (auric sheath) formed around all living organisms has long been proposed and this is now being measured by the Florentine Project. This field is held to contain the system's intelligence that organises the structure of the body down to the atomic level. The fractal structure of the physical heart, receives this field energy and transforms it into electrical energy, reading its encoded information. The brain, acting as a detector of this information, communicates with the cellular systems of the body, causing an information flow to travel up and down the harmonic frequency scale. Each phrase--like heartbeat is part of a song that sends organising instructions throughout the host organism's system. This is explained by Texas University's Dr Richard Merrick, in his book Interference--a grand musical theory, in which he translated this Pythagorean Music of the Spheres into a electromagnetic description of the human cerebral process.
Ethical behaviour is not about doing the right thing for its own sake. In essence, it is about being coherent with universal survival information. As human survival data requires constant updates, like news flashes, increasingly ordered complex information is required. Yet, for it to be useful, it has to be intuitively ordered by the beautiful attractor, and then acted upon by the strange attractor. Therefore, it is the heart, not the brain, that passes this crucial information on to the DNA. For this patterning to be both ordered and irregular simultaneously, the model used has to be of a fractal nature.
Fractal logic, displaying a weak emf with strong biological information, is a unifying concept integrating scale-dependence and complexity, both of which are central to our understanding of biological patterns and processes. Given that fractal and chaos theory are comparatively new fields, it is perhaps not surprising that most biologists are still grappling with these concepts. Recognition of the fractal geometry of nature has important implications to biology, as evidenced by the many examples presented herein.
Fractal logic embraces sub-units that resemble the larger scale shape. This is analogous to looking in a mirror while holding a second mirror in your hand facing the first one. An infinite series of reflections can be seen, with each becoming smaller until the eye can no longer discern it. If we alter the distance between the two mirrors, the scale will change but the ratio will remain constant. Mathematically speaking, as fractals maintain the same ratio while changing scale, their geometric patterning allows electrical and light frequency harmonics to exchange energy across great distances of wavelengths as a function of quantum entanglement.
As mentioned, the heart sends coherent wavelengths to the DNA, which, attuned to its vibrations, receives sonic emotions. Not only do the emotions feed the DNA but also the cellular metabolism. Cells have to carry out vast numbers of chemical reactions to maintain their proper function, all of which need energy from the emotions, causing the centriole to react and drive cell replication.
Some scientists have recently postulated that the centrioles are actually the eyes of the cell. Centrioles come in pairs that are oriented perpendicular to each other. The structure of these pairs strongly suggests that, apart from their wide range of other attributes, centrioles do function as cellular eyes. Each centriole can only map the angle of its source information in a plane perpendicular to its axis. However, as light sources are distributed in three dimensions, the second centriole is at right angles to the first. This embraces the geometry of the plane source, as well as a three dimensional extension.
This 90 degree offset polarisation may well act like Chroma-depth lenses, allowing an evolving 3D pattern recognition of holographic reality. This means that the centrioles, as cellular eyes, are able to perceive depth as well as perpendicular orientation. Such a proposal was used by Robert Pope in his now famous correction to the optical key upholding Leonardo da Vinci's Theory of all Knowledge.
Coherent sonic waves from the heart to the centriole also pertain to the mental and emotional health of the host organism. Research reveals that as long term depression will eventually cause a breakdown in physical well being a definite relationship exists between our mental and emotional state of health. Medical research shows that no matter how well babies are fed and kept warm, without the loving touch of their mothers they can seriously become adversely affected. This is because the loving hugs of the mother are instantly transmitted to the baby's DNA. The ancient Greeks belief that the moon had an effect on the female menstrual cycle led to a science to explain a mother's love and compassion for children. This makes perfect sense when considering the beautiful attractor connection between the moon and the mother. Such heart induced ethical behaviour comes from deep cellular survival data from within the DNA, signalling the mother's intuition to alert her to any threat to her babies.
From this, it can be reasoned that our emotions program our DNA and shape the immune system of our cells. Negative emotions, give out strong thermal signals with little coherent content, damaging the coherence of our immune systems. Counter-wise, positive emotions, which have weak emfs but abundant coherent information, enhance the immune system. The healthier the immune system the healthier the host organism. The amazing thing is that from positive weak emfs we can generate high levels of energy from which we feel a heightened positive sense of self, as part of the holographic universe. This sense of connection helps us feel true 'Epicurean happiness'. Feeling good aesthetically, on the other hand, only connects us emotionally with beauty going into decay. When we feel positively energised and secure in our lives we are much more likely to act in ethical ways. There is, therefore, a definite link between our energy levels and our inclination to act in ethical ways for the betterment of all."
AD 1011 - Then And Now
"Yes, exactly a millennium ago.
Then the whole Indian subcontinent was a conglomeration of small kingdoms. We belonged to a small one, may be the size of Delhi. It was independent, wedged between two powerful neighbors: the Samoothiripad in the North and some principality belonging to the area, now known as Thiruvithankur (Travancore). Our Cochin state was free from corruption. People were generally happy. One English writer described the India of those times as 'thousands of villages', each a republic governed by the village elders. None had money. Gold was used only for making ornaments. Wealth was measured in terms of paddy earned by each family (I am talking in terms known to me). The artisans made clothes, agricultural implements, gold ornaments; made tenements out of mud and hay or palm leaves (cobbler was unknown as none wore foot wear). Brass and bronze works were excellent, as also wood work. Landlords enjoyed leisure and bonded laborers did the work. The latter were fed even when there was no work. All people were known to each other. Even in my childhood, thefts were limited to coconut and plantain! There was plenty of time for any leisurely activity like literature, sports and arts.
All were happy, even though epidemics took a heavy toll of men but not animals.
Let us examine, item by item, how life was then and what we have achieved now.
1) Life was secure then. None was worried about his future. Mostly, traditional vocations were followed, the society being caste-ridden. How will my children live after my time? The question never worried any body. Anxiety on this account was unknown then. Today, every moment we are concerned about it (of course, I am not talking about the Ambanis)
2) All works were done manually. This kept life style diseases away. People were healthy. The rich people suffered from diabetes, B.P and heart attacks. The poor people were spared. Today, the middle class too have become rich as far as life style is concerned. We don't exert. Remote control ensured that we need not even move. So we suffer from all diseases of the rich.
3) The vaidyaji took care of health problems. I don't remember ever going to a doctor. The Namboodri house stood in the middle of a spacious plot of land. We had our own well and at least one pond. No fencing, we never wounded mother Earth with the pick axe or spade. It was like a forest. Things just grew. Village people scouted for medicinal plants or mangoes in the season. They never asked us. In the month of Karkidagam (Sawan) ladies adorned the hair with ""Dashapushpam"" (ten flowers). After the land reforms, we too became proletariat, when our only source of earnings was taken away. The land was handed over to the tillers. Today land is fallow because none can afford to grow food. Wages are high and labour is not available in Keralam.
I have digressed. We were discussing medicine. The vidyaji will only prescribe the medicines. If these cannot be had from the land, there is a shop selling them. Medicines, in soup form, were made at home. People may give some gift like plantain. The belief is that if vidyaji demands compensation, he will lose his ability to diagnose and treat the illness.
When the people of the West were barbarians (say B.C1000) Ayurvedic system of medicine was well developed in India. At Rajgir in Bihar, I was shown the excavated remains of a hospital where the royal families were treated. Even today Ayurveda can hold its head high in certain fields. But the sanctity of the system was violated when it was commercialized. Now, medicinal soups are bottled and preserved, rendering them sometimes ineffective.
Today, medical treatment is nothing but shameless exploitation of the masses. Multi speciality hospitals cater to the rich. The poor people survive by grace of God. 50% of the medicines sold in the market are absolutely useless. (It was in the newspapers.) All medicines have side effects. Fees must be deposited in advance (pity the vidyaji). As doctors are ""manufactured"" in thousands, who can guarantee their quality? (Merit is ignored; caste is the basis for selection of students). Each hospital should earn profit. Or else, it will be closed down. So it must be ensured that people fall ill, as frequently as possible. As soon as a baby is born it is given ten injections, to make sure that its immunity system doesn't develop. The bird flu was unknown then. Today also desi chickens are not affected. Artificial methods have destroyed the capacity to resist diseases.
To make people fall ill, fast food culture is deliberately encouraged. To the capitalist, a patient is also a consumer. The only aim is profit. To hell with health! We want every citizen to be in the hospital so that profit can swell.
4) Education was totally free of lucre then. I was thrilled to see rows of neatly made hostel rooms at Nalanda which was just a name until Sir Alexander Cunningham traveled in the foot steps of Huen Tsang and saw small hills covered with grass and shrubs. He suggested excavation of the area which was started in 1914. Even today, a few work men may be seen digging leisurely; it may take another hundred years at this rate, to uncover the whole township. More than four hundred years B.C, it was a beacon of learning, attracting scholars from all over the East. They did not come to get a degree and campus selection for lucrative jobs. They just wanted to learn. Among them was a young man. No body knew he was a prince. He came in tattered clothes and was emaciated like a beggar, after wandering in the forest, begging for food. His name was Gautama. He spent several years in the campus, endlessly discussing the causes of pain and misery and suffering of human beings. (At Bodh Gaya, he is depicted as well fed and handsome- a real prince charming. His devotees want something pleasing to the eye). I admire him. I like to see Takshashila too!
In the villages, education was the concern of guruji. There was close, personal relation- ship with Guruji and the students who stay with him. Remember the story of Krishna and Sudama who were ordered by guru patni (wife) to fetch fuel from the forest? (I am reminded of an incident I read in a memoir. An English lady accepts an assignment to teach English to the Crown Prince of Japan. She was going through some notes when she wanted the fan to be switched on. She asked the Prince and failed to understand the hesitation in her pupil's face. Suddenly the realization came. How can anybody give orders to a Prince? Of course, the pupil obeyed.) No tuition fee. In the end, some guru dakshina (gift) is given. That is all.
And today? By any stretch of imagination, can you call it education? True learning should aim at liberating the brain power from the shackles of the body, so it can soar higher and higher towards the heaven, scanning the whole universe and beyond. The questions why and how should continuously and intensely torment the inquisitive mind. Learning is tapasya. (Concentrated study). Total detachment from the worldly chores is an absolute must.
In the present system, children are being hypnotized to believe that every thing written in the text book is absolutely true. The only aim is to secure maximum marks in the examination, by hook or by crook. Whether you like a subject is immaterial. Money is the supreme god. (Lakshmi is worshiped by all, everywhere. Is there a single temple of Saraswati? I think there is one in Keralam) The best brains are hijacked by capitalism and enslaved to make more and more profit. Is there any wonder that educational standards are going down every year?
In Russia, when capitalism was abolished in 1917, education became free. Science was made number one priority. (Here MBA is made much of because capitalists want them to work for profit).The results are there, for all to see. From the most backward state in Europe, Russia overtook the US in space research. The first man to go up in space was a Russian. Production of electricity was taken up as the most urgent task. Heavy industry almost outpaced consumer industry. (Indian students who went to study in Moscow found soaps and blades stolen frequently).The all powerful Germans were defeated by Russians in second world war.Without heavy industry backed by S & T, this would have been impossible.
After 1956, the first science city was established in Siberia. From wilderness intended for exiling undesirable characters, Siberia became a treasure of coal, minerals etc. and fully industrialised, an achievement impossible under capitalism. Science is the instrument of this of this revolution.
Today here we find education being converted into a lucrative industry, in which millions are invested to reap huge profits. Government schools are for the poor- no equipments, no teachers, and no books.
Order of preference of students seeking higher education is somewhat as given below:
MBA
IIT
Medicine
Info technology
Commerce
Economics
Geology
Pure science
Geography
Those who fail to get admission for the coveted courses, go for pure sciences. In communist Russia scientists were given maximum salary. They commanded great influence in decision making. Here in Delhi we do not have a science centre where those interested may gather together for a chitchat. Easy access to science literature is a must.
Many of you may think that modern science originated in the west. This is a total misconception.Some of the things our forefathers have recorded in so many words, are stunningly dazzling.
That the earth is a globe
Earth attracts objects towards itself
Earth is rotating: the sun and stars are stationary
Shadow of the earth is cause of lunar eclipse
Dalton's atomic theory
that the foetus in the womb recognizes sounds and starts learning mother tongue, much before it comes out of the woumb.(Abhimanyu learned strategy of warfare, while still in Uthara's woumb, according to Mahabharatam.I first read about it in Bhagawat puran.By sheer coincidence, actual scientific confirmation was reported in the newspapers at that period some 8 years back).
These are just a few instances. As all this is written in Samskrutam. People do not even know about it. It is a pity that we have to learn about such things from foreign sources.
Astronomy originated in India at least 5000 years ago. In Egypt too studies in this field progressed at that time. The Malayalam calendar came into existence 1184 years ago. It is based on the movement of the Sun around the equator.The number of days of each month is calculated every year, so that we are not aware of the leap year.
So, before the Malayalam era came into existence, how did they know their age? Each year was given a name. Only 60 years were given names; thereafter the names are repeated.
Each one must remember the name of the month and Nakshatra (the name given to the group of stars where the Moon appears each day) and also the name of the year of birth, so that his age can be counted. (Like the week. If I am born on Wednesday my age will be the fourth day.) That is why sixtieth birthday is celebrated. The names of the years are repeated, after 60 years.
Two thousand years ago, an European was unable to tell his age. Intellectually, we were far ahead. The Nalanda Vishvavidyala and library were ransacked and burnt by Muslim invaders sometime in fifteenth century. That was the end of a civilization. Knowledge got fossilized in Samskrutam texts to be explored by European Indologists. If these books were available in Hindi or Dravidian languages, history would have been different.
Production of food grains, cloths, agricultural implements, kitchen utensils etc. was regulated according to the needs of the village.Transportation was restricted to the bare minimum. I am not a historian. Perhaps conveyance was restricted to movement of goods.Today production is chaotic. In any society based on rational lines, the requirements will be calculated and production regulated according to the needs. In a market controlled economy, waste is inevitable. Any number of factories are producing cars. Think of the brain power used in designing. If all this is centalised (in this age it is easy) we can have the best model of cars, buses etc. Expenses on advertisement and sales can be saved. Cars will become cheap. Similarly food and other agricultural products can be produced according to requirement. There will be no shortages for glut. Why can't we do it? (See my article: Man is the most foolish animal in the world).
For sheer joy and entertainment people were engaged in cultural and sports activities. Competition was healthy and without rancour.
Today, what we saw in the cricket world is the influence of money. Before future historians, we will have to hang our head in shame!
Local festivals, drama, music etc were meant for healthy entertainment and people were not glued to their TV sets!
I don't want to go back to AD 1011. At the same time, I want to change the system to be reorganized along rational lines. Are we not intelligent creatures?"
Then the whole Indian subcontinent was a conglomeration of small kingdoms. We belonged to a small one, may be the size of Delhi. It was independent, wedged between two powerful neighbors: the Samoothiripad in the North and some principality belonging to the area, now known as Thiruvithankur (Travancore). Our Cochin state was free from corruption. People were generally happy. One English writer described the India of those times as 'thousands of villages', each a republic governed by the village elders. None had money. Gold was used only for making ornaments. Wealth was measured in terms of paddy earned by each family (I am talking in terms known to me). The artisans made clothes, agricultural implements, gold ornaments; made tenements out of mud and hay or palm leaves (cobbler was unknown as none wore foot wear). Brass and bronze works were excellent, as also wood work. Landlords enjoyed leisure and bonded laborers did the work. The latter were fed even when there was no work. All people were known to each other. Even in my childhood, thefts were limited to coconut and plantain! There was plenty of time for any leisurely activity like literature, sports and arts.
All were happy, even though epidemics took a heavy toll of men but not animals.
Let us examine, item by item, how life was then and what we have achieved now.
1) Life was secure then. None was worried about his future. Mostly, traditional vocations were followed, the society being caste-ridden. How will my children live after my time? The question never worried any body. Anxiety on this account was unknown then. Today, every moment we are concerned about it (of course, I am not talking about the Ambanis)
2) All works were done manually. This kept life style diseases away. People were healthy. The rich people suffered from diabetes, B.P and heart attacks. The poor people were spared. Today, the middle class too have become rich as far as life style is concerned. We don't exert. Remote control ensured that we need not even move. So we suffer from all diseases of the rich.
3) The vaidyaji took care of health problems. I don't remember ever going to a doctor. The Namboodri house stood in the middle of a spacious plot of land. We had our own well and at least one pond. No fencing, we never wounded mother Earth with the pick axe or spade. It was like a forest. Things just grew. Village people scouted for medicinal plants or mangoes in the season. They never asked us. In the month of Karkidagam (Sawan) ladies adorned the hair with ""Dashapushpam"" (ten flowers). After the land reforms, we too became proletariat, when our only source of earnings was taken away. The land was handed over to the tillers. Today land is fallow because none can afford to grow food. Wages are high and labour is not available in Keralam.
I have digressed. We were discussing medicine. The vidyaji will only prescribe the medicines. If these cannot be had from the land, there is a shop selling them. Medicines, in soup form, were made at home. People may give some gift like plantain. The belief is that if vidyaji demands compensation, he will lose his ability to diagnose and treat the illness.
When the people of the West were barbarians (say B.C1000) Ayurvedic system of medicine was well developed in India. At Rajgir in Bihar, I was shown the excavated remains of a hospital where the royal families were treated. Even today Ayurveda can hold its head high in certain fields. But the sanctity of the system was violated when it was commercialized. Now, medicinal soups are bottled and preserved, rendering them sometimes ineffective.
Today, medical treatment is nothing but shameless exploitation of the masses. Multi speciality hospitals cater to the rich. The poor people survive by grace of God. 50% of the medicines sold in the market are absolutely useless. (It was in the newspapers.) All medicines have side effects. Fees must be deposited in advance (pity the vidyaji). As doctors are ""manufactured"" in thousands, who can guarantee their quality? (Merit is ignored; caste is the basis for selection of students). Each hospital should earn profit. Or else, it will be closed down. So it must be ensured that people fall ill, as frequently as possible. As soon as a baby is born it is given ten injections, to make sure that its immunity system doesn't develop. The bird flu was unknown then. Today also desi chickens are not affected. Artificial methods have destroyed the capacity to resist diseases.
To make people fall ill, fast food culture is deliberately encouraged. To the capitalist, a patient is also a consumer. The only aim is profit. To hell with health! We want every citizen to be in the hospital so that profit can swell.
4) Education was totally free of lucre then. I was thrilled to see rows of neatly made hostel rooms at Nalanda which was just a name until Sir Alexander Cunningham traveled in the foot steps of Huen Tsang and saw small hills covered with grass and shrubs. He suggested excavation of the area which was started in 1914. Even today, a few work men may be seen digging leisurely; it may take another hundred years at this rate, to uncover the whole township. More than four hundred years B.C, it was a beacon of learning, attracting scholars from all over the East. They did not come to get a degree and campus selection for lucrative jobs. They just wanted to learn. Among them was a young man. No body knew he was a prince. He came in tattered clothes and was emaciated like a beggar, after wandering in the forest, begging for food. His name was Gautama. He spent several years in the campus, endlessly discussing the causes of pain and misery and suffering of human beings. (At Bodh Gaya, he is depicted as well fed and handsome- a real prince charming. His devotees want something pleasing to the eye). I admire him. I like to see Takshashila too!
In the villages, education was the concern of guruji. There was close, personal relation- ship with Guruji and the students who stay with him. Remember the story of Krishna and Sudama who were ordered by guru patni (wife) to fetch fuel from the forest? (I am reminded of an incident I read in a memoir. An English lady accepts an assignment to teach English to the Crown Prince of Japan. She was going through some notes when she wanted the fan to be switched on. She asked the Prince and failed to understand the hesitation in her pupil's face. Suddenly the realization came. How can anybody give orders to a Prince? Of course, the pupil obeyed.) No tuition fee. In the end, some guru dakshina (gift) is given. That is all.
And today? By any stretch of imagination, can you call it education? True learning should aim at liberating the brain power from the shackles of the body, so it can soar higher and higher towards the heaven, scanning the whole universe and beyond. The questions why and how should continuously and intensely torment the inquisitive mind. Learning is tapasya. (Concentrated study). Total detachment from the worldly chores is an absolute must.
In the present system, children are being hypnotized to believe that every thing written in the text book is absolutely true. The only aim is to secure maximum marks in the examination, by hook or by crook. Whether you like a subject is immaterial. Money is the supreme god. (Lakshmi is worshiped by all, everywhere. Is there a single temple of Saraswati? I think there is one in Keralam) The best brains are hijacked by capitalism and enslaved to make more and more profit. Is there any wonder that educational standards are going down every year?
In Russia, when capitalism was abolished in 1917, education became free. Science was made number one priority. (Here MBA is made much of because capitalists want them to work for profit).The results are there, for all to see. From the most backward state in Europe, Russia overtook the US in space research. The first man to go up in space was a Russian. Production of electricity was taken up as the most urgent task. Heavy industry almost outpaced consumer industry. (Indian students who went to study in Moscow found soaps and blades stolen frequently).The all powerful Germans were defeated by Russians in second world war.Without heavy industry backed by S & T, this would have been impossible.
After 1956, the first science city was established in Siberia. From wilderness intended for exiling undesirable characters, Siberia became a treasure of coal, minerals etc. and fully industrialised, an achievement impossible under capitalism. Science is the instrument of this of this revolution.
Today here we find education being converted into a lucrative industry, in which millions are invested to reap huge profits. Government schools are for the poor- no equipments, no teachers, and no books.
Order of preference of students seeking higher education is somewhat as given below:
MBA
IIT
Medicine
Info technology
Commerce
Economics
Geology
Pure science
Geography
Those who fail to get admission for the coveted courses, go for pure sciences. In communist Russia scientists were given maximum salary. They commanded great influence in decision making. Here in Delhi we do not have a science centre where those interested may gather together for a chitchat. Easy access to science literature is a must.
Many of you may think that modern science originated in the west. This is a total misconception.Some of the things our forefathers have recorded in so many words, are stunningly dazzling.
That the earth is a globe
Earth attracts objects towards itself
Earth is rotating: the sun and stars are stationary
Shadow of the earth is cause of lunar eclipse
Dalton's atomic theory
that the foetus in the womb recognizes sounds and starts learning mother tongue, much before it comes out of the woumb.(Abhimanyu learned strategy of warfare, while still in Uthara's woumb, according to Mahabharatam.I first read about it in Bhagawat puran.By sheer coincidence, actual scientific confirmation was reported in the newspapers at that period some 8 years back).
These are just a few instances. As all this is written in Samskrutam. People do not even know about it. It is a pity that we have to learn about such things from foreign sources.
Astronomy originated in India at least 5000 years ago. In Egypt too studies in this field progressed at that time. The Malayalam calendar came into existence 1184 years ago. It is based on the movement of the Sun around the equator.The number of days of each month is calculated every year, so that we are not aware of the leap year.
So, before the Malayalam era came into existence, how did they know their age? Each year was given a name. Only 60 years were given names; thereafter the names are repeated.
Each one must remember the name of the month and Nakshatra (the name given to the group of stars where the Moon appears each day) and also the name of the year of birth, so that his age can be counted. (Like the week. If I am born on Wednesday my age will be the fourth day.) That is why sixtieth birthday is celebrated. The names of the years are repeated, after 60 years.
Two thousand years ago, an European was unable to tell his age. Intellectually, we were far ahead. The Nalanda Vishvavidyala and library were ransacked and burnt by Muslim invaders sometime in fifteenth century. That was the end of a civilization. Knowledge got fossilized in Samskrutam texts to be explored by European Indologists. If these books were available in Hindi or Dravidian languages, history would have been different.
Production of food grains, cloths, agricultural implements, kitchen utensils etc. was regulated according to the needs of the village.Transportation was restricted to the bare minimum. I am not a historian. Perhaps conveyance was restricted to movement of goods.Today production is chaotic. In any society based on rational lines, the requirements will be calculated and production regulated according to the needs. In a market controlled economy, waste is inevitable. Any number of factories are producing cars. Think of the brain power used in designing. If all this is centalised (in this age it is easy) we can have the best model of cars, buses etc. Expenses on advertisement and sales can be saved. Cars will become cheap. Similarly food and other agricultural products can be produced according to requirement. There will be no shortages for glut. Why can't we do it? (See my article: Man is the most foolish animal in the world).
For sheer joy and entertainment people were engaged in cultural and sports activities. Competition was healthy and without rancour.
Today, what we saw in the cricket world is the influence of money. Before future historians, we will have to hang our head in shame!
Local festivals, drama, music etc were meant for healthy entertainment and people were not glued to their TV sets!
I don't want to go back to AD 1011. At the same time, I want to change the system to be reorganized along rational lines. Are we not intelligent creatures?"
The Consequences of Classical Training
"""You get out what you put in."" We have all heard this truism before. But we sense that one puts effort into one's martial art and gets out something completely different. In a traditional martial art, especially, the benefits may not be so obvious as a plaque, a trophy, a black and blue badge of courage or the praises of the pugilistic press. What do we get out for what we put in?
Author's Note:
In a previous article I have redefined the term classical and traditional to mean different things. When referring to classical arts, I usually mean arts rigidly taught to preserve the movements and methods of old. When referring to traditional arts I usually means those arts drawn from the classical and adhering to certain virtues of those older arts but arts which nonetheless can be adjusted to contemporary times. For example Katori Shinto Ryu is a classical bujutsu while Shotokan is a traditional budo. However, for this article, I have used the terms interchangeably in order to avoid repetitiousness. Here I use classical and traditional as a unity to distinguish them from non-traditional or sportive forms.
Introduction:
One man works up a sweat sparring other black belts in preparation for the monthly area tourney. he works hard, his skills improve, his lungs become more efficient, his reactions are honed and his feelings of self-value increase. Another student repeats a kata dozens of times adding flourishes and expressions which will catch the judges' eyes. His muscles are worked, his balance is bettered and, as the feeling for his form is firmed, his self-esteem increases. A third practitioner adds another board to the already awesome stack in front of him. he gears himself up for the break which will certainly astound both the judges and the crowd. He has added power to his knife-hand strike, taught himself to go beyond pain, and thus has increased his sense of self-worth.
And when each comes home with tangible evidence of how he has bettered himself, he will be sure that it was all worthwhile. The judges and the crowd have conferred visibility on his accomplishments. As for the losers, they have not done all that work in vain. But they must join their cousins, the traditional (i.e. non-tournament) martial artists who train like they do, but seek only personal verification for the values. The sports-oriented practitioner may profit as much from his practice as the quiet traditionalist, but the traditionalist (whether karate-ka, aiki-student, or judo-player) aims at different goals. The sportster often asks the judges for confirmation. The classicist somehow seems satisfied without asking a soul.
For the sincere martial artist who seeks personal benefits from training, both accustomed accomplishments and, at a later stage, some advanced attainments are possible...and without satisfying a board of seniors who are less attuned to his personal values than is he himself. The consequences of classical training are there with or without trophies. All one has to do is recognize them.
Exercise, especially exercise which uses all the muscles of the body, which builds strength, flexibility, and aerobic efficiency is healthful and the proper use of the muscles develops coordination, good posture and thus physical grace. The exercises used in the martial arts are movements which can also be used to defend oneself. In the fertile soil of self-defense, martial artists toil with the tools of exercise. What grows is the flower of coordination and health. Within this flower are the seeds of a new garden, the non-physical values: pride, confidence, and self-actualization.
ACCUSTOMED ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Confidence: Pride in Practice It is taken for granted even by non-martial artists that self-defense ability can work toward producing a healthier self-image. Self-image is a combination of one's ability and one's self-value. Bullies often are persons who know their physical abilities but doubt their value. Their marks are persons who may know their value but doubt their physical abilities. For them, self-defense balances the scales. It gives the former scapegoat confidence in his ability to protect his values.
The martial arts allow a person to feel good about himself by earning his way. His achievements produce pride since they are a direct display of his abilities. it used to be this way outside the dojo, but no longer. A job promotion often means as little as a grade promotion in school. Sometimes it is earned but as often it is attained through subtle manipulation, less than subtle dishonesty, or just sitting there long enough. Aggressiveness, which used to be thought of as a virtuous trait, has turned into rapaciousness. Self-interest has become egotism. Earning one's way has been converted to getting one's way. The oriental martial arts try to avoid this. Confidence produces a personal pride and ca itself work toward self-protection. Muggers (and bullies) do not want to test that person who seems alert and confident, purposeful and relaxed. Picture a child cowering in the corner of the schoolyard or an adult nervously circling around street toughs who are gathered near her auto. If the bully or the tough wants to take action, these will be their most likely targets. There is no guarantee against being mugged. it can happen to large, tough, confident policeman as well as small, frail, insecure grandmothers, but personal attitude can have a strong bearing on whether or not a persona is considered a likely candidate for an easy fall.
Yoshimitsu Yamada, Aikido Shihan, student of the founder Morihei Ueshiba and head of the New York Aiki-kai takes a morning jog in Central Park. A short, stout oriental in a warm-up suit with a bulge in the back pocket looks like easy prey to a Big Apple picker. When assaulted one morning Yamada Sensei does not react with violence or panic. he simply looks his assailant in the eye and, insulted, says, ""Do you know who I am?"" The easy pickings suddenly do not seem so easy to the mugger and he flees.
It is hard to fake that kind of confidence. Oh, one can walk though The Commons with one's back straight at a leisurely but not-to-leisurely pace, never twitching to look at the invisible assassins which are sure to be around each tree, but will this pseudo-confidence come through to the attacker as the real thing? In other words, does one look like one could handle the situation if need be? Confidence is a personal refusal to panic. The martial arts build that confidence.
Self-Actualization: Mind-Body Harmony In the Asian martial arts, as in many other physical activities, conscious deliberation is too slow to be effective. Therefore, in order to develop instantaneous reactions, one must train, usually by constantly repeating techniques. The result is reaction without interfering rationality. I welcomes this plunge into a-rationality in my initial martial arts training. I already possessed a reasonable ability to intellectualize, so this discipline was valuable to balance my deliberate side, but not to overshadow it.
My early experiences with judo, ju-jutsu and karate typified the a-rational approach. The repetition melted me into a state of mu-shin (no-mind) and allowed my body to ""absorb"" the techniques. This was not really mind-body harmony, but the intentional numbing of the mind to teach the body. It was like learning to swim by being thrown into the lake, or learning to ride a bicycle by trail and error.
Intelligent people, whether or not they give their mind over to mu-shin during practice, often reflect rationally on this a-rational exercise after a work-out. Zen-Buddhists may not advocate this, but I think it is essential to the development of a well-balanced martial artist. I have known far too many practitioners, who after years of a a-rational training, can perform techniques excellently but cannot analyze or adjust their movements to new circumstances or strategies. Rationality has its place as well as a-rationality. A punch may be a purely a-rational reaction, but the strategy which sets up the opening for the punch, the choice of training used to perfect the punch, and the decision of when, where, and how much to train the punch are all rationally derived.
A rigidly a-rational approach to martial arts training would be akin to making football players excellent tacklers runners, blockers, passers and receivers, but never giving them signals in the huddle nor playbooks to study. Cranial calisthenics and corporeal contemplation should occur in equal proportions. The practitioner can then begin to draw mental lessons from physical action as well as physical lessons through intellectual exertion. It is this mutual interchange that produces the distinct satisfaction of applying, in balance, one's entire being.
An Example of the Process: Dealing with Pain and Fear
Fear is heightened by pain, pain is increased by fear. Danny was a judo student of mine who was so afraid of falling as a beginner that he would tighten up, grit his teeth and take a terrible fall. he was so intimidated by possible injury that he actually contributed to it. To make things worse, he had a legitimately low pain threshold, so that I could not truthfully say to him that there was no cause for alarm. The pain and fear may have been ""all in his head"" but it was nevertheless real pain and fear. he had not invented it, but he had exaggerated it. It took Danny a long time to get over this because at that time, I had not developed a way to help him deal with an exaggerated but natural reaction. I did not realize that the way was implicit in the method of nearly every martial art.
We are all apprehensive of the unknown to some extent. We reason that there is a 50/50 chance that the unknown may bring something unpleasant. What is worse is knowing only a little about what lies out there, but nothing at all about how to deal with it. More frightening that The Unknown can be The-Known-but-Unexperienced, especially when we are certain that we cannot deal with it, that the odds are more than 50/50 against us. Of course, our lack of experience is what makes us so sure that we cannot cope, yet to get experience we must cope. So, we tip-toe into the darkness, hoping to find a light-switch before an edge of broken glass finds our bare feet, the better to now the room next time.
Few of us are experienced in pain. And those of us who are, are experienced in only specific kinds: banging a thumb, bumping a knee, breaking a bone, or receiving a concussion. All of these are transient. The pangs are felt, endured, and pushed aside, but often with the wrong attitude. We do not forget them, but we try to. Few of us use suffering as a tool unless we are athletes. We do not test ourselves with discomfort or even say to ourselves, ""Well, if I can endure that, my next painful experience will be nothing!"" Instead, we try to forget and thus we are just as afraid of the next ordeal (since we never can completely forget) and so it is just as painful.
Not so in the martial arts. First there was beginner's distress: fear of embarrassment (which is actually fear of failure.) It was an insignificant discomfort which went away rather quickly for me since I soon realized that the other students were concerned with their own techniques, not mine. The physical workout was tough for a while on muscles which were not used to this sort of movement: a second, equally minor sort of pain no more unique than that which would accompany any new form of exercise. Then, Challenge Time!
In karate it came with basic ippon kumite (one step sparring) in which I had to test my blocks. I was to strike my opponent's attacking weapon (a hand or a foot) in defense. Will I miss, will my partner hit me? If I panic I will get hit, so I'll block. OW! Blocking can hurt! The affliction was mentally exaggerated because it was sudden and had not been experienced before. But now I knew that I could block a basic attack and that I could tolerate a modicum of pain to do it. I worked on the block so that it would be performed with better timing, better angle and thus minimize the pain. In doing so, I delivered hundreds and hundreds of blocks which made the throbs almost anachronistic and therefor nothing to get panicked about. Gradually new unknowns were put into the sparring drills so that I had to face new fears and more risks. The attack might be high, medium or low level, or come from an angle. Perhaps there would be an attack and a follow-up, or a two person attack. Occasionally I would get hit, but I could slough it off. I was used to a little pain, after all, and seeing a threatening fist coming at me had become an everyday occurrence.
In judo, proper falling was taught with a hard slap to the mat which stung at first, but which acted as a shock-absorber to prevent a more dangerous sensation. Gradually, the sting became inconsequential. The judo custom of accepting other students' invitations to randori (freestyle spar) placed me into numerous situations of struggle and falling so that soon no new sparing or falling experience was too out of the ordinary.
In aiki-ju-jutsu, there was little discomfort in falling initially since rolls rather than breakfalls were taught first (these had come in reverse order in judo). Wrist-releases were taught before basic locks, locks before takedowns, takedowns before throws which require a breakfall. It was while learning locks that I first experienced aiki's variety of pain. The locks were, after all, intended to hurt an antagonist. But in practice, they were put on gradually and I was taught to slap out in submission when it began to hurt. Many students slapped before they felt any shock at all because they were afraid. Others tested the technique by resisting. Neither action was encouraged. Giving up too soon prevented tori (performer of the technique) from knowing the amount of pressure necessary to put on the lock, and prevented uke (receiver of the technique) from building a tolerance to the pain and simultaneously limbering her/his joints. Resisting with strength similarly prevents loosening of uke's joints and requires tori to snap on the move thus taking the chance of injuring uke. Proper flowing with the movements was urged, instead. Gradually, I became more flexible and suffered less, thus, ironically, I could ""resist"" the locks longer, not with strength but with superior flexibility. This sort of relaxed resistance compelled tori to put the technique on more precisely therefor improving tori's skills and making the lock unexpectedly effective when applied on an untrained assailant.
Fear and pain, because they are basic to fighting situations, are dealt with physically (and thus mentally) in all martial arts. having gone through this type of training, something happened to me. There was an overflow into daily life. Things still hurt, to be sure, but now I knew that they could be dealt with, first by accepting pain, then by gradually getting used to it in order to ignore it. After doing this successfully a few times, I could treat fear as I had pain, ""Forgetting fear but never disregarding her."" This attitude, in turn reinforced my confidence and self-respect.
ADVANCED ATTAINMENTS
Holistic Emphasis For the experienced, more benefits await but, due to the lack of an holistic emphasis, many lifetime practitioners become disenchanted with what they thought were advanced attainments in the martial arts: strong determination and the martial spirit (dealing with the fact of one's own death.) Feudal samurai (the misunderstood ideal of many martial artists) were expected to blindly obey and to die even kill themselves, when ordered to do so. (Although the self-sacrifice of the samurai is the extreme example of this, similar but less radical obedience was expected of the Korean Hwarang and the Chinese monks.) For years, the long-time student will look upon these qualities as courage, manliness, or moral rectitude, then, seasoned in the arts but unconditioned by an oriental upbringing, they will doubt their own judgment and/or that of their stylistic ancestors. Blind obedience and self-sacrifice seem distasteful and totally out of place in a peaceful, modern society.
I came to these conclusions rather early in my martial arts career, after about ten years, but did not want to lose respect for the ideals which had profited me in so many ways. Hence, I set the following precept for myself:
Understand the history and traditions of a style but do not be a slave to them, and The final purpose of all the arts is self-development.
I began to break down the ""courageous"" qualities of the samurai in order to see how one could replicate them without being totally self-sacrificial or unthinking.
Determination To the soldier about to face possible death on the battlefield with a clear mission in his mind, determination is imperative. He must tell himself that his loved ones, his way of life, indeed his very moral essence depends on his mission. he must not value himself too highly lest he endanger the mission in order to save himself and thus jeopardize those things for which he wants to stay alive. He grits his teeth and, trying to put thoughts of death aside, he gets on with the job.
The solder's actions are necessary but not desirable; few would choose to be in his situation. But his ability to get the job done improved by his determination is what is laudable.
In times of peace, it is difficult to simulate a real life-or-death situation, but this is what many martial arts schools try to do. Traditional karate schools, especially, may emphasize hard (supposedly non-contact) sparring in order to place the student into a threatening situation and thus test courage and determination. The fighter is supposed to think, ""Nothing can defeat me. I'll die first."" This ""hard"" determination is an expression of extreme self-confidence and pride and as such is valuable as a motivating tool, but it is also unrealistic. One is defeatable and one will accept submission rather than death, at least in most cases even if only to re-engage the fight at a later time. ""hard"" determination should be used as are all ideals. We do not expect to achieve them in full, but how great are our accomplishments when we try!
After Lulu Ko assumed the chairmanship of his school..., there was held a big festival which everyone...wanted to see. He found so many people in attendance that he could not see the stage....
So Lulu Ko looked back and saw a big pine tree. he walked to the tree and placed his back against it. Whereupon, with his back muscles which had been well developed from years of practicing the Sanchin exercise* , he climbed up the tree....
Master Uechi said, ""Can you believe this story?"" The students replied that they could not believe it. With that the Master conceded...that the legend could have not possible basis in fact. ""However,"" he said, ""just think if someone believed this.... What goal might he reach by simply training for it, compared to other people who just laughed about it and did not train.""4
""Hard"" determination can be dangerous if taken too literally but can serve as strong motivation when tempered with ""soft"" determination. Some judo and many karate specialists have experienced only that training which relates to ""hard"" determination. Other judo-ka and most aikido-ka, on the other hand, know only ""soft"" determination: ""Since the mountain is bigger than I, I will go around it rather than through it."" Much more realistic a viewpoint, this type of determination is akin to not making waves and that is precisely its weakness. It is one thing to avoid conflict wherever possible but it is another to avoid possibilities wherever there is conflict. It is wise to circumvent the mount, but not to take too many detours. Detours often lead to mazes more difficult to negotiate than an entire mountain range. Too much avoidance of the difficult results in an attitude of insecurity.
Even Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido and a very religious man who taught a relatively defensive martial art, was not above mixing the hard and the soft. One of his students was having a very difficult time off-balancing a bigger student in the kokyu-ho (breath-exercise) kneeling drill. The idea is to tip the partner up and tilt him over. ""Sensei,"" the student complained, ""he is too strong. I can not budge him."" Indeed the man was enormous. Ueshiba calmly took the student's place and allowed the giant to grasp his wrists. Suddenly Ueshiba's knee smashed into the man's chest at which time he was easily tipped up and tilted onto his back. ""I'm not having any trouble,"" the master said. Regardless of one's art, it is important that the quality of determination be looked upon as a mix of hard and soft. Idealism, whether of courage or passivity, must be balanced by reality.
The Martial Spirit That soldier on the battlefield about to face possible death holds everything as important. When death is close, even poverty is wealth. Everything is important, but in order for this soldier to live, nothing can matter but his fighting. yet if his fighting is everything, depth of concentration can produce a sort of paralysis. he must concentrate on fighting (not on flowers or birds) but must not focus on any part of fighting, nor indeed on the absolute necessity of winning. He must remain alert but not tight, relaxed but not lazy. he must have hard determination but know when to soften it. Things matter, but they cannot matter too much.
For the time in which he is dealing with imminent death, and desiring a continuing life, his mind goes into mu-shin and he reacts with mizu-no-kokoro (mind like water and tsuki-no-kokoro (mind like the moon). Both suggest calmness and reflection, not intellectual reflection but reflection of action. Water is disturbed not willfully by its own action but only by the action of external stimuli, then returns to placidity; meanwhile the moon shines above, seeing all, but remaining undisturbed: mid like water, mind like moon.
The warrior cares about life by not caring about death. He does not desire to die but he cannot afford to be obsessed with living. He must simply be, determined, but nevertheless flowing with fate. He may not believe that he is predestined, but he must assume for his own relaxation and efficiency, that he is.
And so, after the battle is over, he realizes that he has experienced a mind-body harmony which has balanced hard and soft determination, zeal for life and acceptance of death, as well as all the elements of his training.
If a martial artist experienced the hard-to-describe state of mind of the battlefield trooper, it is a desirable achievement, but it is useless unless properly understood and properly put to work off the battlefield and out of the dojo. Determination hard and soft, stoic acceptance of death in order to live, and an appreciation of personal values can be the epitome of the martial spirit, reserved for those with sufficient experience, but it must be framed by a well-balanced philosophy of the martial arts which encompasses more than fighting. The personal values of determination and the martial spirit are available to modern martial artists, but only if they use a little mu-shin, a little rationality, and do not see the goal too narrowly nor hold it too tightly.
Self-defense ability, coordination and health come from many types of martial arts training. Sincere personal effort regardless of immediate reward also produces confidence, pride and self-actualization - the less tangible trophies of classical training. After years of sparring other black belts, repeating kata, or breaking boards, the traditional trainee regardless of belt-level, certificates, plaques or prizes, can attain a special sort of determination and the calm intensity known as ""the martial spirit."" Training is the blueprint by which one builds oneself. If the martial artist is to create himself as his own work of art, he will certainly set short-term, tangible goals for himself, but will not lose sight of those goals which he may never completely attain, the consequences of his own method of training.
Footnotes
Mitchell, Joni, ""I Think I Understand"", Clouds album, Warner REPRISE records.
I do not imply here that there are no causes worth dying for but that they do not appear at regular intervals like auto-inspection, nor should they be determined, as were the samurai's, by Big Brother or other servants of mankind.
I once knew an Israeli child who would, in fact, rather die than submit. he was admired for his determination, but think how wasteful it would have been if school toughs took him at his word. Evidently, he had been conditioned with a war-time mentality which was almost perverse in peace-time America, not to mention dangerous. Sanchin (three conflicts) is the name of a basic kata in both Uechi-ryu and Goju-ryu karate, as well as other systems. (The LuLu Ko mentioned might well be Woo Loo Chin, the Chinese instructor of Kanryo Higaonna who in turned taught the founder of Goju, Chojun Miyagi.)
NAUKA national News, Official Publication of the North American Uechi Karate Association, Vol. 3, No.1, March 1, 1979, from an address by Master Ryuko Tomoyose. "
Author's Note:
In a previous article I have redefined the term classical and traditional to mean different things. When referring to classical arts, I usually mean arts rigidly taught to preserve the movements and methods of old. When referring to traditional arts I usually means those arts drawn from the classical and adhering to certain virtues of those older arts but arts which nonetheless can be adjusted to contemporary times. For example Katori Shinto Ryu is a classical bujutsu while Shotokan is a traditional budo. However, for this article, I have used the terms interchangeably in order to avoid repetitiousness. Here I use classical and traditional as a unity to distinguish them from non-traditional or sportive forms.
Introduction:
One man works up a sweat sparring other black belts in preparation for the monthly area tourney. he works hard, his skills improve, his lungs become more efficient, his reactions are honed and his feelings of self-value increase. Another student repeats a kata dozens of times adding flourishes and expressions which will catch the judges' eyes. His muscles are worked, his balance is bettered and, as the feeling for his form is firmed, his self-esteem increases. A third practitioner adds another board to the already awesome stack in front of him. he gears himself up for the break which will certainly astound both the judges and the crowd. He has added power to his knife-hand strike, taught himself to go beyond pain, and thus has increased his sense of self-worth.
And when each comes home with tangible evidence of how he has bettered himself, he will be sure that it was all worthwhile. The judges and the crowd have conferred visibility on his accomplishments. As for the losers, they have not done all that work in vain. But they must join their cousins, the traditional (i.e. non-tournament) martial artists who train like they do, but seek only personal verification for the values. The sports-oriented practitioner may profit as much from his practice as the quiet traditionalist, but the traditionalist (whether karate-ka, aiki-student, or judo-player) aims at different goals. The sportster often asks the judges for confirmation. The classicist somehow seems satisfied without asking a soul.
For the sincere martial artist who seeks personal benefits from training, both accustomed accomplishments and, at a later stage, some advanced attainments are possible...and without satisfying a board of seniors who are less attuned to his personal values than is he himself. The consequences of classical training are there with or without trophies. All one has to do is recognize them.
Exercise, especially exercise which uses all the muscles of the body, which builds strength, flexibility, and aerobic efficiency is healthful and the proper use of the muscles develops coordination, good posture and thus physical grace. The exercises used in the martial arts are movements which can also be used to defend oneself. In the fertile soil of self-defense, martial artists toil with the tools of exercise. What grows is the flower of coordination and health. Within this flower are the seeds of a new garden, the non-physical values: pride, confidence, and self-actualization.
ACCUSTOMED ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Confidence: Pride in Practice It is taken for granted even by non-martial artists that self-defense ability can work toward producing a healthier self-image. Self-image is a combination of one's ability and one's self-value. Bullies often are persons who know their physical abilities but doubt their value. Their marks are persons who may know their value but doubt their physical abilities. For them, self-defense balances the scales. It gives the former scapegoat confidence in his ability to protect his values.
The martial arts allow a person to feel good about himself by earning his way. His achievements produce pride since they are a direct display of his abilities. it used to be this way outside the dojo, but no longer. A job promotion often means as little as a grade promotion in school. Sometimes it is earned but as often it is attained through subtle manipulation, less than subtle dishonesty, or just sitting there long enough. Aggressiveness, which used to be thought of as a virtuous trait, has turned into rapaciousness. Self-interest has become egotism. Earning one's way has been converted to getting one's way. The oriental martial arts try to avoid this. Confidence produces a personal pride and ca itself work toward self-protection. Muggers (and bullies) do not want to test that person who seems alert and confident, purposeful and relaxed. Picture a child cowering in the corner of the schoolyard or an adult nervously circling around street toughs who are gathered near her auto. If the bully or the tough wants to take action, these will be their most likely targets. There is no guarantee against being mugged. it can happen to large, tough, confident policeman as well as small, frail, insecure grandmothers, but personal attitude can have a strong bearing on whether or not a persona is considered a likely candidate for an easy fall.
Yoshimitsu Yamada, Aikido Shihan, student of the founder Morihei Ueshiba and head of the New York Aiki-kai takes a morning jog in Central Park. A short, stout oriental in a warm-up suit with a bulge in the back pocket looks like easy prey to a Big Apple picker. When assaulted one morning Yamada Sensei does not react with violence or panic. he simply looks his assailant in the eye and, insulted, says, ""Do you know who I am?"" The easy pickings suddenly do not seem so easy to the mugger and he flees.
It is hard to fake that kind of confidence. Oh, one can walk though The Commons with one's back straight at a leisurely but not-to-leisurely pace, never twitching to look at the invisible assassins which are sure to be around each tree, but will this pseudo-confidence come through to the attacker as the real thing? In other words, does one look like one could handle the situation if need be? Confidence is a personal refusal to panic. The martial arts build that confidence.
Self-Actualization: Mind-Body Harmony In the Asian martial arts, as in many other physical activities, conscious deliberation is too slow to be effective. Therefore, in order to develop instantaneous reactions, one must train, usually by constantly repeating techniques. The result is reaction without interfering rationality. I welcomes this plunge into a-rationality in my initial martial arts training. I already possessed a reasonable ability to intellectualize, so this discipline was valuable to balance my deliberate side, but not to overshadow it.
My early experiences with judo, ju-jutsu and karate typified the a-rational approach. The repetition melted me into a state of mu-shin (no-mind) and allowed my body to ""absorb"" the techniques. This was not really mind-body harmony, but the intentional numbing of the mind to teach the body. It was like learning to swim by being thrown into the lake, or learning to ride a bicycle by trail and error.
Intelligent people, whether or not they give their mind over to mu-shin during practice, often reflect rationally on this a-rational exercise after a work-out. Zen-Buddhists may not advocate this, but I think it is essential to the development of a well-balanced martial artist. I have known far too many practitioners, who after years of a a-rational training, can perform techniques excellently but cannot analyze or adjust their movements to new circumstances or strategies. Rationality has its place as well as a-rationality. A punch may be a purely a-rational reaction, but the strategy which sets up the opening for the punch, the choice of training used to perfect the punch, and the decision of when, where, and how much to train the punch are all rationally derived.
A rigidly a-rational approach to martial arts training would be akin to making football players excellent tacklers runners, blockers, passers and receivers, but never giving them signals in the huddle nor playbooks to study. Cranial calisthenics and corporeal contemplation should occur in equal proportions. The practitioner can then begin to draw mental lessons from physical action as well as physical lessons through intellectual exertion. It is this mutual interchange that produces the distinct satisfaction of applying, in balance, one's entire being.
An Example of the Process: Dealing with Pain and Fear
Fear is heightened by pain, pain is increased by fear. Danny was a judo student of mine who was so afraid of falling as a beginner that he would tighten up, grit his teeth and take a terrible fall. he was so intimidated by possible injury that he actually contributed to it. To make things worse, he had a legitimately low pain threshold, so that I could not truthfully say to him that there was no cause for alarm. The pain and fear may have been ""all in his head"" but it was nevertheless real pain and fear. he had not invented it, but he had exaggerated it. It took Danny a long time to get over this because at that time, I had not developed a way to help him deal with an exaggerated but natural reaction. I did not realize that the way was implicit in the method of nearly every martial art.
We are all apprehensive of the unknown to some extent. We reason that there is a 50/50 chance that the unknown may bring something unpleasant. What is worse is knowing only a little about what lies out there, but nothing at all about how to deal with it. More frightening that The Unknown can be The-Known-but-Unexperienced, especially when we are certain that we cannot deal with it, that the odds are more than 50/50 against us. Of course, our lack of experience is what makes us so sure that we cannot cope, yet to get experience we must cope. So, we tip-toe into the darkness, hoping to find a light-switch before an edge of broken glass finds our bare feet, the better to now the room next time.
Few of us are experienced in pain. And those of us who are, are experienced in only specific kinds: banging a thumb, bumping a knee, breaking a bone, or receiving a concussion. All of these are transient. The pangs are felt, endured, and pushed aside, but often with the wrong attitude. We do not forget them, but we try to. Few of us use suffering as a tool unless we are athletes. We do not test ourselves with discomfort or even say to ourselves, ""Well, if I can endure that, my next painful experience will be nothing!"" Instead, we try to forget and thus we are just as afraid of the next ordeal (since we never can completely forget) and so it is just as painful.
Not so in the martial arts. First there was beginner's distress: fear of embarrassment (which is actually fear of failure.) It was an insignificant discomfort which went away rather quickly for me since I soon realized that the other students were concerned with their own techniques, not mine. The physical workout was tough for a while on muscles which were not used to this sort of movement: a second, equally minor sort of pain no more unique than that which would accompany any new form of exercise. Then, Challenge Time!
In karate it came with basic ippon kumite (one step sparring) in which I had to test my blocks. I was to strike my opponent's attacking weapon (a hand or a foot) in defense. Will I miss, will my partner hit me? If I panic I will get hit, so I'll block. OW! Blocking can hurt! The affliction was mentally exaggerated because it was sudden and had not been experienced before. But now I knew that I could block a basic attack and that I could tolerate a modicum of pain to do it. I worked on the block so that it would be performed with better timing, better angle and thus minimize the pain. In doing so, I delivered hundreds and hundreds of blocks which made the throbs almost anachronistic and therefor nothing to get panicked about. Gradually new unknowns were put into the sparring drills so that I had to face new fears and more risks. The attack might be high, medium or low level, or come from an angle. Perhaps there would be an attack and a follow-up, or a two person attack. Occasionally I would get hit, but I could slough it off. I was used to a little pain, after all, and seeing a threatening fist coming at me had become an everyday occurrence.
In judo, proper falling was taught with a hard slap to the mat which stung at first, but which acted as a shock-absorber to prevent a more dangerous sensation. Gradually, the sting became inconsequential. The judo custom of accepting other students' invitations to randori (freestyle spar) placed me into numerous situations of struggle and falling so that soon no new sparing or falling experience was too out of the ordinary.
In aiki-ju-jutsu, there was little discomfort in falling initially since rolls rather than breakfalls were taught first (these had come in reverse order in judo). Wrist-releases were taught before basic locks, locks before takedowns, takedowns before throws which require a breakfall. It was while learning locks that I first experienced aiki's variety of pain. The locks were, after all, intended to hurt an antagonist. But in practice, they were put on gradually and I was taught to slap out in submission when it began to hurt. Many students slapped before they felt any shock at all because they were afraid. Others tested the technique by resisting. Neither action was encouraged. Giving up too soon prevented tori (performer of the technique) from knowing the amount of pressure necessary to put on the lock, and prevented uke (receiver of the technique) from building a tolerance to the pain and simultaneously limbering her/his joints. Resisting with strength similarly prevents loosening of uke's joints and requires tori to snap on the move thus taking the chance of injuring uke. Proper flowing with the movements was urged, instead. Gradually, I became more flexible and suffered less, thus, ironically, I could ""resist"" the locks longer, not with strength but with superior flexibility. This sort of relaxed resistance compelled tori to put the technique on more precisely therefor improving tori's skills and making the lock unexpectedly effective when applied on an untrained assailant.
Fear and pain, because they are basic to fighting situations, are dealt with physically (and thus mentally) in all martial arts. having gone through this type of training, something happened to me. There was an overflow into daily life. Things still hurt, to be sure, but now I knew that they could be dealt with, first by accepting pain, then by gradually getting used to it in order to ignore it. After doing this successfully a few times, I could treat fear as I had pain, ""Forgetting fear but never disregarding her."" This attitude, in turn reinforced my confidence and self-respect.
ADVANCED ATTAINMENTS
Holistic Emphasis For the experienced, more benefits await but, due to the lack of an holistic emphasis, many lifetime practitioners become disenchanted with what they thought were advanced attainments in the martial arts: strong determination and the martial spirit (dealing with the fact of one's own death.) Feudal samurai (the misunderstood ideal of many martial artists) were expected to blindly obey and to die even kill themselves, when ordered to do so. (Although the self-sacrifice of the samurai is the extreme example of this, similar but less radical obedience was expected of the Korean Hwarang and the Chinese monks.) For years, the long-time student will look upon these qualities as courage, manliness, or moral rectitude, then, seasoned in the arts but unconditioned by an oriental upbringing, they will doubt their own judgment and/or that of their stylistic ancestors. Blind obedience and self-sacrifice seem distasteful and totally out of place in a peaceful, modern society.
I came to these conclusions rather early in my martial arts career, after about ten years, but did not want to lose respect for the ideals which had profited me in so many ways. Hence, I set the following precept for myself:
Understand the history and traditions of a style but do not be a slave to them, and The final purpose of all the arts is self-development.
I began to break down the ""courageous"" qualities of the samurai in order to see how one could replicate them without being totally self-sacrificial or unthinking.
Determination To the soldier about to face possible death on the battlefield with a clear mission in his mind, determination is imperative. He must tell himself that his loved ones, his way of life, indeed his very moral essence depends on his mission. he must not value himself too highly lest he endanger the mission in order to save himself and thus jeopardize those things for which he wants to stay alive. He grits his teeth and, trying to put thoughts of death aside, he gets on with the job.
The solder's actions are necessary but not desirable; few would choose to be in his situation. But his ability to get the job done improved by his determination is what is laudable.
In times of peace, it is difficult to simulate a real life-or-death situation, but this is what many martial arts schools try to do. Traditional karate schools, especially, may emphasize hard (supposedly non-contact) sparring in order to place the student into a threatening situation and thus test courage and determination. The fighter is supposed to think, ""Nothing can defeat me. I'll die first."" This ""hard"" determination is an expression of extreme self-confidence and pride and as such is valuable as a motivating tool, but it is also unrealistic. One is defeatable and one will accept submission rather than death, at least in most cases even if only to re-engage the fight at a later time. ""hard"" determination should be used as are all ideals. We do not expect to achieve them in full, but how great are our accomplishments when we try!
After Lulu Ko assumed the chairmanship of his school..., there was held a big festival which everyone...wanted to see. He found so many people in attendance that he could not see the stage....
So Lulu Ko looked back and saw a big pine tree. he walked to the tree and placed his back against it. Whereupon, with his back muscles which had been well developed from years of practicing the Sanchin exercise* , he climbed up the tree....
Master Uechi said, ""Can you believe this story?"" The students replied that they could not believe it. With that the Master conceded...that the legend could have not possible basis in fact. ""However,"" he said, ""just think if someone believed this.... What goal might he reach by simply training for it, compared to other people who just laughed about it and did not train.""4
""Hard"" determination can be dangerous if taken too literally but can serve as strong motivation when tempered with ""soft"" determination. Some judo and many karate specialists have experienced only that training which relates to ""hard"" determination. Other judo-ka and most aikido-ka, on the other hand, know only ""soft"" determination: ""Since the mountain is bigger than I, I will go around it rather than through it."" Much more realistic a viewpoint, this type of determination is akin to not making waves and that is precisely its weakness. It is one thing to avoid conflict wherever possible but it is another to avoid possibilities wherever there is conflict. It is wise to circumvent the mount, but not to take too many detours. Detours often lead to mazes more difficult to negotiate than an entire mountain range. Too much avoidance of the difficult results in an attitude of insecurity.
Even Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido and a very religious man who taught a relatively defensive martial art, was not above mixing the hard and the soft. One of his students was having a very difficult time off-balancing a bigger student in the kokyu-ho (breath-exercise) kneeling drill. The idea is to tip the partner up and tilt him over. ""Sensei,"" the student complained, ""he is too strong. I can not budge him."" Indeed the man was enormous. Ueshiba calmly took the student's place and allowed the giant to grasp his wrists. Suddenly Ueshiba's knee smashed into the man's chest at which time he was easily tipped up and tilted onto his back. ""I'm not having any trouble,"" the master said. Regardless of one's art, it is important that the quality of determination be looked upon as a mix of hard and soft. Idealism, whether of courage or passivity, must be balanced by reality.
The Martial Spirit That soldier on the battlefield about to face possible death holds everything as important. When death is close, even poverty is wealth. Everything is important, but in order for this soldier to live, nothing can matter but his fighting. yet if his fighting is everything, depth of concentration can produce a sort of paralysis. he must concentrate on fighting (not on flowers or birds) but must not focus on any part of fighting, nor indeed on the absolute necessity of winning. He must remain alert but not tight, relaxed but not lazy. he must have hard determination but know when to soften it. Things matter, but they cannot matter too much.
For the time in which he is dealing with imminent death, and desiring a continuing life, his mind goes into mu-shin and he reacts with mizu-no-kokoro (mind like water and tsuki-no-kokoro (mind like the moon). Both suggest calmness and reflection, not intellectual reflection but reflection of action. Water is disturbed not willfully by its own action but only by the action of external stimuli, then returns to placidity; meanwhile the moon shines above, seeing all, but remaining undisturbed: mid like water, mind like moon.
The warrior cares about life by not caring about death. He does not desire to die but he cannot afford to be obsessed with living. He must simply be, determined, but nevertheless flowing with fate. He may not believe that he is predestined, but he must assume for his own relaxation and efficiency, that he is.
And so, after the battle is over, he realizes that he has experienced a mind-body harmony which has balanced hard and soft determination, zeal for life and acceptance of death, as well as all the elements of his training.
If a martial artist experienced the hard-to-describe state of mind of the battlefield trooper, it is a desirable achievement, but it is useless unless properly understood and properly put to work off the battlefield and out of the dojo. Determination hard and soft, stoic acceptance of death in order to live, and an appreciation of personal values can be the epitome of the martial spirit, reserved for those with sufficient experience, but it must be framed by a well-balanced philosophy of the martial arts which encompasses more than fighting. The personal values of determination and the martial spirit are available to modern martial artists, but only if they use a little mu-shin, a little rationality, and do not see the goal too narrowly nor hold it too tightly.
Self-defense ability, coordination and health come from many types of martial arts training. Sincere personal effort regardless of immediate reward also produces confidence, pride and self-actualization - the less tangible trophies of classical training. After years of sparring other black belts, repeating kata, or breaking boards, the traditional trainee regardless of belt-level, certificates, plaques or prizes, can attain a special sort of determination and the calm intensity known as ""the martial spirit."" Training is the blueprint by which one builds oneself. If the martial artist is to create himself as his own work of art, he will certainly set short-term, tangible goals for himself, but will not lose sight of those goals which he may never completely attain, the consequences of his own method of training.
Footnotes
Mitchell, Joni, ""I Think I Understand"", Clouds album, Warner REPRISE records.
I do not imply here that there are no causes worth dying for but that they do not appear at regular intervals like auto-inspection, nor should they be determined, as were the samurai's, by Big Brother or other servants of mankind.
I once knew an Israeli child who would, in fact, rather die than submit. he was admired for his determination, but think how wasteful it would have been if school toughs took him at his word. Evidently, he had been conditioned with a war-time mentality which was almost perverse in peace-time America, not to mention dangerous. Sanchin (three conflicts) is the name of a basic kata in both Uechi-ryu and Goju-ryu karate, as well as other systems. (The LuLu Ko mentioned might well be Woo Loo Chin, the Chinese instructor of Kanryo Higaonna who in turned taught the founder of Goju, Chojun Miyagi.)
NAUKA national News, Official Publication of the North American Uechi Karate Association, Vol. 3, No.1, March 1, 1979, from an address by Master Ryuko Tomoyose. "
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