A Road that leads to Blissfulness

Do you ever feel happiness or pain when someone is smiling or crying in front of you? Have you ever asked yourself why does this happen?

Shri Krishna in Bhagavad Gita says I am a thread running through all the beads of a garland. I am a soul / Atman / Brahman residing in all living creatures. According to him, a Human being is composed of three parts: Body, mind, and soul. Mind and body are made of matter which gets eroded as time went by. On the other hand, the soul is indestructible, infinite, omnipresent, and imperishable. The realization of the soul is the biggest goal in the spiritual domain.

Does there exist any lump of clay by knowing which we can explain every other lump of clay? said Swami Vivekananda in one of his lectures in London. He was talking about the Universal principle which has vast implications in the materialistic as well as in the spiritual world.

Let's understand his statement from the mathematical domain. The addition is a mathematical operation used to add two numbers. Subtraction is nothing but addition with a reverse sign. Eg: 2 - 3 is the same as 2 + (-3). Multiplication is repeated addition. The division is repeated subtraction. The addition is a fundamental mathematical operation that can explain every other mathematical operation.

In Computer Science, can we develop an algorithm that explains every other algorithm? Can we develop a medicine that cures every disease? We don't know yet the answer to these questions.

In the Spiritual world, his statement is true. By knowing just one soul, we come to know every other soul of the Universe. The soul is the only common part that we share with every organism. Let's revisit the question I have asked you at the beginning of this article.

Yeah, I know you got the answer. Every living creature has a fragment of ourselves(soul) in it. That is why we feel happiness/sadness when someone is smiling/crying in front of us.

Are you ever in love with someone? Loving our beloved ones gives us a blissful feeling. Have you experienced bliss? Do you know why are you experiencing bliss? Loving someone unconditionally increases the area of consciousness. Due to that, we experience their innermost feelings which give us joy. By extending the same logic, Increasing the consciousness from one person to every organism of the universe gives the highest blissful feeling known as Samadhi. The feeling of oneness is the universal principle in the spiritual world to attain happiness.

The heart of Bhagavad Gita's message is the feeling of oneness. Shri Krishna and Arjuna is an allegory of soul and body respectively. The scripture is full of verses to spell out what this means:

I am ever-present, to those who have realized me in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me. They worship me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me. Wherever they may live, they abide in me. (6.30-31)

When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union. (6.32)

That one I love who is capable of ill will, who is friendly and compassionate. (12.13)

They alone see truly who see the Lord the same in every creature, who see the deathless in the hearts of all that die. Seeing the same Lord everywhere, they don't harm themselves or others. Thus they attain the supreme goal. (13.27-28)

I am the self in the heart of every creature, Arjuna, and the beginning, middle, and the end of their existence.

A soul is also called Sunyata which means emptiness. In mathematics, we represent it with the symbol '0'. Emptiness is space/void. It describes all the characteristics of the soul. The soul is infinite, imperishable, and omnipotent. All these attributes can be explained by space.

Is there anything in this universe that never leaves you?

No, of course not! Shadow is not the answer. It leaves you in darkness. The right answer is space. It'll never leave you. Wherever you go, it is always with you. Hence, it's omnipresent. Space is an infinite entity, it doesn't have any boundaries. Space is imperishable. It's almost impossible to destroy it.

The Soul is present in every living creature. Sunyata(Soul) that exists within me also exists within you. If there are n living creatures in the Universe then how does the knowledge of one soul gives us the knowledge of every other Soul?

I know my soul i.e I have the knowledge of what '0' is. -------- (A)

Knowledge of every soul means 0 + 0 + .... n times which is equal to 0. -------- (B)

Using A and B, we prove Swami Vivekananda's statement i.e By knowing just one soul we come to know about every other soul of the universe.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is a fictional story about a boy who had passed through various stages of his life only to realize the feeling of oneness at the end of his life. Hemann Hesse writes

Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realization, the knowledge, what actually wisdom was, what the goal of his long search was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness. Slowly this blossomed in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva's face: Harmony, Knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling, oneness.

Always keep the conscious thought of the oneness of all life in your mind. Is it possible to harm anyone if you keep it in your mind? No, Of course not. Injuring others means to injure your own self. On the contrary, helping others means helping your own self. We never help others, we only help ourselves.

In Courage: The joy of living dangerously, Osho explains

In Meditation, dialogue also ceases. Then you have dialogue in silence. Words drop because when the heart is really full you cannot speak. When the heart is too overflowing only silence can be the medium. Then there is no "other". You are one with the Universe. You neither say anything nor listen to anything. You are with the one, with the universe, with the whole. A oneness -- this is Meditation.

The crux of the entire article is the "Feeling of Oneness". Live your life through the lens of Oneness and see the difference it creates in your life.

Thinking Like a Pro

Life presents you with two Choices:

An Easy Life or Meaningful Life

Which one will you pick?

Picking an easy life is not going to add any meaning to your life. If you still want to get an easy life, Eliyahu M Goldratt told in "Choice" that, Take a hammer strike it hard on your head and you will get everything on the bed. You won't get an easier life like this anywhere on this planet.

Choosing a meaning life adds value to your life. To live a meaningful life one has to be an Analyst. An analyst is humbly arrogant. Humble in the sense that one doesn't know. Arrogant in the sense that having the confidence that one is capable of figuring out how to make things work.

Every situation is an opportunity to learn something new. Every new initiative is an exploration. Impediment to action always advances an action. To live a meaningful life, you have to solve lots and lots of problems. The best way to solve a problem is to build a model of it.

A problem is known and you want some desirable answer. Through your experience, you build a model that may be made of plastic, wood, code, or some computer simulation, etc. Feed input to this model and wait for the result. If the result matches your desired answer than your model is correct otherwise it's wrong. Make some changes in the model and try it again if the model doesn't meet your expectations.

In real life, our proposed model rarely works for the first time. When something doesn't work, we are left with two choices.

• Complain about reality.

• Harvest the gift it just gave us, the knowledge of what has to be corrected.

You have to reiterate your model to reach the optimal solution. In the end, the satisfaction of the progress compensates the disappointment.

Building the logical map of the world can help you to recognize the opportunities that are important to you. Along with that when things initially don't work, logical maps help you to identify the missing element until you convert the opportunity into success. Knowing the cause and effect relationships can help you to think clearly.

In Choice, Eliyahu M Goldratt describes the four obstacles which prevent us from thinking clearly are:

1. Reality is Complex.

2. Conflicts are given.

3. Blaming others.

4. The situation can't be improved further.

Reality is Complex: Any real-life situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is actually, once understood is embarrassingly simple. The more complicated the situation seems to be, the simpler the solution must be. Our distorted perception of reality prevents us from thinking clearly which makes us

• Unable to see the camouflaged problems.

• Avoid challenging the things that are in the base.

• Once reaching an excellent situation, not being motivated to explore for better solutions.

Newton didn't invent his three laws, he discovered them. He revealed the inherent simplicity that was already there. Asking why and insisting on a meaningful answer is the key. Every child is Newton in potential. You might think that asking why leads to more and more complexity. No, because when the system converges, common causes appear as we dive deep down. There are very few elements at the base which through cause and effect govern the whole system.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not to be in the multiplicity and confusion of things. Issac Newton

You might argue that how does the reality is so simple if it takes a large number of books to describe the universe, the human body, or a company.

The answer lies in the definition of complexity. The prevailing definition of complexity is, the more data elements one has to provide to fully describe the system, the more complex the system is. The other definition which the analyst use is, the more degree of freedom the system has the more complex it is. The degree of freedom means the minimum number of points you have to touch in order to impact the whole system.

Which one is a more complex system: Left or Right?

According to the analyst, the System on the left is more complex than the right one because the degree of freedom of the Left system is 4 whereas the degree of freedom of the right system is 1.

Conflicts are given: What is a Conflict? A conflict is a situation where we want contradictions. For example, the wings of an airplane. On one side, we want wings to be thick to ensure strength. On the other side, we want them to be as light as possible. In the Computer world, we want an algorithm to be as fast as possible along with that it should take as little space as possible. In every domain, we find lots of conflicts.

How to resolve conflicts?

We know that reality is inherently simple. As we dive deep down, causes converge. Conflicts arise due to some causes. Once the faulty assumption is removed then the cause of the conflicts also gets removed. Conflicts in good situations lead to compromise and in bad situations leads to a stone wall. Conflicts can be solved by the elimination method. Meaningful opportunities are open when one sees how to remove blockages.

An obstacle to people's perception is that conflicts are given and the best we can do is to seek a compromise. Inherent simplicity means that the reality is governed by very few elements and that any existing conflict can be eliminated. If we take that as given, as absolutely correct in every situation, we'll find ourselves thinking clearly.

It's amazing how frequently things that seem to be unrelated are connected to form a bigger picture. Similarities and differences emerge out of nowhere with such frequency that great thinkers start to expect and use it. Harmony is everywhere.

Blaming Others: To excel in life, you need collaboration from lots of people. Relationships play an important role in our life. Preserving harmony in a relationship is very important to live a full life. The quality of forming a pleasant and consistent whole is known as harmony. If relationships are not harmonious with others, the chance of bringing an opportunity to fruition will be severely reduced. Harmony exists in every relationship, unfortunately, we don't bother to find it and actually implement it.

A wonderful recipe to ruin the relationship is to blame others. There are four strategies one can apply in any relationship:

• Lose-Lose

• Win-Win

• Lose-Win

• Win-Win

Lose-Lose: In this approach, both the parties are at loss. Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective people gives an example of a Lose-Lose situation.

I know of a divorce in which the husband was directed by the judge to sell the assets and turn over half the proceeds to his ex-wife. In compliance, he sold a car worth over $10,000 for $50 and gave $25 to his wife. When the wife protested, the court clerk checked on the situation and discovered that the husband was proceeding in the same manner systematically through all the assets. Some people are so centered on an enemy, so totally obsessed with the behavior of another person that they become blind to everything except their desire for the other person to lose, even if it means losing themselves.

Avoid Lose-Lose situation at all costs.

Win-Lose / Lose-Win: In this approach, one person is winning at the expense of others. It assumes Life is a Zero-Sum game which means the size of the cake is fixed. Taking the bigger pie will reduce the portion of the other party. Winning at the expense of the other will sore the relation. Life is an iterative prisoner's dilemma. Employing such a strategy is going to deteriorate the relationship.

Seeking a compromise is a Win-Lose approach. Human beings have an emotional account of winning in their head. A situation that is handled as a Win-Lose, we are more protective than generous.

Win-Win: This approach assumes Life is a Positive-Sum game which means the size of the Cake is infinite. Taking a bigger pie has had no effect on the portion of others. The success of one person increases the chances of success of other persons.

A change that will bring both parties what they need from a relationship is a mantra of the Win-Win approach. Always think Win-Win. Blaming others will move us away from this approach.

The situation can't be improved further: Quantum leaps in performance are always possible. Accepting that I know is an obstacle preventing you from looking for that quantum leaps. Never say I know. A person can never learn or improve at anything if he convinces himself that he knows everything.

No matter what you achieve, it is always the beginning of infinity. The most precious opportunity to deepen our knowledge is whenever reality is significantly different from our expectations. It means something is missing in our approach. The best way to tackle this is to pause and carefully examine the situation.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as achievement, success, and improvement have no meaning. Benjamin Franklin

The hardest thing to do is to struggle to find an answer to a problem when we believe that there is a high chance that it doesn't have an answer. It's so easy to give up. Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn something new. A solution to a problem is creating a new reality. A new reality means new possibilities that you haven't thought about before because they didn't exist in previous reality.

To improve a situation one has to think clearly. Always avoid circular logic. It means A happens because of B and B happens because of A. A kind of Deadlock. For example, you want to learn how to drive a Car. You ask your Dad, buy me a new Car. Your Dad replies, first learn how to drive a Car. Recognizing this circular Logic will help you in thinking clearly.

Be skeptical about tautologies. A tautology is a statement that is always true. A man is a mortal is a tautology. Inherent simplicity means causes converge which means one cause is responsible for more than one effect. To avoid falling into the trap of tautologies, find the other effects, and verify your hypothesis. More effects mean the hypothesis is correct.

People are good. It's our judgment which is worsening the situation. Things can't touch the mind, they are always external. Anxieties come only from our own internal judgment. Things are changing at every moment. As you see something, it'll change immediately and then will be no more. The universe is changing. Life is a judgment. Every hypothesis, before it's even entertained as a plausible hypothesis should first pass the test of not being derogatory.

Conclusion: Life is short. Derive the maximum yield from the present moment by thinking clearly. The harder we try the more we are likely to succeed. The more we succeed the more we are motivated to go about it again. Each of us, if we want it hard enough, can have a full life. Stay calm and be relaxed.

Lesson from an Angel

Last night, an angel came into my dreams. She has a very beautiful face, glittering eyes, and wore red attire. Her dark hairs make her exceedingly gorgeous. I was stunned by looking at her. She spoke in her soft voice, Aman, How are you? I am great. Thanks.

Angel: Why is there so much unhappiness these days?

Me: People are worried about money.

Angel: Does money buy happiness?

Me: Not having money will make our life miserable but having money is not going to make us happy. Money is indispensable only to satisfy the basic needs of our life.

Angel: Are people really making smart decisions about investing their money?

Me: Human beings are not as rational as they think about themselves. We are oblivious that our brain is taking shortcuts to reach a conclusion that makes us flawed thinkers.

Angel: Are you a rational thinker?

Me: No, I am not. Many times I fall in the trap of various psychological biases.

Angel: Let's play a game to check your decision-making heuristics.

Me: Go ahead.

Angel: You have two devices namely A and B out of which you can pick only one. You can insert any money into it in the beginning and hold the device for the next 20 years. Device A gives an annual return of 14% per annum whereas Device B gives a 40% return for half the years and -10% return for another half years. Which one will you pick?

(Don't call the police to complain about the devices, It's just a thought experiment which is happening in my dreams.)

Me: Device A gives 14% per annum. Device B gives on average a 15% return per annum. How?

= (40% - 10%) / 2

= 30% / 2

= 15%

I have used the Arithmetic Mean to compute the average value. Device B gives a higher return. So, I will pick Device B.

Angel: Are you sure? She is mildly smiling.

Me: I can't figure out why is she smiling. I reached this conclusion through my logic. So, I stayed with my decision.

Angel: Rethink about this problem.

Me: Let's take 50,000 as the initial money.

Money given by Device A at the end of 20 years:

= 50,000 * (1.14)^20

= 6,87,174.

(Symbol ^ means power. Eg. 2^3 = 2* 2*2 = 8)

Money given by Device B at the end of 20 years:

= 50,000 * (1.40)^10 * (0.90)^10

= 5,04,284.

How is this possible?

According to my logic, Device B has to give high returns compared to Device A but here the opposite happens. I start thinking where is the flaw in my logic.

Angel: Do you know any other way to compute the average value?

Me: There are two ways to compute the average value.

1. Arithmetic Mean

2. Geometric Mean

Arithmetic Mean is the sum of N terms divided by the total number of terms.

A.M = (x1 + x2 + x3 + ...... + xn) / n

Geometric Mean is the product of N terms and derives the nth root.

G.M = (x1 * x2 * x3 * ...... * xn) ^ (1/n)

Angel: Why did you use Arithmetic Mean over Geometric Mean?

Me: Geometric Mean doesn't come to my mind.

Angel: Think about the problem from the standpoint of Geometric Mean.

Me: Device A gives a 14% return per annum.

Device B gives (1.40 * 0.90) ^ (1/2) = 12.24% return per annum.

Angel: Aman, Money doesn't grow linearly. It compounds exponentially. This is the flaw in your logic. In exponential situations, think geometrically not arithmetically. It gives you a more accurate picture.

Me: I know about Geometric mean than why doesn't it come into my mind?

Angel: Human beings are not evolved to think in terms of Square root, cube root, or Nth root.

Is there any relation between Arithmetic Mean and Geometric Mean?

Me: Yes, there exists a relationship between them in the form of Arithmetic-Geometric Inequality.

Angel: What's that?

Me: Arithmetic-Geometric Mean inequality states that the arithmetic mean of a list of non-negative real numbers is greater than or equal to the Geometric Mean of the same list.

The Proof is simple:

~ (x - y)^2 >= 0

~ x^2 + y^2 - 2xy >= 0

~ x^2 + y^2 - 4xy + 2xy >= 0

~ x^2 + y^2 + 2xy >= 4xy

~ (x + y)^2 >= 4xy

~ (x + y) >= (4xy) ^ (1/2)

~ (x + y) / 2 >= (xy) ^ (1/2)

~ A.M >= G.M

Angel: Can you use it in this game?

Me: Oh! I see. Now, I started connecting the dots. A moment ago, you are smiling at my foolish logic. According to inequality, Arithmetic Mean always overestimates the money compared to the Geometric Mean. Hence, it nudges me in the wrong direction. So, I ended up picking the wrong option.

Thanks, Angel for showing me how to think geometrically. You have helped me to see the problems in a different light.

Don't look at me like this, Angel.

The sweet glances from your eyes make my heart jump. You are a perfect example of beauty with the brain.

On hearing my words, She smiles, blushed, and then vanished like a breeze of spring. The rays of sunshine and the soothing voices of birds awakened me from the sleep with a comprehensive view of averages.

Darrell Huff in How to Lie with Statistics explains:

Statistics is much an art as it is a science. A great many manipulations and even distortions are possible with the bounds of propriety. Often the statistician must choose among methods, a subjective process, and find the one that he will use to represent the facts.

Take the simplest example, let's say that milk cost Rs 100 a quart last year and bread was also Rs 100 a loaf. This year milk is down to Rs 50 and bread has gone up to Rs 200. Now, what would you like to prove? Cost of living up? Cost of living down? or No change?

Consider last year as the base period, making the prices of that time 100 percent. Since the price of milk has since dropped to half (50 percent) and the price of the bread has doubled (200 percent) and the average of 50 and 200 is 125, the price has gone up 25 percent.

To prove that the cost hasn't changed at all we simply switch to a geometric average. [...] Take last year as the base and call its price level 100. Actually, you multiply the 100 percent of each item together and take the root, which is 100. For this year, milk being at 50 percent of last year and bread at 200 percent, multiply 50 by 200 to get 10,000. The square root, which is the geometric average, is 100. Prices haven't gone up or down.

Learning is of no use unless we apply it in everyday life. Replace angel with the stock market and devices with various alternatives of stock can help us to use the above experiment in finance.

Key Takeaways that can be taken from the above thought experiment:

Emotions play an important role in decision making. Extreme emotions cloud our judgment. They drive us crazy by propelling us in irrational behavior. Emotional stability is one of the most important skills one needs to develop in his/her life to make more sensible decisions.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, enjoy them, and to dominate them. Oscar Wilde

Most of the time we use our logical thinking to reach a conclusion but the assumption we use to reach it is wrong. It is clearly visible in our thought experiment where we use erroneous assumptions like Arithmetic Mean to reach the conclusion. Rationality is generally served by broader and more comprehensive frames and joint evaluation is always better than a single evaluation. Using Geometric Mean and identifying the relation between Arithmetic Mean and Geometric Mean shows us the whole picture.

Always try to look at the problem from as many angles as possible. It broadens your framework of mind to make more reasonable decisions. Assume you are on a ship and talking with your friend. Your friend is at rest with respect to you but is in motion with respect to the fish who is looking at you from the sea. You say your friend is at rest but the fish says, No, it is in motion. According to your standpoints, both of you are right.

One must understand the difference between the desire to be right and the desire to have been right. Separating them will help us to see reality as it is, not the way we want it to be. The desire to be right is the thirst for truth. The desire to have been right is God complex which means an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.

Conclusion: Have a strong opinion over your belief but hold them weakly. Don't be rigid in your thinking. Update your apriori beliefs according to the shreds of evidence. Identify the cause and effect relationships. Be more flexible and adopt the growth mindset thinking. A rational thinker will engage in broader framing but humans are narrow framers by nature. Look out for broader aspects, not the narrower ones.