Optimism and Pessimism

Generally speaking, hoping for the best is optimism and hoping the worst is pessimism at their peaks. Only optimism makes a person to take a calculated risk, so it is the first and the foremost attribute of an entrepreneur. But, even for an entrepreneur, some traces of pessimism are desirable due to which he/she prepares himself/herself for contingencies, without which no business organization can be sure of survival in long run. After-all, accidents do take place. So, nobody can afford to be cent per cent optimistic.

Optimism and pessimism, both are states of mind of an individual in a given situation, and the two exist together. It is their proportion that decides whether a person is optimist or a pessimist. If the vehicle designers were purely optimists, there would have been no brakes in vehicles. They foresaw some obstacles being present on roads, and kept the provision of brakes in all the vehicles. Many may opine that providing for contingencies is not pessimism, just because pessimism always stays with optimism.

What is pessimism, after all? It is fear in the mind of a subject confronted by taking a decision. If he/she overcomes this fear by his/her boldness, he/she is considered an optimist. So, to be an optimist, one has to overcome pessimism which is always present in minds of people under all deciding circumstances. This logic makes pessimism omnipresent and optimism an opposition to this. This opposition, like all other oppositions, needs courage which is not omnipresent. Thus, only a courageous person can be an optimist.

There is one more stage higher than being courageous, it is being adventurist. In all the adventures, degree of risk is very high and anything unfortunate is expected. It may be called super-optimism.

Gamble is another game wherein optimism of the player works. It is different from entrepreneurship in the sense that in a gamble, there is nothing under control of the subject while in an enterprise, the subject is empowered to exert his/her controls over the situation. Optimism is justified only in situations where the subject has some control over the circumstances, otherwise it is an undesirable gamble. It is like a circus scene of a lion riding a horse with the lion trainer standing in front of the lion, doing nothing but enough to make the lion behave.

Finally, optimism is defined as overcoming a fear of some mis-happening on the way, which comes from being in full or partial control of the situation. With no controls in hand, pessimism is an asset.

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Sensuality and Intellect Co-relationship

A general observation is that persons with higher degree of intellect are found to be more sensuous and conversely, sensuous persons are more intelligent than other persons in their circumstances. Both of these observations indicate that there exists a relationship between a person’s intellect and his/her inclination towards sexual activities.

Another important observation is that if a person is involved too much in intellectual activities, his/her sensuality gets dissolved, and conversely, if a person is involved too much in sexual activities, he/she loses intellect. From this observation, it follows that the sensuality and intellect of a person use a common resource of the person.

Sensitivities of body and mind differ from person to person. A person with higher level of sensitivities grasps more from his/her vicinities, environment and circumstances than the others. Sensitivity of mind makes a person more intelligent while that of the body makes the person more sensuous. Such persons are remain devoted to their objects and objectives whole-heartedly even at the cost of their worldly comforts. Great scientists and lovers come from this group of highly sensitive persons.

What sensitive persons lack is their sensibility for worldly gains and generalized social relationships. In modern world, sensibility for worldly gains is called ‘practicability’ and sensibility for generalized social relationships is called ‘diplomacy’. For a sensitive person, these traits are considered as ‘hypocrisies’. Such sensible persons consider sensitive persons as ‘crazy’, ‘psychic’, etc. .

For a sensitive person in a loving posture, the eyes often remain closed and the blood flow increases charging the whole body. Similarly, during thinking process, needed in most of intellectual activities, the eyes get closed and everything in the body seems to be calmed down. From these observations, we come to understand that the two activities are unconcerned with the outer world of the person. He/she gets detached from it through closure of eyes devote himself/herself to his/her object or objective.

It also comes to be noted that an intellectual activity calms down the body to provide maximum resources to the mind, while the sexual activity needs every bit of the charged body. So, these two activities are diametrically opposed to each other. Since, body and mind can not exist without each other’s support, love and thinking can not sustain without each other’s support.

So, an intellectual person is sensuous because he/she needs his/her body in the most active form to support his/her mind and vice-versa.

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Mono-tracking of Mind

I was travelling in a bus from Delhi to Bulandshahr. I noticed that front windscreen of the bus had some faint writing on it. It was illegible except the first letter looking like a 'd'. Usually, bus operators write names of originating and destined places on the windscreen. So, I presumed that the windscreen had the name of originating bus-stand's name written on it, which I knew so well but was not able to recall the name. I tried to get this name made out from the writing on the windscreen. The journey took more than two hours and for all this time, I had been trying to recall the bus-stand's name, but failed miserably. I thought that my memory was getting weak day by day. This was a lot depressing to me. In great distress, I dropped the idea of recalling the name.

On reaching my destination, I suddenly got the name 'Anand Vihar' of the originating bus-stand in Delhi. I felt a lot relieved and tried to investigate what was wrong with me during the journey when I was trying to recall. The fact which came out was that I had wrongly presumed the name to begin with the letter 'd' from the wind-screen writing and my mind was totally in grip of this misconception. Such a gripping of mind is called its 'mono-tracking'.

Mono-tracking is the most dangerous enemy to fact finding as well as to innovative thoughts, so must be avoided at all costs. The best way to avoid mono-tracking is to relieve the mind from any binding thought through diversion to some other subject.

Another outcome of mono-tracking is that when one is engrossed with some thing, and another person tells him some other thing, one's mind tries to relate the listened words, without understanding their real meaning, to the subject matter of one's thought waves. Such a misunderstanding may cause bitterness in the relationship of the two.

Enemies of India as rulers of the country for a long time, developed a technique called 'japa' to mono-track the people's minds so that the people go on obeying them as slaves for ever. In this technique, the subject is advised to go on mentally repeating a word or a phrase, called 'Guru-mantra', thousands of times. This makes the mind habitual and feeling comfortable in remaining bound to some given idea disallowing any fresh thinking. Since this practice was advised as a sacred duty, people followed the practice religiously and fell prey to the enemy's rule for over two thousand years.

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Instinct, Intuition and Intention

Every creature is born with three intrinsic attributes - instinct, intuition and intent and follows either of them during his/her lifetime. Out of these three, the instinct is the most basic which dictates the creature to survive, procreate and progress to keep presence of its species on earth. This means every creature makes efforts primarily to save own life by taking foods and from dangers, like temperature variations, enemies, etc., by all possible means. Search for food, covering the body, a seeking a shelter are some most common instinctive activities of creatures.

Second instinctive need is the desire to have sexual intercourse with opposite gender of the same species to procreate other creatures of the same species. Thirdly, every species has some notions of progress and makes efforts accordingly to better one's life. These three efforts made the evolution possible on the earth.

Second intrinsic attribute is intuitive which makes use of the intellect of the creature to keep on guiding him/her in case of dire needs. This attribute, however, is not the same in all the species but has evolved up to different levels in different species. Humans are considered to have the highest developed intellect of all the species on earth. Intuition works often spontaneously and without any efforts by the creature but is always guided by the past experiences and considerations thoughts of the creature. Therefore, memory plays the most important role in intuition.

The third intrinsic attribute, called the intention, is to seek pleasures of life. The notion of pleasure varies from person to person, place to place, and may be different at different times and in different circumstances. This originates from the mind and body of the person and may always not be congenial to the society the person belongs to. Some intentions lead to crimes in human societies.

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Ways to Innovative Thinking

Key to progress of humanity is innovative thinking at all levels from individual to national to global and key to innovative thinking is inquisitiveness of the individual-beings. Therefore, to take the human civilization forward, individuals have to be made inquisitive about their respective surroundings and circumstances. In business and other matter of economy, it is all the more important. All such reforms starts at home, so first of all, you will have to an innovative thinker. How to be like this, I suggest 6 ways.

1. Associating : Believe me, every pair of phenomena in this Universe are related to each other whatever be their degree of separation. With this concept in mind, try to relate your subject matter with some thing else better known to you and based on this linkage, try to explore the subject matter.
2. Questioning : I have always stressed that having doubts on the existing knowledge is the key to new findings. Remember, even the greatest of scientists have been proved to be wrong, and even the most divine things have come out to be fake. So, every one has a right to question every established fact.
3. Observing : I have noticed that some persons are more observant than others as a habit. This depends on how one observes things closely and it becomes a habit. Seeing everything around is almost equivalent to ignoring everything around. So, make it a habit to have a small target and observe it minutely. For example - in psychology, individual behaviors matter; in engineering, individual processes matter; in demography, individual groups matter; in history, individual days matter; observe them closely and minutely and make it a habit.
4. Experimenting : Experiments are our greatest teachers whatever silly these may be. Remember, most of the researches are results of accidents rater than intentions. So, go on experimenting wildly if you want to be an innovator. Some experiments may prove disastrous so take a calculated and bearable risk. There are no gains without taking risks.
5. Learning : Every minor event, and every ignorable person has a lot to teach us something or the other. Keep on analyzing events, keep on networking with individuals to have your share of knowledge. I very well believe that voodoo is a psychological game but still I am liaising with a voodoo practitioner on daily basis to learn something, I don't know what.
6. Recognizing : Unforeseen opportunities come everyone's routines but only a few are able to recognize them and make use of them. In scientific terms, it is called eureka. So, do give recognition to every eureka coming in your way.

Finally, remember only innovative thinkers prove to be pioneers of the humanity, and you may be one of them if yo wish to be.

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What is Mania and How it Works

Mania is a word originally from Greek and Latin languages wherein it meant madness. In psychiatry, it is also known as ‘manic-depressive psychosis’ and is defined as ‘exaggerated melancholia alternating periodically with an exaggerated sense of well-being accompanied by excessive activity (both mental and physical)’. Mania is a never-satisfied desire, so is an abnormality but temporal.

Let us say, you see a beautiful thing and act to acquire it. It is not a maniac activity because you are actually seeing the thing and are acting in reality. But if the thing is not present physically but exists in your imagination and you act mentally as well as physically as if the thing is actually present, your activity is put as a maniac activity. The most easily conceivable case of a maniac activity is in a man imagining a beautiful woman in his vicinity and masturbating to have sensuous pleasure. The same physical activity, if done without imagining the woman of choice, is not a maniac activity and is called self-gratification or self-abuse. Such a maniac condition exists in women also. Even gay and lesbians are highly deformed maniacs replacing the imagination with physical substitutes for things of their cravings.

A maniac activity is caused by an absence of a desired thing at that time attacking the person’s mind and forcing it to imagine and directing the body organs to act, falsely eliminating the absence. Such a deficiency may be felt as a natural need, a habitual luxury, or a lust of the body For these three occurrences, almost, all human-beings suffer from mania to varying extents. Such a condition is treated as a psychological abnormality just because the mind of the maniac is involved in a misconception.

Webster’s Dictionary lists these 12 types of manias based on the things of craving -

Agromania : open country,

Bibliomania : books,

Cratomania : power or ruling,

Dipsomania : alcoholic drinks,

Kleptomania : stealing,

Megalomania : greatness or fame,

Mythomania : telling lies,

Nostomania : one’s home,

Nymphomania : men,

Plutomania : wealth,

Pyromania : setting fires,

Toxicomania : poisons.

Plutomania is the most common disease of humanity in modern times. The list strangely misses one important mania in men for women while lists its opposite mania. I call this mania as ‘Andromania’. Apart from this, I have noticed ‘Drugomania’ in some persons who have a feeling of sickness if they don’t take any medicine. Such persons feel healthy on taking anything in the name of medicine.

Here, I would like to discuss my own suffering. I have a craving to make a noticeable difference in the society I belong to. This craving forces me, again and again, to do something what others are not doing, to get noticed. I don’t put it as a mania because actually act and not limit myself to imaginations. I somebody likes, it may be called as ‘Pionomania’.

So, a mania could be for anything which the person needs or desires but does not get a permanent satisfaction in-spite of having it more and more. He/she takes help of mental imagery for satisfaction but never gets it.

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Constitution of a Human-Being

A human-being has three simultaneous existences – bodily, essential, and causal. These existences are enclosed in this order with bodily existence being the outermost, and the causal existence as the core of the whole existence.

Our bodily existence is made from the food we take and it is two layers – body as the outer layer and the life the inner enclosed by the body. Combination of body components in a given ratio gives rise to a force called the life. Thus, the life is also made from the food we take. The body becomes inactive during sleep and the life force remains active but in a subdued form.

Essential existence is a complex composition and is often referred to as mind (science). It is enclosed by the life component of our bodily existence. Worldly pleasures are sought through this existence. The mind needs a lesser amount of rest than the body, so during light sleep, it remains partially active and is the cause of dreams. When both body and mind go on rest, we see no dreams.

Causal existence is free from the bodily and essential existences but is enclosed within the essential existence and is the principle cause of human existence and is known as intellect (psyche). It seeks and provides real pleasures of life free from the worldly pleasures. It is the cause of logical thinking and so is the cause of justified actions of human-being. In many human-being and other lower creatures wherein struggle for survival preoccupies the whole of life, this existence remains dormant.

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What is a Phobia

Phobia is fear of the unknown. It is not a physical condition but a mental state of the person, based on his/her self-confidence on his/her skills. Consider a person walking on the ground on a narrow strip of, say, 15 cm. wide. The walker shall feel no hesitation in walking. Now, ask the same person, to walk on a wall of the same width but of a height of a few feet. The person either would not walk or have ha lot of hesitation in walking. Why it is so, while the width of the path-way remains same.

While walking on the ground, the person has no fear of falling down, but while walking on the wall, he suffers from a fear of falling down. Thus, it is the risk factor what matters in the mind of the person.

You might have seen many stunts men in circuses walking comfortably on ropes stretched much overhead of the ground. They have no fear just because they have a lot of practice of balancing their bodies under these circumstances and thus avoid falling. So, it is their skills which disallows development of fear in their minds.

These instances show that it is the lack of performing skills which make the performance risky and generate a feeling of fear in the mind of the performer. Such a fear is known as phobia in psychological terms.

These instances also prove that a phobia may be eliminated by developing skill through practising the performance. Thus, a practical exposure is the key to treat a phobia.

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Making Optimum Use of Intellect

In common terms, what is often referred to as our 'heart' is actually our mind which is our psychological build-up and is greatly influenced by our circumstances and desires of comfortable living and sensuous pleasures. The mind is built up not only on brain but on the whole of the neuro-system in the body. Mind is not limited to intellect but has it as a component.

Intellect is pure logical spirit of our brain. It operates through mind, so may get polluted by our circumstances and desires. therefore, for working through pure intellect is difficult but still possible. This dependence of intellect on mind is because of our body organs working under control of our mind. To work through pure intellect, one need to isolate himself/herself from circumstances and desires. In this condition, the mind itself is reduced to pure intellect. This type of functionality is called 'Sadhana' in Indian scriptral terms and is mostly limited to thinking activity only.

Sadhana is a highly misused term in India. Lot of fraudulent spiritualists are doing their roaring business using this term. They promise everything achievable through their dubious methods. 'Sadhana', in fact, means focusing on your means and resources and making optimum uses of these. The most precious means of a human-being is his/her intellect. So, 'sadhana' is principally a way to concentrate on making the best use of one's intellect.

'Sadhana' does not require the practitioner to involve in any type exhibitionism but only to isolate himself/herself from worldly desires and sensuous pleasures, and then focus on the objective of one's life. So, sadhana's first condition is that you have a clearly defined objective of your life and then dedicate yourself for this. The best dedication materializes when you make use of your intellect for this purpose, undisturbed by your desires of sensuous pleasures. This requires you to be truly virtuous - independent, honest, integral, etc.

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Earning Virtues

Virtues are the precious-most assets of human-beings, so these are worth earning at all costs. There are four parameters by which virtues of a person are measured - Independence of Thoughts, Words and Actions; Logical Justiciability; Integrity; and finally Honesty. These are basically related to mental attitude of the person rather than his/her physiology. Let us discuss these one by one.

Independence of Thoughts, Words and Actions

Humans have probably the most developed brain out of all the species on Earth. Through brain, a person builds up his/her mind which determines his/her behavior - thinking, speaking and acting. In the world of conformists, nobody is independent about his/her thinking, speaking and acting. In order to please all others, people often agree with whatever is told them and act accordingly. In this process, although they superficially please most of the persons, they displease their innerselves in most of the instances. This is like a mental suicide.

So the first and formost parameter of being viruous is independence of thoughts, speech and actions, irrespective of what others say about them. Such a person only, can break new grounds of human thought and be a pioneer of human society. This requires fearlessness and courage to stand alone on his/her own feet.

Logical Justiciability

Justice has been key to beginning, sustenance and progress of all human civilizations, therefore, justiciability is another parameter of a virtues of a person. Justice, however, is always circumstantial and evidential, which means that norms of justice may vary with circumstances and evidences. Human logic takes care of circumstantial and evidential factors, expecting a virtuous person to be logically justifiable.

Integrity

Synchronism of thoughts, words and actions of a person provides an integrated personality to the person. This means whatever is in yor mind, speak it out, and whatever you say, mean it trough your actions. In Indian scriptures, it is called 'Shabda Siddhi' which means each and every word of a virtuous person comes out to be true. It is not that he/she has some super-natural powers to make his/her words true, but a virtuous person says only what is true.

Honesty

In the simplest words, honesty means consume only what you earn with your hard labor. Thus, exploiting others of their hard-earnings for the personal gains is dishonesty. no virtuous person would ever exploit others for his/her gains.

Thus, earning virtues is difficult but not impossible. Only thing yo need to earn virtues is your will-power to be virtuous - independent, justiciable. integral and honest. These are keys to humanism.

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