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The universe is a most extraordinary place. It exists of its own, in an objective manner, driven by the laws of physics, some which we understand, and some which we are yet to discover. And yet, in spite of all the objectivity we attach to it, we cannot dissociate the objective universe entirely from the human mind which tries to comprehend it. Who is to say that the mind is definitely possessed with the capacity to unravel all physical laws, and that eventually we will get there. Who is to say with certainty that one day we will know why the universe is there in the first place? Be that as it may, it is our paramount duty to protect and nurture the mind, and make it more and more capable of seeking out those truths. For this, a collective improvement on part of all of humanity is called for, involving not just scientists and mathematicians. For only by simultaneously addressing the more practical concerns that humanity faces, can we make the planet a more conducive place for advancing our investigations of the laws of nature.

8.1 Time and the Inanimate World

Physics teaches us that matter and fields live in space and evolve with time. At least in the classical Newtonian world. [And also in the semiclassical world, where matter fields are quantized and the gravitational background is classical.] And that is how the human mind perceives it too—a past that has happened, an instantaneous present, and a future that is yet to come. In the microscopic world, evolution is time reversible; but in the macroscopic world the second law of thermodynamics is inexorably at work, and there is an arrow of time.

Physics also cautions us that when quantum gravity comes into play, there maybe no time and no space in the conventional sense, let alone an arrow of time. This perhaps happens on the Planck length scale and on Planck densities, and perhaps in some other physical circumstances too. For instance, who is to say that one can with certainty talk of causality when the collapse of the quantum wave-function at one point in space seems to have an instantaneous influence on a space-like separated event? But the human mind seems incapable of tangibly grasping any such timelessness—or at least so we commonly believe: more on this shortly.

Where does such time irreversibility in the macro-world come from, when the micro-world is time reversible? We believe we can only encode this in the initial conditions with which the universe began. For reasons that we do not quite understand, the initial entropy of the universe was far, far less compared to what it could have been, and then the unavoidable expansion in phase space causes the entropy to increase, providing us with the observed arrow of time.

This law of ever increasing entropy holds with such infallible consistency that we have convincingly applied it to every conceivable circumstance, including the world of living things.

8.2 Time, Living Beings, and the Human Mind

In simplistic terms, we might think of a living organism as a material state in metastable equilibrium, which maintains itself, for a certain length of time, in a state of low entropy, by consuming low entropy nutrients [food] and by subsequently increasing the entropy of the environment. It is safe to assume though that the metastable state is not forever—it is subject to aging. This aging in itself is a clear signature that within a living being too, the second law is at work, and its entropy slowly increases. The end result of the metastable state is inevitable death: the second law wins over; there is no living organism that lives forever. But living beings have found a clever trick to ephemerally beat around the second law—reproduction! Every time a new organism is born of the parents, it starts afresh in a low entropy state, and the cycle repeats itself over again, and on it goes. It is clear then, that in this birth-death-birth-... cycle the arrow of time is very much in play.

Undoubtedly this scenario applies to human beings too, but we know that it gets more intricate as we make a transition from lower level living forms to higher ones, including mammals, and humans. Growth and aging in lower living forms presumably follows an automatic pattern, devoid of free will. By the time the ladder of life reaches mammals and in particular humans, something entirely novel comes into play: a highly evolved brain, and with it, a thinking mind. Mind that perceives time, mind that has a memory of the past, a perception of the present, and an anticipation of the future. Mind which with its great capacity for creativity and innovation, has changed the face of the planet. Mind that understands the universe, discovers and formulates physical and mathematical laws of nature, and builds technologies and civilizations. Mind that can be compassionate and spiritual.

And yet, mind that is also a garbage dump of thoughts! Spanned across humanity, most minds, at most of the times, are repeatedly thinking the same thoughts over and again, thoughts that are not only of no consequence, but sometimes harmful to the well-being of the body and the being. Emotions that are irrational and not founded on the factual situation of the immediate present: traumatic memories, unhappiness, anxiety, apprehension, uncertainty, depression, fear, including fear of death. Fear of other human beings, often unfounded. Undoubtedly it is the case that sometimes such thoughts and emotions are precipitated by real life events, including natural calamities. But more often than not, the mind worries, and worries without reason.

Mind that is evil. Mind that plans warfare. Mind that plans and executes killing of human beings. Millions of humans were wilfully killed by other humans in deliberate acts of violence in the previous century alone. No other species destroys its own on such vast magnitude. Mind that is greedy. Mind that is bitter and hates. Mind that is often unsatisfied, no matter how much has been acquired, gained and possessed. We cannot deny that a good fraction of humanity lives in this mental state, to some degree at least, while it is undeniably also true that a good fraction of humanity is genuinely suffering, from poverty, disease, misrule, and other unpleasant causes.

What is the origin of the thought clutter in the mind, which makes it so inefficient, and the origin of the hurtful, unpleasant thinking? The origin lies in the state of biological evolution humanity currently is in. Long, long ago the characteristic of intelligent thinking began to evolve, which gave us the ability to innovate, and master the environment. But along with it came the ‘thermal noise’ of thought—as if nature were trying to make a perfect thought machine, but only succeeding in making an inefficient one, at least as of now. One could be certain that in the very long run the process of evolution is progressing towards converting human minds into more intelligent and efficient ones, where the noise will progressively reduce. One could envisage the arrival of an evolutionary stage where the mind thinks only that which is essential. But for now our civilization is stuck with this thought noise, and it is hurting us bad. For when nature innovated the thinking mind, it also possessed it with a memory of the past, and a sense of the future yet to come. Change, growth, aging and the second law are very much at play when it comes to the thinking mind.

This combination of thought noise, and the ability to perceive the flow of time, is often a recipe for disaster, and the source of the ills alluded to above. While on the one hand the mind and body are truly speaking existent only in the present moment [the here and now] the noise of irrational thoughts relentlessly and continuously forces the mind into thinking and worrying about the past and the future [the there and then]. This flight of the mind to the there and then, when it should be here and now, is predominantly the birthplace of unhappiness, anger, hatred, greed, sorrow, depression, anxiety and fear. True, these emotions could even be precipitated by some mishap in the here and now. But we know that these are rarities; on most occasions the here and now is in reality peaceful, but the worrying mind turns it into an unhappy present moment. In short, the mind is unhappy because it is afflicted with thought noise, and because it comprehends the flow of time.

We take this affliction of the uncontrolled mind for granted; we do not even think of it as a disease, because everyone has it to some degree or the other. Now of course not all of humanity is always unhappy! And sometimes there are genuine causes of unhappiness. That is not what we are referring to. We are talking about the noisy mind being a source of unnecessary and unfounded worry, which affects most people sometime or the other. One instance is the imagined fear of death, which fear lurks even when death is not evidently near—this is a prime example of thought noise projecting itself into the future to conjure something primordially perceived as very unpleasant. Even if a mind trained in physics might know that the second law will ultimately take the body to death, that knowledge is not necessarily sufficient to mitigate the fear. What to talk of the untrained mind then!

How does humanity overcome this affliction? Are we to wait for biological evolution to take (wo)mankind to the state where the mind is efficient and free of noise? No. A handful of Enlightened seekers over the past few millenia have shown us a way out. But while they have told us that everyone can in principle seek and achieve what the seekers have done, clearly that has not happened. Most of humanity does not consist of Enlightened seekers; most humans are perhaps not even aware that there is an escape possible from this unpleasant noise, many are perhaps not even interested! The conditioned mind, whose master is thought, then often uses thought for its design and intent, often evil, often with the express desire for power and control over others. At the end of the day, this only creates more and more global unhappiness and imbalance in the environment, in spite of all the progress and comfort that science and technology have given to us. We have all in our lives come across someone or the other who appears extremely calm, quiet and content, happy and compassionate. In whom the thought noise and worry does not seem to be there. Perhaps he/she was a spiritual teacher. A noteworthy modern day example is the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. One look at his face, and one listening session with him, is enough to convey the deep inner peace that prevails in him. It is practical, important and significant to ask why everyone is not at peace like him? Does one have to be a renunciating monk with extraordinary mental powers, to free the mind of its dreadful noise and the consequent troubles? No. Certainly not. With some help, or on our own, we can all get there, to some degree at least. And that is where humanity should steer to, so that we have more and more human beings who are happier, and at peace with themselves.

8.3 The Timeless Consciousness

I go and lie down in a quiet, dimly lit room, with no one else around, perhaps at night, when it is still, and I close my eyes. I become aware of my body, and of my senses. I become acutely aware of my surroundings, alert to any small noise in the surrounding. I become aware of my regular rhythmic breathing, and I focus on my breath. Amazingly, when one is focused on one’s breath, one cannot think. This takes attention away from the mind, and thinking slows down. With some practice and training, thinking can be stopped nearly altogether, and the incessant thought clutter almost won over. The mind goes blank, literally. I am no longer worrying of the past, nor imagining the future. I am simply in the present moment, and at peace.

At the same time, something else extraordinary happens too, which can hardly be described easily in words. One becomes aware of oneself, in a manner which goes beyond thoughts and mind, for the thinking mind has been stilled already. One becomes aware of oneself as a whole, and one can watch oneself as if from ‘outside’, and one can watch over the mind. If a thought comes, one can watch it come and go. This state of self-awareness one may call Consciousness. It is the ultimate identification with the I, with the Self. Once such awareness has been grasped, and dissociated from the mind, one could stay identified with it for as long as one is alive. Or if, having grasped it, one loses it, one can come back to it, for one knows what one is looking for. This state of Consciousness is the timeless ‘I’. And it is spaceless too. For when the mind has been stilled, there could be no memory of the past, and no anticipation of the future. There is only the Consciousness, and only the immediate present in which the Consciousness resides. For the Consciousness, the world is timeless, every moment when it comes is the present moment. This is another instance, apart perhaps from quantum gravity and acausal EPR correlations, where one encounters timelessness, though we are not at all suggesting that these instances might be related in some way. We have to wait until we have a scientific understanding and model of Consciousness. But we could be sure that Consciousness is some timeless feature of a living system such as a human being, which is undoubtedly a property or state of matter, but it goes beyond body, brain, mind and thought, in a way that we do not understand today.

That the conscious I is timeless one could be certain of. For, everything else changes—the body changes and grows older, thoughts and emotions are in a continuous state of flux. The cells of the body regularly die and new cells are born. And yet there is one constant in a human being: the conscious I. It stays with us throughout life—I am the same I irrespective of how young or old I am. It is to be contrasted with the time-bound I, which is associated with the mind, and which changes continuously. The conscious I does not age during life—it is obviously the same sense of I always. Is this in defiance of the second law? Or is it an equilibrium state—the timeless Consciousness? Intriguing, but we do not know. We could not know, until we mathematically and scientifically understand Consciousness.

The realization and achievement of this state of Consciousness, which is timeless, and where the mind is still and free of thought, we may define as poor man’s Enlightenment. It is a beautiful peaceful state, for if the mind is not thinking, there is no worry, no anxiety, no fear. There is only a powerful deep-rooted identification with the present moment, which moment is infinitely simpler than the gigantic burden of one’s past, and simpler than the uncertainty of one’s future. If we can identify ourselves with this conscious timeless I, we become masters of our minds, we start to control our thoughts, instead of being controlled by our thoughts. A thought may come, but Consciousness decides whether to follow it, rather than being enslaved by the relentless running and repetition of the thought. Psychological suffering and psychological pain goes, for they are part of the active mind. Bodily pain, if any, would remain, but even that would feel less so, because the psychological component will have been removed. There is no denying that one who lives in the present moment, by the Conscious timeless I, and not by the noisy thought-pressed mind, gets to control the mind, and is a happier, less worried person. It is like becoming someone who watches oneself from the outside, deliberately controlling one’s thoughts and actions, rather than letting them happen of their own accord.

It is all very well, one might say, to achieve this beautiful Enlightened state, lying down meditative with closed eyes in one’s bedroom. Of course we all very well know that is not real life. Welcome to the world of people, interactions, confrontations, disagreements, dangers. What happens now? Two principles that were learnt in the bedroom with closed eyes must be adhered to. Operate and act from the timeless Conscious I, and stay deeply rooted in the present moment. Thoughts will come and go, but the superior Conscious I, which watches over the mind, lets the thoughts be, picking out only those which one wishes to, or those which are of consequence to one’s actions, and to the advancement of one’s intellect. The creative process germinates from the Conscious I. One thinks of the future to the extent that one plans for it constructively, but one does not worry about the future. Deliberate decisions are taken by the Conscious I, not by the wandering conditioned mind. With practice and training, this is possible for us all common people. The Conscious I, which is naturally at peace with oneself, will see no reason to harm others, or to be beleaguered by negative emotions. The rooting in the present moment simplifies life extraordinarily. It takes away the traumas and bitterness of the past. It takes away anxiety. It takes away the fear of death. It makes one compassionate towards other humans. The rooting in the present moment also brings an extraordinary awareness and alertness of the surroundings, in which one sees beauty, and which act as a source of joy, howsoever mundane and monotone the surroundings might be. It makes one a happier person. If everyone of us were to be like this, would the world not be a happier place to be in?

Easier said than done. Too idealistic. But at least we could try. Right now there is no global effort in this direction, no mass movement. Only a few spiritual teachers, and their disciples, almost as if working in isolation from the rest of the society at large. And clearly we are not talking of established organized religions here, in the conventional sense, where of course there is enormous following and appeal. Whether that of its own has helped humanity, the reader can judge for himself/herself! It was always the express purpose of all religions, when they were born, to communicate the deep relevance of Enlightenment, of the Conscious I, and the importance of being in the here and now. Unfortunately, with time and history, these important messages have to a large degree been lost and buried, and replaced by something else...often ritualistic and irrelevant, the most glaring misfortune being conflict amongst religions, something furthest from the original message.

8.4 Towards a Conscious Humanity

Humankind’s primary concerns are eradication of poverty and disease, imparting education, development, controlling damage from natural calamities and climate change, search for alternate energy resources, good governance and peacekeeping amongst nations, scientific advancement and technological innovation, looking into the possibly of efficiently migrating into outer space and to habitable exoplanets, and other conventional modes of economic progress which seek to create better societies.

Given that these above are the priorities, is talk of Enlightenment impractical mumbo-jumbo? The answer to this question should be sought in another question. While reasonable success has been achieved in pursuing many of the above concerns, and in particular in science and technology, has this success made us all into happy individuals? The answer clearly is: only partly so, very partly so. What is the key reason for achieving only partial success? It is certainly not for want of resources, of which there were aplenty to begin with. Nor is it for want of innovation, where we have seen staggering strides. The key reason is the uncontrolled human mind! An uncontrolled mind which often applies itself destructively to the individual and to the society. And acts as an obstruction to the better half of the mind which is working hard to address the above concerns. We have with resignation accepted this uncontrolled and confused mind as a curse of nature. However we have seen above that when an individual operates from the conscious I, instead of operating from the level of the mind, and lives in the here and now, the ‘uncontrol’ and ‘confusion’ vanish, and are substituted by peace and compassionate action. Hence progress towards individual Enlightenment is not mumbo-jumbo talk, but a progress which will in a very healthy and productive manner enhance our ability to address the above primary concerns. Minds that are free of wandering thoughts are minds that are more creative, more constructive. Thus we are not talking of people retiring to monasteries en masse; we are talking of people become enlightened monks as they go about their daily lives taking care of their homes and professions.

What is the recipe for creating a globally Enlightened humanity?! Clearly there are no easy answers. A social revolution would be required. And that must be preceded by political will to permit such a revolution in the first place—an act of contradiction by itself, for it calls for using power to surrender power!

Assuming that those in governance are enlightened enough to allow progress in this direction (and that is an enormous assumption), one can think of baby steps to implement. Schools and primary education would be the first place to start from. It is not far-fetched to imagine that one can talk to young teenaged children about mind, thinking, meditation, and deep breathing. Insightful text books written by contemporary spiritual teachers and introduced into the school curriculum would be of great help. A school text book on Enlightenment on par with text books on physics, biology and mathematics? It definitely sounds fanciful and perhaps even ridiculous. But we are talking of nothing short of a revolution here, if we are to steer all of humanity towards this so-called enlightened direction, and from the viewpoint of the establishment, a revolution often does appear fanciful, ridiculous and unacceptable. We have little choice but to start with school. The subject would not be so much about learning and conceptualisation, but about practice and training, day after day, year after year. And won‘t we be making them happier teenagers in the process? We certainly would be—currently they are one of the most confused and unsettled section of our society. Who would be the teacher? How can a teacher who is himself or herself not enlightened, talk about and train others in Enlightenment?! There is no easy answer. Perhaps the teacher who teaches value education in school must learn this ‘subject‘ as he or she goes along, and perhaps visit and learn under a spiritual teacher.

The next group to be addressed, perhaps the prime group—young adults—are students at college and university. Apart from compulsorily introducing such teaching in regular curriculum, there would be ample scope through voluntary extra-curricular initiatives. Meditation, consciousness, and mastering one‘s thinking, are definitely concepts that young minds can be taught and trained in.

Then comes the office and the work place, both in the government sector, as well as the private sector. Adults with homes, families, and children. Spirituality classes should perhaps be made mandatory at the work place. Undoubtedly they will improve the working atmosphere and inter-personal professional relationships.

That still leaves a large fraction of the population—people who are self-employed, and people who stay at home. In reaching out to them, an enlightened media can play a far-reaching pivotal role, by proactively creating awareness. Smooth access to such enlightenment education can be provided via the internet, which can also provide online resources for use at the work place and in colleges and universities.

In passing, it is amusing to note that spirituality is widely perceived as the domain of the old, for whom the mind somehow has reached a stage where search for Enlightenment comes far more inevitably than it does for youth and for the middle-aged. One could be certain though that the need for such education is far more pressing for the youth and the middle-aged, than it is for the old.

Needless to add, those who are poor and hungry, or are beset by natural calamity, have more urgent needs to be attended to, as compared to Enlightenment.

I am acutely aware of how fanciful and improbable such attempts at implementing global Enlightenment might sound. But what other way can there be, if one is to go beyond only a handful of individuals seeking out on their own, and converting such seeking into a mass movement which will help humanity at large.

In attempting to initiate such a mass movement, humankind would only be helping the course of natural biological evolution. As we noted earlier, the human mind will most certainly evolve towards a stage where inefficient thought noise will reduce, producing minds which think less and are more efficient. Very likely, this will bring Consciousness to the fore, evolving us to a race where the I dictates thinking, and not the other way round. We have become conscious enough to realize this, so what better than to do unto ourselves right now what nature is going to do us in the long run. And who knows, unless we this unto ourselves, the evil mind could self-destruct long before nature reaches us to that Enlightened state!

We must also not forget that scientific investigations of the thought process, mind, and Consciousness are also likely to lead us into realizing the existence of this Enlightened state. These investigations will most probably lie at the fascinating interface of neurobiology, biochemistry, quantum theory, thermodynamics, and condensed matter physics. A scientifically sound mathematical model of Consciousness will compel us to accept the existence of the timeless conscious I, which rules over the thinking mind. It is then not pure speculation to suggest that the fields of medicine and psychiatry will themselves encourage and educate individuals to seek out the Enlightened state and become more peaceful, happier beings. One cannot think of a more beneficial and rewarding confluence of science and spirituality.

8.5 Why Is It so Difficult to Make This Work?

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in the kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true—no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Robert Fulgham

We are all born enlightened, in the sense of being rooted in the Here and Now. That is evident from the happy playful infant who engages only in its immediate surroundings. In our early years also we are enlightened. What changes afterwards? Where does the enlightenment vanish? While this is an extremely complex and difficult question, a simplistic answer is the growth of intelligence as the child grows. With intelligence comes thinking, with thinking come understanding and academic growth, and unfortunately also anxiety, worry and fear. The biggest compounding factor is inter-personal rivalry and conflict. Classroom performance and success in education becomes competitive and judgemental; coming first in classroom exams is a matter of great pride and achievement; and performing badly brings negative self-image. [I speak from an Indian perspective, having observed what happens in my country.] Students are judged by how well they do in subjects as diverse as history, civics, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, languages, computers, environmental science, amongst others. He or she who does best in them all is adjudged a hero, no matter if this was rote learning, learning under pressure, learning not for joy and pleasure, but for doing well in exams. The young mind has been bludgeoned, creativity often stifled, and all except the brightest and the most creative, who seem immune to the torture, succumb to the so called exam pressure. The Great Test comes at the end of ten years of school, when the so called nerve-wracking Board exams are held, and the marks you obtain there are stamped on you for the rest of your life. If you did not score above 90 %, you are a dud. Ridiculous extremes are reached when parents clamber over ladders and school walls to pass on cheat sheets to there wards in the examination halls, who merrily copy from them with overt assistance from the invigilators. What are we trying to prove here? What have we achieved? We have destroyed the enlightened, innocent child.

If only we did it a little differently. If only we kept up with Fulgham’s teachings beyond kindergarten. We need to teach life skills, build a high emotional IQ, help them learn to cope with life situations. The real world in which we adults go about our daily personal business has so little to do with the ‘history, civics, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, languages, computers, environmental science’ we learnt in school. True, these subjects are a part of our essential knowledge base, but why did no one ever teach us life skills in school? And this would include teaching us about being in the here and now, about the conditioned mind, and about the Conscious I. It will not take more than some 10 % of the teaching, to be exchanged say for just one other subject, but the personal gain for the student will be more than 90 %. Somebody in school needs to pay attention to what smartphones, social media networks and the internet are doing to our children. They are making zombies out of them, fingers permanently clicking away at the cell phone, oblivious to surroundings, oblivious to nature and outdoors, oblivious to family and dinner table etiquettes!

I believe, what we teach, how we teach, and the intent with which we teach, and what we do not teach, has a lot to do with creating adult troubled minds. We need to change this. The change has absolutely nothing to do with religion, if by religion we mean belief in a named God or God’s representative on earth. Religion is a personal choice made at home; to be kept apart from the life-skills taught at school. And we all know the tragedy of religion. Multiplicity of Gods, communal hatred, and organised warfare motivated by religious strife. If only the whole planet had one God and one religion (if at all human beings continue to have a need for God and religion) there would be less mayhem all around. We may call the school reforms spirituality classes or enlightenment studies, but if that name carries overtones associated with one or the other religion, we may simply call them life-skills classes. And life-skill training also ought to majorly include teaching equality of religions, religious tolerance, and the very meaning of religion itself. And such training has nothing to do with East versus West. It is neither Oriental nor Occidental. It is basic common sense, in a manner of speaking!

In asking who will initiate this change and school reform, we have a great chicken and egg problem. Change has to be initiated and approved by governments, but governments are made of the same minds which have gone through the unreformed school. How will they ever appreciate the need for such a change? One can only hope.

Even if there are enlightened individuals in governments, and some surely are there, there are two enormous hurdles, as I see them, which severely hamper attempts at implementing mass enlightenment. One is the concept of Nation State. The other is overpopulation, leading to scarcity of resources, poverty, and disparity in distribution of wealth and resources.

The Nation State is a global curse: we must defend our territories and resources against each other; every nation state is a potential foe against every other nation. Equipartition of wealth and natural resources is unthinkable. Enormous investment is made and wasted in defence, weapons and armed forces; scores of wars are going on at any given time, hundreds are massacred on any given day—man is pitted against man for the sake of defending territory, or forced occupation. See the ridicule of it, from the vantage point of an observer watching our planet intently from outer space: a figment of planetary rock and ocean that we are, a speck in the vastness of the universe, and unmindful of the vastness out there, killing each other. A bunch of power hungry rulers of nation states often scheming diabolical schemes against other nations. Given this, how can even an enlightened ruler train his or her people to live in the here and now, with the peaceful Conscious I, when directly or indirectly the greater concern is to defend our nation from the others?! What good is a nation of enlightened individuals, who are content to not harm others, when their neighbouring countries are just waiting to pounce? Enlightenment at an individual level is still feasible, but as a mass movement it has to begin by nation states seeing eye to eye, and by agreeing to not go to war. Who is to say how that can be achieved? Will an alien invasion unite us together, or will some of us gang up with the aliens, and pit against the rest of us? In the quote above, Fulgham asks governments to be like the children in kindergarten, to clean up their own mess, and to put things back where they found them. How true! Governments and leaders need to see sense, make peace with each other, and initiate life skills training, globally, in schools and colleges. Hopefully there will be more sensible people on our planet then, who will want to reach out to the poorest, who have not even seen much food nor shelter in their lives, let alone schools and education.

Undoubtedly, we have overpopulated the planet. Along with life skills training, schools, colleges, and governments need to educate individuals on the dangers of overpopulating the planet. Communities do not see it as any of their business to talk to families about the number of children they ought to have. Birth is an individual’s birthright! The family does not care for the population; the system does not care for the size of the family. This deadlock has to break. In a compassionate way, the state should have a say in the matter—not by way of coercion and decree, but by way of cordial discourse. We take the bursting population of the planet as a given, but it is high time we woke up!

Imagine; if only nation states had a policy not to attack each other (even if they do not agree to share resources or consider a one nation world), and if only they were not overpopulated, it would be much easier then to address concerns of the individual, and make progress towards training individuals to be enlightened.

And while we work towards the bigger goal of enlightenment, it is well for us to remember a few simple tips that go into making us happier; tips that we can share with our children as well. Practice kindness. Express gratitude for what we have. Buy less gadgets! Buy things that create experiences, like a musical instrument. Do not hang out so much on social media. Cut down on checking e-mail! Checking emails every so often creates stress. Realise that time is a precious resource. Let us lose ourselves in some fun activities that we like. Embrace failure. All these tips are nothing but Fulgham’s kindergarten lesson all over again!

8.6 Concluding Remarks

We started by observing the paramount significance of the second law of thermodynamics in determining the evolution of the macroscopic universe. For reasons that we do not well understand as of today, there also exist in the universe living organisms—metastable low entropy states which survive by feeding on negative entropy from the environment, while on the whole the second law continues to be obeyed. At the pinnacle of the life chain is the human species, possessed with this extraordinary capacity to think, which has given us the power to dramatically and wilfully change our environment. And yet, because the thinking mind is very inefficient, and lives in time, and remembers the past and anticipates the future, it often self-destructs the species, the worst example being organized warfare. We realize that beyond the disturbed thinking mind there exists the peaceful, timeless conscious I. We advocate that all of humanity should endeavor to realize this conscious I, and operate from that vantage point, which allows us to be deeply rooted in the present moment, control our thoughts, and to be happier, compassionate humans. Only by doing so, can we hope to collectively acquire the competence to overcoming challenges such as poverty and depleting resources, and become a species intelligent enough to successfully execute plans to migrate to outer space.

In 1637, in his search for an infallible truism, Descartes wrote in his ‘Discourse on the Method’: je pense, donc je suis: cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am. Today we know this to be not true! Even when I do not think, I am. In fact when I do not think, it is then when I truly am. I am then the permanent timeless I, which is always in the here and now. When I think, I am only the wandering time-bound I. It is this timeless I which one seeks, and which when found, binds us with who we truly are, underneath the wandering world of thoughts and emotions. The identification with the timeless I is what makes us truly happy and peaceful, and the state that all of humanity should steer towards.

The author is deeply indebted to Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle for their speeches and writings, from which he has benefited in a very significant way.