Red Pill
Religion is morphine; it is a red pill of opium. Humans are fragile; life is as stable and strong as a bubble. Humans are certain about their future as much as a flying piece of paper is certain about its path in a twister. Ocean of sorrow is packed in every human heart. Humans are aware of their physical decay and final demise. Humans are helped by a red pill; it soothes them and promises a heaven. It provides more comfort to a lonely sick old man on dark cold night than a blanket.
Red pill peddlers’ balkanize the world; they all have conflicting claims. Every one claims their pill is authentic and others are a placebo. There are hundreds of small manufactures claiming their own authenticity.
The secret of Red pill popularity is making everything a whim of God. Red pill addicts every sentence starts with ‘If God willing…’ This transfer of responsibility from the individual to God brings a lot of peace to humankind.
I am not getting a job, because my God is not happy. My life is falling apart, God must be angry with me. I was wronged, God will take my revenge. I am weak, but my prayers are going to be strong. This thinking mushrooms a culture of worship. The most self-centered activity of prayer becomes a slice of solace. They not only waste hours in worshiping, but many of them beat their chest so hard that blood comes out. Knives connected with chains were smashed on their naked back, the more the blood the harder they prayed. People climbed on mountains crawling on their hand and knees. Walk on fire, fast for days, Hate other human being, make fellow humans untouchable, slit animal necks while chanting their favorite prayer, they not only mutilate the bodies, but mind too, and all this in the name of prayer and making God happy.
The most bizarre behavior of red pill addicts is that they mock and laugh on others God and praying methods and then turn around and does the same baloney act with all seriousness. If you take red pill made by one prophet, then you don’t like people who take the different red pill recommended by some other messiah. Most of red pill addicts are delusional enough to believe only they have the perfect pill and they are right and all others are wrong.
These red pills bring lot of comfort to lot of people, but with lots of side effects. If the FDA had to approve the red pill, it would never get it because it has so many negative side effects. People become very delusional, and their life and thoughts are mired in dogmatism. History is full of stories, when the red pill addicts painted the earth red with human blood. Humans are charred by the loving and forgiving believers. People who overdose can harm the world, fly the plane in to buildings, and blow themselves up to kill others. With the 21st century arms, and 1st century ideas and an overdose of red pills can do lot of harm to humanity.
However, for many red pills does not do it. They question the source of this pill. Red pill works only for people who are more or less brainwashed in their child hood, people who are gullible, who don’t question the origin, who don’t question if everything is made by God, then who made God? If no one made God, then why it cannot be true for humans? If he is so perfect, then why did he need to release multiple versions of religions; how come he couldn’t get it right on first shot? If he is so perfect, then how come he mutilated that small kid?
Blue Pill
People who are skeptics, rebellious, independent, brave, questioning don’t believe in red pill. They don’t believe in organized religion. These people are unconventional; most of them are educated, little above the crust. They read lots of self help books, discuss meditation and enlightenment; they will have a Chinese or Hindi letters drawn on their T-shirt. They show a special affinity with various eastern god statues. They say, we are not religious, but spiritual. They listen, read and follow the talks of freshest monk, newest guru and latest messiah. You can find most of these people shopping in organic stores, and they are very vocal against people who take red pills.
The guru knows very well that for these supposedly smart people, one red pill won’t do. They repackaged lot of red pill stuff into one blue pill.
They packaged the Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sufism in nice little packets of blue pill. Blue pills promise you enlightenment bliss. It promises the deep meditation and libration from this circle of life by attaining the moksha.
Promises you a state of permanent bliss and your life will be a personification of unlimited, unbound joy.
Unfortunately, the blue pill is as phony as the red pill. At least the last few famous gurus’ who talked about themselves being enlightened, proved in their life time that there is nothing of sort; there is no enlightenment. One of the famous ones was Osho, whom many people trusted and believed to be an enlightened person. Many people felt his power, his energy in his proximity. He was supposed to be very impressive, captive and mesmerizing, He claimed to be an enlighten soul, teacher of meditation.
Osho turned out to be a self indulgent drug addict, a man full of greed and lust. His covetousness is legendary. His collection of hundreds of Rolls-Royce and diamond studded ladies watches are famous. Under influence of nitro oxide or valium, he confessed to people that there is no enlightenment. However, his life itself proved that there is nothing, no amount of meditation and enlightenment that can change the basic human vices and he ended up dying, proving the fact.
His nemesis and contemporary, U.G. Krishnamurti(http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/), who others claim to be enlightened, says -
“People call me an ‘enlightened man’ — I detest that term — they can’t find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I’ve searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn’t arise. I don’t give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God”.
He turned out to be a truthful man. He was very blunt and straightforward in telling blue pill peddlers you all are phony and it is all nonsense. He himself peddled these pills many years as a theosophist and then finally he decided to come out straight and declared there is no such thing as reincarnation or enlightenment. There is one video(http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_video/index.html) where ‘Byron Katie’, author of ‘Loving what is’ was explaining about what UG is experiencing and he point blank answers her – “No Comments, gimmick, politicians”. All the religious, reincarnation thinking is absolute rubbish.
Charles T.Tart, who pioneered the field of consciousness studies decades ago, author, scientist, meditation teacher, Professor emeritus of psychology at the university of California, honestly says in his book ‘Mind science’ – I don’t really know what enlightenment is, but I am an expert on endarkment. I have more than fifty years of personal practice and professional study of endarkment. I figure that the less of that stuff that we do, the less endarkment we generate, will moves us in the direction of whatever enlightenment is.
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, considered an enlightened soul, was a chain smoker and a drunk, often very rude on the name of teaching his pupil. Teacher, who cannot control themselves, teaches other how to control their life and the ‘after life’. Swami Satchidananda taught his disciples celibacy, yet he forced himself sexually on his own female disciples, even after he had become an old man. From internet (http://nonduality.com/morea.htm) you can get list of at least few hundred more guru’s.
India is a factory that produces these so-called guru’s, they are as numerous as psychic palm readers. The path to enlightenment is littered with skeletons of many of these so called guru’s. The majority of them are phony but some of them reached to a mental state, may be because of their mental epilepsy, maybe because of their sensitivity and conditioning, and maybe because of some genetic mutation. They experienced this vast emptiness, blissful joy and the presence of eternal peace, but none can teach this to their handful of disciples out of millions of followers. Jay Krishnamurti, spent his life telling people no one can teach you this and you don’t need a guru; get over of these blue pill peddlers. Many rejected him because he did not hand out a blue pill.
All in all, blue pill is not very different from the red pill. It is a mix of many religions. It does help humankind by destroying the walls of religions. These gurus do bring people of many faiths together, and they try to nudge barbaric humans to be more compassionate and considerate. An ordinary blue pill user may not reach the zenith of meditation, but it may open their eye towards themselves. They watch themselves and their thoughts, they remain mindful and have empathy in their hart and tolerance for others; All this turn them to be a better humans. Blue pill have some benefit of introducing the general public to yoga, breathing exercise, different philosophies and doctrins and a habit of introspection. However, the enlightenment idea is as elusive as heaven.
All these guru’s have a catch-22 definition of meditation. You make your mind empty without thinking about it. Many of them said you just practice and if it happens then it happens. You cannot do anything about it. It is a gift from God. You run hopelessly after this blue pill. However, unlike the red pill, lot has to be done by you. You need to practice meditation, you need to watch yourself and your thoughts and always remain mindful etc. All this makes people confident that they are in charge of their destiny and practice hours doing meditation, which may make them slightly rested but no one reached to Promised Land of enlightenment.
Green Pill
Now comes the third generation, after red and blue, a green pill. This green pill is a result of 400 years of advances made by humans in science. Darwin kicked the big rock of religion and God down the slop of reason and science. Many before him and after have tried to explain the biggest hoax played on humankind, but no was as successful as he was in shaking the pedestal of God. Now, the convergence of many fields of science, Neuron science, psychology, computers, bio tech and genetics evolved to the point where researchers started peeking into the human mind.
From Buddha to Eckhart Tolle tells us – “It is all in your mind. Don’t let the random thoughts come and control you, empty your brain, you are suffering from this decease called thinking. Remain in the present; don’t swing between past and future.” They gave us many different techniques to reach were they themselves reached by accident or after many decades of brain numbing practice.
Now the science is reaching the maturity where humans have started to scratch the surface of human mind. V.S. Ramachandran (http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/), Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California is already talking about the G-Spot of the brain, the God-Spot in the brain. They are finding that a particular area of brain is sensitive to God and religious thought. Scientists have singled the brain region which is sensitive to religion. The brain area, where we keep all the religious thoughts, the area which is hammered by our parents, priest and society with the religious ideas is enhanced. With centuries of lie and their constant repetition, did alter the brain. In the near future, we will find that a brain scan can tell whether a person is religious or not.
In his “God- Part of the Brain”, Matthew Alper builds a case that
humanity’s perception of a spiritual realm is, in fact, the biological result of thousands of years of evolution. His logical scientific argument is that spirituality is the product of our mind, and that God and reincarnation are the ‘white lie’ inventions of the human brain. We use it to relieve the stress of our awareness of our end.
Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor, in his book ‘Stumbling on Happiness’, says – “No other animal has a frontal lobe like us. Two or three million years ago, our ancestors developed the front lobe, the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature and the first to deteriorate in old age. Frontal lobe “empowers healthy human adults with the capacity to consider the self extended existence throughout time”. Damage to the frontal lobe makes people ‘bound to present stimuli’ or ‘locked into immediate space and time’. In short, the concept of tomorrow and time and future is all locked in ‘frontal lobe’. ‘Not to think about future’ means teach the frontal lobe not to do what it is supposed to do”. That’s why our $300 a day guru fails with a healthy frontal lobe person; Gurudev unsuccessfully tries to teach us – how to keep self in present, don’t wander in past and future.
We already know that there are lie detectors in production which will read your thoughts and tell if you are lying or not. Many startups (http://www.neurosky.com/
) are making video games which can enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but with your thoughts. Armed with this knowledge of mind and technology, very soon we will be buying the M-Pod (Meditation – Pod) from TOYS-R-US. These toys will teach our toddlers how to meditate. How to be still, how to remain in the present. Feedback from the frontal lobe will help us train our mind to remain in present and do the thinking of future when we need them. Marriage of the human mind and technology will open new frontier for human kind. Aided by science, humans will evolve at a much faster pace. Spiritual Guru’s will be replaced by shinny X-MindTrainer from Microsoft. Religion will be just a gene mutation, or a slight defect in brain which will be fixed with an outpatient procedure.
There will be small devices like wrist watches, which will read our thoughts, they will continuously watch our thoughts, and will signal us for any bad and negative thoughts. We will be continuously watching our thought. Finally, thousands years after ‘Buddha’ we will learn how to watch our thoughts. It will be a ‘must’ to know and watch your thoughts, as there will be people with expensive and next generation watches which will read others thoughts. So to be successful in society we have to have only good and pure thoughts, any bad thoughts will be caught by devices and those people will be shunned by the society.
In the future, we will find medicines to enhance a particular brain area to help us control our thoughts so we can have only good thoughts. We will have exercises in gym to train our front lobe to work on our command. Mind will not be on auto pilot, we will not be a malfunctioning radio catching simultaneously many stations at a time. Aimless wondering of the mind will be controlled; there will be much order to it. Our natural state will be mindful; we will continuously remain in meditation.
At birth, people will request doctors to zap the G-Spot of their child’s brain by lasers, so the child will not turn out to be a religious fanatic. Children of tomorrow will not be mired in dogmatism and will not build walls among themselves in the name of religion. Finally, John Lennon will have the last word –
‘Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
_____________________________________________________________________
Addendum
May 2007
So the Religious Pills are a reality!
Wall street Journal, May 9th 2007, Antonio Regalado says in his story – “As the first Brazilian-born saint, Friar Galvão is big news here. The country’s leading newsmagazines have run depictions of the friar on their covers, and the faithful have been snapping up tens of thousands of “Friar Galvão pills,” small capsules nuns produce that are said to have miraculous properties.”
Read the whole article on wsj. ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117868203365996868.html?mod=todays_us_page_one“).
Sep 2007
Out-of-body experiences can now be created at will in Science labs.
Recently, two youngish biologists without Nobel prizes have had a go. Working independently, Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital have been making inquiries into the notion of the bodily self—an important part of conscious experience. And in two papers published in this week’s edition of Science, the AAAS‘s house journal, they report their latest results. Out of body experience can be created at will by manipulating brain in lab. Read more about it in http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9682520
Hi Rafat,
Amazing post ! A very deep and meaningful analysis indeed. Illustrated very well with Red Blue Green pill concept. Thanks for sharing your wonderful thoughts. Keep writing.
Dnyanada.
Very good one. Concepts well ‘encapsulated’ :-), its great anology….But the green pill does not and cannot by virtue of its nature, claim to cure all, where as red pill shamelessly claims so. If blue pill consumers go one step further, they can find the green one, but well…Good work Sarosh! – Bhanu
Your writings are curious to me. I totally appreciate your passion to change the world. Your thinking challenges me to rethink my own concepts…other points of view are good to keep us open to the world around us. Curious, open minded discussions are a very good thing. Thank you for the energy and time you put into sharing your thoughts.You offer the world many wonderful things…keep writing …
So the Religious Pills are a reality!
Wall street Journal, May 9th 2007, Antonio Regalado says in his story – “As the first Brazilian-born saint, Friar Galvão is big news here. The country’s leading newsmagazines have run depictions of the friar on their covers, and the faithful have been snapping up tens of thousands of “Friar Galvão pills,” small capsules nuns produce that are said to have miraculous properties.”
Read the whole article on wsj. ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117868203365996868.html?mod=todays_us_page_one“).
Good one.. God or Almighty is a reality and is a matter of faith. Also there is enough logic around us to prove that there is this special force responsible for the entire systematic creation. Its simply not haphazard. If we just take a lil bit of time to ponder, it is mindboggling that each of the creation is with a purpose. Unforunately Man has polluted the entire system by his own selfish needs.
An excellent video by Harun Yahya which I came across recently is below. Well worth a look.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8032229349607999138
Regards, Arif Jameel.
Take a look at this device http://stresseraser.com/hpr
Exactly as I was predicting in the blog above …
Love is the only thing there. the crux of human condition is love. If you have love in your heart, you have no questions like this.
People who are looking for this kind of thing, or that kind of thing have love in their heart, but they don’t know it yet.
This is the only mystery there is. The only mystery there is that we have love in our heart, but we don’t know that.
When we have love in our heart, and if we know it, we are done. our work is done here. We can move on in life and death.
We move in love in life and death. That is it, that is the only thing there.
The question is, you have analyzed these things, you have done it very beautifully. I love that. But, the only thing is, just like the gunas of body and mind, similarly there is going to be different kind of people or different kind of mindstates. It is true, every one of us has aspects of blue, red and green pill takers within us.
We have to understand that, and we have to combine the imbalace of gong in any one direction too much, and stay in the middle.
Staying in the middle is staying in the heart. That is the presence of eternity in every moment, no matter who you are, what you are doing, or what you are aware of.
Amit Singh
I don’t see these things as cut-and-dry as you do. I think there’s alot of overlap between these realms, and they’re all different paths (however misguided or not) towards understanding, and since none of us know the ultimate truth, it’s hard to deem some as more legitimate than others.
Hello, I have no claims, only questions.
how do you account for the logical construction of
all parts of the universe? Does it seem that there must
have been an intelligence behind it that intentionally
devised it all? Did you do it? Did I do it? Could it have
just happened with no mind to direct it to become
what it is? Are your thoughts physical things or some
thing else? If they are something else, what are they?
What do you like most, ignorant and violent and stupid
actions or intelligent and gentle and wise actions?
Without your name and personality and body, who are you? Can you imagine not being? Is it right and good
for anyone to violate your privacy and right to think
for yourself? Do you like people or hate them? Do you
like certain people more than others and even say that
you love them? Do you like yourself? Do you love yourself? Do you enjoy supporting others and protecting their rights? Would you like to add your own questions?——-Doug Rosbury
A very well written synopsis of religion by an obviously intelligent person who got all the nuances of a spiritual path but somehow entirely missed the plot! All you need is love, dude- lots more than you put into your rather dismal blog.
The question is: who prescribes the pill? Whether the pill is red, blue, or green, there is this need that comes to us as a question: a wish to fulfill. There are a lot of people in the world willing to prescribe a “pill” to their fellows, promising a answer, promising wish fulfillment, promising to heal that question. Yet no pill, whether science, religion, or some pseudo spirituality will ever meet the task completely.
The green pill can go a long way in describing the how, e.g., frontal lobe positions the self in time. But it doesn’t explain the why. And there is a lot of “how” that has yet to be explained. Merely pointing out that we are machines that can be tinkered with doesn’t erase the need for faith. In fact, faith in something transcendent and unknowable is replaced with a new faith that all is known or will soon be knowable. With this faith comes confidence that I can control all variables. I know where all the levers are. It makes it easy to act. Unfortunately, we learn later that we don’t know all the variables before we act. We learn that industrialization via fossil fuels brings environmental disaster. We learn that splitting the atom entices some among us to use atomic power for war. We learn that the green revolution in farming can feed billions but also cloud our food with toxins. Genetic manipulation is an untapped wonder but we fear our own hand to use it wisely.
This is because I, a person, am faulty. I am subjective. I will never see the whole picture. I am selfish. I am imperfect. This is the nature of being a human being. Accepting this means I can accept the failures and future failures of myself and those around me. We need a balancing humility that offsets the euphoric side effects of the green pill.
Here is another discovery of science proving my ideas right.
Increased feelings of transcendence can follow brain damage http://bit.ly/bepy8Y