β
When we understand people;
when we understand situations;
when we understand what matters;
when we understand the whyβs, the whatβs and the howβs;
when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.
β
β
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
β
Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Do you know great minds enjoy excellence, average minds love mediocrity and small minds adore comfort zones?
β
β
Onyi Anyado
β
Each person you meet influences your mental universe in a way that has the potential to make a substantial impact upon the causality of the intellectual development of an entire species.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
If origin defines race, then we are all Africans β we are all black.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism (Humanism Series))
β
You are your own best friend. Listen to yourself more often than someone else.
β
β
Steven Cuoco
β
Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex-toy.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism (Humanism Series))
β
Something ought to be said for those who see beyond what most cannot, and this most precious opportunity happens the moment when ones personal value begins blossoming its perfect absolute.
β
β
Steven Cuoco (Guided Transformation (Special Edition))
β
My βBest Womanβ speech
Good evening everyone, my name is Rosie and as you can see Alex has
decided to go down the non-traditional route of asking me to be his best
woman for the day. Except we all know that today that title does not belong
to me. It belongs to Sally, for she is clearly his best woman.
I could call myself the βbest friendβ but I think we all know that today
that title no longer refers to me either. That title too belongs to Sally.
But what doesnβt belong to Sally is a lifetime of memories of Alex the
child, Alex the teenager, and Alex the almost-a-man that Iβm sure he would
rather forget but that I will now fill you all in on. (Hopefully they all will
laugh.)
I have known Alex since he was five years old. I arrived on my first day
of school teary-eyed and red-nosed and a half an hour late. (I am almost sure
Alex will shout out βWhatβs new?β) I was ordered to sit down at the back of
the class beside a smelly, snotty-nosed, messy-haired little boy who had the
biggest sulk on his face and who refused to look at me or talk to me. I hated
this little boy.
I know that he hated me too, him kicking me in the shins under the table
and telling the teacher that I was copying his schoolwork was a telltale sign.
We sat beside each other every day for twelve years moaning about school,
moaning about girlfriends and boyfriends, wishing we were older and wiser and out of school, dreaming for a life where we wouldnβt have double maths
on a Monday morning.
Now Alex has that life and Iβm so proud of him. Iβm so happy that heβs
found his best woman and his best friend in perfect little brainy and annoying
Sally.
I ask you all to raise your glasses and toast my best friend Alex and his
new best friend, best woman, and wife, Sally, and to wish them luck and
happiness and divorce in the future.
To Alex and Sally!
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
β
In the biological sense, race does not exist.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism (Humanism Series))
β
In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is irrelevant.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
There is no religion better than love, no color better than the color of happiness and no language better than the language of compassion.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Wake up to realities! Real life is all about real things!
β
β
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
β
Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space. Without the neurons to create a virtual perception of the past and the future based on all our experiences, there is no actual existence of the past and the future. All that there is, is the present.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Instead of being regarded as intelligent or knowledgeable, many a woman would rather be regarded as beautiful or good in the kitchen; many a man, as handsome or good in bed.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
Homosexuals are not made, they are born.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
The most crucial thing to know about true love is that, it is not something you can find, rather you need to build it with the person in whose eyes you see your soul.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
There's no shame compared to being beautiful with nothing in your brain, an ugly devil with wits is much better that the former.
β
β
Michael Bassey Johnson
β
Beauty is an illusion, created by Mother Nature to drive the human species in the path of reproduction. In reality, beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. Thatβs how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
it is possible with only a little extra anguish
to live in this world at absolute [minimum?]
loving brainy sexual energetic redeemed
β
β
Grace Paley
β
It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
Good and evil are both fundamental features of the human mind.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism (Humanism Series))
β
Through sexual intimacy, two human beings become one mind, body and soul wrapped up in the cocoon of their skin.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Art of Neuroscience in Everything)
β
Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Love is like a butterfly, when it comes and sits on your palm, you can either care for it and let it fly if it wishes, or you can trap it and see it die.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Love that doesn't turn you stupid, is no love.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
The highest truth in the world is love.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders)
β
A world that is safe for mothers is safe for all.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
β
A fulfilling long-term relationship is not accomplished by just finding the one. It is rather a co-operation between two passionate and highly motivated partners working together, figuring out every single situation holding hands. If there is trust at the root of the relationship, if the partners make an effort to keep it interesting, if difficulties are handled tactfully and if you can appreciate every single deed of your partner no matter how insignificant it is, the flames of love would never burn out and your love can truly live happily ever after.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Art of Neuroscience in Everything)
β
You live in a society, that always demands you to have a label to define yourself. Now it's up to you, whether you choose man-made labels like 'religious' and 'atheist', or your innate natural label gifted by Mother Nature, i.e. 'human'.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Christ attained the ultimate spiritual oneness through prayer and devotion, Moses and Mohammed through prayer, Buddha and all the Indian sages through intense meditation and so did I. And so can you.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers and instructions on some books, and want others to do the same. But, to explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining the city of New York after seeing it only in a map.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
You may turn every house in your neighborhood into a charity center, you may fill the land with soup-kitchens, but the misery of humans will still continue to exist until the character of humanity changes.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Principia Humanitas (Humanism Series))
β
The difference between Marilynβs and Jayneβs approach to intellectual pursuits is that Marilyn carried big heavy books around and hung out with brainy people to absorb their intellect, while Jayne really had a thirst for knowledge. Jayne was very proud of the fact that if she like something enough she would commit it to memory. At that time, The Satanic Bible was still in monograph form, and Jayne had pored over those pages until she knew most of it by heart...Marilyn gave me a copy of Stendhalβs On Love, and I still have a copy of Walter Bentonβs This is My Beloved, which we bought together on Sunset Boulevard. Marilyn turned me on to itβwanted me to read it and write something in it for her. I got as far as writing her name in it, but I ended up with the book. It meant a lot to me during a particularly dark period in my life after I left L.A. Jayne kept insisting I read The Story of O and I, Jan Cremer. She gave me a dog-eared copy of each. It seems a distinctly feminine trait to want to share books with people they care deeply about.
β
β
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey)
β
Just like love becomes consummated upon the attainment of orgasm, all the faith and divinity in the world reach their ultimate existential potential upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia or simply Absolute Godliness.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
People often ask me, what my religion is. I tell them, I am a Christian to the Christian, a Jew to the Jew, a Muslim to the Muslim, a Hindu to the Hindu, an atheist to the atheist, but the brightest nightmare to the fundamentalist.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Harmony doesnβt come merely through tolerance. You donβt need to tolerate people from other cultural backgrounds. It is time you start loving them. Toleration may make you a decent person, but it is love that makes you a true human being.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Once you attain the state of Absolute Oneness or Non-Duality, you become one of those spiritual legends that humanity so gloriously venerates as the founding fathers of religion.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
I was working in silence seeking no appreciation or respect from any one. And it is always the silence from which great literature is born.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
The greatest Church is within you, and it is made of love, courage and conscience.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Mother Nature created God as a neurological anti-depressant sentiment, but Man tore that God apart into pieces and made citadels of differentiation out of them.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Krishna Cancer (Neurotheology Series))
β
Beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
For someone who lives in love, pain is nourishment.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race)
β
A world anemic in love needs a day to celebrate love. I am a lover eternal, for me every day is valentine's day.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables)
β
In praising myself, I only insult myself.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live)
β
The greatest gift you can give anyone is love.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
We should try to explain ourselves only to those who value us in their life.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Calling love a philosophy is like calling the air we breathe a philosophy or the water we drink a philosophy or the ground we stand on a philosophy. Love is the very foundation of human existence.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Revolution Indomable)
β
The whole human world is born from the womb of mothers, and if we can't make the motherly act of breastfeeding free from stigma in such a world, then it's an insult to our very existence as a species.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth)
β
People fight over religion, because they don't understand religion. They think reading a few Bibles, Qurans and Vedas makes them religious. Books are not religion my friend. Real religion is realization of the Self.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. Thatβs how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
We gain from the new science of mind not only insights into ourselves - how we perceive, learn, remember, feel, believe and act - but also a new perspective of ourselves and our fellow human beings in the context of biological evolution.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Greatness lies not in ruling a people, it lies in being the cause of happiness in their lives.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Past and future both require a functional mind to exist. Only the present prevails independent of mind β independent of life.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
As a species, wise, harmonious progress is our mission.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (I Am The Thread: My Mission)
β
I work to make human beings out of human bodies. I work to make conscience out of mindlessness. I work to make Gods out of obedient worshippers.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (I Am The Thread: My Mission)
β
If they don't hear your silence,
Words won't do you any good.
Listen to the silence beyond the words,
And you shall hear the divine tune.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Amor Apocalypse: CanΔ±m Sana Δ°htiyacΔ±m)
β
Your testimony begins the moment you demonstrate livable truth.
β
β
Steven Cuoco (Guided Transformation (Special Edition))
β
Human you are, and your religion, Humanism.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Principia Humanitas (Humanism Series))
β
Truth, by all means is the ultimate reward for all the sufferings of the human mind that often compel even the strongest of characters to get down on his or her knees.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
You deserve more in your life. Think big. Love more and share beyond your limits. You will then become limitless.
β
β
Steven Cuoco
β
The female brain is engineered to avoid conflicts at all cost, whereas the male brain pleasures conflicts in the purpose of being the boss.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Only truth in the cosmos is love.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Amor Apocalypse: CanΔ±m Sana Δ°htiyacΔ±m)
β
Logical love is no love.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race)
β
It's ridiculously easy to fall in love, what's hard is to sustain that love for life.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Lives to Serve Before I Sleep)
β
Be her hero and love her even during those times when she despises herself.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
The lessons of relationship that our primordial ancestors learned are deeply encoded in the genetics of our neurobiological circuits of love. They are present from the moment we are born and activated at puberty by the cocktail of neurochemicals. Itβs an elegant synchronized system. At first our brain weighs a potential partner, and if the person ο¬ts our ancestral wish list, we get a spike in the release of sex chemicals that makes us dizzy with a rush of unavoidable infatuation. Itβs the ο¬rst step down the primeval path of pair-bonding.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
β
The religion I am talking about here is plain everyday humanism. Thatβs exactly what the person named Jesus attempted to spread, but due to innate psychological reasons, his pupils ended up constructing yet another orthodox circle with its own distinct beliefs, ideals and fantasies.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker)
β
Religion and politics together is the most dangerous of all combinations, when that religion, is not the true religion of kindness and love, but the religion of books, doctrines and priests.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Let The Poor Be Your God)
β
Humanism is not a pompous philosophy to be talked and debated about by a handful of intellectuals - it is the purest form of moral compass, which defines the civilized heart of thinking humanity.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Principia Humanitas (Humanism Series))
β
Love begins with the stage of subconscious primitive lust and attraction. Iβm saying primitive because at this very early stage there is really no difference between primitive man and modern man.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
The so-called scale of "good, better and best" is a social construct, and often it does more harm to the mind's growth, than good. If you love something, you just do it, without thinking about being good, or better, or best. Such expectation-less action gives rise to the most beautiful of results.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Help anyone who comes to you, as much as lies in your power, not because you are good person, nor because you want to be adored, but because you are a real human β a real human of the civilized society.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Principia Humanitas (Humanism Series))
β
Nature programmed the neurobiological processes of early love to appear as something beyond the primitive sexual cravings of the genitals. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, it all leads to copulation and reproduction, but from the perspective of the individual who has recently fallen head over heels in love with someone, it is mostly about a sensation of warmth and delight, and rarely of sexual nature.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Did you know Socrates said we love whatever we lack? Or think we lack? Socrates? If you feel stupid, you'll fall for someone brainy. If you feel ugly, you'll flip your lid for someone who's easy on the eyes.
β
β
J.R. Moehringer (Sutton)
β
In the beginning of our love lives, it is the beastly instinct of sexual attraction that drives us all. The butterflies in your stomach simply signal your mind that the person in front of you would make a fantastic mate to make babies with. Without this primeval drive, you wonβt ever fall for anyone in your entire lifetime. The very attraction you feel towards a person in a romantic way, is a mental manifestation of a subconscious desire to mate with that person.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
β
Everybody concocts their own truth, then they fight over whose truth is superior. So first, you must trash all this nonsense. Make love the driver of all truth, and whether there is consensus of knowledge or not, there'll always be consensus of heart.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers)
β
Go! Yes, You! Go! I will not force you to like me; I will not force you to love me. Unconditional love has a condition inside it but there is no you in me. If I know my real me, then I know your real you. I know your value in me and I also know my value in you. If your value is not in me and my value is not in you, then I will not force you to like me; I will not force you to love me, so go!
β
β
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
β
Love is not the primeval surge of libidinal lust that a person receives when meeting a suitable partner for the first time. Love in the truest sense of the term is born much later in a relationship, when both sides get to the know the truest selves of each other.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
It is true that breasts can induce sexual tension in men, but truer than that is the fact, that breasts are the primary and healthiest source of nutrition for the infant, so, if men can't use their higher mental faculty of self-restraint at the sight of breastfeeding at public places, then it's not the women who need to change their breastfeeding place, it's the men who need to work on their character.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth)
β
It has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasnβt made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker)
β
All men either consciously or subconsciously crave for authority over their environment, especially over their peers in the society, male and female alike. Women on the other hand, crave for intimacy especially from their female peers in the society. Colloquially this is what you call βgossipingβ.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Unfortunately for the university, none of that information could make the slightest place for itself inside the circuits of my brain. I was looking for education, but all I found was heartless indoctrination. And indoctrination is not just demeaning to the human conscience, it is lethal for the flourishing psychology of the hungry, young mind.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
Start working on your childβs mind. Start building your childβs character. Raise your child as a human being, instead of raising boys and girls. Raise human beings with the religion of love in their hearts. Raise human beings with the language of compassion on their lips. Raise human beings with the color of joy on their face. Raise human beings with the force of bravery in their nerves. And these brave conscientious souls with the flames of compassion in their hearts shall one day change the course of human history.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
β
The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Once you emerge from the state of absolute divinity, the self within you becomes Christ β it becomes Buddha β it becomes Moses β it becomes Krishna. The sage who emerges from the state of non-duality begins to perceive the self as Christ, not Christ as Christ β the self as Moses, not Moses as Moses β the self as Mohammed, not Mohammed as Mohammed β the self as Krishna, not Krishna as Krishna.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
β
It is a solemn duty to change lives positively.It is a noble honor to inspire and be there for others.It is an irresistible necessity to have empathy; to understand the situations and the reasons for the actions of others. Real mentoring is less of neither the candid smile nor the amicable friendship that exists between the mentor and the mentee and much more of the impacts. The indelible great footprints the mentor lives on the mind of the mentee in a life changing way. How the mentor changes the mentee from ordinariness to extra-ordinariness; the seed of purposefulness that is planted and nurtured for great fruits; the prayer from afar from the mentor to the mentee; and the great inspirations the mentee takes from the mentor to dare unrelentingly to face the storms regardless of how arduous the errand may be with or without the presence of the mentor
β
β
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
β
A Muslim who prays five times a day and yet beats his wife at home, is no religious person. A Christian who goes to Church every Sunday, and yet never talks to his or her neighbor with a smile on the face, is no religious person. On the other hand, an outspoken atheist who most lovingly talks and listens to people of all religions without any bigotry or prejudice is a hundred times more religious than all the theoretical preachers of all religions combined.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar
β
Mainspring of Life (A Sonnet)
I have no nationality except humanity,
I have no tradition except compassion,
I have no religion except liberty,
I have no god except a family of 7 billion,
I have no belief but only awareness,
I have no creed but only acceptance,
I have no messiah except the self,
I have no scripture except my conscience,
I have no gospel except godliness,
I have no sermon except thought,
I have no philosophy except oneness,
I have nothing to give you except love a whole lot,
I demand no obedience, nor do I desire worship and offering,
For there is death in worship, and freedom is life's mainspring.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth)
β
How beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight, In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light!
How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear, Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near!
What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine, Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine!
The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath, And in your beauty's shadow I sank motionless as death.
I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain--I only felt that life could give no joy like that again.
And this was love--I knew it not, but blindly floated on, And now I'm on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone;
The waves are raging round me-- I'm reckless where they guide; No hope is left to lighten me, no strength to stem the tide.
As a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky, As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by. The dream that drank the meteor's light--the form from Heav'n has flown--
The vision and the glory, they are passing--they are gone.
Oh! Love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain; Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream again.
β
β
A. Norman Jeffares (Ireland's Love Poems)
β
Today is another day! Yesterday is gone but not its memories. There were so many things we expected yesterday which did not happen and what we least expected happened instead. Some are still expecting something. Expectation is a pillar of life. We all do have our expectations for today. Though we may or we may not be able to tell with certainty how our expectations would materialize. We ought to take life easy. Well, it may not be so easy to take it easy but, take it easy! Stay focused and entrust your trust in God. After all what you least expects can happen; serendipity can visit you and stay with you forever at a twinkle of an eye. The coin of life can however turn within a moment of time and your expectations can become a big had I know and a night mare; the vicissitudes of life can rob you at any moment of time. No one knows what the next second really holds. What matters in life is to do what matter; plant the seed of life God has entrusted in your hands and dare to ensure its abundant fruitfulness. The very problem in life is living to neglect the very reasons why you are living because of the problems you may face in living why you must live. When you trade why you must live for why you must not live, you are ruled by what you know but you do not know how it is ruling you. Once we have life, let us live for life all about living and living life is life!
β
β
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
β
American cold war culture represented an age of anxiety. The anxiety was so severe that it sought relief in an insistent, assertive optimism. Much of American popular culture aided this quest for apathetic security. The expanding white middle class sought to escape their worries in the burgeoning consumer culture. Driving on the new highway system in gigantic showboat cars to malls and shopping centers that accepted a new form of payment known as credit cards, Americans could forget about Jim Crow, communism, and the possibility of Armageddon. At night in their suburban homes, television allowed middle class families to enjoy light domestic comedies like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver. Somnolently they watched representations of settled family life, stories where lost baseball gloves and dinnertime hijinks represented the only conflicts. In the glow of a new Zenith television, it became easy to believe that the American dream had been fully realized by the sacrifice and hard work of the war generation.
American monsters in pop culture came to the aid of this great American sleep. Although a handful of science fiction films made explicit political messages that unsettled an apathetic America, the vast majority of 'creature features' proffered parables of American righteousness and power. These narratives ended, not with world apocalypse, but with a full restoration of a secure, consumer-oriented status quo. Invaders in flying saucers, radioactive mutations, and giant creatures born of the atomic age wreaked havoc but were soon destroyed by brainy teams of civilian scientists in cooperation with the American military. These films encouraged a certain degree of paranoia but also offered quick and easy relief to this anxiety... Such films did not so much teach Americans to 'stop worrying and love the bomb' as to 'keep worrying and love the state.
β
β
W. Scott Poole (Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting)
β
Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, βI wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my lifeβ. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision.
But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life.
From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
β
Darwinβs Bestiary
PROLOGUE
Animals tame and animals feral
prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral:
the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile,
rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile.
Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Prideβevery peril
was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural,
while Courage, Devotion, Thriftβevery bright laurel
crowned a creature in some mythological mural.
Scientists think there is something immoral
in singular brutes having meat that is plural:
beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral.
Yet between the lines thereβs an implicit demurral;
the habit stays with us, albeit itβs puerile:
when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel.
1. THE ANT
The ant, Darwin reminded us,
defies all simple-mindedness:
Take nothing (says the ant) on faith,
and never trust a simple truth.
The PR men of bestiaries
eulogized for centuries
this busy little paragon,
natureβs proletarianβ
but look here, Darwin said: some ants
make slaves of smaller ants, and end
exploiting in their peonages
the sweating brows of their tiny drudges.
Thus the ant speaks out of both
sides of its mealy little mouth:
its example is extolled
to the workers of the world,
but its habits also preach
the virtues of the idle rich.
2. THE WORM
Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain,
lower than a rattlesnakeβs belly-button,
deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit:
nobody gave the worm much credit
till Darwin looked a little closer
at this spaghetti-torsoed loser.
Look, he said, a worm can feel
and taste and touch and learn and smell;
and ounce for ounce, theyβre tough as wrestlers,
and love can turn them into hustlers,
and as to work, their labors are mythic,
small devotees of the Protestant Ethic:
theyβll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland,
south to the rain forests, north to Iceland,
fifty thousand to every acre
guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor,
churning the soil and making it fertile,
earning the thanks of every mortal:
proud Homo sapiens, with legs and armsβ
his whole existence depends on worms.
So, History, no longer let
the wormβs be an ignoble lot
unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
Moral: even a worm can turn.
3. THE RABBIT
a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent,
but social as teacups: no hare is an island.
(Moral:
silence is goldenβor anyway harmless;
rabbits may run, but never for Congress.)
b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit,
kicking and scratching likeβwell, like a rabbit.
(Moral:
to thine own self be trueβor as true as you can;
a wolf in sheepβs clothing fleeces his skin.)
c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors,
but in Sweden the rabbit canβt live out of doors.
(Moral:
to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles;
to understand purity, ponder your freckles.)
d. Survival developed these small furry tutors;
the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters.
(Conclusion:
you neednβt be brainy, benign, or bizarre
to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.)
4. THE GOSSAMER
Sixty miles from land the gentle trades
that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay
sift a million gossamers, like tides
of fluff above the menace of the sea.
These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing
and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean;
the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging,
small aeronauts on some elusive mission.
The Megatherium, done to extinction
by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint
to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson:
for survival, itβs the little things that count.
β
β
Philip Appleman
β
Graduation (Friends Forever)"
And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives
Where we're gonna be when we turn 25
I keep thinking times will never change
Keep on thinking things will always be the same
But when we leave this year we won't be coming back
No more hanging out cause we're on a different track
And if you got something that you need to say
You better say it right now cause you don't have another day
Cause we're moving on and we can't slow down
These memories are playing like a film without sound
And I keep thinking of that night in June
I didn't know much of love
But it came too soon
And there was me and you
And then we got real blue
Stay at home talking on the telephone
And we would get so excited and we'd get so scared
Laughing at ourselves thinking life's not fair
And this is how it feels
As we go on
We remember
All the times we
Had together
And as our lives change
Come whatever
We will still be
Friends Forever
So if we get the big jobs
And we make the big money
When we look back now
Will our jokes still be funny?
Will we still remember everything we learned in school?
Still be trying to break every single rule
Will little brainy Bobby be the stockbroker man?
Can Heather find a job that won't interfere with her tan?
I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
And this is how it feels
La, la, la, la:
Yeah, yeah, yeah
La, la, la, la:
We will still be friends forever
Will we think about tomorrow like we think about now?
Can we survive it out there?
Can we make it somehow?
I guess I thought that this would never end
And suddenly it's like we're women and men
Will the past be a shadow that will follow us around?
Will these memories fade when I leave this town
I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
β
β
Vitamin C