“Possession is nine tenths of the law” used to say my honorable teacher at university. Years later, I came across this exceptional book, Overcoming Jealousy, the best one I have read on the prominent urge to possess and the displays of jealousy in us humans. Thoroughly illuminating this hidden emotion, it renders it both accessible and palpable while showing efficient ways to deal with it through examples drawn from real life. An intricate emotion which we do not want to attribute to ourselves, and prefer to not talk about to avoid kindling the feelings of shame, distress, and sorrow. …
Category: Science
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” says author Annie Dillard. Goethe, meticulous about the passage of time reflects: “Every second is of infinite value” for one who captures it. Seneca states that what we do each day figures the meaning of our life and calibrates the “relative” passage of time. He says, “ Life, if lived well, is long enough, ” and one can depart with a sense of contentment. In his renown work, Divine Comedy, Dante vividly alludes to the consequences of our conduct in life, as to how they determine …
“When you die, you actually know you are dead because your consciousness continues to exist …” says Sam Parnia, director of the first critical care and resuscitation research lab in the world at New York’s NYU Langone Medical Center. Known with his AWARE research, his lab has been studying hundreds of people who had Near-Death Experience (NDE) – who were clinically dead but were brought back to life by resuscitation after a cardiac arrest. The time lapse in-between actual death and coming back to life varied in each case from a few seconds to more than 20 minutes . …
Peter Wohlleben, forester and the author of international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees writes: “Our need of nature is an integral part of our humanity,” and “the bond that unites us with nature is never broken.” He recounts how he discovered this bond hidden in him at a time when he was working to optimize the forestry output for the lumber industry, and trees were nothing more than profitable commodities for him. He recounts: One day, as I was doing my daily job across the forest, I stumbled over an old tree stump. When I examined the chunk of wood covering the …
There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras (circa 570 BC), the wise philosopher and polymath put forth that the universe as a whole was composed of harmony and numbers. The planets and stars move according to mathematical equations, their movements correspond to musical notes and that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolving. Their orbital resonance generates an inaudible symphony which he called Musica Universalis —music of the universe. The seventeenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), inspired and intrigued …
A most asked question in the history of humanity is “What is the meaning of life? What are we doing here?” For some, the meaning is finding food and shelter, for others it is success in work or a happy settlement, and for another, it is living on the impulse –seeking pleasure whatever that signifies individually (for example, going across town for the chocolate that I particularly like instead of finishing an important job for me and others, or perpetual travelling for somebody else who otherwise becomes restless and meaningless at home, seeking to supplant meaning by buying another house …
One of the most read mystical poets Rumi (1207-1273), recounts in his seminal Mathnawi that at the time King Solomon was building his temple following the divine order, medicinal plants sprouted one after the other in the courtyards of the temple. Endowed with the gift of speaking the language of animals, plants, and other creatures in nature, King Solomon would ask the emerging sprouts : Tell me your name, what you heal, which medicine are you? whom you hurt, and whom you cure Plants would speak up and count their remedies and harms, if any. It is cited in …
We may all be familiar with the butterflies flying in our stomach when we are head over heels in love. The heart beats faster, the autonomous nervous system signals excitement and increases oxygen to our muscles, the neuroendocrine system is boosted up; being elevated from head to toe, the body feels lighter and on an instant we can take flight. This is how neuroscientists describe the state of “limbic love.” Emotions are activated in the limbic system of the brain and they coordinate our behavior and physiological states even though we are not always consciously aware of them. The …
The little happiness in life is sometimes found in the backyard. Just as planting a seed may flicker hope, a walk in nature may change our ordinary mood to a state of awe, or we may overcome by delight at the sight of the first rose bud in spring. The appeasing quality of nature kindles the human spirit as the marine biologist Rachel Carson (1907-1964) wisely emphasized it : There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature –the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. “Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in …
Mars, the mysterious red planet named after the Roman God of War has occupied the extraterrestrial fantasies of the humans inhabiting the earth since ancient times. Seeking life on Mars or chances of colonizing Mars, or the contrary, anticipating Martian attacks on earth, has always inspired astronomers, film makers and storytellers. Among the sky watchers, the pioneer was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) who geared his telescope ceaselessly to observe Mars. He chalked out the red planet’s surface, demonstrating its seas and continents on the map. His most ground breaking observation was the dense …
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