Madhu's Musings

Bhagwat Gita is, if anything is, a manual for life. It's like a SOP for living our lives. A standard operating procedure ( SOP) is a set of written instructions describing the step-by-step process that must be followed to perform a routine activity properly. When Krishna is counselling Arjun and making him understand how to go through life with all its trials and tribulations, he is also talking to us, our inner Arjuns, to face and overcome our challenges. Krishna, the Universal Intelligence, the best psychologist the world has ever produced lives within all of us if we could listen to him. There are many paths that could lead us to our Krishna, like meditation, yoga, prayer, knowledge, and selfless work, but the onus is on us to travel on that path. Life has always been a great teacher and will remain so, but again, the onus is for us to learn from the lessons it imparts to us. Sometimes extraordinary, challenging situations force us to seek our inner teacher, our Krishna, for not

I kept going on an unknown journey The path seemed dark With no signboards or landmarks I stumbled many times Fumbled in the dark Bruised and battered I looked around For the direction, for any help Nothing appeared, no one showed up I got up, started moving again Hoping against hope I wanted to give up But a small voice inside me won't It pulled me It didn't allow me to give up, however much I wanted I was scared of the darkness It said darkness is the path that leads to light I was broken It integrated my fragmented pieces I was searching for a speck of reflected light to guide me It said, find your own lamp However flickering, it would be your own I said I couldn't go anymore It said I could carry you But you have to carry your own lamp Unwittingly I kept going on Not knowing the path To an unknown destination The inner lamp slowly became brighter Darkness turned into the light Suddenly it lighted my path And I realized I was the light I was looking for I was the destina

India is blessed to have such profound scriptures like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagwat Gita that we can keep learning their significance even today in the context of modern-day Science.  Here is my attempt to understand the essence of Ramayana in the context of the present-day understanding of Science in a nutshell.  Ram is the symbol of divine or Universal Consciousness, the ultimate reality, the God or quantum observer of our lives that pervades the quantum field with universal intelligence. Sita symbolizes us, our Soul, our being, the individual Consciousness. Although an integral component of Universal Consciousness, it is seized by the ego-oriented mind because of the forgetfulness of the Self. Her journey is a metaphor for the individual journey toward self-realization, which involves overcoming various challenges and obstacles. Laxman Rekha represents Conscious Awareness, a built-in program in our forebrain to observe our thoughts. It has the power of metacognition, an awaren

  T he ongoing pandemic has irreversibly changed many aspects of our lives. Still, recently I stumbled upon a new discovery, a new life lesson when I was studying Covid-19 immunological protection data from an instrument called Flowcytometer for vaccine studies. As a lifelong student of life, I gained an insight that I could never manage for the last twenty years of my professional life. Earlier, I found the instrument a little complex and too scientific. I could have never imagined that it would teach me something besides science one day. A life lesson. The flow cytometer is a versatile instrument used for the immunological analysis of any cancer, infectious, or genetically abnormal cells. Basically, cells are tagged/colored with a fluorescent dye and made to pass through a laser beam. The cells are then analyzed based on their size and quality and on an attached computer system. Before all this, blood samples have to be processed to be analyzed by laser beams. However much care is ta

"That's the thing about unhappiness. All it takes is for something worse to come along, and you realize it was actually happiness after all." I was watching The Crown on Netflix the other day. Queen Elizabeth commented after President Kennedy's death when her mother asked about Jackie Kennedy's unhappiness. As a lifelong student of life, these words of Queen made a lasting impression on my mind. As human beings, aren't we generally programmed to keep taking things for granted until it's lost or taken away? We tend to believe unhappiness to be real and happiness to be some distant goal that needs to be achieved. Rarely we human beings are contended with what 'it is,' only to be shaken out of the slumber when that 'it is' is lost or gone forever. The words from the Queen were nothing extraordinary, and we all know such words of wisdom, but sometimes some words impact us more than others. Whenever I feel dissatisfied with anything or, for tha

 I recently watched The Lord of the Rings, much after my son's insistence, as I am not much of a movie person. I remember watching it in bits and pieces when it was released, but as usual, it didn't interest me. Perhaps this time also, I would have given up but for my son's persistence. And honestly speaking, maybe that might be one of the best spiritual learning for me. The movie seems to be a lot like the Mahabharata war, where good wins over evil after much chaos and destruction. Many things reminded me of our Bhagwat Gita, where all Krishna had to convince the reluctant Arjun to fight the war besides supporting him throughout the epic battle. Somehow the friendship between Frodo and Sam was like Arjun and Krishna. From beginning to end, Sam remains his unconditional friend who leaves nothing to support Frodo. But as the movie unfolds, like Arjun', Frodo has to carry the task of throwing the Ring in the fire, however difficult it is. "Maybe I can't carry it