Is There a Fixed Number of Souls?

Answering some more of your questions on Reincarnation

Could my gender get changed during reincarnation?

The soul is considered sexless. It could reincarnate in either sex and it may change from one to the other gender in different lives. Those who hold that the ego is reincarnated now as a male, now as a female, point to the people with male bodies who have female minds, and vice versa.

Can any of us become animals again?

Two great reincarnational traditions, Buddhism and Vedanta, do not agree on this one.

The Buddhists say, yes, we have incarnations as humans, animals, plants, and even toadstools, and that a human incarnation is something very special because it is so unusual. The Vedantic thinkers disagree, saying that once a human cycle of incarnations begins, the soul continues on with human incarnations until the cycle of incarnation is complete.

However, we do know that actually some animals are on a plane above some human beings! The particles of the body, after dissolution, may come to be particles of animals namely, our bodies - may become reincarnated in animals.

If I can't remember my past lives, why are they important?

The events of a past life, per se, amount to very little if anything. It is the lessons, learned and unlearned, which are carried forward that count and not a specific event. Those lessons form a script or a filter through which you experience your current life until the unlearned lessons are learned.

Is there any evidence at all suggesting life after death?

Scientists investigating 'near-death' experiences say they have found evidence to suggest that consciousness can continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function.

Is there a scientific basis for reincarnation?

Our body's cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones. Every seven years we change the complete set of cells. This means that, in a sense, we change our body every seven years, but this change is so gradual that it's imperceptible. So, each of us has a number of "different" bodies in this very life. The body of an adult is completely different from the body the same person had as an infant. Yet despite bodily changes, the person within remains the same. In other words, we reincarnate even in the course of one lifetime. Something similar happens at the time of death, when this body cannot be worked any more, the self undergoes a final change of body.

If there's only a fixed number of souls, how has the world population increased?

Let us take note of the fact that as man's population has increased, the animal kingdom has gradually been decimated - and that is where some mystics say human souls gradually evolve upwards from. It is also probable that life exists on many other places in the unlimited expanse of the universe, in which case the planet Earth would be only one of many places for souls to inhabit. In the Vedic literature, our universe with innumerable planets throughout the galaxies is comparable to a grain of mustard seed in a bag full of mustard seeds.

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Thought for the Week

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. . .
The other eight are unimportant”
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
American Author
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Remember Me?

Answering reader’s questions on reincarnation

We had a flurry of responses to the article on reincarnation. So, this week I am responding to the most common questions that readers have sent in.

How can events or memories from a past life affect people in this life?

Here are the most common:

• An inexplicable interest in a particular country, language, time period, historical event, etc.
• A person might, when presented with photographs or movie footage (related to their past life), feel an emotional rush and even identify themselves somehow with the visuals.
• Many individuals claim to be able to view their past lives in recurring dreams or nightmare
• Some people have, from a young age, seemingly irrational fears  about happenings like, say, drowning, aircraft crashing or loud noises, Under hypnosis, the person often states that the cause of the phobia is an event that caused their death in an earlier life.
• Unexplained or chronic physical afflictions for which there seem to be no evident reasons. Again, when working out this problem under hypnosis, people may often state that the origin of their problem is a traumatic event from a past life. And, surprisingly, once this discovery is made, the person’s problems are often reported as going away of their own accord,almost miraculously.

How do people claim to remember past lives?

The recall could be spontaneous, especially with small children, when memories simply appear to surface from nowhere, a “waking dream”. Recall could also be triggered by anything which appears to remind the person of a key part of the memory - a particular smell, object, noise, word or phrase, taste or physical setting.

Sometimes people have recurring dreams with a vividness that can leave them in a cold sweat or in tears.

Profound meditation can also enable spontaneous memories that appear to be from past lives and is probably the single most common method used by people of all religions or philosophies in order to gain mystical insights.

How many people believe in reincarnation?

Worldwide statistics are difficult to obtain, but a Gallup poll in the US in October 2001 of Americans’ belief in psychic and paranormal phenomena throws some light. The survey asked adults if they believed in “Reincarnation, that is, the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death”. 25% said they did believe in reincarnation, 54% didn’t, 20% didn’t know,  and 1% had no opinion. Belief was only slightly higher among males than females, but varied significantly between age groups: belief amongst 28-29 year-olds was at 25%, at 22% in 30-49 year-olds and 28% in people 50 and over.

Let me conclude with a poetic expression by William Wordsworth (English poet, 1770-1850) :

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come...”

More on reincarnation next time.

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Thought for the Week

“I can well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries... 
that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task 
Memories, Dreams and Reflections had given me”
Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)
Swiss Psychologist & Pioneer of Psychotherapy
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Have You Been Here Before?

Attempts to find scientific evidence for rebirth have not been very successful

Is rebirth possible? Is there any scientific basis for believing in reincarnation?

Such questions have always perplexed man since time immemorial, but conclusive evidence to resolve this eternal mystery still eludes us.

To start with, let us align ourselves to the thought that reincarnation is not an abstract religious concept or a philosophy, but could be a natural phenomenon. The Theosophical Society which draws much of its inspiration from India, was the first institution in modern times in widely spreading the concept of reincarnation in the West. It has taken reincarnation, as well as karma and spiritual evolution, as one of its cardinal tenets.

Probably the best known collection of scientific data that appears to provide scientific proof that reincarnation is real, is the life’s work of Dr. Ian Stevenson - an academic psychiatrist, who led the study of reincarnation in the United States until his death in 2007. 

Dr. Stevenson’s credentials are impeccable. He was a medical doctor with many scholarly papers to his credit before he began paranormal research. He headed the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ian Stevenson, who often called reincarnation the “survival of personality after death,” saw the existence of past lives as a potential explanation for the differences in human condition [source: New York Times]. He believed past experiences plus genetics and the environment could help elucidate phobias and other unexplained personality traits.

Instead of relying on hypnosis (like Dr. Brian Weiss) to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases (in India, Africa, the Near and Far East, UK, USA, and elsewhere) of children who spontaneously (without hypnosis) remember a past life.

His studies are scrupulously objective and methodologically impeccable. The late Herbert S. Ripley, former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Washington in Seattle, noted, “We are lucky to have someone of his ability and high integrity investigating this controversial area. Wrote Dr. Harold Lief in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases: “Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known as the Galileo of the twentieth century.”

Spontaneous past life memories in a child can be investigated using strict scientific protocols. Hypnosis, while useful in researching into past lives, is less reliable from a purely scientific perspective. He has over 3,000 cases in his files. Many people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence yet for reincarnation.

In order to collect his data, Dr. Stevenson methodically documents the child’s statements of a previous life. Then he identifies the deceased person the child remembers being, and verifies the facts of the deceased person’s life that match the child’s memory. He even matches birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records (such as autopsy photographs). His strict methods systematically rule out all possible “normal” explanations for the child’s memories.

Some of these children have recognized former homes and neighborhoods as well as still-living friends and relatives. They have recalled events in their purported previous lives, including their often violent deaths. In many cases birthmarks and other physical anomalies match up with injuries suffered in the prior life (for more read “Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect”)

The most obvious objection to reincarnation is that there is no evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and travel to another body. Another objection is that most people do not remember previous lives. Possible counter-arguments are that not all people reincarnate, or that most people do not have memorable deaths.

For the foreseeable future, there can be no absolute scientific proof of reincarnation, and none against it. It is up to the individual whether they take a personal stand or not on the issue. Next week I will respond to your questions and concerns about rebirth.

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Thought for the Week

“It is the secret of the world that all things
subsist and do not die, but only retire
a little from sight and afterwards return again.
Nothing is dead;
men feign themselves dead,
and endure mock funerals and there they stand
looking out of the window , sound and well,
in some strange new disguise.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
US Philosopher & Poet
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Once Is Not Enough

Do you believe in reincarnation and rebirth?

Reincarnation: “to be made flesh again”, is a belief that some essential part of a living being (the spirit or soul, the ‘higher’ or ‘true’ self, the ‘divine spark’, or simply ‘I’) survives death to be reborn in a new body. Accordingly, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives.

Although Eastern religions accept reincarnation as part of their doctrine, Christianity has rejected it since 553 AD. Sufi mystics and poets in the Islamic tradition celebrate reincarnation:

‘I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear?
When was I less by dying?’

Reincarnation is a subject that has captured the popular imagination and the creative world. Many feature films revolve around the theme, including The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Karan Arjun (1995) and The Mummy Returns (2001) to name but a few.

THE FEAR OF UNHAPPINESS
The Upanishads hold that we live in accordance with our deep, driving desires and it is those desires that are predominant at the time of death that determine what our next life is to be. In short, we come back to earth to achieve the satisfaction of that desire.

Buddhism expounds that desire causes suffering. If we examine our thoughts and feelings we will see that there is not one moment when we are not continually wishing for something or pushing something away.

This constant state of craving and aversion doesn’t allow us to live in the moment. We are so afraid that we will experience unhappiness by not getting what we want, that we go to great lengths trying to make sure the world provides for us what we think we need to be happy — love, security, money, sex, recognition, whatever. 

As our egos drive us continuously in the search for happiness in the outside world, we create a lot of drama and pain in this journey. A turning point can come when we no longer look to the outside world to give us happiness and turn inward on our paths to find the Universal Consciousness.

FACT FINDING
Many Lives, Many Masters is the true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr Brian Weiss, spent years in the disciplined study of human psychology.

He held steadfastly to conservatism in his profession, distrusting anything that could not be proved by traditional scientific method. But when he met his 27-year old patient, Catherine, in 1980, who came to his office seeking help for her anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias, it jolted him out of his conventional systems of thought and psychiatry.

For the first time, he came face-to-face with the concept of reincarnation and the many tenets of Hinduism, which, as he says in the last chapter of the book, “I thought only Hindus… practised.”

If you’d like to know who you were in your last life, log on to  http://www.thebigview.com/pastlife and just type in the date when you were born in your present life and share your experience with us.

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Thought for the Week

“I used to believe in reincarnation,
but that was long ago, in another life”
Dave Schinbeckler
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Conquering Fear

Readers seek advice on the different kinds of phobias that grip them

The emotional intensity of reader responses has compelled me to continue on the topic of fears this week. Some of the responses are in the domain of managing phobias, in which I do not profess to be an expert. We should not be embarrassed or ashamed about having a phobia. Around 10% of the general population have a phobia that is severe enough to require clinical help. So please consult a psychotherapist or a counselor in such cases while keeping an open mind on the responses offered.

I have always had fear and anxiety about the future. As a child I was always told: Be extra careful with whatever you have, as you do not know the future. This gave me a sense of scarcity and feeling of inadequacy. Fearing the future, I wasn’t able to enjoy the present.

After reading through books and articles, I have come to the conclusion that I was creating an inadequate world for myself by thinking negatively and running away from the very source of abundance.

My old thought process is slowly changing but I still look for reassurance that the world isn’t such a bad place after all and there is enough for everyone to happily coexist.

Preeti Shinde

I have repeatedly mentioned that awareness is the first step towards a solution. You already seem to be there. All of us have our individual fears about the future, so you are in great company. Live in the moment.

As far as reassurances are concerned, its all a matter of perspective and you can certainly work towards that. A glass tumbler with 50% water can be termed both as a half-empty glass or a half-full one. Take your pick and live in abundance with the right choice!

I am afraid of heights and arguments. I am scared of people who cannot discuss but only argue and as they get offended easily.

PK (Maheshwari)

The only types of innate fear that one is born with are : a fear of falling, a fear of loud sounds and a fear of abandonment. We continue growing with them. (About your fear of heights, there’s nothing to worry about, unless you propose to walk the tightrope between two skyscrapers!

We know this because if one makes a loud noise, a baby gets startled and cries. If he is allowed to fall through a distance, he is likely to cry even if there is no actual impact. Even before a baby can actually hone his senses to perceive the world around him, these fears are present in him instinctively.

Reconsider your stand on getting scared of arguments. So long as you are not a particpant, it shouldn’t concern you. Try detaching yourself from those moments.

I am 56, but I look ten years younger, and am married with a loving husband and two college-going kids. I used to feel young and energetic until some fears started entering my mind. Over the last few years, I have lost both my parents and an only brother.

In spite of having my own family, I fear being alone, I fear flying, I fear my health is failing. Even a slight pain, especially in the left side of my body, scares me to a near nervous breakdown. 

I am known to be a fighter (I single handedly took care of my parents and brother until their last days without any help or support except from my husband, because my brother was HIV positive). But deep within, I was frustrated, sad and reluctant since I did not know how to take care of them, especially my brother. I do not like to take anti-depressants and want to strengthen my mental power to get over my fears.

I do yoga and meditate but I meditate more on my terrible experiences and most of the times I end up crying.  I am trying to involve myself in some social activity but have this nagging fear about my fluctuating health.

Doctors say I am quite healthy except for high BP problems, and my problems are mainly caused by anxiety/fears.  I am confused and do not know how to deal with myself.  I do not like to read newspapers in the morning because they are full of negative news, like accidents, murders, or terrorist activities.

Anonymous

You, yourself need to address these fears. Your past experiences seem to have left indelible impressions on your sensitive mind. Since you do yoga and also practice meditation all you need to do is to veer yourself away from meditating on negative experiences. Try creative visualization, in which you should focus on pleasing and empowering visuals and situations.

Heal your past relationships with your parents and brother. See them as happy, contented individuals, focus on the more blissful moments spent together with them. Build up on the fact that even doctors have certified you fit, what else do you want? And reading or not reading news is a matter of personal choice. Don’t indulge in it if it disturbs you.

Our thoughts create our own heavenly havens. Get set to create yours.
Keep sharing your fears and concerns.

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Thought for the Week

“I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888)
American Novelist
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

The Fear Factor

Only if we conquer fear can we begin to live. 
And there are many ways of doing so

 

This week, we will continue to discuss the topic of fear. A fear can be healthy if it cautions a person about anything that can be dangerous. But sometimes a fear is unnecessary and triggers more caution than the situation calls for. And most people develop a hatred for that which they often fear.

While fear is an emotion indispensable for our survival, only when we are no longer afraid do we actually begin to live.

Mike Tyson (the youngest boxer ever to win and lose a world heavyweight title) explains it well : “Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.”

Perhaps the most important thing we can do to reduce fear is to make it easier for people to accept and like themselves. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

Experience has taught me that silence terrifies people the most. “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature” says Anne Frank, author of The Diary of a Young Girl - which documents her experiences during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.)

Meditation and yoga are two useful ways of putting negative thoughts and emotions to rest. I have also learned over the years that when one’s mind is prepared to face something, it diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

Do remember Bertrand Russell’s advice : “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” 

There are various ways to deal with your own fear, including :
• Becoming aware of it
• Identifying the ways you express fear
• Recognizing the situations which trigger fear and
• Using behavioral techniques to reduce fear and stress.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

If you feel that fear is getting the better of you, take a moment to pause. Close your eyes, take deep slow breaths and focus your attention on the sound of your breathing.

To prepare for the flight and fight response. your body uses large amounts of glucose in your blood.  It is a good idea to drink something sweet  to quickly replenish blood sugar levels.

Try not to let your mind get carried away with negative thoughts. Focus on the “now”. By living in the moment, you will meet the need in front of you as it arises without getting caught up in the “what-ifs” and “should-haves”.

Learn to let go. Often, after something scares us, we feel the effects long after the event has occurred. Our minds tend to hold on to negative feelings, self-criticisms and apprehension. 

Try letting it all go once the threat has passed and articulate your feelings with someone you trust or a therapist (this is also called “debriefing”).

Look back not in anger, nor forward in fear, but around you in awareness, for as Percy Bysshe Shelley puts it “Fear not for the future, weep not for the past”.  

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

Keep sharing your fears and concerns,

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Thought for the Week

“Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it...
that is the quickest and surest way
ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
Self-improvement Writer & Developer
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Scared Of Something?

Confront it - safely - and you can conquer it

Fear is “an unpleasant and often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” It is one of the basic human emotions, helping us to recognize and respond to dangerous situations and threats. It is a survival mechanism programmed into our nervous system from birth. 

The process of creating fear takes place in the brain and is entirely unconscious. When you experience fear, your breathing speeds up, your eyes widen, your heart races, your muscles tighten and your skin sweats.
All these physical responses are intended to help you survive a dangerous situation by preparing you to either run for your life or fight for your life (thus the term “fight or flight”). 

Sometimes fear is triggered by something that is startling or unexpected (like a loud noise), even if it’s not actually dangerous. That’s because the fear reaction is activated instantly — a few seconds faster than the thinking part of the brain can process or evaluate what’s happening. As soon as the brain gets enough information to realize there’s no danger (“Oh, it’s just a balloon bursting — whew!”), it turns off the fear reaction. All this can happen in seconds.

In humans, as in all animals, the purpose of fear is to promote survival. If we couldn’t be afraid, we wouldn’t survive for long. We’d be walking into oncoming traffic, stepping off rooftops and carelessly handling poisonous snakes. Experiencing fear every now and then is a normal part of life. 

Public speaking (speaking in front of others is one of the most common fears people have), going to the dentist, pain, cancer and snakes are some of the common triggers for fear. A small amount of fear before an important speech serves a purpose – it encourages you to focus on your topic and avoid making a fool of yourself. This is one of the types of fear that can be useful to sharpen our minds. 

Future-oriented fear is known as anxiety with no easily identifiable stimulus. While fear happens at the moment danger arises, anxiety is characterized by apprehension because we don’t know what’s going to happen next, and we cannot control upcoming events.

A phobia is an intense fear reaction to a particular thing or a situation. With a phobia, the fear is out of proportion to the potential danger. But to the person with the phobia, the danger feels real because the fear is so very strong.

Phobias cause people to worry about, dread, feel upset by, and avoid the things or situations they fear because the physical sensations of fear can be so intense. So having a phobia can interfere with someone’s normal activities. A person with a phobia of dogs might feel afraid to walk to school in case he or she sees a dog on the way. 

Many of us fear the same things - so do we have universal fears? This makes sense if you think about fear as an evolutionary instinct embedded in the human consciousness. 

This idea of the universal fear is supported by Fear Factor’s recent desi version “Khatron Ke Khiladi” where 13 celebrity women break away from their make-up rooms  and do some daring stunts! The emotional experiences varied between fear, disgust and horror. Consider riding a bicycle across a thin ledge across the roof tops of a 17th floor building or eating strawberries amongst a live swarm of flies, or live iguanas  licking off fruit bits from the girl’s faces.

Charles Darwin said it was a result of the instinctive tightening of muscles triggered by an evolved response to fear. To prove his point, he went to the reptile house at the London Zoological Gardens. Trying to remain perfectly calm, he stood as close to the glass as possible while a puff adder lunged toward him on the other side. Every time it happened, he grimaced and jumped back. In his diary, he writes, “My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced.” Darwin had never experienced the bite of a poisonous snake, and yet he reacted to it as if his life were in danger. 

We tend to avoid the situations or things we fear. But this doesn’t help us overcome fear — in fact, it can be the reverse. Avoiding something scary reinforces a fear and keeps it strong.

Fears and phobias limit our ability to get the most from life. In some cases they can prevent us living even a relatively normal life.

It is possible to overcome most kinds of fears, and not necessarily with ‘treatment’ but through learning how to manage our own thoughts and feelings. For example, people who fly despite a fear of flying can become used to unfamiliar sensations like takeoff or turbulence. They learn what to expect and have a chance to watch what others do to relax and enjoy the flight. Gradually (and safely) facing fear helps a person to overcome it.

Next week, we would continue exploring fears and how to surmount them.

What are some of your biggest fears? Fear of failure? Heights? Being alone?  losing someone close to you? Or simply sharks?

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Thought for the Week

“Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.”
Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Two-time Nobel Laureate in Physics & Chemistry
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

How Much Is Too Much?

Reader reactions on the subject of money and our relationship with it

We have had to surrender to the never-ending flow of our reader’s reactions on Money. I for one never ever realized the variety and diversity of feelings, opinions and beliefs about Money. Since the issues shared on money by my readers are of widespread interest, we have chosen to devote this week as well to some selected responses. 

I would like money only in moderation. I would know how to spend a windfall by starting a school and orphanage but to protect it from grabbers, thieves and relatives would be nightmarish. I am more scared of the friends and relatives that who’d start crawling out of the cracks.

PK Maheshwari

Ankur Gupta : Should we therefore say : Be rich to yourself and poor to your friends?
 
Money gives me meaning. I believe that more money makes things better and yet there will never be enough money. You list points like “There will never be enough money.” and “there will always be enough money”. How can they lead to self-destructive financial behaviours?

Manak Pincha

AG : “Money scripts” by themselves cannot be wrong or right. But a rigid belief in any of them without the flexibility in various situations could be detrimental.

Since everything in the universe is God’s creation, so is money. God is everywhere - in the temple as well in the bank. The only problem is that if one spend all the money on oneself or hoards it, it starts giving negative results. I for one, find it extremely difficult job to determine how much is enough for me and how much to spend for the needy.

Shailesh Agrawal

AG : Perhaps we could even view money as simple survival necessity like air or water. Who parcels what for whom, then becomes a pertinent thought.

In modern society, money is a powerful motivator for innovation. It is what drives the entrepreneur to take risks and without it, many of the recent advances in science and technology would not have occurred. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich (or richer).

So how much money is too much? The answer must be that no amount is enough. To draw a line at some point is to ask one to snuff out his/her passion, to stop living when he/she reaches that threshold.
The key issue is what one does with personal wealth. A lifestyle devoted solely to ever increasing personal consumption and self glorification (Laxmi Mittal comes to mind, the Ambanis might fit the category too) seems unsatisfying, even disdainful.  Why is that? Why should the onus for “greater good” be borne just by the wealthy. I believe that the answer is that it shouldn’t. All of us, regardless of income level or personal wealth, should give a portion of it to worthy causes (whether it is 1 or 5 or 25 percent is a matter of personal choice.) When enough people do it, the collective impact can exceed that of a few billionaires.

Rakesh Mital

AG : That is a wonderful articulation and expression about what money means. 

Next week, we move on to Fears. Keep sending me your suggestions, questions and responses

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Thought for the Week

“Money is better than poverty,
if only for financial reasons.”
Woody Allen (1935- )
American Humorist
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

How To Manage A Windfall

Views on money and its importance

Imagine that you just won the lottery, inherited an unexpected fortune, received a major legal settlement, or sold your business. What do you do with all that money?

You may think that your financial worries are over. The reality is, this kind of “sudden money” brings with it a host of emotional and financial challenges that most people never anticipate. 

Every day, regular people squander inheritances, salary bonuses, tax refunds, and gambling winnings. That’s because, contrary to popular belief, it’s hard to spend money well. A windfall is the unexpected receipt of an amount of money. But spending a windfall wisely is even harder.

Blowing away lakhs of rupees seems practically impossible, but these tales are not uncommon, say the experts.

“...there is a widely held belief that money solves problems. People think if they had more money, their troubles would be over. When a family receives sudden money, they frequently learn that money can cause as many problems as it solves,” says Susan Bradley, author of Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall. She concludes “For many people, sudden money can cause disaster.”

There are people who are wealthy and unhappy.  There are people who are wealthy and very happy, with extraordinarily intimate loving relationships. But money is neither good nor bad in itself; it is our own relationship to it that will determine what it turns out to be.

Money cannot give what you do not possess - meaning in life, happiness, fulfillment, peace, good intimate relationships, a sense of belonging, etc.   Money may help these things happen but money cannot make them happen.

While there is great spiritual and emotional value in doing good things for others, it does not, by itself, guarantee a safe future.  Regardless of how “good” you are, your financial life will not take care of itself without effort on your part.  

You probably know many good people who have dedicated their lives to doing the right thing for others.  But they may still find themselves struggling to make ends meet.  

At first glance it would seem that “the universe” has not magically supplied all of their needs.  

Actually, “the universe” provides us opportunities, on a daily basis to help shape our own future.  Some of these opportunities include budgeting and saving.  If we fail to take advantage of these opportunities, it may seem as if the universe has failed us.  Actually we have failed ourselves.    

Certain “Money Scripts” are at the core of all of our financial behaviors. They are the internalized and typically unconscious beliefs we have about what money is, what it is not, what it can or cannot do, the role we play in it, and the role it plays in our lives.  They are formed during childhood and reinforced throughout our lives, often appearing as self-fulfilling prophecies.  

This is also a predominant script for those who work in the helping professions.  They tend to be underemployed and/or make ill-advised financial decisions in an unconscious attempt to “get rid of what we don’t deserve”.  That is why individuals who experience “sudden money” events are often back to their original level of financial existence within several years.

Personal life coach, Dr. Ted Klontz has identified some of the most common money scripts. He cautions that if left unexamined and unchanged, these could contribute to some of the most common self-destructive and limiting financial behaviors.
• More money will make things better
• Money is bad
• I don’t deserve money
• I deserve to spend money
• There will never be enough money
• There will always be enough money
• Money is unimportant
• Money will give me meaning
• Its not nice (or necessary) to talk about money
• If you are good, the universe will supply all your needs

Which of these is yours?

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Thought for the Week

“Here’s something to think about:
How come you never see a headline like
‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?”
Jay Leno
American TV Host
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

How Much Money Is Too Much?

Readers share their views on money and its importance

Last week’s Open Mind evoked a variety of enthusiastic responses amongst our readers.

Dr. Shekhar Misra, Professor - International Marketing, University of California, USA :
This is a very good piece that puts “money” in perspective. Much too often, it is considered (almost) a “dirty word”, even though it is simply a means of exchange, as your piece elucidates. It is not something to be worshipped, but neither should it be despised. Whatever be our goals in life - enlightenment, helping others, bringing happiness to others or to self - money is a needed facilitator much of the time, but not all the time. No more, no less.

Some years from now, people will have a much more positive image of Bill Gates as they learn about the results of the work that his Foundation is doing in the eradication of diseases. It takes a very long time to impact such widespread diseases and their ravages. Gates couldn’t have undertaken such massive efforts to alleviate the lot of humanity without all the money he earned. (NOTE: I used to be a critic of Gates, and it is only in the last year or two that I have developed a more favorable impression. 

For a brief introduction to what I am referring to, look at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/globalhealth/151538_global08.html

Vinod Jain : 
Money is the barometer of success. We normally hear people say that these days money has no value.  The fact is that money has remained the same but the prices of commodities has gone up. When I shifted to Mumbai in 1981, milk was Rs 4 a litre and now it is Rs 28 a litre. But I still drink only 200 ml daily.

Money cannot be destroyed or created. It only changes hands - from one person to other, from one generation to others, from one country to other.

Harprit Kour : 
Money may not be everything in this world but it can buy you many things which can give you happiness, pleasure and satisfaction. A person is not rich by how much he earns but how much he can save. How you use money is very important. If used wisely, one can become a rich person with not just money but also good ethics and behavioral patterns as well.

Pradeep Maheshwari, Delhi
Money is only a means of exchange which gives independence. How we use it depends on how our character has been shaped by our upbringing and education.

Chandru Badrinarayanan : 
I have experienced a roller-coaster in terms of monetary comfort. You do not get more pleasure by spending more money. You should never raise your lifestyle to such an extent that you will not be able to sustain it, when disaster strikes. Always raise your lifestyle at a slower pace than your earnings.

Shailesh Agrawal, Delhi : 
It isn’t merely a matter of how much you have, but of how well you use what you have. When you have more than enough, you start thinking about having more money. Ultimately, one is as wealthy or poor as he thinks himself to be.

Ramesh Rawal, Delhi : 
Earning money through legal and desirable ways is as important as spending it for the benefit of society. One should also have a non-monetary goal - feel happy for others.

Vinod Dhall, Dar-es-Salaam : 
Money is the foundation on which a human being can build a happy and useful life for himself, his family, biradari, and society (the order is deliberate). The Bhagwad Gita says that “Nirdhanta sab say barra paap hai”. (Impoverishment is the biggest sin).

Vicktor : 
All notions and quotes on money are rubbish. Forget about “smelling the roses”. After college, the only aim in life should be to earn more and more money. Everything else follows. While there should be a balance, you should first have the money, and forget all gyaan. The moment you smell one rose, there are plenty others in waiting. The rose named ‘complacency’ tends to sink into your blood and all your motivation to work hard is gone. The pleasure of the green buck is more than a ten thousand roses put together. You can see your child go to an international school. You can help the needy. You can forgive and let go. So one must work hard and get the money home. Nothing else matters. That is what you are here for. Not to start another religion.

So there you are. Money means different to each one of us. Take your pick.

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Thought for the Week

“Money frees you from doing things you dislike.
Since I dislike doing nearly everything,
money is handy.”
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
American Comedian
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Master or Servant?

Money matters even when your goals are non-monetary ones

GOT ANY CHANGE
Through history money has been any object/s - coins, shells, beads, cacao beans, pieces of gold, silver and paper - that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, being a unit of account, and a store of value. The term originates from the temple of Juno Moneta located on Capitoline, one of Rome’s seven hills, where the mint of Ancient Rome was located.

George Bernard Shaw said that “Lack of money is root of all the evils” , while another philosopher said that  “Money is a barrier against all possible evils”  and the New Testament expounded : “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” 

So whom do you believe?

That’s an individual choice. But a general truth would be that money is one of the key factors that create distinctions betwen human beings. All men are born equal, but the assessment of big or small, successful or unsuccessful is all too often made on the basis of who’s rich and who’s poor.

In today’s society, if you don’t have money, you have bigger problems. For money is not everything, but it certainly makes life easier.

But as the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (399-295 BC) has said, “To have enough is good luck, to have more than enough is harmful. This is true of all things, especially of money.” 

But how fair is it to pin the blame all or even any evil, on a medium of exchange? Blaming money for evil is like blaming the scoreboard for the cricket game. 

The desire for money is good when people play by the rules, and when their desire for money and status results in better ways of doing business and in inventions that help people and that make the world a better place. The negative side emerges when the desire for money is strong enough to make people do wrong things in order to obtain it.

For instance, money can help facilitate the development of genius and extraordinary achievements. It gives us the leisure to devote a part of our time to culture and art. It can help ease some of the anxieties that assail us.

Money can help us attain many of our goals.

But you might say, “What if I only have non-monetary goals?”  Let’s say you have fitness goals, study goals, or maybe a goal to improve your relationship. How does money figure here?

Fitness : You want to run/cycle every day? Shoes cost money, a bicycle costs money.
Education : Want to register for a course? You need to pay fees, buy books.
Your relationship : Everything from gifts to movies to your privacy costs money.

So money is a tool. How can we get this tool, to enable us to progress with our goal setting. You can either reduce expenses, or increase income. The former is not the easiest (but not impossible).

So let’s get realistic about money.

But let’s not make the mistake of seeing money itself as the goal. When we do so, we can lose sight of many of life’s joys -  we should always have time to stop and smell the roses.

As Francis Bacon put it pithily, “Money is a good servant but a bad master.” 

So money is a tool that’s used in your goal setting endeavors - nothing more, nothing less. Each of us have our individual way of prioritising money in our lives. Send me your thoughts on this subject with the subject line ‘Money’. We will discuss them next week.

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Thought for the Week

“No one on this deathbed wishes
he had spent more time making money!”
Dr Joseph Murphy (1898-1981)
Author
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Ready To Leave Your Body Behind? - 2

Astral travel is an interesting experiment that revs up the right hemisphere of the brain
but do not attempt it unless you are absolutely relaxed

Astral travel has evoked an extremely “queasy” response. It has touched the twilight zone in most readers... the temptation to try but some inexplicable uneasiness has also exerted itself. Most of the responses reflected this and hence I am responding to some of the more common ones.

Astral travel is a very interesting experiment, but the real fear I feel, which has already been mentioned, is that, if I succeed in the experiment, and I manage to lift my astral body, can some other soul occupy my physical body, which is lying unattended? That thought is scary. You have told the way to go out but what’s the way  to come back to the physical body?Is there any possiblity that I may not be able to re-enter? Does it cause any harm to the physical body? As when you take your car to the garage, it never comes back to the real showroom condition. Is it fine to disturb the God made system?

All these years, I have not had any problems and that is the best I can share at this stage. Your analogy of taking the car to the garage is not tenable, since you are not taking your body anywhere. I can expound on my own experiences. The astral body is often reported as being joined to the physical body by a silver cord - an etheric umbilical cord. Some people believe that if the cord breaks while in astral travel you will not be able to return to the physical body.

Remove any such fears before you attempt this because it is our own thoughts which create problems for us and ultimately create our reality. If you get fearful, please stop as you are not ready for astral projection. Anything done in metaphysics should feel comfortable and easy.  If it is stressful, let it go for now, as you are not ready. Your own thought is your “genie”, so if you are afraid, you create a nightmare immediately.

Many ask how long one should practice to get the experience and once experienced, how long one should continue in that state?
There are no shoulds in this experience! During astral travel, time and space simply do not exist. The out-of-body-experience (OBE) is not generally long; on the order of a minute or so. Time is distorted and extended, i.e., an hour in the astral can be like a few minutes in the physical dimension. Those who experience OBE may note that the subjective experience is much longer than the objective time passing.  Why bother about compiling statistics - instead just go ahead and relish the wonderful experience which may open up a whole new world for you!

Earthly benefits?
Astral projection is a great way to rev-up the right hemisphere of your brain. It is a virtual manifestation of creative visualization with all your senses aligned together. The subconscious mind has far greater powers of visualisation than the conscious mind. It is like comparing a super computer to an child’s calculator.

How do I remember what happened during my astral trip?
You are aware of things you encounter along the way while out of your body. It is essential to write them down immediately. After your astral travel, everything seems so obvious that it seems that you can remember it forever. Furthermore you feel very comfortable and ready to fall asleep. If you write enough details, you can consciously reconstruct the information later, when you need it.

What is the scientific basis of OBE?
OBEs cannot be disproved, these have not yet been studied to the satisfaction of the scientific community. Some neurologists believe that at least some OBEs are caused by an unusual but natural brain state in which one’s body perception and sense of reality are altered. These experiments involve electrical stimulus of a particular part of the brain, the right angular gyrus located in the parietal lobe, which produce subjective experiences having all of the hallmarks of an OBE, including the sense of enhanced reality and extreme disembodiment.

What precautions should I take before venturing out for an astral journey?
Be calm and  relaxed when you do astral travel. You should not be full in the stomach or hungry. Make sure the room temperature is comfortable. Stay balanced and do not get too excited or fired up.

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Thought for the Week

“Be brave. Take risks.
Nothing can substitute experience.”
Paulo Coelho
(Mystical Brazilian Novelist)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Ready To Leave Your Body Behind?

Astral travel is an out-of-body experience

Let’s look at a kind of out-of-body experience (OBE). It’s also called ‘astral travel’, referring to an ‘astral body’ that is separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it. When the physical mind is asleep, the subconscious takes over, and this is when you do your astral projection.

If you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a jolt, this is your astral body returning to the physical. The initial experience of being without a body can be frightening. It is natural to assume that you are dead and for panic to set in. But once your initial fears are overcome, astral travel will become perfectly natural.

Remember: When your physical body sleeps and the astral body leaves, the physical body just rests. So no harm can come to you through astral travel if you do it consciously. Warning : It can be dangerous if practised when you are on drugs or alcohol.

The best way to practise astral travel is to be physically awake. You must learn how to use your mind to project your astral body. When you’re out of the body, you are not bound by time or distance. But you have to learn to control yourself, so you’ll go where you wanted to go.  Since you’re controlling yourself with your thoughts, think of any place and you’ll be there.

To start with, lie down on a comfortable, flat surface or hard mattress. You need to be quite alone, without any distractions so make sure no one can intrude. Also, that every part of you is comfortable — without anything sticking into your body. Don’t cross your legs or your limbs may develop numbness after some time.

Close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply and focus or concentrate on a point about five to six feet in front of you. Imagine a light shape roughly resembling your physical body rising up from within you. WILL yourself to think that YOU — the astral you — are watching your body some six feet away.

You may get the feeling that you’re in a huge big balloon, pushing and pushing but nothing seems to be happening. Yet suddenly, you will burst through.

With practice you will experience a slight, almost electric shock and be able to see your body lying with eyes closed some six feet away. Don’t panic or get alarmed. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. And fear will make you bounce back into your physical body.

Don’t bother to look at your physical body too long. Let yourself float about the room. Leave your room, move around the house and gradually move out into the street.

You may not achieve astral travel at the first or even subsequent attempts. But it will happen. Think positive and be confident you can do this, because as soon as doubt clouds your mind, you won’t be able to do it.

And don’t be disappointed if you cannot achieve astral travel every day. The success rate could be only 10%, even if you practise it every day.  Every session has its benefits though, since it would be an immensely relaxing session in itself.

Share your experiences with me by emailing graymatter@hindustantimes.com with the subject line, ‘Astral Travel’

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Thought for the Week

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — 
I took the one less traveled by, 
and that has made all the difference”
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
American Poet
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It

Yes, but how do you turn dreams into reality?

It was a delight to go through the dreams you shared with us. I will not be able to respond individually to all of you, but I can say this : the very process of conscious day dreaming would have set the ball rolling in your life -  if you can dream it, you can do it.

The key is to connect your dreams to specific goals. The law of attraction, popularized by Rhonda Byrne’s book “The Secret”, works only when all your senses are aligned to your dream.

For instance, some said their dream was to have “lots of money”. But lots of money could mean a lakh for one individual and a crore for the other! Could I issue you a cheque for “lots of money”? That’s how vague this dream is.

Get more specific. Exactly how much money do you want to make? How do you plan to do so? And what will you do with it?

It also helps to understand your daydreams. Think about this:

1.     When you fantasize about a dream-home, do you actually see it in your mind? Smell the fragrance of your garden, feel the texture of your walls? Was the image clear and sharp?

2.     Are your dreams personal or impersonal? In dreaming about establishing a school, are you driving the project, a participant or a mere spectator?

3.     Is your dream relevant to your real life? If you daydream about swimming in a pool of champagne, you are probably just seeking an escape from today’s problems. But, if you rehearse an important presentation,  you are dealing with a relevant aspect of your life.

4.     Do your dreams represent suppressed desires? If you have been doing poorly in school but telling yourself it doesn’t matter, while your daydreams show you overcoming incredible obstacles, you may have misjudged your deepest wishes. Or if your daydreams consist of passionate love affairs while in everyday life you have focused on career success, you may be suppressing a deep need for affection.

Gathering self-knowledge is the first move towards fulfilling your potential.

It won’t always be easy, but bear in mind what George Elliot said, “It is never too late to become what you might have been.”

THE POWER OF POSITIVE
The importance of thinking and dreaming positively cannot be stressed enough. If you worry a a lot, keep this in mind - worrying is actually a form of daydreaming, but with a pessimistic result. If it recurs, it could actually lead to the imagined result.

The opposite is true as well. If you repeatedly visualise success, you are more likely to achieve it.
It is so easy and simple to daydream and then say, “Well it is just a daydream. It will never come true”. It is so easy to give up due to lack of faith.

Don’t. 
Remember, quitters don’t win and winners don’t quit.

In short, to achieve your dreams and goals:
1. Have a specific goal.
2. Be sure you really want to achieve your goal.
3. Have a clear mental image of your goal.
4. Nurture a strong desire for it.
5. Disregard and reject doubts and thoughts about failure.
6. Keep the faith and persevere.

When you visualize your goals or write them down, the energy you channel toward visualizing and affirming your goal helps develop your inner strength, concentration, willpower and self-discipline. You actively develop your inner powers.

And lastly, one of the advantages of visualisation and affirmation is that you can use them wherever you are, at any time. All you need is your mind.

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Thought for the Week

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. 
Keep this constantly in mind. 
Weak desires bring weak results, 
just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970)
Pioneer of Personal-Success literature
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Can Your Dreams Shape Your Future?

Yes, they could. 
Especially if you consciously daydream

Dreams are the images, thoughts and feelings experienced while we sleep.

While psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung saw dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious, noted psychic Edgar Cayce believed that we dream in advance of anything of importance that will happen to us. He saw dreams as tools for transformation.

Dream researchers say dreams can offer inspiration, contribute to our creativity, offer direction at crossroads in our lives and even afford us glimpses of the divine.

Unfortunately, a daydream - which is a fantasy, usually of pleasant thoughts and hopes, experienced while awake - is looked upon negatively because it represents ‘non-doing’ in a society that emphasizes productivity. We are under constant pressure to do, achieve, produce, succeed. But daydreaming can be beneficial in many ways and, ironically, can actually boost productivity. Plus, it’s something almost everyone does naturally.

From the first time we play make-believe, we begin dreaming about our futures. Ask preschoolers what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll hear answers ranging from policemen to firefighters to astronauts – and every one of those dreams is achievable!

We all have a wish, a star, or an idea that we hope for in the future. To dream is to live a vision, to embrace magic, to see the future and its possibilities.

There are numerous examples of composers, novelists, and filmmakers, developing new ideas through daydreaming. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians, and physicists have also developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas.

Your personal dreamlist sows the seeds for your future. Everything we want begins with us thinking of it first. When we dare to dream, we dare to find ourself.

Dreaming is a path and if you follow it with perseverance you will be greatly rewarded. Keeping a written dream journal is a must. What are your dreams? What would you like to achieve? How would you like to love? What would you like to learn?

As soon as we connect our dreams to specific goals, we have greater focus, a better job, more money, a new car, quality family time, a new outlook on life, or anything else we can imagine. We build an energy bridge between our desired goal and ourself.

Olympic athletes and performers use this kind of visualization, which has been shown to help their performance in the way that actual physical practice does.

Practice conscious daydreaming. Let your mind wander, and instead of thinking about things you have to do, simply imagine things, places, people. You will in a much better mood with a clearer mind.

When you consciously dream about scenarios in which you’re trying to convince someone of something you believe in strongly, you are also in a sense getting to know yourself and what you stand for better.   At their best, daydreams allow you a range of possibilities which, in the hard cold light of reality, aren’t possible. The beauty of dreams is that nothing is impossible.

I invite you to consciously daydream (without any limitations) and share your top five dreams through this column. I promise that no names will be divulged if we analyse these dreams.

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Thought for the Week

“The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams.”

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
First Lady of USA (1933 to 1945)

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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Right V/s Popular

Making the right decision is not always the most popular option

Last week’s “Quick, decide!” was an eye-opener in more than one ways. The flood of so many interesting well-thought-out responses was overwhelming; so much so, that we had to refer them to a clinical psychologists to get a macro-view of them respondents. 

(See “Accept the guilt’ below)

Most people chose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child.  I thought the same way initially, because to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was a rational decision most people would make, morally & emotionally.

But, have you ever considered that the child on the disused track had, in fact, made the right decision to play at a safe place? Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.

This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority has often been sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how far sighted and knowledgeable the minority.

The great critic Leo Velski Julian, who originally posed this question, said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the children on the operational track should have known very well that the track was still in use, and should have run away if they heard the train’s sirens. (An ideal alternative suggested was to grab the attention of these playing children while manning the track-changer)

Julian  pointed out that the other track was not in use probably because it was unsafe. If the train was diverted to this track, it could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake. And the attempt to save a few children by sacrificing one child, could end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

Next week we move further into the realm of decision-making.

The two ethical dilemmas posed in Open Mind last week...

DILEMMA 1
A group of children is playing near two railway tracks, one still in use, the other disused. Only one child is playing on the disused track, the rest on the used one.

Suddenly you see a train coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids. However, that would mean the one child playing by the disused track may die. Are you ready for that... or would you rather let the train go its way?

DILEMMA 2
This one was posed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) a well-known theorist in the field of moral development.

Scenario 1
A woman is suffering from a unique kind of cancer. There is a drug that might save her but it costs $4,000 per dose. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, goes to everyone he knows to borrow the money and tries every legal means to do so, but he can collect about $2,000. He asks the scientist who discovered the drug for a discount or let him pay later. But the scientist refuses.

Dilemma: Should Heinz break into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

Scenario 2
Heinz breaks into the laboratory and steals the drug. The next day, the newspapers report the break-in and theft. Brown, a police officer and a friend of Heinz remembers seeing Heinz the earlier evening near the laboratory and later that night, running away from the laboratory.
Dilemma: Should Brown report what he saw? Why or why not?

Scenario 3
Officer Brown reports what he saw. Heinz is arrested and brought to court. If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail. Heinz is found guilty.

Dilemma:  Should the judge sentence Heinz to prison? Why or why not?
What kind decisions would you take in Dilemmas 1 and 2?

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Thought for the Week

“There is no dilemma compared with that of the deep-sea diver 
who hears the message from the ship above,
“Come up at once. We are sinking.”
Robert Cooper
(British Diplomat)
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Accept the guilt

(GUEST ARTICLE)

Clinical psychologist Sadia Raval 
analyses readers’ responses to the two dilemmas posed in last week’s Open Mind

A favourite line that I often say to my patients is, “A decision can never be wrong”. Any decision made by an individual in a given situation is a product of their intelligence, personality, past experience with a similar situation, their moral environment, socio-cultural influences and various other factors, at that point. Within their capacities then, they make the best decision available to him. It is only in hindsight that decisions appear wrong and inadequate, when initially unrevealed factors or undesired consequences come to the fore.

So none of your responses can be called ‘wrong’.

Hence, the attempt here is not to analyse the personalities of those who responded but to analyse the responses themselves and the important and broader factors leading to them.

One of the main factors, when making decisions, is identification. Broadly speaking, identification can be explained as ‘that aspect of the decision-making situation that an individual feels mostly deeply connected or concerned with’. This aspect, with which the individual identifies, will then shape his or her decision.

For instance, in Dilemma 1, responses like: ‘It is worse to have many children killed than to have one killed’, ‘the needs of many outweigh the needs of few’ clearly indicate that the aspect that concerns the person most is the loss of a larger number of children and more families suffering.

Responses like: ‘I would not like to punish the single kid for doing the right thing by playing on the unused track,’ involve identification with the single child who did no wrong. The situation is seen from his perspective.

Dilemma 2 saw three basic kinds of responses. In the first, the identification was with Heinz throughout the three scenarios. The story was seen from Heinz perspective and with feeling and concern for him. The responses were: he should steal; the police officer should not report the crime and the judge should not pass a strict sentence.

In the second kind, the identification was with the law — that it could not be manipulated for individual needs. Obviously the decisions were: Heinz shouldn’t steal, the officer should report him and the judge should pass the required sentence.

The third set was perhaps the most interesting; in each scenario they identified with the person then in control. In Scenario 1, the situation was viewed from Heinz’s perspective, in the second from the officer’s and the third, from the judge’s. So the most common response was: Heinz should steal since he had little option left; the officer should report him as he was duty bound to; and the judge should forgive Heinz or give him a minimum sentence on humanitarian grounds.

One important factor is the ‘locus of control’, which can be understood in terms of a continuum. At one end is an internal locus of control, where individuals believe they have the control to effect a change and are driven to action. At the other end is an external locus of control, where they believe they have little control over a situation and are, as a result, driven to less action. Most people do not have a completely external or internal locus of control but may tend towards one side or another.

In Dilemma 1, those choosing the option of changing of track are, generally speaking, displaying an internal locus of control — they believe their actions will make a difference and are disposed to act.
Those unwilling to change the track may be disposed to taking control in other situations but in this particular one, are functioning from an external locus of control. They would like to let fate take its course, or hope that the children on the used track will run off and be saved anyway.

So too, in Dilemma 2 those who believe Heinz should wait for destiny to unfold or supernatural powers to heal are functioning from an external locus of control. Here, other factors in the environment are seen as more capable of controlling the situation than oneself.

Upbringing and culture-specific factors play a role here and a strong belief in fate, destiny, or a supernatural power can clearly affect an individual’s locus of control.

Guilt, another important factor, is associated with the undesirable consequences of a decision; it is that uneasy feeling that makes one feel responsible for what has gone wrong and leads to regret — which as Kahlil Gibran says, is “the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement”. Guilt is not an easy feeling to wriggle out of and what we often do to alleviate it is rationalise our decisions so strongly that there isn’t space for guilt to creep in.

For instance, in Dilemma 1 those who felt the single child on the unused track should not be punished alleviated the guilt of being responsible for the deaths of many children by putting the situation into a right vs wrong moral frame and supporting the right. In Dilemma 2 those who felt Heinz should steal, came up with reasons like, ‘He had no other option’ or that saving a life was superior to the law. This kind of rationalisation is often overused to justify a decision one has made and important aspects of the actual picture are overlooked, because they do not fit into this guilt-free decision.

A take-home here is that when taking decisions, if you deliberately attempt to identify with other aspects of the situation that concern you less, a clearer picture will emerge.

Ultimately, it is more important to make informed, clearer decisions, accepting the guilt that they bring along as inevitable, rather than making less informed, guilt-free ones.

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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times