Small Acts, Great Journey: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Life

 When you come across a small insect drowning in a little puddle of water, or in a bucket or some vessel, either offer it your finger or the tip of a small twig, take it out and put it there on some leaf, among the branches of a tree, or on the petal of a flower.

If you find an injured butterfly, that winged beauty struggling on the ground with its wing damaged, pick it up with care and put it there among flowers, plants or bushes nearby, so that it can complete its journey in a dignified way.

If you see marks of injury on the trunk of a tree, caused by us humans, by our chainsaws or our axes, put your palm on the wounded bark.

If you see an old beggar helplessly standing there in the crowd, so lonely and left out from all the progress and development that is taking place, cast away by destiny, go and offer him a chai or ten rupees. But do that with a smile, because that is what he needs more than your ten rupees—your smile and your acknowledgement of his presence, that you consider him to be a human being.

Go and enjoy the little, small foothills in your neighborhood, and climb those gentle slopes with the pride of an expert mountaineer. Why should you wait for the time when you will be climbing Mount Everest? This is your Mount Everest—your little neighborhood hill. Enjoy the slope. Enjoy your walk.

There is a temple, shrine, mosque, church or gurudwara in your neighborhood or locality. Go there with full faith. Enter as if you are entering the portals of divinity. That depends on how much faith you carry, not on the name of the place.

So why wait for visiting Kailash Mansarovar, Mecca-Medina, the Buddhist places of enlightenment, or other lofty places related to the great saintly figures of different religions? Go there and enjoy your being in your neighborhood place that has been set up in the name of God. It is as good as being there at the topmost place of your own system of faith or religion.

Enjoy your walk in the small scrub forest still left out by encroaching humans and urbanization, that small strip of green, even if it is famished and not luxuriant. Go there and enjoy your walk. Why wait to enjoy a walk in pristine forests like the Amazon? This is as good as being there in the lap of Mother Nature.

When you lose sight of the purpose in life, when you feel unprotected and lonely, just look into the vast sky. Look into its maternal depth. It is your home, your protecting roof. All you have to do is look into its depth.

During the day, it is pristine blue. During the night, there are the stars twinkling mischievously, giving you hope.

The moment you learn to enjoy these small, small things, and become sensitive to little, little things—an injury to an insect, a wounded butterfly, or the injured bark of a tree—you become a healer.

Mother Nature, Mother Existence, is there acknowledging and watching you closely, seeing how you are sensitive enough to put your healing hand at a point where something has gone wrong. You are trying to mend the entanglement at a particular point.

You are a creator.

You become a healer.

You work like a little saint.

It is not necessary to go into hard tapasya and become an enlightened saint. Take care of these small things, and you are a saint.

You are a pilgrim. If you go to the small religious places in your neighborhood with full faith, you are as good as a tired pilgrim walking long distances to reach the lofty places of his faith.

You are a great, knowledgeable and wise environmentalist, fully aware of the role of Mother Nature. If you are walking with full presence even in a little scrub forest in your neighborhood, acknowledging the role played by those still-left-out trees, plants and grasses in your life, functioning as your lungs by giving you oxygen, then you are a great scientist and environmentalist just by doing that.

You are the richest person on Earth the moment you acknowledge the misery of a poor old man who is begging, standing left out in a corner of a crowded bazaar while people are having a heyday in all the growth and development around him. The moment you hand out ten rupees with a smile, you are the richest person on Earth.

The moment you put a caring hand on stray cattle carrying an injury, you are the kindest soul on Earth at that moment.

So, on a daily basis, you have countless opportunities to be a healer, to be a saint, to be a mountaineer, to be a pilgrim, to be the richest person, to be the wisest person—just through the small things that come your way.

And life becomes very fulfilling wherever you are situated, whatever your locality, whatever your profession, or whatever type of personal life you are living.

Mother Nature always has so many points where you can plug in with your role, with your awareness as a mender of things, as a healer, as an enlightened person.

Enlightenment is no mystical concept. It is just being aware of the missing parts at small, small points, in terms of sentient life as well as insentient life.

So just be aware and walk, and continue doing what you are doing, because these little things never stop you from taking care of your responsibilities and fulfilling your commitments, the personal and professional roles that you are playing. That will just go on as usual.

But you will be entering that stage where you are required to play your role as a more substantial person—a person full of wisdom, awareness, knowledge and understanding. You will be a better soldier to cope with the challenges.

It gives such a holistic and fulfilling aspect and perspective to your life.

Then you are just there as an open entity, responding to some positive change in the cosmos, in this beautiful play of energies. If you remember that you are here to bring about some positive change in this beautiful game or play of manifestation, the cosmos is acknowledging you, watching you. It is storing each and every point of your progress on the path of these realizations as you evolve through your journey.

And it responds.

You are sowing the seeds of the same positives to come into your life through other situations, through other persons who are on the same frequency. You will come across systems, institutions and people who will be providing a positive push in your own journey.

So when you take care of these small things, it is just as simple as sowing the seeds of your own greatness in multifarious ways.

You are just walking consciously and dropping small seeds. These will germinate, and at the end of it, you will have your own rich harvest, which you have been sowing without putting in any particular effort, without taking time out of your busy schedule, without sidelining your main priorities.

Here you will have a rich harvest—a small forest, a little garden of your own deeds. Small, small deeds which you have been doing without even taking extra time out especially for them.

So that is the win-win situation for you.

And if you bring that type of depth and substance to your presence, it will just dispel the dust of ego covering your real soul. Once the dust is gone, your inherent self, the real self, will shine more brightly.

And it will be for people to feel it.

They will feel it naturally.

They will feel your presence.

They will feel the beauty and fragrance of your presence.

You will be inspiring. You will become a beautiful medium of evolving energies in this beautiful, pleasant, ecstatic cascade of energy trying to manifest itself in newer and newer ways. You will become a platform for something more in the direction in which this evolution is taking us collectively.

And then you will have a beautiful meaning of life.

The more your inner self shines brightly for others, the more it will spontaneously start bringing about positive changes in many people's lives, in situations and in surroundings.

You will have a very efficient role to play, whether you want it or not. It will happen on its own.

And once that starts happening, you will have a very satisfying, specific meaning of life. Life will become joyful because the moment there is an inner assurance—now I am playing a role; now it is worth it; now I am at least giving back to Mother Existence in return for what I have been taking—the moment you feel it and realize it, it gives you spontaneous, unconditional, automatic joy.

And that is as good as being enlightened.

And then, at the end of the journey, when you call off this journey in this lifetime, you will drop this body without too many grudges, because then there will be this ultimate realization:

It has really been worth it.

I used my full potential.

Mother Existence had given me potential, and I tried my level best to manifest it, to actualize it to the maximum limit.

Please continue your journey with awareness, with sensitivity, with a feeling for the small, small things around you.

And through these small steps, you are taking big strides towards greatness.

Great be your journey.

Blessings.

Flowers: Little Lessons in Love, Healing and Kindness

 Flowers are one of the most beautiful expressions of Mother Earth, representing love, joy and happiness. No wonder beautiful flowers bring smiles to almost everybody, ranging from little kids to the oldest people, from a beggar to a king, across all classes and categories.

Now, a flower is an expression of a plant or a tree to propagate its species, to increase the members of its species. And it is done through such a beautiful, petalled, fragrant medium that it invites honeybees, insects and butterflies, who get nectar in return for the pollination work that they do. It is a wonderful give-and-take phenomenon. And humans of all types also have their takeaways, ranging from perfumes to poetry and building aesthetics.

Now, as I see it, a flower is a beautiful compilation of energy in beauty and fragrance. In my opinion, it carries a very positive, pure, holy and pious form of energy. That is why we offer flowers to gods and deities in temples, churches, mosques and gurudwaras. Go anywhere in the world and take the example of any type of faith, religion, belief system or sect, and you will find that flowers occupy a foremost position as far as offerings to the higher forces are concerned.

It means there is an absolutely loving-kindness type of symbolism that a flower carries.

Just like mud has a stench, which means there is something chaotic, something disorderly about it which repels us. It symbolizes some chaos. It symbolizes some mismanagement. It symbolizes some trouble. It symbolizes some lack of something. And on the opposite end, we have beautiful, fragrant flowers with their beautiful colours, patterns, lovely smiles and smells. They convey something very, very positive, something beautifully ordered, something lovingly managed, something denoting love, something which symbolizes the procreation spirit of Mother Nature—of evolving into more beautiful patterns of life, sustenance and soul.

That is why they say that where you have flowers, fairies come to rest and dance upon them at night. It is a beautiful story. It is a kind of myth, but if we analyze it deeply, we will find that there is substance behind this myth. Because when you have such positive little petalled abodes of positivity, love, beautiful smell and smiles, obviously the equivalent energies will find a kind of restful space there.

So flowers must be attracting something very positive and healing for us humans. That is why we have flower gardens and potted plants, and it gives so much aesthetic strength to us just to have flowers around us.

I have done my own experiment in this regard.

One day, I was not feeling well at all—slight fever and fatigue—and I was thinking of taking some general over-the-counter medication like aspirin. But then I thought of doing an experiment.

I have this beautiful plant of champa in my garden, and I found a champa flower on the ground. It had come down on its own. I did not break it. That means the plant had happily allowed it to come down, beautifully landing on the ground.

I picked it up.

Now, the champa flower is a beautiful white flower having five petals, and in the centre you have yellow colour at the lower end of the petals. This yellow generally dissolves into the white on the surface. The petals are on the sturdier side, and that makes it a bit of a durable flower. You can keep it in your room for two or three days, and it will continue to give you its smile and smell.

The champa flower has a very delicate fragrance. It doesn't throw big packets of lovely smell at you from a distance. For that, you have to approach it. You have to pick it up and take it to your nostrils, and then, as you inhale gently, there is this beautiful wafting fragrance. It is very gentle. It doesn't strike too much, but it is a very deep kind of smell.

So I picked up this champa flower—a fresh, beautiful blossom—and started walking in the garden from one end to the other while taking deep inhalations. I would inhale deeply, keeping the flower just against my nose, and I kept doing it for a few minutes.

So much gentility, so much fragrance, so much positive energy—I was surprised that within five minutes I felt absolutely normal. The next day, I woke up quite fresh without taking any medication.

Flowers have so much beautiful energy, carried on a very high frequency—a frequency of love and healing—that if you plug into that source of energy, it is almost a natural law that you will have positive results. It will uplift your mood. It will elevate your spirits. It may even do away with symptoms of fatigue and mild fever, like I felt.

So, as far as I am concerned, I take flowers to be something very sacrosanct in nature. They symbolize something which is purer than our existence. They are an expression of something bigger than what we perceive here on Earth in our game of survival, competing against fellow human beings.

So whenever I see flowers, I always try my best not to step over a flower. That comes very naturally to me. When I pass under a tree or a plant, I ensure that I don't step over a flower. Wherever there are flowers lying on the ground in my little garden, I try to pick them up and put them in the flower bed, as if that is a secluded place for their rest, for completing their journey.

It also enhances and strengthens my aesthetic sense. It boosts my sensitivity to the small, small things of life.

Now just imagine: if somebody has become conscious and aware enough that he will avoid trampling, walking over or stepping upon a flower, he will gradually be conditioned in a certain way. His heart will be reshaped and opened. His emotions will be rechannelized in a similarly positive direction, so that he will think twice before hurting somebody. He will become caring. He will become considerate. He will become kind.

So it is a very small experiment which we can do on a daily basis—a kind of exercise to strengthen the small elements of kindness, love, gentility, art and poetry in our heart.

It is just like going to the gym and doing exercises to strengthen our muscles and body. This is an exercise for the soul—for making one's heart more sensitive, more open to the plight of others.

Because if you are caring for flowers, of course you will gravitate along the same path and become caring, sensitive and kind enough towards fellow human beings as well.

That's how I do it.

We can also extend the same thing to little insects and other crawlers, other small, crawling expressions of Mother Nature in the form of little creatures. Suppose I am just walking in a garden. I try to avoid stepping upon little insects because if you become aware of not harming other forms of life on Mother Earth, possibly you are getting attuned to an attitude of not harming others on the broader platform as well, including human society.

So these little, little things—not trampling over flowers, not stepping upon little insects—are small exercises, tiny experiments in kindness, consideration and awareness.

And gradually, they can give us a very nice, humane personality—one that is loving, kind and caring.

The lightness of being in a challenging world

 Hey, are you feeling the heat of situations and challenges? Just wait. Just look around and try to find out who isn’t.

That’s how life is. That is the nature of life on Earth. It cannot be otherwise.

There will be challenges.

It is just as you cannot move on the ground without friction. Even contradictory forces, like centripetal and centrifugal forces, opposing each other, maintain the orbits of planetary bodies. There is the law of gravitation, and if you look deeply into things, you will find that inherently there is some tussle going on at each stage of life. There is no smooth sailing as such.

Basically, it is about putting up an effort at each stage.

It is not just about the survival of the fittest. That would be generalizing it too much. But overall, it is about facing one challenge after another, and there is hardly any smooth sailing. If at all there is any, those are just a few resting periods.

So I would say the journey on the road is full of challenges, and we have to just keep going.

This mere acceptance is going to put a lot many things in order. The more we are aware of this fact throughout the day, all the time, the less heartburn we will have on account of our own hard situations. Because all of us are sailing in the same boat. All of us are putting up an effort. All of us are trying to save ourselves from the disorder and chaos that seem so imminent.

The only difference is that our challenges are of different natures. That’s it.

Somebody is struggling in one domain of life; someone else is struggling somewhere else. But struggle it is. That is the nature of life.

There will be hardships. There will be ailments. There will be competition. There will be heartbreaks. There will be scores of things that give us pain and bring tears to our eyes.

But if that is the nature of life on Earth, do we have any other option?

We have become used to crossing the hurdles, so that comes almost naturally to most of us. And it will become still smoother and easier if we just always remember that it is simply the way things are here on Earth—the way they were for people in the past, in earlier generations, and the way they will be for the people who will come on Earth after us.

Simply, in this particular little unit, in this particular little celestial unit defined by the environment where this type of life has come to thrive, where energy has manifested in the ways we see it, this is as per the fundamental laws of manifestation, given all the natural factors that have given birth to life on Earth.

So we have to accept challenge as one more natural factor. It is almost inevitable. It is almost impossible to spend an unchallenged life on Earth. That seems impossible.

If we accept this fact, life becomes smoother.

If we accept that there will be challenges, that there will be testing phases, and if we accept this as simply as we accept the laws of nature—as simply as we accept that there is a new dawn after the night and a night following the day—life will become smoother. Hardships and challenges will lose the scary shape they have for most of us.

Because once we accept something as a law of nature, it loses its capacity to demotivate us, to hijack our morale and stall our progress.

So just keep going.

And remember: just look around in the crowd and see. Believe me, there will be scores of people around you who are going through a much, much harder phase than the one you have been facing in your life.

The moment you open yourself to the possibility of others also facing challenges and hardships, acceptance comes very naturally. In fact, if you do a deeper search, you may find that you are lucky in comparison to many other people. Inevitably, you will find that there are so many who have suffered far more than you, without any apparent cause.

To be alive here means to deny the forces of entropy, to deny disorder and chaos, to maintain your identity, to maintain your shape and structure, to maintain your hope, and to continue with your set parameters of life defined by your family, career, ambitions, dreams and skills.

That is what I consider to be among the basic tools of leading at least a purposeful life.

And the day we realize this, the day we feel that challenges and hardships are routine things, we will develop the capacity to enjoy life in those little interludes when we aren’t facing too much testing.

They will become sabbaticals, in fact.

Almost holidays.

And we should not wait for big events to celebrate.

In fact, that would be a folly—to postpone joy, happiness and celebration for occasions when we presume that, after much hard work, we will finally reach there.

Because success, as we have defined it here on Earth, will have very few people reaching the top. If there is one winner, that comes at the cost of hundreds of others who also ran in the same competition but somehow lost.

So we should never, ever commit this mistake of postponing our celebration, joy and relaxation until a point when we think that we will emerge victorious, complete something very, very important, or achieve something very grand in nature.

No.

It is also the nature of life here, and of the kind of competitive structure that we have built up, that inevitably there will be so few winners and so many losers.

Now, the so-called losers can have their own version of success, their own versions of enjoyment, joy and happiness.

Why just be bogged down by the conditions set by business models developed in a capitalist economy, rewarding the excellence of a few at the cost of so many others? Why just get cast in that mould?

It is for you to decide what your success is.

Start trying to look at the success of your life in terms of little, little achievements, little, little accomplishments, small, small acts that we perform on a daily basis.

Do an act of kindness—a little one.

You already are a winner.

Enjoy nature with your full feeling.

You are a winner.

Write a few lines in your journal from the depth of your heart, manifesting so many things in your subconscious.

You are a winner.

Bring tears of gratitude to somebody’s eyes with your act of kindness.

You are a winner.

Bring a little smile to the faces of your children.

You are a winner.

And these small, small milestones on the highway of your life are the grand milestones of your journey.

Celebrate them. Cherish them.

They are the check dams on the stream of challenging life. These are the little check dams that allow you to take some time out from the routine grinding, from regular testing and challenges.

Never miss them.

Because in the hope of reaching some grand homecoming, we miss the little milestones that are always there on both sides of our path. We very rarely look at them.

Look at a little flower by the side of your path.

Look at the honeybees hovering over it.

Look at the trees welcoming you with their swaying branches.

Look at the cool spring air caressing your skin like a lover.

Look at the beautiful azure-blue sky looking at you like a mother with love.

Everything is there for you.

It is just that you have to open yourself to it.

There is beauty despite all the challenges. We just need to be open to it, acknowledge it, and always remain very aware of it.

Life then acquires a definite shape, a tolerable reality.

You get an ease—a lightness of being, I would call it.

So, happy be your journey.

My best wishes.

The human and the artificial creator

This discussion is about the basic difference between human beings as creators or generators of something unique and exceptionally original, and artificial-intelligence-driven systems and agents. I want to examine the fundamental difference between these two kinds of creators of something new.

As far as the human system is concerned, it is a compilation of millions of cells, neurons, veins and arteries, where life is thriving creatively at each instant. There is a very lively and spontaneous interaction between the individual and the surrounding pool of energies—from cosmic energies to the human beings around us, social systems, and all the other structures that have been shaped by the human mind, individually and collectively, over the years.

There is a very thin boundary between a living human being and the overall cosmos surrounding him. Without this interaction, it is not possible for an individual to live, thrive, breathe, see, perceive, grow or evolve. Every second, there is an interaction between the individual and the universal, and it goes both ways.

It is almost like a thin, porous film that defines an individual—with his genetically coded traits and identities acquired since birth, along with the structures of knowledge subsequently fed into him—while simultaneously connecting him with the overall system, the universe.

Through this porous border, something is being drawn from the universe at every instant. We breathe in and we breathe out. We are exposed to innumerable seen and unseen factors every moment. In that sense, we are merely more distinct bubbles in the overall sea of the cosmos.

The cells have their own memories, their own functions, and creativity coded into them. The central nervous system, operating through the brain, has an almost infinite capacity to develop new neural alignments and pathways—to see, perceive, understand and know things in more and more ways. There does not seem to be any end to it.

That is what makes something created by a human being—whether in art, writing, poetry, prose, verse, scientific discovery, design or sculpture—capable of being extremely unique and fundamentally different.

As far as man as a creator is concerned, there is always the possibility of something exceptionally original being created because there is this spontaneous and beautiful flux between the individual and the universal that supports individual life. The universe is giving us countless inputs every second to sustain that life.

And who knows how many other types of energies exist? Even today, fundamental questions about dark matter and cosmic dark energy remain open. So we have to keep the possibility open-ended. The human system itself is open-ended; it is not a closed system.

Therefore, when it comes to creating something new—whether in art, science or any other domain—there is always a possibility of encountering something extremely and exceptionally original. To me, that is one of the basic things that defines us as human beings.

The Artificial Creator

If we consider artificial-intelligence-driven systems as creators of something new, we have to recognize a fundamental difference. An artificial intelligence system is not a living entity. In this sense, I see it as a closed system.

However hard we try to put more and more gigabytes of information into it, however enormous the data centres become, the information ultimately consists of material that has been generated, gathered or made available to the system. AI therefore becomes, fundamentally, a recycler and reorganizer of inputs—including the enormous body of information mankind itself has created.

It is possible to keep increasing the dataset available to algorithms so that they can create new music, paintings and different forms of writing. But whatever they create cannot, in my view, be fundamentally independent of what has been put into them.

It may appear interesting or unique on the surface because an artificial intelligence can draw simultaneously from an extraordinary variety of sources and produce something highly appealing. But that ultimate originality will be missing.

Why? Because there is a distinct barrier between the artificial-intelligence system and the cosmos. There is a strict boundary because it is not a living entity.

In the human system, millions of living entities—cells, microorganisms and the entire biological colony constituting the organism—are continuously interacting with the surrounding world and universal forces. AI does not participate in existence in this same biological manner. Its operations remain within its constructed system.

It cannot interact with the thriving cosmic energy and those pulses of information and possibility in the way a living organism does. In every quantum of this beautiful storm of energy surrounding us, there is memory, there is potential, and there is the pure possibility of something more and more and more.

As living organisms, we have an overlapping space with this because we are part of it.

Even though we retain our individuality, the boundary between the universal and the individual remains porous. We are constantly taking something in and giving something back. Every instant, we are adding something to the overall cosmic information, energy and wisdom as well.

In the case of an artificial-intelligence-driven system, I see this relationship as fundamentally different and restricted.

Therefore, even when something generated by artificial intelligence initially appears very interesting, after some time one may begin to feel that it is an elaboration upon something that we have already read, felt, realized or experienced. That ultimate novelty, exquisiteness, originality and element of surprise will be missing.

Artificial intelligence can certainly be a tremendous tool for enhancing productivity at many levels. It can bring enormous quantitative as well as qualitative improvements to manual processes. It can calculate more, generate more content, generate music and create paintings, provided it receives the necessary inputs.

But it cannot replace the novelty of the human brain and its beautiful open-endedness—its capacity to become a channel through which something more can manifest from the universe into the individual.

AI as a Workhorse, Not a Master

People say that artificial-intelligence-driven systems may pose serious risks in the future. Of course there will be risks if we allow artificial intelligence to master our lives.

AI can be a great workhorse as long as we retain mastery over it and do not become so dependent upon it that we ourselves turn lazy.

Extreme risks can arise when human beings surrender too much decision-making to automated systems. One can imagine even something as catastrophic as nuclear weapons being released because of miscalculations within highly automated systems. That could pose a collective threat to the existence of life on Earth.

So the question is not merely what artificial intelligence can do. The question is whether the human being remains its master or gradually becomes dependent upon it.

When the Human Being Himself Becomes Artificial

There is another very significant factor.

There will always be a section of humanity aspiring to become superhuman by introducing more and more artificial components into the human system—for example, neurological chips implanted in the brain to increase cognitive powers, or genetic engineering intended to alter biological structures for greater longevity, cognitive capacity and other advantages.

As long as the normal human system is not tampered with, it remains open to the complete grace of godliness, chance, universality, wonder and surprise that this infinite cosmos represents.

But if we begin tampering excessively with it and introduce more and more artificial components, then we may gradually create barriers within that spontaneous flow of life between the universal and the individual.

It would be like constructing check dams across a naturally flowing river.

The more artificial barriers we construct, the more we may interfere with that spontaneous exchange between the organism and the universal.

There is a tragic possibility here. Just as we have spoiled nature, damaged ecosystems and polluted Mother Earth, we may eventually create environmental conditions in which the normal human body itself finds it increasingly difficult to survive without artificial assistance.

We already have pacemakers for the heart. Bones become fragile and are supported or replaced through implants. These technologies are enormously useful when needed, but they also give us a glimpse of a possible future.

There may come a day when the air on Earth becomes so polluted that human beings require something artificial inside or around their lungs simply to survive in that environment.

Thus, the more we move towards mechanization and artificial intervention within the human system, the less receptive, perhaps, the organism may become to that spontaneous universal grace, because more artificial barriers will have been inserted between the complete organism and the universal.

And perhaps the future human being, carrying an increasing number of artificial components within his system, will also become increasingly susceptible to manipulation by artificial intelligence itself.

The Emergence of New Human Classes

This brings us to another possibility—the emergence of entirely different classes of human beings.

Even today, the majority of poor people do not have access to the best medical care. Healthcare infrastructure and advanced medical facilities remain restricted for those who cannot afford them, whereas rich and super-rich people can access ultra-modern healthcare and sometimes overcome diseases that would prove fatal for someone without such resources.

Poor people may still die of illnesses such as diarrhoea and malaria, while the wealthy have access to extraordinarily sophisticated treatments for critical and chronic diseases.

Now imagine this inequality projected into the future.

There may be super-speciality institutions offering biological modification, genetic engineering and artificial augmentation. Only a tiny number of people—the super-rich and the billionaires of today or their successors—may be able to access these facilities.

They may have parts of their bodies reshaped biologically or artificially until they gradually become a class substantially different from ordinary human beings of flesh and blood.

And there may eventually emerge another tier even above these super-rich.

Imagine that a few dozen people possess such enormous resources that they effectively influence the fate of the entire Earth. They may invest massively in space travel and, eventually, in establishing extraordinarily advanced medical and technological facilities on the Moon.

Such facilities would be so inaccessible that even the super-rich of Earth might find it extremely difficult to reach them.

The most advanced technological, biological and scientific means of transforming man into something approaching a superman might then become available only there.

With enhanced longevity, enhanced cognitive capacities and enhanced physical and biological capabilities, these few individuals could become something substantially different from the ordinary human population. Possessing advantages unavailable to everybody else, they could ultimately exercise enormous power over the planet.

Three Classes of Future Humanity

In such a future, I can imagine three broad classes emerging.

At the very top might be only a few dozen individuals with access to the most advanced facilities beyond Earth—perhaps on the Moon—who have transformed themselves so profoundly that they begin to resemble a different kind of human species.

Below them might be a few thousand extraordinarily wealthy people on Earth—the aristocracy of this future order—who have access to the best terrestrial genetic engineering, biological modification, artificial organs, neurological augmentation and other technologies capable of raising their capacities far beyond those of ordinary human beings.

And then there would be the overwhelming majority: common human beings of ordinary flesh and blood.

The first group could rule the Earth indirectly through the second. The second would possess enormous technological, economic and biological advantages over the third.

Thus, instead of inequality remaining merely an inequality of wealth, property or political power, humanity could reach a stage where inequality becomes embedded in the very biological and technological constitution of different classes of human beings.

And that, to me, is where the question of artificial intelligence ultimately becomes much larger than machines producing paintings, music, calculations or written content.

It becomes a question about what it means to remain human.

The human being, as I see him today, is a living, open-ended organism—a distinct bubble within the enormous sea of the cosmos, retaining an individuality of its own while remaining connected through a thin and porous boundary with the universal.

Life continuously enters him, moves through him and leaves him. He receives from the universe and gives something back to it. And somewhere within this mysterious, spontaneous interaction lies the possibility of genuine novelty—of something appearing through a human being that has never appeared in precisely that form before.

Artificial intelligence can calculate for us. It can organize for us. It can generate enormous quantities of material. It can enhance productivity and become perhaps the greatest workhorse mankind has ever created.

But the danger begins when the workhorse becomes the master—and an even deeper transformation may begin when the master himself gradually becomes artificial.

Postscript: There is no doubt in my mind that as far as the ultimate originality in creating something new is concerned, there is no comparison between a flesh and blood human and an artificial system. But the question arises: Will the normal flesh and blood humans be relevant in future? May be they will be wiped out like Neanderthals were wiped out with the emergence of Homo-sapeins. It seems evolution -- man-propelled evolution though, which will eat its creator. The product will eat the producer. 

An odd flower in the concrete corridors of power

 

Lessons and learning from a powerful yet saintly bureaucrat

 

Some people have such graceful presence, even in the corridors of power and authority, that your dignity (as a common citizen of the country) gets enhanced by several notches after meeting them. They make you feel noticed. They put you at ease instantly; boost your moral and enliven your hopes just through a few words and small gestures.

How are they so effective without even asserting their power and strength directly? It's because they derive that strength and authority from an inherent core of kindness. They are aware that they are playing a powerful role on the surface--for some greater common cause--while the inner detached core of their real Self watches with amusement and playfulness; but it never gets personally attached to the play on the surface. I recently had the opportunity to feel the kind inner presence of a powerful persona on the surface.    

Apart from being a writer and poet, I have continued doing my professional assignments to sustain myself, while at the same time fighting court battles for what I believe to be justice and my well-deserved, hard-earned right. After more than two decades of struggle, despair had slowly started making its home in the armor shield of my determination. I was beginning to lose hope. To make it worrisome, frustration had started setting in. It was at this stage of my struggle that I finally ended up in front of the honorable Chief Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Rajesh Khullar ji.

What I am writing here is simply how I felt in the presence of somebody occupying such a high position. Power and authority can be intimidating to common people like us. We take it as a rule, so much so that we put all powerful people in the same basket of arrogance and ego. But even a rule can't sustain without an exception. And the honorable CPS to the CM Haryana happens to be one such exception.

As I stood in front of him, I faced an exceptional mix of power, strength and authority side by side with kindness, care and humbleness. Both things side by side! They look contradictory but here in this persona they co-exist. That's what makes Khullar Sahab exceptional. His authoritative presence will instinctively turn you towards obedience and hard work; his kindness will boost your morale and enhance your self-respect. Both things pushing you towards your best.  

He operates, as I see it, as the chief driving force of the Haryana bureaucracy. It is a very powerful, humungous responsibility and an equally onerous task. While waiting outside his office for my turn, I got an opportunity to witness firsthand the extraordinary range of people and matters lining up to get his attention.

There were powerful politicians, cabinet ministers, MLAs, mayors and chairmen. Then there were senior bureaucrats from different departments—IAS and IPS officers and many other senior officials from various departments. Alongside them were petitioners and seekers of justice like me, and other groups of ordinary people who had come with their representations, hoping to get their problems addressed.

Sitting there, I became a firsthand witness to Shri Rajesh Khullar ji's style of functioning. His schedule was so incredibly busy that even very senior officers and politicians sometimes had to wait, because he had meetings to attend, issues to examine and tasks to get completed.

I waited there for about seven and a half hours. But believe me, the wait did not pinch me at all. Just by being there, observing all the happenings, I happened to read an entire book on state bureaucracy. 

There was such busyness, such a pinpointed approach, such focus, such a bombardment of tasks of entirely different natures. One moment the matter could concern the life of an ordinary person; another could involve a powerful politician, a senior bureaucrat or a wealthy businessman. The range of people and problems that he has to attend to is enormous.

To deal with such different personality types and such varied subjects requires adaptability, quick understanding, knowledge, wisdom and, above all, experience. Just sitting there and watching people come and go became engrossing for me.

 

The morning outside his residence

Someone had told me that Shri Rajesh Khullar ji give time to people even from his personal time, before normal office hours, early in the morning. So I went to his official residence with my representation and some of my books that I wanted to present to him.

I found dozens of people waiting in the park in front of his official residence. A tense anticipation on the faces of people who had travelled from various corners of Haryana.

Many of them appeared to have lost hope elsewhere and had ultimately reached there. As one can imagine, people in such situations become disgruntled. They lose hope. Frustration sets in. Naturally, some of them were critical of the system and the government.

I heard many people complaining about various things. That’s inevitable where you have a gathering of people looking for their problems to be solved. But amid all those complaints, there appeared to be a remarkable consensus about one man – Khullar Sahab.

I moved around; as a writer, I keep my eyes and ears open. So here I was eavesdropping on what people were discussing. Grumblings, remarks, comments, frustration. Well it acts as a catharsis for the people to vent out their misery. But in spite of all the stress on people’s faces, there was a hope in the eyes. Because there was a consensus: 

Here is an officer who is an exception. Whoever reaches the threshold of his office or residence rarely goes completely empty-handed, because he always tries to do whatever he can to help the person.

One person was particularly critical of the government. But after expressing his dissention and criticism, he immediately qualified it. He said, in substance:

“But I have no complaint against Khullar Sahab. It has been my experience for eight years, and I have never been disappointed whenever I approached him.”

Another person went even further. He remarked that politicians sometimes do silly things that cause them to lose votes, whereas it is officers like  Khullar Sahab who actually increase votes through their positive approach, tireless hard work and willingness to help those who approach him.

These were not things that were told to me later as stories. I was standing there and listening to people speak from their own experiences.

Then his personal assistant came outside and collected the applications and representations.

Even the process itself impressed me. There was a specific precision and seriousness about the job. Absolutely no casual streak at all. The staff, including the security personnel at the cabin outside the main gate, were extremely helpful. They kept accepting representations even from the people who arrived slightly late. The usual time, as I understood it, was approximately 8:30 to 9:30 in the morning. Yet if somebody arrived at 9:35, I did not see that person simply being turned away. The staff would try to help. They would even provide a pen and paper to somebody who needed to write something.

Watching all this, I felt that such consideration and dedication in the surrounding system must ultimately derive its soul and inspiration from the central figure himself. It showed, to my mind, Khullar Sahab's commitment to efficiency while simultaneously trying to help people as much as possible.

Our bunch of applications and representations was taken inside.

About half an hour later, the personal assistant returned with remarks and notings made by Khullar Sahab himself on the individual applications and representations.

When he showed me mine, I was wonderstruck.

I had written an entire page about my issue. Out of that whole page, the master bureaucrat had expertly identified and underlined just two points sufficient to cover the entire issue, marked them in the margins, and sent the matter onward to the Chief Secretary for expediting the process.

Just three or four words stood there as the entire positive reply to my full-page representation. His single phrase standing out as the title of justice and fair play! 

After fighting for so many years, those few words appeared to me almost as if they were shining on the page.

They appeared to me like the title of justice.

I was deeply impressed.

 

My books reach him

I had watched Khullar Sahab’s interviews where he recited poetry with the finesse of a seasoned full-time poet, discussed administrative principles with the fluidity of water, elucidated deep spiritual insights about life and living like an ascetic and threw light on scientific concepts like a scientist. The vast range and broad platform of his personality created a deep impression on me. And that bred hope, inspiring me to try to meet him. Trying to grab my chance, I then requested the staff, “Can I meet the Hon'ble Chief Principal Secretary?”

They politely explained that it would not be possible because he had to leave.

So I asked, “Can you please forward my books for his consideration?”

They said, “Yes, we can take your books. At least we will put your books in front of him.”

I sent about ten of my books to the Hon'ble Chief Principal Secretary.

As I said above, I knew him to be a person of vast and varied knowledge, ranging from hardcore science to poetry, and somebody fond of literature. I therefore hoped that my books might add some substance to my application and hence to my cause. They would perhaps tell him something about the person behind that one-page representation.

A couple of hours later, something happened that I had not expected.

I received a telephone call from his personal assistant.

I was told that Khullar Sahib would speak to me.

I was taken aback. I was nervous as well because everything had happened so suddenly.

Then I heard his voice.

There was authority in that voice, certainly, but it was not merely an authoritative voice. Beneath that authority there was a supporting kindness. If you are sensitive enough, you can feel these things. I could feel that this was a voice appropriately authoritative for the responsibility he carries; but its foundation consisted of kindness, understanding and sensibility.

That instantly began putting me at ease.

I had been nervous when the call began, but the manner in which he spoke changed that. He said only a few sentences, but he spoke so personally that it did not feel like some hard and stern message being passed down by somebody occupying one of the highest administrative positions in Haryana.

Then he complimented me on my books.

That meant a lot to me.

He said, “You can meet me sometime.”

Then the call ended.

Those few words gave me an enormous boost. A revival of hope. Isn’t it wonderful how one’s mental state takes a better shape just by hearing some nice words! Words of appreciation coming from such a senior figure in the Haryana administration instantly made me feel contented with life in that moment because, more than anything else, I felt respected. And noticed. And that’s what basically we the common people look for when we reach high offices. 

I felt respected for the work I had been doing over the years; writing my books in complete anonymity; the time when I would devote years to my books with hardly any reader, forget about coming across encouraging compliments. I know I sound poetic when I say this, but it felt like desert rain to me because it is such a rare event in my life. I felt that my books had received recognition from somebody occupying a position from which he has spent a lifetime evaluating people, policies, problems and ideas. This itself felt like a big reward.

 

Seven and a half hours that became a learning book

Hoping that our interaction was still fresh in his memory, I thought it better not to lose any time. Opportunities are slippery eels. With my poetic amusement, I have had plenty of them going slipping from my hands.

It’s a battle for the less and less by the more and more.

A person in his position has to attend to scores of issues and hundreds of different personalities every day. Had I been lazy and postponed meeting him to some other day, perhaps whatever positive impression my books had created might have become diluted amid the enormous number of things competing for his attention.

A poet as a rational thinker. Good going! So I headed straight for his office in the Haryana Civil Secretariat.

Sitting outside his office itself became a case study in bureaucratic functioning. I’m an avid reader of people, situations, surroundings and happenings. I had a lively book to read. I kept reading it and didn’t know how time just passed.

It was enlightening to watch how things function in the highest corridors of power. I waited for approximately seven and a half hours, yet strangely enough, it did not bother me at all. Watching such influential people from close quarters is an extraordinary experience. In any case, I believe in learning from all situations and circumstance. That’s the primary fodder for a writer. Learn, learn, keep sense-perception open, stay alert, read the book of life. I did.  

The morning turned to afternoon, which too graduated into evening. How could one become bored when so many things were happening every moment?

The waiting area itself turned into a big learning book for me. So many characters to read. Highly influential people were arriving continuously. It was there for anyone outside in the corridor to naturally feel that a whole series of serious meetings were taking place on completely different subjects in Khullar Sahab’s office. Administrative issues were being dealt with gripping intensity. And in between scores of individual matters were being attended to. And among all of these were people like me, looking towards this office with hope.

I was awestruck by the sheer range of it. The task of fulfilling so many hopes. Imagine the expertise of the central figure in this churning of petitions, representations, complaints and public discontent. 

Finally, late in the evening, at around seven, I got the opportunity to enter his office and meet him.

“Sandeep”

The way he took my name—“Sandeep”—was so full of kindness and consideration. As if he was welcoming a friend, not a stranger carrying a representation for resolving an issue.

It felt as though he understood my position as somebody seeking justice for what I consider a well-deserved cause. There was something reassuring and caring in the way he spoke, as though he understood the wound itself; as though he could sense those clouds of despair that begin creeping into a person after fighting for a cause for a very long time.

Then something else surprised me. Khullar Sahab can surprise you in many ways. He has a vast range of behavior and words to comfort you, test you, encourage you, study you and much more. I’m lucky that he chose to comfort and encourage me.

He did not meet me in the manner in which I had imagined the Chief Principal Secretary would meet somebody.

I had expected him to occupy his high official chair behind the large table, with me sitting on a chair in front of him. Naturally, I began moving in that direction.

Instead, he directed me towards a more personal, private inner space.

I was quite surprised. A very pleasant surprise. It felt like I’m not a petitioner in his office; rather a much-welcomed guest. Now to maintain that personal, humane space in such a high office is no mean feat.

And there stood before me the poet, the philosopher and the bureaucrat—the man at the very heart of the Haryana administrative machinery—with such natural and majestic authority that his presence itself was sufficient to dispel much of my nervousness and inhibition.

Despite all the authority surrounding him, I found his presence remarkably kind. Power and authority lying at his feet like the weapons to be picked up when needed for official duties; just the necessary burden to be picked up when necessary. But the master bureaucrat always carries kindness on his impressive persona; it’s always there, even when he has to act hard and stern to get things done. 

When I look back at that moment now, I find something almost saintly in the figure I encountered that evening. This is, of course, entirely my personal impression. I saw somebody surrounded by the glamour and machinery of enormous power, yet completely unaffected by it—as though he was simply playing the role assigned to him without becoming attached to the role itself.

I could detect absolutely no hard edges in his presence that would intimidate someone meeting him for the first time. His words and light in his eyes were comforting to this stranger poet.

To me, he appeared to function with a remarkable detachment.

And every word he spoke to me was rewarding.

I felt honored that somebody with such an extraordinary administrative record was speaking so appreciatively about my books. He complimented me again.

I told him:

“Sir, these words of appreciation from the chief driving force of Haryana bureaucracy happen to be my biggest reward in life.”

Then he offered me some fruit.

Now, if such an esteemed personality asks you to have something, one should not say no! So I took a piece of apple and had a bite.

Then he said simply:

“Tell me now.” He meant the issue I had gone to get resolved.

 

From listening to action

I told him about my issue. He listened with full patience and consideration.

He immediately made a telephone call to his office and directed that the matter be dealt with as soon as possible.

But another small thing touched me equally deeply.

He knew that I had already been waiting for many hours. It was now late in the evening.

He asked me, “Where are you from?”

I told him that I came from a village in Sonipat.

Then, with what I experienced as very natural concern, he asked:

“Where will you stay today?”

That question has remained with me.

I told him that I would be going back with my friend in his car. Had I told him that I was going by bus or would stay in some hotel, I am almost certain—from the impression I formed of him—that he would have directed somebody to make some arrangement for my overnight stay.

Such was the impression his kindness left upon me.

 

My overall Impression of Khullar Sahab

The meeting left a very deep impression on me.

What struck me above everything else was the absence of any trace of hard edges, which power and authority easily breeds in we humans, in his graceful yet strong personality. Great power and authority can so easily enter a person's personality. It can gradually create distance between the person exercising authority and the ordinary person standing before him.

My impression is that power has not been allowed to make that dent in Khullar Sahab's personality. Power has merely been used as a tool for civil service. Power just seems a part of a job to him; because he is so much more in terms of knowledge, understanding and wisdom in deeper dimensions of life.

It is not that he does not exercise power. Of course he does. But he does it strictly as his job. Nothing more. His position requires enormous authority. He exercises power to a great effect that results in tremendous administrative efficiency. But the best thing is: He has mastered power; power has no mastery over him. 

He appears to use power rather than allowing power to use him.

He uses it as an instrument of service—to bring effective change into the lives of people who approach him, to implement the policies that the government places before him, to make the administrative machinery function, and to put forward innovative ideas.

He uses power for a purpose, but, as a person, my impression is that he remains beyond that power.

That is the essence of my first personal experience of him. A tremendous personality; a vast book to read to learn about personal and professional values.

Standing before him, I felt almost like standing before a saint-bureaucrat. One can feel such things if one is sensitive enough. I have been doing a lot of research on saints, sages and ascetics. The search has taken me to remotest caves in Ladakh. It was a pleasant surprise to find a saintly persona in the highest corridors of power.

I find in him a remarkably deep and brilliant mind together with a caring, poetic and sensitive heart.

And that, in my experience, is a very rare combination. Extraordinary is the word I would use without any conditions. Plain extraordinariness. So much so that it’s no longer only about getting the issue resolved. As a novice student of spirituality, meeting such a kind heart in the cold machinery of power system is a reward in itself. The lesser rewards, like issues and representations, of course naturally flow.

Postscript: This is not a mere eulogy entirely driven by the element of gratitude for the assurance of getting my issue resolved by the saintly bureaucrat. It has deeper roots. Issues will come and go; opinions will change; but this is something permanent. Whatever comes to me through my pen is Ma Sarasvati's blessings. I'm just a medium for certain messages. The issues and problems are just means to get in touch with such good people. The episode merely shows the inherent goodness in Khullar Sahab. Through my pen I try to highlight goodness in people. I have simply highlighted how nice it felt to meet him. The fragrance of humanity in this metallic world. We still have flowers out there. And there is still hope.