Symphony of Science

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This is one in the series of music videos from Symphony of Science. Sounds like science and spirituality is coming together. They have never been separate subjects to start off with. So concisely articulated to summarize the mechanics and inter-connectivity of the universe. Very much what Buckminster Fuller propounded.

Psychic Buster

Here is a video of James Randi talk in TED talks:

(if you have problem with the video, click here.)

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I don't agree with everything he says, but include this video here as it helps readers to be more discerning and check bogus psychics out, so that they don't get cheated.

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Here is my critique of his talk:

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1. That what he said was mostly his opinions that we have to assume it is true to go along with his arguments, for instance, about the several occasions of what these purported psychics said in generality during 'communications with the dead'. But read on, as I have found other videos about his more substantiated investigations below.

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2. How am I to know that the bottle he consumed is indeed homeopathic pills or that he had spit them out in his hands carefully and not swallowed them? He is a stage magician and conjuror after all!

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3. That it is his assumption that dead people are 'dead' after the pass on. This is again his opinion and belief, as scientific studies have been done on people who had clinically died in a hospital and came back to speak about their continued consciousness. Also, there are scientific studies on reincarnation.

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4. However, I would agree with him about the media putting on programmes as long as it pleases the sponsors. In any investigation, just follow the money and the sex - that'll cover 90% of the grounds.

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Here is a more methodical way to bust fraudsters, where Randi tested this 'astrologer', who turned defensive quickly. But we don't know if the subjects are pre-arranged actors. Sorry. I am a bit of a nitpicker given the context. (If you can't get the video, click here.)
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Here is an even better analysis. Read the subtitled comments in the video:

(if you can't get the video, click here.)
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This one is more spectacular:

(If you can't get the video, click here.)
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Lastly, this is a video about some evidence about reincarnation:

(if you have problems with the video, click here.)

I put up this post to urge readers to do their own thinking, and not based their beliefs on someone else's thinking and experiences.

Personally, I practise Reiki and have recently bent a spoon, without pre-bending it in preparation. I have also witnessed psychics who could give spot on detailed answers to questions they have no way of knowing, sometimes stuff that the subject himself has forgotten. But don't take my word for it unless you have experience similar and it makes sense to you.

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I think where there are counterfeits, there must be the real, otherwise there is no reflection of the of the former. What do you think?

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You can read about my experiences of Reiki healing here.

You can read about my spoon bending experience here.

Reiki - Understanding the Cause

This pair of slippers is not exerted upon symmetrically. You can see it from the imprint. The right foot tend to lean on its right side. This is because the big toe on the right foot experiences pain when it is moving. To avoid the pain, the foot intuitively lean on its right side. Hence the assymetric imprint.

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Observing symmetry is important, as our body is made to be symmetric. For instance, if you are constantly adjusting your shirt or skirt to bring it bring it back from getting uncomfortably twisted around your waist, it may be a sign that there is asymmetry.

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This is my pair of slippers. So I too have asymmetry and that is caused by my painful right toe. It used to experience intense and piercing pain. When I went to my doctor, he suggested surgery, but with no guarantee of it being fully rectified. So I hesistated and tried Reiki instead. That was three years ago. Then, it was swollen and intensely painful, but after Reiki, the swell has vanished and the pain is much subsided.

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I have continued the healing, but the results were very slow, until one day when I learned from a Chinese physician that the cause was that there is abnormal and inward growth of a bone in the toe. Knowing that, I then visualise shaving off the extra growth each time I heal it. Then to my surprise, the healing accelerated and there is now only residual pain in my right toe joint.

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Then, just as I thought my problem was about to be over, my left big toe started to experience similar acute pain. Again, I responded by using Reiki energy to shave off the extra bone in the left toe. To my surprise, it healed within hours and the pain has not come back since.

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I am still healing my right toe daily and I believe soon this chronic pain too will disappear totally.

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What have I learned here?

1. That if you know the cause, it is easier to heal, thus it will help alot if the healer understands about anatomy.
2. That if problems are detected early, they can be healed faster.
3. To watch out for asymmetry, as these are unhealthy signs, so that you can respond early to heal.

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To read more about Reiki healing, click here.

Bucky Group - Meditation

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It's good to join the Group again at MacRitchie on a Sunday morning, after a long while. It was a very humid morning and I was drenched running the 4km stretch of boardwalk by the reservoir.

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After that, we continued on passages on Bucky's "Utopia or Oblivion" book. Chao Loy was surprised that the Group had only covered one page after the last time he was there, which was one month ago. We all laughed and joked that Chao Loy should come more often to speed us up. We are slow alright, but better so to go the casual approach to understand Bucky's philosophy without too much of a rush.

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This week, we read about how the Soviet Union jump started their industries by buying the latest factory equipment from the United States in the 1930s and so did China subsequently after 1949. Both countries improved the quality of life for their people rapidly as a result.

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I think that if it had been for the inept political system and resulting upheavals, just left to the advent of technology alone, the quality life would have improved by leaps and bounds. Politicians and greed puts us back. So though technology enables us to make things cheaper and better rapidly. the cost of living has consistently gone up and the quality of life stagnated or gone down for the masses. Bucky had mentioned is passing to send all the politicians on a spaceship to the sun and we would all be better off. On the other hand, take away technology and there will be widespread starvation very quickly.

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In China today, it has come a stage where producers of consumer electronics have to introduce new improved versions of their products every six months to beat the copycat pirates. To do that, the producers have to keep one version released to the market and two newer versions in the pocket, ready to be released anytime the pirates catches up with them.

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At Breakfast in Brinjai:

Chao Loy shared with us about a talk by the chief of Tzu Chi Charity Foundation Singapore, a successful entrepreneur who decided to stop his business and donate all his money and focus all his time to the Charity. In his talk, he said that these days, people are spending more and more time and resources on their body and forgets about nourishing their minds.

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I told Chao Loy that though nourishing the mind is important, it has to be balanced with a healthy body, as I have experienced. I have been doing regular meditation and even some yoga stretches, but at one stage was still not coping up very well with stress. So I decided to have an overhaul of my lifestyle. This is my self-imposed regime now I:

• Cycle to the beach, do qigong exercises and meditation
• Return home for breakast
• Hit the gym for one hour
• Have raw and steam veg for lunch
• Rest for 1 hour after lunch
• Have a short meditation
• Skip dinner
• Have some light yoga asanas
• Sleep before midnight.

I feel brand new now. So, meditation (taking care of one's mind) alone is not enough. We need aerobic exercises, diet and rest.

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Chao Loy then shared with us an interesting story between a little boy and his grandmother who is a devoted Buddhist who chants incessantly.

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As the grandmother was chanting, the little boy came and interrupted her and asked to be able to buy ice cream. The grandmother told her to hold on, as she is busy chanting, in which the boy said:

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"The ice cream man is here, if you wait he'll be gone. Buddha on the other hand, can wait, and you can chant later."

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Defeated, the grandmother stopped and bought the boy the ice-cream, then continued chanting.

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The boy came again and then called, "Grandma".

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The grandma heard him but ignored him as she focused on her chanting.

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"Grandma", the boy continued.

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The grandma again ignored him.

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The boy then repeated, "Grandma..."

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This time the grandma shouted at the boy, "Stop interrupting me, can't you see I am busy chanting???!!"

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The boy was saddened, but replied gently, "Grandma, you called out Buddha's name for so many times and he was never angry with you, I just called out your name three times, and you got angry with me."

Coffeeshop Talk

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At my neighbourhood coffeeshop today, the coffee auntie asked if I have been to the newly opened casino in Sentosa (Singapore). I told her that I haven't since I don't gamble. She was surprised since many others here love gambling to the extent of taking it almost like a religion.

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I told her that I believe in the teachings of Buddha, and that in gambling, for me to win, many have to lose. She was amazed and then confessed that she is a Buddhist, but couldn't get herself to understand some of the principles in Buddhism that encourages people to live a less materialistic life. She then related to me that her friend had just spent $18,000 to bring a Buddhist monk into Singapore ( I assumed it's for blessings), but still that had not got her anywhere (read 'made her rich').

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I explained that faith is in the heart and not in the matter of spending money to bring priests and monks to bless oneself and gain merits. She listened intently, but seem confused and then walked away.

Kids Play - Nice Teacher

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Zee is a gutsy little 8 year old talking to her teacher...

Zee: I like Miss Tan, she is gentle, sweet and nice to me. I like her. You (referring to her teacher), you are mean, and I don't like you!!!

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Teacher (paused, and gently replied): Yes, but sometimes the mean ones are the ones that love you most...

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Why Positive Thinking Is Bad for You

By Srikumar Rao

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The "power of positive thinking" is so firmly enshrined in our culture that knocking it is a little like attacking motherhood or apple pie. Many people swear by positive thinking, and quite a few have been helped by it. Nevertheless, it is not a very effective success tool -- and it can be downright deleterious. There are much better ways to get the benefits that positive thinking allegedly provides.

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Perhaps the statement that best exemplifies positive thinking is "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade." It seems so obvious that this is good advice that we never question the wisdom of the adage. But it does not take a whole lot of digging to unearth the flaws in this reasoning.

For one thing, did life really hand you a lemon -- or was that merely your initial, unthinking reaction upon finding yourself in a difficult situation? And is being handed a lemon really a bad thing?

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No matter what happens to us in life, we tend to think of it as "good" or "bad." And most of us tend to use the "bad" label three to 10 times as often as the "good" label. When we label something as "bad," we greatly increase the odds that we will experience it as such. And that is when we assume that we need to apply positive thinking. We have been given a lemon, and we had better scramble to salvage something out of the situation by making some lemonade out of it.

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How tiresome and tiring!

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Think back on your life. Can you recall instances when something that you initially thought was a bad thing turned out to be not so bad after all -- perhaps even spectacularly good?

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Maybe, for example, you missed the early-morning train that you always take to get to work on time, and you had to wait a whole hour for the next one. But in that hour, you struck up a conversation with someone else who had missed that train... and a beautiful friendship developed. Or maybe you didn't get a job that you desperately wanted. But then you were unexpectedly offered a much better job -- which you would not have been able to accept had it not been for the earlier rejection.

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And consider the story of Olympic champion Michael Phelps. He broke his wrist after slipping on some ice. He was in the middle of intense training for the Beijing games, and thought his career as a swimmer was over. But his coach wouldn't let him quit. And though he couldn't swim for a few weeks, he kept training just by kicking his legs.

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Phelps did make it to the Olympics, and he won the 100-meter butterfly by one of the closest margins in athletic history -- 1/10th of a second. Turns out the weeks of kicking had given him leg strength he'd never had before. While his opponent had to stop kicking and glide at the end of the race, Phelps was able to keep going and win.

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Now, let me propose something radical and revolutionary: No matter what happens to you -- no matter how terrible it may seem -- you do not stick a "bad" label on it. You are fired from your job... your mortgage lender sends you a foreclosure notice... your spouse files for divorce... or whatever. Is it possible, just possible, that the reason you experience such things as personal tragedies is because you have been conditioned to think of them that way?

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In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells about a beautiful girl from a privileged background who was grateful to be in a concentration camp because it allowed her to connect with a spiritual side of herself that she never knew existed. Observations like this led Frankl into his life's work of trying to determine why, when faced with extreme adversity, some people flourish while others disintegrate.

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Many who rise triumphantly never label what they go through as "bad" and, thus, don't agonize over it. They simply take it as a given -- like an engineer surveying a swamp through which a road is to be built. From his perspective, the swamp is not a bad thing. It is merely something that has to be addressed in his construction plan.

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If you never label a situation as "bad," you won't experience it that way. You won't need positive thinking to get yourself through it. And all of the stress associated with figuring out how to make lemonade out of your lemon simply goes away.

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That's a lot different than saying to yourself: "This is bad. Really bad. But somehow I will make some lemonade out of this lemon -- and then perhaps it won't be so bad." What you're doing, here, is falling victim to the huge pebble in the positive-thinking shoe. First you think your situation is bad. Then you think you will somehow make it less bad. Meanwhile, you can't help but wonder if you're just kidding yourself. And if you don't manage to make lemonade out of your lemon, you're devastated -- because the success tool you were conditioned to believe in caved in on you. That's why I say that, in some cases, positive thinking can be harmful.

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Can you actually go through life without labeling what happens to you as "good" or "bad"? Sure you can. But you have to train yourself not to do it. You have been conditioned to think of what happens to you as being either bad or good. And you can de-condition yourself. It is neither easy nor fast, but it is possible.

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Let's say you break your leg. Yes, there is some unpleasant stuff you have to do -- like having a doctor set the broken bone and going to therapy when the cast comes off. But the real unpleasantness in this situation is what you inflict on yourself: "Why did this have to happen to me? Bad things always come my way. I am in such pain." All of that is simply baggage. You don't have to pick up this load -- and the only reason you do is because you were never told that you don't have to.

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I am telling you now. Don't pick up that useless burden. Don't label what happens to you as "bad." Then you won't need positive thinking -- and much of the stress in your life will simply disappear. Poof! Just like that.

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[Dr. Srikumar Rao is the author of the new book Happiness at Work -- Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful, No Matter What. Visit www.srikumarsrao.com to read more of his articles and to buy the book. You can also follow Dr. Rao on Twitter: @srikumarsrao.]