I have seen God!!!

This could be a bit unsettling to read... but thats what reality is so many times...
Just happened to watch this program on Discovery the other day. They were showing a pair of twins who were born with their bodies joined above their waist and how the doctors saved their lives.
These twins were born with their bodies joined in a hugging position. If you can imagine two children hugging each other, the part of bodies from abdomen to the lower neck would come in contact, this was the area where these two were joined.
Doctors had to take up a process of surgically separating their bodies.
Before taking up the process, the team of doctors took all kinds of scans and x-rays and digitally created a 3D model of how their bodies, bones, organs, and each and every blood vessel was internally connected. With a 100% preparation and knowing everything about the childrens' bodies, the doctors started the separation process.
Somewhere halfway through the process, as they were about to separate the chests, they saw something, something that shocked their entire medical knowledge.
For the first time in the entire diagnosis, they noticed that the two hearts were beating in absolute synchronization. So far they didn't know why, but now they were able to see the reason staring at them.
The two hearts were connected. They were connected by a piece of flesh, it was not a muscle, not a blood vessel, nothing that could have shown up on the hundreds of scans taken. It looked like a piece of pink chewing gum stretched really thin and it was connecting both the hearts. This most insignificant piece of skin had kept the two hearts connected and they were beating as one.
Doctors did not know what could happen if they cut this connection. One or both the hearts could stop beating. Scared and praying (yes, doctors do pray), the doctors cut the skin and thats when it happened...
Just upto one second before the skin was cut, the two hearts were beating as one. The moment the connection was cut, instantly, the two hearts started beating at their own rhythm.
Thats where I think I saw God.
I don't remember much of the program after that scene, I know the children lived and are now healthy. I never watched that kind of programs before and have never seen it again, but somehow I saw it that day.
Even now if I recall, I can see that scene, two hearts beating as one this second, and are beating at two different tunes at the very next second.
What was that factor which had kept these two hearts beating as one? Infact, what is that factor which keeps our own heart beating? Agreed... the medical science says that there is an electrical current that gets triggered and so on.
But what on earth can create such electricity which we can carry inside us without getting electrocuted?
How is it that millions and trillions of electrical signals get triggered inside my head without me knowing about it?
What keeps the lungs pumping even when I'm asleep and not thinking about breathing?
What is it that repairs any cuts which happen on my skin?
What is it that somehow brings the right idea to my mind at the right time?
What an immaculate machinery has been created in form of human body.
And the best part is that most of us have not done anything in creating this body. It was given to us.
God is in this body... God is this body.

The most saddening part is when people start abusing this very body by drinking, smoking and taking all sorts of wrong things which our body is not designed for.

I realised that I have seen God and see him everyday when I look into my own eyes in the mirror.

Have you???

Knowledge or Intelligence??

Red means stop… all of us know it. This is Knowledge. To stop at Red is Intelligence.

Speed limit board of 60 means I should drive within 60 kmph. This is knowledge. Driving within the limit is intelligence.

I should not get angry… this is knowledge. Not getting angry is intelligence.

Debit what come in, Credit what goes out… any accountant knows this. This is knowledge. Creating a proper accounting entry is intelligence.

I was clarifying the doubts of one of my students the other day. The way I normally do it is that I ask a series of questions back to the students and they end up finding the answer on their own.

The one thing that I have learnt through this approach is that most of the time the knowledge required to solve the problem is available with us. We are just not able to apply the knowledge correctly.

Either we don’t apply the knowledge we have, or we apply it in the wrong place in the wrong way.

Knowledge used in the right place, at the right time and in the right manner is Intelligence.

The same logic applies everywhere, at work, at home, in the kitchen, on the road… everywhere.

It doesn’t matter how much knowledge I have in my life. The pace of my growth is defined by my intelligence and intelligence is nothing but the ability to apply the right knowledge at the right time, at the right place and in the right manner.

Lets move towards becoming more intelligent rather than being knowledgeable.

The leaf

I went to pick up the bike I had parked under a tree this Sunday morning. As I started the ignition, a dry leaf floated down from the tree and landed on the petrol tank. The falling motion of the leaf was so graceful that I had to pause for a moment till it actually landed.
Looking up, I saw a huge tree. The leaves in this tree were of different shades between deep green and brown depending on their age. Some leaves were small, tender and fresh just a few days old and some leaves were totally dried up about to fall. On one end, this leaf had fallen from the tree, but somewhere else on the same tree a few new leaves were budding. All this time, some birds were sitting on the tree and some were flying away. In the process, they were breaking away some of the green and young leaves. There were a few leaves being eaten away by worms and insects.
All this time, the tree was swaying gently totally oblivious to what was happening to the leaves. Just because a leaf fell off, the tree did not die, it continued to sway.
Just because a leaf fell, the other leaves did not stop living.

My teacher once told me a story...
Just imagine - There is this train, the origin and the destination of this train are not known. All we know is that the train is going somewhere. We are already travelling on this train towards some destination. On the way, at some station in between, someone boarded the train and joined us in the journey. We get excited, we get to know each other and establish a connection with the fellow passenger. Now, his station arrives and he has to get off.
Now, just because this fellow passenger is gone, do we mourn forever? Do we go into depression? Does that mean the end of our journey?
NO... we continue to travel till we reach our station.

Now, just imagine that each station on the train is represented by a day. A date. For example, on 11th December 1929, a passenger ("X") boarded the train. Another passenger joined on 09th May 1960. Another passenger came on 22nd November 1982 and so many other passengers boarded the train.
26th January 2003 was the destination for this passenger "X" and she got off the train. For the second and the third passenger and for so many more, the journey is still on.
Another passenger boarded this train on 02nd October 1969 and got off the train on 30th January 1948.

Did the train stop going? No. Oh yes, the other passengers miss the passengers who got off at some station, but the train goes on.

Some people, some things, some relationships come to our life for a purpose, and they are destined to leave once the purpose is served.

Maybe one day, even my station will come, a leaf will drop from the tree. But thats the way it is meant to be.
The tree lives on...
The train goes on...

I do miss the passengers who got off during my journey... the leaves which fell during my lifetime... but there is no pain.

I don't know where I will use this learning, but what I do know is that this learning will make my journey a little more peaceful.

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I know that quite a few people (known and unknown) visit the blog and find it useful in some way or the other, however, it will be more helpful for me to know who visits.

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Why is the last mile the longest???

You appeared for that exam and the result was supposed to come on the internet after 2 months. As soon as you came out of the exam, you knew that you have to wait for 60 days.
45 days passed by without much effort. From day 46 onwards you started checking the results page every day.
Day 50 onwards 3 times a day.
By day 55 you were checking the results every one hour.
Day 58 the results page became your home page.
Day 59 you had glued your bums to the chair, left hand to the keyboard and right hand to the mouse.
Day 60 you almost went to the place where the server had been hosted for the results page.


You fasted one of those days as it was a festival... the whole day... you were not supposed to eat anything from morning 6 o'clock to evening 8. It was no effort to go through the whole day. But somewhere around 7 in the evening, you started feeling hungry. The last one hour was the longest hour of your life. And the time from 7:45 to 8 was crawling so slow that you almost pushed the hands of the clock to 8 o'clock.


You were supposed to drive down from Bangalore to Chennai (350 kms approx). The first 200-250 km were a breeze, after that you actually started cursing "why is Chennai not coming yet"... as you reached the outskirts of the city you became more and more desparate, traffic starts moving slower, signals turn red and the last few kilometers seem to take longer than the entire journey...


You participated in a 10k marathon... the last kilometer was the most difficult to pass...


You got engaged to him / her... the wedding was supposed to happen 1 year later, first nine months went by and as you got closed to the D day, time seemed to slow down and you were waiting so desparately for the day to come.

In all the above, and many more experiences of life, the one thing that seems to be common is that the end of any process often seems to become more difficult, lengthier than the process itself.
In all the above examples, the last mile of the journey was the longest.

Seen carefully, in all these cases, the process has not slowed down, its just that we become more and more impatient and desperation seems to set in. This desperation is what makes life difficult.
Like my teacher once said - "Desperation is the cause of suffering, drop desperation and you can transcend suffering."

I don't know what intellectual or sophisticated lesson I will take from this post, but I know for sure that I will maintain my patience and go through the entire process without any desperation... be it exams, results, journey or waiting for my own marriage :)

I don't do things, things happen through me...

The other day I sat to write a blog on some topic, somehow I was not able to proceed beyond two lines. Finally I ended up choosing a different topic which came first to my mind and wrote about it ("Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa"). Next day, I spoke to a loved one and that person told me about something which was happening in that person's life and how relevant the post was. Maybe that day, the blog was meant to be a solution for somebody.

One of my students asked me a question on a problem given in the text book. Till now I had tried a few times but was not able to solve that one problem, I always used to believe that either the question was wrong or there was a misprint. When this student asked me the question, I still tried to solve it one last time. As I was explaining the solution, I saw something in the question, got some idea from god knows where and tried some new approach, and alas... the solution was staring at me, even now I don't know why I had missed that approach earlier or why I tried it this time with this student. All I know is that the student was supposed to get an answer through me and he got it.

In both the above examples and at many more times, it was not I who was doing something, but it was rather that something was happening through me.

I'm sure we all go through this experience when we do something which we know we cannot do otherwise.

• You got some very difficult task in the office that day and you had no clue how to do it, suddenly you stumbled on some document, or somehow you figured out a way and the problem was solved. You still don't know how you did it, knowing yourself in all honesty, you know you couldn't have pulled it off.
• You went to write the exam and there was this googly problem which carried 20% of the total marks, having no choice, you started solving it and somehow you cracked it... later you see that this question fetched you those critical marks you needed in the exam. You still don't know how you cracked it.
• There were sudden guests in the house and you don't know what to prepare as nothing was there in the house. You scavanged the fridge to find a pack of krackjacks, two onions, a lonely tomato and some cheese. Helplessly and feeling afraid you prepared something like crackers with toppings, thinking that it would fail to qualify even as an appetizer. Guess what... the guests actually loved it more than anything you have ever made before... you still don't know how you did it.'
• The way you avoided that accident by some amazing presence of mind...
• Somehow you happened to be there and your blood group seemed to match and you saved a life.

Yes... there are times when we do things which we know we can't do on our own. The fact is that at all those times, we are not doing anything but the things are happening through us. In all such cases, there has to be some invisible factor that is working through us which we don't understand. Its just that we were supposed to be there at that time to do that act. If we had not been there, someone else would have done the job.

I know what your cunning mind is thinking "Gulshan, if we don't do anything and everything happens through us, then what is the use of running around so much and trying to do things, best is to sit in one place and do nothing... things will keep happening through us"

My dear, look back at all those experiences... whether it was workplace, exam, kitchen, road or any other place, it was always you who made the initial effort and then the actions happened through you. You started attempting the question paper and then the answer came through you, you started working and the result came through you, you started thinking and the solution came through you. It is always you who started and some force which finished the job.

If you had stopped even before starting, the answers could have been very different.

So, looks like the second and more important half of this understanding is that:

"I don't do things, things happen through me, provided I put in the efforts expected from me"

Now your cunning mind will say "So Gulshan, I really think that fellow is supposed to get beaten up through me. I will not beat him, he will be beaten through me."

All I can say to that is "BEWARE"