days are surely flying or i am in a special zone ;-)

Haven't made a post for 2 months now !!!!
Coming to think about it, I was a trifle busy these days. There are a lot of things occupying my mind and I am certainly not getting leisure time. At work front, things are looking good. NR has been too kind to me and work items have been motoring along well. Work hours have been a hell but that's ok. One can not get everything at the same time :-)

I am now focusing on Zen and I must credit Osho for this. Some time back I was very confused. I had become certain that there can't be an entity like a God that humans have envisaged and that i have praying to all my life. But I also did not want to become nihilistic, completely ignoring everything around me and living like a thinking automaton. I don't want to entertain negative thoughts but if I reject everything about a supreme power then there won't be any lofty goals to aspire to. This life is too evil, too churlish to believe in. Then I read an article by Osho in which he made almost similar arguments and exhorted his followers to try out Zen, a philosophy which does not force any god down your throat. And I obtained D T Suzuki's book on Zen almost by serendipity. I loved its initial chapters and I tried some of the things that he had outlined. And seriously I loved them. I am still very ignorant about zazen but what ever I have learnt about it, it is certainly something I would like to master.

why do i need a god?

Why would someone need a god? someone to pray to? someone to look forward to, for help, for succour? It is so easy to blame the fallout of your actions (executed due to your choices) to a higher power. That is why the concept of god has been so popular throughout the history of mankind. Someone to be feared, someone who would judge us one day, someone who would either welcome us to the gardens of eden or who would push us to penitentiary. All my life I have been fearful of earning God's wrath. All my life I have prayed to a higher power for blessing, so that difficulties can be surmounted by some divine power, so that I can be saved from unsavoury incidents, so that I can always get the best of everything, so that I can get love, so that I can be appreciated for my work. Nietsze had said long time back that god was dead, that he has been dead for a long time. Osho said that if there is no god for you, then learn to live with that empty space. William Bramley says that the concept of god was created by an alien race to keep us humans under control. So the final burning question is - is there a higher power? Should we pray to him? Will He ever manifest Himselft to us? Will it be also vengeful or will it be merciful? And what if there is no such higher power? Will that make our lives harder to live? So, was G. right? that an evil magician has put us under a spell so that we only focus on day to day life and not focus on our spiritual growth.

random number generators

Of late, there have been many concerns, raised in general by our disgruntled operators, that the random number being generated is not good enough. We have been using java's secure random generator which is very very good and so the possibility of someone guessing the next no in sequence is impossibly low. But I was asked to do some searches for some other algorithms and so it began. In the very first search I found out that there are much better algorithms available openly like mersenne twister or xor shift rng with huge period and good randomness. I found that xor shift rng algorithm can be easily coded and so after some more searches, the code was ready. We launched it on the test machine and I set the sample size to 2000 (pretty low, but that is what our operators do, take the latest 2000 values, i know it is pretty weird but...). When I compared the 2 results, one from the secure random generator and one from the xor shift rng, the results looked more or less same. There were some results which were favoured more, while there were some which were not favoured at all. Then I increased the sample size to 300000 and let it run. This time when I compared the result, the xor shift rng's results did look more balanced as the count of individual results was more or less same to the average count that should have come. As of now we will put in the changes to only 1 game and then we will see.

are we slave race, really?

These many years I had been bothered about the lack of control seen in our kind, the kind of urgency that we display, the utter lack of peace at any moment, the violence and aggression exhibited, the thieving nature, the aggrandising characteristic. It almost seems like our race is doomed, that it would be better for everyone if we all would just be killed, be exterminated. On top of that, I did not understand at all the same behavior exhibited by our so called gods, the vengeful nature, the extreme punishment meted out by them. And this was true for all religions.
Recently I read The Gods of Eden by William Bramley and I must say that a lot of my questions were answered. Basically he says that human race was created as a slave race in exact replica of our creators who took pains to make us as dumb as possible so that we can keep on doing what they expected us to do without us trying to emulate them and become some sort of competitors to them. This is exactly the same thing stated by Guirdjeff that we all are sleeping because some magician wants us to live but not to break the shackles and become free ourselves. This idea can easily be stretched to the kind of mean monstrous machines as seen in movie Matrix but the truth is far closer home. Mr Bramley quotes extensively from ancient scriptures and a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense. It finally made me to discard the last remnants of the god like figure ingrained in my psyche. It was much easier for me this time to discard what I had learnt all my life. The worst part was when I ran into some enormous difficulty. If this would have happened 3 years back, I would have taken refuge in my god. But this time around, it was first a bit of shock that I don't have anyone to turn around and expect to be protected. Then the realization made me a lot sadder because from now onwards it is just me. I am still curious about the true nature of mine and whether I should identify myself with my self (?) or with my mind. And it has been fascinating to suddenly interrupt a train of thoughts and to think about whose voice was it, my ego's, my mind's or really my true self.

cars 2 is boring

on an aside, we saw the cars 2 today and it was definitely a bad movie. there are some sequences that are good, especially the starting sequence involving the mcmissile but then the movie goes for a free spiral downwards. there is no story, no plot and seriously mater was irritating :-)
that actually set me thinking. i have been planning a novel and have spent some time thinking about characters. what i lack is a definite storyline, which will connect all the events coherently. let me just put it this way - it has been very very tough. writing paragraphs and sentences is easy. conjuring up conversation is hugely difficult. making it real is frighteningly impossible. so i should not be too harsh on bad movies or bad books. at least they tried.

where have i been?

last time i checked myself, i was doing ok in this world, was reasonably fit (mentally as well as physically) and things were looking rather well. then the news came that our company has merged with another. that event caused so many ripples, created so much turbulence that it is only today that i remember myself again. what have i been doing? creating games, yes. developed a game resembling rat keno, no mean feat here :-)
worked hard, watched movies, read books. but it was not me. i don't think you will understand it, but it was me on an auto pilot. it was me all right doing things, but not in complete control of myself. with things happening quickly, the mind automatically steps forward and starts driving things and I, the real me, goes in hiding, safe in the belief that all is well. so where does that leave me and in what state?

lost symbol and other books

I know that I am very late, this book has already made ripples and Dan Brown has won many accolades, but still, having just finished the book today, I must say I was impressed. Da Vinci code was a much better read, but this book is also very good, though the preaching at the end started getting on my nerves :-)
Marrying the concept of science as we understand and mysticism as experienced by mystics has always fascinated people. Some time back I got an opportunity to go thru PD Ouspensky's works and he was basically trying the same, trying to understand this world as it is truly, not as is felt by our senses and is given shape by our mind, but as it is, in its real form. There were some amazing observations. Finally I found the courage to read the Beelzebub's books (G's book) and it was hard to understand. I think G's intention was to create a Bible kind of book, full of parables with layers and layers of meaning hidden, sometimes in word play, sometimes obscured by the way the words have been used. Very very difficult to understand and on top of that, the implicit assertion that he knew the secret history of mankind and some really tall claims as to why mankind lost its way were very very hard to digest. Finally the only thing driving me thru that book was to inculcate in me an attitude to tolerate something which my mind was rejecting as bullshit.
After all these readings and meditation, the only thing I am certain of is that I am totally and thoroughly confused. I agree with the sentiment that nothing is secret and that everything is freely available. You need the eyes to find what you seek. And to develop that vision, you have to work very very hard, first to unlearn and then to learn.