Number of words: 84 Another well known example of spontaneous intuitive insights are jokes. In the split second where you understand a joke you experience a moment of ‘enlightenment’. It is well known that this moment must come spontaneously, that it cannot be achieved by ‘explaining’ the joke, i.e. by intellectual analysis. Only with a … Read more

Number of words: 151 This way of basing all theories firmly on experiment is known as the scientific method and we shall see that it has its counterpart in Eastern philosophy. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, was fundamentally different in that respect. Although Greek philosophers had extremely ingenious ideas about nature which often come … Read more

Number of words: 655 Throughout history, it has been recognized that the human mind is capable of two kinds of knowledge, or two modes of consciousness, which have often been termed the rational and the intuitive, and have traditionally been associated with science and religion, respectively. In the West, the intuitive, religious type of knowledge … Read more

Number of words: 688 The birth of modern science was preceded and accompanied by a development of philosophical thought which led to an extreme formulation of the spirit/matter dualism. This formulation appeared in the seventeenth century in the philosophy of Rene Descartes who based his view of nature on a fundamental division into two separate … Read more

Number of words: 102 The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in lonia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their … Read more

Number of words: 98 Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it . as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and … Read more

Number of words: 829 The Muslims constitute about 12 percent of our population. On every index of development – income, education, health, share in government services, share in private enterprise, role in self employment, membership in legislatures – the level of their achievement is substantially below their share of the population. The only index on … Read more

Number of words: 691 It is the overwhelming showing of the Muslim League in 1946 that constitutes the basis of the  joint Muslim League Sangh Parivar thesis that the Muslims of India brought about the Partition. But let us look at the facts a little  more closely. The british Indian province in which the Muslims … Read more

Number of words: 146 Communal politics in sind, as elsewhere in the subcontinent, came into play only after the collapse of the non-cooperation movement in 1921-22 Mahatma Gandhi had launched the movement in 1919, with the restoration of the Islamic Khilafat of the major objective to bring Muslim on to the bandwagon of the all-India … Read more

Number of words: 292 The origins of our secularism lie in the encounter between the Aryans and the Dravidians at the commencement of our recorded history as a civilization. It is well illustrated in the contrast between the treatment meted out to Eklavya at the expressed later in the same epic over Siva teaching the … Read more