Satyamev Jayate

By Feburay 2007, I noted that my mind was still usually tense and that this tense feeling could not be slept off. But at times the mind was also serene. The heaviness of mind together with a lethargic physical state, a runny nose during the day and a tendency to doze off or sleep whenever there was nothing for me to do made me conscious that I was suffering from a mental disorder. I usually came alive physically and mentally after about an hour or two of working at Shell Wigmore where I had to deal with the minute to minute reality of customer service. But I did not wish to go back onto medication for I had not felt any the better with the Risperidone and being on medication was not a long-term proposition for it could lead to undesirable physical side-effects. I wished to achieve my sanity by mind control. I also wished to see whether in the absence of medication there would be a recurrence of the psychotic episode for which I was 'taken into care' by the considerate British State in 2004. Further, I wished to live in the way that I was created.

Rashmi kept pointing out to me from time to time, I had needed hospitalisation in 2004 because of the severity of my delusions then, such as my considering the phone calls that she received from friends and colleagues as being UK Big Brother-prompted calls to harass me; my attempt to travel to France without a proper passport; my distrusting workmen who used to come to our house to effect repairs; my doubting whether certain visitors from India who came to our house had been sent by the Indian government to spy on me; etc. Some of my interpretations of those happenings, described in detail earlier, might have been legitimate concerns but others were undoubtedly delusions. My present analysis of the events was that my mind had been so predisposed into believing that Vishnu was the all pervading universal Being to be seen as such, and that things that happened to me had a Divine purpose behind it, that the mind was examining all matters in order to understand the manifestation of the so called Ultimate Reality. Everything had to be examined, including mechanical things such as the functioning of the central heating boiler, the motor car and the computer to see if and when these would suffer a breakdown thereby causing a problem to be negotiated. Similarly, the house and its contents remained uninsured for a few years as we could not afford it, so would there be a burglary or structural damage? I got over that period of intense search over time but the residual mental illness had to be lived with and I had to cope with its downside healthwise.

It was true that there were times when I was envious of normal people enjoying life optimistically going about their day-to-day work unaware or oblivious to questions that had haunted me: this is how I had been before I entered my forties when I had a good career and went about my business with a clear mind dealing with the day-to-day realities of scientific research and playing sport. Now seeing former colleagues in well to do positions in their scientific careers I wondered to what heights I could have risen if only I had followed a different path. However, on reflection I was happy for my mental experience, especially since it had led me to delving into the important questions of our existence with an examination of information that I had been brought up with and that surrounding me: delusions or reality they form the human experience and cannot be ignored if only because mental disorders (ie those not conforming to the needs of a society) needed to be understood by societies and governments who had to take these into account when formulating and implementing policies for the welfare of the people.

At my appointment on 7 February 2007, I was somewhat surprised when Dr Shobha said that she was discharging me from under her care as I had come off my medication and had kept up with my 48 hour shift work at Shell Wigmore. I told her that I needed to keep my job going. She commented that I looked well for my 50 years of age, but that I should not over work and that health and family were the important considerations to be borne in mind. She also said that she had not read my memoirs as she could not find time to do so but would keep them confidential in her files. It seemed that I had inundated her with unanswerable questions and this may partly have led to her discharging me. I did not question her decisions but felt that I did not wish my case details to remain suppressed in her files. I was minded to now send the memoirs to the University of Greenwich for its comments, for the proverb 'the pen is mightier than the sword' came to mind. On reaching home I spoke to the Vice Chancellor's Secretary on the telephone in order to send the document by email and drafted a letter as follows: I am writing to you as a former employee of the University of Greenwich who had suffered from a kind of a mental disorder since 1998. The University could not however wait for the outcome of my medical consultation and treatment and had inexplicably dismissed me from service prematurely for alleged gross misconduct. I am now happy to say that my medical troubles are a thing of the past and I have been accordingly discharged by the Consultant Psychiatrist. The full details of my experiences have been written down in the attached memoirs which I am sending you for the University's comments and records as is appropriate for this matter. I aim to publish my memoirs in due course so that any concerns you have on its content should be expressed to me at this stage. In view of the update that I have provided I wish to return to working for the University of Greenwich as a scientist or in some other capacity. I have just turned 50 years of age and therefore still have much to contribute in terms of imparting or using my knowledge, and with the great environmental and international terrorism concerns of today a human being owes it to mankind to do what one can for world development, world peace and security at home and abroad. Is there any chance therefore of me being re-employed by the University of Greenwich?'

Rashmi however dissuaded me from engaging in fresh communications with the University of Greenwich for fear that it might lead to the court matter surfacing again. I therefore decided to let the 'sleeping dogs lie' and look out for another opportunity to publicise my memoirs, which must be made available for all to read sooner or later. Rashmi was pleased that I had received a clean bill of health from Dr Shobha. I wrote to the Disability Allowance authorities to suspend the further payment of this allowance to me.

Truth is not what one chooses to believe, truth is what is represented by the actual happenings of life. Actions speak louder than words and these actions generate the evidence for ones beliefs and future actions. Although I believed in an after life, I was still concerned that success of a particular way of life should be judged at the material sphere also, putting aside the idea that seeking a better afterlife was the goal of human existence because this outcome was not available for objective assessment by man. The UK and India had contrasting ways of life and I considered myself fortunate that I had been born into a culture of religiosity in India but had spent my adult life in the UK with its history and culture of world domination physically and economically and a present population consisting largely of non-believers in God. I had the opportunity to study and compare the two systems.

At an individual level one could measure success by assessing happiness from wealth and fame acquisition, good health, longevity, or the satisfaction derived from the fulfillment of ones duties, or all of these. It was generally accepted that money could not buy happiness, and despite the poverty of India visitors have remarked on the gentle culture of the people and their apparent happiness with life. It did not appear to me that suicide rates were any higher there than in the UK. This was because people believed in fate, which is a religious idea. At a wider level however one must address the issue of how the UK ruled over the world producing great scientists such as Newton and Faraday. It was clear from history since before the Norman invasion that British governmental philosophy was guided by the doctrine of the survival of the cleverest and physically fittest to enable the exploitation of world resources for the comfort of its people, and this national path was given renewed impetus following the findings of another of its scientist Charles Darwin, that of the survival of the fittest by natural selection. Perhaps people were more religious in the UK centuries ago than they are in the twenty-first century and nation benefited from these creative people. And the Almighty must have had plans for mankind to develop and also provide a thread of unity for the future of the world in permitting the English to rule the globe for so long.

India was a large diverse country with hundreds of kingdoms but came together to eject its foreign colonial power largely through the efforts of a deeply religious person, Mahatma Gandhi. And the country that fed housed and clothed 350 million people at independence in 1947 was now successfully looking after the welfare of a billion citizens with the economy booming at a nearly 10 per cent growth rate. It was therefore clear that religiosity had not been an impediment to the people as a whole, that is, it was not a 'cost' as Professor Stephen Dawkins seems to think. India is without doubt the most developed economic and military power to have emerged from among the countries that had previously been colonised by western imperialists.

In contrast, my observation was the population of the UK is generally not happy. And what a culture to prescribe to the world. The UK had the highest crime rate in Europe and teenage pregnancies rates seem to be the highest in the world with 6000 abortions in the month of January 2007 alone. Young people were encouraged to leave their family homes soon after their teens and without adequate parental guidance and support they soon found themselves in the doldrums. A large number sought to enhance their life by engaging in sex, alcohol and drug abuse. The government actually promoted alcoholism with the extension in public house opening hours and gambling with the opening up of the economy to Las Vegas style supercasinos. Further, the nation had been 'invaded' by foreign cultures from across the globe and this trend was continuing with the recent influx of immigrants from the countries of Europe. Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Latvians, Lithuanians, Polish, Portuguese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Somalis, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Brazilians, Australians, you name it they were all in the UK, with its indigenous Scottish, Welsh Irish and Cornish nationalities. In a bid to reinvigorate its world supremacy endeavours the UK experimented with economic theories to bring in a plentiful supply of cheap labour that the indigenous population was unable to generate, and international finance, so that it allowed mass immigration and faciliatated its companies to be taken over by foreign firms (such as the acquisition of the Corus steel business by Tata of India). Its natural resources, like minerals, timber, natural gas and fisheries were nearing exhaustion. And the nation's recent attempts at re-establishing itself as a colonial military power by interfering in the affairs of other countries failed to produce the desired results in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In African countries it's influence was now being replaced by that of China.

The foreigners settled in the UK altered the traditional British culture and were not generally patriotic towards the country they live in. There was therefore a debate in the country on the pros and cons of multiculturalism and the promotion of certain British values to achieve the necessary social cohesion and for generating the community spirit needed to maintain UK's strategic interests around the world. The indigenous British people did not tolerate multiculturalism as was seen in the manner in which some of them bullied Indian Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty with racist taunts in a Television Reality show, Celebrity Big Brother, and from my own experiences at the University of Greenwich and outside. So what kind of culture did the UK represent now from the one prevailing 100 years ago? A mixed bag, uncertain of its national values and goals and tending to become a Police State in order to cope with its problems. And in the long term the indigenous population will become even more diluted so that it would hardly have demonstrated the concept of the survival of the most powerful 'species' the world has ever seen in action.

Of the two national states, the British therefore deserved the title of being the failed 'species', whereas the Indian 'species' has gone from strength to strength. The greatness of Hinduism is that it was tolerant of other belief systems and recognised that God may be approached and worshipped by numerous different paths. One was therefore justified in asking whether this spirituality produced India's strength as a nation and whether a religious way of living ones life may therefore be the most successful philosophy for both material and spiritual outcomes.

Professor Lord Robert Winston (Why do we believe in God?) questioned whether there was any evidence that the Divine Idea might be carried in our genes and indicated that the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) could be more biologically active in some people which could therefore be partly responsible for a religious bent in these people. He has further referred to evidence from studies of identical and non-identical twins that religious thinking or behaviour tended to be genetically linked, suggesting that it might confer comfort or other advantages that could form the basis for natural selection. Intrinsic religiosity - which seems to incorporate a notion of spirituality - was however much more likely to be inherited than extrinsic religiosity which tends to be a product of a person's environment and direct parental influence. Could a higher level of the population of India be genetically predisposed to a religious way of life than in the UK? And how could this gene/receptor be reconciled with the idea of the unseen soul and advaita? A likely candidate for the genetic basis of religiosity would be a truth gene, for truth is the basis of survival at the material level so that it would explain man's development from the hunter-gatherer life to the complex world in which he lived now, and a quest for the truth is the fundamental basis of spirituality.

Given that everything is delusional a belief in God was the only sanctuary for humans to bring some peace of mind needed to cope with life's hurdles and its injustices. Delusions must affect the general population since from childhood one was subjected to all kinds of information on what the wider world was like, what one should think, how one should behave, and what one should be doing in life. Man acted according to the beliefs generated by his observations and upbringing and on a particular day could easily be deluded into actions that were unjustified causing harm to others and leading to self harm too. Drugs were of virtually no use in alleviating delusions. The cure came from being shown the truth. That was why a primary duty of a state towards its citizens was the provision of good education facilities. But how did one attain truth when societies and States generally functioned on the basis of delusional beliefs and the education provided was flawed? These societies consequently had a high level of crime and a youth in bewilderment, as seen in the UK whose education system was now oriented towards producing the skills required by the economy rather than for the mental development of the citizen. Its solution was then institutionalise offenders in prisons or mental institutions and serve anti-social behaviour orders on the young.

Religious establishments provided another source of knowledge that guided the individual through life. The major religions had the shortcoming that people became categorised into the pigeon holes of being either a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or others, and the important issues of the truth of right and wrong actions and intrinsic religiosity among followers became overlooked. Some humans got to be known as avatars in their own lifetimes and others became gurus and spiritual leaders by virtue of being born to perceive a very high level of knowledge from an early age. Individual priests provided education to their communities and societies, and were found everywhere especially in India where the Brahmin caste also conducted religious ceremonies and rituals as the guardians of Vedic knowledge which few would otherwise have had time to read and understand. Depending on the religious teachings received individuals may live a fruitful life or one based on delusions.

In the absence of a good guru, knowledge could also come from the self-purging of ones delusions to achieve a sanity of mind through ones life experiences, a process that should be described as the hard way in which the truth came from God Himself. Without a truthful attitude in ones thoughts and behaviour there could be no realisation of God. From within Hinduism Vaishnavism was the truly universal religion for it encompassed the celebration and preservation of creation, the love of the Divine, duty, and the acceptance of Fate as its essential components. The philosophy 'I am the master of my fate' was untrue as a person was driven by circumstances and the knowledge that he had gained up to any given moment in time, which was the product of his circumstances.

Since I came to the UK at a young age and lived my adult life in the country I had benefited from the tremendous educational opportunities that had come my way in science, economics, agriculture and general knowledge from watching excellent television programmes. As a British citizen by naturalisation and since we as a family had chosen to continue to live in the UK, for the time being at least, (and with Rupa being a British citizen by birth) I decided that the truth must also be that I was effectively supporting the UK state in its objectives and therefore must work for a better future in the country and for this country rather than harp on about India's greatness. To me the multicultural complexion of UK represented a microcosm of the United Nations and therefore could in the future become a force for good in the world by demonstrating how different races and cultures might live together in harmony for the common good of mankind and of the planet Earth by the promotion of sustainable lifestyles and infra-structure development. It remained to be seen if this nation would adapt itself towards that end or continue with its path towards selfish consumerism fuelled by imperialistic foreign policies. Having checked various websites again for career opportunities and finding none of much interest I however wondered whether I may have to be content with a future of being a mere observer.