The Euthanasia Debate and My Views

Some months ago, there was a Supreme Court verdict against euthanasia in the case of Ms Aruna Shanbagh, an unfortunate person who has been leading a vegetable like existence. Much comment has occurred in blogs and in social media with good arguments on either side, the pro and the anti proponents. More recently, there was a discussion in Twitter in the Big Battle and I was vehemently opposed to euthanasia.

On the one hand we have a lady who in the prime of her life was brutally raped and left for dead by a cruel person who, if he did feel any remorse, did not bother to come forward and take the punishment due to him. This man will no doubt suffer the fruits of his karma, but the law has not been able to trace him out as yet. So how does one deal with the suffering that Aruna has been going through and the suffering of the nurses and her sister, who must feel for Aruna every time they change her or clean her up. The nurses of the hospital where Aruna now exists were actually glad that the Supreme Court ruled against Euthanasia. This piece is a purely emotional one and does not even attempt to talk legally. Our Supreme Court has wonderful jurists who have decided on weighty matters of the State in an impartial manner and I cannot even hope to come near them in my understanding of Law.

Am reminded of the film Legally Blonde, where the first Professor whose class the heroine Elle Woods attends, says “The Law is Reason Free from Passion.” This is repudiated by Elle Woods, played endearingly by Reese Witherspoon, in the convocation, when she says that passion is a key ingredient in the study of Law and of life itself. I would rephrase it as “The Law is Reason free from Emotion.” We are emotional creatures and the Hon. Judges of the SC can hardly be free of it. They have delivered a judgement based on their understanding backed by detailed knowledge of the Law and they have had the strength of mind to go by the Law and Law alone in delivering judgement.

But we, poor sods, with a limited knowledge of law and driven entirely by the emotions of the moment take sides on the debate of whether or not Aruna’s life should be taken to end her suffering. The Judges decided against, refusing in effect, to be party to killing her.

On a purely personal level, there have been times when I have seen pain and suffering in people and animals. My own daughter, who was four years at that time, went through a lot of pain when she suffered, and finally succumbed to burns caused by a lamp which we Hindus light in our homes. My wife and I did our best to save her life and failed. It was really sad to see her suffer the way she did. Yet, we saw her courage in the way she did not cry even when in great pain. Her ordeal lasted for four days and our grief is for a lifetime. What would my feelings have been if she had suffered over a longer period of time, due to any other reason, say an incurable and painful ailment? Trying to project my responses to an imaginary situation, I would say that I would have definitely have done my best to keep her alive and to cure her. Never for a moment could I have even thought of taking away her life.

That was my daughter. What about the elderly and sick? My grandmother suffered for 9 long years after she suffered a fall that made her bedridden for the rest of her life. She was in her 80s when this happened, but her children, my father and his siblings, cared for her and their love was evident in the way they looked after her. I am sure that much as they would not have liked to see her suffer, none of them would ever have thought of taking her life. Sadder was the fact that she was a spry old lady even at 84 or so and was very active.

We had two dogs till the end of 2009. The elder of the two, Dennis or Dinesh, died in 2008 after a brief illness when he suddenly became weak and stopped eating. Yet we took him to the vet every day, gave him drips and injections in the hope that he would get well. Dennis was 13, which in equivalent human years is 90+. At no time did we consider putting him to sleep.

The bottom-line for me is that we humans are driven by love for our near and dear ones. At no time will we contemplate taking away the lives of those really loved by us. In the case of Aruna too, as seen through the prism of my emotions and thoughts, the courageous nurses of the hospital where she resides have grown to love her. Her sister too lives in the hope that some time or the other Aruna will come out of her coma. There is no objectivity where love is involved. Only outsiders can talk of being objective till something strikes them closer to home. Whether or not we agree with the Supreme Court judgement, we must all salute love and courage exhibited by the nurses and Aruna’s sister who have never allowed their hopes for her recovery to die.

McDougals Ahoy

( A Short Story by R.A.Krishna)

(This work is the copyright of the author and may not be reproduced, duplicated, printed or published, in print or through electronic media, without his permission)

President Wesley Douglas put a weary hand on his brow and asked his Secretary of State “What on earth is going on in Mars?” “Nothing we cannot handle Wes” said Raman his advisor and friend. Both gentlemen had been friends from college, the African American and the Indian whose family had been in the country for more than ten generations. With whites reduced to a minority and being addressed by pejorative such as Cauc, after Caucasian, America was a different place altogether. Hence, the African American and the Indian in the august presence of Lincoln and Jefferson.

Douglas was worried about what his sponsors, a group of companies led by the McDougal Corporation, would say with his next campaign for re-election to the Presidency only one year away in 2092. Ever since, 2015 Presidents were given only three-year terms and were expected to produce results within the first year itself. The Government could no longer afford the high costs of administration and every aspect of government activity had been taken over by the Corporations. Each department was given to one of the corporations to be run as a profit centre. There was a bit of trouble when several bureaucrats chose to commit suicide en masse rather than go through the painful process of relocation to bureaucratic Siberia. Nonetheless, the human race is adaptable and it was surprising how quickly things calmed down.

The American mission to Mars had gone in 2036 and it found intelligent life for the first time deep underground. Huge tunnels had been created, due to seismic activity in the planet, and the present inhabitants of Mars had got Oxygen within these tunnels, which preserved life. By tapping the sun’s energy on the surface and by a device, which let the sun’s energy flow direct from the source, they were able to create artificial lighting or a 'virtual sun' by which, they were able to grow plants for their food even there. The Martians had migrated from another planet and had therefore remained undetected by the various missions flown to that planet from Earth.

The Martians, who resembled human beings, were robust people as they lived entirely on grains, vegetables and fruits grown organically. They were extremely wise in their behaviour and had graduated from the kind of animal thinking that plagued Earth even at this stage. They were always blessed with abundance and did not have nor need any medium of exchange. Most things that were rationed in Earth, were there for the asking in Mars and there was no concept of lack there. From Earth, several missions had gone to Mars and most had been sponsored by the big Corporations who ran everything on Earth. The big names were Lepsy Cola, Loca Cola (derived from the Golden Oldie "Living La Vida Loca") and McDougal's, all of which were the successors to the erstwhile brands of the 20^th century. With pollution having spoiled most of earth, it was necessary to find an alternative source for supply of farm products to be made into the food products sold on Earth. Mars seemed a promising source, as people there lived a simple life and had not yet managed to pollute the planet. McDougals, the food processing kings of earth were looking to source their entire farm produce from Mars from the huge virtual dome they had made over 60,000 sq. km. The CO² heavy atmosphere of Mars created a conducive ambience for the purpose. The oxygen let off by the plants during the day could be recycled at night. They were also looking to tap the Martian markets and wean the Martians off food such as grain, vegetables and fruits and introduce them to their beef burgers, chicken nuggets etc. The big snag was the difference in the concept of value by the Earth based corporations and the Martians. Since the Martians had no wants beyond their immediate needs of food and shelter, the difficulty lay in making them want anything. However, in the best tradition of Dollaria (formerly USA) Multinationals, McDougals felt that creation of wants was only a matter of time. Since the Martians were unable to offer money, MC were looking to get produce in exchange for their burgers and fries.

Life was difficult for the McDougal Corporation as chickens and cows were not breeding because of radiation, contamination from Chernobyl and other such disasters, the last of which was the missile disaster that polluted the waters and land of most parts of Europe and America. The Internet hackers had indirectly been responsible for the disaster. After hackers had got into all the major E Mail sites such as Yahoo and Hotmail in 2000, they had got bolder and infiltrated the sites of establishments such as NASA, nuclear reactors and other such sensitive sites. The whole world was net enabled by 2005 and everyone depended on the Internet for their existence. Homemakers used the Internet for whiling away leisure time, that had grown in leaps and bounds, to surf, chat, play games with assorted strangers and for other purposes. It was possible to power appliances through the Internet. Microwave ovens, washing machines, dishwashers, TV sets, Stereos and every other device and its mother-in-law was net enabled. Soon however, the plague of hackers came to the homes of people, to those of the rich at first and then to every home. It became intolerable when washing machines and stereos came on of their own accord. It was difficult to get a night's sleep when it was rudely interrupted by the whirr of the washing machine or the loud boom of 1990s disco music. When the hackers were infiltrated by terrorist groups, the ICBM disaster happened in 2065, when Seoul and Shenzhen were wiped off the map by nuclear missiles that had been stored by the US Govt. and were controlled through the network. Someone managed to hack the President's password and activated the missiles. This led to reprisals by what was then called the People's Republic of China and the Democratic Republic of Korea. The nuclear carnage that followed led to large areas being rendered inhospitable for cultivation or any other use in Europe and America.

The White scourge, a disease that attacked those with a lower level of Melanin, had wiped off a large portion of the Caucasian population in the USA, or, as it was now called, Dollaria. Apparently, a diet of hamburgers and fries was not sufficient to create resistance from diseases. Whites became a minority and had a difficult time coping with their new-found status. The Corporations had a contingency plan, however, and a number of Indians and Hispanics as also African Americans had suddenly been inducted to the top echelons of the companies. The WTO had paved the way for American companies to swamp the markets of countries such as India. After these companies had patented the local foods such as idli, dosai and chapathis, no one was permitted to make these in India or any other part of the world. In 2022, the Indians could get no food except burgers, fries, pizzas and burritos. Even orthodox Hindus were unable to eat their traditional vegetarian food and had to start eating alien food with a liberal portion of meat to survive. Several orthodox Indians preferred to starve rather than eat the food available. The patenting of foods had led to riots in 2018, when the Indian Govt. under pressure to enforce patents had started shooting at sight anyone trying to make idlis or chapathis at home. In 2020, all the other Indian foods, which were listed in detail in " The Complete Glossary of Indian Cookery", were patented by a consortium of American and European food companies. The legal battles that resulted had been decided in favour of the corporations by the World Trade Organisation, the head of which retired comfortably with the substantial 'speed payment' made to him by the patent holders. His successor had the task of enforcing the patents and had managed to pressurise the Indian Govt. headed by the candidate put up by the Dependable Industries Ltd., to pass a law banning the preparation of food items patented anywhere in the world without a licence from the patent holders. DIL had managed to get several patents passed on as consideration for this law from the American consortium and had started a chain of dosai franchises all over India. Since the franchises were a monopoly and no Udipi restaurant could make this item, there was a hefty profit margin in it. Most of the owners of Udipi hotels had perforce to seek employment in the franchises which were owned and managed by the relatives and cronies of the controlling family of DIL.

By 2021, the entire chain of dosai franchises had been spun off as a separate company and the controlling family of DIL had become richer by $ 32 billion by the sale of this unit. The buyers were none other than the American consortium who decided against continuing this line. The line was revived only in 2032, when extreme obesity and high incidence of cardiac disease led to the corporation reviewing its policy of burgers and fries only for India. Apparently, medical studies in the 1990s had led to the conclusion that the traditional American diet quaintly termed then as 'junk food' was a health hazard. With the population of India having reduced considerably due to heart and other diseases caused by the change in dietary habits and the prevalence of the internet that led to Indians being stay at home creatures, there was a need to reverse the trend.

The other reason for interest in Mars was for growing newer strains of grain free of radiation, pollution and miscellaneous perils of earth life. The Corporation was also concerned that the patent laws applied only to Earth and this left it open to the risk of other corporations opening franchises in Mars and manufacturing foods and other items there for sale on Earth. With the costs of transport having come down considerably after expiry of the patent on the Solaric, a device that cost barely $2 and could be fitted on to anything, there was the possibility of anyone being able to go to space. The Solar power device, had been developed independently in 2008 by a maverick scientist called Tomas Bjorkmann of Denmark who had declared his intention of giving his patent free to anyone who wanted it. Bjorkmann died mysteriously in an accident. His relatives sold the patent to the Solarus Corporation, who reintroduced the same device at a cost of $50,000 in limited editions. The Governments had decided that there was too much risk of people clogging the skies and had introduced a highly selective passport system to regulate space traffic. Now however, with a lot of pressure from the populace, the restrictions on space travel were about to come to an end. The Solaric was expected to boost the prospect of travelling in space and make the entire process simple and cheap. Business risks were therefore far greater towards the end of the 21^st Century than earlier. The century had seen the rise and fall of several businesses. The Internet revolution had come and gone. Most of the servers had closed down due to lack of custom from people who were scared off by hackers who got into homes and into bank accounts electronically. There was no safety from such attacks. The hand powered washing machine made a comeback in 2075 and this was followed by other 'dumb' machines that could be used by anyone without working them through the net. William H. Gates and other software developers, who had exited their businesses of making proprietary software when the net rendered their businesses obsolete, due to alternatives being available free, were contacted at the vacation spots where they had gone to settle down. The purpose was to get them to once again build systems for stand alone computers. Gates refused initially and then demurred. A think tank of old timers such as Gates, Jobs and others got together to revive the systems before the Internet. Slowly, they were able to bring about a semblance of order in computer systems harking back to the days before the Net. Paper money was reintroduced instead of electronic smart cards that did not work without electronic networks.

NASA resumed space flights in 2070 after a prolonged hiatus caused by the missile disaster. The missions to Mars focused on the possible commercial use of land on that planet. On the fifteenth such flight in 2075, Lewis James, the Marketing Director of the McDougal Corporation was struck with the idea of building a virtual dome over Mars to keep the atmosphere contained and grow plants on the Martian soil. Finally, only 60,000 square kilometres of the terrain was found hospitable for agriculture and poultry farming. Soon McDougal's was able to implement its idea and source the entire requirement of chickens, cows and potatoes from Mars. Since MC was the sole supplier of non-contaminated foodstuff on Earth, it was able to monopolise supply of food on Earth. Mars was another story. The Martians told James that they had no interest in the products offered by MC and instead offered James their famed hospitality and good vegetarian food. The idea of killing living beings was abhorrent to the Martians and they tried repeatedly to convert James to their vegetarian ways. Sadly, company policy forbade James from eating anything but beef burgers and chicken nuggets, apart from the occasional milk shake. Pansha, the Martian Chief liked James but found it difficult to understand his company policy. He even offered James a permanent home in the Martian underground, but James refused saying his heart belonged to Earth. As slaughter was not permitted on Mars, the livestock had to be transported to Earth in a live state. This created logistic problems before one of MC's engineers thought of a slaughterhouse spaceship. The only snag was disposal of animal waste. The solution offered was to dump this on one of the moons of Mars (as the Moon near Earth had already been riddled with toxic and nuclear waste).

So what was the problem that President Douglas was worried about. It was the protest made by the group of Martians led by Prousha, who wanted their Chief to banish the animal killers of Earth from their planet. Somehow, they were able to get wind of the slaughterhouse spaceships and the pollution being caused by them to the Martian Moon's surface. All the blandishments offered by MC officials to the protesters were in vain. Since the Martians did not have any concept of value, as all their wants were being met, there was nothing that could be used to bribe them. This situation was totally new to the officials of MC and to people of Earth, who had got used to wheeling and dealing as a way of life. Finally, the Martian Chief had no alternative but to send the McDougal Corporation away. The loss on this heavy investment in Mars made the Corporation file for bankruptcy. Tim McDougal, the last Chairman of the McDougal board was not too shattered at the closure. His statement at the Press Conference after filing for Chapter 11 proceedings was " So we lost in Mars as far as food is concerned. Hey we still have Jupiter and Saturn for starting a new food venture. And come to think of it, there is plenty of scope for selling clothes in Mars. No one wears them there at present. We shall introduce Lockey and Nevis to them!"

Here is a lovely speeech that Steve Jobs made at Stanford Univ. It really is so beautiful and sublime and brought tears to my eyes. Comments are welcome!


'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Hello everyone! This blog will discuss what we need to think or do to make our lives better. Hey, I know this is a little general but who knows what comes up and what resources we can gather as a result of our intention. This will discuss anything except what is of a prurient or destructive nature. We have a lot of brainy persons here who would like to share their experiences of success or health tips or even small actions that can make a big difference. Let me kickstart this blog with an excerpt from my book which is on the way to being published.

"Whose permission do you need to dream? Only your own. But do you dare to? Do you assume that your dreams are impossible and so close out possibilities even before they can form themselves in the realm of thought? The possibilities created by your mind are endless and they need to be given energy to become reality. How does one give energy to one's dreams? It starts with believing in the possibility, living the possibility and then taking action steps to make it happen. Each of us assumes that the way to make things happen is to start with the doing and then to have and then to be that which we dream of being. The Universe has a different idea. It starts with being and then doing before having. We have any number of examples of great people who used to dream and then make things happen by the doing. Kekulé was working on the structure of the Benzene molecule which is now well known to any high school student. He kept working without understanding what the molecular structure was. One day he dreamt of a snake eating its tail and this was the Aha moment for him. He was able to comprehend and later communicate the structure of benzene to the rest of the world. What does this tell us? Quite a few things really. All the doing did not get Kekulé the structure. The dream which was done when his mind relaxed and let go brought to him that which he was seeking.

So dream on for only by dreaming can we hope to go beyond the 'obvious' which is a limitation we impose on ourselves. Let us now see how we can dream in a more structured manner much as this would appear to be a contradiction in terms. Each of us has needs and desires. Some of them are what we have, what we would like to have based on our present perception of reality and the stuff that dreams are really made of, the outrageous impossibilities. How does one dream like Kekulé ? Providing the answers to life's little problems through dreams. Here is a little technique that I recommend for making your subconscious do all the work while you relax. Keep a pen and paper near your bedside for noting the answers thrown up by your subconscious mind.Before you actually go to sleep, take a few deep breaths and allow yourself to relax.Now pay a little attention to the problem on hand. Mull over it in your mind briefly as a problem to be solved. Now dismiss it from your mind and go to sleep. When the answer comes to you, note it however crazy it may seem. Go through it with your conscious mind to see how you can put it to actionThis technique can be used for pretty much any problem one encounters in life and it works because the subconscious is an extremely powerful source of knowledge and wisdom. It is a storehouse of a huge amount of information and can use all this information to get the kind of output one wants.There are some rules that need to be followed before one uses the subconscious for problem solving. Feed only the problem to the subconscious. Having done that get your conscious mind out of the way (this is the difficult part). Why is this recommended? Since one is handing over the problem to your subconscious that taps into a large repository or one which is a higher power, prompting it will actually slow down the working. It is akin to putting down a problem in a spreadsheet and trying to prompt the computer to bring out an outcome that you desire! This is so plainly stupid that you would not even try to do it. However, the subconscious is an infinitely more powerful computer than the best and fastest of supercomputers. Using the subconscious can certainly bring you quick results and guide you provided, you get your conscious mind out of the way