Q: How do I improve increasing imagination and creativity by mindfulness?
Krishna: Do all scientists practice mindfulness for improving their creativity and imagination? To creatively connect things to solve problems?
How do you have the right imagination without the correct evidence based knowledge? Imagination without genuine knowledge is like having only wings and no feet! What does it stand on then? What do your focus and attention based on then?
Do all gurus who practice mindfulness have great creativity and the right imagination? Why don’t they develop a vaccine then? Why don’t they develop drugs then? Why can’t they build an eco-friendly apartment complex then? Why can’t they make aeroplanes then? Why can’t they write and publish great and realistic articles/ papers then? Why can’t they create master pieces and classics then?
Can you make the right connections without the critical thinking abilities?
First answer these questions before proceeding or listening to others’ advice.
You have to acquire these things first to become highly creative.
Okay, if you have all the abilities and qualities mentioned above, but are still unable to focus your power, then only mindfulness can help you - ‘to some extent’. I said ‘to some extent’ because those abilities and qualities themselves are some sort of power-giving standards. They are enough to make you highly creative and imaginative. If you are unable to use them, that shows some sort of inadequacy in your mental make up.
If the inadequacy is only temporary, because of various conditions like stress, anxiety, pain, depression, insomnia, lack of attention, job burnout, high blood pressure (hypertension) and other health conditions, mindfulness might help you.
If the inadequacy is a major one - like lack of total interest in your work, lack of adequate and the right knowledge, complete lack of critical thinking abilities, refusal or inability to learn things in the right way, you will get only partial benefit from mindfulness.
Analyse all these things first thoroughly, then you yourself will find an answer to your question.
Q: Why do some people take things very seriously? Why can't they take things lightly like I do?
Krishna: When several things influence a person's mind, and information processing of that mind, how can you expect everybody to react in only one way?
Why should everybody be like you? Or think like you?
All sorts of people and their mental make ups make this world so beautiful and rich. Serious people have their own charm and depth. People like you who take things lightly can have several inadequacies.
What is right and what is wrong? Who will decide? You? Or societies we live in?
If somebody tells me to take something lightly, I just ignore his advice! Because nobody, except me, knows the condition I am in and why I behave in a certain way.
Who are others to tell me what should I do in the condition I am in?
Who are you to tell serious people to be like you? If they tell you to be serious like them, will you accept it? Is yours only the right behaviour? Are serious people doing things incorrectly?
You are a no one to decide things for others.
Just leave their behaviour to them. Don't interfere in others affairs. That is unless they ask you to or suffering severely because of their behaviour or making others miserable.
Q: What do you think about people who go out of their way to voice unnecessarily things and deliberately make other people feel miserable because they don’t agree with them?
Krishna: Well that depends on your perception. Let me present a different view.
We, in the world of science think in this way:
“deliberately make other people feel miserable because they don’t agree with them”
Quite often people don’t agree with science and scientists - even if we show solid evidence - the evidence is ignored or, considered as an opinion, not fact. People don’t even try to understand the difference between perception based opinion and an evidence based fact despite trying our best. Unable to come out of a conditioned mindset, they even try to degrade you.
What do you do then? Resist it using all your might to bring them back to their senses. Very often we do this to protect the very people who we are disagreeing with!
If a child refuses to take food, the mother can use the methods she thinks is best to deal with the problem. If the child can’t understand this and hates its mother?
That is its headache.
The mother knows what to do to help the child.
So do scientists to help the world.
Q: You invited your friend for dinner, and the meal turns out to be a disaster. How will you manage the situation?
Krishna: When I invite my friends or relatives for dinner or lunch, I myself will cook. With years of cooking experience, how can the dishes become disaster in the first place? All of them? No way.
Even if one or two miss the right measurements of ingredients, we can rectify them before serving them.
If one of the dishes is not up to the mark and expectations, I will tell my guests before hand, apologize and request them to adjust for one day. Most of my friends and relatives know how busy I would always be and don’t complain at all.
Once or twice we ordered the meals from outside which turned out to be average, but my friends themselves apologised for coming without informing us beforehand and not giving us time to cook!
If the type of situation you mentioned arises, we can order something good from outside, or inform our guests beforehand in sweet words and apologize and ask them to adjust. Most of the guests oblige and just laugh it away.
Camouflage your disaster with sweet behaviour. They won’t even notice it!
I don’t think the situation would be so bad that our guests would go home completely disappointed.
Use your management skills. You will never fail.
Q: What are we going to do in After Life? How long will we stay there?
Krishna: After life? It just is a belief as there is no genuine evidence.
If you can imagine there is an after life, you can imagine as many situations and scenarios as possible too. And imaginations can never give you a correct answer. So people just tell stories.
Just read them and enjoy! But don’t think they are facts.
Q: My folks are forcing me to marry a girl. According to them, this is the best proposal I can ever get. I don't know whether to accept this or not. What do I do?
Krishna: I read a quote recently: "Whenever you say “yes” to something, you’re saying “no” to something else."
Why did this quote come to my mind when I heard your query?
"According to them, this is the best proposal I can ever get" - who knows? You might get another one that could beat this one! If you say 'yes' to this one, you might be saying 'no' to even brighter future!
"My folks are forcing me to marry a girl" - if you bow to this 'force' and say 'yes', you would be saying 'no' to your choice, freedom, independent thought, and who knows what else?
Never, ever marry someone under force. Never, ever yield to force.
Marry her only if you are fully satisfied with the girl and the proposal.
Q: Should women forgo their freedom after marriage for the sake of marriage?
Krishna: That is what our culture tells us most of the time. It tells women to 'compromise'.
But I think when two people are involved in a relationship, both will have equal part in its success.
If a woman has to compromise a little, even her partner has to compromise. If a woman has to forego some of her freedom, even her man has to forgo a part of his!
Asking only one person to do all the hard work is highly prejudicial and not correct. This is where today's highly independent women are feeling the heat. And this is where frustration starts and cracks begin to appear in any relationship.
Women can compromise if they really love their men and that love depends on the co-operation of the men. But a full compromise is not possible because we, as human beings, are a bit selfish. And if the women is earning and independent, how much she compromises depends on her strength.
If the man is a rogue, no woman with self-respect can compromise. A big NO will be the answer. It is better to come out of an abusive relationship than suffering it life-long. You have only one life, why should you spoil it because of a bad relationship?
That is my view.
But .... should women forgo their freedom after marriage for the sake of marriage? If you ask other women this question, the answer depends on the mentality of the women and each woman is different in her thinking.
Q: Is it possible for a soul to be "stuck" in the past and repeat one same reincarnation (like a time loop) - however emotionally and/or physically painful it might be - until it finally gets ready to go to the next reincarnation?
Krishna: Hmmm. I don’t understand why people get stuck with soul, past life and ancient thinking despite nil evidence.
Anyway, your beliefs are yours, and if you could imagine so many things with souls and after life, you could as well imagine as many stories and situations as you want. And people can tell you as many sweet stories in the way you want to hear them.
We people just smile and move on … we are not stuck.
Q: A girl is behaving strangely with me. She comments on all posts of mine on social media, upvotes and likes them but when I try to chat with her privately, she doesn't give replies to me. Is she sending me mixed signals?
Krishan: Your feelings are getting mixed up.
The girl upvotes them and comments on your posts because she likes them. She doesn't give replies to your private chats because she is not interested in you and likes only the topics you deal with. Get that right first.
Q: A girl is ignoring me and going around with other boys. I feel like torturing her, abusing her and killing her. All the heroes in the movies and TV serials do that. When they do that, why shouldn't I?
Krishna: Oh my! You are thinking like a psycho. Do the movie and serial heroes do such things ( I don't watch them so I don't know)? I f they are really doing that, they should be banned. What type of role models are these heroes? Are they heroes or villains?
But you should realize that the girl has every right to go with whoever she feels comfortable with. She can love whoever she feels is good to go with. Who are you to question her and agonise her for her choice? Respect others rights. Like you have your likes and dislikes, she too can have her love and hate relationships.
Come out of these ego issues. Just because a girl refused you, you have no right to abuse her and kill her. Be a gentleman and accept and respect others' choices.
By the way, no girl with a sane mind accepts and goes with a guy who thinks like you.
Q; Do you think you will live on Earth again (as you) after you die?
Krishna: The atoms of my body might get recycled and become part of another living being or several other bodies. That ‘s it.
I will never live another life with the same consciousness and the same body. Nobody ever can! If somebody thinks they can or in a reincarnated form, it just is a baseless belief and a wishful thinking which can never come true.
Q: Do humans have knowledge of what they're doing?
Krishna: Yes, all human beings with sound minds have awareness of what they are doing.
But ‘knowledge’ of what they are doing is a contentious issue.
That depends on each individual’s thinking, analysis, perception, and the knowledge people have about the work.
Several men think what they are doing is right. But others who are watching them might think the person is wrong in doing it.
Who is correct here? There are some general parameters to judge things. And those parameters are usually morality based and morality is just a word for emotional responses for how people do or do not behave according to 'rules' of the group they identify with. Morals differ from culture to culture.
Therefore, even judgements might differ. ‘What’ you are analysing with might not be knowledge at all. It can be your baseless belief, perception based ignorance, your group’s morals, your culture’s rules, and all things irrational.
When evidence based facts, genuine knowledge, changing sets of morals depending on situations and incidents become rare parameters to analyse deeds, you might be aware of what you are doing but might not have full knowledge of what is actually happening.
Q: Why do people think TV serials and movies are real?
Krishna: Why? Recently an interesting thing happened. I came across a dead serious debate online. People were fighting over the hero and heroine of a TV serial.
Some said the hero was wrong and some the heroine.
They 're arguing as if all this 's real!
I tried to make them realize it 's not the fault of the actors but the writer and director made them do all that and the actors were just following the instructions of the director. But they failed to understand this. Funny!
Then a six year old child, who was our neighbour, told her parents she wanted to marry a TV serial actor and asked her mother to go and talk to the dad ( in the serial) of this hero! Funny!
And why are some people failing to distinguish between reality and fiction?
Some chemical changes are definitely occurring in the brains. Brain circuits are getting screwed up.
The need to escape into our imagination has long been a human need. When a story is well scripted and acted wonderfully, it makes the brain think it is real. Emotions rule the world. If the story is super-charged with all the right emotions, people get connected to them, bond with them and start thinking they are real especially if they get to see this drama everyday in their living rooms like the serials on TV.
Movies allow people to escape—and there’s value in that—but it’s more than simple escapism. Movies take them to places they’ve never been and inside the skin of people quite different from themselves. They offer human beings a window onto the wider world, broadening their perspective and opening their eyes to new wonders. But cinema is more than just a window. It’s also a magnifying glass. It focuses peoples' attention on everyday reality in a way that makes them see everyday reality for what it really is: magnificence and curiosity. This idea—that the everyday, when carefully seen and considered, can provide epiphany—finds its greatest ally in the cinematic form. So yes, people love movies because they let them escape. But they are not escaping from reality as much as they are escaping into a clearer, more focused understanding of it.
“There is nowhere better to lose yourself than in film. You can be a character in any country in any time period. For two hours you can forget who you are and be who you dream.” –Alex, Baltimore
This is how one person explained his interaction with movies: it’s the way it makes me feel. It's like when you read a great book, you enter a world that is separate from where you are, but you relate to the characters and get lost in the pages. It makes you happy or sad. It makes you laugh and also cry. Movies do that, but more directly. A good film resonates with you and doesn’t leave your system right away. I’ve always said, I know I’ve seen a good movie when I’m still talking about it the next week. Some of the greatest films I’ve seen have never left my heart and soul, and I hope they never do.
Magic? Maybe!
Another person said: What do you mean, it is real! Jealousy, love, fear, courage, doubt, friendship.. It’s about feelings and drama and human nature, not about if it’s true or not.
A documentary will teach you facts. But fictional TV can tell you so much about feelings, insight, inner strength, it can give you another point of view..
People can feel brave when watching a protagonist be brave. They can be inspired. It can make them realize things about themselves and others that they wouldn’t have. Fictional stories can show us aspects of philosophy, theology, sociology, man it’s so much to learn from it. It doesn’t matter that it’s not real people. Are people real people anyway? From our perception every thing only exist to us as an idea inside our head. If my friend died and I didn’t know, she’d be just as real to me until I get the news. She would be just as real, even though she didn’t even exist anymore.
We get an idea of the characters we see on TV. If they’re badly written or acted we don’t «Buy» them. Just as we don’t «Buy» someone who’s obviously fake or hiding something in real life. But when characters are well written and acted out we believe in them, we can recognize aspects of ourselves in them, and we empathise with them. They teach us things. And therefore we bond with them. Even though they are not real.
Another explanation: I’ve talked to so many people who say they feel like they form relationships with characters in TV shows. And then they feel like they lose a friend when the season is over. You might say it’s absurd. But it’s exactly the same you get from reading good books.
And you might say that what they can give you is limited. But so is what you can get from real people. Haven’t you had some people in your life that you’ve just felt like you outgrow? So what they give you is also limited.
And if you watch something in a different time of your life it can mean something else. I remember first time I read the last Harry Potter book. I though Harry was a self-centered emo-kid. Then I re-read it some years later after going through some shit on my own and I felt like I really understood what he went through. First time I watched Breaking Bad I hated Skyler so much, but then I watched it again 5 years later and I really understood her and felt bad for her (even though she was kind of a cunt in some ways) and I got some perspective on being disliked by people who don’t get you at all.
So I think my conclusion is that we get addicted because it speaks to us on an emotional, psychological level, it teaches us something even though we might not know what (I didn’t understand the «moral» of Walking Dead until months after I finished season 8), and it helps us understanding other people more because it gives us their stories and perspectives that we wouldn’t get in real life, because we would never befriend Don Draper or Rick Grimes. They might not be real, but there are many people who are very much like them. (I should know. I married Jesse Pinkman)
