What started as the sad end of a young, promising actor, gradually built up as a media frenzy wherein the person departed was turned into an analytical object and as many versions have been created of his life as the fancy of the analyzer allowed. The truth that emerged out of this hectic media coverage, that has not yet abated, like the calmness at the axis of a storm, is that a person’s life does not have an unequivocal meaning. There are as many stories as there are people telling them. And they are telling these stories because people are listening. But why are people listening? Are they distracting themselves from their own multiple stories?

We find a myriad of biographies written and there are even autobiographies in case of famous people. I had the privilege of assisting Dr APJ Abdul Kalam in writing “Wings of Fire.” Twenty-one years after it was published, it sells in large numbers, purely because both Dr. Kalam and his story are liked by many people, most of whom had never met him. But why do they like him? They like in him what they themselves wish to be – a celebrity, in spite of his humble background, his average academic record, and a simple, no-frill lifestyle that makes him famous and the hero of millions of ordinary people. 

There is a marvellous book, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” by Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung (1875-1961), wherein he wrote about the “self-story” – about what his life meant to him, sharing a privileged insider version of the life to help others to understand their lives better. The point Jung makes in his book is that there is no ultimately privileged point of view in any life.  Each person lives circulating stories that stand in a dialectical relationship with each other, demanding continual revision, as if different actors are playing the same role in a drama, and different singers, rendering the same song in their own styles.

However, there are some “facts” which belong to the deceased – indisputable existential life facts, deeds and dates about which there is consensus, and artefacts – mementos and possessions. People have created institutions that lasted much beyond their lives and their personal values have become the hallmarks. In stark contrast, we now have various chat apps, social media posts, light-hearted musings, and carefree exchanges that become “truths and facts” after our bodily death. There are no more footprints on the sands of time; there are “records” of every careless word you utter, a picture you click, and a joke you crack.

Be aware that an average person is watching over three hours of television each day. We have indeed become a “time pass” society, watching others. Play-acting has become a living for us, and we are selling our attention for free. We are expected to stick around, glued to the same television channel, irrespective of the number of commercial breaks. It is time to introspect how far you are willing to go, diluting your own personal and inter-personal life for these shows. 

In our super-competitive modern life, the ladder of success is hard to climb. For every person who makes it into public celebrity and culture-hero status, hundreds, if not thousands of others of equal merit and ability go unrecognized and suffer the agony of defeat in the winner/loser creed of modernity. The success and publicity market devalue the accomplishments of the unrecognized; their genius goes largely unacknowledged. In every scientific laboratory, there are people doing high value work that is “not in sync” with the powers in control of their times. They need affirmation, encouragement and energy to continue with their work, which may even bring them immortalization.

All of us are “luminaries,” carrying a speck of the immortal soul. It is the degree of muck that covers it, sometimes due to circumstances, but mostly due to carelessness about not cleaning it, and almost always by the willingness to live with it. The drama of this world is a crowded show – there are no pantomimes and monologues – each one of us carries circles of our existential cast of characters: the people whom we encounter in our lives and with whom we establish a lasting and meaningful personal relationship. If these circles are not harmonious, we are not only wasting our time but are also carrying the ignominy of show-spoilers. 

We are living in an age of upheaval – what was normal when 2020 started, is unlikely and remote in the future and by the time 2021 comes, we will be living in an altogether different world. Don’t resign yourself to the fate of living in a flux. Be not some virtual ghost but the author of your life story. Include in the story, real people around you, family and co-workers. The members of the existential life-community living in genuine reciprocity do share a fate together and are meant to better each other’s lives. Be the star in the eyes of the people around you, the flame in their hearts, and remove the muck so that your soul can shine through. 

You are complete, full, and gloriously gifted already. Know yourself, put your act together, and perform without the fear of someone else’s disapproval. The world is designed to bow before those who dare to rise. Know yourself as a superstar in your own ensemble, an irreplaceable, valuable person, best suited to “perform” the role that has come your way. There is no life that cannot hold a work of art, worthy of appreciation. Once, travelling in a train, I met an old man, who sang a song so soulfully that tears rolled out of every eye in the compartment. People paid him generously. Life, for this person, had obviously not turned out well for his talent, means, and circumstances, and yet, he articulated and preserved his gift and was displaying and celebrating it. 

So, arise, awake and claim your own fame!

This blog coincides with Engineer’s Day. Every year, September 15 in India is observed, if not really celebrated, as Engineer’s Day as a tribute to Bharat Ratna Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1860-1962) on his birthday. I had fond memories of celebrating it at the GB Pant University in the early 1970s. For the engineering students in the University, it used to be like a festival. Hostels, especially Hostel No. 5, were decorated with lights, a special dinner was made, and a slew of programs were organized for a fortnight starting September 1. A sense of pride was instilled in young minds that they were going to be important people. 

When I joined DRDO in 1982, I found my designation awkward. Everyone in the organization was called and continues to be called “Scientist” and not “Engineer.” I worked under the towering leadership of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and continued to live in my own bubble of feeling important about doing some great work. This idealism led me to the indigenous development of medical devices. Inspired by the Chitra Heart Valve made by Dr M.S. Valiathan at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology and productionized by TTK, guided by cardiologist Dr B. Soma Raju, we succeeded in making an indigenous coronary stent in the early 1990s, by developing Delta-free 316L stainless steel alloy at DRDO. It was reverentially called the “Kalam-Raju stent.” 

And then I realized the system that was loaded in favor of supply chains rather than making things in India. Between producer and user, there are multiple gateways, each collecting its own toll fee. In the Y2K rush, the dot.com boom and bust, and China dumping whatever India needed at “China Price” (something impossible to compete by fair play), I saw the aura of the engineering profession disappear. This became a trend when IIT graduates started entering IAS and business schools, in significant numbers. On the other hand, the opening of thousands of private engineering colleges, diluted engineering education to an extent that many colleges had to be later closed for want of fee-paying students. 

All this was not without costs. 

In 1978, the Indian GDP per capita was more than that of China. By 1991, China had reversed this. The shame of pawning gold to receive a billion-dollar loan led to economic reforms, which were used more for making money, naturally by those who had it, and India turned itself an importer for everything – every home had bought a TV, fridge, washing machine coming from abroad. Then came cars and finally, mobile phones. The only thing we exported was our raw material – especially iron ore. A beautiful place like Goa was turned into mining pits. The red waste on the green lands seemed like savage wounds inflicted upon Mother Earth. And now, there is not even a comparison with China. In 2019, China’s GDP was 4.78 times higher than India’s. 

So, when on the 74th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for Atma Nirbhar Bharat, I saw an end to the long dark tunnel, which had appeared too long to end for a while. This call was made after some careful homework. After winning the elections in 2014, PM Modi did two things. First, he revived the Golden Quadrilateral Highway building project of Prime Minister Vajpayee and expanded it to connect all major ports and economic hubs with good roads. Second, he called for “Make in India” with an automaton lion as a logo. 

The fifty thousand-crore Setu Bharatam Project was rolled out to make highways free of railway crossings and overhaul 1,500 British-era bridges. Government-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is laying a 2000 kilometer LPG pipeline from the Kandla coast in Gujarat to Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Inland waterways are being developed on mighty rivers like Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mahanadi. Viable solar power has become a reality, and electricity from solar panels now costs less than that generated at thermal power plants. When PM Modi had pitched for “One Sun, One World, One Grid” at the first General Assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in October 2018, it was clear that India had woken up.

But then, the “Make in India” lion did not roar. Actually, it did not even prowl. The share of the manufacturing sector in India’s GDP had stagnated at around 15%, and remained there. In the larger industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, power and construction, the GDP contribution was stuck at around 26%-27%. Red-tape and corruption were rightly seen as important deterrents for entrepreneurs setting up their factories. India actually did well in upping its EDB (Ease of Doing Business) rank from 142 in 2014 to 77 in 2018. Most of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), required for key drugs, continued to come from China. Indian drug-makers, actually pioneers of the industry, turned to importing around 70% of their total bulk drug requirements from China.

We have a national mission of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022, when India completes 75 years of independence. I am happy to see that engineers are finally getting involved with farmers. Last week, a long-standing friend and engineer, Venkat Kumar Tangrila, briefed me about the Wind-solar cold storage that he installed in Warangal. It can store three tons of tomatoes. I learned from him that a tomato crop gives five rounds of fruits over three months. Farmers make their money in selling the first two rounds. By the time the third round comes, it creates a supply glut, bringing down the price. The fourth and fifth rounds are sold, many times at no price. With cold storage right there in the field, every round is released into the market at a proper interval. The cold storage, running with 7.5 kW alternative energy, costs about Rs. 10 lakhs and earns back its cost in three years’ time. We need more of such works. Let engineers join hands with farmers. 

It is heartening to see Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Arvind Krishna leading the world’s top three technology companies. India might have failed its engineers, but they did not fail their profession. I consider Sundar Pichai, 48 years old, thoughtful and incredibly kind, Chief Executive of Google since 2015, and promoted last December to lead parent Alphabet Inc., replacing the company co-founder Larry Page, as the modern-day Sir MV, and celebrate Engineer’s Day this year in his name. By next year this time, Chandrayaan-3 would have landed on the moon, transparent and rational flow of capital by technologically advanced banks and services would have recovered the economy, Tata’s electric car, Tigor, would be running 200 kilometers on a single charge and we will have many new engineering feats and engineer heroes to celebrate. 

Commenting on the blog article – Hack Your Time, Do More of What Matters – a long-standing friend and a spiritually evolved and worldly successful person, RN Bagdalkarji, suggested to me to “write one more blog wherein you can bring out how effective people make use of their time.” This led me to wonder how confusing this issue actually is. While I was pondering over this, an image of a person from a small town, who has been watching films in an old theater since his childhood, now going to a multiplex with eight screens showing different films with no one really restricting entry if one wants to see a little bit of every film, came to my mind.

What if this person decides to maximize his expenditure by enjoying the best of eight different films – a song here, a dance there; a fight here, a love-making scene there; a courtroom argument here, a devotional song there? Of course, it is funny and silly. But this is exactly what most of us are doing with our one life – we are not living through the drama of our own world as our seers advised. We are indulging in the various dramas going on around us, including those where there is no role, or even a dialogue for us in the script. Surprised? See people betting during an IPL cricket match; getting emotionally involved with the characters and events in soap operas; investigating suicide-murder mysteries and passing judgements on the happenings of the world.

We exist in two states – the waking and the sleeping – divided into 16 hours and 8 hours respectively. Wise people divide the 16 hours of waking into two equal parts of 8 hours of work – their livelihood, and 8 hours of leisure – family commitments and pastime. The eight hours of sleep are also divided into two parts – the sleep with dreams, and deep sleep. In dream sleep, our mind “watches” a grand emotional drama where we are naked in a public place, have lost our way in a maze of lanes, are being chased by a beast, bitten by a snake, or flying over things and people, and so on. 

In his 2017 book “Why We Sleep,” Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, explains that we naturally sleep for 5 cycles of 90 minutes each, totaling seven-and-a-half hours. Most of the earlier 90-minute cycles are deep sleep and later, towards morning, most of it is dream sleep. So, if you are sacrificing the initial cycle by staying up late partying, or watching TV, or whatever, you are losing deep sleep, meant to repair your body. If you are sacrificing the later cycle, getting up early to catch a flight, you are losing the dream sleep meant to repair your mind. Of course, some people do recommend getting up early morning to take advantage of the calmness and the solitude. However, if one follows the saying, “Early to bed and early to rise…” one can do so and yet fulfill one’s need for proper sleep. 

Bill Gates recommended Matthew Walker’s book for everyone saying, “I realize that my all-nighters, combined with almost never getting eight hours of sleep, took a big toll.” So, all of us, who are nowhere near Bill Gates in our accomplishments live ignorant about the importance of sleep, causing our health – both physical and mental – irreparable damage. The damage caused by inadequate sleep is compounded by sleeping with the mobile phone under the pillow, the LED light in the bedroom, watching TV in bed till your eyes close, and drinking tea/coffee after 8 p.m. Alcohol is a big disruptor of sleep cycles, leading to permanent damage of the brain over time. 

So, having made a mess of your sleep, the Rta of repairing your body and mind, now come to the waking hours. Commuting long distances to work is a curse for a large number of people, especially those living in metropolitan cities. Doing a job you don’t like is another torture, the stress of which does not end after finishing the day’s work; it lingers beyond that and comes home with you. Similarly, arguments and fights at home reach the workplace. 

Now enters the TV with a “manufactured reality” presented by every channel in its own taste and style. And finally, the Internet, the free-for-all gutter of profanities, sacrileges and misinformation that initially started with the omnipresent stream of knowledge with good intent and has now turned into an “Indra Jaal” – hacking human minds like insects trapped in a spider net. The AI engine knows what you are doing, where are you going, what mails you are typing, which calls are you taking and making and then turns you into “an ideal consumer.” And then we are taught to manage our time, when in reality, we have lost control of our lives – like a drowning man holding a stopwatch to see if his sinking is perfect!  

Shakespeare wrote so sagaciously, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.” So, first and foremost, live your age. Allow your children to live like children, take risks when you are young, travel, live your dreams, and as age sets in, settle down, withdraw from the world gradually and then bow off the stage with grace.

Know yourself as a soul – an eternal witness – now in this body, watching this particular film in the small-town single screen theater. Connect to your childhood. Remember your grandparents, and your primary school teachers. Life is like a yarn over a spindle, everything is right here, with you every moment. In your struggle to become somebody, you have lost somewhere your real self. But the good news is that it can be recalled and felt. And it will also bring you a lot of healing. 

Close your eyes and remember sitting in a theater, enjoying a movie. None of us is born to sit through different screens in the multiplex. Still better, don’t miss out on the drama of your own life, while watching the film that is this world. Find out your lines in your drama, say them with conviction and get out of the limelight as soon as your part is over. You will find yourself living with a deep sense of satisfaction, peace and fullness during the time that you spend on earth. 

Say “Thank you” and “I am sorry” more often, even if you are not. This is the easiest way to participate in the world. Don’t manage time, manage yourself. You are actually the eternal consciousness, which is true, pure and blissful – Sat, Chit, Ananda. It is the ever-changing mortal body and drama around it that is not this – that is false, deceptive, and painful – allow it to roll over, like a scene in the film. Cry, laugh, jump or sink in your seat, but don’t try to run into the screen and break your head against the wall behind it.

This blog is coinciding with the occasion of India’s 74th Independence Day observed under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic. On high notes, the construction of the Ram Mandir finally began with a billion people watching the Bhoomi Poojan ceremony live; the New Education Policy 2020, with long-pending major reforms in education, has finally rolled out, and five freshly purchased Rafael fighter jets flew into the Indian skies escorted by two Sukhoi-30 jets that reminded me of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

I was with him at HAL when on 4th January 2001, Wg. Cdr. Rajiv Kothiyal flew in the very first LCA, named KH 2001 to honour its designer Dr Kota Harinaryana. On June 8, 2006, I was at Lohegaon Air Force Station in Pune when President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam flew in a Sukhoi-30 fighter plane. He was donning anti-gravity suit. It was a majestic site to see a line of Sukhoi-planes on that occasion. Later on March 7, 2007, I attended Fleet Review by President Kalam coinciding with the Platinum Jubilee of the Indian Air Force and watched the awe-inspiring fly past by IAF aircraft when 17 Jaguars fighter planes flew in a formation of number 75 over our heads with a deafening sound. Of course, we took mortal body of Dr Kalam to Madurai in the gigantic The Lockheed four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft C-130 aircraft on July 29, 2015. 

My latest book “India Wakes” found initial acceptance and appreciation. It was called “the most democratic book published in years.” It received praise with the words, “the book’s value lies in its timeliness and straight talk.” The book audaciously proclaimed, “India is increasingly well positioned to replace China as part of the global supply chain, and India is now and likely will continue to be a rapidly growing market.”   

We called the first chapter of the book, “Botched Up Independence,” quoting an eye-witness, Mr. Narendra Luther, “It was independence for those who were not disturbed from their homes and hearths. It was partition for an estimated twenty million people who were uprooted from their moorings and became penniless refugees.” The book put before the modern generation the three burdens that India has carried since independence — a hostile and always scheming, troubled neighborhood, many decades of economic stagnation, and the delay in the weaponization of our military forces, as we were spreading the message of peace that no one was really taking. 

Even today, our rich and powerful live in their own bubbles, as though not needing anyone in the world, or rather, living in the knowing that the world needs them to keep moving. Fed up with this hypocrisy, a large number of brilliant Indians went abroad, and it is not by chance that people of Indian origin are at the helms of giant companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM, whereas not even one Indian company can be called a global one. There are no buyers for many of our “Ratnas” as we call our public sector companies.

It is therefore important to understand the right meaning of the word “independence.” What Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak called “Swaraj” as a “birthright” in 1916, turned out to be “Swarthraj” by those in power. What Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru called India’s “Tryst with Destiny” was indeed murder and mayhem as Saadat Hasan Manto observing those times wrote, “Human beings had instituted rules against murder and mayhem in order to distinguish themselves from beasts of prey. None was observed in the murderous orgy that shook India to the core at the dawn of independence.”

According to the Principle of Dependent Arising, a key doctrine of Buddhist philosophy, any phenomenon arises in dependence upon other phenomena: “If this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist.” Later, Stephen Covey wrote in his famous book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, “You cannot continuously improve until you progressively perfect interdependent relationships.” The fact that stares upon us is that while independence without interdependence leaves us isolated, interdependence without independence leaves us vulnerable.

My generation has seen the breaking up of joint families into “independent” nuclear families of their children. Our children are living through the stress of raising their “independent- spirited” children, expressing their adoration only on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The “independent opinions” floating on the Internet are as toxic and hazardous as plastic bags in a city drainage system – choking it and stinking. The profanity and crassness seen on social media are precariously detrimental to civil society. 

The most urgent need of the hour is to regain the spirit of interdependence for that is the basic truth of our lives. My friend, Dr. Mpoki Ulisubisya, the High Commissioner of the United Republic of Tanzania to Canada, calls it “Ubuntu,” an African term that means, “I am, because we are.” No human being can flourish without the support of the family. It is like “a circle within a circle” situation. Families flourish within close-knit communities. Communities depend on harmonious societies and countries become prosperous doing business as trading blocs. 

We have seen many “what if’s” in our history to the great lament and regret of the future generations. What if the British had never come to India, or say, by 1810 or so, a loose confederacy of Sikh, Maratha and Deccan rulers had managed to kick out the British, the French and the Portuguese? Or, had Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief of Siraj-ud-Daulah’s army, bribed by Robert Clive, not betrayed his nawab? Or what if Cyril John Radcliffe had applied mind and method over a period of time and not partitioned India in five weeks’ time? Or, what if Prime Minister Nehru had not turned upside down the “village republic” ideal of his mentor, Gandhiji, in favour of the centralized economy of Soviet Russia? 

Another “what if” is staring at us today. The world has a predatory superpower on the prowl, and failure to act against the threat it poses will be a historic blunder. I read a story “Nanhi Laal Chunni” (Little Red Riding Hood) in my school. Re-enacting this fairy tale with China is too risky and scary. For the dream of a 5-trillion-dollar economy to turn true, we ought to bridge the 50-billion-dollar trade deficit with China. What if we do not? What if 20 million affordable houses are not built, and farmers’ incomes are not doubled by 2022? The independence of the country needs an upgrade by unwavering action to improve the living conditions of our people.

My longstanding friend and former CEO of HarperCollins for a decade, PM Sukumar, kept feeding me worthy reading material and last week, he shared an article by Dr Adam Bell about the hacking of one’s perception of time. After I shared the article with many, as is the trend these days, whatever you get – forward, I also read it keenly, something not many people bother to do, and indulged in ruminating upon it like even fewer people do. I am writing about it as I found it to be the real root of many of our problems, and the principal source of our dissatisfaction with life. 

We are all basically consciousness imprisoned into physicality. The eternal soul lives in a perishable body, which needs non-stop respiration and a thousand other internal activities to be alive. Surprisingly, all these activities are pretty regular and cyclic. Every minute, the heart pumps blood 72 times, circulating 5 liters of blood through the body. The lungs inhale and exhale 18 times, approximately the same volume of air. The entire blood in the body gets renewed every 120 days and all this happens, throughout our lives, most efficiently, independent of the watch and the calendar. These values of course vary from person to person but within a very narrow band.   

Now enters the mind, the slave of time. The mind is thought to be in the head, but actually it is a software operating all over our body – especially the gut, where billions of bacteria live – converting our food into nutrients and waste. These bacteria are not eternal but almost immortal; they are alive for billions of years and keep acquiring new human bodies to live and multiply. My friend, Dr Girish Sahni, Former Director General of CSIR and Director of the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), based in Chandigarh, tells me that there are ten times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, using the human body to live safely and flourish. They also do not follow the time of the clock and whenever the mind forces food upon them, if it is not needed, they get upset, and even angry. 

So, the key to good life is freedom, even if it is not liberty, from the clock and the calendar, from the alarms and the deadlines and targets and schedules.

In Hindu philosophy, there is a principle of Rta (ऋत). It means order, rule or truth as one wants to understand it – the principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. Understand the time of the clock and the date in the calendar as measuring tools and as references to carry out the business of the world – hourly payments, daily wages, monthly salaries, quarterly returns on investments, annual increments, etc. A day in the school is divided into periods and children are expected to toggle from one subject to another by the sound of the bell.   

Disorientation of what we do with our biological rhythms, called Circadian Rhythms, is our chronic problem. The Circadian Rhythms respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the Circadian Rhythms.

As Adi Shankaracharya declared the cornerstone of Hindu philosophy – know this world as unreal and your soul as real – ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्येत्येवंरूपो विनिश्चयः – don’t allow the watch and the calendar to override the reality of your Circadian Rhythms. Yes, it is true that people have to work in night shifts, but they must be suitably compensated with less working hours and resting days, which is mostly not done, except in highly regulatory industries like the airlines. Resident doctors and nurses are even forced to do double-shifts by greedy hospitals, putting patients to the grave risk of errors in treatments. Most of the road accidents are caused by sleep-deprived drivers.   

Dr Adam Bell gives a modern version of “mindfulness” as taught by Buddha. He prescribes a 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise. Several times in the day, stop what you are doing, and “see five things” in your immediate vicinity; “be aware of four feelings” in your body (any itching, tense muscles, pain, pressure, whatever); listen to three sounds around you (your heartbeat, a bird chirping, a fan moving, a clock ticking); sniff the air for “two smells” you can pick up on (the aroma of any food or the fragrance of any flower); and finally, “taste one thing” you can have (a sip of water, for example). Doing this few times (say five times) every day will slow the passage of time for you.

Your life depends on your breath. Start counting your breath whenever you want to stop your mind from its excursions. Divide the time into small doses like we pour water from a jug into a tumbler, tea in a cup, soup in a spoon. Now examine every small interval. Is it worth spending this time watching TV, gossiping, reading the newspaper? Can you do something better? Go for a walk, take a nap! These two activities are much better than anything else people do. You will start changing and soon you will be doing only the task that matters in any individual time block. All other distractions will be discarded by you, yourself.

I am not asking you to be a hacker. I am telling to retrieve your reality that has already been hacked by the “world”. What we consider as our work, livelihood, business, are all means to live, not life. The purpose of human life is to flourish, to expand the consciousness further. How come you are reading my blog? Who created the Internet? Why are Adi Shankaracharya’s sayings heard and read even today? Why is Dr APJ Abdul Kalam loved and remembered by millions even after five years of his departure from this mortal world? Why do you cry while listening to good music? These are all examples of the expansion of consciousness.  

That consciousness is the Reality. When it enters a sperm and ovum fused together, it starts dividing the cell into a well-defined “Rta,” making a human body out of it. When it is separated from the flesh, the best of the doctors in the most equipped hospitals pronounce the patient “dead.” From where does Consciousness come? Where does it go? Nowhere, it keeps shifting!  This world is nothing but a simulation program where each player is free to make choices and score to reach the next level of the “game.” 

So, don’t allow your choices to be manipulated. Know yourself as an unchangeable eternal soul, now in this body, in this mental state, both temporary and changing every moment. This knowledge, this awareness, is what matters. The rest is time-pass, living a life hacked.