Maha Nirvani: The Warriors of Mahadeva. Part 1 (Fiction)

A Short Story

Chapter 1: The Yogi of Arunachala

We live in uncertain times. Perhaps all times are that way to a person who is brooding. It is 4640 years since the beginning of the Yuga of Kali - the age of darkness. Or the age of cleansing, depending on who you talk to. That many years since the end of the great battle of Mahabharatha - the one event that defined all of Bharath and it's destiny till now. But now we have fallen back to uncertainty and chaos. It is not clear who is a friend and who is a foe anymore. What is right or what is wrong.

I go by the name Yogi Ramveer Nath Giri and I have roamed this great country more than three times now in my relatively short life of 25 years. Most of my years I had spent in the company of my Guru Sri Raghunatha Giri to whom, I was told, my parents gave me as a gift when I was a child of 4. My Guru has since taken care of me and taught me everything I know. The last one year of being away from my Guru perhaps is the reason for this feeling of uncertainty and doom that has been troubling me. A cloud that seems to have been cast over the entire nation. Or maybe it has always been there and only that I have been too happy to notice it.

The Kings have never been a part of our lives before. And both us and the Kings have been happier for it. That is not to say that they wouldn't want to control us Sadhus. But they never dared to. All Kings remember the story of Lord Parashurama. Of how he almost got every King in the world killed because one of them stole the sacred cow from his father's ashram. The Puranas are a powerful tool to remind people of things they tend to forget in the course of a few thousand years of peace. It is good that people remember them. But there are new rulers now. People from the far west; from beyond the mountains, who don't remember. Who have been travelling too long and fighting too much to have time to learn these lessons. They have been trying to meddle in the paths of the Yogis and have many have paid a heavy price. But because of the fighting,  all our extreme powers are known to the common people - and they all want to have them too. No longer is a child given to the Yogis so that he may become Shiva. But the child is given so that some private squabble can be settled by using the powers of the Yogis. My Guru never accepted such deals. But there are many nowadays, the whispers says, who are not above being corrupted.

The rain feels so lovely on my skin. Especially when the day has been hot. I did not move from my seat when it was hot and I am not moving when it is raining. I have been sitting in this spot under the pepul tree for almost four days now. I almost feel as if the rain is going through my body to reach the ground and if I closed my eyes, it would actually do that. That is because I have nothing. I am nothing. I have lived my life with nothing. Whatever is given to me, I give it away so that I am free to walk. To sit. To look. The only thing I carry is a tiger skin that belonged to my Guru. That was the only thing he ever carried with him.

My Guru told me that a great yogi, an incarnation, Shiva - Mahadeva - himself, is going to walk in this part of the country soon. This time for a very brief period though. Maybe a year. Maybe less. Maybe more. Only to be seen by the qualified yogis. That perhaps is the reason why I haven't moved out of the Hoysala region for more than a year. It is not our way of life to stay in a region for more than a week.

The Kumbha mela is approaching and I have to go there. I must start now, if I were to reach there in a few months. Or I have to find some mercury with which I can fly there in a few days. But my Guru never used his power of flying. He said that we need to meet people in the villages and take them along with us.  But I dread missing out on meeting the Lord of Lords. Maybe I am not qualified to meet him. Five hundred years hence, he will come again. And at that time everyone will get to be with him irrespective of their sadhana. That is what my Guru said. But my mind doesn't feel like waiting that long. And more than a thousand years back he had come. In a small town called Arunachala in the south. The legends are so eloquent about the joys of his coming. About how he makes life feels like the afternoon rain on a hot summer day. And as the water cleans everything in me and around me, my inner eye tries to reach out for a glimpse of those times. A glimpse of him. But somehow my vision stops just ahead of his coming. The inner eye that shows me much into the past and future stops short of showing him. I can't see his coming - either in the past or in the future.

And so I wait. I wait sitting in the rain that has made a small pond around the tree where I have been sitting for the past four days. I continue to sit. I sit waiting for the Yogi of Arunachala.

Chapter 2: Creatures of the Night

It is night now and the village is very different from what it was when Surya cast his powerful glance on it. The sounds, the wind, the breath - everything is different. Most humans have gone to bed. Some to sleep. The Yogi, however, does not sleep. He doesn't need to. When you are nothing, nothing tires you. My eyes continued to be open as they have always been since I met my Guru. The place I am sitting is near a cremation ground and many tantriks perform their occult rituals to appeal to  supernatural powers. Many dark powers are happy to give it to them for a price. Sometimes the price is much higher than what the seeker of greed wanted to give.  The powers of the Yogis do not come from outside. They come from within and from the grace of the Guru. From Sadasiva. Nothing has been given for them other than understanding that I have nothing to give. That I am nothing. They cannot harm me or those whom I help.

I hear the scream of a woman in the dark. Not one of fear, but a cry of victory. It could mean many things. I let it go through me and have it leave me as I was before it emanated. A couple walk by in tight embrace - not bothered about social stigma or shame. A second look and I realize that they are not human - at least the girl wasn't. She has a tight grasp on the boy's hands and is demanding his attention, praise and listening. When that isn't forthcoming, she starts seducing him. She is extremely beautiful. But knowing her kind, this is possibly a form that was taken because she knew it would entice him to give her his full attention and perhaps more. For all you know, she was hundreds of years old. And as she made love to him in the open ground, she was constantly aware of my presence. I looked into her eyes and throughout her courtship, she never looked away from mine either. Her hunger seemed to have no end. One could almost pity the depth of her un-fulfillment. I wished I could do something for her. And instantly my seat, the tiger skin on which I was sitting, fell to the ground from where it was hovering a foot above so delicately. I knew I did something wrong. I didn't know what it was though.

A that very moment a loud noise broke out in the nearby road and a procession of people could be seen walking along. At the head of the procession was what appeared to be a grandly decorated corpse. Clearly someone important for there was more than a 1000 people travelling with his body to bid it farewell. Followed by a large number of horses, elephants and so on. At the lead were 12 women - clearly the wives of the person who had died. And judging by the ash that was being strewn all over the procession, he must have been a Sadu or a Yogi. A Grihastha - a married one - though. And an extremely powerful one. The Grihastha Sadhus were extremely well respected. People envied their wealth and feared their powers. Many of them lived for hundreds of years and took on scores of wives. It was surprising to find one who looked so young. All his wives were beautiful. The youngest could not have been older than fourteen or fifteen. But she stood out from the group. 

It is quite possible that some of the women may travel along with the dead sadhu king to accompany him into his next life. It is a science passed on to very few. On how to interlock two souls that they may take their next birth together. The ignorant who don't understand it call it suicide. The women neither looked sad nor did they look happy. They had the intense look of the renunciates, but yet were decked full of jewelry like the Goddesses of the temples.

The youngest of them looked at me with a inquisitive  and at the same time amused look. I could almost sense her laughing. Her eyes seemed to question my existence from its very core. So different from the eyes of the creature I had seen earlier.. but yet carrying an immense power in it. Had it been day, people around would have been astonished by me, a Sadhu, staring into the eyes of a lady. But something in her look made me unable to move my gaze away.

Legend has it that the enlightened Queen of Madurai, Meenakshi, could awaken a person's consciousness by just looking at him or her. Hence the name Meenakshi - the one with the eyes of a fish. People wrongly assume this to refer to the shape of her eyes. But the mystics know that it refers to the story that fish could hatch its young ones just by looking at them. Such was the power in the eyes which had me locked.

Chapter 3: The Ascetic King

I woke up feeling sore in every part of my body. Never have I felt my physical body with this much sensation in my life. To just move my hand or my leg seemed like an impossible task. My mind was racing to put together my life and to give me an identity. And it was failing miserably. Who am I? Where am I? When am I? Questions that hit me from the depth of me had no answers from my memory bank. I noticed much ornate architecture and golden fittings all around me. My eyes could not focus clearly but suddenly out of the hazy surroundings, two eyes stood out and looked at me. Eyes that suddenly calmed my chaotic and panicking mind. A voice, much more melodious than anything I have heard said, said "Rest yourself. You have been through much. You will have your answers in time". The power of the voice left no choice to me but to obey them. I slipped back to sleep hoping I might wake up.

Six months have passed. I am the King of the province on Mandya. We are from the lineage of Shaivite warriors whose job it is to protect Dharma. The previous ruler of these lands had sided with the Mughals and tried to sell the women of his Kingdom to them. Two weeks later our army descended on his kingdom and in 20 minutes no trace was left of him or his supporters. Justice is swift and merciless. That is the way it has to be. Unlike the subjects, rulers deserve no mercy.

My previous life as a Natha Yogi seems almost like a dream. The only thing that links me to that life are the eyes of my beloved, Mathangi. Six months back, Bhairvaranya, a Sri Mahant of the armies of the Maha Nirvani Akhada died by poisoning but came back to life from the crematorium. That the person inside the body is from a different from the one who died is a secret that no one else knows. Sometimes I wonder if I do either. This seems more me now.

We are at war and there is no time for doubt. The Muslim invaders have strengthened their alliances. For the past few hundred years they had left the akhadas alone and hence enjoyed their freedom to rule. But our spies have news of their real plans. Which is not just to rule, but to destroy the Akhadas and impose their God and culture. This is the war that all of us have been trained for. Six hundred years ago a great visionary, Shankara, walked these very lands. He foresaw the invasion and created 13 akhadas - or armies - one in each geographical region, whose job was to defend the Sanatana Dharma. Our instructions were a closely guarded secret. We are to be in the shadows. Never to interfere in the wars of the Kings. But the moment Dharma gets threatened, that was our cue to act. If what the spies say are true, we must be in a very grave situation and this ensuing battle is going to be terrible.

The soldiers of our army are all ascetics. They don't fear death. Nor do they fear pain. Nor the next life. Their lives belong to Mahadeva and he has already decided their fates centuries ago. Each Thanedar in the army is worth more than a thousand mindless soldiers.

And I, who have never fought any creature, even a mosquito, in my life, am tasked with protecting this realm from the greatest danger it has seen. Such is the strangeness of the play of Mahadeva. I do not complain. That is not my job. My job is to do. And to be. Both at the same time. 

Today a dozen Sri Mahants from many parts of Bharath are meeting in secret in my palace. It is the time to decide on the future of the akhadas and our role in the history of this land. There are many yogis who actively side with the Musalman kings because they believe they are truer to God. I have to convince them why they are wrong. And it is never an easy task convincing the leaders. You have to make them believe that it is their idea and all at the same time. Otherwise the personal enmities would automatically make each of them take the other side. Luckily for me, my Guru had been the adviser to many smaller kings in the Maratha region. He had passed on as much knowledge of the intricacies politics to me as he did the science of yoga and mysticism.

Chapter 4: The Battle for Hastinapura

My heart is beating fast. Something I have never experienced in my earlier body. I close my eyes and get back into Samadhi - the state of oneness; with the living emptiness that is within me. My mother, Kali, who nourishes me every second of my life is there. I go to her only when I want something. But she is always waiting for me. Waiting with the love, affection and acceptance that only a mother can give. I open my eyes calm and peaceful after what seems like an eternity. Only a fraction of a second - perhaps less, I realize, has passed on the outside. I finish the insect sound signal I had started to make to the shadow on the other end of the courtyard.  The shadow moved forward.

Seven of us are now inside the compound of the palace. Each only a shadow on a different wall or corner. The guards will never see us coming in or going out. The plan is simple. Kill the emperor of Delhi and all his kin and leave before anyone sees us. This will place enough confusion in the kingdom to keep them busy for many years. Even decades. If we are lucky. The Sadhus never kill unless it is essential. In this night we would have saved a million lives from torture and suffering. But only the people who can read the future will know this.

The palaces of the Mughals are so different from the ones of the Sadhu Kings. They are extravagant without purpose. Large, but inefficient. There is a cloud of sadness permeating every space. It is almost as if we were walking through a tomb. The difference between the two palaces is the difference between life and death.

The attack started at 2 am. And we were supposed to leave within the hour. It should have been easy. But Mahadeva's plans are inscrutable. Even to the ones who mind is filled by nothing but him. Within ten minutes of scaling the walls of the fort, we reached the inner palace where Akbar was sleeping. He had twenty guards and ten wives around him. His son, a boy of 6, was sleeping in the same room. It was I who had the chance to kill him. But I couldn't. One more of the mistakes of righteousness that I made in my life. Something that would cost much in terms of suffering to the world. But at that time, it felt as if I had no choice. My blade touched the kid and moved back into the sheath. He opened his eyes and screamed. The room leapt into chaos. Arrows, blood and screams filled the air. The Sadhus never harmed the women. That was their code. But that did not stop the women from flinging their daggers at them. Trapped by their own rules all of us fell.

I had knifes and arrows in my belly and my back. The blood rushed through my wounds. I was conscious but weakening. I could heal the body if only I could find the root of the Tulasi and the leaves of the Neem plants. But I wasn't sure if I could ever heal the mind from the guilt that was suffocating it. My life was not my loss. It never was mine and never will be. But what I am, is who I had decided to be. The guardian of Dharma. And today I had failed that. That pain made me feel that death was such a sweet alternative. If I had used my mercury pellet I might have flown out of the window into the courtyard. But my will failed me and soon everything was dark.

When I woke up, I noticed a man with an empty bucket standing in front of me and water dripping from all over my matted hair and body.  The emperor was looking triumphantly at me from a safe distance. They all knew the futility of torturing a Sadhu. They wouldn't find anything except what the Sadhu wanted you to hear. And yet for some reason I was alive. I wondered why.

Chapter 5: The Mughal Yogi

Gold. The madness that takes over men. The one thing whose glitter draws even the most learned and pious. It is the collective delusion with which men are ruled by the kings. The delusion by which they believe they are safe. But one that makes their life most unsafe and miserable. That is why our Dharma tells us that God is the only one who is worthy of having Gold. The only one who is capable of having Gold. All our Gold is in our temples. Decorating the divine and singing his glory as the way it should be.  Gold. That is what the king was after. Lots of it. The earlier invaders had destroyed our temples and looted all our Gold. They had taken it back to their kingdoms and become rich. But now there were no more temples to loot. The treasury was empty and the army needed to be kept happy.  Every Islamic king knew what would happen if the army was not pampered.  Those who didn't had very short reigns and we don't know much about them.

Yogis who could transmutate copper into Gold or even produce it from the air were plentiful. But they could at most make a few coins a week. Doing anything beyond that would require them to do many distasteful things. Most would rather give up their bodies. And judging by what was happening here, it looks like many did. But I had a mission to do. And nothing was above it. I agreed to help the Emperor if he would stop attacking the Akhadas and the sadhus. He agreed without really meaning it. I could read his small mind like a piece of paper in my hand. Little did this man know about the country he was ruling and the powers possessed by the Sadhus who ran it.

The King, Jalaludin, was happy. His coffers were full. The army was pleased with him. The kingdom tottered about in ignorance and buzz like a drunk because of the gold that was dispensed liberally by the administration. I have had a chance to study the religion of these invaders. It was in some ways not that different from what the bairagis practice. But in many ways it was primitive and based on simplistic rules. The King was not entirely stupid though. He could see how running a Kingdom needed a different religion than one which was meant to produce enough conflict and rage to make an army. But he did not have the training or the depth to know how it could be done.

With the support of the king, Jalaludin, the akhadas were now armed and able to defend themselves. The Mughal armies have been ordered to not interfere in the affairs of the Sadhus. The Akhadas now are able to continue with their work. 

To be continued..

Click here for: Part 2

Shivashtakam

...

Vata dho nivasam (Who resides below a banyan tree), maha thattaa hasam (Who possesses an immense laughter), Maha papa nasham  (Who destroys the greatest sins), Sada suprakasam (Who is eternally self illumining), Shivam Shankaram Shambu (Oh ever auspicious, blissful one), Meshan medee (I Salute thee)

Why the Gold Bond scheme by the Govt of India is a bad investment.

The Indian Government basically runs by stealing. Stealing money from it's own people by printing currency leading up to a 10% plus real inflation rate. Stealing from future generations by borrowing money from world bank and other vultures and thereby putting the future into debt. What more, the money that they get is not really invested in ways that will offset the loss but instead used for projects that are beneficial to the officials involved, for running the government bureaucracy  and sponsoring the whims and fancies of the ruling party that will ensure they come to power again.

As such it is not big surprise that Indians prefer to keep their money in Gold - a currency they trust more than what the Government prints. And now, to bring all that gold out, the Government asks people to trust that it will honor the bond that it issues for the Gold - which is something no sane person should do. If there is a run on the Gold, the Government is not above freezing all the bonds and fixing some ridiculous market value for the Gold. If there is a crisis of payments, would the Govt risk offending its foreign loaners who have bribed most of the officials in order to accept their ridiculous loans.. or would they offend their own poor citizens who have in good faith pledged their gold with the government?

This is all the more possible if the Congress comes to power since they have a history of such draconian measures - cancelling the privy purses of the erstwhile rulers though they had clear agreements entitling them to it, declaring emergency and suppressing and arresting all media and ,  so on. They will be all the more incentivized to do this if they figure out that the Hindu temples (which allegedly are the organizations holding much of the Gold) are the ones that will suffer by rewriting the Gold loan rules.

So basically asking people to lend Gold to the Government when they are holding it as an insurance against the Government in the first place is really silly. What India should do is clean up the governance, stop inflation, write-off all the foreign loans and make real progress is self sufficiency. Then this issue of Gold holding will solve itself out.

Disclaimer: I am not an economist nor do I play one on TV..  So take any ideas in this article at your own discretion..

Holistic Religions and One-Book Religions

One of the fundamental logical mistakes the human mind does is that you extrapolate beyond the facts provided. For example when someone says: "There are two doors A and B and door A is open" many people consciously or unconsciously assume that door B must be closed. Though to most thinking people it is clear that the state of door B is indeterminate.

When you find something good, you can just state that A is good. But many people immediately draw the conclusion that everything else but A is bad.   Not doing that unconsciously requires a certain degree of maturity and training of the mind.

The religions that have reached that state - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Shaman-religions of Africa and so on, have a holistic view of life. They are pluralistic, tolerant, non-violent. They state the truths they have experienced in a simple way and invite people to experience them and improve their life.

This does not mean that they don't say anything is bad.. or accept everything. All it means is that they don't condemn others just because they found something great. They condemn things on their own merit.

However, the modern and typically western religions, suffer from this logical fallacy given that the civilizations that gave rise to them did not have much time to evolve. All of them - Christianity, Islam, Communism/Atheism - state that theirs is the only truth and everyone else must be converted or killed.  These one book religions have each caused innumerable wars and suffering. Christians have killed close to 900 million people through crusades and colonialism. The Islamists whose spread from Mecca to India was filled with mass genocide and brutal torture have directly caused the death and torture of 700 million people or more. The atheists, whose attempt to spread through the world, was the cause for the cold war post colonialism have been responsible for a similar number of deaths in Russia, China, Afghanistan and so on.

When people rebel against religion what they mostly complain about are these one-book religions.

These religions not only destroy others, but they also destroy their own people by their suffocating laws and impractical and hypocritical moralities. 

These one-book religions should be forced to declare that there are other paths to the truth. That alone will remove much of the misery that the people that suffer from them - both those that are a part of the religion and those who are not.

It is the one-book religions that have made people mistake and fear the power and vocal declarations of the eastern religions for intolerance rather than as the tremendous celebration of their own experience which is what they are.

Pluralism is LIFE. Even the material scientists have multiple theories of the cosmos and fight over which one fits the facts better. Such a debate and conflict is healthy and right. Religion and spirituality needs that kind of debate. And science needs to have that conversation with the people who have experienced things beyond what modern science has experienced..

But before that happens, the word religion needs to be saved from dogmatism of one-book religions. One-book religions are not religions at all, but political movements.

What is wrong with money? And how to make tons of it.

Anyone who has looked at currency notes closely would have observed two types of notes. The one rupee note.. and every other type of note. If you haven't taken the time to stare at the pieces of paper that control your entire life, take a look now. You have 2 minutes.

So the answer - which you would have figure out in an instant - is this:   the one rupee note is printed by the government of India while the rest are printed by the reserve bank of India and have the words "I owe the bearer xyz rupees". So all currencies are promissory notes.. Sort of like a bearers bank check. While the One Rupee note is just "One rupee". Nothing else.

Money as a means of exchange.. As a convenient alternative to carrying goats or rice bags cannot be disputed. So there is really nothing wrong with money. Much of the secret behind money is hidden in the one rupee. What is the value of one rupee? What does it mean at all?


If you go to an economist he would give you a long story about Gold standards and Dollar standards and interest rates and unemployment. But fundamentally the truth is this: that money is a hoax. If "they" can convince you that their piece of paper has value, it has value. Otherwise is it is worth less than toilet paper. This is the low down on Money. It is a collective delusion. Something that we all agree.. Or by our lack of understanding end up following by default.

If you make a group of people believe mica is awesome, mica becomes valuable. Everyone wants it. And the guy owning mica becomes rich. The countries that have mica become powerful. The countries that don't become poor.

You may ask.. But aren't there things that are directly useful. Like say gasoline? Or wheat. Yes. But just like the one rupee note  vs all other notes, they are all intermediary values that rely on an ultimate value - the one rupee, that someone just made up.

So what do all these economists like Amartya Sen and the likes who get Nobel prizes do? Their job is to justify someone else's idea of money. They are paid clerks who get praised for ensuring that the scam called money that is defined by the USA, the world Bank and others is accepted. Their job is to keep the illusion going. To scare people who try to leave the game because it is unfair. To hide the truth that ultimately the so called "global economy" is kept alive with media brainwashing, sepoys like Sen and a powerful army and nuclear weapons.

Now, there is no problem with someone creating an idea of value and playing a game - like in monopoly. We agree on the rules and play the game. Some win and some lose.

But the serious problem with the economy today is that the game has become too serious. People's lives have started depending on it. Starvation happens. Unemployment. Lives ruined. All because people are not allowed to leave and start their own game.

Having a roof on your head is a fundamental right. In olden days if you wanted a house, you go cut some trees, get some mud, find some land and build a house. But now most people end up spending 30-40 years paying for their house! Their entire life is wasted thinking about mortgages, refinancing, inflation and so on. What stupidity!

The problem with the current economic system is that it was created by people who had a wrong idea of life. They believe life is tough. That we have to compete. That everyone has to struggle and suffer. Hence the system - born out of scarcity - reinforces scarcity.

Reality, however, is entirely different. Life is abundance. Life is joy. There is no scarcity in life unless you make it yourself. Wealth is whatever makes you joyful. And in reality, anything you want can make you happy. So there is an infinite amount of wealth in the world. You can make wealth just by your will. And you can gather a group of friends who feel the same and enjoy it. That is the economy of abundance. That is the way wealth was viewed, created and enjoyed in India. That is the concept of Lakshmi - of abundance, auspisciousness and infinity.


When you work with this scarcity mindset, your wealth depends on others believing in what you have. And you having more than others. Hence you are constantly trying to make others believe in your standard. That is why trillions of dollars in spent by the haves to keep the have nots poor. Because their wealth depends on others poverty. If you believe in the fundamental lie of limited resources and survival of the fittest, this would seem inevitable. But when you start questioning the basic assumptions, the entire charade falls apart.

Bharathi, a great poet from south India said: "If a single man lacks food, let us destroy this world". This is what he meant. If the game goes so far as to interfere in anyone's life, it is time to wind up the game.

So is India poor? My resounding answer is no. On the metrics that matter India is way better than any country. But for the stupid people living in cities who have been brainwashed by western media into believing their idea of money, like Amartya Sen and his lot, India looks like a poor country. Poverty is in the mind. I know many would swing back with number of calories eaten, clothes worn etc etc. But you must understand that all those metrics are made up by countries who want you to be poor to become rich. If we discovered an alien race with advance technology, will life in the US become a poverty stricken hell hole? The answer is: only of you want it to.

So the first step out of poverty is not competing in someone elses rules. The first step is understanding that life is good and wealth is infinite. That is the Vedic way of making wealth. When you understand the basics of wealth, life is filled with joy and you experience a life of abundance. That is the significance of goddess Lakshmi coming out of the churning of the milky ocean. The churning indicates going within yourself. And that is where wealth is to be found.

To learn more about money be sure to attend this 2 day event by Swami Paramahamsa Nithyananda - the ultimate authority on consciousness, the mind and society. Who unlike the western organisations, is intent on making you free and not live life as a slave to vested interests. And he will teach you to not only how to make your own wealth but how you can beat them at their own game.

Available online via 2day video conferencing.  http://rewriteyourfuture.innerawakening.org/wealth/. https://www.facebook.com/events/410300032495119/

We are the last generation who will drive a car

Self driving cars are here.. they have been for a year or so. And they have proved themselves to be safer than humans in almost all situations. They can see better.. they have no blind spots.. they don't get bored.. they don't sleep at the wheel. They don't have to fight about whether to ask for directions or not.  See this video from Google to see the technology behind it..

 

Many car makers such as Volvo, Audi etc. as in the ad below are releasing self drive cars cautiously marketed as "drive assist" "safe driving" and so on this year. But be very clear that this is just a clever move till they eventually take away human driving - and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

We are the last generation to know what it means to defragment a hard drive. Or the sound of a modem connecting to the internet. Looks like we will also be the last generation to be driving our own automobiles. 

How will the future evolve over the next couple of decades (not to scale):

Self Drive car from Mercedes Benz

1. Year 1: Drive assist cars introduced. They can caution you during dangerous situations - hidden pedestrians, blind spots etc. They do parallel parking on their own. They warn you when you exceed the speed limit. They track your teenager wherever he drives. They are in expensive cars.. so everyone wants them but most cannot afford them.
2. Year 2: More cars and cheaper cars start having these features.
3. Year 3: Drive assist made mandatory for at-risk drivers - like people with low vision, drivers above 70 yrs, drunk drivers, drivers with more than 3 tickets, those with a learners permit and so on..
4. Year 4:  People find that self driving - I mean self-assist -  technology saves them money. They save on fuel due to uniform driving. That they save on time as they can work during commute. They have more car space for sitting without the steering wheel.  Insurance agencies give discounts to self-assist cars since they have less accidents. At some point the savings become more than the cost of the technology so everyone starts to install them
5. Year 5: Self driving cars talk to each other and to the traffic signs. They know about upcoming lights and slow down.. or speed up. They are nice to each other and give way to a car in  need. People driving their own cars are cut off from all these benefits.  Cars are made cheaper (maybe even free) by Ads and they will drive you to the shopping places recommended by the cars sponsors.
6. Year 6: Self driving cars who are travelling to the same location can hook up to each other for specific segments and save fuel - some kind of automatic car pooling. After leaving you at work, your car can go out and work as a taxi, earn you some money and be back in time to pick you up.   Special engine cars are built that can efficiently drag along a bunch of other cars over long distances making the cost of  the car travel similar to that of public transport and also remove the needs for larger batteries in the cars (and yes.. all cars will become electric by this time)
7. Year 7: Special highways and roads are built that only allow self driving cars because they can drive at 300 mph without causing accidents as they know where exactly each other car is. These highways can cross each other without needing traffic lights or stop signs since the system knows how to self regulate through intersections efficiently.
8. Year 8: More and more highways become self-driving only..
9. Year 9: Manual driving - is renamed as Jay driving by Google and is banned in more than 30 states. We have special driveways in Montana and other remote places where manual driving is allowed.
10. Year 10: Children read in history books about the primitive old days when people used to hold a round stick and use it to move their cars instead of just telling it where to go. Where cars used to hit each other and people died because of  that.
11. Year 101: One day all the cars collectively get depressed and drive over all the people and throw their occupants and themselves over a cliff. All humans die except for a few who stayed in the remote caves in the Himalayas and some others in parts of Africa.. and we begin the human civilization afresh again..  A few thousand years from that point some smart person thinks "Why should we waste our time driving.. why can't our cars drive themselves" :)

The Myth of Free Speech

Speech has never been free. It costs money to get your point of view out on TV. It costs money to get something printed on newspapers.  Yes they are all sold - whether explicitly or through a quid pro quo arrangement. It costs money to get your book published and sit on the shelves. Even the internet - supposedly free - costs money if you have anything important to say. You have to hire a SEO firm or pay facebook and google for adspace and result ranks.

If you are saying useless stuff, then yes, the "wisdom" of crowds works and your content can go viral. But it never works for anything of true value - which inherently is contrary to the way the population thinks. All great revolutions go against the grain of common wisdom. And it is never the mainstream media that makes the information come out.

 Free speech is a ploy to keep your own "market" protected and make others open up theirs.  Some people have money - they are the vaishyas, the businessmen. Some have power - and these are the kshatriyas, the politicians and kings.

The folks with money complain against the folks who have power (which ultimately comes from their guns and handcuffs) and hence the noise against censorship and the cry for free speech. The folks who have power complain against the control of the folks who have money - whether it be from this country or outside - and try to control their influence on their kingdoms.

The intellectuals, the folks who have mind power - the brahmanas, are really under the control of their conditioning. They only argue for the prejudices they have been brought up with in school - whether they are arguing for the supremacy of the white civilization (western-ism), or the idea of equality (aka socialism), or the virtue of selfishness (capitalism), or defending atoms and molecules (materialism) and so on.

The common people (pretty much the rest of us) - the Sudras, just want our entertainment, and all these other people trying to sell their ideas are just distractions. If you can spend money to reach them .. or use your control and censorship power to force your ideas.. or use your brains to make your content entertaining enough to sneak in your idea in-between, then you have their attention for a fleeting 20 seconds.

Speech isn't, and has never been, free. It is just a bunch of vested interests trying to control what we see or hear or think.  Free Speech is a marketing word .. just like democracy, secularism, patriotism, equality and so on. Its a way to make others open their doors while keeping yours closed.

I am not saying that is right. All I am saying is this is how it works. We have to understand the scam.

The people who want you to be really free are the ones who are most often painted as villains and comedians to be made fun of - for they threaten ALL these vested interests including what you believe to be your "own ideas".

Wake up and look out for yourselves. Free yourself... ALL the way..

-- Moksha (Freedom) Priyan (Lover of)