A machine can now do much of what you trained for. Volume I asks what you are, what the machine is, and what stays yours when it does the rest. Thirteen chapters, three Parts, and no promise that your job is safe.

A machine can now do much of what you spent years learning. Every list of what it cannot do has failed, including mine. This book makes a smaller claim that holds: not what a machine cannot do, but what it cannot be.

The Hanuman Chalisa a whole theatre sang begins with a confession: I lack understanding, give me a better mind. Why devotion needs logic, why logic needs devotion, and how to tell a living faith from a sealed one.

Critics called Hanuman Ansh slow and full of magic. Much of that should stand. But a verdict on craft is not a verdict on the whole, and a devotee who treats every criticism as an insult does more damage than any two-star review.

Did Neem Karoli Baba’s train really stop? I cannot prove it, and neither can you. But look at what he asked for: a station for a village. How logic reads every miracle in Hanuman Ansh, without blind belief and without mockery.

At Hanuman Ansh, people took off their shoes in a multiplex and stayed through the credits. The building did not need to become a temple. They carried the temple in with them, and that is exactly why devotion needs judgement.

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← Previous: Chapter 14: Peaceful Coexistence · Series hub · Next: Chapter 16: A Meaningful Life →

← Previous: Part IV: On Ethics · Series hub · Next: Chapter 15: Organisation of Society →

← Previous: Chapter 13: Mastery Over the Mind · Series hub · Next: Chapter 14: Peaceful Coexistence →

← Previous: Chapter 12: Modifications of the Mind · Series hub · Next: Part IV: On Ethics →

← Previous: Chapter 11: Understanding the Mind · Series hub · Next: Chapter 13: Mastery Over the Mind →

← Previous: Part III: On Psychology · Series hub · Next: Chapter 12: Modifications of the Mind →

← Previous: Chapter 10: Life and Death · Series hub · Next: Chapter 11: Understanding the Mind →

← Previous: Chapter 9: The Concept of God · Series hub · Next: Part III: On Psychology →

← Previous: Chapter 8: Free Will or Determinism? · Series hub · Next: Chapter 10: Life and Death →

← Previous: Chapter 7: Energy: An Abstract · Series hub · Next: Chapter 9: The Concept of God → You can plant the tree. You cannot make it grow. Most of the misery I have seen, my own included, comes from mixing up those two. In brief: In this chapter I take on one of the oldest questions about our lives: whether we choose anything at all, or only feel as though we do. I answer it the way I finally answered it for myself, with a tree that you can plant but cannot order to gro

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