I have now moved to Hyderabad (with San Fracisco bay area & Bangalore behind me). Here is the first big tech event I am going to attend in the city which I am going to call my home!

Check out "barcamp 7" on Aug 30th

By the way, that is not a static image. That is a live map widget. You can drag around, zoom in & out.

Oh, another thing. That is not google maps.. That is Zveego!

If you want to see a bigger widget (or if the the previous widget breaks in Internet Explorer 6), take a look at the following

I too loved US and bay area in particular. For me, this place has magical memories and great thoughts associated. Here is the answer I gave to myself when my own doubts arise about moving back to India.

I need US more than I need India.
India needs me more than US needs me.

And the second is nobler of the two.

On the occasion of the workshop, I want to recall the power of identity from the famous "Stanford Prison Experiment" which I learned about from Peter Senge's classic book “Fifth Discipline".

There was this experiment done at Stanford University during 70s. A researcher named Philip Zimbardo wanted to setup a mock prison experiment. Volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners and lived in a mockup prison. Though the experiment was planned for two weeks, it had to be called off on sixth day since the situation got out of hand.

They advertised in local newspapers for volunteers for a mock prison experiment. Out of the people responded (mostly students), they did a psychological profile and picked a very healthy bunch of youth. Then they split the team into guards and prisoners on a random basis. They created mock prison cells in the basement of psychology department. On the first day of experiment, the prisoner volunteers were picked up from their homes by police and charged with fictitious charges.

Both the volunteer prisoners and the volunteer guards took their identities seriously. The guards really turned sadistic towards the prisoners. Some of the prisoners turned violent and some of them were really depressed. Some of the prisoners were released on third itself because of mental break down. The whole experiment had to be abandoned on the sixth day.

Even though, this whole thing was supposed to be a mock up experiment, within few days of mock identities, people really became those identities. This experiment really showed the power of "identity masks" we wear upon ourselves. Some times this mask is tagged on us by the external world. Even though we have power to see beyond these masks, in reality we get overpowered by the "identity trap".

Identity is a trap which even the sanest of people can not escape from.

Buddhism talks of illusion of a real core at the center of the self. The illusion of self is created by the various identity masks we wear upon. Even though they are just masks, the effect of the mask itself is so powerful that the illusion looks very real.

Next few years seem pretty critical for the development of identity abstractions on the internet. Identity is very deep concept. There are lots of good things happening in the identity space but there are lots of deep theoretical issues to understand. I am pretty excited to be at the workshop.

Anything less than idealistic does not provide me enough intellectual stimulation.

There are two counts by which this provision is immoral (and hopefully illegal): 1) How can a person be standing for elections from two constituencies? This is waste of our resources. 2) There is more fundamental flaw: How can a person represent a constituency where he is not resident?

You can't generally walk into a different city or different state and hope to vote there. You have to prove your residency there and get yourself into voter list. So there are some minimum requirements by which one can become a voter of a particular constituency. And also it is illegal to be on voter list of two constituencies. If there are such minimal requirements for voting, how can there be no such requirements for our electors? The electors got to at least fulfill the minimal requirements of a voter. If you are representing the people of that constituency in a legislature, how can you get away not being the resident of that constituency? How can an elector who does not even fulfill the minimal voter residency requirements hope to understand and fight for the issues of that constituency?

Only "Ordinary Resident" needs to be be allowed to run for election from any constituency. Amar hopes to find any contradicting laws or loopholes and hopes to raise PIL in Supreme Court of India. It is a worthy cause! Anybody who understand the issue better, please do pass comments.

The book is written around the time of emergency period. The emergency itself seems like a triggering point for lot of themes in the book.

Naipaul's style leaves me an inspiration to try a third person perspective of India's situation. The analytical power of most of native Indian writing is dulled because of subjective involvement. On the contrary the writings of western writers sway in two extreme angles: either too much adulation or too much of harshness and both of which are completely unrealistic. But the Naipaul's position is different. He is an outsider and an insider. Since he is an outsider, he is harsh as he can be in judging. He is still insider with a caring heart.

He dissects ruthlessly but has a heart to suggest diagnosis. His analysis of the situation itself presents as a bold diagnosis.
Nothing & nobody in India including Gandhi had survived Naipaul's criticism. His insight is sharp. His generalizations are sweeping and sometimes tend to be crude but I loved them all.

Naipaul seems to be intrigued by RK Narayan's statement that "India will go on". Naipaul is convinced that India will go on but is skeptical about where it is going.

Naipaul's central theme revolves around the psyche of the Indian religious experience, the self-absorption of Hinduism and the acceptance of karmic fate. He claims that it is not the Muslim invaders of middle ages or the later British who impoverished the spirit of India. What he says is that the Indian religious experience is inward looking. Whenever a foreign invader came to India, the India withdrew itself; it could find a place in a religious path which emphasized the way out through self-nirvana instead of fighting the world.

"It is religious response to worldly defeat"

And he claims that it is not we fought to get the freedom; the freedom movement itself was only a response to our religious experience tapped into by Mr. Gandhi. Naipaul says that Gandhi had well understood the Indian psyche. The tool of non-violence was specifically invented by Gandhi after having understood the Indian psyche.

Archaic emotions, nostalgic memories: when these were awakened by Gandhi, India became free. But the India created in this way had to stall. Gandhi took India of one kind of Kal Yug, one kind of Black Age; his successes inevitably pushed it back into another.

Naipaul is angry with Gandhi for not having left an ideology to follow.

Gandhi swept through India, but he has left it without any ideology. He awakened the holy land; his mahatmahood returned to archaism; he made his worshippers vain.

Out of multitude of Indian leaders Naipaul dissected, only person who could get some credit was Gandhi. Though Naipaul is bothered about inward looking focus of Indian mentality, he seems to be thrilled at Gandhi's achievement. He says that even though Gandhi drew his strength from inward looking self-introspection, Gandhi always stood for action.

Now, in Bengal, he has nothing to offer except his presence, and he knows it. Yet he is heard to say to himself again and again, "Kya karun? Kya karun? What shall I do?" At this terrible moment his thoughts are of action, and he is magnificent.

We Indians use outer reality to preserve the continuity of the self.

When caste and family simplify relationships, and the sanctity of the laws cannot be doubted, when magic buttresses the laws, and the epics and legends satisfy the imagination, and astrologers know the future anyway, men cannot easily begin to observe and analyze.

When men cannot observe, they don't have ideas; they have obsessions. When people live instinctive lives, something like a collective amnesia steadily blurs the past.

In complexion, features, and physique the poor are distinct from the well-to-do; they are like a race apart, a dwarf race, stunted and slow-witted and made ugly by generations of undernourishment; it will take generations to rehabilitate them.

Naipaul had no respect for communism either. While commenting on naxalism,

The best left the universities and went far away, to fight for the landless and the oppressed and for justice. They went to a battle they knew little about. They knew the solutions better than they knew the problems, better than they knew the country. India remains so little known to Indians. People just don't have the information. History and social inquiry, and the habits of analysis that go with these disciplines, are too far outside the Indian tradition. Naxalism was an intellectual tragedy, a tragedy of idealism, ignorance, and mimicry: middle-class India, after the Gandhian upheaval, incapable of generating ideas and institutions of its own, needing constantly in the modern world to be inducted into the art, science, and ideas of other civilizations, not always understanding the consequences, and this time borrowing something deadly, somebody else's idea of revolution.

The man (the intermediate technology scientist who talks about the bullock cart improvements) himself was out of the country, lecturing; he was in demand abroad. Certain subjects, like poverty and intermediate technology, keep the experts busy. They are harassed by international seminars and conferences and foundation fellowships. The rich countries pay; they dictate the guiding ideas, which are the ideas of the rich about the poor, ideas sometimes about what is good for the poor, and sometimes no more than expressions of alarm. They, the rich countries, even manage now to export their romantic doubts about industrial civilization. These are the doubts that attend every kind of great success; and they are romantic because they contain no wish to undo that success or to lose the fruits of that success. But India interprets these doubts in its own debilitating way, and uses them to reconcile itself to its own failure.

He belonged to old India; nothing had happened to shake him out of that security; he questioned nothing. From the outside world he had snatched no more than a skill in computers.... To match technology to the needs of a poor country calls for the highest skills, the clearest vision.

The Gandhian spinning wheel no longer a means of livelihood for dispossessed, or a symbol of labor and brotherhood with the poor, but a sacred too, an aid to thought or a yogic means of stilling the waves of the mind, and aid to mental vacuity.

Gandhianism expressed in the white homespun of the Congress politician, no longer the sign of service but the uniform of power....

While India tries to go back to an idea of its past, it will not possess that past or be enriched by it. The past can now be possessed only by inquiry and scholarship, by intellectual rather than spiritual discipline. The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

Most of the public projects are so lousy because of corruption and unprofesssionalism of the contractors.

We want to celebrate the people who build great projects. At the same stroke, we want to give the incentive of discredit to the bad guys.

One could argue that the bad contractors have anyway developed thick skin for criticism and that they would float another benami company for another project. But my idea is to celebrate the good contractors more than punishing the bad contractors. By celebrating the good guys, we are setting expectations a bit higher for the future generations.

Inspiration one: Your tax dollars at work

While driving around in USA, I have seen huge signboards by the side of road construction projects: "Your tax dollars at work". These boards explain the project details like timelines and costs. What an empowering idea? It is people's money which is making these roads, not the grace of a politician.

Inspiration two: Reset your expectations

Rajesh Jain's call to "reset our expectations" was an inspiring thought to my idea. Read his article at TECH TALK: Building a Better India: Prologue

Inspiration three: People who built the Great Wall of China

One inspiration for the idea came from a documentary on the Great Wall of China. During the construction of the Great Wall of China, certain sections of the wall mandated the bricks to be marked with the name of the army unit or village unit which contributed those bricks. By marking the bricks with a particular entity, they could trace back the manufacturer later when a section of wall collapsed. This is a wonderful idea.

Inspiration four: Dale Carnegie

Another inspiration was Dale Carnegie. In one of the books, Dale Carnegie tells the story of how a manager increased the productivity of two departments. By writing the production numbers on a black board outside the units, he set a competition between the two departments to beat one another in production numbers. It was a cool trick!

Going forward into new millennium, the temples of India are libraries.

The modern India is going to depend more and more on the knowledge of its populace to progress itself and to compete with the west. The libraries are surely the temples of India. But these temples are in dilapidated condition now and most of them don't even exist. The government does not realize the significance of the libraries. Or sometimes, the corruption is so rampant that the funds for libraries go straight into the pockets of crooked.

Probably the schools & universities also would qualify as the temples on par with libraries. We have been doing reasonably good with the schools. But the universities are right now in such a bad shape because most of the research at Indian universities is irrelevant to current India; we seem to rather ape the west and look forward for an approval from the west.

One saving grace for these temples could be philanthropy. The philanthropy in the west has done some miracles. Why did not Dhirubhai Ambani leave his wealth to libraries (or some other philanthropy) rather than to his bickering children ? Hope, at least the more modern thinkers like N.R. Narayana Murthy does that!

Do we really understand the reasons for suicide of cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh? Do we understand the psyche of the farmer? Is it a political issue or an economic issue or an issue of literacy? Do we understand their plight?

I believe that all of the political parties either have not understood the real causes or are only interested in the causes, which they can exploit politically. Similar to cotton farmer suicides, there had been ginger farmer suicides in Karnataka. What did we learn from them?

Even YS Rajasekhar Reddy's populist measures (like free electricity) in the wake of elections and aftermath did not address the real issue. We need politicians who can sustain the faith that honest & courageous efforts beyond the populist measures do pay off electorally. Populist steps may be what the people ask for; but are they good enough?

Illiteracy & greed are the causes

I am not claiming to understand the whole of the reasons but I believe that the mainstream politicians have not understood them either. The causes are complex. But the illiteracy & greed seem to be the root causes. Illiteracy includes illiteracy of the agricultural & scientific crop techniques, illiteracy of the financial & risk assessment. The greed of the farmer is also another reason. Ofcourse some times the nature (either bad rains or the diseases) also have bad luck with the farmer; but the main reasons seem to be illiteracy & the greed.

Cotton crop is a game of high investments & high returns but also of high risks. If there is a disease during the flowering, it becomes a big investment game. Sometimes costs spiral beyond managing when disease goes out of control.

The small farmers out of greed have taken huge amounts of loans from private lenders to raise the crop. They don't understand how much loan is too much. If the nature (weather & disease) favours, yes, they would be able to pay back all those loans. But what if the nature overruns the farmer's luck? These loans at such compounding interests (50% per annum or even 100% per annum) would snowball into untenable debt in couple of years. The loans now look so oppressive to kill the spirit of even the best optimist.

There are also issues of scale of farm size. There is a critical scale at which these huge investments make sense. If you raise one acre plots of cotton, you are also at the mercy of your neighbour's plot. Even if you do good disease control of your crop, but what if the neighbour did not control his disease? The neighbour's disease can reinfest your crop. There is a minimal size of land, which makes sense for investments and gives a sense of control on your crop.

The greed of the farmer also blinds him. Having seen a bumper cotton crop at a relative's village, he plunges into cotton farming without doing homework. One can do some minimal soil testing to find out if this patch of land is suitable for cotton. There have been instances of even the landless folks plunging into this game by taking huge tracts of land for lease. For the people who take on leases, the risk is more dangerous if the crop fails.

Wrong diagnosis

There have been a lot of wrong diagnoses (as per my opinion) suggesting the bad moneylenders and lack of enough subsidies from the government.

You can't ban private lending. It is not feasible. The business of private lending blooms not because the lender is driving it but because the borrower is so desperate. If the government bans it, the debtors would sustain the business out of their own desperation. So one could argue "why not make government/bank lending so available that there is no necessity for the existence of private lending?". Well, there are lots of limitations for government/bank lending. The banks are concerned about the feasibility of lending, non-performing assets and how much to lend to a farmer. If the farmer resorts to an untenable debt on a certain amount of land, he will be forced to private lender.

Some argue that the government does not subsidize enough support purchase price.

Psyche of the nation

What is the mental health of the average Indian? There are people committing suicide when their movie hero's film fails at box office. In such a nation, how can we accurately pin point the reasons for cotton farmer suicide?

What can be done?

Farmers need education on financial risk & return assessment. How much investment is too much? How does the compound interest work? When to back out? If they borrow at such exorbitant interest rates from private lenders, what happens if the crop fails? When the crop turns out good, they can easily pay off the debts. But if the crop fails, how the compound interest spirals out. There are instances of people borrowing at 100% interest rates. If the crop turns out good, there is no big deal; but if the crop fails, the interest rates compound so badly that they can't imagine recovering for their life.

We have such huge pool of government bureaucracy (including the college lecturers and school teachers). We need to use them to campaign and educate the people. Yes, the results of such campaigns are not easily quantifiable. Nor do such campaigns appease the emotions of the people. But the political parties have to think beyond their *quick* electoral payoffs.

The government can do a lot apart from education. Government can conduct free soil testing and encourage people to go for soil & water testing before planting crops.

Government can put more scientists into service. We need to recruit more agricultural scientists. Even the ones already employed with government are turned into file pushing bureaucrats. Rather we should deploy them in the real fields advising the farmers. Lot of the times, the farmer uses wrong pesticides at the suggestion of the *uneducated & greedy* pesticide seller. We need these pesticides to be prescribed by Government scientists. But we got to make these government scientists roam the villages instead of hoping that the farmer would visit the government offices if he needs the advice.

Government needs to open up the "model farms" in each district and use these model farms to educate the people about scientific techniques.

The summary is that government has to think beyond the electoral payoff of populist measures like free electricity. Yes, we need to give free electricity but something more needs to be done too.

Once upon a time, two people were traveling by a bullock cart. One was a highly learned professor in physics. The other was an ordinary drunken person. The cart was running towards downhill slope and is about to turn over. The professor sensed this and started planning on what to do. The drunken guy had no sense at all; he didn't even know that the cart is going to turn over. The professor calculated the path of the crash; he estimated the force of the crash. Then he did a recovery plan to minimize the damage to his body during the crash. The drunkard has no idea at all.

The cart crashed. Finally people recovered. The professor had more injuries than the drunkard. The professor started thinking what went wrong. He thought that it is unfair that he got more injuries even after planning for the crash while the drunkard came out unscathed even though he had had no sense at all.

What was the reason ? The story has subtle but profound lessons. Having planned so much, the professor started resisting the crash. But the body of the drunkard fully cooperated with the fall (probably because he had no sense). That was the reason for parity in injuries.

What is the moral of the story ? People while trying to achieve something end up resulting in the complete opposite results. When the people plan so much, they cling to their expectations and in the process it hurts more than helping. But the people who are flexible to cooperate with the environment get better results.

The story does not imply that we got to be unprepared like drunkard guy. But rather we should be flexible and "let go" of things instead of resisting the change. The Nishkama Karma of Gita tells the same; "don't expect the fruits of your actions". But most of the time, while expecting the results, we cling to the results and we hamper our own progress.

The main concern of Buddhism is "you" i.e the human being. All it tries to do is to study the human condition; why is human being the way he is. And it proposes some techniques to alleviate human suffering.

Buddhism is all about living a life in harmony with one-self, in harmony with others & in harmony with environment.

What a wonderful religion! May be, the label "religion" is a misnomer for Buddhism. If you are really looking for God, go somewhere else. But if you are honestly looking to improve yourself, try some of Buddhism techniques.

The main technique of Buddhism is Meditation. There have been attempts to imbue Buddhism with lot of analytical theory but main theme is always the technique rather than theory. A lot of people would like to indulge in theorizing as a substitute to the actual work; but such people would be disappointed. Stop analyzing and start working on the actual issues.

Even if you are not convinced of the methods of Buddhism, don't worry; at least take the inspiration that it is you who can do anything at all for you. God is for those who like to shift the burden of responsibility from themselves. In my opinion, God is very damaging to the health. Just the thought that "somebody (i.e God) is going to take care of me when I am in trouble" is a comforting but is a destructive notion. It makes you dependent on somebody else. Sorry, you are responsible for yourself.

But there is a recursive danger now. Ok, now I take responsibility for my self and hope that it would ensure the results. Well, even that is a dangerous assumption. Sorry, you can't even rely on the assumption that hard work pays off.

A lot of people like to call themselves Karma Yogis. They say that they leave the fruits of the action to God. But by asserting that such a path is going to lead them to happiness is again a dependance. Now you are depending on the efficacy of the Karma Yoga technique. Sorry, you can't even rely on assumption that by leaving fruits of action to God will make you happy.

So, what do I depend on now ? Doesn't such freedom cause anxiety ? Yes, it does. All you can do is to learn being comfortable with the utter chaos. Learn to tolerate the ambiguities. Learn to tolerate fuzziness.

Introduction to NLP

I don't think, I need to give an introduction of NLP to the audience of this newsgroup. But I want to stress some of the NLP terms which are of interest to my discussion below.

We know that there are at least three primary modalities: A (audio), V (video), K (kinesthetic). Each of the modalities has further submodalities.

Different people are good at different modalities. Some people experience the world intensely through Visual modality while others in Auditory. For one person, it could be V > A > K which means Video is more primary than Audio which is more primary than Kinesthetic. But for somebody else, this order could be A > V > K.

The main insight of the NLP is that by manipulating the submodalities of the experience, you could reduce the hold of that experience on you. Say you are scared of spiders or roller coaster rides; you can sit down and analyse the modality & submodalities of the experience. As soon as you think of roller coaster ride, you may have been visualizing certain video in your head. Analyse the pictures and video to see where it is located in your head, what color is it in, whether it is moving fast or slow etc. Now by manipulating these submodalities, you can loosen the fear of rides or the fear of the spiders.

Where NLP got it right?

The basic insights on modalities and the techniques developed out of modality manipulation for self-help were the greatest things. Techniques like swish pattern were very successful in helping people.

Where NLP went wrong?

To get the best out of NLP, it needs the help of external therapist. The NLP does not have in-built rigorous discipline to be used by an individual by himself. It requires the intervention of an external therapist who interprets, articulates and leads you to a solution.

NLP as a self-help tool failed since it lacked the formal inbuilt discipline needed for a serious spiritual/self-help path. To use any of the techniques (e.g. Swish Pattern) for self-help, it requires an enormous amount of unbiased objective analysis of oneself. (For me, after 3 years of experimentation with NLP, the addiction only turned into more & more reading of NLP literature rather than working to fix my problems. I felt at some point that I needed help from a therapist to make better progress).

It is very tough to use NLP to cure some of the deeper psychological complexes like “existential anxiety”.

A new model of NLP

My feeling is that NLP got wrong in understanding the representational systems or the modalities (A, V, K). All three modalities are not different. There is only one primary modality, which is Kinesthetic. All other modalities express themselves through Kinesthetic. My insight is based on my experience with Vipassana style of meditation. You just need to work on your K (kinesthetic) modality to fix any problem. However, the kinesthetic is the subtlest of all modalities. I try to explain below why Kinesthetic is the primary one.

Introduction to Vipassana

Vipassana is the meditation technique used by Theravada style of Buddhism. The Vipassana meditation consists of working on your bodily sensations to liberate your mind.

Vipassana is taught generally in a 10-day course. The first three days consists of focusing your awareness on your breath. By the end of the three days, the mind gets so acute that one will be able to observe the subtlest bodily kinesthetic sensations. After these three days, the student is taught to focus on the sensations throughout the body instead of just nasal area. The main thing is to develop equanimity to the bodily kinesthetic sensations.

Equanimity is what gives you the results. You are asked not to focus on the individual thoughts; you are not supposed to analyse the connection between a particular individual thought and the kinesthetic sensations thereof. The 10-day program basically instills the discipline to experience the bodily sensations without reacting to them. It is a very tough and hard work but if you do your work diligently, you can see that the deeper mental complexes evaporating from your mind.

Do we need a 10-day course to learn Vipassana? Can't we learn it just by reading a book? Possibly not. The path is so hard that anybody would need at least one 10-day course to instill the discipline and to appreciate the proper intent of the technique.

Theory behind Vipassana

We need to understand the Chain of Conditioned Arising or Causal Genesis to learn why & how the Vipassana technique works.

There are four mental processes or aggregates (khandha) which give rise to whole process of how our thinking process works (as per Theravada Buddhism):

1) Consciousness (Vinnana): The first process of the mind is the receiving part, which registers the occurrence of any input, physical or mental. It notes the raw data of experience without assigning labels. This is where you receive all the experiences of the world through your senses. You hear something or see something. There is no judgment of whether this is good or bad. Your friend just uttered some words but you haven't judged those words.

2) Perception/Recognition (Sanna): This is where you make judgment of the registered raw data. In the previous process, you merely heard or saw something in raw terms. But now in the current step, you are making judgment, assign labels & categories, evaluate whether it is good or bad. The words uttered by your friend in the previous process are evaluated now and are labeled as either they are good words or bad words. It basically filters the raw input and presents a colored image of the reality. This judgment process itself is conditioned by one's past experience. We are evaluating the current raw input based on our past-accumulated reactions.

3) Kinesthetic sensations or feeling (Vedana): This is the subtlest of all four processes. A kinesthetic sensation or feeling arises in the body as soon as the first step happened i.e. as soon as the raw input is received. So long as the second process of evaluation of the input has not happened, the sensation remained neutral. But once a value is attached to the raw input, the kinesthetic sensation turns pleasant or unpleasant. The kinesthetic sensation is the bridge between mental and physical experience but itself is rooted in the physical body.

4) Reaction (Sankhara): If the kinesthetic sensation is pleasant, we wish to prolong or intensify the experience. If it is unpleasant, we wish to stop it. The mind reacts with liking or disliking. We are merely reacting to the bodily Kinesthetic Sensations (Vedana) but such a reaction is so powerful that it determines our future conditioning to the experience. The greatest insight to take is that we are not really reacting to the valuation we gave in the second step (i.e. whether your friend's uttering were praise or abuse), but rather we are reacting to the physical kinesthetic sensations manifested in third step. The new Sankharas form the basis by which you will judge and evaluate the future raw inputs. And thus the cycle of conditioning continues.

Now what? We keep going through this loop of forming new Sankharas; and the Chain of Conditioned Arising continues in a loop. But here comes the insight of the Vipassana. By learning to observe the Kinesthetic Sensations (Vedana) objectively and not reacting to them, one can break the chain of conditioned response. Basically we are breaking the conditioning of the registered experience forever. The Perception/Recognition (Sanna) instead turns into Wisdom (Vinnana).

You are not supposed to focus on the thoughts but instead on the sensations. It is very difficult to link what thoughts caused what physical sensations. But that is the origin of discipline in Vipassana. Normally it is very tough to focus on thoughts for novices to try tracing them to the resulting kinesthetic sensations. (But I believe, one can learn such prowess as one practices more & more).

Why is the technique so subtle and why is it not so
self-evident? Everybody needs an explanation of why and how a technique works. But the Vipassana is an experiential technique, not an intellectual experience. You don't need to understand how it works to get the benefits. Even my explanation of the technique is only an approximation. One only needs to go through the 10-day course to experience the benefits of it.

NLP & Vipassana

Have you ever done a yoga asana on a stressful day? A single yoga asana seems to relax the stress and get you into good moods. Even the tai chi focuses on bodily kinesthetic movements as a spiritual tool. The salvation lies in the human body. The kinesthetic sensations talked about in Vipassana are nothing but the knots in our psychosomatic field.

There is one subtle difference in NLP and Vipassana. Vipassana never focuses on an individual thought and resultant kinesthetic sensations. It is not humanly possible for a novice to connect the individual thoughts and the resulting the kinesthetic sensations. Vipassana frowns upon such an experiment itself. But I believe, once the practitioner gains more experiences, it is possible to do such thing. The NLP addresses a certain particular psychological problem while the Vipassana addresses the deeper complexes. I don't think, it is possible to fix your phobia of spiders in a Vipassana sitting. But a deeper surgery of psychological complexes is only possible in Vipassana.

NLP indulges in an analytical approach to identify the root causes of the problem. In Vipassana however, the fact that you are uncomfortable with a certain thing is good enough. Rest is the hard work of equanimously observing the physical sensations without reacting. The underlying complex reasons come up the surface and evaporate by the exercise. You are expected to hold your equanimity during the meditation; neither crave for more of the similar sensations nor run away from them. Otherwise you are only strengthening the conditioning.

What is next?

There is need for more research into kinesthetic modality as the tool for NLP. I would urge the NLP community to give a try of Vipassana mediation. I believe, Vipassana can nicely complement the work of NLP or even replace NLP as the ultimate spiritual tool. If you want to experience the technique, one can sign up for a free course at http://www.dhamma.org/. The course itself is free. You can also check out my blog http://www.nachiketa.org/ for other related information.