Excerpts from The World As I See It - An Essay By Albert Einstein

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving"...

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader.

In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling...... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

My Immortal

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

Enlightenment

Q: You know how they keep talking about achieving enlightenment and truth? Well, I just had a passing thought that perhaps the entire purpose of being on Earth for us is to achieve enlightenment so that we can escape our cycle of reincarnation and go to heaven where we can spend all eternity kissing Buddha's 2500 year old a@#. 

A: Well I do not know what enlightenment do they want us to achieve. Enlightenment of what. They keep talking of doing good and being great leaving desire and physical pleasures, why what for. They ask it in the name of god. Now I ask why would god give us all these senses of pleasure and pain when he wanted us to renounce them in the first place.

 Re-incarnation is a theory just like there are many theories, Buddha says that there is sufferings in this world and the cause of this suffering is desire. Is freedom from this suffering not itself a desire for peace/pleasure.. name it yourself. I would as why deny it yourself. The only thing that makes us human is all these desires and attachment. No matter what happens a person will always be more passionate than detached. Selflessness can only exist to a point. 

The thing most dear to man is his life and to him he can at most give that up. On the other hand love has no limits, he may want to own everything and there is no limit to one love as it is as big as the cosmos. This is what makes us human and it is our inherent characteristic perhaps. This greed, passion and attachment are the things which will always be greater than any kind of detachment, selflessness or altruism. 

 Now to refute the concept of heaven. Every religion in the planet who believes in heaven and hell says that the body "remains" here and that one's spirit goes to the heaven. Now If you consider the concept of heaven and hell you will learn that all the pleasures and tortures of heaven and hell respectively are those of the physical nature. Now why is this, it is because heaven and hell have been conceptualized by men of flesh and blood. 

They have not known any kind of pleasure or torture that can be inflicted upon one's soul. Some religion preaches in heaven you will get 72 virgins(Islam),others says there are angels(several). In hell a "sinner" will be hanged upside-down with his head dipped in a pool of boiling oil etc. and even bigger horrors inflicted on one's soul, while these are the tortures of body which is left behind after death and is soon to be burned or buried. 

These are some very obvious flaws, as you see that religion has been invented by men(women) in the first place.

 Something else(may be irrelevant here) Humans are too insignificant when you think of the cosmos. Have you ever thought how large the universe is and how small Earth is relatively. The insignificance of Earth is itself insignificant. Who would miss if earth were to disappear just like a speck of dust cleaned from your floor. 

Purpose of our being on earth can not be determined it is not a mathematical problem as it was not certain that human were the ones who would evolve.

Evolution has merely favored humans before the others. There was no definite plan as there is no definite possibility of some God creating the universe. If there is such a thing as a God then he/she has failed miserably if you look at Earth.

Philosophy leading to Atheism

Why is it that most people who start thinking and getting into philosophy become atheists?

When we study philosophy we try to find a reason, proof and a cause for faith in god. Faith cannot be verified. Nobody has seen god, then how can any one say if he exists yet so many people believe in God.

Now the original question: why do we deviate from god. Well its not that we deviate from it suddenly but we realize the ways that others around us follow to look attain God or heaven seem totally irrational. For e.g. god does not want us to give him materialistic gifts, have fasts, pray in the way we do etc. For e.g. say a different civilization which believes in a notion that to please god we should have sex. It may sound absurd but a civilization can have such a tradition. For one it is less gruesome than human or animal sacrifices.

The deviation from these methods causes other people to label philosophical questioner as un-believer. He is not an unbeliever. He is at this point agnostic, or looking to just verify what he has believed till now. In some cases depending upon the people around our subject he may turn atheist or remain agnostic. Now when he questions again and again in the matters of faith he may be ostracized and it may result him to loathe the idea of religion altogether. This is one and the most likely way how one may turn atheist.

It is difficult for one to realize that something he believed in all along has such a weak foundation. It is like being in love. It cannot be quantified. It can only be felt. For e.g. If you are in love and some one asks you to prove it you can't. It is true about god.

Now you will ask if these methods are irrational then why do such methods exist, people are smart. Here I would say we humans have a tendency to believe in whatever is super natural very easily. People tend to believe in something that seems unbelievable.

The way I see it that at some point of time the notion of religion was brought up to bring order to the civilizations in particular. It is just a theory though. The religious leaders must have define some standards so that people will not engage in small crimes the like theft etc. Because when the idea of religion originated the society was not as civilized as it is today but that is off course deviating from the point.