The Ultimate Source of all Wealth and
Power:
Your Head and the Ideas You Think
Man has always had very frail limbs. Very little protective coating like other animals. We do not have a skin like a rhinoceros nor quills like a porcupine. We cannot jump far, we cannot run fast. We cannot climb trees and bound across branches with agility. We cannot swim well. Today, man tends to be so obese in many societies that man cannot even walk a short distance with comfort.
On the other hand, even in pre-historic times, man did reasonably well by developing basic tools and learnt to attack other animals in groups, as well as how to domesticate many animals, and many other such innovative things. This diverse output was generated by man's processing power, rooted in the brain, and not in the limbs. Man survived the terrors of the jungle and the constant fear of attack from unknown creatures of the night only because man, the animal called Homo sapiens, began thinking of cause and effect, and exploring his world with his perception and his mind.
Despite this moderate progress, man's genes could not quite prosper the way we are used to in the present times. Human population remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of thousands years. Though the human brain was reasonably well developed at that time, something was not happening.
That something was provided to the human brain - particularly the Western brain - only in the past 2,500 years, particularly in the past 225 years.
Before that, man was chained by his own fear of authority of "senior" human animals. Either a tribal king would subdue dissent (unfortunately, it is dissent which is the starting point of all thinking) or a religious ojha would prevent the investigation of disease. The human brain was exactly similar in biological shape and size to the present man's brain. But that brain was as if wrapped within many layers of blankets of authority. Fear (based on very good reasons) dominated man's existence, and unfortunately, to a very large extent, continues to dominate our existence even today.
Over and above the fear of Nature and of the Unknown, we are fearful - perhaps even more than we are afraid of Nature - of uniformed men, of gangs in the streets, of the Kings and Presidents and Prime Ministers we have created, and of our own "bosses" and "supervisors" in our daily life. Ideally we would like to avoid giving authority to anyone. But we are bound - virtually imprisoned - within deep layers of authority from the moment we are born and until we die. Most of these are due to the fact that others exercise judgment over us which can then lead to economic loss or even physical pain. Nature sends Her wrath on us once in a while; but other human beings are like a perennial cloud blocking the view of sunshine - of our innate freedom.
The key to gaining wealth and power is to minimize human authority over oneself, a task which is not quite difficult as it seems. But now I declare that
You are the bestower of ALL authority.
I don't know if you have ever examined the immense power you hold over authority figures. Each of us bestows authority on the "authority-figures" each day through each action of ours. By swearing "Heil Hitler!" I create Hitler. Else he is just another joker in green clothes. By assissinating him, I finish off the brute. By not assassinating him, I connive in the extermination of millions of Jews and cause millions of other deaths throughout the world.
I have all kinds of power: the power to speak the truth, the power to flee to safety, and the power to assassinate (as well as its obverse, the power to suicide). I (and you) are all born with these fundamental authorities over other human animals. That is why you find authority figures so worried all the time about their security, and often desirous of clamping down on the spread of truth. Authority figures are afraid of only one thing: of the People finding out their deep, and dark, secrets.
This truth is worth repeating: No other human being is anything more than an animal. If it appears to us that a particular human being is more well dressed and more powerful than a mere animal, that is an illusion we have created for ourselves. All human beings are made of flesh and blood and hence are killable, like any other animal is. Assassinating an other human animal disposes off all power that that human being might have possessed. That is the reason for the popularity of assassination in our history books. Today, assassinating a persons' character is considered more polite, thus leaving an empty shell of a human being behind.
Therefore I as a citizen possess complete power over any figure of authority. By calling one such animal, "Sir," I enable him to be my boss. If I were not to do so, he would just be any other human being. Consider how I could use my power to divest him of his existence as my boss. If I were to find that he is doing things against the public interest, I could expose his misdeeds and let the Public decide his fate. I have used the power of speaking the truth in this case. That is actually the MOST potent power of all.
However - and this is not a weakness - for most "bosses" I am willing to ignore or tolerate their minor excesses since I know that those excesses are too minor to affect the world in a serious manner. Second, it is very critical for me to determine whether by "dethroning" an evil Boss, I will ensure that such evil Bosses do not emerge again. In other words, I must determine whether such bosses are genetically produced or produced by the environment.
For example, in India, most of my political bosses and many administrative bosses have been directly corrupt or indirectly so. I do not believe that homo sapiens indica is a genetically deformed species prone to corruption from birth. If such is the case, then the evil Boss must be a product of the "system" and I must therefore change the system. This book will do that job. After that my father will not be asked by one Chief Minister to fund him from a government sector undertaking, nor will another Chief Minster - in another part of India - ask me to select a contractor who is not the lowest bidder for a major purchase. Evil men will disappear because Indians are not evil by nature. They have been made so.
I will show you the truth about your power and the reason why you are at the "mercy" of the Evil System of India. After that you and I will simply change the system to prevent the formation of Evil.
By paying obeisance to my "culture" I create it; I enable it to exist. Everything that existed in the past existed without my permission. I can do nothing about it. But anything that desires to exist while I am alive must get my permission to exist from this moment. If I do not permit it to exist, it will die. That is my power. That is Our Power.
By not speaking out against feudalism, casteism and all other stupidities and misuse of power, I connive in its misuse. I am responsible for the entire evils of the world. The only way I can get out of this responsibility is to resist - with a simple smile on my face - whatever I decide for myself is Evil. You and I have to do this. If you will not - since you say that you are scared of the consequences - then I will. Full stop. I am scared too, but I know the truth about the power of the mind. So I will help you out of the situation.
By first denying and then violating the authority of another human being over me, I create my own authority. By refusing to take my culture or social attitudes as given, I explore my own ideas, and realize, ab initio, which of these I believe in and which I don't. I take greater risk than the person who is mired - by his own mind - in a realm of apparently "given" structure, which was actually not given to him but created and allowed to exist by his acceptance of it.
To me, neither the structure of India nor of the Indian Constitution nor even of the world, is a given - to be accepted like a sheep. I am a CITIZEN OF THE BLUE PLANET, a creature not created by anyone else but my own parents, in a chain originating in the creation of matter by ethereal incidents. No bounds confine me. No nation owns me. No nation or religion gets my allegience by default. Anyone who is in authority anywhere has to earn his/ her position by persuading me why I must listen to them.
And so whatever confines I accept are accepted out of choice. I choose to accept many confines. I remain a serious, thinking, hard-working officer of the Indian Administrative Service (a completely self-chosen confinement, once again). I am not a rebel nor will I tolerate rebellion against India.
I have chosen to be bound by the orders of my ministers, but I must have - even if some fool has not written it down for me - the discretion to distinguish where official secrets end and where personal secrets begin. When a Chief Minister asks me to favor a particular contractor for a major cement contract, I must use my discretion which is innate in me, since I am a human being and not a sheep, to bestow on that request the status of a Personal Secret. I am not bound to hold on to your Personal secrets, if these secrets tend to defile my nation in which I choose to spawn my seed. You are a slimy frog of the gutter and will have to be treated as such. Upholding Official Secrets is my duty. I chose to abide by these secrets. Upholding Personal Secrets is not my responsibility. I chose when and where to make the distinction.
Remember, a Hitler has to be assassinated. Exterminated. Evil must go. You cannot say, "Goodbye Hitler, I must leave you now to your self-chosen task of burning alive, human beings and children," and escape from Germany. You have to finish him off. I hold everyone responsible, who lived when Hitler was rising and did not assassinate Hitler, for the guilt of the death of millions of people.
Similarly, I hold myself responsible for not telling the people about incidents of an enormously Evil nature that have taken place in my life. It was my job to finish off this Chief Minister. To show his blackness to the people. If necessary, to assassinate him. But no, wait. As I said above, I think that I can get rid of the fundamental problem itself: by ensuring that we never have such Chief Ministers. To that task this book is dedicated.
Unfortunately, I was not so clear about my power, earlier. I am, now. I did not expose many rascals in time. But actually that would have been a waste of my time and energy. I did send many small rascals to jail. I suspended petty officials found sucking the People's blood. But the best way I always found was to create systems that prevent this tendency.
I am now going to create that system for India which will eliminate these tendencies in our rulers. Through the many years of experience of being in the government (my father's 30 years of experience must be added to my 15), through studying thousands of books, through travelling and living in villages and many foreign lands, and above all, through simple analytical thinking, I have confirmed the existence of the Germ which sprouts many thousands of smaller rascals on a daily basis. That germ is called Socialism. Now, I will set about, in my usual super-efficient manner, exterminating Socialisms of all kind and anything anywhere in the human mind which supports weakness.
I want you to clearly understand one fundamental thing at this stage. If you allow corruption to go around you, You are squarely responsible.
I have taken upon myself full responsibility, too. I cannot tell my children on my death bed, "I am sorry Sukrit and Prateeti. I was bound by some stupid sub-section of the Conduct Rules of the all-India Civil Services (which were in any case designed by the British to breed generations of loyal, unthinking, clerks for themselves). Therefore I had no choice but to hide behind my positions of power and to let big cockroaches and rodents infest our public life." I don't tell lies to my children. I would be a coward if I were not to get rid of these cockroackes during my lifetime, so that they have a clean kitchen. I will not kill these cockroaches, however. I will apply a poisonous gel on their colonies so that they are made incapable of evil.
The release from authority
As I showed you clearly above, Man is everywhere confined and bound by self-created chains. The main breakthroughs since man was a primitive man, 5000 years ago, have come about by releasing these chains that bind the human mind.
i) The first great idea: 2,500 years ago, came the first truly great idea, from Socrates. Socrates virtually single handedly freed the human mind from domination by its social environment. He asked for proof for everything that people took as granted. Obviously he created a good number of enemies. But now those stupid enemies are long dead, while Socrates lives on - forever. "His method would be to start with whatever seemed the most satisfactory "hypothesis," or postulate, about a given subject and then consider the consequences that follow from it. So far as these consequences proved to be true and consistent, the "hypothesis" might be regarded as provisionally confirmed." (Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5005/86/0.html)
This kind of thinking caused a chain reaction down the centuries. Instead of attributing bad weather or bad health to gods, or to a curse from a local "magician," man started asking questions. And observing things.
ii) The second great idea: The next truly great idea came from Martin Luther in the 16th century. He questioned the authority of religious leaders in deciding what a particular religion states. He elevated, in a rather indirect way, the status of the Mind of the common man. That the common man has an innate ability to decide on issues relating to God, was an idea which is still shaking the earth. He started off the chain reaction that led to the separation of the authority of the church and the state. The Renaissance - which was characterized by the generation of many new ideas - can be directly attributed to Luther.
iii) The third idea: The third great idea (it was after a lot of personal debate that I approved this to be a truly great idea) arose from Adam Smith. His showed how a policy of attempting to dominate other nations by giving the government great powers to regulate trade and the economy, would fail. He showed how competition through the invisible hand is the fundamental way for the creation of wealth for nations.
iv) The fourth idea: I have no doubt about the greatness of this fourth idea. The fourth major idea that the human mind has created, was by observation. The purest of the scientific methods showed Charles Darwin that the human species was an animal. That this species evolved from other lower forms of animal. Today, we know that the genes of a chimpanzee and a man resemble each other to about a 99% extent. The key idea that he found was that evolution of these animal species takes place through competition.
The following statements are the natural consequence of these basic ideas:
I wish you to spend a moment to think about this "path of causality:"
You cannot choose the genetic quality of the brain you are born with. However, the brain is surrounded by an environment. That environment is comprised of two parts: external and internal. The external environment comprises of things like books and experience. The internal comprises of personal attitudes and the color of the spectacles you wear within your head. If you look at the world from an attitude of a "protector of the faith" then you will perceive the simple action of an outside person eating something as signifying a possible aggression against you. The more purely objective or transparent your internal spectacles become, the better you can allow the world's purest ideas to filter into your brain. The Scientific Attitude is the ultimate form of transparent lens that you can wear within your head.
And while you cannot choose your genetic capability, you can choose, to some extent, both the books you read and the experience you get out of life. The greater the truths that you can absorb through your readings and experience, the faster your brain can come to represent the mountain of truth that it should be. A good brain represents the essence - as seen by that particular brain - of the entire ideas and thoughts and truths of the entire mankind both living and dead. It is that kind of a brain that generates further ideas and then leads to wealth.
Right now I am standing comfortably on top of such a mountain and I am ready to generate immense wealth: for You and thus also, for myself. All around me I see men and women doing various things - some of which get them happiness and wealth; others which get them misery and poverty. I have spoken with many men, mostly dead; some living. I think I see the critical pivots and the axles of this machine called the human being. I think I see that Indians are focusing excessively on the wheel and chassis. I will shift the emphasis to the engine.
Being well positioned atop this mountain of truth, I will take over this responsibility of showing you the way to convert this very India (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) into a Nation that will be a powerhouse of wealth and happiness. Then, we shall both of us, you and I, together, move the landscape of the world to put India on top of the list of the wealthiest and most powerful and wise nations of the world. I will not bring anyone else down. I will simply let us all, working together, elevate India.
Go back to the "path of causality" described above. This, essentially, is the formula for wealth. Do you see what I see? If you do, then please close this book and go ahead and make your wealth. If you do not yet see, then read on. I will show you, in a step by step manner, how this formula can be made to really work.
By now we have seen that the real difference between us human animals and the human animals of 5000 years ago is in the permission we give our brain to absorb knowledge. If we close our brain down, saying that this or that cannot be discussed because so-and-so said so, then we have cut our brain's potential and our wealth generation potential, by half or more. By allowing our mind to analyze all kinds of ideas, we permit our brain to think and thus to create successful ideas. The moment man released his brain from the blankets of authority, entire nations became rich and powerful. Clearly we have not yet freed the Indian mind. That is the most important job needing to be done, today.
I hope you now begin to see very clearly why ideas count for much more than action. You and I choose our lives on the basis of ideas imparted to us by our environment. Those who spend their lives terrorizing others (such as the misguided youth in Assam, the ULFA who have read a lot of pamphlets on scientific socialism and Che Guevera), have chosen this erroneous and socially harmful way of life because of ideas. Nehru stole his ideas from Professor Laski. That one professor has cost us trillions of dollars, just like that fellow called Marx cost the world millions of lives in internal violence inside many nations (such as the massacres by Stalin), and trillions of dollars of lost wealth.
I can only hope that the ideas in this book secure for Pakistan, India and Bangladesh eternal peace amongst themselves and within their nations, complete stoppage of bloodshed on parochial and communal grounds, and yield trillions and trillions of dollars worth of economic gain. Only then would it have been worthwhile trying to write such a book.
Therefore, I might believe in a lot of hard work and spend my whole life working without a wink of sleep, but if the Principal idea for which I am working is false, then I can only hope for failure in the end. Hard work or action is not enough - as I found out myself when I spent ten golden years of my youth working like a donkey within the existing system in India. Actually, you will really find very few "superhuman" maniac workers like me. I have always worked from early morning to late at night. I have always cleared all my files and papers. I have always listened to what the people want and tried to give them what they wanted in the most efficient way. I have been a mad man. Trying with my bare hands to make the system more efficient, more corruption free. But, as I look back and see all that work, I know. I must admit. That I have - truly speaking - nothing to show for the work I did.
India is today like a country bombed by high level artillery from within - despite all my hard work (I thought that if all of us do sufficient amount of hard work, things will improve). Everything lies shattered all around. Even literally. Bombs have blasted off the schools and health centers and bridges in Assam. I have escaped a direct attempt on my life as a Deputy Commissioner despite all the goodwill I had with the villagers. And we continue to shatter India and the Indian rupee, on a daily basis, with our policies. I am sorry folks, but my hard work and honesty as a senior IAS officer of your government is not going to save you. That is why I want to tell you clearly: that correct ideas are far, far, more important than correct action. Even being honest is less important than that.
When I was young I was continually misguided by the socialistic writings in our press, praising the nationalization of private banks, praising our mixed economy, and passing the blame of our failures onto the "corrupt" and lazy leaders and bureaucrats. It was easy to get hold of communist literature. The Communist Party of India was well funded by the USSR and would distribute a huge amount of literature freely to college students. The Mir Publishers would hold book fairs and palm off communist literature at throw away prices to poor students like all of us were. Some of my best friends and present colleagues in the Civil Service became strongly influenced by such literature while they were in college. I too read this literature and some of it must have brushed off on me since till a few years ago I sincerely thought that I could do a lot of work within the existing Indian system.
But these were wrong ideas, and there was very little material available to students which told them what was really wrong and why we were really poor, and why we were unable to shake away the chains that had bound us in poverty for over 200 years, now that we were purportedly "free."
What happened is that there was nobody who told the truth - the complete truth - about ourselves and our problems and of the way the world works. Even today, as I mentioned earlier, people try to write "polite" and "nice" books, avoiding discussion of the complete package of truths. Anyhow, all that does not matter now. I am now doing this unfinished job of liberating the Indian mind.
This material is meant for you - the Young at Heart. If you do not have a spring in your stride, determination in your eyes, self-confidence in your abilities and optimism for the future, then please shut this book and go away. I am really, really, very tired of meeting people like you. I only want you to accompany me further if you promise to get rid of your cynicism about me, about my tall claims and about what you and I are jointly going to do to India. I want to remake India the way I see it. I see India as rich and prosperous, and powerful and happy and wise. Do you see that? If you don't then please don't waste my time. I don't think either I or India need you.
Why do I see all this so clearly? I don't know. All I know is that I think about it, feel it, and see it: that human beings cannot perform in a system which does not respect two basic things: the "free" human head and human greed.
As a human animal, first of all, I care for my greed (I want this and I want that). Then I care for my children (my seed, my genes). Finally, if my country takes care of me, then I care for my country. If my country lands up in the hands of goons, then I leave the country. Millions fled Hilter's Germany, East Europe and the Soviet Union. Thousands are always trying to get out of North Korea and Cuba. Are they all useless fellows? Should they have stayed behind and starved or got killed?
Do not waste my time by telling me to care for my country first. A country is an artificial concept. My stomach, my greed, and my children are real. Based on flesh and blood and sweat and toil. Therefore I will care for my country. But first I want a country which I can care for.
If, after working like a donkey (as I described it above, in detail), and being two IAS officers in the family, I cannot afford to buy the books I want to read, or subscribe to the journals and magazines I want, I cannot buy a car of my own except on a loan from government (why does government come into such things like giving loans for cars?), and I save, at the end of 12 years, that much amount which I later was able to save as a student in a foreign country in 1 year, then why do I care for this India? Am I your slave that I will run your country for you as your Secrectary to the Government, give my best output from my powerful brain and superior organizational capacity, in return of a package comprising a few peanuts and a lot of kicking around by some rascals elected by you as my "leaders" and "bosses," when I can be a student elsewhere and give better books and a better life to my progeny? You don't care for my brain and my capacity. So why do I care for you? Why do I care for my "country"? You neither respect my brain, nor my creativity, nor my greed. You need to change that in order to get Indian brains to work for India and not for some foreigner.
To repeat, to create wealth you need two things: (a) a human brain that can think straight, independently, and creatively, and (b) the opportunity for that brain to grab a disproportionate share of the wealth so created. Of course we will need a few other things too. But fundamentally, these two are sufficient on their own.
As a first corollary, we have to stop this great love of "labor" and start respecting the "brain." Labor is only a tool. The creator of wealth, the biological organ that uses the tool, is the brain. You would not be alive today - nor even born, had man not mastered the jungle and disease. Even if you were alive, you would be in a jungle, lighting fire with stones and being bitten to death by animals. Your only claim to being a special creature called Man is when you use your Brain. Else, you are a mere homo sapiens, mere flesh and bone, a mere animal that comes and goes like cattle comes and goes in this world.
Pay to buy the best brain, and you will get the best results. Singapore knows how to do that. So does the West. Singapore pays tens of thousands of dollars to its top bureaucrats and close to a million dollar to its Ministers. And the US allows chief executive officers to be paid any amount, in millions of dollars a year, that the shareholders think best, to pay for the services of the brain of the CEO. Very rarely has there been occasion in any of these places to regret paying so heavily for the brain of these human beings with ordinary legs and hands and the same blood as labor.
The key difference, as already pointed out, between good brains and bad is not in their physical size, nor in the knowledge they possess, nor even in their so-called "capacity," but in the ability of the good brain to explore all ideas, to expand the reach of human thinking, to be independent. So think not that I am being arrogant and claiming that I have a special brain. No, not in the least. I am only special by virtue of being able to think differently, by being able to think "cleanly" and to be able to "slice" through reality. I have stolen all my ideas. I have perhaps nothing "original" to offer. But my way of offering it is original. I am being unbelievably immodest for an Indian.
But just as I believe in myself and in India, so also I want to make you believe in yourself and to kindle in you the most immodest dream dreamt by an Indian so far: to overcome the USA in terms of sheer wealth and power and innovation. I want to conquer the world. Full Stop. Nothing less than that will satisfy me (and I hope you will not settle for less than that in this life of yours). But I (and you) will conquer the world not by guns (though we shall have the best guns), but by our ability to produce the best goods in the world. I will create - by my sheer ability to burn away the blankets of confusion you wear around your brains - the best brains in the world. And since we outnumber almost every other nation in the world (and we surely will, if we merge, as we must), then there is nothing stopping us - this unstoppable force of millions of super-inventive and super-entrepreneurial brains, from taking over the world as its rightful leader - in everything; material and spiritual.
We do not care to have any "labor" in India. We only want brain workers. Everybody: our farmers, our potters and our Godmen, have to be brain workers, operating in their fields with computers and the best that technology can create (and we will create the best technology), using e-mail and newsgroups and bulletin boards to find out and share knowledge. I don't want to see a single Indian beggar nor an Indian who wants to unionize as a laborer. We will have no laborers. Nobody who will only use his hands. No digger of roads, no sweeper of latrines. Only entrepreneurs and smart workers. Smart workers who will own shares in their factories and work for the improvement of every step and every process. Smart workers who will be rewarded for using their brains much more than they are rewarded for using their limbs. We will, each of us, be independent, powerful thinkers and creators of science, technology, new ideas, new prouducts, and infinite wealth. And we will send out "missionaries" to save the poor of the rest of the world, by showing them the path to riches.
As you can by now see, this is a book about finding the correct ideas, and not merely working hard like a donkey. I do not find it satisfying to offer the second-rate success of a spiritual type where you struggle in this world only to make up in some later world - even though those ideas may be partly correct. Therefore I will not spend my life being a Mother Teresa. I will also not be your religious Guru. Remember, just as we choose which system or culture we abide by, so also we choose our vocation. I could have chosen to be your GodMan. Instead, I have chosen to make India rich. Not by saving its beggars from dying like flies in the streets of Calcutta, nor by "magically" offering golden watches to my devotees while I let the rest of India rot. None of these would solve India's problems. Therefore I have chosen to be your philosopher, your bureaucrat, your political economist, and your dreamer.
I wanted to give a lot of examples about why ideas are so very powerful. About why ideas are beyond life and death. And why ideas are a matter of life and death itself. But there is no time for so many examples. Just one will have to do: a very poignant example which hurt me to the core when I read it, for I know what it is to have a baby who is sick.
a) Illiteracy has very little to do with foolish ideas. Most of our Ph.D.s spout foolish ideas when probed in some detail. Most of our professors preach rubbish and are unable to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid or the existence of such mothers as the one above. We need social reform first. We need Raja Ram Mohan Roys in every nook and corner of India. Literacy is important only if it makes people scientific. If literacy is not coupled with critical thinking, nothing will help.
b) Second, high population has nothing to do with this. Stupid Indian mothers exist everywhere, even in pockets of low population such as in tribal areas. High populations such as Japan have the lowest mortality among infants in the world. No, attributing false causes to the reality is not the way to go about analyzing situations.
Therefore, we will teach our mothers so that our babies do not die. We will eradicate False ideas. We will limit ourselves only to Correct ideas. I hold myself and also you - the reader who has reached thus far - responsible for any death of this type in India. The mind that is sitting on top of a mountain of truth must reach out to those who are cowering inside dark tunnels of confusion and ignorance. If you have come this far in the journey with me, you realize that the mountain of truth is very simple. It leads to clear thinking. You pierce right through people's self interests, people's ignorance and people's evil intentions.
We will banish false ideas from India. Each and every one of them. Anything that cannot be proved to be true in a way that can be duplicated, under strictly controlled conditions, by others, elsewhere in the world, is False. Nothing False ever led to anything good.
A simple typology of ideas
I don't want to dwell much longer on this topic now. Most of the sensible things I had to say have been said. But before I move on to the next halt in our journey, I will show you a simple "classification" of ideas.
1. Type I: Ideas which are essentially correct. Some such ideas can be partly correct, and may need refining, such as Newton's laws which were refined by Einstein. But Newton was basically correct. Other ideas might have only been partially explored and may result in very powerful results in the future. That is why science is continually yielding more and more secrets of the universe. It is one's job as a student of truth to quickly recognize as many of these Type I ideas. The more Type I ideas one knows and the better one knows them, the greater the wealth and power that is generated.
2. Type II: Ideas which are essentially false. These include things like the earth being flat, that communism is feasible, or that the Aryan or any other race of men (such as white, black, green or yellow) is superior to others. It is one's job to quickly identify the ideas of Type II category and to place them in the trash can meant for these ideas, in one's mind. Do not forget to flush out this trash every now and then by repeating in your mind the arguments about why that idea was wrong.
3. Type III: Ideas which can never be proved to be right or wrong. The typical example of this is the existence of God. Even if we go far into the past, we get stuck with something always, behind which is an impenetrable vacuum. Before the Big Bang, what was there, and who created all that energy which drives the world? Is there only one universe or multiple universes? These ideas can only be answered through beliefs. In this book, I assume the existence of God without loss of generality (though personally I am neither a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh or anything else). As Voltaire said, simply, that if God did not exist, we would need to create one. Life is so difficult and trying at times that it is good to have a God holding one's hand. But I am interested in extracting from religion a deep, Type I truth.
I have studied a lot of religions. The essential lesson I draw from everyone's beliefs about God is that God created every human being equal in a very basic, essential way, and that therefore the divergences and discrepancies between human beings that are observed, particuarly across nations, are essentially man-made. Now that is a really powerful lesson, that can start as the foundation of our search for wealth and power.
I mean, I have not yet been shown any telegram or e-mail sent by God that he or she has blessed a certain group of human beings with the major part of the wealth created by the world in return for the extra hours of prayer that these people put in everyday, or for other good deeds done by them. To the contrary, it appears to me that the American people perhaps do not even put in one tenth of the hours in prayer that most people in India put in. In addition, of course, they are intense thinkers, going straight to the point, seeking out the secrets of the Gods, and completely upsetting the Blue Planet itself. So clearly God hates them for being bad boys and could not have given them these special powers over the entire Earth.
So do we agree or not: God made all of us equal?
One must mention here that each generation has its own limitations, set by its past. Had I been born two centuries ago, the ideas of Type I needing mass propagation would have been quite different. Perhaps I would have written against monarchy, or against sati, or thugee. I would have had major misconceptions about capitalism and would have believed, perhaps, in the magnanimity of the top civil servants who would have been my "mai-baap." I don't know. All I know is that after a hundred years, the ideas which will need to be mass propagated would be different. We would have understood some more about Type I and Type II ideas. Some more ideas might transfer from Type I to Type II. That is how the world progresses: by trashing its bad ideas. In the current situation, it is very surprising for people in the West to think that a book like this can be even contemplated. They have trashed many more ideas than we have. It sounds surprising to them that we have so much faith in our bureaucracy and our mixed form of government. Well never mind. Each place and generation has its limitations, and let us proceed to trash our own bad ideas.