The Human

Condition

The Human
Condition

 This book and its works are the property of the Author and no part of it
may be published or reproduced without prior written consent of the
author.

 Invocation
ॐ असतो मा स मय ।
तमसो मा मय ।
मृ अमृतं गमय ।
ॐ शा शा शा ॥

Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |

Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

Lead us from the unreal to the real

Lead us from darkness to light
Lead us from death to immortality
Aum peace, peace, peace!

This book, is a dedication to the light of knowledge

which dispels the darkness of ignorance. This light
lies deep inside all of us, but needs a Guru to ignite it.
त्यो
र्मा
न्तिः
ज्यो
ति
न्तिः
द्ग
र्ग

न्तिः



 Prologue
It takes some e ort to become good in any task of your
choosing, but it takes even more e ort to transition from
good to great, and for this reason, most of us never ever
transition to being great, because good is considered to be
good enough, and so why put in the e ort? Most times this
e ort is more than the e ort that one has taken to get to the
“good” state.
If you ask anyone who deals with anything which can be
termed “high performance”, they will tell you that the devil
is indeed in the details. Ask a person who maintains a
Formula-1 car, or the person who takes care of race horses,
they will tell you that these systems need to be nely tuned
in order to extract the maximum possible performance
from it.

They will tightly control the input that is given to these

system, be it the fuel in the case of formula-1 car, or fodder
for the race horses. The maintenance and service aspects
are also very nely controlled. The knowledge to be able to
extract the highest performance comes to them from a
deep understanding of the system in question.
The human body is also a system, and to extract the best
performance from it, both physical and mental, there are
various tools that one can use. In this book, we take a look
at the tools, but more importantly, we take a look at why
those tools work and their boundary conditions.
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 1
The Human System

T he human system is the most evolved system that

nature has to o er, at least on the face of the earth.
We humans are considered at the top of the food chain, not
because we are the strongest, or the fastest, but because of
our ability to use tools.
The ability to use tools has a fundamental pre-requisite,
that is ability to understand the system. Imagine you don’t
know the di erence between a screw and a nail, how can
you choose between a screwdriver or a hammer? You have
a 50% chance of choosing the right tool, but then this will
be accidental, and as the number of tools increase, the
probability of choosing the right one decreases.

The next stage is you are taught exactly this, you are
shown a screw and told to you the screwdriver on this and
you are shown a nail, and told to use the hammer. This can
be a function of memory, which means if you see the same
nail (or similar in all aspects) you will be able to use it, but a
nail of say a di erent material / di erent size comes along,
we will be left clueless.

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 Now, we know that we humans are not this clueless. We

are able to learn, we are able to predict naturally, and we
are able to understand the di erences, so if I show you one
type of screw, you will be able to identify other screws and
choose the right tool. This is the system of learning.
The other most important thing that we humans have is
the perception and awareness of their own existence, and
we call it consciousness

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About the Author