Harry's Paradise

                                              -Harry Anthony

This is a pretty sensitive question, because someone listens to what you say and then it takes less than a fraction of a second to turn the plate around and tell that it is just a delusion. Well, such an action is not surprising because  someone said it right “Intent precedes content” and if one already has a conclusion then your conclusion is taken just to be dumped.

I personally feel the best way into this direction is not religious or spiritual or scientific or arithmetic but a little logical and completely philosophical.

One very important question many tried to answer is ‘Purpose of Life’. I wonder why people talk about anything else other than the purpose of life, as it is so crucial for our existence, If this question is answered precisely I think the age old debate on Does god exist? can just come to an end.  I am in no better position to do that, as many people for centuries tried, but could not convince as spiritually is an experience of realisation and no language is capable enough to express all experiences.

But, should there be a Purpose for life?

Before going into that we need to accept one very important aspect of life that life is a journey, man travels in two different dimensions, A) Space, this is well known to us, we physically move a step forward or backward, sometimes out of our house, sometimes out of our city or state or country and if the technology is advanced we may also move beyond earth to have a cup of coffee on some neighbouring celestial bodies and these are nothing but destinations we set and travel  But the point to note here is that, we do have tremendous amount of control on this aspect of journey, but not so with the second aspect of travel that is B) Time, time is something that is absolutely not in our control it just keeps moving, we are left to make only one choice to set a destiny  and hope time takes us there.

if there is no purpose of life and that purpose is not in future then the very existence of a person is void. I in this very moment typing this article today is for someone to read it tomorrow and that is exactly what is making my absolute present, which is life. So its clear that every moment is intended towards some purpose in future and you can never deny this fact, and if you do so, your very denial has no purpose and is meaningless.

So, now we understand that life and purpose are so inter linked and one cannot exist without the other we are in a nasty situation, because when man grows up he is capable to create a purpose and live for it, but how did he even exist as a child when he could do nothing on his own? Hence, There should have been a life giver and also with it was given a purpose.  Life has a purpose given by somebody other than himself and may be understanding this purpose will lead us to the life giver. I am so convinced with this contemplation, I think the purpose is what creates life.  

Another very compelling argument is the first verse of Genesis that starts of with 'In the beginning .....'. At a glance one may read this so casually without knowing how in itself it answers a very big question of existence. Lets consider the contrast of 'In the beginning'. which would be 'No beginning at all'  that means everything existed in some form or the other and was always there. This leads us to a logical problem because anything as we perceive if it always existed will have no existence at all. We know everything that we perceive comes from something and that some thing from something else. like a fruit comes from a tree, a tree from a seed so on and so forth, if we manage to travel in time backwards we have to stop somewhere and then start our journey to get to the current point, if there was no stop at all then how would you even turn back and get to the point where you are right now. 

It is evident that at least we (matter) in the current form had a beginning, we are living in the present and off course waiting for the end and this cannot be denied. But the end need not necessarily be an "End" in itself but can also give a way to a new beginning

New beginning is a hypothesis, but remember the book that talked about 'In the beginning' also affirms a 'New Beginning' both denial and acceptance of this hypothesis requires a level of reasoning and 'Faith' in fact denial demands more 'Faith' as it requires an absolute reasoning on why a new beginning is not  possible. So is the case of denial of existence of a Creator, which  demands more faith and reasoning.

Just stop by and observe the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west, Observe the gradient shades it emits by every passing second.   Observe how the winter, summer and springs come and go. All of these driven by the dimension called Time.

Step out of your house in the night and look into the dark sky through those man made lamps into the vastness of space and gaze at the abandoned stars (abandoned by man). All of these driven by the dimension called space. When you consider these two dimensions 'Time' and 'Space' don't they tell you that they are too good to be there without a purpose. Don't they tell you that they are too good to be there without a designer who architected it all. The answer for this is not in asking who is the Architect, but  to ask is there an Architect.

When the scriptures compel us to believe in a 'God' its not absurd or silly, neither is it trying to grab our share of enjoyment. Its just like being served a fine dinner in a restaurant and asking us to believe in a Cook and follow his guidelines to best enjoy the dish.

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Meaning of Love

Its not surprising that we tend to get mesmerised by anything that is related to love, because 'love' is exactly what keeps our world bound together.

I tried contemplating on this beautiful aspect and was saddened

Its unfortunate that in today's time the meaning of love is being abused like never before in the history of mankind. In an attempt to justify all our wrong doings and feel good policies that give us pleasure, we tag our actions 'modern' or 'open minded' and in doing so, very few realise that we are closing the doors to our own well being, I am not against open minded approach and modernisation, but towards what? so do not take it as an extreme, history has proved that when man gives his own egoistic definition to the creation he is in deep trouble, almost 2.5 million people have lost their lives till date of HIV infection and this is a physical damage which we have compromised with, and that's exactly what we are doing with meaning of love, probably heading towards social and emotional damage when we search for true love and find it not, because have forgotten what it is like.

Its a generation where the majority think that they can only get into relationship after loving one another and switching for best partner to settle in a best relationship, in some cases they think that achieving a best relationship is impossible hence switching is the only constant, we seldom understand that 'Relationship is not built on love' but 'Relationship is an integral part of Love' because the basis of love begins the very moment when one starts relating to other and gets thickened when the relation is committed. I know this is a claim or philosophy of mine that brings anguish to many as I already mentioned it is the majority who bought into this so called "Modern and open mindedness" and we can debate on this for years to come. I also understand that this is a personal choice and I do comprehensively 'RESPECT' a personal choice, but when a personal choice is being wrongly justified as moral I have every reason to make a comment on it in general.
 

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Denying reality and living in fantasy

This article may seem a little broken and I wrote it this way deliberately, because I know the one who is of my kind (who wants The Truth) will understand it perfectly.

Few years ago there was an outrage in one South Indian state when a film actor made a comment saying, 'A Wise man should not expect his would be wife to be a virgin',
There was allot of protest as such an immoral attitude is not tolerated in India and finally I think the actor apologised for her comment.

This issue was then lost and forgot, but very recently I was having my hair dressed in a saloon, when a local channel was relaying the results of a non government survey on the next generation attitude towards relationships, the audience were all undergraduates, the results were shocking, the majority well above 60% thought it was not important to value relationships for short blissful pleasures and monitory benefits and that shocked me, because as I did know that immorality among man has always existed as a weakness since the beginning and he knew it was like a disease and forgiveness is something he always asked for, but it is for the first time in the history of man kind that it is being proclaimed by the masses as "Wise" to be immoral and reason for forgiveness (treatment) is no more there.

I would like to give you one very famous illustration of a frog usually used for explaining the dangers of global warming which is a threat from outside, but I think it also applies to a threat that's inside out .

Take a frog and put it into a bucket of boiling water and the frog immediately jumps out, maybe with minor burns, but take the same frog and put it into a bucket of cold water and start heating it gradually, the frog will sit there, sit there and sit there all the way till boiling point.

Do you know when we start learning to drive a car or a bike how uncomfortable we feel in handling it, but by regular practice (I call it conscious programming) we tend to master it and after several years the vehicle almost becomes like a part of our body and no more conscious attempt to drive it is required. If you contemplate upon most of the regular activities of day to day life, major of those activities are driven by  your subconscious mind and those activities/habits are not in there by mistake or a miracle, but by your own conscious induction and these inductions happen because of some recursive action from necessity, pressure of social status, traditions, fashion, short blissful pleasure. But, the point to note here is that, all your subconscious habits may or may not be of a reason that is beneficial, or could rather be beneficial in short term but not so in long run, and in case of an addictive action spiritual or material that conquers your body it could be disastrous, and this is because the decision of conscious programming is not discrete or constructive.

Let me try and explain.

With due respect to my smoking friends lets take a very familiar material smoking habit, the one who starts to smoke knows that smoking is not a necessity or something of great benefit in relation to the damage it does. But still one would force and begin doing it falling to some social ideology or curiosity, in India its a popular style to smoke and a way to impress girls. Or some say it is manly. Well, what ever the reason one gives to start smoking, it is useless and doing something that is useless is an imagination or a dream not reality.  He lives in this dream smokes, smokes and smokes till one day he comes out of the dream, but now that the nicotine has already conquered his brain while he was dreaming, and is required to fuel his daily activities even after he is out of the dream he has no other option but to keep smoking , finds himself week and not brave enough to take control of his body so manages to justify the action as 'Wise'.

Going back to the illustration of the frog, Man is like a white paper when he is born, his environment writes many things onto it, he gets used to it and that becomes his world, few questions that one needs to ask is, what was written on the white paper all these years? Who wrote it? and why? and when one asks these questions without any geographical, social, cultural, religious and racial bias, he can validate himself, if he is in there, like the frog sitting in the water that is gradually reaching the boiling point?

The survey results I was talking about in the beginning of this article, tells us we have secretly written allot onto that white paper and sitting there like a frog while the water is starting to gradually boil, and the coming generations will not even know what cool water feels like.

Off course we are not frogs we are intellectual beings and can do something about it.

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Jesus, Which Jesus?

                                            -Harry Anthony

As I already mentioned I am a software engineer, I am very familiar with a term called software versions, a version is customisation of a software to suit specific needs of an organisation or a set of organisations, it need not necessarily mean there are additions made to every successive versions, they could also be altered.

Its really unfortunate that today there are different versions of a character called 'Jesus' that exist in the world. Everybody has customized this character according to his own needs and professes it for what ever reasons. Off course on the other hand it also tells how an attractive personality this man called 'Jesus' was, that so many from east to west are not able to deny him completely but accept him partially.

In this article I want to shed some light on the different versions of the character that exist today, Off course, I don't want to super impose any one 'Jesus'  but will be sincere in portraying the 'Truth'.

Jesus of 'Da Vinci Code'

I chose to speak on this version to be the first one because, this Jesus who was introduced by the author of the book 'Da vinci code' is the most smartly customized version and the intention of it was also pretty clear, to introduce a sensation and make huge bucks.

The problem with this book is that it claims to be a 'Fiction based on Facts' and when an ordinary reader/viewer like me takes one step more to validate the facts, will  know that it is a book that is a 'Fiction based on Facts' but, the facts are only the characters that have been picked from The Bible and there is nothing new to it. But many non critical readers do not take that additional step and get tricked into thinking that the entire story could be real. This understanding seems to be so evident as many Non- Christian friends of mine when they come to know of me being a Catholic tend to ask me on what do I think about the movie/book the 'Da Vinci Code' surprisingly even after so many years have passed by.

There seem to be so many flaws in the book that shatters this version of Jesus from all directions, this article is surely not the place I am going to talk about all of them but few.

Did Leonardo Da Vinci really know any Secret? This part of the story is the most important one, as it is the only string on which the entire story clings to. When we validate this aspect of the story one can observe that Leonardo, was associated to the story based on two points, 'Priory of Sion' and the painting 'The Last Supper'. It is claimed that Leonardo was part of this organisation called 'Priory of Sion' which maintained the blood line of Jesus and Leonardo decided to encrypt that secret into his works and did it through the very famous painting 'The Last Supper'. So all that one has to do is validate these two points.

Leonardo's association with 'Priory of Sion', This secret organisation called 'Priory of Sion' was a secret organisation, formed secretly and also planted secretly but not at the time of Leonardo Da Vinci but very recently in 19th century. and is also acknowledged as one of the biggest hoax in the known history. The founder of this organisation was a man called 'Pierre Plantard'  I am copying this piece of information from a different source, wikipedia.org which explains the facts about this organisation and its intention.

Jesus who visited India

A year ago when I was in Swindon, UK I watched a programme on BBC where a documentary was trying to fill in the missing years of Jesus that is 12 - 30. I didn't know if I had to laugh or say what. The documentary was so elementary without any evidence to backup the claims, and I was surprised it was actually relayed on a world class channel like BBC. I had also read a section in a local news paper in India that had a similar story, in which Jesus is said to have travelled to India kashmir/himalaya gained spiritual knowledge from a/few yogi's and then went back to Israel to teach.

Biblically it is clear that Jesus at the age of 12 itself (before going to India, if he ever did) had great knowledge when he debated with the local Jewish elderly learned priests and the priest were amazed at his knowledge. Neither are the teachings of Jesus similar to what is taught in India. (Except on issues of Love which is universal), I don't understand the reason why would Jesus visit India. On the contrary to this claims historically, we know that Jesus was very famous and his visit to India should have surely left a good trail but nothing of that kind is found. Infect the first church in India was established in the extreme south of India called 'Kerela' and that was long after his death and is proved to have started by St Thomas, one of the twelve decuples who travelled through trade ships to India and was martyred in Tamil nadu, why would he (St Thomas) take so much pain to come to India to teach Indians about the things his master learned from India? and why would the Indians martyr him if he was teaching something that was familiar to them?

I don't want to waste my time on this any more I am leaving this here.

Jesus a great preacher only

This version of Jesus is accepted by many people, and there are few religions I leave them unnamed accept Jesus as a great preacher only. On this I would like to redirect you to a different article by C S Lewis, Who is Jesus? Lord, Liar or Lunatic.

'The Devine Jesus'

The final and the most prominent figure of Jesus as professed by Christians is Jesus who is 'Divine', 'Son of God', 'Messiah', 'The Liberator'. and this claim of Jesus being divine apart from being a great preacher is made from the earliest records called 'New testament' initially whose authenticity was doubted but later with the help of science and technology was proved to be well preserved, not tampered and belonged to the time of Jesus. For this as well I would like to direct you to the same article Who is Jesus? Lord, Liar or Lunatic.

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Why was Jesus Crucified?

As a kid when I was in 4th grade I was confronted by one of my Hindu friends on Good Friday asking me what made Jesus God? And I gave him a textbook answer that Jesus was God because he died for our Sins. The answer wasn’t quite correct ended in wrong arguments and I could not defend my faith then, and felt very embarrassing, because as a kid you always wanted your God to be a hero who would bash the roman soldiers and establish himself as the king of all kings but not die such a miserable death in the same hands, but when I grew up and recollect those moments I felt if God would have done what I expected him to do as kid he would have been just another man not God.

Crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the demonstration of four perfect attributes of God, 1) Love 2) Mercy 3) Forgiveness and 4) Justice. These four attributes of God in its highest intensity got unfolded to us in that cosmic drama which took place in real two thousand years ago on The Cross. God So LOVES us The World, that he shows MERCY on us sinners who disobeyed his law and FORGIVES us and because of his perfect JUSTICE had to abide to his own law hence had to pay the price by sacrificing himself in his only Son Jesus Christ.

To make you understand what I just said I will provide you an analogy, Imagine an earthly father constructs a house with all his hard work and investing a lot of money, then realises that he alone cannot enjoy his home hence invites his children to stay in there at no cost, but just warns them not to damage anything, for some reason may be curiosity or ignorance the children disobeyed the father and did some damage by breaking few valuable goods, now the father gets to know about the destruction and probably angry comes to the children and says, you have just done what I have asked you not to do, and he has the right to ask the children to go work and pay for the damage, the children knowing its too expensive and are not in the condition to pay regret, repent kneel in front of the father and ask him for forgiveness, the father could either still ask the children to go work, make money come back and pay for the damage or he could just do what a true loving father does, Forgive and he did exactly the same Forgave, but here we need to understand the very moment the father forgives it entails that the children now need not pay for the damage, but we should also understand the father must now pay for the damage.

In this mysterious cosmic world created by god which is Just, we are held responsible for the damage we do to good and we are expected to pay for it. But when we realise that as humans we have done so much damage that is impossible to be paid, we can repent kneel down and seek forgiveness from the Creator, and The Creator is so compassionate that he does feel happy to forgive us but yet because he is also perfectly righteousness so much so that he abides to his own law required someone perfect without sins to bear upon himself the iniquities of Man, and because there is none good but god he pays for it by sacrificing himself in his Son Jesus Christ.

So now I understand that Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is his execution of Gods authority to Forgive, Ah! isn’t he now my real Hero

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Who is Jesus? Lord, Liar or Lunatic.

This video is a chapter from a book called 'Mere Christianity' written by C .S Lewis the author of the book 'Chronicles of Narnia'. This is one of the best articles I ever read about Jesus.

There is always a great amount of confusion on the identity of Jesus. Many people have different thoughts about Jesus, and I don't blame them because even I as a layman born in an Indian  Catholic family was baffled when I stepped out of my community and encountered more than a dozen of Jesus . It took me more than two years of sincere effort to know about the One Jesus, at least the one my church professes, who was born of a virgin and lived in the first century.

If I am asked to quote one statement to compact my understanding, all I need to do is quote the words of C S Lewis an atheist who did not believe in God turned theist. Well I don't remember the exact words, but he meant something like.

'If there is any myth or fiction about resurrection, then that has got realised in  Jesus'

He quoted this after reading The Bible, this statement may not sound so great for a person who does not know much about the author C S Lewis, but when  we consider some of his credentials  of being a literary critic, a leading figure in the english faculty at Oxford university and author of some very successful books, most importantly a sceptic of God and his existence, makes such a statement, one cannot just read it and say 'Take it easy'

In this chapter 'Lord, Liar or Lunatic'  the author gives the reader three options and only three options to take a stand on Jesus and who he is with a good reasoning.

Any other versions of Jesus can be excluded by basic common sense.

Its a pretty short video but strikes on the heart of the matter.

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I have added few videos at the bottom of the page from youtube which I appreciate the most

Latest evidence about the 'Shroud of Turin'

Anil Kant-Ibadat Karo

Why should one quite - warning highly graphic

Its just what I need