What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time
raising money.

... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been
approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to
men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of
decimals.
James Clerk Maxwell

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. - George Wald

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and
longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a
physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems
that he is already too old to solve them.
-- Eugene Wigner

Albert Einstein
There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.

The Doctoral student Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider asked Einstein in 1919 how he
would have reacted if his general theory of relativity had not been
confirmed experimentally that year by Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson.
His answer was: "Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is
correct anyway."

The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not
I have second thoughts. Maybe God *is* malicious

"Some men spend a lifetime in an attempt to comprehend the complexities of
women (or vice versa). Others pre-occupy themselves with somewhat simpler
tasks, such as understanding the theory of relativity !"

Stephen Hawking
"My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as
it is and why it exists at all."

Scientific discovery may not be better than sex, but the satisfaction lasts
longer

Each equation ... in the book would halve the sales.

Richard P. Feynman

"This is the third of four lectures on a rather difficult subject -- the
theory of quantum electrodynamics -- and since there are obviously more
people here tonight than there were before, some of you haven't heard the
other two lectures and will find this lecture almost incomprehensible.
Those of you who *have* heard the other two lectures will also find this
lecture incomprehensible, but you know that that's all right: as I
explained in the first lecture, the way we have to describe Nature is
generally incomprehensible to us."

One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them
today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much.

I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians.

Physics is to Math what Sex is to Masturbation

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's
not why we do it.

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in
the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince
you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics
students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it.
Nobody does.

For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the
proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for
measuring energy.

About 4.6 billlions years ego, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billions kilometers across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it - 99.99 % of the mass of the mass of the solar system- went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception of our planet. All over the inchoate solar system , the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew larger enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled.

It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometers across is thought to have taken only few tens of thousands of years. In just 2 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all debris that remained floating about.

At this point , about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of the Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had resembled itself into a single clump, and within a year, it had formed into the spherical rocks that companions us yet.
Most of the lunar material , it is thought , came from the Earth's crust, not its core, which is why Moon has so little irons while we have a lot.

When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probaby already beginning to form an atmosphere , mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphar. Hardly the sort of the stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thng, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the earth might well have frozen over permanently, and life might never have got toehold. But somehow life did.

For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteroits and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the ocean and the components necessary for the succesful formation of life. It was singularly hostile enviornment, and yet some how life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We are on our way.

Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it all happened.

The core of a neutron star is so dense that a single spoonful of matter from it would weigh 90 billion kilograms. A spoonful! A supernova occurs when a giant star, one much larger that our own Sun, collapses and then spectaculary explodes, releasing an instant energy of a hundre billion suns, buring for a time more brighter than all other stars in the galaxy. It is like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once.

Space is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is over 30 million million kilometers. Nobody knows howmany stars are there in the Milky Way- estimates range from a 100 billion to perhaps 400 billion- and the milky way is just one of a hundred and forty billio or so other galaxies, many of them even larger than ours.

Below is an extract from the book 'A short history of nearly everything' by Bill Bryson

Welcome . And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. Infact, I suspect it was little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had some howto assemble in intricate and curiosly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all billions of deft , co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under appreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention , your atoms don't actually care about you - indeed, don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that *they* are there. They are mindless particles after all and not even themselves alive. ( It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single rigid impulse: to keep you you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting - fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds upto only 650,000 hours. and when that modest milestone flashes into view, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown, your atoms will close you down, then silently disassemble and go off to be other things. And that's it for you.

Still you may rejoice that it happens at all. Generally speaking in the universe it doen't, so far as we can tell. Thi is decidedly odd because the atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to form living things on Earth are exactly the same atoms that decline to do eslewhere. Whatever else it may be, at the level of chemistry life is fantastically mundane: carbon, hydrogen,oxygen,nitrogen, a little calcium, a dash of sulphur, a light dusting of other very ordinary elements- nothing you wouldn't find in any ordinary pharmacy- and that's all you need. The only thing special about the atoms that make you is that they make you. That is ofcourse the miracle of life.

Whether or not atoms make life in other corners of the universe, they make plenty else; indeed , they make every-thing else.
Without them, there would be no water or air or rocks, no stars and planets, no distant gassy clouds or swirling nebulae or any of the other things that make the universe so agreeable material . Atoms are so numerous and necessary that we easily overlook that they needn't actually exists at all.

There is no law that requires the universe to fill itself with small particles of matter or to produce light and gravity and other properties on which our existence hinges. There needn't actually be a universe at all . For a very long time ther wasn't . There were no atoms and no universe for them to float about in. There was nothing- nothing at all anywhere.

So thank goodness for the atoms. But the fact that you have atoms and that they assemble in such a willing manner is only part of what got you here. To be here now, alive in the twent-first centuary and smart enough to know it , you also had to be the beneficary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living things that have exisited since the dawn of time, most- 99.99% - are no longer around. Life on Earth is not only brief but dismayingly tenous. It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguising it.

I decided that I would devote a portion of my life to reading books and journals and finding saintly , patient experts prepared to answer a lot of outstandingly dumb questions. The idea is to understand and appreciate - marvel at , enjoy even- the wonder and accomplishment of science at a lavel that is not too technical or demanding but isn't entirely superficial either.

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

The best work in the world is done by people who's bosses don't know what they're doing.

What is the difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone?
- The way you approach it.

Mayonnaise Jar and Coffee
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a
day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front
of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and
empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the
jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of
course, the sand filled up every thing else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a
unanimous "yes".

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty
space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now", said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the
important things, your family, your children, your health, your friends and
your favorite passion things that if everything else was lost and only they
remained, your life would still be full."

"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house,
your car. The sand is every thing else, the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first", he continued, "There is no room
for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend
all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for
the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are
critical to your happiness.

Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your
partner out to dinner. Play another 18 holes. There will always be time
to clean the house, and fix the disposal.

Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set you
priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee
represented.

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked", he said. "It just goes to
show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room
for a cup of coffee with people SPECIAL to you ."

Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.

External nature is only internal nature writ large.

The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him -- that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man "knows," should, in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what man "learns" is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.

The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin ? to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

====================
What Vedanta Is
Vedanta is a philosophy taught by the Vedas, the most ancient scriptures of India. Its basic teaching is that our real nature is divine. God, or Brahman as it is called, exists in every living being.

Religion is therefore a search for self-knowledge, a search for the divine within ourselves. We should not think of ourselves as needing to be "saved." We are never lost. At worst, we are living in ignorance of our true nature.

Vedanta acknowledges that there are many different approaches to God, and all are valid. Any kind of spiritual practice will lead to the same state of self-realization. Thus Vedanta teaches respect for all religions.

The Main Ideas of Vedanta
Following are some of the main tenets of Vedanta:

* God is one without a second, absolute and indivisible. Though impersonal, beyond name and form, God assumes various personal forms to reveal itself to us. God is our soul. We are primarily consciousness, part of the cosmic consciousness.

* All of the incarnations (manifestations of God on Earth) are actual embodiments of Divinity. No one incarnation can be regarded as the only manifestation of that Divinity.

* There is no accident in the cosmic universe. Human destiny is governed by the law of cause and effect.

* We are born on earth repeatedly to finish the unfinished work of realizing our divinity. Although we suffer because of actions, we can control ourselves and hence our destiny.

* There is a higher state of consciousness which can be achieved in this human birth.

* There are many ways to achieve union with God, through the intellect, emotions, actions, and the will. A specific path or a combination should be followed to realize the aim and objectives of life.

Vedanta stresses the idea of self effort. It encourages every individual to realize God within by the practice of certain methods, called Yogas, which channel the tendencies we already possess and lead us to God. The ideal is to practice a harmonious balance of these four yogas:

Bhakti Yoga
This is the cultivation of a devotional relationship with God through prayer, ritual and worship. In this practice, the human emotions are give a "Godward turn." Their energy is used in search for God within.

Jnana Yoga This Yoga is the approach to God through discrimination and reason. The goal is freedom. All of our miseries in life are caused by seeing difference, and so the jnana yogi tries to break through this delusion by seeing God everywhere.

Karma Yoga The path to God through selfless service to others is Karma Yoga. By working in this spirit, the God within each person is worshipped.

Raja Yoga This is sometimes called the yoga of meditation. It is the soul of all the yogas. The emphasis here is on attuning the mind to God and truth through concentration and mediation.

Right and Wrong Conduct
All ethics are merely a means to the end of finding God within ourselves. "Right" ac