

# THE  
UNIVERSE AS A COMPLEX  
SYSTEM

## WHAT CAN MODERN SCIENCE AND EASTERN PHILOSOPHY TELL US ABOUT ORDER, CREATION, GOD AND RELIGION?

### DR. RAJKUMAR MD, FRCPath

Copyright © 2012 DR. RAJKUMAR MD, FRCPath

Smashwords Edition

# Contents

 1: Order out of Disorder

 2: Need for GOD and Religion

 3: Origin of organised religion – why around 3000 BC? Why in Indus valley?

 4: Speciation of order-generating sociological tools: Religion and Law enforcement agencies

 5: Human brain gene changes and improved cognition as the basis of social adaptation and religiosity

 6: The electrical God

 7: Science of Meditation and Prayer

 8: God phenomenon as an emergent property of Universe as a complex system

 9: Creation or evolution – why not both?

 10: Brahman: Eastern Philosophical views on Cosmology

 AUTHOR PROFILE

 UPCOMING PROJECTS 1

 UPCOMING PROJECT 2

 SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK

# 1: Order out of Disorder

YOU WALK INTO your house. It is messy with things strewn around everywhere. Most people would like to immediately tidy up the house, restoring things back to their appointed place, to feel at ease.

You go to a shop. Merchandise is kept here, there and everywhere with no logical arrangement. You do not see any queue or anything. People are elbowing you, jumping the queue and you stand there like a loser. You are not going to be a happy man, are you?

We hate Disorder and chaos. Don't we? Why is it that orderliness is aesthetically, and socially more pleasing than disorder? Have you thought about it?

Apart from the orderliness in our social lives we also see nature is full of orderly arrangement of matter. Our universe is so full of beautiful things. You can't have beauty without order. There are so many phenomena in nature that happen in a predictable manner. Predictability is not possible if there is no pattern and order. There are so many physical and biological systems in our world that are intricately designed and are capable of a functional complexity that is mind-boggling. You don't have complexity without order either. Order is at the centre of our existence.

The truth is physicists would tell us that matter always moves towards a state of maximum disorder, at least from a thermodynamic point of view. Order has to be strived for. There is a cost associated with order generation. Order is not cheap. Order does not come free. Why, or how, does nature impose order at the expense of energy?

Living organisms are highly ordered. In fact, they would qualify as the most ordered arrangement of matter in the universe. The life processes seem so meaningful and purposeful. They would be impossible but for the orderly cellular functions. Order imposed on living cells not only consumes a lot of energy but demands complex structural organisation as well. But, immediately after the life system dies, the matter that was associated with that life system crumbles into a state of disorder as if it was waiting to do so. This is the reason for the decay of the dead bodies soon after death. A dead person's body becomes cold meaning that he is not generating the body heat anymore. The heat is an outcome of the metabolic combustion of the food just like you burn your petrol in your car engine. This is not happening after you die. Because food intake does not happen and the dead person is not breathing anymore there is no possibility to burn (with oxygen) the fuel (food). Secondly, the cells cannot keep the internal chemical composition intact because the cell membrane cannot keep up the integrity of the boundaries of individual cells. Many of the vital stuffs like salt, nutrient levels fall in your blood stream. Cells start dying due to lack of oxygen and energy. Finally, the body cannot fight microbes either because the immune cells are dead or because the heart has stopped pumping blood removing the only source of transport for the immune cells to reach the troubled cellular locations. The result is an invasion of the microbes and initiation of microbial metabolism of your body contents which is colloquially referred to as decay.

A corpse, and the inevitable degradation of it, represents the physical state nature would prefer the matter to be – disorderly, useless and in the elemental state. In other words, the state of living is against natural laws! Purpose and meaning is stripped off the matter. Then the question automatically arises: why was life created in the first place in the universe, knowing that life systems are antagonistic to nature from a thermodynamic sense? This is a question for some serious and long thinking.

Whether God created life, or alternatively life just evolved, the question will still remain. Why life at a cost? This is not a theological question. My question is from a physical, thermodynamic point of view.

Order and creation are inter-dependent and in my opinion the answer for both should be sought from the same source. Origins of purpose are also to be found here.

In our universe life systems are not the only ones to exhibit order. There are other physical and inanimate systems also that manifest order in their existence. If the preferred state of natural systems is disorder how come there is order everywhere? Where does order spring from? Why do we need order that is costly?

Before we go into the order in physical and biological systems I would like to focus on societal order first. In fact, much of this book is about social order-generation mechanisms. Intuitively, social order is easier to comprehend than physical and biological order. I want to delay bringing up the discussion on physical order and also minimise the technical language required to explain it. This book is meant for everybody and I want lay people to travel with me in this journey feeling comfortable all the way. I am not going to intimidate anyone with hard science.

Order in our society requires establishment of the concept of right over wrong. A simple example is any game we play. Even if it is only for fun any game you play has to have a set of rules. The players have to play the game as per these rules. If the players do what they want, with no agreed rules, then it is not going to be fun. Is it? You will never be wanted to participate in any game if you are a non-conformer. Our life in the society is like a game. We play this game with our fellow players, the members of the society. Obviously, there has to be some rules though these rules are not always easy. If you want to brand yourself in the society as a good person then you play the social living game by the rule whatever it takes.

In fact, there is a social theory called the 'Game theory' that can explain human behaviour. It is said that we all like to be fair in our dealings with others and expect them to reciprocate that fairness. We do our part and we expect others to do their part. If there is a suspicion that you are a free-rider, who is cheating and refusing to do your part, then you are ostracized. People play this 'social game' on some sort of a trust that others will play by the rules too. The extent of cooperation players of this social game are able to demonstrate will depend on the confidence they have that others will make their due contribution. Psychologists in the recent years have formulated this 'Game theory' and have used it effectively to study human behavioural dynamics that leads to order in their lives, and society at large. This is an illustration that subjective human behaviour can be brought within the frameworks of a scientific theory.

When it comes to fairness and justice in our lives we almost always think of God and moral values. The fabric of order in our society is woven with moral values as mandated by our religions. Our society has evolved towards a state of order. Barbaric, primitive societies are only a very small minority in today's world. I am sure at some point in the past things were not as organised as now. We probably never had all these rules and fine prints in every single thing we did. People were just getting by without any need for complicated regulations. The primary reason for this is that, in the olden days (i.e. before the origin of established political structures), the population size was very small. People were living in sparsely populated land masses. The size of a human group in the days he was a hunter-gatherer was probably in the region of 10 per group. The population density of a hunter-gatherer society was around 1 person per square mile. Contrast this with a population size of mega cities of today like Shanghai, Mexico city, Bombay etc with over 20 million people living together, with a population density in excess of 15,000 to 20,000 per square mile. This is like difference in managing a small village shop run by a family and running a business conglomerate that operates across the globe, with staff numbers in excess of 50,000 or 100,000. The village shop probably does not have any written rules or regulations. But, can you do that with a multinational company? A family that consists of 10 members does not have a written constitution but a nation with a population in millions certainly will. I hope you see the point.

Since the dawn of civilisation in the Holocene period around 10,000 BC, coinciding with the receding of glacial ice, human population has been on the increase. Before the advent of agriculture, when man was still only a hunter-gatherer, the total population of our planet was only 1 million. Within 2000 years i.e. by 8000 BC, the human population has multiplied to 5 million thanks to invention of agriculture. Over 4000 years, starting from 8000 BC, the human population saw minimal increase. It took 4 millennia for the population to increase to 7 million by about 4000 BC. This may have been due to various climatic factors that affected growth of human societies which had settled around various parts of the world. But, it is estimated that there was a four-fold increase in population to 27 million by 2000 BC. This perhaps was due to the growth of urban cities and states during this period. From about 4000 BC the population began to increase sharply and this coincides with the origin of urban civilisation and writing technology. I am more interested in this time period to trace the origins of social order. This is the time period when organised political and religious structures emerged.

It is not just the question of how many humans can mother earth support but my concern is purely sociological. How can we generate order? How can we find ways of sustaining the cooperation we expect to see in such large groups? Is it possible at all? Were we equipped for this, both in terms of political organisation of the world and more importantly from an individual point of view? We all know that man is still struggling even till this date. But, the primitive man living thousands of years ago had to learn to adapt to the increasing size of the society. This adaptation was not only in the social arena but also in terms of his genes and brain function. Demand placed on his cognitive ability and social skills like tolerance led to evolutionary selection pressures on his brain genetics and anatomy.

Our society is like a human enterprise. There are commercial and non-commercial components in it. Still, you need governance mechanisms in both types to keep order. There has been a lot of sociological evolution in the past 10,000 – 20,000 years or so in our history to deal with this need. I am going to talk about these order-generating sociological tools that man developed and surprisingly they are fit for purpose even today. One such tool is the concept of God and religion. I am convinced, and I am hoping that I will convince the readers also, that the religions have more to do with sociology than theology. This is a rather provocative argument. We have all along abided by religious dogma with unquestioning faith. Religious rules are non-negotiable. I have argued that the religions are by-products of human societal evolution that was working towards order-generation.

It is one thing to say that religion was evolving as a social order mechanism just like the political structures like states. But, on the other, man seems to have harboured notions of God, or some sort of belief in supernatural being or as yet unknown proto-religious beliefs, for a long time before he came up with organised religions. It is not as if man stumbled upon religion overnight. We have evidence to show that origins of proto-religions dates back much earlier than the period when Hinduism as an organised religion made its appearance 4000 - 5000 years ago but we also have evidence for symbolic behaviour of the primitive man dating back to tens of thousands of years that suggest some sort of proto-religious beliefs.

The concept of God is perhaps the most intriguing and unique development in the origin and evolution of man. No other life form has anything like religion and they do not know or care about God. Why man? Organised religions originated few thousand years ago. But, belief in 'God' or a 'Supernatural being' predated the religions by millennia. The question naturally arises why it took so long for organised religions to arise.

Life forms originated on earth about 3 billion years ago. Proto-human species appeared only about 7 million years ago. It took a further good 7 million years for modern human species to evolve. Religion as a human faculty made its appearance about 5000 years ago. Accepting the time of origin of formed religion as about 5000 years ago the natural question to ask is: Why then and why not much before?

The first religion to appear in human history is said to be Hinduism. This statement is not made to glorify Hinduism whatsoever. As a social phenomenon the first religion to arise was Hinduism and that is all matters. It is said to have appeared in the ancient Indus Valley civilisation. The timing is said to be around 5000 years ago approximately. Why Indus valley was the first geographical region that paved the way for organised religion? Are there any geographical or social reasons for it?

Humans are said to have originated in Africa several millions of years ago. Then they migrated out of Africa over 100,000 to 200,000 years and settled in various geographical regions like the Middle East, Egypt, Indus Valley and Central Asia. Of course they spread to other corners of the globe as well. The question is what conditions led to origin of religion in the Indus Valley. Were there special reasons for this? Why couldn't man formulate religions in Egypt or Greece or Sumeria?

This book will explore the answers for such questions apart from others such as nature of God himself. The fundamental aim of this book is to look at spiritualism as a human quest towards social order. I have also asked the question whether God could be a physical phenomenon independent of religions. This is sure to shock the readers. I will try to find the answers to these questions using real science. There have been a number of attempts made by other writers who have tried to find satisfactory explanations for the concepts of religion and God from some sort of scientific vantage point. In my opinion these attempts have fallen well short of their goal mainly due to the fact that they could not muster up enough convincing science to accomplish their goals. Either the science that was used was pseudoscience or overzealous interpretations of spiritual texts to the advantage of promoting a specific religion. Also, we should not lose sight of the fact that the general feeling out there is that when someone is trying to bring science to explain God the desired outcome for the writer is to dismiss God. I differ from them on the grounds that I argue that science demands that God has to be real and an inevitable consequence of the existence of the cosmos. This is a rather remarkably different stand point.

In the same vein I have collected a lot of recent evidence from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, and anthropology that belief in religions and God is biologically imprinted in man and how man could not have escaped it by any means. Spiritualism is a remarkable and unusual trait present only in man and there are genetic and neurological evidences to show how and why he has this predilection towards spiritualism.

I look at God as a physical phenomenon, as a cosmic property of the universe. Belief in God is based on fear of punishment from God and as a provider of sustenance and as a creator. Religions are based on the beliefs that God will create, provide and punish. Religion as a human faculty has only been around for 5000 years. May be proto-religious beliefs may have been around for a few tens of thousands of years before that, possibly even 100,000 years ago. But God, as a natural phenomenon, is an emergent property of the universe as a complex system that has existed since the origin of universe 15 billion years ago, if not earlier, and therefore preceded onset of religions by 15 billion years. The physical nature of God is not a unique human faculty like religion. God phenomenon arises outside of human brain, unlike religion. It is a real physical phenomenon that is believed to have something to do with origin of the universe and life.

Believing in God and the actual God phenomenon are two different things. The belief in God stems from the brain because man believes that the world could not have come out of nothing and that there is someone out there who is watching us not only to punish our wrongdoings but also to show motherly love by giving. Our brain has evolved to always find a cause-effect relationship and primitive man has shown Pavlovian conditioning to associate temporally related but causally unconnected events. Consequently, any unfavourable event like disease or a natural disaster was thought by primitive man to be the result of his own act that immediately preceded it though really there was no connection whatsoever. Primitive man, obviously due to lack of understanding of the workings of nature like rain, floods, earthquakes and diseases, thought God was punishing him. He tried to avoid the punishment by appeasing God with prayer and rituals etc. This belief in God that God will respond to our rituals is the basis for origins of religions though we all know that neither diseases nor natural disasters are punishments from God.

Science has proven that these natural biological and physical phenomena have their own causes. But, the imprinting of God in our brain has been so strong that it is still not easy to shed the fear of God. May be it is because scientific advances have only happened in the last 100 years or so which is too short a time for reversing genetic and neurological changes in human brain that happened over tens of thousands of years. Why am I so sure that genetic and neurological changes in human brain are responsible for our spiritual tendencies? This is because of a lot of recent anthropological, genetic and neurological research evidence that has started pouring in. Several human brain genes have been identified that have undergone remarkable beneficial mutations over the last few tens of thousands of years like _Microcephalin, FOXP2, ASPM_ etc. A number of brain anatomical organisational differences have been noted between human brain and other primates. More interestingly, neuroscientists have uncovered regions in the brain that may mediate spiritual feelings just as there are dedicated brain centres for language, speech, vision, hearing, sensations etc. The part(s) of the brain that mediate spiritual feelings have been given a catchy name the 'God Module'. I will describe the brain genetic and anatomic changes later.

Actual God phenomenon, in my opinion, is an emergent property of the world that is a physical outcome of the universe as a complex system that can create, protect, generate order and destroy. Interestingly, this is a natural tendency of all complex systems, big and small. Let me explain.

As I will explain repeatedly later, our universe is a complex system just like many others. A complex system is one that consists of multiple interacting units. The constituent units in a complex system may be dissimilar but all the complex systems display identical behavioural motifs irrespective of their nature. Even animate and inanimate complex systems seem to have similar manifestations. The system could be a commercial/industrial company, a nation, a biological life form, a society, complex molecules, cells etc. In recent years there has been a lot of research into the mechanics of complex systems and a new theory called Complexity theory has come about which is really powerful to explain a number of phenomena that we observe all around us.

Complexity theory has the advantage of offering a non-reductionist approach to understanding natural phenomena. Instead of looking at effect of individual constituents the complexity theory looks at the whole. What we find interestingly is that the output from a complex system always exceeds the sum total of effects of all individual constituents. There is an emergence of properties and functions, from within the complex system, which cannot be accounted for by any single individual constituent. The classical example is the consciousness arising in the brain that cannot be credited to any solitary neuron. Another example at a molecular level is the emergence of the catalytic property of a protein (enzyme) not present in any of the constituent amino acids. A third random example is magnetism, an emergent property, not seen with individual iron atoms. There are many more examples one can easily think of.

All complex systems such as these have self-preservative tendencies. They strive to survive against the odds. An individual organism is a complex system as well as the species. At both levels you would find survival tactics as you would find in an organization like a company, state etc. Even planet as a whole has self-regulatory mechanisms according to Gaia theory proposed by James Lovelock. There are many similarities between animate and inanimate complex systems. Firstly, they have certain emergent properties not accountable by the individual constituents. Secondly, there is a tendency to generate order and inhibit disorder within the system. More interestingly, complex systems display inherent protectionist behaviour that seems to take care of the constituent entities in order to survive as a whole. Earth gives you food, air and water and also energy and medicines. The company you work for gives you a salary, bonus, medical benefits, and others. Your nation as a complex system protects you from enemies and takes care of public health and order. If God is the emergent manifestation of the universe as a complex system all benevolence we normally associate with God, all the emphasis we place on order as opposed to disorder as mandated by fear of God, all creation that we consider divine could be construed to be the result of purely complex system dynamics that could be accounted by physics. There is no reason to believe that this emergent dynamics is restricted to God/Universe complex system only. This is a purely physical phenomenon that should be observed in any other complex system, small or big, animate or inanimate. In other words, 'God-like' properties are there everywhere for you to see if you analyse the inner workings of a complex system of your choice.

The point I am trying to prove is that complex systems do behave almost 'God-like'. In what sense are they God-like? They are God-like in the sense they respond to calls for help. They are capable of protection. They are capable of restoring order. They are capable of creation. They are capable of punishing the offenders. These behaviours cannot be traced to any component of the complex system concerned which is no different from our inability to pin-point God in our day to day life. This is because the 'God-like' survival properties are emergent manifestations of the complex system as a whole. If we considered our universe as a complex system then we are bound to see the same survival properties in it similar to what we can find in other complex systems like human body or a country. We will come back to this discussion again later.

If you consider creation as a unique divine property I have the challenge of proving that other complex systems, other than God/Universe, possess the potency to create. Secondly, I also have to convince the readers that creationistic view alone does not fully account for the origins of entities but we need the evolutionary force to support it. I will explain this later in the book.

For the time being what I would like to tell you is that whether you are an atheist or not does not matter. You will still be susceptible to the influence of this emergent property of the universe. Being an atheist determines what religion you follow and perhaps the type of God you accept. But, both the atheist and the non-atheist are subject to the emergent manifestations of the physical world just like the millions of life forms. You will find the basis for my argument as you go along. It is too early at this stage of the book.

God is perhaps the most written about and talked about idea since the origin of mankind. A lot has been written about god and religion since historic times. Especially in the last two decades there has been quite a few books written on God. My intention is not to dismiss religion and God. I know that some writers who have approached the topic of religion from a scientific point of view either dismiss God or favour one religion over another. On the contrary, I am trying to explore the religion from Darwinian perspective – why did religion originate and how can we relate human biological evolution to his cultural evolution? What is the nature of God from a physical point of view?

Was religion a necessity? It certainly looks like it is. We could not have done without it for keeping our society in order. But, this order is about sociological order and what about the universal cosmic order that is seen in physical and biological systems. We need to invoke something over and above something like religion for this. Man's territory is infinitely small compared to the known and unknown dimensions of the universe. Religion is restricted to human behaviour, and localised to earth, which obviously has no affect whatsoever on a star in the distant universe or a physical or biological system elsewhere in the cosmos. Of course human actions religiously moderated or not, will have an effect on ecosystem within the planet but will have nothing to do what happened on Jupiter or the Sun. What I mean is that religious concepts will have nothing to do with physical or biological systems on other planets or stars or the rest of the universe but God as a physical phenomenon will be capable of influencing the cosmos as a whole. Any factor that guides the order in such settings will be external to man. I am proposing that this is an emergent property of the universe itself. This all-pervading universal influence is the one generates cosmic order and creation. We call it God. Hinduism calls this cosmic whole as _Brahman._

I have also attempted to distinguish between the concepts of God, as known in religions, from a scientifically accountable God. I have gone beyond moralistic accounts of religious Gods and explored the phenomenon as if it were a property of the manifested matter in the universe that influences everything physical and biological, near and far. I have also fitted in the creationist arguments in to my scientific view of God and religion to show that creative potency is pre-existent in the manifested universe almost as a natural outcome of the inherent physicochemical nature of the manifested matter. The same emergent property is also potent in order generation which in turn gives rise to the apparent purpose.

One could say that space for religion becomes less with increasing advances made by science. We are now able to account for a number of things previously not explainable by science. Until very recently, it was not known what makes man to feel religious. Does it mean we are better off now with more scientific advances? Does answering some previously unknown things with science take away the spiritual purpose of religions?

We still do not know a lot about us. How we came into being, how our consciousness works, how the cells work, origin of the universe are all just a few examples of what are still in the 'Unknown' category. If, and when, we find the answers to these kinds of questions do you think we will forever relinquish religion? Is it possible to ever get rid of our religious beliefs? Is it likely that other order-generating mechanisms like laws, police, social rules etc substitute for god as a moral force? Or, is it likely that religion and belief in god have a different purpose altogether?

There are other sociological tools we have evolved too. The moral enforcement agencies that evolved later like laws, courts, police etc are also similar to religions in that they demand order. The difference is the latter take away the choice element from you. You have to conform. You have to be moral. There is no choice. When the police come to arrest you for a crime you cannot tell them to leave you alone because you do not believe in law! Can you? But, you can do so with respect to fear of God. Religions are not like that law enforcement bodies. Nobody will punish you if you do not follow a religion. I view the moral establishments of the modern world as evolutionary variants of religion that are even better at moral enforcement. They are probably more necessary now to enforce order in the modern, scientific world where people have woken up to the fact that God may not be real (in the conventional religious sense) and therefore will not come down to punish every time.

In fact, that is what you see in your life. People who commit crimes do not get punished by God but by the law enforcement bodies. There are many criminals in the world who live happily unpunished by God. Often we hear people moan the good life enjoyed by many such people. In the same vein we also hear cries of despair from God-loving people who suffer hardships in their lives. They feel that the suffering they have to face is unjustified because they are God-fearing and have been good all their lives. It is not an exaggeration if I said that people almost think of God as if some sort of a global accountant who will protect the good and punish the bad based on some sort of a 'moral accounting' system. That is why they get upset if the 'good' people suffer and equally get upset when the 'bad' people get away. It is very common for people to ask the question – **'** doesn't God have eyes'? In fact, many people have a major problem trying to comprehend why God is appearing to be so cruel based on all the suffering we can see all over the world. This is because they think that if God was watching he would not have let the good suffer. People also don't fail to say 'God has opened his eyes' when some good happens to them. My belief is that people in general view God as a 'moral accountant' who will balance the books based on the good and bad they do.

The Hindu belief in ' _Karma'_ is an institutionalisation of this 'moral accountancy' thinking. _Karma_ is a concept put forward by Hinduism to explain the cumulative moral balance of a person. Someone who consistently and repetitively does bad deeds will be in the 'Red' as per the Karmic accounting system. Those who do socially acceptable acts and help others are said to clock up _Karmic_ points. The concept is no different from the day of judgement preached by Christianity when a person is evaluated after death in God's court. A sinner goes to hell and the good go to heaven. I suppose even Islam has the same belief that Prophet Allah will take into account all your deeds and your actions will determine what you deserve. _Zakat_ is a religious requirement in Islam where the rich will have to give to the needy. All religions have this commonality whereby socially beneficial acts are considered dear to God and Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam are all similar in this respect. Hindu _Karma_ goes even to the extent of believing that this 'moral account status' will even carry over into your next birth! How nice if we can carry over our bank account status to our next life too (provided you not overdrawn) so that you can continue to enjoy the hard-earned money in the next life too? Karmic concept of Hinduism says you certainly can do it with your cumulative 'moral wealth'. This belief, by way of institutionalisation in the form of religion or mythology, is sufficient to regulate millions of people. Who wants to be fried in oil in hell?

_Dharma_ is another central tenet in Hindu religion. _Dharma_ is about common good taking precedence over individual benefit. In English language the word 'altruism' means something similar if not the same. One could say 'selflessness' is another way of describing this. _Dharma_ is mandated by Hindu religion though in my opinion every single religion including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism preach self-less acts without doubt.

Doing no harm to others is another dimension to the concept of _Dharma_. An act that is harmful to another person, or the whole society, is called _Adharma_ in Hindu religion. It is prohibited. In the context of what we are discussing now perhaps _Adharma_ is the same as Disorder. Harming others is decried by all major religions. This is easily the foremost requirement in the practice of all religions.

What I have shown later is that the _Dharma_ principle has a solid scientific basis. I call _Dharma_ as the cosmic order. It transcends the societal and religious domain. There should be a universal principle that is equally applicable to the physical world as a whole and is not restricted to the human behavioural philosophy only. This is one of the main themes of this book. This all-pervading, universal driver is one that directs order-generation in manifested universe including in the physical and biological space. I have shown that the emergent properties of complex systems can account for this universal force that cannot be pin-pointed to any single component of the physical universe.

I have shown that _Dharma_ is one such emergent property that has the capability to impose order which is a view that is totally new and forms a strong point of this book. This is purely a name that already exists in Hinduism and I want to make use of it. Otherwise, if the readers wish, we can even get rid of the name and just consider it as an objective property. I am accounting for a natural property seen in nature that favours order over disorder. Readers may recall that I said earlier that order has to be won the hard way. Like the battle between good and evil the order/disorder tussle also is universal. Though Hindu spiritual thinking views _Dharma_ as the principle that should be preferred by people in their social life, for preserving the society, I feel that this is part of a universal phenomena transcending human behavioural domain to reach out to the physical world where any deviation from the norm is kept in check. This property underpins all cosmic order in fact. In simple terms, this cosmic order principle means doing things by the rules. For example, all atomic and molecular interactions take place according to set rules. These are simple rules but non-negotiable. If a positively charged atom is attracted to a negatively charged atom is a simple rule of interaction. If opposite poles of magnet attract each other it is again a simple rule. Such simple rules generate complexity and order. It is all doing things by the book. We have a lot of rules in our social life wherein we cannot deviate from the norm. I suppose the same thing applies to our physical world also. An apple will fall, and not fly, simply because it obeys gravitational rules. Covalent bonds, electrostatic force, hydrophilic and hydrophobic, Van der Waals forces all determine atomic interactions. At the sub-atomic level we have the strong nuclear forces, weak forces etc that determine what the sub-atomic particles will do. These rules in the inanimate space are deterministic. There is no other way.

I will return to more on this discussion later on but first I would like to focus more for the time being about the moral behaviour of people at the individual level as they behave inside a complex system called the human society. Some recent research in human behavioural psychology has shown some interesting facts. Even if religions had not originated we, humans, still would have had the ability to guide us through right and wrong. In other words, it is claimed that we are anatomically hard-wired in our brain to make intuitive moral judgements.

Researchers have studied the moral behaviour of people by psychological experiments. A moral sense test for the public was organised by the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, which is part of the Psychology Department at the Harvard University. The objective of this test is to assess the sense of right and wrong amongst the public and perhaps make a distinction between people who are religious and those who are not. This test posed a set of scenarios that required a moral judgement on the part of the person who was taking the test. These scenarios were obviously imaginary but the participant had to provide a moral response as obligatory, permissible or forbidden. Marc D. Hauser, who led this research, concluded that there was no statistically significant difference between subjects with or without religious backgrounds. The 1500 subjects who participated in the study were clueless when asked what led them to decide on the 3 choices for each of the scenarios. Dr. Hauser thinks that this study provided empirical support for the idea that we humans are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgements of right and wrong. This human faculty is just like other faculties like language, mathematics etc that is perhaps hard-wired in the brain. If its role were in generation of moral order would this important social need override all attempts to kill religion?

Recently, there have been a lot of very interesting findings, published in reputed science journals, on the human faculty of religion and the belief in God. There have been research findings that seem to suggest that man is hard-wired to believe in God just as he believes in right and wrong. Some unique parts in the brain seem to be mediating the spiritual beliefs, it is claimed. The neuroscientists who have studied this curious brain function have dubbed the part of the brain that mediates this belief in Spiritualism and God as the 'God Module', as I said earlier! We will see more about this exciting neuro-anatomical fact a bit later. I have shown that evolution of neuro-anatomy of the human brain towards the 'God Module' was driven by social needs as his society became bigger and bigger about 10,000 years ago! The parallel co-evolution of brain anatomy and social growth led to the pervasive belief in God, it is claimed by scientists.

There are also findings from researchers who studied the genes in the brain and found support to the conclusion that some of the genes in the brain have evolved pretty quickly in the last 50,000 years or so. These genes have enabled a number of human faculties like language, reason, art, music and perhaps religion. All evolutionary changes have to be imprinted in genes for them to be passed down generations. We all know that as biology students. Our knowledge of human brain genes has been very scarce until recent times. Thanks to human genome sequencing advances we are now in a position to know more about human genes especially those of the brain. Several prominent brain genes have undergone favourable genetic mutations in the last 50,000 years that have conferred improved or new functional capabilities for the mankind. These new genetic advances had to occur in the human brain to prepare it for adaption to crowded life in the society where the primitive man had to exhibit augmented cognitive abilities such as identifying a stranger, read the emotions on the faces of others, recognise fear, language etc. Without these brain applications a human brain (50,000 years ago) was like your computer before a decade. Just like your computer of the last decade, that was incapable of running your fancy applications, the primitive brain was also handicapped. Human brain evolution, fuelled by beneficial changes in some brain genes, prepared it for the journey into the uncharted territories, including the spiritualistic space. A list of these genes is discussed later.

Amazingly, religion has also been viewed also from Darwinian perspectives and an attempt has been made to explain religion from the evolutionary point of view. Thinkers have considered religion as if it were an evolutionary adaptation of mankind to survive in large societies. Disciplines like moral psychology, human cognition etc have been used as frameworks to study religion and its basis. Reputed journals like _Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, New Scientist_ etc have carried research articles on the behavioural and cognitive basis of religion. I feel there has been a spate of such articles in the last 5-10 years. The thought that religion could have an evolutionary, anatomical, genetic, neurological or behavioural basis has caught up with serious scientists in the last decade or so. Religious analysis is no more the domain of preachers and philosophers. It has very interestingly moved into the scientific arena.

Most of the recent books on the topic of science and religion have interestingly tried to explain religion away. What I have done is to try and explain religion and god concepts with science. My thesis is that the god concept is not antagonistic to science. In fact, science can explain god.

I am not a religious person. I am not a theologian or a philosopher. It is not my intention to discuss religion from these angles. As I said I perhaps would not even know all the nuances in religious practices across the landscape of world religions. I do not follow any religious practices on a regular basis. So, I can reassure readers that I am not here to uphold any particular religion. It is immaterial what practitioners of individual religions do. It is also not important what the individual religions preach. I am not concerned about which god is promoted by these religions. Yet, it is my belief that I can use science to explain god and the religious beliefs.

All I am going to try and say is that religion was a social necessity for mankind. Even more importantly, I have an explanation for the God phenomenon that is totally unconnected with any particular religion and is not concerned with any deities. The beauty of my book is that I am not claiming that any religious Gods exist. But, I argue that the God phenomenon is true. Again, I can see grounds for confusion here in the minds of readers. You will be able to resolve your confusion by the end of this book.

This book is not about whether believing or not believing in God is good. Most certainly this book is not about which religion is the best. There is no attempt whatsoever to go into the details of every religion in the world. There is also no interest in tracing the history of every religion right up to the present day. In fact I am only interested in what led to the origin of religion, where and when. I am not interested in discussing what has happened to religions since then. Similarly, there is also no distinction made between religions whatsoever when trying to unravel the nature of God. The phenomenon of God is explored rather than a particular religious God from any specific religion. I do not think we need those details here either.

Various types of people have their own beliefs about god. Some say there is no god because no one can prove the existence of god. Most of the people say there is god, or an equivalent supernatural being, even though the concept defies the principles of scientific thinking in that this concept has never been reproducibly proved. There are others who believe in many gods, each with unique powers. Recent history has shown that belief in god has taken a nasty turn towards unnecessary killing and destruction to achieve supremacy of their gods. It is a real pity that religion has evolved in this direction because the very reason why religions originated was to maintain social order and peace. Though religion may have led to terrorism and death of late, do we really know how much more destruction could have happened if religion was not there as a moral force in our society?

Religion has lost its pre-eminent place in the last half a century or so as scientific advances happened. What religious believers considered miracles could be accounted for by physical and chemical principles. There is no need for religion based on magic and miracles. Modern science can do things nothing short of a miracle and people know what the natural forces are in terms of physics and chemistry. Science demands proof for everything. This has slowly eaten away the belief in God for most people. Despite all this even non-believers still accept that a supernatural being could still exist. This is very surprising because what he or she is saying is that there is no god but only a supernatural being. What difference does it make?

When man cannot explain something with science there is a tendency to assume some divine interference as a causal agent. The best example of this is the case of creation of life and the world as a whole. God concept fills the 'gap' in our understanding of the nature here. This has been called the 'God of the gaps'. We needed god perhaps to account for some missing answers. God as a divine agency is an easy answer. This may be a reason why many people believe in God.

Finally, I would like to add in this book is the argument between creationists and evolutionists. Schools have now abolished the teaching of creationistic theory. There has been so much in the public press about this topic. This book is to tell a different story where you can keep both creationism and evolution in the model and keep the god principle as well, all within solid scientific frameworks. Doesn't it sound incredible?

Before I start talking about the need for religion in our society as a social order generator I want to talk a little bit about order in physical and biological systems too. The purpose of this discussion is to elaborate a little bit more on the mechanics of order generation generally seen in nature.

Let us take a simple chemical reaction: Something called A gets converted to B. What happens next? According to the law of mass action, at the point where all A is converted to B, there will be a reversal of the reaction where B is back-converted to A. When all B is converted back to A the whole sequence will start all over again. The futile cyclical conversions A to B, then B to A, then A to B happens again and again. From a thermodynamic point of view the reaction will stabilise to a state of equilibrium where the rate of forward reaction (A to B) and the rate of reverse reaction (B to A) will settle to a rate that is determined by a constant. The state of equilibrium reached is also the state of maximum disorder.

Intuitively, the statement that the equilibrium is a state of maximum disorder in counter-intuitive. The term 'equilibrium' gives some sort of a mental picture denoting something stable and preferred. But, from a physical point of view, 'equilibrium' is a state of maximum disorder wherein no useful action results. What is the point in blindly converting A to B only to be reverted back to A? This is like water flowing from a tap only to flow backwards into the tap!

At the time of death all your body constituents enter into this type of reactions as dictated by chemistry. Forward and backward reactions happen for no point. Your body constituents settle to a state of equilibrium. In physics equilibrium is the preferred state by nature. But, in biology, equilibrium is a bad word. Life systems actively and avidly work all their lives to evade this equilibrium state. In other words, life systems actively work, expending energy, to avoid the state of disorder.

Thermodynamics defines order as a state where something useful can happen. There is the so called free energy available to do useful actions. A classic example is boiling a kettle of tea. The heat energy was useful to heat the tea. If you had used fire to heat the tea I am sure you will agree that a lot of heat was wasted to heating your kitchen as well. The heat that went waste to heat your room was the useless energy that tried to equilibrate with the temperature that prevailed in the kitchen. Of course, some heat was used to heat the tea which performed a useful work. This is free, useful energy. It is also true that, if left alone, the hot tea will get cold meaning that the heat will dissipate to the room and become useless again. This again means that it will be in equilibrium with the kitchen temperature, a state of disorder where no further useful action can happen. You will never find a situation where the heat of your kitchen got back into your cold tea to heat it up again!

Life systems actively avoid the situation of equilibrium. How? In the example A to B conversion, for example, there would be a conversion of B to C and D etc preventing the reversal of B to A. This would require energy and some assistance in the form of enzymes as catalysts. Also, to feed the reaction forward more A will be added. The products C and D may have biochemically favourable outcomes called 'useful work' which obviously means life processes. This is a simplification of the way life biochemistry of life works as we all know that there are literally hundreds of such metabolic reactions happening inside living systems. The energy needed to run these reactions, against nature, is derived from your food. The food not only gives you the energy but also the raw materials for stuff like A. Life systems are open systems in the sense we not only take in something new but also produce an output that exchanges with the environment. Closed systems are opposite in that they do not take in anything nor leave anything out. Closed systems will end up in disorder (equilibrium) unlike open systems.

If you look at our own society order is something that has to be obtained at a cost. The cost is borne by the governments. The cost arises to meet the demand of social monitoring, punishment, running law enforcement agencies etc. Also, the cost comes in the form of time and effort needed from its citizens to plough new ideas and practices so that the society does not settle into a state of equilibrium. Leaders and spiritual gurus pump in new thoughts every now and then throughout the history. This drives the social reactions forward, instead of reverting back. What would happen if our society allowed itself to reverse many of the advances it had made over the years? This would be like the reversal of the reaction B to A where nothing useful would be happening.

We say that some countries are still primitive. There are some others which have turned barbaric due to social unrest. What do we mean by a primitive, barbaric society? We are obviously referring to situations where there is no social order. The order that has been earned by societies in the rest of the world has been lost in some pockets of the world. This is like reversal of B to A for me. Such societies become kind of closed systems in that they shut themselves in their own world. They neither contribute anything to the outside world nor take in something from it.

In our body our cells are capable of an orderly state where they respond to cues coming from other cells, including brain and endocrine glands. Life processes are outcomes of orderly, synchronised cellular actions. There are very few things in probably the entire manifested universe that would even come very close to the beautiful order of a living system like a human body. By responding to molecular signals the cells execute their tasks and the output is a synchronised, purpose-oriented, growth process. All the beautiful, complex biochemical metabolism and growth processes in our body are outputs of orderly cellular behaviour. But, in the cancerous state, cells lose their ability to respond to orders and cues from other organs. The result is that they lose their functional ability. This is no different from a situation when someone decides to isolate himself from the society. In isolation a person can hardly do anything more than very basic actions needed to survive. Can he? He cannot hope to be doctor, lawyer, and engineer etc all by himself. He cannot hope to build a mansion all by himself. He cannot hope to run a business all by himself. Basically, he reverts back to the age of the primitive man with minimal functional ability. A cancer cell is exactly like that. By becoming independent and maverick it loses the ability to augment its functional and structural specialisation. It cannot produce any meaningful molecular product because it has lost this ability. It is a reversal of the specialised status it once had, like B converting back to A. Anatomists would call this an undifferentiated state. An undifferentiated cell would be something similar to the primitive man where he did not have any functional or social specialisation.

What is clear is that an orderly state is prone to create as well. New things are possible when there is an orderly cooperation of entities. If 5 people cooperate the output is probably more than what 1 person can do. If 100 people cooperate in a predictable, orderly way I am sure the difference is going to be much bigger. What about 1000 people? What about 100,000 people? This is what happened when human society transformed itself from a hunter-gatherer situation to a settled life in cities and states. More people were there to do tasks other than food acquisition only. Crafts, art, technology all became possible because there were not only many people who can bear the burden of additional work required but, more importantly, there was a cooperative behaviour that allowed them to create new things.

I suppose this is no different from comparison of a life system like a bacterium and a human being. A bacterium is obviously infinitely much less sophisticated than a human body just because there are trillions of cells in the human body that are working in an orderly manner!

Order and creation are indeed tied to one another. Where you beat disorder you create! Where you achieve order there is purpose too. Nature does it time and again.

A complex system emerges with ordered patterns involving a condensation of freedom available for the constituent units. Irrespective of the nature of the constituent units, which form the whole, the freedom of choice for the constituents for performing a task may be many but the system settles in a state where the choices are only a few. Using the terminology of dynamics this preferred state (s) are called 'attractors'. The behavioural mode is called the 'attractor state'. The complex system, of any type, has an affinity for that state. When displaced from that state the system will find its way back to return to that preferred state. As one can imagine alteration of a behavioural state, due to internal and external fluctuations, can lead to a range of states in the existential space and the preferred state can be called a 'phase space'. The existential state is in a dynamic equilibrium.

In complex systems like societies and multi-cellular organisms there are usually more than one point attractors. The system may be stable having reached one of the several equilibrium points, depending on the initial conditions. In such cases all the initial conditions that lead to a particular, fixed point, preferred attractor state are called 'basins of attractors'.

Coming to our discussion about origins of social order I want to apply this dynamic system thinking to see if we can find a convincing explanation for the rather strange phenomenon of why people decide to comply with socially accepted behaviours. There are only a few types of socially prevalent behaviours though each person has a wide variety of possible options. An individual person's freedom is really constrained by the social 'attractors', I guess. The society as a system is most stable when the behaviour of its constituent citizens is narrowed down to a few selected types. The chosen behaviours, which are the 'basins of attractors' for the social dynamics, are interestingly the ones allowed by the religions. Doing good deeds to others, avoiding harm to others, love for humanity and other life forms, and respect for others are exactly the most preferred attractor states of human behaviour which favour a stable society. Religions could be the 'basins of attractors', I think. What do you think?

# 2: Need for GOD and Religion

IN THE RECENT past religion is increasingly being viewed at as something like a sociological need. Anthropologists look for explanations why it has persisted so long in human history. Does it fulfil an important need for us? What is it?

It does not take rocket science to understand that religion can keep human behaviour in check through fear of God. People behaviour is tempered by the moral beliefs. I suppose our society would have run amuck if there was no fear of punishment in this life or after.

Order in the society is not easy to achieve. Man faced this need when he started living settled life having abandoned the life of a nomadic hunter-gatherer. In the last 10,000 years with 'invention' of agriculture and availability of unlimited food size of the human societies increased to levels previously unknown to man. However, living in groups is itself a biological challenge that needed behavioural adaptation from man. Animals are no exception. The main thing in group living is the requirement to exhibit fairness and a sense of cooperation. Fairness is about doing the right thing and giving the right level of contribution to the group. Most, if not all, religions preach this. Don't they? As you will see I keep arguing throughout the book it is this social necessity for fairness and cooperation (altruism) that led to the origin of religions in the human society.

Animals also live in groups. Chimpanzees live in group sizes of up to 50. I suppose earliest humans had lived in comparable group sizes. Our closest relatives, common chimpanzees and bonobos, do have some traits that may have been necessary for the evolution of religion in man. These traits are intelligence, symbolic communication, a sense of norm within the society, realisation of 'self' and a sense of the community. Animals, including humans, have to restrain their selfish behaviour and be able to reciprocate the behaviour of other members of the group. Chimpanzees can remember who have done wrong to them and who have done them favours. They are more ready to share food with those who have previously groomed them. Group behaviour is about fairness and common good. The more cohesive a group is the more chances of defending the group from other groups. Departure from social rules will be punishable by dominant group members.

Laurie Santos, a researcher from the Yale University, found that monkeys exhibit prejudice against other monkeys that come from outside their group. This finding, which was reported in the March 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that this distrust and suspicion of outsiders is a biological property that had evolved at least 25 million years ago. Over these years we have fine-tuned this social behaviour to the point where we are now. We needed a variety of social mechanisms and also biological adaptation to achieve the current level of social tolerance. Many would be quick to admit that this skill is not yet perfect in many of us yet!

Jared Diamond, in his book ' _Guns, Germs and Steel'_ (Chapter 14, From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy, the evolution of government and religion) argues that organised religion is a means of maintaining peace between unrelated individuals. As long as man lived in small groups, in bands and tribes, there was a sense of relatedness between people, which may have been enough to maintain social order. As societies grew in size you needed something like organised religion, according to Jared Diamond, to promote a bond and avoid enmity between people who do not know each other personally.

Religion is thought to be a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a human group struggles with the problems of human life (a quote by Milton Yinger, Dec 2008 newsletter of the Northwest branch of the Theosophical Society). The eight major Religions differ in the approach needed for correcting the problems but have a lot in common. Devotional practices, knowledge and understanding, self-less action, meditation/prayer etc have been considered as suitable ways of bridging the gap between the individual human being and God. Various religions glorify values such as justice, truth, tolerance, faith in God, need to do good deeds, love and forgiveness etc. Despite differences in details of the individual religions there are a number of commonalities.

The great doctrine of 'God as a saviour' is more or less uniform across religions. Christianity considers Jesus, the Son of God, as the saviour. Hinduism considers ' _avatars'_ as a human form of God, arising in hours of human need. 'Avatar' is a mythological concept in India. During times of need God will appear to restore order and 'Avatar' represents the form which God will take for this purpose.

Heaven and hell are ideas common to Brahmanism, Buddhism and Christianity. Hindus call the heaven as ' _Swarka_ '; the Buddhists call it ' _Devachan_ '. The opposites are ' _Naraga_ ' and ' _Avichi'_. Whether these beliefs evolved to discipline human behaviour is a moot point. If so, the religions were necessary tools in human sociology. We could not have escaped them. We needed them in pre-historic times just as we need them today.

We do not realise the extent our lives are regulated by order-generating mechanisms around us. We have so many rules and regulations that govern our behaviour in the modern society. Social order is the result of regulated, synchronised human behaviour. This simply means the citizens are under more pressure to conform. Under normal circumstances, we don't realise the extent to which social order-generating mechanisms impose restrictions on our behaviour. You are rewarded when you do things to the common welfare of the society but punished when your behaviour harms others. The society can be quite cruel to you if you don't behave properly. Look at the way the law establishment works.

It is not my intention to downplay the human civilisation and its achievements. Civilisation brings about order and the associated restrictions on you. The motif behind it is apparently the benefits of cooperative behaviour. We pay a little bit of a price in terms of losing our liberties. What I am trying to show is that it is an inevitable consequence of a complex system consisting of individual units, in this case common citizens. Group behaviour is the natural outcome of complex systems and I have tried to explain it as an emergent property of the system itself.

Religion is a natural phenomenon that may have arisen within a complex system such as the human society as an order-generating mechanism. This is no different from the evolution of social order through other sorts of order-generating mechanisms like laws and social rules. We did not have laws, social rules, police etc until recent history, probably until 5000 years ago. We have to remember that. There was no need for them tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. I feel these order-generating mechanisms evolved only in the recent recorded history of mankind because the numbers of people in human societies had grown beyond easy control mechanisms.

Religious beliefs of mankind over centuries have evolved to meet local needs and problems. Religions have undergone changes over the years and what we see today is probably very different from their original form and content. Today the religions are more focussed on sects and sub-sects, deities, places of worship, and unique religious practices. The earliest organised religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, in their original format, were more a way of life that focussed on an ethical, harmonious human life. Hinduism, in the earliest form, did not even have a deity. It did not preach good or bad. It did not even have a founder. Hindus call their religion the eternal law, which means both the divine law of the universe and the moral law of the human race. There is great emphasis on ' _Dharma_ ' which means 'Principles of common good'. People have to pay respect to _Dharma_ in their behaviour. _Dharmic_ approach to life could be seen as a means to social order. I also emphasised a little while before that in my opinion the Dharmic concept is operating across the universe in the physical universe as well. It is a universal order generator. Hinduism also stressed the place for ' _Karma_ ' which means 'action'. _Karma_ is your 'behavioural action foot print' over your life term. You reap rewards of what you sowed.

Looking at recorded history it is evident that nature's forces like sun, fire, water, air and earth were indeed the earliest deities man had looked upon as their saviour. They were thankful to the Mother Nature for providing the essentials of life. It is likely that this practice may have been going on for long periods, possibly thousands of years, before records began. Indians believed that each of these natural forces was a God – Fire was _Agni_ , air was _Vayu_ , water was _Varuna_ , Sun was _Surya_ etc. It is true of other civilisations like Egyptian and Greek as well. Primitive man in general, irrespective of the civilisation, religion and geography, came to believe that God is a supernatural force beyond their control and was seen as the ultimate provider and carer of life forms, including man. The natural disasters like floods, earthquakes and cyclones were believed to be due to wrath of the Gods that needed sacrificial offerings to appease them.

The _Rig Veda_ , the oldest spiritual teaching known to man, conceived probably between 1500 and 1200 BC (many believe that Vedas were conceived much earlier than that), contains hymns that praise the joy of living, sacrifices to Gods, and alludes to the dynamic order of the cosmos where all the forces are balanced. Ancient man saw these natural forces as the source of their sustenance because it was obvious that the earth, the sun, air, water and fire were indeed the very basis of their life. Man thanked the mother earth for giving them food and shelter. They were thankful for the air they breathe. They were thankful for the water the rain gives. They were thankful to the sun for the light. The mother earth is the ultimate provider and carer. No wonder pre-historic man learnt to worship the mother earth and other natural forces as the gods themselves.

In my opinion, man applied the 'Game theory' rules to his spiritual thinking. Just as he expects his fellow members of the society to reciprocate the cooperation the primitive man believed that he can make God himself indebted to them when they offered food, flowers, and sacrifices as part of their rituals. By offering their agricultural produce or animals the primitive man thought that the God will be obliged to help them back. This God's help was expected to come in the form of rain, good harvest, healthy animals etc. Also man thought that he can pacify God to escape from his anger. This is all 'Game theory' and the psychological basis for origin of religious practices can be traced very easily to this principle.

About 2000 BCE, during the Shang dynasty in China, people in China worshipped weather gods and sky gods (similar to early Hinduism) and they also believed that their ancestors became gods after they died. Each family worshipped their ancestors. Taoism, founded by Lao-tsu in China around 600 BCE, centres around the theme of one eternal, primeval Supreme Being that sustains all things in the universe. This is called _Brahman_ in Hindu spiritual thinking. I would like to add here modern physics would call this emergence, a collective property of the manifested universe. This is where I offer a novel opinion of God totally different from any other.

When a human being seeks his own plan, rather than the eternal plan of the great _Tao_ , he precipitates ills, suffering and evil. Therefore, one should live in primitive simplicity, allowing all things to take their natural course. Basically, one was expected to **'** go with the flow'. Instead of trying to get things done the hard way, people should take time to figure out the natural, easy way and every thing would get done more simply. This idea is called ' _wu-wei'_ , meaning 'doing by not doing'. Lao Tzu thought that everything alive in the universe (plants, animals, and people) shared a universal life force and therefore it was wrong for people to fight each other. In fact, it is very interesting to note that Lao Tzu also thought it was wrong for governments (or anybody else) to make a lot of rules and laws about how people should behave. Because this will only make them act in a pre-ordered way and would sometimes go against the Tao, breaking the principle of ' _Wu-wei'_. Education, wealth, power and family ties are considered worthless impediments to living. Only quiet non-striving is successful and one should aim at extreme disinterestedness and maintain the utmost possible calm and cultivate kindness, sincerity and humility. It is believed, just as in the case of early Hinduism and Buddhism, that early Taoism was more a philosophy than a religion. It was concerned mainly about the quality of life and had little interest in the heavens, rituals, gods, and life after death. Later, this seems to have changed in to a religion of polytheism, occultism and witchcraft.

A Hindu scripture called Bhagvat Gita preaches something very similar to the ' _Going with the flow (Wu-Wei)_ '. It says one should do their duty without expecting any rewards. The underlying message is that an action happens as part of a system which cannot be changed. An individual person does his duty as part of the systemic whole and therefore is unable to influence the outcome of his action. It is beyond his hands. Then why worry about it? Gita maintains that all actions happened for good. All actions happened the way they were supposed to happen, indirectly implying that it is part of a grand plan of which an individual person is a part of. I feel we are looking at Complexity here. I am sure the teachings of Gita can be better understood in light of the Complexity theory. How?

All of us know that in many situations we are not capable of doing what we want. We want to get a job and strive very hard for it. But, did you always get it? Why? This is because getting a job that you want depends on other factors other than you. There could be other candidates better than you, the expectation of the employer, the interview performance, or even you could be late for the interview due to traffic and so on. Many things happen in our lives not always the way we want them to happen. You want to earn a lot of money. I am sure all of us want that. But, are all of us rich? Why? Even accidents that happen on the road are examples of how things can take a different outcome than what you desired. You were doing your action of driving the way you were supposed to. But, another guy who happened to be on the same road can commit a mistake and you can end up dying, or seriously hurt. The bottom line is that we cannot expect things to go your way all the time. The systemic outcome could be different. All interacting entities in a complex system may influence the outcome. So, Gita's message that doing your duty without expecting rewards can be interpreted to mean that the complex system, of which you are a part of, will drive the dynamics.

Not long after Lao Tzu, another Chinese scholar called Confucius created a different philosophical system called Confucianism, which held that people should do their duty and follow their gods and leaders faithfully. Order was considered to be the way to peace. A couple of other philosophical schools of thought arose in China during the days of Confucianism one of which (Mo Tzu) proposed that the way to happiness was to treat everyone as they treat their own family members and the other (Legalism) believed that people were basically bad and needed laws and punishments to create order and peace.

Romans also believed in many gods, and that these gods each controlled different parts of the world: storms, ocean, marriage, blacksmithing and so forth. One important Roman idea in relation to their Gods was ' _do ut des_ ', which in Latin meant 'I give so that you will give'. In other words, sacrifices to gods were done in the hope that Gods will reciprocate the help. This is more like the game theory principles. Jupiter and Zeus were both Roma sky gods who threw lightning when they were angry! For the Romans their emperors, or their guardian angels, were gods or very close to God.

Sacrifice has been an important element of religious practice in diverse religions over the years. Animal sacrifices were common. Zoroastrians were known for their fire sacrifices. Phoenicians sacrificed their own children! Christianity is devoid of this sacrificial practice because Jesus had already sacrificed himself.

Similarly, when things went wrong, for whatever reason, it was associated with some curse or bad luck or the wrath of God. In primitive communities that exist even today, like African Bushmen, and any other such communities living in the remote parts of the world, one could see unusual practices that are aimed at appeasing God. In fact, even illiterate people living in very rural areas of the world, like in India, there are still some practices like sacrificial offerings to god, a tendency to associate things like failure of agricultural harvest, lack of rain etc with curse of the gods. They are ready to believe that misfortune is a result of their own bad doing and in order to escape the punishment they resort to ritualistic practices, which they believe will set things right.

I was watching a programme on the BBC one day about the life of an African tribe. This particular tribe is perhaps one of the last known human societies that still rely on hunting for their food. The men from this tribe go miles in search of animals and on this programme they were followed for several days on their hunting trip. The BBC presenter also accompanied them. The tribal head could be seen trying to do a ritualistic appeasement with some leaves and branches to ward off the bad luck as they were unsuccessful in their hunting for more than one day. He was even trying not to link the presence of the BBC presenter to their bad luck! That is the way humans think and act when they do not have the benefits of a scientific understanding of the world. There is a natural tendency to try and associate every thing to an unknown factor, which they can't see or do anything about.

Science may have come a long way to enable us to explain a number of natural phenomena without having to invoke an unknown, supernatural power. But, is that enough to stop people from feeling religious? I do not think so. Religious beliefs, I feel, are not just based on attempts to explain the unknown through the agency of God. They are order-generating mechanisms, or social mechanisms to induce a sense of well-being. That is perhaps the reason why most people prefer being religious, at least believing in a supernatural power if not a proper deity.

An interesting article entitled ' _The new sciences of religion'_ by William Grassie ( _Zygon_ , vol.43, no.1, March 2008) discusses the new sciences of religion, spanning the traditional fields such as the psychology, sociology, anthropology to new fields like economics, neurosciences, epidemiology and evolutionary psychology of religion. Grassie has summarised the recent approaches by various investigators towards explaining religion with a scientific approach.

Grassie particularly talks about, apart from other things, the attempts to naturalise religion with evolutionary principles. He starts of with the case of Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. Boyer apparently argues that the human brain to be an 'agency detector'. This may have happened in the Pleistocene age, if not long before. Human brain attributes agency and personality to the forces of nature. It makes us think of objects in nature as potential agents that could determine our survival. He claims that man may have seen the role for a divine agency in the structure and function of the cosmos. Boyer thinks that the human brain evolved to be a _hyperactive agency detection device._ Religion could be a dysfunctional by-product of a naturally evolved mental capacity and has no survival value as such, according to Boyer.

Grassie continues with the discussion on naturalisation of religion by taking up the application of evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to the study of religion. According to them ideas replicate and spread (memes). This happens in the cultural space independent of the genes. Religion itself is one such meme and Dawkins is a bit more vigorous in his view of religion as a deadly virus. His recent book considers religion as a delusion.

David Sloan Wilson, a biologist at Binghamton University, New York, assumes religions must be functional because they persist. They may be of adaptive value promoting in-group altruism and social cohesion. Of particular interest is his view that religion offers survival benefits at the group level (i.e. society) more than the individual subject level. By promoting social cohesion at the species level it may have helped mankind to survive the hardships faced in the process of formation of large cities and states.

Grassie talks next of those who used Lamarckian principles to explain human cultural evolution, including religion. Jean Baptiste Lamarck proposed a theory of evolution, even before Darwin. He contended that transmutation of species occurred through the accumulation and passing of acquired characteristics from one generation to the next. Though this theory has not won favour in the biological arena it may be the case that this model better fits cultural evolution. Cultural achievements of mankind, including science, are passed on to the next generation through education. It is likely that religion may also follow the same Lamarckian principles for propagation.

Grassie's article also contains the definitions and meanings of some terms, including the words 'religion' and 'spiritual'. The term 'religion' is apparently derived from the Latin verb ' _religare_ ', which means 'to tie together, to bind fast'. It could be interpreted as 'binding to god' or as a representation of bounded belief systems and sets of practices. The term 'spiritual' is said to derive from the Latin verb root ' _spirare_ ', meaning 'to breathe or blow'. The divine reality is pervasive and invisible in the air that we breathe and the word 'spiritual' could connote this.

Grassie also points that similar concepts could be found in the Hinduism. Hindus call this all-pervasive principle as _prana_. Some Hindu meditative practices involve set methods of breathing and this could be a reflection of the importance of _prana_. Grassie says the Chinese concept of _Chi_ energy may be analogous. He also claims that the term religion does not translate into other cultures and languages. The Hindu term to denote religion is _dharma_ though it is actually the guiding principle of moral behaviour for the common good. This term does not represent any god or deity. In Judaism, the Hebrew word _dat_ (meaning law) is used to indicate religion. This probably reflects the Jewish preoccupation with religious laws and justice. _Din_ is the translation in Arabic for the word religion. This word means the path or the way, perhaps indicating the way people should live.

The religion as a phenomenon is common to all human societies despite all their differences. Why? It has been claimed, as mentioned above, that religion could have evolved as an anthropological adaptation to the hardships of living in a society. Cognition is fundamental to this adaptive behaviour. We make inferences on nature and our own place in it and the sub-conscious dynamics of our minds shape the religious concepts.

Or, is religion an innate behaviour of mankind? An innate behaviour should come on even in the absence of active learning. Examples of innate behaviours in the animal world include babies suckling, walking, swimming (fish), flying (birds) etc. Animals do not have to be taught to do these things. It is sometimes said that even language ability is kind of innate for humans. Even mathematical abilities are believed to be instinctual as even animals can be shown to have counting abilities. If religion is really innate what we should really see is some sort of brain hardwiring that generates religious beliefs. We will come back to this again a bit later as there may be some recently described evidence in favour of this view in the form of 'god module' in our brains. This God-module consists apparently of regions in some parts of the brain that mediate the religious feelings just like other cognitive functions are mediated by specific anatomical regions in the brain.

If religion had evolved as an innate instinct one could confidently say that it has survival advantages to the individual, or the society as a whole. Intuitively, one expects an innate behaviour to offer benefits to the individual. May be religion helps us to integrate with the society using the moral principles? David Sloan Wilson is a proponent of the group level evolutionary selection theory. As said a little while ago, he argues that religion may have ensured order-generation within society and those societies with strong religious beliefs may have been fitter than others that did not have the religious binding forces.

It is interesting to note that intensely sad experiences cause people to become spiritual. I am sure most of us have seen or heard of people, whose life is transformed by a sad event affecting their personal lives, often involving death of a person very close to them. They become good Samaritans all of a sudden. They may have never cared until then. Why? Is it because of the human tendency to believe that they will be punished for wrongdoings? They may not have really done anything wrong but our minds try to associate events even though there is never any evidence for any causal association. People assume that their bad luck is the result of something that they did, or failed to do. They want to make up for it by doing more good work after the misfortune occurred. They may either take up social work, or some campaign against something, or even donate liberally to some charity. We see such people in our daily lives. If you look at people who are activists working for or against something there is invariably a personal reason for it. A person who is doing charity work or raising funds for a cancer hospital may have had some one dear to him die of cancer. He subconsciously tries to associate cancer of his relative with something he may have done. A person who is participating in social causes like safe roads, anti-drugs campaign, and alcoholism awareness may have almost certainly lost some one dear due to one of these killers. He or she may look at it as punishment for not doing enough good to the society. So, he tries to take up the charity work to show that he has contributed his part which also makes him feel good.

I suspect this human behaviour is very interesting. We still carry the same mentality our primitive ancestors had thousands of years ago. We are trying to do sacrifices to appease something. We also want others around us to know that we have done our bit. I know what I am arguing here is not going to win many hearts. This because we always respect people who do charity work or those who work voluntarily for a cause and what I am doing here is really downplaying the good causes. I am not really trying to downplay their good work. My purpose is only to analyse the psychological basis of the voluntary good work people do and it is my opinion that people take up such work when they are personally affected by something. Their subconscious perception is that they have failed in their duty and therefore punished. Inwardly, people also think that their perceived failure will also be viewed by the society as something to be despised. This is because people inherently hate free-riders. That does not mean such people who suffer traumatic incidents have been free-riders or wrong-doers. But, our minds work in such a way that we associate our bad luck with something we did or something we failed to do. So, with intention to make up for this 'perceived wrong-doing', people try at make up for it and they also make sure to show others that they have taken up some good work. Then they feel OK. This is, in my opinion, the same as sacrificial offering man has been doing for ages.

Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff of the University of British Columbia, Canada, wrote a fascinating review in the _Nature_ journal titled 'The origin and evolution of religious prosociality' (' _The origin and evolution of religious prosociality'_. Nature, vol 322, 2008, p58 –62). The focus of this review was to explore the reasons why man became religious. The main argument of this review is that man found religion as a prosocial tool. 'Prosocial' means that something that encourages social cohesion. In the recent past many evolutionary psychologists have propounded the idea that religion may have acted as a prosocial catalyst. It is not really surprising when you look at the teachings of all religions. They all uniformly claim that doing good to others is a virtue. Harming others is forbidden and there is also a fear of punishment for any wrongdoings. It does not take rocket science to realise that the output of these beliefs will favour a sound society.

It has been argued that religious beliefs are social adaptations that have evolved over time to help man do better in group living. People counter this argument asking why then do we see differences in these beliefs across cultures? I personally do not have any problem here. What difference does it make if different cultures have different religious practices and even Gods? The underlying common theme is the same for all cultures and all religions. Tolerance to others, altruism and fear of God are common to every single culture and society, irrespective of the religion. That is what matters and that is what had evolved over the years to make man a better social animal. I can only compare this to other basic needs for human living. For example, take the case of food. We all need food, irrespective of which nationality we are and to which religion we belong. The fact that each cultural group has its own peculiar foods does not take away the necessity of food as a biological need.

Whether morality is the basis of the religion is open to discussion. People debate this viewpoint. There are many that feel religion is transcendental and is not just about morals. Different cultures have different types of religious practices, even within the same religion. Also, this seems to evolve over time. What was practiced long time ago may not be the case now. Some thinkers look at these religious practices and rituals as if they are some sorts of an elaborate mechanism for people to advertise to others in the community to tell them how religious they are.

Religion is like a group-identifier. People must have learnt to identify themselves as belonging to the same group, much like people follow sports and games now. Every football follower tends to have a single club that they support and they are often proud of it. I suppose this group identity operates at various levels in our society. Obviously, if there are many football clubs then there will be fans for each one of them. They are groups divided by their support for the clubs. The same football supporters, who are fans of diverse local clubs, support their national team in international tournaments forgetting their local differences. His nation is the unifying identity that bonds all the citizens in his nation in one big group. People all the time belong to some sort of groups or other. They could be members of social activist groups that work towards some community goals. It could be a human rights organisation or a green earth movement etc. Usually there is some sort of identifier that will help the individual to broadcast to the community his allegiance to whatever he is supporting.

A football fan can easily advertise by wearing a shirt with the club or national logo on. An activist in some social movement can also do such a simple trick but quite often it takes more than just wearing a t-shirt with a logo to convince others about how involved or serious he is about the cause. To prove that he or she will have to attend gatherings, make speeches, represent the cause to the government, write articles about it or whatever means that will help the cause. This often is going to be time-consuming. But, these time-consuming activities help him to build a reputation. Socially good causes need supporters and we generally respect such people who spend their time and resource for a social cause. People tend to crave such reputation because it helps them show to the society that they care about the society. The reward they get is the common good they get as well as broadcasting the individual contribution they have made to the society. Society respects people who make contributions to the common welfare of the society. Selfish people are abhorred. This is a social ploy that have evolved over time to make people get interested in the common good, which is the building block of a large society.

Social surveys indicate that individuals who report religious beliefs generally tend to have altruistic tendencies. The more active religious follower, who does regular prayers and visits temples/churches/mosques, is more prosocial than others. They are the ones who tend to do more volunteer work for the community and also make donations from their own cash. These surveys have adjusted for factors like income levels, political affiliations, and education, age and gender and still find the same results – that the religious people are more prosocial. The only drawback is that these surveys rely on self-claimed religiosity. Whether these self-reports are reliable is questionable. People may be keener to impress others or even deceive. In other words, religious people may be more prone to build a social reputation than non-religious people. Measures of religiosity are positively associated with the tendency to project an overly positive image of oneself, according to psychological research.

In order to overcome the limitations of self-reported religiosity bias there have been various types of behavioural studies conducted where people have to demonstrate behaviour to support a claim. In simple terms, it is the difference between saying that they will do something and actually doing it. A classic 'Good Samaritan' experiment secretly observed the tendency of people to help a man lying on the road. There was no correlation between those who helped and those who did not in terms of their religious beliefs. In another such behavioural experiment people were given the option of volunteering to rai **se** money for a sick child. There were two scenarios projected here. In the first scenario, the participants were told that they will be asked to actually raise money if they volunteer. In the other scenario, the participants can register their interest to raise money but they will also be told that it is unlikely that they will be called upon. Only in the latter scenario there was a correlation between religiosity and prosocial behaviour! This is interpreted as meaning that individuals are willing to reap the benefits of socially appearing to be helpful without having to bear the costs of an altruistic act. It is said that many studies have shown that religiosity predicts prosocial behaviour when it helps to promote a positive image for the participant in his own eyes or that of the society. Even so, the fact that religiosity correlates with prosociality at least in some contexts, means that either empathy or guilt could predispose people to be religious and prosocial.

When you meet a stranger you do not know how prosocial he is. In other words, you do not know if he has done his bit to the community. If you come to know that he has done this or that (good or bad) then your impressions of the person changes. You are more likely to cooperate with him if he has done something to the community. Would you ever form a business relationship, or even a simple friendship, with a stranger if you came to know that he has either stolen from others or harmed others? This is a problem we deal with even in today's life. What would have been the case thousands of years ago when man for the first time was interacting with others he has never known before?

With increasing group sizes they were more likely to live close to people they were not related to by birth. They needed some symbols that will tell others who they were and what kinds of persons they were. This was crucial for these pre-historic people to form bonds and build the society. In today's world it is still possible for people to conceal a lot of past antisocial behaviour. But, if needed, we have means at our disposal like criminal records with the police that can easily trace a person's past social behaviour. The pre-historic man did not have such luxury. He needed other means of judging how cooperative a stranger is. Religious conformity may have been a mechanism. Rituals and prayer helped these pre-historic people to advertise their allegiance. What we should not forget is that written language became available only in the last 3000 - 4000 years and may have taken long period for it to be freely used. Until then religious conformities could not be expressed in writing and therefore had to take elaborate symbolic means like rituals. Even spoken language is relatively a new human skill. It must have evolved as a social means of communicating with an increasing number of fellow humans in a group. Grunts and gestures were no more adequate to express him. He needed something more elaborate than that.

It is increasingly recognised that language originated directly as a mechanism to help cope with group size. Brain genes that help with language function have evolved in man in the last 30,000-50,000 years or so. Language made it possible for man to make it clear to other fellow humans his intentions towards social behaviour. He was also able to use the language to set up social rules that others could understand and follow. Religion itself was one such social mechanism that relied on elaborate rituals to symbolise allegiance to a belief. Language may have released the reliance on behavioural symbolism a lot so that people can spend less time to advertise themselves with time-consuming behaviours.

Our society, past and present, can broadly be divided into religious and secular groups. All groups have a finite life span. Which type of human groups will last longer? Will it be the religious or the secular ones? Interestingly, the religious communes last longer suggesting that intra-group cooperation and trust are far greater in such groups. An interesting study was conducted by Richard Sosis of the University of Connecticut and Eric Bessler of the McMaster University on the longevity of communes and the place for religion in this. They studied eighty-three 19th century U.S communes to find out if religious rituals and taboos imposed by religious communes actually promote intra-group cooperation despite being costly. These taboos and other restraints range from material possessions, marriage, sex, and communication with the rest of the world. Their findings indicate that religious communes, despite costly signalling requirements, survived longer than less demanding communes. They also wondered if it was the religious ideology that mattered or was it the costly commitment of the members. Surprisingly, it is not the ideology that is important but the signalling mechanism instead. People announce to others that they are willing to follow rituals to belong as a group. That fosters trust and cooperation from others. This, in turn, increases the chances of the group to survive.

Even I have always wondered why religions have so demanding requirements to the ordinary practitioner. Hinduism is so full of such ritualistic procedures. There are so many things like the way to conduct prayers, fasting, sacrificial offerings, restriction on eating meat, rules for who can be the priest, the types of _slogas_ and _mantras_ to be chanted during prayer etc. The study by Sosis and Bressler actually shows why these ground rules are set up by religions. Intuitively people tend to trust very religious people unconditionally. May be we all conclude that if some one can invest so much time to signal their religious commitment he will also be inclined to follow other ground rules for social welfare and also be afraid of divine punishment. They will, therefore, need less monitoring by fellow members. Otherwise **,** the society has the burden of monitoring the group members to see if they contribute to the common good and also whether they actually do harm.

We all behave well when under supervision. A person is more likely to behave well in a place where he is already known so that he can keep up the reputation. Outside his familiar circle he has less pressure to conform. Even criminals are known to have this fear of losing their reputation within their social circle if the truth is out. You could also see this behavioural effect in humans when they are in small groups as opposed to large groups. Generally, people in small groups can easily be seen and identified and therefore the general public in small groups behave with restraint. This is not the case when the crowd has exceeded some limits. Typical examples are crowds at a large sports event, rallies etc. Riots do happen because it is more difficult to identify the culprits in a large crowd. That is why we call it the mob behaviour. The same individual who behaved well in a small crowd is different when he is in a large crowd. The only difference is the level of monitoring. We have CCTVs all over the public places these days to increase this monitoring. That restrains people from going amuck. God is the supreme 'Big Brother'. Fear that God is watching pretty much is the single most effective social monitoring we ever had all through human history.

Some interesting experiments have been conducted to study the human behaviour with and without monitoring. We can see that with simple things like driving on roads and the impact of speed cameras on our driving. A guy who was doing 60 mph a couple of seconds ago brakes hard to come under 40 mph just for a small stretch of road and then he picks up the speed again! The tendency to cheat is seen more when the subjects are given tasks to be performed without supervision. There is less of a tendency to cheat if the subjects are told that some one will be monitoring. You do not have to dig into the results of these psychological experiments done under controlled conditions. Just look at an examination hall where students are writing an examination. If the invigilator was not present I suppose practically all students would be inclined to use inappropriate means to get the right answers. The presence of one or two invigilators in a large examination hall restrains hundreds of pupils. I suppose most crimes get committed under the hope that there will be no witness. Even a murderer will hesitate to carry out the heinous crime if some one was there in the vicinity.

Monitoring is a costly exercise. What I mean by monitoring is that mechanism available to the society to identify harm-doers as well as free loaders. Escaping the commitment to contribute to the society's common good, and of course get benefited as a result, is cheating. We loathe such people. We do not hold such people in high esteem. They are more likely to be ostracized. We also punish them to inhibit them from doing it again. The taxman is a punisher of free loaders. We all hate paying taxes and would take every opportunity to conceal an income if only we can. In less monitored countries, or very large countries, tax evasion may be easier than in heavily monitored smaller countries. Even crime rates are lower in cities where there is more effective policing. But, unfortunately, the crime rates are soaring in large cities. The problem is that bigger group size brings in that level of anonymity, as it is more difficult to monitor a person all the time. Secondly, there are tensions that build up in overcrowded groups that lead to violence. This is more of a fundamental biological problem seen even in overcrowded animal communities. The violence may be due to competition for scarce resources, and mates as well, apart from lack of adequate monitoring. The same problem must have arisen when human group sizes were exceeding some critical limits at various points in history.

It is more than likely that human group sizes were kept in check for long periods in prehistory by various mechanisms, biological and social. Apart from the challenge of providing food to growing population the other major stumbling block is the social monitoring. You needed to be able to trust others who were not related by birth. When man was living in small bands you could easily spot the offenders and, more interestingly, kinship itself was capable of eliciting cooperation and trust. People are more tolerant to their kins when compared to others. They are tolerant to even their wrong-doings. In small bands this was fine. But, in bigger group sizes, this was not going to work. There was some sort of limitation that restricted the group sizes to manageable levels for a long time.

One particular estimate of sustainable prehistoric human group sizes was put around 150. R.I.M. Dunbar at the Human Evolutionary Biology Group at the University College London had published an article in the _Behavioural and Brain Sciences_ journal (1993, 16 {4}, 681-735) that discusses in great detail about the group sizes and their various correlates. Beyond a group size of about 150 he claimed that the demand placed by cognition (i.e. to understand the feelings, emotions, behaviours of others and also to display your own), and also the challenge of keeping vigil on other fellow members, would have been beyond the capacity of the prevailing neocortex size at that time. He quotes previous studies that showed that the mean group size is directly related to the neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Even food availability may have been a major limiting factor. It is common sense that a group of animals living in a habitat can survive depending on the richness of the habitat to support the group. Over and above these habitat limitations there is a species-specific upper limit due to cognitive constraints.

In the humans the evolution of the brain most likely occurred in a parallel manner as we evolved culturally as both are intricately linked processes. I have discussed later the advances we have made in our understanding of human brain changes. Though the size of the brain has reached its limit there have been some prominent changes in neocortex size, changes in neuronal types and layered cortical organisation of the neurons, positive selection in some brain genes etc that may have conferred the distinctive cognitive advantages for humans. There is an argument that our brain genes are still evolving and have not finished yet. With respect to the size of sustainable groups the hunter-gatherer brain was only equipped to a certain extent. The figure is put around 150.

But, human groups size has been steadily growing over the years and one would expect to see parallel increase in brain's ability to process cognitive information. It is of interest that Neolithic villages in Mesopotamia are said to have had a group size of about 150 – 200 in 6500 – 5500BC. A typical village, as shown by archaeological remains, consisted of 20 – 25 dwellings. The figure of 150 occurs frequently among a wide range of contemporary human societies.

A study of a fundamentalist farming community called Hutterites, living in South Dakota and Manitoba, have about 51 communities the mean size of which is 106 individuals. The Hutterites regard 150 as the limiting size for their farming communities and take active steps to split them into daughter communities once the numbers are exceeded. Another report of a community living in East Tennessee rural mountains showed that the group size was 197 as censussed in 1970.

Dunbar also cites a few other instances in our contemporary societies where the group size is restricted to a few hundreds. Examples cited are the number of researchers involved in a professional network (range of 100- 400), and unit size in army (100-200 men), friends and social networks within a workplace (90-150) etc. An analysis of 30 societies ranging from hunter-gatherers to large-scale agriculturists, demonstrated that there was simple power relationship between the maximum settlement size observed in a given society and the number of occupational specialties and the number of organisational structures recorded for it.

Beyond a critical threshold of a maximum settlement size of 500, social cohesion could only be maintained if there are an appropriate number of authoritarian officials. Even western industrial societies have been shown to have the limitations to the size of functional groups within industrial and commercial organisations. Business organisations necessarily have to sub-structure their work force to define the channels of communication and control. You could see this in your every day life. Large companies and smaller ones differ in their control hierarchy and the number of functional units they will have. These functional units typically fall within a group size range of 50-500.

Agriculture released the food pressure about 10,000 years ago. But, the primary cognitive challenge had to wait for brain changes, including language evolution. Cognitive changes happened much earlier than agriculture. Until these cognitive changes happened perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 years ago the human group sizes were limited to 150. Beyond this size, the tendency was towards either collapse of the group or division into two or three smaller sized groups. This figure of 150 has been disputed and evidence has been gathered for larger group sizes amongst Pleistocene foragers. At the end of Pleistocene the size of human settlements far exceed what would have been allowed based on kin-based and reciprocity-based altruism. What made it possible? Was it some sort of proto-religious beliefs that ensured a bigger group identity and a level of cooperation not possible until then? Or, did language make it possible for larger group sizes? Exchange of social information through fellow members was made possible with language. Language fulfils the same role of social grooming. The fact that observed group sizes for chimpanzees is 53 one can speculate that language increases the efficiency of social bonding by at least 3-fold, considering the group size for humans is 150.

It is claimed that competition for resources and habitats drive cultural evolution. This, in turn, favours larger groups. One characteristic of larger groups is that there is some sort of institutionalised social monitoring mechanisms. Police, law, courts etc come up in our minds when we think of institutional mechanisms. These mechanisms were most likely preceded by pervasive beliefs in moral Gods. Frans Roes and Micheal Raymond had ('Belief in moralising gods' _Evolution and Human Behaviour_. 24, 2003, 126 – 135) done a cross-cultural analysis of the factors that may have been responsible for the human group sizes. Their results are fascinating. They used two sources of data currently available called the _Ethnographic Atlas (_ with information about 862 societies and over 100 variables) and the _Standard Cross-Cultural Sample_ (composed of data on 186 societies and over 1800 variables). Typical variables included in these databases were things like presence or absence of beliefs in moralising gods, jurisdictional hierarchy beyond local community, resource bases (hunting, cultivation, fishing etc), external conflicts, internal conflicts, geographical regions (Africa, Eurasia, N and S. America) etc. Their results showed that large societies are more often characterised by a belief in moralising gods.

The other finding is that large societies tend to be stratified into classes and castes, with unequal power and wealth distributions. Moral rules may have been presented as divine creations to render them non-negotiable, protecting the privileges of the wealthy and powerful. Moral and religious rules act as social bonds. It is up to the individual to either follow or ignore them. But, fear of social and divine sanctions force people to go with the flow. Even today, in the rural villages of India, village chiefs have the power to isolate non-conformers of village rules. Such people are not allowed to interact with others in the community or use any of the village resources. They are literally made social orphans. The only option left to them is to leave the village. Fearing such sanctions villagers by and large live within the boundaries of social rules that operate within their village. I suppose religious beliefs also provide such a unifying mechanism.

Fear of punishment is a good mechanism to generate social order **.** Our own brain is designed to recognise the reward and punishment as two distinct entities. In fact, most of human behaviour revolves around these two. We love rewards and hate punishment. Rewards make us feel good. Punishment is unpleasant and is painful both psychologically and physically. We avoid unpleasantness in our lives as much as we can. Evolving human society needed some sort of mechanism to inhibit people from doing things that may harm the society. This was the fundamental requirement to peaceful co-existence of the fellow humans and was critical for human group size expansion. I told a little while ago that at some point in prehistory human group sizes unexpectedly grew beyond limits previously possible. Various hypotheses are put forward to explain how this became possible. The scale of cooperation achieved in prehistory and now is remarkable. Neither kinship nor reciprocity readily explains the interest in common good (altruism) that we see in very large human groups.

A number of social and behavioural researchers have recently shown that substantial cooperation can evolve even among non-kin if co-operators also engage in costly punishment of non-cooperative, norm-violators. Societies in which punishment is common will exhibit stronger norms of fairness and prosociality. Punishment as a tool is present across a highly diverse range of human populations. The culture of punishment coevolves with altruism. Different geographical regions may differ in the degree and frequency of punishment but social dynamics create environments that favour evolution of psychologies that predispose people to administer, anticipate and avoid punishment by learning local norms (Joseph Henrich et al. Costly punishment across human societies. Science, vol 312, 2006). Richard Boyd and his group at the University of California showed (The evolution of altruistic punishment, PNAS, vol 100, no.6, 3531 – 3533) that the evolution of cooperation and group size is strongly affected by the presence of punishment. In the absence of punishment, within-group adaptation acts to decrease the frequency of altruistic cooperation.

What we need to look at is the cost associated with the act of punishment. To the punisher the costs are due to the monitoring required and also to the act of punishment itself. But, this individual cost actually adds up to give benefit to the group as a whole. I guess the modern day punishment mechanisms like police, law, court, tax office etc illustrate the principle very well. Criminal offences, economical offences, antisocial behaviour etc are punishable. But, look at the level of monitoring required for the police or the tax office. They must be spending literally billions of pounds to implement a system that will monitor the system for offenders. If you find offenders it takes months or even years to investigate the case and prosecute them. This applies to all types of offences, especially the serious ones. The financial cost and time may sometimes be prohibitive. Apart from the detection of the criminals, which may take a long time and effort by itself, the costs associated with prosecuting some one is again very expensive and time consuming. The courts are overloaded with cases of all types. It takes a significant amount of time to finish a trial and sentence the offenders. At the end there is the long-term cost to the state for keeping the offenders in prison.

I recall reading somewhere that it takes nearly £30,000 per year to keep an offender in prison in UK. The natural thought that arises is that this is the sort of sum of money hard-working people earn in a year after all the hard work. Why should the state spend this sum of money to punish a criminal? There are about 80,000 prisoners in Britain. This is such a small number considering that the population of UK is more than 50 million. So, we are looking at a fraction of 1% of the total population here. Prison places have become full and there have been calls to build more prisons. But, there is a problem obviously to find the money for it. So, the government is taking the stance of being soft on crime and give prison sentences only for very serious crimes. 'Minor' crimes like burglary (!), vandalism are not even investigated by police because it is easier for the affected persons to get insurance compensation. The argument is that the chances of successful prosecution is less in such cases and therefore not worth pursuing. Cost takes a major consideration here but the outcome is that citizens feel let down. I was watching the BBC Panorama programme the other day that looked at the falling rates of referral of cases to the crown prosecution service for even cases where grievous body harm were caused by the offenders. Cases were downgraded so that they do not have to be referred to the crown prosecution. The police were issuing fines and some sort of non-custodial punishments to these offenders, which was taking the pressure off the courts and of course the prison service.

If you are looking at busy tourist spots and highly sought after recreational cities the chances are that there will be trouble all the time. People are going to be drunk and get involved with physical fights and many are going to be looking out for chances to steal. The police will have to spend significant amount of time to go through the paper work with each arrest and follow them up with more work if they have to be referred for prosecution. Instead, it is easier not to book these cases and let them off with a caution or a fine. Looking at it from an operational point of view these measures were considered cost-effective punishments. All countries have the same problem and despite all this the crime and tax evasion and other antisocial behaviours seem to be occurring all around the world. The incidence of these crimes varies across countries though. There are views that countries soft on crimes will have a higher crime rate because the punishment does not deter the offender. In fact, in Britain, the prisons provide very comfortable accommodation and good food and many prisoners willingly overlook opportunities to escape! There are some criminals who purposely commit crimes so that they can enjoy the comfortable, free livelihood inside the British prison! One would anticipate that criminals in such countries to be less scared of committing a crime.

Having CCTVs all over the place is a cheaper way to deter crime **.** That is why states have deployed literally thousands of them all over. Apart from deterring crime they are also useful to collect evidence for finding the offenders retrospectively. CCTVs have replaced the police on their beats. So, they have to be cheap. Even speed cameras are similar in this respect. Perhaps it was possible in the olden days for the police to go on their regular beats because the population was less and the streets were not so crowded. We do not of course expect the police to be on every street in residential neighbourhoods because the chances of crimes being committed are less, barring burglary. But, in busy city centres one would expect the police to be more visible.

People are afraid to cheat or commit crimes if some one is seeing. That is the bottom line. Reputation is at stake here for the offender. Even if the police are not going to punish them we ordinary citizens intuitively dislike such antisocial people. They are ostracized. They are not allowed to be part of the groups whatever that group might be. You would not invite a burglar to your dinner party, would you? Or, would you want a person who caused grievous body harm to be a member of your school's parent-teacher association, would you? Would you be ever interested in appointing some one at your shop or office if some one has a record of crime? These are our ways of demonstrating altruistic punishments I was talking about a little while ago. These people have violated the norms of social cooperation and they have to be punished. Time and again, we all know that criminals dislike being identified within their friends or neighbourhood circles. As long as their crime history remains anonymous they are fine. But, they so much care about being disliked within immediate social circle because social ostracism is painful. That is why rural villagers use that as a ploy to keep the villagers behaving within the social ground rules.

Now I come to the main objective of this discussion. I feel fear of God has the same effect as a million CCTVs. We did not have the technology for CCTVs thousands of years ago. So, man relied on the fear effect of religious beliefs to deter people from being antisocial. Many of the religions preach that God will punish us either in this life or in the next life. Hinduism is one such religion where the person's karma is a cumulative record of good and wrongdoings over our successive births. We are expected to improve our track record of being good and suffer the consequences of wrongs that we have done. We cannot escape the punishment. This kind of fear of God has been around for many thousands of years. Religion itself may have had a prosocial effect and may have been selected for the group level advantages they bring. As long as man was living in small bands and tribes it was feasible to monitor the social behaviours (contributions and causation of harm) by observation. With bigger groups, such as chiefdoms, states etc you brought in political authority and punishment with religious endorsement. Rulers were considered as representatives of God. That is how the rulers and the elite could justify why others had to give out contributions and also allow inequality in social wealth.

In prehistoric times man believed that every climate changes as God's way of responding to man's actions. Failed rain was thought of God's anger for some wrongdoing of man. Floods and earthquakes were also thought of as representing God's fury. Man thought of diseases as punishments from God until a century ago. Even today, very primitive people living in rural villages and African Bushes do look at nature's fury as wrath of God. They are superstitious to an extreme degree. They do not understand the science and still live in the same mindset we were in many thousands of years ago. The concept of God had a large-scale effect on human minds and helped to bring about a global 'big brother' effect. It has certainly played a prosocial effect beyond compare.

Modern man has understood a lot about nature though he can't control any of it. He does not look at nature's fury as God's punishment. For the first time since the origin of man we are now able to understand that nature is explainable by science without invoking God. Has that taken away the beliefs in God? May be less and less people believe in God around the world these days. There may be a correlation between the level of literacy and the religious beliefs across cultures. In spite of falling numbers of religious followers there is still a widespread feeling that some sort of supernatural being is still out there. Because, as long as man lives, we will still struggle to understand how everything started in the universe from nowhere. Until we find the answer to this question you are never going to erase the memory of God from man's brain.

# 3: Origin of organised religion – why around 3000 BC? Why in Indus valley?

IF YOU WANT to describe mankind in strictly biological jargon here it is. Humans are _eukaryotes_ coming under the kingdom A _nimalia,_ as distinguished from plants. They are _Chordates_ , coming under the subphylum V _ertebrata_ because they possess a typical vertebral column. They come under the class _Mammalia_ and are _primates_. Within the order of primates they come under the family _Hominidae_. Modern humans belong to the species called _Homo sapiens,_ one of the few other species in the genus _Homo_. It is believed that this species originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, in the Middle Palaeolithic era, descending from _Homo erectus_. Many readers will be wondering why I am talking now like a biology teacher. The reason for this is simple. I find it curious that human species has evolved a characteristic that is not seen in any other life form i.e. religious propensity. Why?

The words _Homo sapiens_ actually mean 'wise human' or 'knowing human' in Greek _._ Members belonging to this species have accomplished so much within the 200,000 years time frame than what even their closest hominid species could not ever do over the tens of millions of years. By the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, which is about 50,000 years ago, humans had developed cultural advances such as art, music, languages, crafts and possibly proto-religious beliefs. Humans have the unique distinction in the biological world in that they alone are capable of such cultural abilities, including being religious. What were the biological and social reasons for their religiosity?

It is difficult to pinpoint a time when evolving human beings began to think of some supreme being. It is reasonable to hypothesise that this may have been preceded by the emergence of consciousness, the ability to be 'aware', made possible by the emergent processing power of inter-linked neurons in the human brain. It was then possible to relate man's own existence to the grand universal order. Though nervous system exists in other life forms the appearance of a brain occurred much later in evolution. Again, though other life forms have a brain, the human brain is unique in many respects. The frontal lobe made abstract thinking possible. The infinitely dense neuronal connections in the frontal brain, where each neuron is connected to about 40,000 others, and the evolution of association areas in brain, enabled man to conceptualise. Awareness of one's own self was possible. Even more importantly, man became conscious of the world around him. It has been claimed that ' _noosphere_ ', that portion of the atmosphere that contains thinking organisms primarily man, is the basis of theology.

There is a possibility that man living in pre-historic communities, tens of thousands of years ago, had some sort of ritualistic practices, which were the forerunners to religion. Nobody can say what they were and how exactly they transformed to formed religion. One thing for sure is that it took a critical mass of humans living in a society when such a thing as a religion became necessary. There is some evidence that humans living in the middle and lower Palaeolithic periods may have harboured some religious ideas. Homo sapiens may have buried their dead as long as 300,000 years ago, which may be taken as evidence that they thought about after-life! Burial sites have also been used as archaeological evidence for man's belief in afterlife and therefore as indicators of evolution of religious beliefs. At a site called _Qafzeh_ in Israel we find the evidence for deliberate burial of the dead. This dates back to about 95,000 years ago. Again, as in the case of symbolic behaviour, opinions differ as to the purpose of these behaviours and whether they indeed point to some religious thinking. The fact that they thought about after-life so many tens of thousands of years ago, so prominently seen in Egyptian history even as recent as 5000 years ago, could be taken to mean that man believed for a long time in some sort of supra-human existence and potential punishments meted out to wrongdoers in the afterlife.

Archaeological findings from Stone Age sites have uncovered symbolic artefacts thought to be associated with religious ideas such as lion man, the venous figurines, ritual burial site from _Sungir_ , cave paintings at _Chauvet Cave_ which have all have been dated to be between 13,000 to 50,000 years old (Upper Palaeolithic).

My purpose here is to come to some acceptable estimate of the time period when early humans formed religious beliefs. There is a commonly held view that spirituality was based on some form of symbolism and therefore it is safe to conclude that the time of first archaeological evidence of symbols could be taken as the time of origin of religion. It has been said that the incised pieces of ochre, with geometric designs, found at the South African site of _Blombos cave_ dating back to 100,000 years could be evidence of some sort of religious belief (Science, 30 Jan 2009, p 569). While one can accept the argument that we need some sort of symbolism for the identity of the group that believed in a set of religious beliefs it is not so clear as to what sort of purpose these early humans really used these symbolic objects for. Symbolic expressions flourished later on approximately from about 35,000 years ago in Europe. There are some realistic paintings of animals and half-human figures and spectacular figurines found in caves in France and Germany. Some argue that these figures represented spirit guides or were used for shamanistic rituals. What was the purpose of carving images of animals on massive stones? How do they translate to so-called religious belief?

Catalhoyuk in southern Turkey is said to be one of the first settled towns in human history. This site has been found to contain burials, and sometimes removal and reinterment of skulls, thought to be concerned with spiritual life. Whether these activities were routine part of their life or were they separate spiritual practices we will never know.

The problem in conclusively affirming the religious links with these early practices is that we do not have written evidence for it. One could only infer possible motifs in the absence of written proof. That is why it is believed that language and writing may have played crucial roles in clear categorisation of human behaviour into religious and non-religious types. This could only happen 4000 – 5000 years ago with invention of writing. With language, people may have acquired the ability to express their views on supernatural beings more clearly but without written records it is not easy to trace the origin of these ideas. Even earliest spiritualistic teachings of the first organised religion, Hinduism, were passed down generations by oral tradition. This was because writing was not available then as a tool for recording human thinking. So, earliest form of Hinduism was practiced as a way of life by oral teaching and therefore was limited in scope to start with. Advent of writing in Sumeria and the spread of this technology and availability of the writing technology in the Indus valley must have made it possible for them to spread the beliefs and practices more easily than ever before. The problem is that the Indus script is yet to be deciphered. So, we do not yet know the full account of events that may have happened in the Indus valley during this time. May be much of the connecting links in historical origin of organised religion will never be known until we can decipher the Indus script.

The Pyramid tests from Egypt were the first religious texts in the world dating back to 2400-2300 BCE. Writing that had evolved 3500 BCE in Sumeria and Egypt, for the purpose of accounting, was used for other purposes and we had to wait for about 1000 years before we see it being used for writing sacred texts (1. Bruce Wallis _. An introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature by Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge_. Edition: illustrated Published by Courier Dover Publications, 1997. 2 _. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ By James P. Allen, Peter Der Manuelian Translated by James P. Allen Contributor James P. Allen, Peter Der Manuelian Published by Society of Biblical Literature, 2005 _)._

Writing helped sustain religion and also spread them far beyond what was possible before with oral transmission. But, we should not forget that earliest writings were done on naturally occurring plant materials that provided a flat surface for writing the letters and symbols. Much of the writing that was done by the Indus Valley people may have been lost because they were written in perishable materials. This is compounded by the fact that we have not deciphered the Indus script anyway. Anyway, the possibility of mass transmission of these early written records to wider population was still not possible. People had probably kept them at public places such as proto-temples. It is possible that those who wrote them, or learned them, popularised those beliefs to others. Many of them may have been lost due to natural decay or destruction. Anyway, the point is that writing enables us to develop comprehensive doctrines that others had to follow. Language, together with writing, also made it easier for people to let others in the group know about their adherence to such religious beliefs rather than purely relying on rituals and costly practices. Illiterate societies still have the need for large-scale reliance of rituals to prove their religious allegiance.

This chapter aims to explore two fundamental questions. The first one is concerned with the reasons why religion as we know it only happened within the last 5000 years. What triggered it? The second question is why did religion first evolve in the Indus valley? What favoured origin of religion in this geographical part of the world even though modern humans and their ancestors had evolved first in Africa and had been migrating all over the world from here.

To find possible answers to these questions we need again to go back in history. The closest living relatives of modern man are the Chimpanzee species. Fossil records and genetic studies have shown that the chimps and human split in the evolutionary tree sometime between 5 and 7 million years ago. Modern humans and Neanderthals, both evolved from _Homo erectus_ , diverged around 300,000 years ago. It is believed that higher cognition started around the time of this split and has been continuing until the rise of modern humans about 200,000 years ago in Africa. This period of nearly 200,000 years has been phenomenal for the human species. They have done what none of the other life forms have accomplished.

It is now clear than mankind originally evolved first in Africa. These human ancestors migrated out of Africa due to climate changes that deprived them of their hunting grounds. In search of food they kept moving. _Homo erectus_ migrated out of Africa approximately from about 1.7 million years ago, travelling across Europe and Asia. Bone finds have been made in Indonesia dating to about 500,000 years suggesting that this species reached this part of the planet. Interestingly, the _Home sapiens_ , the forerunners of modern man, were still evolving in Africa by this time. Earth's climate underwent major changes between 130,000 and 90,000 years ago. This triggered the migration of _Homo sapiens_ across Africa. About 70,000 years ago, cooling of the climate occurred which led to glacier formation on tops of mountains in Africa. Early humans living in north-east and north-west Africa were effectively cut-off by this. There was scope for origin of genetic diversity in these isolated human groups due to small variations creeping into the respective gene pools. The stage was set for 4 different ethnic groups – African, Caucasian, Mongolian and Aboriginal (Australian). These early humans migrated out of Africa from about 60,000 years ago, occupying Middle East, India, China and Australia, probably in that order, over a period of 20,000 years. So, by 40,000 years ago, man had reached Australia. They reached Americas by about 14,000 years ago. Humans had reached Britain about 20,000 years ago. There is evidence, though, that _Homo erectus_ species may have made many unsuccessful attempts to populate British Isles. Those early settlers were wiped out apparently by icy conditions that prevailed.

The migrating _Homo sapiens_ displaced Neanderthals living in Europe. They were more successful in hunting due to perhaps their spears, which were designed for flight, were better in killing compared to the Neanderthal-style clubs. It is believed that the period from about 50,000 years saw major and dramatic increase in complexity of tools used by the humans. There is evidence that early man started showing cultural abilities such as art and music from this time. He knew how to use bones, tusks, antlers to make ornaments. He knew how to make household items needles for sewing, oil lamps, and ceramic pots. Earliest sculptures and cave paintings have been dated to about 25,000 years ago. Though the time period from 50,000 to 25,000 years means a huge period of growth for man it still is a fairly long period of time just looking at the time since the origin of modern humans about 200,000 years ago. There seems to be some sort of accelerated evolution of man, both physically and culturally, in the past 50,000 years. I am not really focussing now on the time since the man-chimpanzee split that happened 5-7 millions of years ago. I am only looking at what happened since 200,000 years ago that led man to evolve much improved cognitive abilities and behavioural abilities.

Till about 10,000 years ago man lived as a nomad. He was constantly moving in search of food, driven by changes in climate and the fall in numbers of animals that he could hunt. Man living then had no need for material possessions. He was no different from animals we see even today. Their only needs were hunting tools. They hunted when they needed and shared the food with the members of the group. They had no need for storing food. They did not have facilities to store food anyway. They did not need money because the concept was not there. In fact, our ancestors had lived like animals for the past few million years from the time of their first appearance as _Homo habilis,_ and even as _Australopithecus_.

An interesting observation is that _Homo sapiens_ may have shrunk to a total global population of only about 1000 to 10,000 people at some point. How did that happen? What is the evidence for this theory? The evidence for this is that all humans living today seem to have descended from a small number of genetic ancestors. This is because we only find very few genetic variations between people living today, which are much less than what we find for most species of mammals. It is said that even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, show more than 10-fold differences across the spectrum of their species than we do. It is likely that _Homo sapiens_ faced a catastrophic collapse of their population due to some natural disaster. This is different from periodic changes in climate due to ice ages etc. The natural catastrophe could have been the volcanic eruption in an Indonesian island about 70,000 years ago. It is believed that this could have created a blanket of dust blocking sunlight for years, triggering an unexpected ice age.

In fact, ice ages have been hitting mankind for over millions of years. The truth is that all life forms that lived on our planet since the origin of life faced this problem. It is to do with earth's rotation on its own axis and also due to the planet veering slightly nearer to or farther from the sun. These geophysical factors reduced or increased earth's temperature by a few degrees on a periodic basis. The earth's temperature increase due to carbon dioxide emissions is a completely different sort of global warming, purely due to man-made factors.

It is said that ice could have covered up to 30% of earth's land surface on an occasional basis throughout pre-history. About 30 ice ages of varying severity could have happened within the last 2 million years. As one can imagine, the ice ages severely reduce food availability for the hunter-gatherer. One would have thought that humans living during such time start moving towards warmer regions of the world. Their group sizes necessarily revert to small numbers of people, who have to perhaps fight with similar sized groups they encounter during their migrations. In some parts of the world people moved towards hilly locations to avoid floods. Or, they moved closer to lakes and rivers for fishing. This must have happened when migrations were too risky due to the icy conditions and the risk of not finding enough hunting grounds for feeding the groups as they migrate.

Ice ages must have affected animal evolution including humans because mass extinctions and drastic reductions in animal numbers must have followed every ice age. This should have had enormous effect on the continuity of animal evolution. In the case of humans living within the past 200,000 years the interruptions due to ice ages could have hampered their social expansions and cognitive evolution. They had to perhaps start from scratch all over again each time an ice age interrupted. This may be one big reason why civilisations as we know them originated only a few thousands of years ago though man, as a species, had made his appearance very long time before that. In fact, our recorded history dates back to only around 5000 years and there are only conjectural sketches of human history for periods before that. The pre-historic events in human history are deduced from fossils, tools, paintings, remains of settlements etc.

At the end of the last ice age, over a period of 10,000 years (between 17000 and 7000 years ago), 25 million square kilometres of most habitable land on our planet was flooded by water from melting ice. Rising sea levels, due to melting ice, submerged a land mass equivalent to the size of North and South America put together. Just to give an idea of the sheer size of the land mass again this was equal to 3 times the size of Canada and bigger than Europe and China put together. This gives an idea of the impact the ice ages may have had on the humans. If you imagine that each time an ice age occurs a similar size of land mass is lost which will have such a devastating impact on life forms. Human species also suffered as a result and no doubt their sociological and technological advances had to be delayed, or even reversed, from time to time. One cannot rule out the possibility that civilisations may have originated much before than the recorded history but were destroyed due to these natural causes. The disruptive effect this may have had on the evolving human civilisation must have been huge. In many cases the entire pre-historic civilisation may have been wiped out.

Ancient people living in the inundated regions at the end of the ice age either died as a result of the floods or had to move out and start all over again. Graham Hancock, author of the book ' _Underworld'_ has painstakingly figured out, with the help of Dr. Glenn Milne from University of Durham, the areas that must have been inundated during the last ice age. Interestingly, vast regions affected lay adjacent to recognised early centres of agriculture and civilisation. This may mean that people living in the inundated areas moved out and started all over again. Malta today is a tiny island in the Mediterranean but until the end of the last ice age Malta was connected to Sicily by a land bridge 60 miles long. Malta, fascinatingly, has the oldest freestanding temples in the world!

Around India it is said that more than a million square miles were submerged in the northwest and southeast regions. In January 2002 National Institute of Ocean Technology in India discovered two underwater cities off the coast of Northwest India, each covering an area of 10 miles lying 120 feet deep in the Gulf of Cambay. These submerged cities had towering walls, massive geometrical buildings and dams all dating back to around 8000 to 9000 years ago. About 6900 years ago, it is conceivable that the seas rose and flooded what were once a huge fertile valley and possibly an ancient civilisation in this part of India. This is more than 4000 years older than any advanced city-building culture recognised by archaeologists.

Graham Hancock was instrumental in unearthing another lost city off the southeast coast of India. This area was subject to marine archaeological explorations by India's National Institute of Oceanography since the 1980s. The submerged city is called Poompuhar known to the ancient Tamil mythologists who have described a lost great kingdom called Kumari Kandam that existed in this part of the world long time ago. The immediate offshore area close to the shore, at depths of around 6 feet, contains man-made structures dating back to 3rd century BC to 3rd Century AD. In fact these structures in the shallow water sometimes are exposed during times of low tide. But, three miles off the shore at depths of more than 70 feet, more structures are seen that date back to the post-glacial period 11,000 years ago! Graham Hancock organised an underwater exploration of this area in 2001 with the help of funding from Channel 4 Television in Britain and the Learning Channel in the US. He particularly concentrated on a U-shaped structure though there are more than 20 other larger structures located in the same area. It is believed that a very advanced technology should have been available to the people living here at the period, far more advanced than the abilities of known cultures in India, or anywhere else in the world, 11500 years ago. Hancock believes that a civilisation thriving there may predate the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq. In fact, this lost culture in Poompuhar in India's southeast coast may predate the Harappan civilization!!

In the coastlines of Cuba a Canadian exploration company had uncovered a lost city that had submerged off the coast of Guanahabibes Peninsula on the western tip of the island. Paulina Zelitsky, a Canadian Oceanographer, said that the stone structures found here were built at least 6000 years ago which predates the pyramids in Egypt. These structures are found 650 meters deep and consist of symmetrically organised stone structures resembling an urban layout. This intriguing discovery provides evidence that Cuba could have been linked to Yucatan Peninsula by a strip of land and an ancient and unknown civilization existed here 6000 years ago!

Of course we have no control over geology but just for the sake of argument if we had lived on a planet devoid of ice ages I feel strongly that many civilisations may have flourished on earth much sooner than 5000 - 6000 years ago. We would be seeing many civilisations that are many times older than, more importantly, with records!

The last ice age ended on our earth around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. It started almost 22,000 years ago. It is thought the earth's temperature rose by about 6-7 degrees to melt the ice away. As the temperature rose, the glaciers melted over thousands of years, rising the sea levels and consequent flooding. Hunting ground sank below the rising sea. Rich forests became barren lands due to changes in rainfall. Similarly, new fertile regions also emerged. An area called Fertile Crescent covering Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Turkey and down towards the Gulf along the Euphrates valley through Iraq and Iran (ancient Mesopotamia) emerged around 14,000 years ago. These regions were not like the dry, desert regions as we see them today. This is what happens due to the climate changes initiated by ice ages. There is evidence for human settlements in Lebanon, Syria and Israel during this age. The people living here were called the Natufians. They settled along the edges of water, living on fish. Some of them relied on fertile, grassy lands and hunted animals living there. They lived in small, mud huts and could avoid the need for a nomadic life.

It is believed that the climate cooled down dramatically plunging the region in another ice age condition about 12,700 years ago. It is believed that most of the world then experienced this spell of cold, called the 'Younger Dryas', lasting for more than 1300 years. Severe drought set in as fertile grounds in this region transformed into barren lands and much of the land sunk under sea as ice melted. But, it is believed that it was here that the 'seeds of farming' were sown for the first time in human history. Women in the Natufian society learnt to collect seeds of wheat, barley and Rye for planting them later. This must have led to crop farming as we know it. This new practice, which was to change humanity forever, was first started in Middle East and Northern Africa. Archaeological excavations in modern day Syria (at a site called Abu Hureyra) has shown farming tools, in the form of picks and sickle blades that were used for harvesting. Pestles, mortars and bowls have also been found here suggesting that they were using them for grinding the seeds.

It is interesting to note that Natufians were the first to domesticate animals too. They domesticated wolves, dogs, wild sheep, boar, goats and horses. Domestication of animals also provided a stable source of food, in the form of meat and milk, and avoided the uncertainties associated with hunting. Humans may have paid a price for domestication of animals as it was easier for animal-borne pathogens to infect humans too. Burial sites at the Natufian settlements have been found to contain a number of young children thought to have succumbed to diseases from animals. By about 11,400 years ago the 'Younger Dryas' period ended and the climate allowed the land to regain the fertility that prevailed there a couple of thousand years ago. It became a land of plenty again with rich vegetation, rainfall etc. Man had by then a couple of new types of 'technologies' – farming and domestication of animals. Boy, what technologies they proved to be!! The stage was set for big-time changes in human social scene that has continued to this day. I would rate these two technologies as comparable to only five more that were to transform humanity later – wheel, writing, combustion engine, telecommunication and finally digital revolution!

This stability, coupled with farming, enabled for the first time the opportunity for humans to settle down in a place. For the first time nomadic life could be abandoned. The other outcome was that availability of food was predictable and more importantly plentiful enough to feed more mouths. Slowly, the numbers of people living in a group started increasing. This must have gone on for some time before man realised that there were lots of challenges associated with living in large groups. To be honest most readers would agree that we probably have not got it right yet despite at least 5000 years of social evolution. You can imagine the plight of man living at the time civilisations began. He had to learn ways and means of how to cope with expansion of their societies. Formation of cities and true states needed order generation. It was not easy.

Permanent settlements appeared throughout the Middle East from about 9000BCE. Man had now come very far away from the small animal-like bands. He was ready to build towns and cities. One such earliest town was called _Jericho_ in this region. It is presumed that it was 8-times larger than earlier Natufian settlements. Houses unearthed in _Jericho_ have been found to contain multiple rooms and designated spaces for various household activities like cooking and washing. They had stone foundations and cobbled floors. Each of these sites had its own stone or clay silo for storing grains.

Humans had always lived in small bands of 10-20 people for much of their history for tens of thousands of years. Availability of food by hunting was enough only to feed this small number. It is more than likely that there were competitions for fruits and animals from nearby groups that limited what they could find for feeding their own groups. Territorial hunting grounds were accepted by the people as the norm, no different from what we see in animals and primitive tribes groups even today.

Agriculture changed the way man had lived for thousands of years before. The origin of agriculture enabled permanent settlements and also the possibility of more humans living within a given land mass. The change from nomadic life and also the pressures of living in larger groups was having its effect on the humans. With increasing population sizes the social structures started to change. People began to form tribes by joining individual bands together. About 500 persons may have constituted a tribe. The basis of the tribe was no more family ties like it used to be in a band. The tribe had to be held together by some sort of identity to make it less fragile. It is believed that some sort cultural similarity and common language may have provided this bond. Tribal societies were forerunners to chiefdoms and states. Tribalism formed first when the earliest farmers had to learn to share resources to live together with neighbouring villages. It is also likely the tribes formed to fend off competition and aggression with other similar tribes nearby.

Language was essential for people living in large groups. Without language communication between large numbers of people would not have been possible. Language must have also been a unique identifier of a group. As group sizes increased people started in specialising in their work. This meant that the sophistication of tool making, irrigation canal building, crafts, art, and music required more refined language for propagation. Without a rich language these skills could not be learnt and propagated.

It is also evident that these communities were indulging in the concept of trading with neighbouring societies. This again meant that people had to learn the accounting system as well the languages of the other parts of the world. Man had to be cognitively agile. Maybe horse domestication provided them with easier and faster transportation but the challenges of alien language, fear of strangers, warfare etc were probably not easy to deal with. Trade between people living in Mesopotamia and those living in Egypt and Turkey seem to have been going on for a good 35,000 years which is hard to believe. What this means is that there was trade before even cities evolved. Proof for this can be gleaned from the find of _Obsidian_ , a form of natural glass that forms when volcanic lava cools quickly, in Neolithic Jericho. This material occurred naturally in the rocky hills of Central Turkey, which is hundreds of miles away. It can be inferred that Natufians traded perhaps their seeds for _Obsidian_ because this material was extremely good for making sharp arrowheads.

Apart from the point that those human societies were advancing further by exchanging their assets we should also note that these immediate forerunners of our modern civilisation were in possession of the cognitive ability to discern that naturally occurring materials could be used for improving their technology. Use of stone tools started many hundreds of thousands of years ago and that by itself was a dramatic advance in human history. It has been argued that evolutionary changes in brain enabled this. Further brain evolution and improvements in reasoning abilities made it possible for man to make better tools making him an efficient hunter and also a farmer later on. That is what distinguishes man from other animals. It was possible for him to use his brainpower to tackle nature and survive. He was able to tap into the knowledge of other societies as well and this cross-cultural exchange of ideas made it possible for an even faster evolution of human societies. I feel that even farming, as a technology, must have spread this way. Language and communication were absolutely critical here. Fortunately, man's brain had evolved by this time to accommodate the newer needs of social interactions.

Farming continued in the hills and mountains bordering the plains of Middle East well into 6000 BCE. The settlements were of sufficient size, widely separated from one another, and had access to a variety of food sources. As population levels rose new settlements arose in places where there was less variety in food sources. They were vulnerable to climate changes. A period of drying climate had occurred around 5000 BCE and the farmers had to move from the foothills to plains. These plains had become available for habitation due to the receding sea levels. For the next few centuries farming communities living in these areas were doing fine until another period of drying led them to learn to divert water from rivers and streams to their crop fields rather than relying on rain. This was the beginning of irrigation, another major milestone in human history.

In the beginning there was no centralised control of the irrigation facilities. It appears they were managed with local decision-making, with the consensus of family heads. As the number of families living in a settlement were only a few it was possible for village-level decisions on the use of irrigation. Finding the advantages of the purpose-built irrigation canals there was a progressive increase in the building of such canals over time. They were criss-crossing much of Mesopotamia. Villages had to be more closely packed to benefit from these canals. This meant that strangers were getting to live close together, something man had not done before. There was no point in building these canals over huge distances as it would have required enormous human resources. The agricultural bounty fed more mouths and this period of abundance continued apparently for about 1500 years or so. This was long enough for more sophisticated growth of human societies. Mesopotamia became urbanised. This was the first of its kind in human history. Since the split of humans from apes around 5-7 million years ago man has truly made giant leaps to become a city-dweller.

Until about 5000 BCE each village was politically independent. They were also well separated from each other. As long as the people were living in valleys of the mountains there was less room for many villages to be near to each other. But, when the area of plains available for cultivation increased, coupled with irrigation canals, it became possible for more villages to clump together. Also drying up of some small streams meant that people had to settle in villages nearer to a large river source. With a large number of villages there was a need for some organisation and control. It was not enough to have a head of the village. There was a need for a higher authority than that. This authority was new to human societies. The difference was in the number of persons to be controlled and regulated. That was the origin of the first city of the world. It started in Mesopotamia. This is where civilisation as we know started for the first time.

The total population living in the prototype cities were possibly 300 persons by about 5500 BCE, spread over a few acres. This may appear too far too small compared to populations of today. But, we should not forget that even today some tribal groups with population figures comparable to this number, or even less. Even otherwise if you consider that the population density of humans when they were hunter-gatherers was just 1 person per square mile it is a real population explosion to have 300 persons living together within a space of a few acres. The prototype cities were just a few acres wide to start with. It was primitive no doubt. It took another 2000 years for the population to grow to about 3000 around the year 3500 BCE. It is claimed that the first ever such urban city may have been _Uruk_ ( _Erech_ of the Bible). The size of this prototype city is estimated to be about 100 hectares. By 2700 BCE, it is claimed, the population had reached about 30,000, occupying about 500 hectares. In the next few hundred years it jumped to about 300,000. It took 8000 years for man, since he abandoned his hunter-gatherer life style, to reach this stage. Man needed improved cognition skills around this time. He needed to learn how to live socially with increasing numbers of strangers. He had to live with tolerance, be ready to share food with strangers, be willing to help others, and also had to identify free-riders and fight off intruders from outside groups. All this depended on man's own biological adaptation in terms of increasing brain size, evolution of neuro-anatomic changes in the brain that supported language, speech etc. More importantly, the need for order in the society led to interesting changes in the human groups.

Mesopotamia had cities by about 3000 BCE. May be that is why they call Mesopotamia the 'Cradle of civilisation'. Other geographical regions like Indus valley also had seen the formation of cities by then. Slowly villages must have developed all the way from Indus to the Aegean. By 2800 BCE there were several city-states of various sizes between the Persian Gulf and the region of modern day Baghdad. By 4000 BC a pre-Harappan culture had emerged comprising of two large cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and more than 100 towns and villages. There were also other cities in the Indus Valley civilisation including Dholavira (2900 BC) and Lothal (2400 BC) in what is now the state of Gujarat in India. In terms of sheer geographical area the cities and villages of the Indus valley civilisation covered a space 4 times the size of Sumer and twice the size of Egypt during the Old kingdom.

Inter-city conflicts did not develop until areas of neighbouring cities began to overlap. Conflict resolution was not easy. There were no governance structures in place yet. People had to evolve social mechanisms to live in peace with neighbours. One such mechanism was to build the sense of identity as a group as well as promote tolerance. Though fights between bands and tribes of humans may have been very prevalent over millennia the first recorded artistic depiction of an inter-city conflict dates back to 3200 BCE. They probably became common in the next few centuries. Unlike kingdoms much later on in human history these early conflicts were not based on power. There were no mighty emperors who just wanted to expand their power. Instead, these conflicts must have been due to sharing of natural resources and use of irrigation canals etc. There was a need for arbitration between cities in conflict and the political arrangements that followed saw some sort of an arbitrator concept coming into the picture, to be followed by some political unions of some cities and the later development of a higher authority. Even walled cities were developed for the sake of protection.

It is likely that irrigation water was a source of friction between users much like what happens even to this day in our modern society. In large agriculture-dependant societies like India there is a long history of conflicts between member states that cannot be resolved even with the might of the central political authority. Individual states within India enter into conflicts on shared use of water in the rivers that flow through these states. Dams built on these rivers on their voyage through these states cause a lot of grievance to the other states because they are affected. Some sort of long-term agreements are entered into but never followed to the letter of the agreement. Even nations come to bitter disputes on sharing waters of large rivers. China threatens to build dams on the river Bramhaputra that could threaten water sources for a large part of Northern India. Even at a lower level, small villages often see conflicts between villagers over sharing of water. Violent encounters between these poor villagers are commonplace in countries like India. This being the case in today's world one could imagine what may have been the case in primitive human towns.

The other dimension to farming was that it necessitated a 'state-controlled' system for storing the surplus grains. Someone had to control this storage and distribution system. Farmers who spend their time and resource to do the cultivation should be made to deposit their surplus grains for their own personal use as well as for the common use of others in the society. This collective co-operation had to be controlled and regulated so as to avoid free riding. The contributors needed to be encouraged to do so for something in return. The return was some sort of service they get from the community. With agriculture starting to provide surplus food it was possible for people to be free to do activities other than hunting and farming. People could be fed without problems. People could be spared as there was no need for everybody to be involved in agriculture. The availability of manpower led to learning of new skills. As skilled labour became possible it was no longer needed for everyone to do everything. Instead, each contributed something for the common good and got back some service. The service they got back should be something that was worthy of having. One common service we can think of is the building and maintenance of the irrigation system itself. Or, it could be the building of communal structures like granaries or city walls for defence or temples. Or, it could be the protection from invading villages. More importantly, these communal activities had to be regulated by someone. This necessitated the birth of the political systems. What were initially handled by priests had to be done more formally by rulers. It does not appear that the chiefdoms had the political force of a state but certainly must have allowed the chiefs to enjoy some benefits such as the absence of the need for doing manual work by themselves, or even having the privilege of multiple wives etc.

I suppose human societies are by nature not homogenous in terms of power and ranking. There are some privileged positions within all societies and human organisations. In the modern times we live today it is completely accepted as the norm. Presidents, Chief executives, directors are some titles within human organisations that come with power and prestige. But, in the earliest human societies these types of privileged leadership positions were new. These leaders had unequal access to livelihood and also exploited the labour force. They made others to do the work for them on the claim that it was going to be useful for the common good and for the society as a whole. The role of the leader is to lead the society and help coordinate activities within the society as well as to help organise a protective force against enemies. These types of duties needed to be done by someone. Whoever did those duties occupied the highest position in the society. Other stratified social classes included possibly priests and traders at the higher end followed by working class. Traders had the eminent position as early as 1000 BCE as seen in Greece and Rome. The social stratification is evident in archaeological findings at burial sites and even house types. The rich and privileged had more things buried along with their dead bodies than those who did not.

The point I am trying to drive home is that societies needed to justify this difference in social privileges. The leaders had to justify why they have the privileges. This became all the more important when states began to form from chiefdoms. The leader of a state has to have the obedience of his subjects. The subjects should consent to his leadership. One way the early human societies achieved this was to exploit the human belief in divine powers. This is very important to understand. I feel that this was directly the reason human societies turned to exploiting the fear of the unknown supernatural being for social regulation. I see the origins of organised religion here. Organised religion must have evolved, perhaps coinciding with abandonment of a hunter-gatherer life style and the beginning of farming during the Neolithic period (around 10,000 BCE). It is thought that organised religion served to justify central authority as the transition from foraging bands to states and empires happened thanks to crop production. The empires of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt were theocracies with kings playing both the roles of political and spiritual leaders (Michael Shermer, _The Science of Good and evil: Why people cheat, gossip, care, share, and follow the golden rule,_ 2004, published by Henry Holt and company). Justification of political authority by divine sanction is similar in all state societies and chiefdoms around the world.

As said earlier, man has believed in some divine agencies for a very long time, possibly tens of thousands of years before the formation of organised human societies like chiefdoms and states. Pre-historic man feared the punishment from these supernatural powers. The earliest human state leaders used this fundamental human belief to claim a so-called mandate from heaven that allowed them to act on behalf of the divine powers. Leaders projected themselves as descendants of divine powers. This institutionalised the human beliefs in supernatural powers into a form of state religion. This ideology allowed them to legitimise their power. This is the very basis of religions.

If you go to Egypt you will find many man-made structures dating back to 4000 – 5000 years ago. It could be a burial site for a Pharaoh, a temple or something else. In most of these historic structures one can often see wall carvings and paintings that depict offering of cattle, fish, birds, grains etc by peasants to the King who is depicted as a demi-God. The pictures show villagers queuing up with their produce in front of the king. The recurrence of this theme in wall carvings and paintings at so many sites around this time period suggests that this was a very important part of their life. The reason behind these offerings could have been the force of authority gained by the king under the guise of divine sanctions. The modern equivalent of this is paying income tax. Obviously, we do not pay the tax in cattle or grains etc anymore but the concept is the same. You make your contribution to the pot and get many benefits back. No divine sanction operates here but only the fear of punishment. Any tax-evader who got caught will vouch for it.

Priests were held in high regard and states built temples to demonstrate some sort of reality to the common man that divine powers could be housed on earth in temples under the control of priests. One does not get the full impact of this statement until you start thinking for a moment how big the churches, mosques and temples generally are. You can see this all over the world. Invariably, these religious worship sites are built grandly with a lot of impressive artwork, something not possible for individuals to have. It is not uncommon to see such religious monuments built 1000-1500 years ago, if not more. Societies preserve these monuments. One could easily see churches and temples many hundreds of years old. For the purpose of this book I am interested in the period 4000-5000 years ago when religions began in an organised way. At that time was it possible to build big, impressive temples and other worship sites? I feel the newly evolving political authority did manage that even at that time. I guess the massive temples that we can see in Egypt, such as Karnak temple, is ample testimony to this. If you were one of those fortunate to visit this site I am sure you will agree how massive and impressive the structure is. It is really incredible and I personally was awe-struck and wondered why this massive monument was needed so long ago. The only logical reason is that leaders built these sites to influence the minds of ordinary citizens. I can see how people living during these times came to view these monuments and the leaders who built them with awe and respect. For them they were divine because they were huge and impressive. I am sure Karnak temple built 3000 – 4000 years ago has lasted the test of time because it was built of stone. That does not mean there were no temples built before that. The use of stone technology in recorded history apparently started in Egypt about 5000 years ago with the building of the first pyramid called the Step pyramid in Saqqara, near Cairo. If one visited that site you can see for yourself how incredibly grand this step pyramid site is. There was such a massive courtyard in front with great walls etc but they are not intact anymore. You can visualise the grand structure mentally based on just the remains. It is really amazing that this culture went to this extent just to legitimise the power of leadership.

Similarly, the Giza stone pyramids that you see are so huge that almost takes your breath away. Just why did they need this unimaginably big stone structure 5000 years ago? By building such massive structures Egyptian kings must have impressed their people so much that they follow their orders without question. But, use of stone technology for buildings may not have been tried in other parts of the world until very late in history. I feel many religious worship sites could have been constructed in the times of organisation of religions but they may have been built of mud and other materials and that is why we do not see them now. The Gobekli Tepe site in Turkey has a building dating back to 11,000 years that is thought of as the world's first temple. Why did man erect this megalithic structure at this time?

In relatively recent history we saw lots of temples, one for each God, built in Greece between 2000 and 3000 years ago. You had a God each for healing, sea, agriculture etc and a temple was built for each one of them. The grandeur of these temples can be visualised though in many temples what you actually can see are some huge columns as much of the structure has been damaged due to earthquake or deliberately by succeeding empires. The point is that temples served the function of glorifying divine powers at the time they were built.

I do agree that many of these Priests enjoyed a high position in the society and it is likely that kings and priesthood enjoyed equal rank in the society for quite some time in early social history. In fact, priesthood may have had higher powers than the ruling elite in that the ruling elite depended on the priesthood for making some important decisions. The influence of priests over kings can be seen even in recent human history. Church played a very influential role in Roman states and this continued till about 500 years ago in many of the Christian states. To a large extent even today Islamic countries rely a lot on religious leaders and religion is intertwined with politics in these countries as of today. In Saudi Arabia, even today, the king is always referred to as the 'Holy Custodian of the two great Mosques'.

I have so far said that people living in the pre-historic societies had to be convinced that it was worth it to part with their farming produce and animals for the welfare of the community. So, the political or other control systems like village heads, chieftains or even later day kings and priests had to act like representatives of divine beings. Because man had long believed in supernatural divine powers it was easy for those prototype rulers to succeed in making the members of the society to part with their possessions for the sake of common good. Game theory had come into effect. People were starting to cooperate. The concept of giving something to get something back was taking shape. After all, primitive man living much earlier had the practice of offering sacrifices to nature that they considered God. This pre-historic practice evolved to the point at the beginning of state-based civilisations where the people were accepting to pay the Gods through the kings and priests as intermediaries. In return, they had to be promised something back. One such promised return could have been the escape from the punishment of the divine being, in this or the afterlife. That was enough for them to cooperate. Or, they promised protection from nearby city combats. But, when the cities became too big, with hundreds and thousands of people, it was not easy to make people behave well and cooperate. This was because of the anonymity that had crept because of the large size of the chiefdoms and states. You needed something better to monitor people. One way of doing it is to make people believe in morals that will have a self-disciplinary control. The concept of good/bad and the fear of punishment (from the king or god) made it so much easier. It is believed that the belief in morals even predates religions. Even outside of religions people intrinsically believe in good and bad. You do not have to a follower of a particular religion for this. Even non-believers accept the concept of right and wrong. Man may have evolved this mental faculty of right and wrong (morals) possibly as a result of group-living, particularly big-time group-living. Belief in morality may be a precursor to the evolution of the faculty of religion. They both may represent stages in evolution of human brain wherein group-living had imposed some selection pressures. What the evolving political structures did was to institutionalise these mental faculties in the form of organised religion.

Studies have shown that social order decreases when the space between people increases just as space decreases. The reason for the former situation is that people are going to be far removed from the leaders who are supposed to be monitoring their behaviours. The latter situation i.e. decreasing order due to decreasing space is due to competition for resources. What man needed at these times was a mechanism to punish free-riders and harm-doers.

One thing that has been noted is that altruistic punishment is costly and resource-intensive. God was like a supreme 'big brother'. The fear that god was watching has a tremendous amount of restraint on people at least in the olden days (more so in the pre-historic days). So, god became a cheaper way of ensuring order. So, god was a necessity. Rulers exploited this fear and posed as representatives of god to get the respect of people. For quite some time priesthood and military rulers went hand in hand until very recently.

I said a little while ago at the beginning of the chapter that I am interested in finding answers to two questions: 1. why organised religion originated 5000 years ago? 2. Why did it originate in the Indus Valley? I guess the answer to these questions will have to be found also in the sociological changes man was facing as human societies started changing in terms of numbers and also the consequent cognitive demands placed on man. Man was adapting genetically to the increasing demands placed on him by the cognitive challenges. There were unique selection pressures operating in the human species.

I think that the evolution of human social structure had reached the critical mass in and around the Indus valley around 4000 – 5000 years ago. The catalyst for this paradigm shift in human history was the critical mass of interacting humans in the Indus Valley. It is believed that the Indus or Mature Harappan Civilization was the most extensive urban culture of its time about 2600 – 1900BC. Its area comprised of 1 million square kilometres and more than one thousand settlements have been identified so far. During the first stage of development about 7000 – 4300 BC some twenty small Neolithic villages existed in the highland valleys in this region. About 4300 – 3200 BC, the Chalcolithic phase, villages grew to the size of dozens of hectares. During the Early Harappan period of about 3200 – 2600 BC many new sites came into existence. There is evidence during this time for development of an administrative structure as shown by stamp seals bearing geometrical motifs. There were towns with walls and a grid pattern of streets such as Rahman Dheri. Bullock carts were in use attesting to improved transport allowing cultural uniformity over the region.

Around 2700 – 2500 BC the Indus script came into being and the society had become highly organised enough to complete enormous projects like building the city of Mohenjo-Daro around 2500 BC. The acropolis of Mohenjo-Daro was a cultural and administrative centre, which had a foundation 12 meters high artificial platform of 20 hectares. Even the construction of the platform alone would have required 10.000 labourers working for 400 days. The city of at least 80 hectares had streets with fine orientation and had covered drains. The city is estimated to have had about 700 wells constructed with tapering bricks so strong that they have not collapsed in 5000 years. The city walls constructed as a defence against flood water were massive. The Indus valley cities point to a centralised state with advanced town planning. They do not look like cities that grew slowly from villages to big cities. If that were the case one would not expect to see identical construction pattern in every single house and street. On the contrary, what we find is uniformity in construction to fine detail which could be taken to mean that this city was built to a plan from scratch in one go. For a civilisation to even think of undertaking such a massive project they need to have reached a level of sophistication amply supported by technological capability. Even in the modern times building a township takes so much planning and coordination. If someone could achieve that 5000 – 6000 years ago then it means something. The same variety of burnt brick was possibly used in constructing buildings hundreds of miles apart. Uniformity and regularity are seen in the weights and measures.

In terms of geography Indus Valley Civilisation occupied a vast area encompassing most of Pakistan, extending from Baluchistan to Sind, and extending into modern day states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. Indus Valley colonies have also been found in Afghanistan and also as far as Turkmenistan. Though the name of this civilisation is Indus Valley some believe that the true name should have been Indus Ghaggar – Hakra civilisation because majority of the Harappan sites have been discovered along the dried-up river beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries.

The population size of the Indus valley is estimated to have reached 1 million about 2000 BC. The population size had reached the critical levels that required more sophisticated control of the society. Religion provided that unification mechanism at the mass scale. Belief in supernatural being had to be exploited coupled with inherent tendency towards morals. The rise in political structures acted as a catalyst towards this big change. It was not necessary until 2500-3000 BCE for man. Simple leadership principles helped control people until then. But, they were not enough in urban cities like the one at Indus valley as population size had reached many thousands within the cities that existed at that time in this region. This was a huge number by human standards until then. Man had only been living in group sizes of 300- 500 until 8000 BC. Religion was the answer to establish social order for bigger groups for reasons cited in the previous chapter. In other words, the power of God and religion as a moral restraint was exploited by man for the very first time in human history. I guess this new development in human society had as much beneficial impact on cohesion and expansion of the human society as other land mark inventions like writing, wheel and agriculture.

People tend to cooperate because they know that their chances of survival are better that way. In the 1950's, Mancur L.Olson, an economist, proposed that repeated iterations of a situation tend to promote cooperative attitudes. The amount of cooperation increases when communication is permitted. The improved language faculty and, more importantly writing as a new tool, made this communication possible not only in the Indus region but also throughout the Near East. Enhanced communication was a need in growing human societies for order generation. It included, amongst other things, spreading of beliefs which allowed formation of a group identity as well. Group identity is fundamental to cooperation. The social advantage people in the Indus Valley must have reaped from their religion is enhanced cooperation. Religion provided a sense of unity and identity for people so that they felt more inclined to cooperate.

Why would people learn to cooperate when living in large groups? Is there an alternative? Can't they live a life on their own without regard to others? Yes, they can. But, the only problem is that this group would not go very far without proper cooperation of constituent members. This is almost blatantly obvious. You can for a moment think of any group or an organisation of which you are a part of. Just imagine what would happen if everyone in the group went their own way. This could be staff within your company. Or, it could be people living in your home town. If everyone did what they want, without any regard for others, the end result will be total mayhem.

In the 1940's, John Von Newman and Oskar Morgenstern developed the mathematical theory of social cooperation within the framework of Game theory. According to the Game theory, individuals rationally choose the action that yields the highest pay-off. The longer the game theory continues, the more likely is the cooperation between the individuals.

When you say cooperation it can mean a variety of things. People can help each other and expect reciprocal help when they are in trouble. People can avoid doing deliberate harm to others again expecting something similar in return from others. People can be tolerant to others. They can show love to others increasing the bond. In many cases some sort of group identity helps in a big way to promote cooperation within a large group. It is evident at various levels of social organisation even in our modern societies today. The top most group identifier is that we all are inhabitants of the earth. Various international treaties and diplomatic relations are reflections of the global cooperation between 6 billion people. It may not still be the most peaceful place in the universe but I guess by and large man has at least succeeded in making a reasonable effort. Individual national identity is another big inducer of cooperation. People are extolled for their patriotic virtues and people really give up their lives for their country. We have a lot of mechanisms that ensure harmonious living of the citizens of a country. Religion is a big identifier of even bigger masses of people even surpassing national identifiers. We can see what a remarkable sense of belonging people have for people of their own religions.

Dr. Patrick McNamara, Head of the Evolutionary Neurobehavioral Laboratory at Boston University's School of medicine, analysed a database of the cultural co-operations found in a society and the intensity of its religious rituals. His conclusion was that religious beliefs favoured more cooperation in the society. Richard Sosis, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, has also found that the long-term co-operative benefits of religion are considerable.

I guess the Hindu religion that evolved in the Indus Valley gave the inhabitants a much better pay-off. The proto-religious beliefs and the cooperation that came with them must have undergone repeated iterations over time to culminate in the final form of social cooperation, the Hinduism. I am not promoting Hinduism here. I am just trying to show that this earliest religion in the history of mankind came about at the right time at the right place.

In terms of chronology what evidence do we have for the events that happened in the Indus Valley that culminated in the origin of organised religions? This is based on the Vedas as the source document. There were 4 Vedas, each produced during successive time periods, the Rig Veda being the earliest. The time of origin of Vedas is under dispute. Many believe they were conceived between 1500 BC and 500 BC. Whereas there are scholars who claim that Vedic civilisation is much older than that. An estimate of 4500 BC is substantiated by various pieces of evidence. One such evidence is said to be the River Saraswati, often talked about in Rig Veda as a bountiful river. This river may have supported the Vedic civilisation for long periods but the River Saraswati dried out, or changed course, at least 2000 - 3000 years before Rig Veda was conceived. One would argue that there was no need for a civilisation to glorify a river of the past. On the assumption that the Rig Veda was conceived during the height of the Saraswati-based civilisation the estimate of the time of origin of the Vedas is pushed back to at least 4000 – 4500 BC.

Historical evidence points to further migrations of the people of the Indus Valley inward towards Eastern India over many centuries. The Indus Valley people migrated further eastwards towards the Ganges River and the surrounding areas. This was a result of climatic changes in the Indus Valley like drying out of Saraswati River. The Ganges River is 2510 km long and its basin is one of the most fertile and densely populated regions in the world. Ganges covers an area of 400,000 square miles and flows through 29 cities with population 100,000 and 23 cities with population 50,000 to 100,000 and a further 48 towns. The people who migrated inwards towards the eastern part of India continued with the spiritualistic tradition started in the Indus Valley. They perfected the spiritualistic thinking and we saw the origin of religious texts like Upanishads that are supposed to be distilled thinking of all the Vedas. There were the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata born and they are supposed to be the sacred texts of Hinduism. Important Holy towns like Varanasi and Haridwar are on the banks of the River Ganges and it shows that religious growth occurred here in a tremendous way. The other important holy river called Yamuna is a major tributary of the river Ganges and was also centre to further religious growth. Doab region, where the Ganges and Yamuna flow, has been considered one of the most fertile areas in the subcontinent since ancient times. Some important historic towns have flourished here, including Kasi, Mathura and Ayodhya. The two latter towns were the backdrop for the Indian epic Ramayana and river Yamuna is also the seat of Lord Krishna who figures prominently in Mahabharata, the Hindu epic.

There were many kingdoms and states established in this region over a millennium and by about 6 century BC there were 16 major states in the northern third of the subcontinent, including 4 major ones called Kasi, Kosala, Magadha and Vriji. Magadha happened to be the kingdom where Siddhartha Gautama founded another big religion, Buddhism, around 600 BC. This only suggests that this region was a cauldron of spiritual thinking and growth for a long time, having spread from the Indus Valley 2-3 millennia before this (i.e. before origin of Buddhism around 600 BCE). One can reasonably assume that there was continuity in the process of religious growth that can be traced over a period of 2000 – 3000 years from the Indus Valley (Saraswathi) to the banks of Ganges and Yamuna.

During this growth of society, state-based political organization and rising population this region of the world had more sociological needs than anywhere else in the world. The first of the need was the order needed to keep the society intact. The demand for social order peaked in this landmass. This necessitated the people in this region come up with sociological tools like organized religion. This is the answer to the question I asked in the beginning: why it took so long for the organised religion to arise? Or, putting the question in another way, why was there no organised religion for 100,000s of years but suddenly in the last 5000 - 6000 years?

If you look at the Indian epics like Ramayana and Mahabaratha the main mythological characters are kings who are also having the status of Gods. There are priests who figure prominently in the stories. There are also characters who figure in these epics who are really Gods. Like the Greek mythology the Indian mythology also centres on real places and real kings who existed. The fact that the Indian epics were created in the ancient Eastern India, by people who had migrated from the Indus valley, had morals and values and God's word as the content means that these were really outcomes of religious growth that happened in this part of the world.

The prototype version of Hinduism was not based on temples and icons. It was instead based on 'ways of life', a comprehensive set of rules that promoted a good, orderly, socially responsible way of life. Deity worship that we see today is modern variations of the essential Hinduism that started 4000-5000 years ago. In fact, other major religions like Jainism (600 BCE), Buddhism (560-480 BCE) were variants of Hinduism that speciated in the same Indian subcontinent. Judaism, the forerunner of Christianity, started around 1500-1350BCE and the proper Christianity originated 2000 years ago. Taoism and Confucianism evolved around 600 BCE more or less around the time Buddhism was making its appearance. It is interesting that Buddhism has a wider following in China than even in India where it originated. Islam is a very late addition to the human religions and had its origin around 600 AD.

Other early evidence for practice of an organised religion may be said to exist in the Neolithic settlement of Catalhoyuk, in what is now Turkey, which was home to about 8000 people. 8000 people are a huge number for mankind which was just learning how to live in large groups. These people must have faced a big problem. They had to find ways of dealing with the challenge of interacting with far too many strangers and also the challenge of monitoring people's behaviour. James Mellart excavated this site and he believed that this site may have been the spiritual centre of Anatolia.

West Asia has always been the hub of many new religious ideas and has offered the setting for origin for many of the world's most popular religions. As said earlier, the earliest evidence for prehistoric religion in India dates back to the early Harappan period between 5,500 and 2,600 BCE. The Vedic texts of Hinduism are dated to 1,700 – 1,000BCE. Judaism is also stated to have originated in the Near East around 1,500 – 1,350BCE. Zoroastrianism, also originating in the Near East, dates back to about 600BCE. Jainism (600 – 550 BCE) and Buddhism (560 – 480 BCE) also found their origins in India. Christianity and Islam also had their origins in the Near East. Christianity preceded Islam by more than 600 years. Sikhism also is a late addition to the list of world religions and appeared in India in the 15th Century CE. The only other major religions that evolved outside India and Near East were Taoism and Confucianism finding their origins in China around 550 BCE.

It looks like the Near East was a 'cradle for religions' of the world in the last 5000 years. There has been a spate of religious discovery within a short span of time (compared to geological standards). Why?

It is something that needs a great deal of debate as to why this was so. What was the reason for this in human history? This is of equal importance as to analysing why Hinduism originated in the Indus Valley. The reason may be that the population density increased more in this region than others. You had the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Indus Valley Civilisations flourishing in this part of the world. The origin of agriculture in the Middle East led directly to the expansion of human group size in this region and therefore indirectly necessitating social order-generating mechanisms like political and religious units. Other regions in the world did not have the need for such mechanisms simply because the human society had not grown to this level of complexity as yet at that time point. The social order had to be generated by political leadership without doubt supplemented by religious leadership. The political leadership became a necessity in this part of the world at this time just as religious leadership. In fact, states born out of Neolithic revolution like in Egypt and Mesopotamia were theocracies with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles. They were trying to establish the authority of their political rule using religion use as a divine sanction for their rule.

To sum up, through the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, the population size in groups all over the world had waxed and waned. For various reasons like changing climate (ice ages for example which recurrently occurred in the last 2 million years), mass extinction of animals and the consequent lack of food, lack of sustainable source of food for his group beyond certain numbers (because agriculture and domestication of animals were not known yet) have all contributed to keeping the human group sizes small. Because the group sizes were small the primitive man never really was pushed to evolving more cognitive skills as they were not needed. At some point within the last ten to twenty thousand years ago the human group sizes broke free of the shackles. I guess the origin of agriculture, domestication of animals and invention of wheel may have all contributed equally. Even more important is the co-evolution of human brain that prepared him for meeting the demands placed on him for more effective interaction within the large group. The evolving brain provided the necessary hardware for all this to happen. The timing of the brain changes and the origin of human cognitive advances, including moral and religious thoughts, gelled nicely together. The genes responsible for brain size like _microcephalin_ gene and _ASPM_ gene had shown remarkable evolutionary selection that can be clocked to 37,000 and 5,800 years respectively. Both these genes made accelerated human cognitive advances possible. They, together with many other genes as we will see later, prepared the humans for the journey towards bigger human societies and the consequent social skills.

I believe this may be because of the way social dynamics works. It takes the right time and right place and the right mass of people to make big social changes possible. Religion was a big development in human history and it would be wrong to expect this to happen too soon. At the same time, having started, I would expect it to happen very fast from then on. This is almost like the scientific revolution we have seen and remember that it all happened within the last few hundred years!! If you look at the digital revolution it all happened within the last 50 years!!

Natalie Glance and Bernardo Huberman, at the Palo Alto Research Centre, have investigated social cooperation using both analytical techniques and computer simulations (Scientific American, May 94, ' _The dynamics of social dilemmas_ '). Their studies show that cooperation or defection in social groups can occur abruptly at or near a meta-stable state, where the group can remain for a long time before going either way. They believe that this explains certain real social phenomena, such as the recent upsurge in recycling, environmental awareness and activism. People may have started worrying about it a long time ago. As more information became available on the harmful effects of environmental degradation, it became easier for people to realise the benefits of environmental protection. Initially, it started as sporadic efforts here and there. Later on, as in other spheres of human activity, more and more people agreed to behave like others. Now, the momentum of environmental protection goal is such that countries are required by international treaties to comply with standards set by agencies. As elsewhere, countries have to do something about it as a matter of compulsion. No country is exempt. What started as a move to mutual benefit has ended as an order-generating mechanism that leaves little to your own freedom. If you look at Europe-wide legislations being passed on recycling it is difficult to believe that re-cycling was only viewed an optional do-good thing to conserve the scarce resources. Now European Parliament at Brussels decides what you would put in your waste bin and has the power to control your behaviour! In another instance, countries have agreed to limit technologies that liberate ozone-depleting chemicals and help reduce damage to our atmosphere in a set time frame. Every country has to agree to this goal. I suppose global warming and the international pressures to deal with carbon emissions come under this category as well. When James Lovelock proposed his 'Gaia' theory people dismissed him and respectable journals refused to publish his 'crazy' views. Over the years, and with more evidence, it is now in the realms of international policy and no more just an exotic scientific theory. What a change within 30 years!

The phenomenon of sudden synchronisation of social responses can also show in the way things fall apart. The fall of the Berlin wall, the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the escalation of events to world wars etc are such abrupt defections from prevailing social compacts. I feel that less people now believe in God than about 100 years ago. What was unthinkable even 50 years ago was to speak against God. **N** ow it has become so common for people to deny origin of life as an act of god. People question creationism. They question the need to pray. They question the role for God in the scientific society. Is this an indication that what took so many thousands of years to form will end in a short time of a few tens of years? I suppose it is unlikely that religion as we know it will end. It is likely that religions will play less influential roles in our society. But, that by itself is a very significant change when you compare the human history in the last 2000 years or so. There has been a close relationship between rulers and church in the history of Christianity for many hundred years. The situation still exists in the case of Islam. In a number of Muslim countries the ruling government is closely allied to their religion. Are we likely to see the course of events in the future where the Islamic countries will end the dominance of religion in their governance, similar to the way Christianity has changed?

The other argument I place to support the claim that religion was a necessary social invention is the fact that there have been other instances in the human history when man found the need for other major breakthroughs and succeeded. The three major such breakthroughs were agriculture/domestication of animals, the wheel and writing. Agriculture and domestication of animals started in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago when the human group sizes were exceeding the limits sustainable with hunting alone. So, agriculture led the way for continued expansion of human sizes. In the absence of this it is more than likely that our social group sizes would have been far less and probably this means that religion and political leadership may have been completely unnecessary.

The other example I would like to cite is the invention of wheel as a social transformer. According to archaeologists the wheel was invented in Asia around 8,000 BCE. The oldest wheel known, however, was discovered in Mesopotamia and dates back to 3,500 BCE. The wheel was also made by Sumerians and improved later by Egyptians and Ancient Indians. The point I am making is that as human group sizes expanded it became necessary for him to move across large distances. This may have been to transport themselves or goods. The need for this obviously arose in this part of the world because of expanding group sizes in human societies.

In short, religion to me was a social adaptation to the needs of the expanding human society much like agriculture, political leadership, and perhaps the wheel and writing. The driver for these adaptations was the human group size. It took a critical mass of humans in groups to make them a reality. With respect to religion, the topic of our discussion now, it took the conditions prevailing in the Indus Valley to make it happen and not anywhere else in the world. It is amazing that it took something like 7 million years for man since he split from the chimps to be able to do it!

# 4: Speciation of order-generating sociological tools: Religion and Law enforcement agencies

ARGUABLY, need for order generation within expanding human societies may have been the driver for origin of religion. But, we all know that order generation in modern societies is done through various other mechanisms also like law, police, court, political authority and various forms of rules and regulations at different levels. Order is not just what we need in the society as a whole. We need order in everything small and big in our daily lives. You will need to follow orders at your work place. You need order even in games that you play even though it is played just for fun. Even buying a drink from a local store means you have to stand in an orderly queue. Rules and regulations are all around you. They are solutions to order generation in your world.

It is claimed that religion has been selected for its survival advantage to the society as a cheap and effective way of bringing sense of fairness and justice in the lives of people. Fear of God and fear of punishment in this life, or afterlife, still continues to be useful for mitigation of bad behaviour from people. The _Karma_ that you accumulate, through your good and bad deeds, will reflect on your next birth says Hinduism. Egyptians thought they are going to be re-born and so worried about the next life probably more than they cared about what they are going to do in this life. Mythological stories have been handed out to us that depict deep-frying in oil for sinners. I suppose this is like the stories we tell to our kids that if they don't behave the bad man will take them. Man's conviction that some almighty power controlled their nature and this power can unleash punishment is as old as you can imagine. This fear is the capital on which our society has built the religious empires.

May be religion may have lost the pre-eminence in the last 50 years or so because of various reasons. The most important reason may be that scientific advances have exposed many myths about God. People have started thinking differently. They know that the rain, earthquake, floods etc have geological or physical causes. They need proof and evidence. The same way miracles do not seem to happen. Instead, we have seen scientific advances that can help us do things that would have looked like mother of all miracles for the ancient people. Why do you want miracles from God?

Of course majority of human population still have almost instinctual fear of wrong-doing. As we saw earlier our hard-wirings in the brain make us so. Order generation through other mechanisms like law and punishment has been accomplished by rulers for many centuries. They have the same purpose as religion but are more costly. Even rules and regulations governing any organisation are cost-intensive in terms of monitoring and implementing. Just an application for a credit card or a bank account comes with so much fine print. The fine prints are all the rules and regulations governing the account and many of them have legal consequences. In fact many of these conditions have a threatening tone to them that can worry us deeply. Banks obviously cannot rely on the customer's fear of punishment from God to repay the loan. They have to enforce this through other means. Similarly, the income tax department cannot trust the citizen to pay his taxes based on his religious conviction. You need the revenue enforcement bodies and their strict laws to milk the citizen to the last penny due. Crime monitoring and prevention is the role for police and the courts. However costly it is we still rely a lot on these enforcement mechanisms. If we had relied only on man's fear of God as a deterrent to crime I guess the world will be a crime-ridden place. The same can be said for many other types of things in our society. I am sure most of us will not be paying our tax in this life if the punishment is only going to be meted out to you only in your after-life if you see what I mean!

Neuro-physiological studies show that our brain is conditioned by stimuli. There is something called conditioned reflexes, which is well known in physiology. Pavlov, a famous Russian physiologist, had done his famous experiment to prove the existence of conditioned reflexes. He trained his dog to its meal times by ringing a bell followed by food. The dog quickly learnt to associate the ringing of the bell to the arrival of the food. I am sure most of us who have pets would have seen this daily in our own lives. What is interesting is that Pavlov showed that the dog started secreting digestive juices on hearing the bell, even before it had seen or eaten the food! This is the conditioned reflex.

Normally, the digestive juices get secreted in our stomach after we eat. In the case of the dog the secretion of digestive juice was shown in anticipation of food. The anticipation was entrained by the dog's association of bell with arrival of food. If a type of stimulus is followed by an event on a recurrent basis then our brain will be entrained. To be honest, even our body works a lot by such anticipatory preparation. All of us know about hunger pangs. What is it? We start feeling gripping pain in out tummies when we do not eat for a long time. These pangs are due to contractions of our intestine called peristalsis. Normally, with food arrival in our stomach, our stomach and intestines contract periodically to propel the food down the gut. This is a normal process to allow food to travel down the gut for digestion, absorption and secretion to take place. The truth is that our stomach and intestines start secreting digestive juices, and even start peristaltic movement, at exactly the same time if you have been regular in your meal times! This is conditioning. In fact, when you just see a delicious food your mouth starts watering. This is because your mouth starts secreting salivary juice in anticipation of the delicious food that will be arriving into your mouth soon.

What I am trying to convey is the point that our brain always works by association of stimuli. If two stimuli occur within a reasonably short time frame our brain will almost always associate these two stimuli and show entrainment. In other words our brain will show an anticipatory response. If a punishment is given shortly after a perceived wrong act then our brain will learn to avoid the wrong act in future. The strength of this association will be much stronger if this happens repeatedly. Similarly, a reward given in appreciation of a good work will be associated with one another and will encourage repetition of the good work.

Coming to our main subject of discussion, punishment by God, it is not something that happens like clockwork. The question here is not whether there is a God or not. The question is also not about whether the God will really punish. The point is that the so-called God's punishment is only an association man makes to the act of wrong-doing and the perceived punishment. Going by the explanation for our brain's conditioned reflexes we perceive any unpleasant event that occurs just after our perceived wrong-doing as being related. The truth is that they may be purely coincidental. But, our brain does not work that way. We also add weight to the perceived association by taking into account the experiences of other people around you. Just imagine that this has been happening for millennia. No wonder this was powerful influence on man's behaviour in the past.

Now in the modern world much of the happenings in your life are explained by factors other than God. An unpleasant act after your wrong act is explained away by a lot of other means. It is not always thought of as an act of God. Because we do not see any scientific basis to believe that God punished you. Moreover, the lack of temporal correlation between the events also makes it harder. There is a proverb in Tamil language that says 'The king punishes the same day but God is patient in punishment' meaning that the punishment from God will not come immediately. So, there is less effectiveness in order generation if people in the modern world keep seeing that there is no sign of any immediate punishment from God. Whereas police and other enforcement officials are not like God because they catch you immediately, of course if there is evidence. So, people fear your enforcement officers more than God. No wonder we need such forms of order generation too. What I am trying to say is that our mechanisms for order generation in our society have evolved too. We have at our disposal various solutions to the problem, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

In biological evolutionary arena a number of solutions emerge to face a problem related to survival. The fittest solutions survive. Invariably, the process of improvement happens over time with adaptation. If you consider a species as equivalent of a solution then you see divergence of species at some point in time. Newer species bring refinement to the biological solutions. Speciation of biological systems is a natural outcome.

Even religion itself has shown divergence into multiple forms over the last 2500 years or so. Hinduism, the world's first religion, has evolved further in the last 2500 years. Apart from its speciation into off shoots like Buddhism, Jainism etc even the traditional Hindu beliefs have changed. Buddhism as a 'religious species' has been far more successful than Jainism or Sikhism though all of them speciated from Hinduism. Buddhism has spread to China, Japan, Sri Lanka and many other countries while Jainism and Sikhism remained largely within India. Hinduism itself still is flourishing within India but innumerable deities have come to occupy the centre stage based on various mythologies. Hinduism has lost its original characteristic as a 'way of life' but has transformed into more of deity worship, countless rituals and sub-sects. The origins of other religious species like Christianity and Islam have made the religious ecosystem even more diverse. Thanks to sub-sects within each of these religions we have more 'sub-species of religions'. There are various other religions practiced elsewhere in the world but the point I am trying to focus is that all these reflect evolutionary changes in the religious landscape that helped people to adapt to local conditions. There are differences in some religious philosophies but many aspects are the same. People in different regions of the world needed to identify themselves as belonging to a large group and the religion was one answer. The religious leaders for the respective religions helped to forge a sense of leadership for the masses. They also showed the way for the common people how to lead their lives. The individual major religions and their sub-sects were adaptations to local conditions prevailing in the respective parts of the world.

However, some fundamental constants have never changed within religious teachings. They are the beliefs that God is there to protect and save. That God will punish. To me what is the most important aspect of spiritualism is not the type or name of God we believe in. It is not the traditional practices associated with the particular religion, like prayer, types of worship, places of worship, social sanctions etc. These things have evolved over time. They are purely a result of insinuations by people who decided at some point in history that this is the way to do it. I am not really interested in these practices. What I am interested in is the absolute constant in all religions which has not changed or will not change. Number one is the belief in a God or a supernatural being. Number two would be the belief that this being will protect and you have to ask for help through some sort of prayer or some sort of religious offering. Number three would be the belief that God is a big brother who can punish the wrong-doers and therefore one should always do good deeds.

Has man been content with only religion as a moral enforcement body? No. He has various other mechanisms like law, court, police etc. These punitive mechanisms were fundamentally different from the religions because there is only perceived punishment from God in the former whereas in the latter the punishment is real. The cost associated with non-religious order generating mechanisms is high but this has not deterred us from continuing with these tools. That by itself shows that they have been fit for purpose from an evolutionary perspective. They have been selected out of all possible solutions man may have tried over millennia. These moral enforcement agencies show no signs of dying out. Do we ever see any sign of these law enforcement agencies going out of vogue? In other words are we likely to see a society where there are no police and no courts? A society where there are no revenue enforcement agencies? They have perhaps survived as long as religions themselves. That is enough proof of the success of these moral enforcement 'species'.

Some time ago I said that religion may have lost its pre-eminence in the last 50 years ago. Does it mean that religion as a 'social species' will become extinct at some point in time? It could become an endangered species in some parts of the world but I do not think religion will ever be wiped out of human societies forever. There will always be severe competition between law enforcement bodies and religion in the ecological niche of morals and order. It is likely to be more of a 'symbiotic' relation between both rather than one of total extinction of the other.

There may be other mechanisms that may evolve in the future. We have to wait and see. As of now I am looking at media as a powerful tool already. People are so scared of becoming target of negative media stories. Newspapers and TV are looking for juicy stories all the time. You are likely to become the object of a story if you did something wrong. This is likely to have a very significant effect on your social esteem. People actually dread this. This is going to nullify lots of effort you may have put as an abider of social rules and customs. You may have to work uphill to remedy the damage done. In fact, such bad publicity is seen as something that tarnishes the reputation of the family as a whole and not just the person concerned. This is interesting. As I said before most of the times we build an image of ourselves in the eyes of the society. We go to significant extent to advertise our intentions and also actions. In fact, religious rituals are purposely made very elaborate to make it possible for their followers to publicize that they are conformers. The reputation of the individual is tied to the reputation of the family members also. Kinship plays a role in building the image of the family in the eyes of the society.

The only scenario where I can see religion and other social enforcement agencies becoming extinct is when human society itself becomes barbaric and primitive again. Or, it could happen when the sizes of the human societies become very small like in the primitive times. When can such a thing happen where man will revert to primitive group sizes? May be during climatic upheavals like ice ages, global famines, or cosmic events like big-time meteorite impacts, or man-made events like nuclear holocausts, etc. The odds of these events happening are very low. When they happen you are likely to see it.

Even in today's world there are primitive people living in remote corners of the world totally isolated from modernity. These people even today have no need for big religions and moral enforcement bodies. A village head will settle all disputes. Rituals and sacrifices will be seen but will be largely local. Kin-based tolerance is enough to maintain order but these tribal groups still demonstrate strong sense of territorialism. They fight bitterly any intruders that come into their hunting ground, no different from our ancient past.

We see emergence of spiritual leaders, bogus or genuine, from time to time in many parts of the world. Ordinary citizens of the world take refuge in them and seek solutions to their personal problems. In India, such so-called religious gurus are quite common. In most cases they are bogus and we all know it. But, you would not believe very well educated, rich people going to them in search of mental peace. They pay a lot of money instead of sacrifices. Quite often, such fake gurus make millions. Some fake gurus deliberately start their ashrams with a view to becoming rich! To make it easy for them to succeed these fake guys start discovering their own spiritual philosophies which are usually non-sense. But, our history tells us that they have been not too infrequent. Would you call them as religious off-shoots? I would not. Because these half-baked religious thinking do not survive the test of time. They do not survive because they do not offer any value for survival. It is like a badly manufactured industrial product that will not survive the test of time. It is like a biological species that has no fitness to survive.

In the case of religion we have a choice – to conform or not to conform. You cannot be blamed for being a non-believer in religion and God. This may be looked at as something bad in the past but certainly not now. To be honest, no body these days despises an individual just because he or she is a non-believer. It is even looked at as a personal liberty.

Can you do the same for other moral enforcement systems? Can you tell the police that you are a non-believer in police and therefore should be released? You cannot avoid the rules of your work place saying you do not believe in them. Imagine playing a game with your friends where you do what you want while all others are playing to a set of rules. Do you see the point? Other than religion all other order-generators are not optional. You have no choice.

Perhaps, the evolution of order generation systems has led to non-negotiable mechanisms. This non-negotiability was the advantage that added to the survival value. This is the big difference between religion and other systems.

If you look closely, even within religion, there is a lot of non-negotiability. It may be your choice if you do not want to be a religious follower. But, if you chose to follow a religion then you have to conform to the doctrines of the chosen religion. You may not be allowed to eat meat, may not be allowed to marry, may not be allowed to change the rituals etc.

I guess, over the millennia, a lot of anatomic and genetic changes have taken place in the human brain that will guarantee social compliance. You may not need any further big leaps. Man will be a social animal always. Then how come we see so much unrest within countries and so many wars between countries? It is completely wrong to assume that it was all rosy in the past. Since the days of tribalism thousands of years ago warfare and inter-group rivalry was unavoidable. Does it mean man is really not a social animal? Has thousands of years of human evolution been a waste? Have they achieved anything at all to assure social order? These are difficult questions.

One could say that 4000 – 5000 years of city-dwelling is not enough time for man to find the perfect solution to harmonious living in big groups. He has tried and found many solutions but they probably are not enough. A lot has happened within too short a time. 4000 - 5000 years is nothing in geological history. Even if you want to push the time a little back and go to perhaps 10,000 years still it is nothing when you compare the geological time frames. This makes me wonder if we will see more adaptation by man through other mechanisms or by more refinement of the existing methods. I may not live to see this happen nor will you.

The only other option is to reduce the human population size. This may be a more viable solution. Limitations of resources, constraints induced by diseases, warfare etc may push the human population to manageable proportions. This may remove the selection pressures man is facing for order generation.

# 5: Human brain gene changes and improved cognition as the basis of social adaptation and religiosity

IT IS NOW that human brain has advanced by leaps and bounds so much that even the closest organism is a very distant second. It is no secret that human behaviours and cognitive functions are rooted in neuro-anatomical organisation, brain neuro-genetics and neurochemistry. We are now beginning to realise that a lot of human behaviours thought previously to be related to upbringing and nurture are indeed genetically determined. Man's ability for language, music, art, reasoning, altruism is now known to be determined by brain genes and anatomy. The question I want to raise is whether the unique human trait of religiosity is also genetically determined.

I am going to explore the current knowledge of human evolution spanning last few hundred thousand years. What do we know about the evolutionary changes in the human brain in terms of neuro-anatomic changes as well as improved genetic capabilities? Do these changes correlate with improved cognition? Do they correlate with his spiritual behaviours? Let us find out.

Very interestingly, some recent scientific studies led by Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago, reported in _Science j_ ournal (Ref: _Are human brains still evolving? Brain genes show signs of selection. Science,_ vol 309, 1662-1663) suggest that the evolution of human brain may not have stopped yet. Instead, it may still be evolving. Lahn's group had earlier shown that two brain-related genes called _microcephalin_ and _ASPM_ have undergone strong natural selection since the chimp-human split, implicating both these genes in the dramatic brain expansion enjoyed by our ancestors. _Microcephalin_ is an interesting gene. In babies born with the medical condition called 'microcephaly' this particular gene is non-functional. 'Microcephaly' literally means 'small brain'. So, there is a rationale for associating brain size with the _microcephalin_ gene. That is why the finding by Lahn's group that _microcephalin_ gene is undergoing beneficial mutations in humans over time, suggests that these mutations could have been responsible for the increasing brain size seen in humans over the years.

The brain size of modern humans is typically about 1400 cm3, almost twice that of a chimpanzee or gorilla. Over the past 2 million years human brain size has tripled. David Geary and researchers at the University of Missouri collected data from 153 hominid skulls from the past 2 million years. They examined the locations where these skulls were found and the climate that must have prevailed at the time the fossil was dated and also the population density in the areas where these skulls were found. Their conclusion was that the population density had the biggest effect on skull size. When humans had to compete for necessities and social status bigger brains provided an advantage. As said before the demands placed on man living in larger group sizes were manifold.

Apart from the brain size it is now well known that neuronal connections in humans are far denser and they also have a more prominent frontal lobe. Man's cognitive abilities increased because of increased neuronal circuitry and the consequent processing power. The first known human species, _Homo habilis_ , appeared in east Africa by about 2.4 million years ago. They were the first to make and use stone tools. The making and use of stone tools required more brainpower that put more evolutionary selection pressure on brain size at this point in human history. Though it is easy to imagine that a progressive increase in brain size would have been even better but there were some natural limitations to the brain size. First of all a larger brain needs a larger skull. This would make child birth a very difficult process because that would demand a wider pelvis for the woman. The wider pelvis would make bipedalism a bit more difficult and make running a difficult task. Moreover, the brain is basically an electrical organ. It generates heat during its function. Also, we should not forget that the earliest man was living in hot Africa. The brain needs active cooling to enable its function. Anatomical mechanisms in our brain make this possible. Too much increase in brain and the skull size would have put energy constraints on our metabolism. This is why the increase in brain size was not naturally selected beyond what we have today.

Another group led by Dorus et al studied 214 genes involved in humans, macaques, rats and mice. When the mutation rates of these genes in these organisms were analysed it was noticed that the human brain's genes had gone through an intense amount of mutations in a short period of time. These mutations presumably played a role in evolution of human cognitive abilities.

Lahn's group have looked for evidence that selection of some specific types of mutations in the two genes ( _microcephalin and ASPM_ ) would have conferred improved cognitive abilities since the rise of humans 200,000 years ago. They sequenced the DNA of diverse human populations, i.e. people of different races living in different geographical regions, and found that certain type of gene mutations in these two genes seemed to be more common than could be accounted for by the previous estimates of natural mutation rates. This would mean that there is natural selection of these mutations for their advantageous effects on brain function. Positive selection means that one or two variants of mutated genes get preferentially passed onto off springs. Or, looking at it from the other way those people with these types of gene variants have survival advantage and therefore have better chances of successful reproduction to be able to pass on these gene variants down the generations.

I can only use an analogy here to explain the positive selection concept better. Just look at technological advances in our society. We have numerous gadgets and tools like cars, radio, TV, computers, cameras, phones and what not. You can look at each type of gadget as if they were a 'gene'. One normally sees companies producing their own versions of each of these products. There may be a hundred companies making different types of cameras and another hundred that makes different types of phones etc. Some of these products sell better than others. Why? Because these versions of the products had some improvement in structure or function over others and so more people bought them. The result was that the company that made these improved versions of the products got the economic advantages to stay in business and obviously continue to make more of the improved versions of the concerned product. We have to note here that technological improvement is a relative term. What was considered as a remarkable advance in 1960s wouldn't even be in existence today on the market! Instead, what you would find is an even more improved version of it. So companies are continuously on the lookout for opportunities to make improvements in the products. The company that can produce improved versions of gadgets will win the market. The genes in our body also undergo continuous improvements as a result of random mutations. Some of these random mutations confer improved function. And the people who have such beneficial mutations reproduce successfully and pass on these gene variants to their off springs and at some time point you find almost all people would have them.

Lahn's team worked out, based on the known mutation rates in these genes that the most favoured type of gene mutations (i.e. the type of gene mutation seen most races) in the _microcephalin_ gene clocked in at 37 000 years ago which is roughly the time of the explosion of symbolic behaviour in European humans. The favoured gene mutations in _ASPM_ gene arose 5800 years ago just before cities arose in the Near East. What a remarkable coincidence? Though these findings are subject to different interpretations there is a strong indication that the pieces seem to fit so nicely in favour of a link between gene changes in the brain and the rather sudden onset of cognitive behaviours in the humans that lived within the last 50,000 years.

The evolving brain of the human species is the biggest factor that has made man so successful. The crucial evolutionary changes in the human brain determined the improved cognitive abilities not present even in other closely related species. Also important is the origin of religious and spiritual feelings in human behavioural repertoire.

Religiosity is increasingly looked at as a social adaptation to huge group sizes. It was a necessity. Humans beginning to live in large groups needed to understand others, live with strangers, know how to be tolerant, know how to be kind, know to help and know how not to harm others. We all know that all these qualities are preached by most forms of religion. These social qualities became enshrined as religious dogma. If you look at the teachings of all forms of religion one striking thing about them is the emphasis placed on being good. All religions abhor bad behaviour. What do we mean by good and bad? Being good and bad refers to the bigger scheme of things in terms of the whole society. Anything harmful to society is bad and anything that is beneficial for the society is good. In other words, it relates to the common good over and above what is good for the individual person. Hinduism refers to this common good as _Dharma_. _Dharma_ refers to the right and wrong from a systemic point of view. The beneficiary of good _Dharma_ is the whole system, in this case the society, whereas the beneficiary of selfish behaviour is the individual only. Hinduism repeatedly stresses _Dharma_ as if it should be the guiding principle in our lives. I suppose all forms of humanitarian behaviour will be appreciated by us simply because they are good for the society. Religions tend to encourage such humanitarian behaviour.

What does it to take for man to be aware of his place in the bigger scheme of things? What did he need to advance himself and his society so that the world will be a better place to live?

It is like the technology, consumer and the market. Until 60 years ago we did not have the technology for computers or even TV. Until 30 years we did not have the technology for Internet. Until 20 years ago we did not have the technology for mobile phones. In other words, we had to wait for the advent of technological improvements before we can become capable of making and using such gadgets. If man wanted to speak 50,000 years ago perhaps he could not. This was because the 'neuro-anatomic technology' needed for speech was not yet there in our brain. Brain had not yet evolved this 'biological technology'. Similarly, if man wanted to make a superior tool for hunting then this technology was not available until a certain time point until the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. His brain lacked the processing power and there was also a limitation in terms of finding the right material and method for making them. He even did not have the brain technology for a number of other tasks which we take for granted now like music, arts etc.

Over time, especially in the last 50,000 years, man has made rapid progress in terms of his biological evolution. Last 10,000 years he has made huge progress in his social evolution. To be honest a lot of his biological evolution was necessary precursor to his social changes. What I am doing is to trace the genetic changes that happened in the human brain in the last few tens of thousands of years, as part of his biological evolution, which made improved cognition possible, indirectly enabling human social adaptations including religiosity.

Why did man start feeling religious? We asked the same question in the very beginning. For the serious religious believer this question is likely to provoke a sense of anger because it is like saying religion is a man-made product and not of divine origin. For the secular ones the question is like any other scientific question. Rational explanations are sought here. What did it take for man to become religious? I mean what kind of 'biological' and 'social' adaptation did he require for this? Recent research on the origins of religiosity have shown that there is clear evidence for some sort of genetic and neuro-anatomic changes in the human brain that may be responsible for this. It is something similar to advent of right kinds of technology for making something happen. You had to have the need for a technology in the first place. I tried to explain this need for social order in the previous chapters. Now I will try to trace the origins of the 'technology' that made religiosity possible.

What I am going to do in this chapter is to try and explore the genetic and anatomic changes in the human brain that led to alterations in the brain function mentioned in the previous paragraph. I am going to start with cognition. I will come to religiosity later in this chapter and there is recent evidence has shown that there is a strong relation between both. What I want to show is that origin of changes in some genes and molecules in human brain played big roles in mediation of these behaviours – cognition and religiosity. I will discuss first some genes known to be connected with size of the brain, language and go on to the biochemical neurotransmitters that control vital human emotions. What I will show is these molecular changes have occurred over time but the fixation of these new molecular traits coincide with the time points man made leaps in the cognitive space and also in to the spiritual space.

It has now been accepted that cognitive abilities and personality development in humans have a strong genetic component **.** Interestingly, a correlation has been well established between brain size and cognitive abilities. Human brain is in its own league. The closest relative of humans, the chimps, has a brain that is no match to that of humans. Human brain size has been progressively increasing since the ancestral primates originated 60-70 million years ago. Especially the past 2-3 million years has been the best for us. Human brain has expanded in size in a burst during this period. The _A. afarensis_ skull is estimated at 400 cc, which is only the size of the chimp's brain. The _Homo habilis_ , which lived around 2 million years ago, had a skull that was about 750 cc. Early _Homo erectus_ specimens found in Africa (1.7 to 1 million years ago) are found to be about 900 cc while the _Homo erectus_ skull from a later age (0.5 million years ago) is around 1200 cc and as said earlier the modern human skull is 1400 cc. Even the earliest forms of _Homo sapiens_ species, which lived 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, had a brain size a bit lower than the modern _Homo sapiens_.

If you look at the computer evolution over the years, interestingly, computer sizes have dramatically fallen. Computers in the 1960s are said to be so big as to fill an over-sized room. Their processing power was only marginally better than a calculator. With modern computers the increase in the number of transistors has done the trick. There was no need to increase the size of the computer to make it more powerful. With existing size and processing power of the PCs one can do wonders now. Wouldn't be advantageous to make supercomputers in greater numbers than what we see today? Yes, it would. But, the cost will be prohibitive even for big corporations let alone the general user. The alternative is to link up the computers in a network. Who needs to elaborate on the wonders of computer networks like Internet, World Wide Web etc?

I feel the evolving brain in the _Homo_ lineage, especially the _Homo sapiens_ , found the trick in increasing the connectivity of neurons rather than increase the size of the individual neuron, or the brain as a whole. On top of this man has increased the power of his brain by 'networking' with other brains. How does he do that? That is what we do day in and day out in our lives today. We interact with tens and hundreds of others. Exchange of knowledge is happening all the time. Sharing of knowledge helps to pool the human brain power. When more human minds work on a problem the output is like a supercomputer. There has been no turning back since. Language and writing were pre-requirements for this sharing of information.

It has been claimed before that the size of the frontal cortex enabled man to plan better, organise better and behave more sociably. But an interesting study (Nature Neuroscience, vol 5, no 3, 2002) by Semendeferi and colleagues at the Department of Anthropology at University of California, San Diego, using magnetic resonance scans on humans, monkeys and apes has cast doubt on this idea. This study compared the proportion of the neocortex that is made up of the frontal lobes in these primates. The values were more or less similar for the apes and monkeys. But, the frontal lobes formed a smaller proportion of the neocortex in the lesser apes (gibbons) and monkeys. The conclusion from the study was that a possible great ape/human specialisation with regard to an enlarged frontal cortex may set larger hominoids apart from other anthropoid primates. In simple terms, the brain evolution in the lineage leading up to man must have happened in an incremental fashion and that is why one may find some evidence of behavioural characteristics and intelligence even in these apes. If one looks at the absolute size of the frontal cortex (and not just the proportion in relation to the neocortex size) in these animals the humans do really have the largest frontal cortex. It has been argued that the intelligence may be critically dependant upon the absolute amount of brain tissue above that accounted for by the relation between brain size and body size. In fact, the human neocortex itself is 3 times as large as expected for a primate matched for body size. It can still be argued that such absolute differences in size will have a functional value.

Our brain is compartmentalised in terms of structure and function. Distinct anatomical areas within the brain help mediate the various abilities we possess including vision, speech, hearing etc. Speech ability is a distinct human trait that enabled the human race to deal with the rising numbers of people in the human society. There was a need to communicate with fellow members. All forms of life forms have some sort of communication abilities that help them to exchange information. Lower life forms use more of chemical signals whereas the higher life forms use other mechanisms. Primates use gestures and grunts to communicate basic ideas but were inadequate to communicate complex information. As man became more civilised the need for establishing social rules, cooperation, learning specialised crafts etc demanded a language to encode complex information. Speech, therefore, could be thought of as an evolutionary adaptation to man's social evolution.

But, it is unlikely that man's brain evolved speech centres almost overnight from scratch. Just as in the case of all biological abilities the process of evolution is a slow one. It starts at some time point in the evolutionary continuum and undergoes a gradual process of change, punctuated by periods of rapid changes as well as periods of dormancy. I suppose the nature of genetic mutations determine the speed with which the evolutionary change happens. Talking about speech ability the natural question is whether the brains of other animals, particularly the closest relatives of man, have the brain changes that would have supported the speech and language ability.

Broca's area is a small part of the human brain in the frontal cortex that is concerned with speech production. Brodmann's area 44 is part of this Broca's area. This area is larger in left hemisphere of the human brain than in the right. This asymmetry has been correlated with language dominance. One could argue that this could determine the superiority of man in this discipline. But, Claudio Cantalupo at the Emory University, Georgia, reported in Nature (vol 414, 2001, p 505) that this type of asymmetry can also be seen in the three great ape species _Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes_ , and _Gorilla gorilla_. This finding was interpreted as evidence that brain changes that led to left hemisphere dominance in speech production started at least 5 million years ago and were not unique to hominid evolution. The authors state that asymmetry in area 44 may be associated with the production of gestures accompanied by vocalisations in great apes. This ability may have selected for the development of speech in modern humans by means of more cortical changes and expansion of Brodmann's area 45 in the human brain. Another interesting point about the left hemisphere dominance in speech production and vocalisation is that the left hemisphere also determines the right-handedness of individuals. Captive apes have been noted to make right-handed gesturing and therefore the left hemisphere could be controlling the communication process more than the right hemisphere.

Wernicke's posterior receptive language area in the temporal lobe of the brain is another anatomical region of interest when it comes to understanding the origins of speech and communication abilities of man that would stand him in good stead in his march towards urbanisation. A particular component in this brain area (called the _plenum temporale_ ) is implicated in both spoken and gestural human communication as well as musical ability. Interestingly, this brain part also shows the left hemisphere dominance. Even chimpanzees, as well as _H. habilis, H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis_ , show this asymmetrical plenum temporale pattern. Then what determines the superiority of man in this capability? It has been reported that the dimensions of the vertical columns of neurons in this part of the brain is bigger in humans than in chimpanzees. This could confer a functional advantage to the humans.

Similarly, another area in the brain called the area 19 in the prefrontal cortex subserves the higher cognitive functions such as the undertaking of initiatives and the planning of future actions. Very interestingly, the area 10 can also be demonstrated in chimpanzee, bonobo, orang-utan and gibbon brains! This could be taken to mean that the brain precursors for these behaviours like taking initiatives and future planning evolved earlier in the evolutionary process and probably reached perfection in man. As with speech and language abilities these other human qualities have been fruits of continuous adaptations in the human brain. As said a short while ago, there are some differences in the organisation of area 10 that can be made out using imaging techniques. These differences could be in the form of width of the cortical neuron layers and the space available for making connections with other neurons. The area 10 in the human brain is also larger relative to the rest of the brain in the apes suggesting that this part of the cortex became specialised during hominid evolution.

Now the important question we need to answer is what determined the differences in the evolution of the brains of different animals, particularly the higher primates. This includes of course the relative increase in overall brain size as well as distinctive differences in some localised parts of the brain that were to lead to emergence of human cognitive capacities. It is no secret that evolution of all biological traits ultimately depends on mutations in the respective genes controlling those traits. It is to be noted that many of these biological traits may be determined by more than one gene. Most certainly, cognitive traits in higher animals are more than likely to be determined by a number of different genes in the brain. Mutations in these genes may happen at different rates. The types of mutations also may be different. Mutations in some of these genes may produce a smaller effect than those in other genes. However, the additive effect of all mutations over time can be expected to confer a cumulative advantage. Selection pressures also come into operation by the prevailing environmental conditions and certain mutation types in some genes get selected for the survival advantage they provide. The intensity of selection and heritability determine how important the effects of the genetic mutations are going to be on biological traits.

As our interest is evolution of human cognitive function let us now concentrate on the genes that may have played a role here. The best way to find that out is to make a comparative study of the gene expression patterns in the brain regions of different higher primates.

Comparative genetics is perhaps as useful as comparative anatomy. The humans and their closes relatives such as chimpanzees are 98.7% identical when you compare their genomic DNA sequences. But, the differences in their behavioural and cognitive abilities are huge. Wolfgang Enard and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute, Germany, studied the protein and gene expression patterns in humans, chimpanzees, orangutans and macaques as well as three mouse species that are as related to each as other as humans are to chimpanzees, orangutans and macaques. They studied the gene expression patterns in their blood cells, liver and brain. The reasoning behind this was to see if the gene expression differences are any more different in the brain as opposed to non-brain tissues. The extent of gene expression change on the lineage leading to the chimpanzees and the humans are equal in the blood cells and about 1.3 fold different in the liver tissue. But, the gene expression pattern in the brain cortex (particularly Brodmann area 9 in left prefrontal lobe) is about 5.5 fold different in the lineage leading to humans!

As said earlier, this part of the brain controls some of the vital human traits like initiative and planning. This relative acceleration in brain gene expression differences may have determined the evolution of cognitive traits in humans that are less developed even in the closest genetic relatives to us. There must have been some sort of selection pressures that must have operated to explain this. The fact that the gene expression patterns in blood cells and liver have not undergone any substantial differences between chimpanzees, macaques and humans means that such selection pressures were not operational with regards to these organs. The brain, and the demands for improved cognition, had to evolve faster perhaps due to the pressures placed on man for making better tools, find better means of communication and find better ways of cooperating with fellow human beings. As said earlier this selection pressure on human brain may not have stopped yet and may be continuing!

The work by Enard and colleagues actually looked at the gene expression patterns in the prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 9) en masse. There was no attempt to specifically identify any particular genes. Obviously, it adds value to our understanding if we can say the evolutionary changes in genes x, y and z are the ones responsible for the human cognitive traits. Various groups of scientists have addressed this issue and we are now having glimpses into a list of possible candidate genes that may have propelled man into the unchartered territories of knowledge and power.

Mario Caceres and colleagues at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, Emory University and the UCLA, have gone one step further and analysed the differential expression patterns of specified genes in the human and other primate brains. They reported (PNAS, VOL.100, No.22, 2003) that at least 91 genes were expressed more in the human cortex than in non-human primates. Typically, these genes were expressed more in humans. They seem to be those concerned with synaptic transmission and axonal transport as well as energy metabolism of neurons. As the size of the brain increased the energy requirements of the human brain increased and may have been a limiting factor, along with others, to the maximum size it can achieve. One particular gene called _CA2_ is expressed in glial cells and is said to be involved in generation and transport of lactate as an energy source. Lactate is produced in glucose metabolism under conditions where there is not enough oxygen (anaerobic). The brain cells are particularly dependant on oxygen for its function, much more so than other organs. They are also dependant on glucose as the primary energy source. The brain is not able to use other alternative energy sources, which other organs in the body can. Therefore, any improvements in energy utilisation, which allows the brain to use an alternate energy source, would be a welcome advantage. Lactate is a by-product of glucose metabolism under anaerobic conditions. It can be used to regenerate glucose by a process called gluconeogenesis, which a number of tissues in our body can achieve. The _CA2_ gene perhaps gives that capacity to our brains and may have offered that ability for the evolving brain to ensure alternate energy sources for continued function. People who have mutations in this gene end up with Marble brain disease, which is usually associated with mental retardation.

A gene called _CAMK2A_ is said to be involved with learning and memory and is over-expressed in human brains. Glutamate is an important neurotransmitter in our brains and some of the genes expressed highly in human brains, such as _SYN47_ and _CAMK2A_ are found to play roles in improved control of glutamate-mediated transmission of nerve signals at the synaptic junctions. One can imagine that these genes could determine at least some of the differences in brain function that we see in humans.

Paleoanthropologists at the Max Planck Institute, Germany, led by Dr. Svante Pabbo, have done a remarkable job by sequencing the genome of Neanderthal humans. The source of DNA was obtained from Neanderthal remains dating back to nearly 40,000 years ago. The objective of this piece of interesting research was to compare the DNA sequences of modern humans with that of Neanderthals in order to identify any crucial differences that may have led to superior skills of later humans. This is no different from the earlier comparative approaches used by various investigators in the past. So far, these comparisons have been between modern humans and the other primates largely. Findings from such comparisons tell us what happened hundreds of thousands of years ago but not what happened to our most recent relatives. The common lineage between Neanderthals and _Homo sapiens_ split somewhere around 500,000 years ago. After this split the Neanderthals lived for about 400,000 years in Europe and West Asia and became extinct only about 30,000 years ago. What drove them to extinction is still debated. It could have been climatic changes or failure to adapt to climatic changes as well as _Homo sapiens_. Or, it could have been due to the _Homo sapiens_ themselves who invaded regions previously occupied by Neanderthals and overcame them. It is also said that the Neanderthals and _H. sapiens_ may have lived together for a long time on our planet before the extinction. It is said that they may have co-existed for about 12,000 years before their extinction and there are reasons to believe that they may have even inter-bred! So, there must have been a progressive evolution of the brains of Neanderthals and _H. sapiens_ over time until the former ceased to exist. By analysing the genes of the Neanderthals who lived about 40,000 years ago we are more likely to get some very interesting and vital information about the type of gene changes that led to the explosive cognitive evolution of modern humans. Based on the preliminary analysis of the gene sequencing data there is evidence to believe that the Neanderthals had the same version of the 'language gene', _FOXP2_! This suggests that the Neanderthals probably had the ability to talk like us. We have to wait and see what other genes involved in our cognitive functions were similar between us.

One way of finding out which are the most relevant genes controlling brain function is to find out the genes that are mutated in people with brain disorders. There are various types of brain disorders ranging from minor psychiatric illnesses to malformed brain. Many neurological diseases result due to impairments in the brain function due to structural or molecular defects. Mental retardation can result due to a number of causes and the functional outcome is lack of intelligence, depriving the individual of that primary human quality. People born with autism and attention deficit disorders have problems with social skills and may not be best equipped to live in an organised society, again a truly human trait. Dyslexics have problems with the language ability and we have already discussed the genetic and evolutionary adaptations that may have given man this unique ability. Robert Hill and Christopher Walsh, at the Harvard Medical School, wrote in the _Nature_ journal (vol 437, 2005, p64-67) that studying the genes responsible for these neurological disorders in man could provide us with insights in to our own recent evolutionary history. I feel that people born with mutations in these critical genes take the concerned people back in evolutionary history. It is almost like turning the clock, a process that can possible be called devolution. Such people actually are no different from members of the human lineage that existed tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago. A person with mental retardation is like a man who has taken a time machine and went back in time perhaps to Stone Age times. It does not matter what the cause was for the retardation in the growth of the brain but the effect will be the same. One or more cognitive functions of the brain are lost and the patient is unable to function like normal people. The deficiency in the higher functions of the brain is viewed today as pathological but for a human being living tens of thousands of years ago this would have been normal.

Studies in such people can show specific genes to be mutated and one can build a case for an association for that type of brain disorder and the mutated gene. Microcephaly is the medical condition where the size of the brain is grossly reduced. It literally means a microbrain. I referred earlier to the gene called _microcephalin_ that is believed to have been responsible for the increasing brain size in modern humans. The finding of mutated _microcephalin_ genes in children born with microcephaly led investigators to link the gene to brain size and the valid assumption that this gene may have been responsible over time for the increase in brain size man has enjoyed evolutionarily. As said earlier, a strong correlation has been found between brain size and cognitive abilities and therefore the _microcephalin_ gene may have played a crucial role in the evolution of man's abilities to think. Humans born with defects in Microcephalin gene, thereby ending up with small brain, are like living fossils. They take us right back to the pre-historic times when human brain was no bigger than perhaps Apes.

Similarly, the gene _FOXP2 (_ forkhead box P2) has been found to be mutated in people with speech and language disorder. These patients rewind the clock back at least 50,000 years, possibly 200,000 years if not more. Not only these patients prove the point that gene changes in brain underlie big cognitive improvements but also the point that speech and language are so critical for group living. People with speech disorders would find the incapacity disabling to see the least. Naturally, one tends to postulate an association between the _FOXP2_ gene and the speech ability and naturally pose the question whether the mutations in this gene may have led to man's unique speech and language ability over time. A lot of work has already been towards this direction and very interesting results have been generated. _FOXP2_ gene codes for a protein which functions as a transcription factor. Transcription factors are proteins that help in the process of decoding other genes. So the product of the _FOXP2_ gene does not have a direct effect on speech-related functions but bring about a series of actions possibly by facilitating the decoding of other genes involved in this process. In reality, it is possible that a number of genes may depend on _FOXP2_. As one may expect _FOXP2_ gene can be found in other species related to man. There are some differences in the gene sequence of this gene in humans as compared to gorillas and chimps that may explain why we are better in speech. Variations in this gene has been extensively analysed and the conclusion is that natural selection may have been responsible for these variations. Very interestingly, the timing of the fixation of the main differences in this gene is around 200,000 years ago, an intriguing correlation with the estimated age of _H. sapiens_! Does it mean that timing of selection and fixation of the critical mutations in _FOXP2_ gene was due to some sort of selection pressure in the evolution of human societies that required man to be a better communicator than his predecessors? Would it be the rising group size of humans? Would it be the rise in the numbers of groups in a given region? Would it be the ability to make better tools and the need to learn new skills by exchange of information?

_AHI1_ is a gene expressed in our brains. Its task is to help bridge the cortical neurons to the spinal cord. This gene seems to have undergone subtler changes between primate species suggesting positive evolutionary selection in the lineage leading to humans. As we know the spinal cord conducts neural impulses bi-directionally. It carries sensory signals coming from various nerves supplying the limbs and the rest of the body to the brain. It also carries the information transmitted by the brain control centres to the body organs, including the limbs. So, our body coordination and gait depends on the proper conduction of impulses along these pathways. If _AHI1_ is mutated the patients not only have problems in gait but also symptoms characteristic of autism, such as antisocial behaviour. An autosomal recessive brain disorder called _Joubert syndrome_ has been shown to be due to mutations in _AHI1_ gene in humans. There is abnormal cerebellar development in such people. The parts of the cerebellum that connects to the cerebrum and thalamus are absent. These people have cognitive difficulties and autistic behaviours as well as motor clumsiness. Why would one expect cognitive difficulties and other higher mental functions in people with cerebellar defects?

Cerebellum is known to be primarily associated with our body coordination while in movement. But, evolutionarily speaking, it reciprocally evolved with the neocortex. Recent neuro-anatomical studies and imaging observations have shown that the cerebellum plays roles in many human cognitive functions. The cerebellum can be shown to have reciprocal connections with each of the major neocortical regions thought to have changed in the course of human cognitive evolution. In modern humans the size of the cerebellum is largest relative to the rest of the brain than in late Pleistocene humans, including Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon 1. In the A _ustralopithecines_ and early members of the genus _Homo_ , the cerebral hemispheres were large in proportion to the cerebellum, compared with other hominoids. Apes have larger cerebellums than monkeys indicating that there was a specific selection for an increase in cerebellar volume at one or more points in primate evolution. The cerebellum has also been implicated in motor planning. Unlike humans and chimps, the baboons lack the ability to modify current movements based on awareness of movements to follow. Therefore, by having larger cerebellums, the apes are better than monkeys in the cognitive department.

One cannot discount the influence of bi-pedalism and the increasing need for hand-eye coordination in tool making, art and music as selection pressures in the evolution of cerebellum in humans and other species. The increase in size of the brain in the path towards humans was not just localised to frontal cortex but to cerebellum as well. Improved motor control was evidently required more as humans became bipedal and also as they started using their hands for making fine tools. Even simple stone tool production recruits the cerebellum as well as sensory-motor and superior parietal association areas of the neocortex. One needs to judge the velocity of moving stimuli and have a sense of the spatial orientation of objects while making as well as using tools. If one looks at the archaeological evidence at the early or transitional Upper Paleolithic sites we do not find technologies like bows, armatures, weirs, loom weights and eyed needles. But, these are commonly found later at the Later Upper Paleolithic sites. Humans living during this period faced the demand for increasing cognitive skills as social and cultural complexity increased. Late Pleistocene Neanderthals and early modern humans may have particularly faced this challenge. Neocortical expansion that happened during this time may have helped solve these challenges but at some point the size of the neocortex, or the brain as a whole, could not go on forever. There were limitations to the extent the sizes of the neocortex or the brain as a whole can grow.

Anne Weaver at the Santa Fe Community college, New Mexico, thinks that the secondary expansion of the cerebellum observed in Holocene humans would have streamlined the neocortical networking (PNAS, VOL 102, NO 10, 2005) and helped to transfer some amount of the information processing responsibilities to the cerebellar neurons. This is why we see patients with mutated genes controlling cerebellar development also have cognitive deficits.

A rare developmental disorder called the Dysequilibrium syndrome leads to hypoplasia (underdevelopment) of the cerebellum and also variable amount of hypoplasia of the cerebral cortex as well. These patients have mild mental retardation but mainly they are crippled by an inability to stand erect and walk bi-pedally. One family in Turkey suffer from this condition and they walk and run on their hands and legs like quadruped animals!! What this finding means is that bi-pedalism as a trait evolved in man supported by gene changes in the brain. The particular family reported to have the Dysequilibrium syndrome takes us back in time to the time we were all like animals walking on all fours!! To be honest bi-pedalism was a very significant and distinct evolutionary change for us. I guess freeing of two limbs from locomotion enabled man to find other uses for them. Hands for human beings are absolutely critical for art, craft, tool making and may have played an indispensable role in man's cognitive evolution. To know that a single gene can explain this huge leap in man's capabilities is really amazing!

The other genes that may have played a role in evolution of the human brain are those that code for proteins present in the synapses – the interface between two neurons. As said earlier, the increase in size of our brains stopped at some point. Instead, the evolution took the route towards an increase in the number of neurons and, more importantly, an increase in connectivity between neurons. Seth Grant at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute feels that the actual nature of the types of proteins present at these synapses may be more important determinants of the enhanced human brain function than just an increased number of synapses. Synapses have the basic structure in all animals but there are dramatic differences in the numbers of proteins in the synapses of different species. Seth Grant's team found that among the 600 proteins found in mammalian synapses only 50% of them occur in invertebrates. Obviously, single-celled life forms have only 25% of these proteins. To be honest even this is surprising in that the synaptic proteins are found in single-celled life forms in the first place. Presumably, they play a different role in these life forms and it is possible that these proteins evolved over time, undergoing mutations and duplications of genes, to result in an increased number and possibly more appropriate types of synaptic proteins in higher life forms.

Another gene implicated in human brain evolution is _GLUD2_. This gene codes for an enzyme called Glutamate dehydrogenase. This enzyme is involved with the handling of the neurotransmitter called Glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid. It can be used as a neurotransmitter within our brain for transferring signals between neurons. Glutamate can also be modified to other even more important neurotransmitters like GABA that play important roles in cognition and anxiety etc. _GLUD2_ gene first appeared in hominids about 18 – 23 million years ago. It can be assumed therefore that use of neurotransmitters, particularly Glutamate, for neuronal communication began around this time. This must have speeded up the exchange of information between brain regions. Chemical information transfer, coupled with electrical signals, added to the complexity of brain function.

Other brain genes that seem to be positively selected in the human lineage are the receptors for acetylcholine, oxytocin, kainite, and dopamine. As one can see these are molecules known to be involved with conduction of nerve signals in the human brain. Acetylcholine, dopamine, catecholamines, and glutamate-mediated signal conduction has been around in the animal world for many millions of years. There are many lower life forms, which also use these information systems. That being the case the natural question to ask will be: what are the differences in these molecular structures in the human brain that respond and conduct signals coming in the form of these informational molecules? The easy answer is that the modern human versions of these receptors are more highly efficient in responding and conducting these signals.

Dopamine is said to be a key molecule in the brain that helps in behavioural adaptation and to the anticipatory processes necessary for preparing voluntary action consequent upon intention. There is also evidence to believe that dopamine also regulates attention. A particular variant of Dopamine receptor type 4 has been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the most prevalent psychiatric disorder in the US. Dopamine receptor genes have also been investigated for their roles in other psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia.

Parkinson's disease is a well known neurological condition characterised by motor impairment besides alterations in emotional and cognitive functions. A characteristic feature of Parkinson's patients is that they have an expressionless face. It is difficult for us to interact with our fellow citizens in the society if we cannot show emotions and expressions to let others know how we feel about something. Conveying emotions and feelings is a hallmark of human race and it was probably a social skill, supported by evolutionary changes in our brain, that our ancestors thousands of years ago had to develop. We also had to read the expressions on other people's faces. Before proper language and writing evolved I suppose primitive human race relied on communication of our feelings by means of such expressions on our faces. Even today there are some examples of mental illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease, where people cannot read the emotions on faces of other people. No wonder they fall short in their social interactions. The fundamental problem in Parkinson's disease is a deficiency of dopamine in the certain parts of the brain. In other words, deficiency of a biochemical molecule called Dopamine determines our ability to show emotions on our faces! This is amazing because such a crucial human behaviour like emotions can be explained by means of a molecule!

Dopamine supplementation is possible medically. Doctors prescribe a drug called L-DOPA, which is a precursor of Dopamine. A simple biochemical reaction of decarboxylation, catalysed by the enzyme called DOPA decarboxylase, converts this DOPA to Dopamine inside the neurons. The reason why doctors administer the precursor of Dopamine is because Dopamine as such does not penetrate the brain barrier but its precursor DOPA does. Secondly, Dopamine has a number of other functions in our body even outside our brain. So, if we were to take Dopamine as a medicine we cannot restrict its action purely to the brain. The other thing is that DOPA is acted upon by the DOPA decarboxylase enzyme present in peripheral nervous system and up to 95% of the administered dose could be used up even before DOPA enters the brain. In order to spare the DOPA for use by the brain cells the Parkinson's disease patients also get another medicine that is an inhibitor of this peripheral DOPA decarboxylase enzyme. Thereby, all of the administered DOPA becomes available for the brain. Because this enzyme does not cross the blood-brain barrier, the conversion of DOPA to Dopamine is not prevented within the brain.

The reason for this slightly lengthy discussion about an enzyme involved in neurotransmitter biosynthesis is the fact such enzymes play crucial roles in making the neurotransmitters available for use by the neurons. There are also enzymes that play a role in degrading the neurotransmitters after use. Degradation of neurotransmitters is one way of ensuring that these neural signalling molecules do not act forever. Such uncontrolled, unwanted actions of these neurotransmitters could be wasteful and also unproductive. Monamine oxidase is one such enzyme involved with degradation of several types of neurotransmitters and other molecules with action within the nervous systems. It is a kind of broad-spectrum enzyme that can help handle many different types of neurotransmitters. This enzyme comes in two forms, Type A and B. The genes for these enzymes are located in the X chromosome and may have arisen by gene duplication. If you look at the amino acid sequences of the two type of MAO there is something like 90% similarity but the tissue distribution of the two enzyme forms differ as well as the types of neurotransmitters each will degrade. MAO type A can degrade serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. In mice experiments knocking out the MAO gene produce aggression and altered emotional learning.

In humans mutations in MAO gene produces mental retardation or psychoses and sleep disorders. Polymorphisms of the MAO type A gene may be associated with different types of psychiatric disorders and behaviours ranging from drug abuse, bipolar disorder, antisocial personality disorder, aggression and Schizophrenia. It has been reported that a selective change in MAO type A enzyme gene may have been fixated during an episode of positive selection suggesting that this change may have played a role in shaping human behaviour and cognition. However, analysis of the MAO type A enzyme gene does not indicate any accelerated evolution in humans or any of the related lineages.

Evolving man needed a number of new social skills even tens of thousands of years ago. We find it difficult even today to deal with the complexities of social interactions. Amazingly, in my view, psychiatric disorders we see in the modern world today are true reflections of what might be the consequences of maladapted genetic make-up of the human brain. I feel that evolving humans, a few tens of thousands of years ago, were yet to adapt to live in large groups. Many different gene selections within the human brain made it possible for him to find biological adaptations to social needs. I have traced a few such gene selections in the last few paragraphs. I still feel that we have not got to the bottom of this issue yet. There are still a number of brain-related genes that need more close scrutiny. We probably have only a very superficial glimpse into the adaptation of the human brain in the recent history of humans. The list of genes that have shown positive selection in the human lineage is not long enough to account for the huge advances modern man had made as an evolving animal. We still need to keep looking.

The list of genes reported in the _Cell_ paper (Cell, vol 119, p1027 – 1040, 2004) by Bruce Lahn and colleagues classifies the genes that have shown positive selection under two categories – those that show positive selection in primates and those that show selection in rodents. Within each category, the authors divide the genes into developmental genes and those that have direct physiological functions. The developmental genes are those that have roles in brain development and include genes such as _microcephalin_ and _ASPM_ that were discussed a little while ago. The physiological category includes genes for neurotransmitter receptors like acetylcholine receptors, Dopamine receptors, Glutamate receptors and Oxytocin receptors. These physiological genes perhaps confer functional improvements perhaps by more efficient communication of signals between neurons. This list will grow as more researchers delve into this very exciting field. Even the discoveries of these genes we already have come to know about have been made very recently. They have changed the way we should look at evolution. Study of evolution is no more just about finding fossils for making physical observations. The power of biochemistry and genetics has given us a very valuable tool to approach evolution from a more informative angle. My feeling is that we are likely to see variations in the human lineage in the genes such as the serotonin (5 hydroxydopamine) and GABA receptors. I do not think we have seen this evidence yet but the roles played by these two crucial neurotransmitter systems in the human brain.

GABA is the most important inhibitory neurotransmitter system in our brain. It provides the 'brake' on our neurons to prevent runaway stimulation. It is abundant in the CNS of both invertebrates and vertebrates. It is said that GABA may be mediating important processes like learning and memory. Medications we use for treating anxiety, like benzodiazepines, stimulate GABA receptors and induce relaxation. Low levels of GABA function in our brain are known to produce several psychiatric and neurological disorders, including anxiety, depression, insomnia and epilepsy. There is evidence to suggest that during mammalian evolution, particularly primates, the number and complexity of GABA-using neurons increased. In the mammals, the expanding neocortex was accompanied by an increase of thalamic nuclei in the diencephalons. Nearly a third of the neurons in these thalamic nuclei are GABA-dependant. Therefore, it is likely that GABA neurons play crucial roles in coordination and integration of cortical functions. The developmental route for these primate GABA-using neurons seems to be different when compared to the rodents suggesting that some-primate-specific change had happened at some point. Still, there is no human-specific variation known in this very important pathway. GABA receptors are broadly of three types – type A, B and C. Each of this type is made up of different subunits alpha, beta and gamma, delta, epsilon, theta etc. Michael Poulter and other researchers from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, have found that depressed people who commit suicide have an **a** bnormal distribution of GABA receptors. One of the types of the GABA receptors is apparently under-represented in the fronto-polar cortex of people who committed suicide when compared to the non-depressed people. Similarly, other studies have shown that people who exhibit suicidal behaviours have also reduced serotonin activity. What is even more amazing is that childhood trauma and stressful pregnancies lead to certain epigenetic changes in the 5-HT or GABA pathways and may also play a role in these types of behaviours.

It is well known that some hormones and neurotransmitters of importance occur in such multiple forms and types and is a common theme in biochemical evolution. The multiple types of the same receptors offer the possibility to introduce subtle differences in the tissue distribution, affinity to respective ligands, and regulation. Though these neurotransmitters and hormones do occur in diverse life forms we should not forget that the level of complexity seen in these life forms may almost certainly differ. In fact, the neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, glutamate etc even play completely different roles in lower life forms. The functions of these signalling molecules in the evolving brain in humans are themselves outcomes of these molecular variations. We need to look carefully into these subtle differences, as well as other epigenetic changes, to understand the vital changes that made modern humans possible.

The other example of the important neurotransmitters in our brain includes the serotonin (5 hydroxytryptamine). Serotonin is said to play very important role in preventing depression. 5-HT seems to be the key substance in our brains that make us less depressed. Lots of drugs used to treat depression help to build up levels of 5-HT and Norepinephrine. One particular class of drugs are inhibitors of the MAO that we were discussing a while ago. By inhibiting the enzyme that degrades 5-HT and Norepinephrine it is believed that people will get rid of depression. Other popular class of drugs used for treating depression include the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Drugs like Prozac come under this category. This drug class prolongs the action of 5-HT at the brain nerve terminals prolonging the action of 5-HT. There are 7 predominant types of 5-HT receptors and the type 1 occurs mainly in the brain. There are subtypes of each of these major types. For example, the type 1 5-HT receptor occurs in at least 4 forms – A, B, C and D. With such complexity it is more than likely that subtle structural differences in molecular structure of 5-HT receptors are likely to be seen in us.

Anxiety and depression are generally very common in the modern world. One could say that humans feel anxious when meeting strangers. It is quite common to see this anxiety in our interactions with strangers in different settings. I guess anxiety is a natural psychological reaction that helps us to prepare for the encounter with the unknown persons. We do not feel anxious once we get used to a person or a place. The phrase 'feeling at home' aptly describes the change in our psychological adaptation to a stranger or a new place once we start feeling comfortable. If we feel this element of anxiety even today just imagine what would have been the case for the pre-historic humans who started for the first time ever to live in groups consisting of members who were not related by blood. It is not the question of a bigger group size alone. The challenge was mainly the resources needed in the psychological make-up of the humans for effective interactions with strangers. I do not think this psychological armoury came into being all of a sudden. Humans evolved mechanisms, such as brain neurochemical changes in GABA, Serotonin etc, to help them adapt to this challenge. Humans probably still evolving in this direction considering the fact that we feel anxiety even today. In fact, a lot of people take anxiety- busting pills on a regular basis to help cope with the anxieties of their daily life. This simply means that we have not yet mastered the art of anxiety-busting from a biological point of view.

Even depression is a common human malady. Lots of people all over the world are depressed. They resort to anti-depressants. Prozac, the anti-depressant medicine, is one of the biggest sellers in the world. This only proves the point that our biological capability to deal with depression is inadequate. We need extra help from the doctors.

I guess the human brain has evolved a number of defence mechanisms to help us deal with the problems of group-living. We have serotonin, GABA, Oxytocin and Dopamine and various other neurochemicals to deal with these behaviours. We rely on our own opium-like molecules called endorphins and enkephalins also to help us feel happy. We even supplement our natural mechanisms with outside help such as alcohol, drugs etc. All these mechanisms cannot discount the benefits many people derive from spiritual thoughts and practices. Many people feel praying to God eases their tensions and fears. Just going to a place of worship relaxes the minds of most religious people. This could be due to a form of psychological response wherein the person transfers the burden of his anxiety and fear to God. The expectation that God will be with you has a beneficial impact on the state of mind just as you would feel more comfortable when you have someone close to you during times of crisis. What I am trying to say that God and religion could be manifestations of a psychological defence evolved by our brains to combat fear, anxiety and depression. They are supplementary tools at our disposal for handling our worldly problems.

A major unsolved problem, as I said before, is that modern humans evolved long time before the emergence of human culture (approx 10,000 years ago). Why is there such a long gap? What facilitated this sudden transition? It is likely that biochemical evolution within human brain we saw above made it possible for humans to prepare better for the complex inter-personal interactions and group-living. It is more than likely that it has taken so much time for man to perfect the strategies needed for group-living such that he does not feel depressed, anxious or angry. What we need to note is that human population size may have increased much faster than we had time to cope with. What I mean is that only 4000 years have elapsed since the population grew from 5 million to 6 billion! This is too short a time for us to be genetically adapted fully. If you thought of a human generation as 25 years then only 160 generations have passed since recorded history!! But, the population has jumped from 5 million to 6 billion! How can man cope? Do you really think human evolution can manage this in such a short time?

Handling anxiety and stress is something man had to get used to in the course of last few thousands of years especially after cities began to form. I suggested that religions were possibly social mechanisms to keep people less anxious and be more pro-social. Pro-social means a tendency towards love for the members of the group. This behaviour almost certainly did not come easily to man. He needed a lot of anatomical and genetic changes before he could become tolerant to strangers and be willing to show altruistic tendencies.

I expect to see more positive, beneficial changes in the genes for molecules involved in anxiety and stress-busting. They may include genes involved in cortisol biosynthesis in adrenal glands, ACTH (Adrenocorticotrophic hormone) and Corticotrophin-releasing hormone from the Pituitary and Hypothalamus respectively. The latter two are trophic hormones released from pituitary and hypothalamus to drive cortisol production by adrenal glands. Cortisol is the primary hormone produced within our body that help us fight stress. Stress being so ubiquitous in our world I feel it is very unlikely that human species has not undergone major biochemical evolutionary changes in the cortisol biosynthesis.

The other genes that may have played beneficial roles include endogenous endorphins and enkephalins. They are our natural depression-busters in the body. We feel good under their influence. They are the molecules that mediate the reward and pleasant sensations in the brain that make you feel calm and interested. I am not sure if anyone has checked the levels of endorphins and enkephalins in people during their religious experiences. I can almost bet my last penny that these molecules surge during such experiences making people feel very good. Endorphins and enkephalins are produced under regulation by the pituitary in a closely related manner to ACTH production. These endogenously produced molecules like endorphins and enkephalins bind to receptors in brain where opium-like substances also bind. In fact, the discovery of receptors in brain that can bind opium and similar compounds led to the discovery that our own brain makes similar substances. The biological purpose of these endogenously produced 'opioids' is presumably to provide relief from stress and anxiety. I would expect to see significant differences in these genes in the human lineage if we look for them.

Religion itself was on offshoot of the cognitive changes happening in the brain in response to expanding group sizes. Though one cannot pinpoint a single gene and attribute its function in religiosity we can reasonably say that a number of gene changes and neuroanatomic changes that mediate improved human cognition and good behaviour directly or indirectly have roles to play in spiritualistic outcomes as well.

If one were to accept the definition of religion as an adaptive response to group-living then I guess the task of proving the point is easier. Whether most people would agree to this definition I am not so sure. But, my conviction is that religion is a by-product of social evolution. There are other eminent personalities like Stephen Jay Gould who have also expressed similar views on the biological and social basis of religion and I am not alone here. All religions preach more or less same behavioural codes of practice - Do no harm to others (restraint on anger and rage), do good deeds (promotion of altruism, cooperation and tolerance), help others (empathy), punish non-conformers (fairness, justice), concept of right/wrong (morals), understand man's role in the world and his relation to God (Abstract conceptualization) etc.

Without ability to do abstract thinking (thanks to neocortical brain changes), without the ability to show emotions (thanks to dopamine gene in the motor area of the brain and also oxytocin), without the language ability (thanks to FOXP2 gene), without the ability to control stress (thanks to cortisol, endorphins and enkephalin genes), without the ability to control depression (thanks to MAO gene), without the concept of right and wrong (thanks to inherent brain hard-wiring) etc man would not have been able to practice the religious teachings. In order to feel empathy, in order to conceptualise his place in the universe, in order to reason the cause-effect relationship with nature, in order to relate to strangers and still not feel tense and anxious, in order to have sufficient reasoning ability to improvise, in order to make better tools and exploit the bounty of nature etc man needed evolution of higher cognitive functions in the brain.

# 6: The electrical God

HUMAN BRAIN growth is very plastic. It can change, remodel pretty quickly. As we grow, our brain undergoes re-modelling and re-wiring to accommodate our learning. Memories are stored and new skills are learnt. There is progressive loss of nerve cells as we age. This sort of brain re-wiring is happening at the individual level. These changes are specific to the person concerned. They are different from long-term, species-level brain changes that we have been talking about earlier. Such long-term changes get transmitted down generations over time to the extent all members of the species have these changes. The plasticity of the brain allows changes to be captured within a short time as well. As I said individual learning is one such example. You do not have to always expect species-level selection mechanisms for this. But, species-level changes also do occur if there is a selection pressure that operates such as a new need, social or biological.

Humans have undergone lots of unique brain changes over tens of thousands of years. We have already seen the impact of such changes on functions like language, cognition etc. I also mentioned how the brain has evolved to handle anxiety and stress as well. The point I am making is that our brains can change within a life span of an individual as well as over the life span of the species.

The point I want to raise now is the extent to which human brain changed to help us handle the social bonding, altruism, empathy, morals, reward and punishment. I argued a while ago that religion is all about morals and group-living. If that were true then I would expect our brains to be able to distinguish between good and bad. Also it should be able to make us feel better being altruistic. In addition, I would also expect the human brain to be able to help us understand the place occupied by man in the grand scheme of the universe. We all know for sure that humans feel good about being good. It is a sort of an exhilarating feeling to help others and see the gratitude in the eyes of others. Also it boosts your own image in the community. We all crave for words of praise from others. These words of praise are only given to those who do good for the society at large. We do not see people showering praise and affection on a robber or a murderer. The praise acts as the carrot for us to do good deeds. Doing something to our community is considered an unselfish act. We are made to feel good about it but at the same time we cannot deny the benefits to the society as a result of our self-less act. The reward we get is often the feeling of pride and happiness within ourselves. That means the brain can perceive our acts as good and bad and make us feel good or bad accordingly. Facing the hatred of others for an unfair act is unpleasant. We all hate to be hated. Sometimes, the consequence of a selfish, immoral act can be bodily punishment. Fearing the punishment we behave well. Even in the absence of bodily punishment we still want to avoid selfish acts wherever possible because they affect your reputation in the eyes of the community.

The reason for this lengthy discussion is to show that our brain has evolved to shape our behaviours. There are distinct anatomical areas in our brain that mediate reward-punishment distinction. Even animals have such brain areas. Simple electrical stimulation of these areas make the animals (including humans) feel great or loathsome depending on the location. As I said, one of the funny things about our brain is its tendency to categorise all stimuli as either 'pleasant' or 'unpleasant'. Different types of stimuli, unrelated to each other, can evoke a sensation of pleasantness or unpleasantness in the brain. It is my belief that the religious sensations elicited within our brain are linked to the 'pleasant' pathway and that is why man prefers them. Let us say religious feelings are intensely painful or scary. Would mankind have taken to religion as avidly as they have done now? The 'feel-good' factor underlies our long-lasting love affair with religion over millennia.

Neurophysiological studies have shown that any sensory stimulus, which reaches that part of the brain that evokes pleasant sensation, will make you seek the same experience again and again. The neurophysiologists call it the 'reward response'. A lot of animal and human experiments have been done to explore this phenomenon. These have shown that there seems to a 'punishment' region in the brain which makes a stimulus feel unpleasant, deterring the animals from doing it the next time!

The brain is organised into a 'yes' or 'no' dichotomy. If it is a pleasure stimulus, do it. Do it again and again. If it is an unpleasant stimulus, don't do it. Categorisation of your actions this way is possible, as I said earlier, because the sensory information from the external environment reaches that part of the brain, which pre-determines the next course of action.

Let us look at an experiment that throws more light on this phenomenon. Electrodes can be placed over defined regions of the brain through which a moderate electrical current can be allowed to flow, by pressing a bar that completes the circuit. This current will stimulate the brain regions in a manner similar to normal sensory stimulation (where electrical impulses are conducted). When the electrodes are placed on the 'reward' regions of the brain, animals, including humans, are found to press the bar repeatedly. Animals braved current intensities enough to knock them off to get 'more of it'! They continue to press the bar, ignoring food and water, until they become exhausted. Rats have been found to press the bar 10,000 times per hour, and monkeys up to 17,000 times! Human patients with incurable pain due to cancer and patients with epilepsy and Schizophrenia went on pressing the bar describing the feelings as 'pleasurable' and a 'relief from tension'. Some of the patients could not tell why they liked to press the bar repeatedly.

It is amazing how stimuli from the external environment are perceived as pleasant or unpleasant, based on where the sensory data ends up in the brain. This is apparently a question of 'wiring the nerves' to the right regions of the brain. Every one understands that this 'wiring' has an evolutionary basis. Obviously, those behaviours felt as pleasant would be repeated too often. Perhaps such behavioural activation pathways would be selected by the organisms for their pleasure potential.

It is interesting that the behaviours felt as pleasurable are the ones that are vitally important for our survival. Eating and sex are the two pleasurable behaviours that I can think of instantly. It does not take much thinking to realise how vital they are for living systems. What would happen if eating is a tasteless affair? Who would take the trouble of finding food for eating? Animals spend much of their time seeking food. Don't they? Apart from the pleasure of eating, the unpleasantness of hunger makes it doubly sure that organisms will strive as hard as they do to find food.

Do you think anybody would indulge in sex if it wasn't so pleasurable? Who would want to take on lifelong responsibility of raising children? Then why do we do it at all? Because it is so much fun and that is the reason. Would you touch it with a barge pole if it was not pleasant? You end up with a pregnancy now or later. Isn't it a sure way of ensuring reproduction?

Parental behaviour, glory and fame are pleasant too. The society praises people when they do acts that find no takers. This praise gives an intoxicating feeling of importance, inducing the unsuspecting souls to do it more and more. There are some jobs like being a soldier in the Armed forces, which not many people want because of the dangers involved. The governments manage to recruit people by two ways. They make it compulsory for all youth to spend some time in the Army. Or, they offer incentives for joining the military service. The glory associated with valiant service in the military is the biggest incentive of all. Fighting (to your death) the unknown faces, to defend your country, is glorified. No wonder people fall for the trap. People who die in the course of their duties, be it in the Police force, Army or any other service, are glorified with posthumous awards. I wonder if this is a way for our society to try and prevent people from getting too scared of joining these services in future. If such a thing happens who will do the dangerous jobs? There has to be a carrot. It feels good when somebody says you are a hero. It is a common ploy in the society to make some body do something that not many people want to do.

Look at the charity work. Who would do it? It involves a lot of your time, effort and the will to do good to the society. What do they get in return? In the larger scheme of things, the charity work helps improve the society of which the charity worker is a part. Is that the carrot here? Also it helps boost the social image of the worker and announces that he is not a free-rider. He has managed to fit in the society well.

Most of us find our jobs boring and monotonous. Yet, all of us do our jobs because we are compensated for our work with salaries. The salary buys you the pleasures. The salary is the bait for people to do the jobs they wouldn't touch otherwise. I always wonder why people seek jobs so desperately. Losing the job is a crisis in their lives. Do you want me to believe that everyone is so eager to go through that monotonous job all day, all year, all their lives? Whom are we kidding? It is the money that we are after. The money can get you many things that please your senses. Your brain reward centre can stay stimulated in a frenzy.

It has to be accepted that we feel bored if we do not have anything to do. It may be true that we may not like our work. But we feel bored if we stop doing our work. By nature, we need to keep doing something or other to keep our minds active. I feel bored if I find nothing to do. Even if somebody is willing to pay me for doing nothing, I still would like to work. This is because our brain is designed such that it seeks to avoid boredom. Boredom drives you to do many things, including most of the adventurous things man does. On one side, we are paid to do our work. On the other, boredom drives us to take up work. It is made doubly sure that we all do something or other to keep the system ticking. I wish to suggest that our behaviours are controlled by brain 'programs' activated by external information. The information loop consisting of the sensory receptors, the nerves, the brain and the target organs, works like an automated system.

Obviously, 'hardwiring' of the behaviour programs is a combination of evolution and learning. Instinctual functions like fear, rage, sex, hunger, maternal instinct etc., are hard-wired when you are born. Birds fly by themselves without anybody teaching them how to fly. Animals walk right after birth. Fish swim instantly after birth. Babies know how to suckle the breast. There is no learning involved in such behaviours. Evolutionary selection has ensured appropriate neuro-anatomic changes in the species concerned. As said before the changes in the brain here are different from learning-induced changes and more importantly, they are inheritable. Inheritability is therefore the primary difference between learning-induced brain changes and the evolutionary selection-induced long term changes.

The behavioural make-up of a human being is decided quite early in the life, to a considerable extent. It is a well-known fact that children indulging in crime and violence are born into families devoid of love and care. Studies have shown that these children do not adapt to the society even when taken to a new environment with comforts, care and food. This suggests that the psychological experience they had during critical period of their emotional development have influenced the brain maturation in the wrong direction.

Genetic factors also play a role in how an individual will react to his surroundings. Extremely violent people have been shown to have abnormalities in their chromosomes. In some cases, they have been found to have brain diseases such as a tumour. The presence of pathology in the brain disturbs the normal brain function.

Coming to the centre point of this book what is the likelihood that our religious feelings are hard-wired too. Why do we even suspect this? Because spiritual feelings have had a pervasive influence on human society for possibly tens of thousands of years and for whatever reason this social behaviour has been 'selected' in evolutionary terms. Something that survives this long should have a survival advantage for the species. In evolutionary language we call this selection. This selection is attended by neuro-genetic and neuro-anatomic changes in the brain and becomes inheritable.

There is a lot of recent debate about the brain-wiring of man that makes him feel religious. Just as there are centres in brain that mediate speech, hearing, memory, sensations etc there are claims that there are also brain centres that may make people god-loving and religious. They call this part of the brain as the 'God module'. There have been some reports and counter-reports recently about this 'God module' in the human brain that probably programs the human beings to behave spiritually. This has led to a new field called 'Neuroethology'.

But, my argument is that rather than considering man as hard-wired to believe in religion and God, could we postulate that the brain evolved to contain the brain module to meet man's inner needs to find order, happiness and peace? This is like muscular development to meet the needs of a fitness trainer. What I am saying is that earliest man, just evolved from monkeys, may not have had any god module in his brain. With social growth and increasing need for order and peace man's brain evolved to accommodate such functions. The brain had to come up with ways of dealing with increased demands for cognition (due to increasing group numbers), demand for better communication (more than the grunts and gestures operational until then), tolerance to strangers (a trait very important in large group living which is completely new to man in the last 10,000 years), and the very new human quality of social norms (such as the importance of common good above selfish interests, punishment for wrong-doers and non co-operators). For the first time since human origin man started feeling good about being good. As I said this is the 'pleasant' or 'reward' type of sensation. As I also said this type of behaviour has survival value for the individual animal as well as for the species. More importantly, this type of reward behaviour has clear neuro-anatomic, electrical basis.

I feel such neuro-anatomic changes in the human brain started happening over possibly tens of thousands of years culminating in a set of established, inheritable traits. I postulate that these anatomic changes in human brain could be the God module. This is more or less like evolution of frontal lobe in the evolving man's brain that helped abstract thinking, which was not possible before in other animals. In essence, God module is an effect rather than a cause of religiosity. Contrary to what is said about God module being the precursor of human religiosity I claim that the need for human behavioural and cognitive changes, since the expansion of human group size, has led to the evolution of neuro-anatomic substrates which scientists have uncovered now. The term 'God module' is very catchy though I do not think for a moment that man feels spiritual and god-fearing because of this portion of the brain. Using my previous example of the body-builder it is almost like saying that the fitness trainer started to train after his muscle bulk increased. Isn't it obvious that his muscle bulk increased as a result of the person's fitness program where his body increased the bulk due to the increased muscular activity? Which one is the cause and which is the effect?

Robert Buckman, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, in his book titled ' _Can we be good without God? Biology, behaviour and the need to believe'_ (Prometheus books) argues that religion is not necessary for human morality. This defies the age-old belief that morality is largely dependent on religion. Buckman provides a lot of evidence for neurophysiological basis for beliefs and religious experiences. Work of Canadian neurosurgeons Wilder Penfield, Michael Persinger and others are cited showing that the brain can be deliberately caused, by means of temporal lobe stimulation (through disease or damage to the right temporal lobe, low voltage electrical stimulation under surgery when the person is awake or through low intensity electromagnetic fields outside the skull), to experience things like well-being or even religious visions, mystical experiences, feeling of being one with nature, a feeling of particular peace and serenity, a sense of some deep understanding or of profound knowledge, near death experiences, understanding in some tangible way the working of the cosmos etc. The fact that such experiences, normally associated with religion, can be mechanically elicited raises the very important question as to how these experiences are different from those of true religious people and how they reflect any external reality.

Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego, has also reported that he had discovered the 'God Module' in the brain, which could account for man's instinct to believe in religion. The way Dr. Ramachandran reached this conclusion was by studying the brains of people with temporal lobe epilepsy. Epilepsy is basically an electrical over activity in localised regions of brain. Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy have an over activity in the neurons in the temporal lobe, including the part of the brain dubbed the God module. Dr. Ramachandran's group also studied these patients by examining the electrical activity in their brains when they were shown words invoking spiritual belief. These findings have led his team to conclude that there could be dedicated neural machinery in the human brain concerned with religion. How religious people feel in their lives could just be a reflection of how well developed his God module is!

Michael Persinger, a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Laurentian University in Canada, identified a region within the temporal lobes in the brain which become active (firing bursts of electrical activity) when one thinks about God or feels spiritual. Dr. Persinger's experiments were earlier mentioned in this book. He also reported that amygdala, a tiny structure in the human brain near the front of the temporal lobe, also seem to generate an intense emotion and a sense of meaningfulness. When an electrical current was passed through coils on the head of his 80 subjects, which created a magnetic field mimicking the electrical firing patterns of the neurons in the temporal lobes, the subjects experienced an induced spiritual experience. What the subjects described was interesting. They all felt an opiate-like effect with a substantial reduction in anxiety and a heightened sense of well-being. Interestingly, they also felt that they were not alone.

These observations are very interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the reduction in anxiety and a sense of well-being and the feeling of not being alone all point to the benefits of such feelings to a human being. In times of hardship these are the feelings that are likely to give a sense of support which makes us wonder if the temporal lobe in the brain has wired the brain to provide such relieving, stress-busting experiences. Is that the reason why mankind has favoured spiritualism?

The second point for discussion is the role opiates play here. It is known that human brain generates and responds to opiate-like substances. Are they evolutionary adaptations that have prepared man for the so-called spiritualistic experiences? Or, were they part of neuro-chemical evolutionary developments that happened in man's brain over tens of thousands of years that helped him to cope with stress and anxiety (and has nothing to do with spiritualism)? What I am saying is the man in living in increasing group sizes was faced with more stress and anxiety and he needed some relief mechanisms. These God modules in human brain were evolutionary responses that helped man to cope with his stress and anxiety. Spiritualism and religion were perhaps new names for what was basically an adaptive change man has evolved to deal with the problem of living in a crowd. Or it could even be considered that religion and spiritualism are by-products of evolutionary changes in brain that had happened for a different purpose.

It has also been reported that a localised God module is too simplistic an explanation to the profound phenomenon of human spiritualism. Mario Beauregard, a Canadian researcher, used another approach to study the neurophysiological basis of religion. She used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor the changes in blood flow through the brain when the subjects (Carmelite nuns) reported a feeling of a religious experience. What was seen is not a localised change in blood flow but brain activity in several areas of the brain. This led Dr. Beauregard to conclude that several brain regions must be involved in generation of mystical experiences.

Studies on patients with temporal lobe epilepsy by other researchers have yielded interesting results. A team of Swiss researchers have noticed that out-of-body experiences, often referred to as a spiritual manifestation, can be elicited by electrical stimulation of specific brain regions, particularly near the junction between the temporal lobe and parietal lobe. It is to be noted that such out-of-body experiences are commonly reported by people during their near death episodes! Also such out of body experiences (called Clairvoyance) are presumably achievable by trained spiritual monks. It is interesting from this point of view that what is supposed to be a spiritual practice, or something that is associated with death when the soul departs the body, is an electrical phenomenon in some parts of the brain that make you feel like that. Out of body experience is based on the alleged separation of soul from the body and that the soul still retains the ability to perceive and remember. Our understanding of the brain and cognition has no explanation for this but having said that it is also true that we do not have an explanation even for consciousness, something we all know we have.

Anecdotal reports do exist in the public domain about cases where the people who had out of body experiences remembered what they observed hovering above their own body. For instance, I can recall one case where the person had died and was resuscitated in the ambulance. Brought back to life the resuscitated person knew what had happened to the extent he could even tell where they had put away his glasses! His glasses were apparently removed after he had 'died' and, during the resuscitation process one of the ambulance staff had put it on top of a shelf inside the ambulance. The 'dead' person was aware of this even while he was perceived to be dead. He claimed that he was watching it while he was hovering over his body during his out of body experience, even as the resuscitation was happening on his 'dead body', as if it was an episode of ER we see on TV!!

Matthew Alper, author of the book ' _The God part of the brain'_ , says that humans have selected a cognitive mechanism to help believe in an alternate, spiritual reality that allows us to perceive an ability to transcend physical death (through out-of-body experience) and a perceived afterlife. Evidence in the form of research in temporal lobe epileptics as well as patients with organic brain diseases like head injuries, have shown development of excessive religiosity in such patients after the event. These observations have led Alper to conclude that there is no basis for spiritualism outside the physical realm and that there is no spiritual reality.

Brick Johnstone and Bret Glasss, from the Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, did a study to examine the self-reported spirituality and neuropsychological abilities in patients with traumatic brain injuries (Ref. _Support for a neuropsychological model of spirituality in persons with traumatic brain injury,_ Zygon, J of Religion and Science, Wiley Inter Science, Vol 43, Issue 4, p 861-874). 26 adults with traumatic brain injury underwent assessments and it was concluded that there was a negative correlation between spirituality and measures of right parietal lobe functioning and a positive correlation with measures of left temporal lobe functioning. Surprisingly, there was no correlation between frontal lobe function and spirituality measures. As the frontal lobe is the one concerned with reasoning abilities this observation suggests that religious experiences are not likely to arise due to reasoning and understanding but something that is instinctive. The association between decreased right parietal lobe and spiritual experiences may explain the transcendence phenomenon (decreased awareness of self) commonly seen in religious experiences.

The parietal lobe is normally concerned with spatial perception. The observation of decreased awareness of one's self, seen in the patients with parietal lobe injuries, by Johnstone and his team, is very interesting for two reasons. From a religious point of view we know that self-centred behaviour is despised. The common good for the society is likely to take priority when some one places less emphasis on one's self. The self-less actions, glorified by humanity, are a great religious quality and it looks like this behaviour too could have a neurophysiological basis. This intriguing thought adds weight to the argument that religious thinking and behaviour may have been evolutionarily selected for this reason. The second reason why Johnstone's finding is important is that we already know that an extremely bizarre form of disturbed perception can be seen in patients with damage to the parietal lobe, especially the bottom portion of it. Individuals with such lesions do not have any problem with seeing or hearing. There is no difficulty in the sensory receptors for touch, pain or pressure. Yet, they seem to be unable to receive stimuli from both the parts of the body and behave as if their body is made up of only one half only! In extreme cases, individuals shave only half their faces only, dress only half their bodies, or read only half the page, completely ignoring the other half! In short, people with parietal lobe dysfunction have problem in perception of their own self. That is why they ignore their body. From a philosophical point of view, is it likely that less focus on one's self could mean more focus on the external world? If that is the case this is perfect for the society as people are going to care more about the societal whole than themselves. This is a far-fetched theory but I can at least say that this interest in common good is quite pervasive in our society and there has to be a neural mechanism that allows us to accept common good at the expense of their own selves. For this I do not for a moment think every one is walking around with parietal lobe disorders. What I believe is, just as found by Johnstone and team, there could be some anatomical basis within the parietal lobe function in the normal people that allows them to think more about others than themselves. Or, at least makes them think about the whole, of which they are a part of. This broad outlook is critical for the expanding human society. I would expect this characteristic to be of survival value to the species. That is also why this self-less quality is too glorified in our society and we feel great about exhibiting this characteristic to others to show that we conform.

Nina Azari, a neuroscientist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, holds a doctorate in Theology. She studied the brains of religious people with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure the level of brain activity as the subjects recited the 23rd Psalm, read a happy story, read a neutral text and while at rest. There were a group of normal people as well who were used for comparison. Dr. Azari did not see any increased activity in the limbic system in the brain of religious people, contrary to expectation. There was some increased activity in three areas of frontal cortex and parietal cortex, some of them known to be associated with rational thought.

Andrew Newberg of University of Pennsylvania had done similar experiments in Buddhist monks and come to similar conclusions. Dr. Beauregard's experiments in Carmelite nuns were referred to earlier. These kinds of imaging experiments, primarily studying blood flow changes in the brain, are thought to relate brain activity to blood flow changes. Such experiments seem to suggest that religious activity seems to be determined by several parts of the brain spread across lobes.

Dimitrios Kapagiannis of the National Institutes of Health, US, and his colleagues, reported in PNAS ( _Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief_ , PNAS, 2008) that well-known brain networks involved in fundamental cognitive mechanisms such as abstract semantic processing, memory, emotions, imagery etc mediate specific components of religious belief. They studied the brain activity of religious and non-religious people by magnetic resonance imaging as they were engaged in religious perceptions. They divided these religious perceptions into three categories: God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotions and Religious knowledge source. The subjects were asked to state whether they agreed/disagreed with certain statements that touch upon these three categories of religious perceptions. The statements included were such as 'God will guide my acts', 'God is punishing', God protects one's life', ' God is wrathful', 'The afterlife will be punishing', 'God is ever-present', 'A source of creation exists', 'religion provokes moral guiding' etc. The subjects had their brains scanned as they reacted to these statements. The objective was to localise the brain activity as the subjects were engaged in these religious perceptions. Based on the observations, the authors concluded that the networks of anatomical structures lighting up in the brain during such tasks had their primary roles in social cognition, language, and logical reasoning. Religious cognition may have emerged as a unique mix of these evolutionarily important cognitive processes. This nicely fits with the theory that religion and God may be by-products of evolutionary adaptations in human brain that were selected for their survival benefits associated with group-living.

Esther Nimchinsky and colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the California Institute of Technology reported in 1999 (PNAS, VOL 96, 5268-5273) that a unique type of neuron exists in humans and great apes in the anterior cingulated cortex. They are large, spindle-shaped cells not observed in any other primate species or any other mammalian taxa. Interestingly, the volume of these cells correlated with the encephalisation in higher primates. Among the humans and great apes, the chimps and bonobo have spindle cell densities comparable to humans. This again underscores the relatedness of _Homo_ and _Pan_ and is suggestive of the emergence and progressive neuroanatomical refinement of a highly specific pathway in hominids. This began to emerge in the common ancestor of pongids and hominids and is particularly well developed in _Pan_ and _Homo_. It is suggested that the anterior cingulated cortex, where these cell types are located, may have been subjected to an unusual adaptive pressure over the last 15-20 million years. The anterior cingulated cortex is an ancient part of the brain in the sense that it evolved long time ago. It sub serves many functions and its role in cortical control of autonomic functions (such as heart rate, blood pressure and digestive functions) seem to be well conserved among animals. Judging from the connections from these new spindle cell types to amygdala and hypothalamus it may be integrating sensory inputs with emotional overtones and project to motor centres controlling vocalisation, facial expression or autonomic function. In humans the anterior cingulated cortex appears to be involved in higher-level processes that are responsible for more than mere handling of the sensory and motor input. Functional imaging studies have shown that this part of the brain in humans is involved with attention and gets activated with increasingly difficult tasks. Very interestingly, it is activated during the experience of the unpleasantness of pain and in the recognition of the emotional content of the faces. It has been reported that lesions in the anterior cingulated cortex is humans are associated with a form of mutism (Brain, 118, 279-306, 1995). The brain areas where these newly identified spindle cells are located are known to be involved in eliciting meaningful vocalisations in squirrel monkeys when stimulated and voluntary phonation in macaque monkeys. This region may be involved in some aspects of communication in primates and Esther Nimchinsky and colleagues argue that appearance of these spindle cells in the only mammalian lineage (us and the great apes) might signal the further anatomic changes in the brain necessary for speech and its emotional implications. Amazingly, another anatomical structure called planum temporale, a region that is important for language comprehension, evolved more or less at the same time (Science, 279, 220 – 222, 1998). Great apes have language comprehension abilities not present in other animals and these adaptive changes in the brain in several cortical structures made it possible. The process of adopting the religious belief depends on cognitive-emotional interactions within a part of the brain called anterior singulae, particularly among religious subjects. The authors conclude that religiosity is integrated in cognitive processes and brain networks used in social cognition rather than being _sui generis_ (Latin word meaning 'distinct for itself' or 'a class of its own kind').

This is what I was trying to say. Man needed some capabilities like improved cognition, language etc when his group size started increasing. His brain started to evolve to enable these functions. As an offshoot of this brain development man also found spiritualism and religiosity emerging as an outcome of these brain changes. Ultimately, the bottom line is that man's brain is like a programmable computer. Hardware for even abstract human abilities does exist.

Is this type of brain research common? Yes, there is a whole load of experimental evidence based brain stimulation experiments that have led to an understanding of the mechanical nature of the human sensory experiences. Of course these experiments I am referring to below in the next few paragraphs deal with all kinds of sensory and motor phenomena but they do drive home the point that brain hardware is real.

Every biology student knows that our nervous system is the hardware of our behaviour. The basic architecture of the nervous system is very simple. Stimuli from the external environment are picked up by specialized sensory receptors for sound, light, smell, touch etc. The nerves to the brain carry the sensory data. The brain processes this data and sends back the appropriate commands, via the nerves again, to target parts of the body. An action is initiated.

The brain is compartmentalised functionally and structurally. There are different regions in the brain capable of controlling different tasks such as speech, vision, hearing, movement, memory etc. These compartments may need to 'talk' to each other, while accomplishing a task.

A number of experiments have shown that the behaviour activation pathway is a mechanical process. There is nothing for the organism to do about it. It must be a rude jolt to the readers but let me explain. I hope to show that behavioural properties like decision-making, exploration and motivation are simple hardware tricks of the brain.

The nerves to that portion of the brain controlling behaviour carry a sensory signal associated with a type of behaviour. It is simply a question of wiring the nerves to the right 'processor' in the brain. From then on, it is a question of mechanically activating a sequence of events leading on to the behaviour, as if running software on your computer! You may find it hard to believe what I say. Let me substantiate my claims.

The brain is a funny object. It is said to be the seat of intelligence. Yet, it is so easy to trick it into activating a behavioural sequence. Behaviours can be induced in an animal by physical stimulation of the brain. Depending on the site of stimulation of the brain, behaviours such as sleep, food seeking and consumption, water seeking and consumption, aggression, rage, depression, and even sexual arousal!

Feeding behaviour has been evoked by electrical stimulation of the brains of virtually all vertebrates such as fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals. This is achieved by stimulating the brain in or near a portion of the brain called the hypothalamus.

Electrical stimulation of a portion of the brain along the median forebrain bundle, and in neighbouring hypothalamus, causes penile erection with considerable emotional display in monkeys!

Sensory cortex takes care of all sensory feelings of our body. Our body is represented here, region for region. For instance, a part of sensory cortex will control sensations in fingers; the adjacent part will control sensations in the upper arms and so on. If you stimulate the sensory cortex of the brain, you can feel pure sensations of touch, warmth, cold, pain, when you are not touching anything! Stimulation of the sensory cortex part connected with the hand can make you feel as if some one has touched you on the hand! How stupid of the brain! Sounds like hypnotism, isn't it?

Electrical stimulation along a part of the brain called the central nucleus of amygdala can produce a pattern of behavioural and autonomic changes that resemble a state of fear in animals, including humans. Researchers have shown that destruction of amygdala produces a state of abnormal placidity in monkeys. Most traumatic and anger-provoking stimuli fail to ruffle the animal's abnormal calm.

Interestingly, stimulation of some other parts of the amygdala produces rage in cats. Violent episodes of rage can be produced in response to trivial stimuli when these regions of the brain are stimulated. Violent rage attacks in response to minor stimuli have been observed in human patients with brain damage. During brain surgery for treatment of diseases of the pituitary gland, there can be unintentional damage to structures at the base of the brain. Amygdala and the hypothalamus are close by and it is possible that these structures can be damaged in which case the unfortunate patients end up with frequent episodes of rage.

Emotional dysregulation can also result due to diseases of the nervous system, especially influenza and encephalitis, which destroy nerve cells in the limbic system and hypothalamus.

There is also a plus side to such phenomena. It is known that stimulation of the amygdaloid nuclei and parts of the hypothalamus in conscious humans produces sensations of anger and fear. This finding has led to the strategy of inducing damage to the amygdala for treating mental patients. They become placid and manageable after the surgery! It is increasingly being recognised that violence seen in many criminals could have a neurological or genetic basis. These anatomical or genetic factors predispose certain people to extreme violence. Does this mean it is OK for them to commit crimes? I know that criminal law in many countries show lenience to psychologically deficient patients and let them go unpunished for crimes they committed. Can this be applied for people who can be proven to have neuro-anatomical or genetic conditions that make them prone to violence? The problem here is the difficulty in proving that the neurological lesions were related to the violence. The absence of clear proof will make it currently impossible to use it as evidence in the court of law. However, some criminologists are proposing that such people are treated at least leniently.

Certain other experiments have shown that electrical stimulation of certain portions of the part of the brain called the cerebral cortex can awaken a sleeping animal, which will remain awake without making any movements. Even locomotion can be elicited by stimulating certain parts of the brain in rats.

Stimulation of certain other areas of the temporal lobe of the brain makes the person feel strange in a familiar place. Or, it may make the person feel that he has been to the place before while, in reality, he has not been there at all. This phenomenon is called ' _dejavu_ ', deriving from the French word for 'already seen'. This experimental observation indicates that the brain has a distinct structure that enables us to categorize objects and places as familiar and unfamiliar. This is interesting because the temporal lobe is where memory is stored in our brains.

The famous neurophysiologist, Roger Penfield, stimulated portions of the temporal lobes of the brains of his patients, and made them recall old, forgotten incidents for no apparent reason. It is interesting that they could not recall past events with such clarity when they tried voluntarily! I suspect that the brain stores memory as we store our data files in our offices. If you want to access data dating back to decades, it is not going to be easy in any office set up. You know that it is there, somewhere, but do not know where exactly. Your other more relevant, recent data seem to have exhausted all your storage space that is easily accessible. Direct brain stimulation, as Penfield did, triggers the release of this memory. This was possible because this bypassed the search routes that I said must have become clogged.

These experiments show that the 'brain ware' is very impersonal. I am tempted to suggest that the brain is a kind of robotic system, responding to stimuli in a mechanical fashion. The troubling notion is that even religious experiences can be artificially elicited suggesting that spiritualistic experiences are dependant on brain programming.

The highlight of this chapter is my counter argument to those 'God module' antagonists. I am supporting the notion that the God module may be real. For the proponents of the God module idea I want to say something too - that the God module is an effect of religiosity and not the cause. To make it clear what I am saying is that the God module evolved probably thousands of years ago (re-wiring of the brain) as man started to interact with increasing numbers of humans. The social order generation, including morality, necessitated brain changes that would ensure man to do acts that were good for the whole society. For the first time an animal needed to think beyond the self – which until then was the very basis of survival. Self-less acts and tolerance were needed and the brain had to evolve to support these types of behaviours. The only thing is we have dubbed these adaptations as religion. So, in my opinion, the God module was the effect and not the cause of spirituality.

# 7: Science of Meditation and Prayer

PEOPLE CLAIM that meditation has the effect of calming our minds. Stress-relief is the main objective why people take up this practice. These days a lot of people have actively taken up interest in Yoga and Meditation. They are interested in signing up for lessons in Yoga and Meditation. Corporate companies encourage their staff to attend stress-busting programs. Aside from the instruction-based mind control majority of the common public resort to daily prayers at home or at places of worship like Churches, Mosques, or temples. Prayer takes the load of their chest. Prayer gives them the psychological support they need. By appealing to God of their choice (Prophet Allah, Jesus Christ, Buddha or any of the Hindu Gods) they feel that some help may be on the way. This obviously boosts their morale. This is perhaps a psychological adaptation made by man to overcome any anxiety and fear. Do we have any scientific evidence that meditation practices actually produce beneficial effects?

The Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a very useful procedure for studying the electrical activity of the brain while the person is at rest or busy with perception. The electrical activity is studied because the 'official business language' of the brain is electrical in nature. Nerves communicate with each other and their target cells through electrical discharges. The EEG can be recorded with scalp electrodes through the unopened skull or with electrodes directly on the brain. Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist, was the first to study background electrical activity of the brain, and introduced the term EEG to denote the record of variations in the electrical potentials recorded from the brain.

The electrical wave pattern of humans at rest, with eyes closed, is a rhythmic one. It is not clear why such rhythmic electrical activity occurs within the resting brain. An EEG of an adult human at rest shows a fairly regular pattern of electrical activity of amplitude of about 50 mV and a frequency of 8-12 per second. This pattern is called the Alpha rhythm. It is remarkably similar in all mammals, except for very minor variations.

Another type of rhythmic electrical activity in the brain is the beta rhythm, with a higher frequency (18-30 per second) but of lower voltage. The third pattern is the theta rhythm with a frequency of 4-7 waves per second. Theta rhythm occurs in children.

When a man is at rest, with his eyes closed, the electrical pattern in the brain is the Alpha rhythm. As you record the EEG, ask the person to open his eyes. Now the Alpha pattern is replaced by an irregular, low voltage electrical activity with no dominant pattern. This is technically known as the alpha block.

Why did the regular, rhythmic, alpha rhythm disappear when the eyes were opened? It is because the brain starts receiving visual stimuli. The visual stimuli generate electrical activity, which obliterates the background electrical rhythm of the brain. In fact, any form of sensory stimulation can disrupt the rhythmic electrical activity of the resting brain. Neurophysiologists call it the 'de-synchronisation response' because it represents the breaking up of the synchronised activity of the resting brain. De-synchronization of the resting electrical activity of the brain seems to be important for a person to be able to perceive. It is called the 'arousal response'. De-synchronization is correlated with the aroused, alert state of mind.

How does the electrical activity of the brain change when we go to sleep? Interestingly, it depends on whether the person is dreaming or not! Electrically, the first stage of the sleep is associated with low amplitude, fast frequency EEG waves. The next stage is associated with bursts of alpha-like waves, which are seen in persons with their eyes closed in the wakeful state. In the final stage of onset of sleep, there are characteristic, slow, rhythmic waves indicating synchronisation. At this stage, the person is deep asleep.

Sleep researchers have found that we spend about 2 hours going through these stages of sleep without dreaming. Then we go through a phase of dreaming. At this point, the EEG pattern changes to that of the aroused state. We spend about 90 minutes in this phase of sleep. At the end of the dream phase, we go through another cycle of dreamless sleep stages. We seem to be spending about 25% of our sleep dreaming. Towards the mornings, there is more of sleep associated with dreams.

From the point of view of sensory stimulation, it takes a greater amount of sensory signals to wake up a person when he is dreaming. At the other extreme, he is easily woken up at the early stages of the sleep, when he is not sleeping. The ease with which a person is woken up to the aroused state is determined by a component of the nervous system called the Reticular activating system. It is referred to as the 'sensory gate'. It regulates the sensory input proceeding to the brain. The reticular activating system receives input from the visual, auditory, olfactory and other sensory pathways. In other words, the nerves carrying these signals send inputs to the reticular activating system. Most interestingly, the nature and source of the sensory stimuli is not important at all.

The reticular activating system determines the information-receptive status of the brain. The brain is not alert when the reticular activating system is inactive. In other words, the person is unconscious. General anaesthetics depress the reticular activating system and help prevent pain stimuli from being conducted to the brain.

Certain interesting findings have emerged from neuro-physiological studies on people when they are meditating. These people show alpha pattern of EEG waves, which is the pattern found during early hours of sleep. In normal people, I said, alpha rhythm would disappear when an external stimulus arrives. Surprisingly, this does not seem to happen in experienced meditators! What does this mean?

External stimuli desynchronise the resting rhythmic electrical activity (alpha rhythm) because the nerve cell electrical activity changes on beginning to process the stimuli. This is what is called the arousal response or de-synchronisation. Meditation allows us to prevent this from happening by shutting down their awareness to external stimuli.

This intriguing observation has been made on Yoga meditators as well as transcendental meditators. Yoga is a popular meditation technique practiced in India. Transcendental meditation originated in the eastern world and is now spreading to other parts of the world as a popular means of calming the mind. As I said a little while ago, even big corporate houses advocate the use of this technique as a stress-busting strategy for their employees.

Basically, meditation is done by focusing your mind on a single object or image. In India, meditation is aided by chanting mantras, which are words with divine meaning. By repeating these mantras, it is believed that the mind can be so occupied with the task to the extent it can help ignore other stimuli from the world around you. In yoga, the meditators adopt complex physical postures as they meditate.

I am sure every one of us knows how difficult it is to concentrate on something for more than a few seconds. Our mind wavers from one thing to another, on a continuous basis. We think about this and that. We see or hear things for no apparent reason. Our mind moves across thousands of miles and many years in a fleeting second! In a wakeful state, it is quite natural that our EEG pattern is different from the resting rhythm.

The idea of the eastern practice of meditation is to try and prevent aimless sensory stimulation. Readers may be surprised why somebody would want to do that. Isn't the meditator losing the chance of getting more sensory information? Here comes the surprise. The meditators seem to achieve more powerful sensory reception when they are not meditating! The mind control they exercise during meditation helps them to achieve it.

I said earlier that we have a tendency to become habituated to monotonous, repetitive stimuli such as the sound of the ticking clock or the smell of the perfume. Our world is full of such recurrent, boring stimuli. It is a real danger because our brain may refuse to register sensory data in an alert manner, because its perceptivity status is lowered by the habituating stimuli all around you. So, naturally, we have learnt to ignore repetitive stimuli after sometime. This is called the habituation response.

Meditators do shut down external stimuli during meditation. But they behave differently after it. In experienced practitioners of meditation habituation response does not happen. They are able to respond to external stimuli without getting habituated. In other words, they achieve a state of 'hyper-awareness'. They are able to perceive sensory data more alertly than others!

Japanese researchers have studied this fascinating phenomenon in Zen masters as compared to normal people. Zen tradition believes in a different type of mind control. They open up their minds to be conscious of every action they do. There is no attempt to isolate the persons from external stimuli. Instead, they are asked to develop a 'present-centred' consciousness and open up their awareness to daily activities while engaged in them. In the more advanced form of Zen, the focus is on breathing movements! Once this is mastered, they move on to _skikan-taza_ , a meditative exercise that involves intensive awareness of the act of just sitting!

In the study that was done on the Zen practitioners, the subjects were asked to sit in a soundproof room. They were asked to listen to a clock, repeated every 15 seconds, while an EEG was taken. The normal subjects showed the customary phenomenon of habituation. Their brains showed less and less response to the clicking sounds. The click had been turned out of awareness for them. In the Zen masters, it was not the case. They responded to the last click as strongly as they did to the first click!

In another study, the meditators were asked to gaze at a blue rose for half an hour at a time for several sessions. Instead of getting used to the image, they said they were able to see it more vividly. The image was more luminous. Some said they felt as if they were seeing it for the first time.

Many psychologists view this phenomenon in different ways. It may be a 'cleansing of the doors of perception'. It may be 'de-growing of the mind' to the level of the child who has not yet developed automatic ways of turning out world experiences. The child sees and hears things for the first time and therefore tries to perceive them to the fullest extent. This is because the sensory experience is novel to them. Whereas an adult does most of his sensory perception in an automatic manner, without pausing to appreciate the beauty of what is out there. This is because he has seen, heard or touched them a number of times. His brain has got used to them. All of us can vouch for the fact that there are so many things in life that do not excite you anymore. These 'unexciting' things may have been viewed as interesting, wonderful, and exciting sometime in the past. We always look for something new all the time.

Studies on the meditators have shown that it is possible to regain the child-like curiosity and intent by de-automating our sensory experiences. Reports on the experiences of those who practice meditation indicate that the primary after effect of the mind concentration is an opening up of awareness or 'de-automation'.

_Karma_ Yoga is a Hindu practice in which everyday activities are treated as a sacrament so that we give them full attention. In Sufism, in the version attributed to Gurdjieff, there is a practice of focused awareness of the body. Another practice in this tradition believes in performing ordinary actions slightly differently, such as putting the shoes on in the other order, shaving the other side of the face first, eating with the left hand, etc. As you can see, these exercises are attempts to return habitual, automatic actions to full awareness. Because the action is done differently, we have to concentrate on them rather than doing them like automatons!

Looking back at our discussions so far, it becomes clear that there are many ways of keeping our brain alert to sensory signals. Meditation looks very esoteric and not many people can be expected to do it in the modern world. In the past, people used to pray either at home or at places of worship. People all over the world still do it. However, less and less people are willing to find time for it. Less people go to church and that is a fact. Elsewhere in the world, men and women are no longer keen on going to places of worship. Many of the older generation still do. Prayer as a means of focusing the mind has lost its place in our world just as meditation has. The only exceptions are the Islamic countries where the majority of the people pray 5 times a day. They simply start praying at scheduled times of the day wherever they are – home, shop, or any public place!

However, I argue that people living in the modern era have found an alternate to meditation and prayer as tools for calming the mind. Instead, they seek entertainment, holiday etc. They help in alerting the inattentive and anxious brain. Holidays break the routine for our brain. They help us to shut down anxiety-causing regular occurrences that we encounter in our daily life. In time our work generally gets stressful or boring. We need a way out anyway. Holidays and other entertainment forms provide us exactly that. Even books and films can take our mind away from the stress of our daily grind at least a few hours. We need the mental refreshment these activities give us. In the past, perhaps more people indulged in long prayers and meditations and other ritualistic practices to take their mind of the daily stress. I suppose it is a sort of evolution of tactics to keep our brains happy and relaxed.

# 8: God phenomenon as an emergent property of Universe as a complex system

GOD IS believed by most people to have created the world. Some people do not believe the creationist theory.

For the ordinary minds a natural question would arise: if God created the world then what created God? It is, as can be imagined, a very tricky question to answer. In fact, nobody has found a satisfactory, convincing answer to it yet.

At t = 0, at the very origin of the universe, what was pre-existing? Was it God?

At t = end, would God still remain?

What if I proposed that God did not create the universe but was probably an effect of it? In other words, God was an emergent phenomenon of the complex system we call as the universe.

Emergence is a ubiquitous phenomenon. You can see properties emerge in complex systems that are not individually ascribable to any constituents. I am proposing that the God phenomenon is an emergent property and therefore you will not see it before the origin of the universe or after the end of it. God may not have created by the universe but got 'created' by the universe instead! There are very few provocative statements one can ever make than this.

What is a complex system? How is it different from non-complex systems? Complex systems tend to come up with ways of ensuring their own survival. An organisation that consists of multiple interacting units is a complex system. A business company, an educational institution, a nation, a state, a religion or caste-based group, a professional group, an organism, a species, a cell – they are all complex systems. One underlying common theme of these complex systems is the fact that they all try to survive against all odds and generate order. They try to self-preserve themselves. The third point of commonality between them is there is no single cause of this self-preservation behaviour. In fact, you cannot trace the origin of the complex system to any single constituent. All constituents of a complex system seem to contribute to the emergent property of the identity, order and also self-preservation.

Complexity theory can also be understood from a philosophical point of view. Just look at a simple question – _Who am I_? Ramana Maharishi, a well-known spiritualist from Southern India, asked the question and tried to find the answer to it as part of his spiritual exploration. Only when you ask the question to yourself one can realize the problem of answering it. The question ' _Who am I_?' is all about complexity and emergence. 'I' does not mean my name, my body, my dress, my brain or any single part of me alone. Then who am I? A complex system is more than the sum total of the individual components. 'I' will dissolve into oblivion when your body is dismantled.

When you say a company tries to perform well what is it that tries to do well? What is the identity of the company? Is it the workers, the building, the shareholders or the executives? A company is dependent as much on the top executives as it does on the lower rung of workers. A top executive can't claim to be responsible for all the capabilities of the company. He can come up strategies to make the company perform better but the strategy needs the hard work of the labourers to bring the ideas to fruition. This is blindingly obvious. A labourer is as much interested in the welfare of the company as the top executives, because they all know that their own survival depends on the welfare of the company. The selfishness of the employees translates into the selfishness of the company. The selfishness of the company is represented by the company management board, which comes up with all kinds of regulations controlling the employees, including themselves. There is the salary as the incentive, apart from other types of benefits, to keep the workers going. The companies pay us the employees a salary not because of love for us but to entice us to do the hard work upon which its own survival depends! It is the mechanics of complex systems at work!

An organisation behaves with a selfish goal of survival and propagation. It defends itself against all odds. It grows. It offers its employees incentives to do what it wants. There are welfare plans for the employees such as medical insurance and occupational health. While labour laws ensure this, the real motif behind this is to ensure that the employee does not suffer from health conditions that will affect his work on a daily basis, or may need him to take many days off work, that will ultimately affect the productivity of the company. So, the 'protective' employer is in fact interested in getting you to be in pristine health so that you will work better and longer and give him more profit!

The companies develop guidelines and policies from which the employees cannot deviate. Ultimately, the employee's welfare depends on the well being of the company. At the same time, the company's welfare depends on its employees. Only thing is you don't know is from where this awareness comes into being. The company, as a complex system, stabilises at a state where the employees accept to behave as puppets doing what the company tells them to do. The company, in the mean time, tries to keep the employees happy with salary and other perks. If you try to locate the origin of the selfish survival behaviour of the complex systems, you would not be able to pinpoint the exact source. This is because none of the individual constituents is responsible for this phenomenon.

A government regulates the country in ways considered appropriate by the elected body. May be because it is not only the citizens of the country as a whole but also the members of the government and their families benefit too from the well-being of the nation. National Health Services of a country may not be owned by anybody but the managers of the health service try their best to regulate the work and behaviour of all its employees. They hope that their own families benefit from the good services, like any other family. The managers and employees and ministers get compensated for their services in terms of salary and other benefits to keep the healthcare workers interested.

Look at our nation. It is a complex system made up of citizens and natural resources. Can you tell me when a nation begins to show individuality? Is it all down to the prime minister? Is it the government? Is it the citizen? Why are we so passionate about our country of origin? From where does this property of self-preservation arise? Why are we fighting to our best to safeguard the interests of our nations? Soldiers kill unknown faces to save their own country. This is extremely curious because their orders came from commanders who are only people like themselves. Patriotism is a selfish manifestation to safeguard your country at the expense of another country. It is strange that your patriotism is an abstract entity. It is certainly more than just the geographical boundaries. I am sure you would agree. When a national team plays against the team from another country the borders of the country are not at stake. Yet, the teams play as if their lives depend on it. People play their national anthems, cry during its recitation and sentimental things like that. You see people weep because they won a medal for their country like what happens during Olympic tournaments. Where did the country come and tell the player to win the match for it? From where does this property of patriotism emerge?

A citizen is not free to do anything he likes just as a company employee is not able to do things as he likes. You are rewarded if you do things conducive to the common welfare of the society but punished when your behaviour harms others. Why, or how, people accept to subject themselves to the attachment of all kinds of 'strings' that makes them dance to the tune of the society? Or, to the tune of the company we work for? I said that nobody owns a country. Nobody owns any organisation. Nobody owns anything when you part with the world. Still you find all kinds of regulations governing the employees (and citizens) like me and you. You are expected to do exactly what you are told to do. This is surely the case with almost all organizations.

Emergence is an all-pervading concept, which has come to be recognised as a great way of explaining how complex systems function. Basically, this means appearance of functional properties that cannot be explained by any of the individual constituents alone. The sum total of effects manifested by a complex system as a whole is always more than that due to individual constituents. As I said in the first chapter, the classical example is the consciousness arising in the brain that cannot be credited to any solitary neuron. Another example at a molecular level is the emergence of the catalytic property of a protein (enzyme) not present in any of the constituent amino acids. A third random example is magnetism, an emergent property, not seen with individual iron atoms.

If you want to understand complex systems reductionist approaches do not help. We need to look at the whole. What type of property emerges depends on the complex system but generally speaking this could be a capability to do a task, the ability to self-preserve, the ability to propagate, the ability regulate and generate order etc.

Even non-living entities like huge molecules (enzymes, DNA etc) are complex systems. They are often made up of hundreds of individual molecules bound together. There are thousands of different types of proteins in our body, each with unique function. In terms of composition they are all made up of tens and hundreds of different amino acids, strung together as beads in a chain. The proteins take up different shapes and sizes and interestingly support different functions. Enzymes are strings of amino acids and therefore proteins in nature. There are many different types of enzymes in our body. They are all strings of amino acids just like all the enzymes. The sequence of arrangement of amino acids is different in each case, conferring different 3-D structures to the protein molecules, including enzymes. Interestingly, as said earlier, the functional capabilities of the protein molecules also differ. An enzyme can catalyse a biochemical reaction. We all know that no single constituent amino acid can accomplish this catalytic task on its own. Catalytic property is something that emerges out of the collective whole. It cannot be traced down to any single amino acid. I view an enzyme as a complex system made up of molecules as units. The catalytic property of the enzyme is an emergent property made possible by the collective behaviour of all the constituent amino acids.

Enzymes can also display functional and structural specialisation due to three-dimensional folding of the proteins. The amino acids that make up the protein fold into a shape driven by the electrical charges present on the amino acids which attract. Sometimes it can be other inter-molecular forces like Van der Walls forces etc. The surface of the enzymic protein becomes functionally compartmentalised. A part of the enzyme surface will act as the substrate-binding site. This substrate-binding site will act as a procurement department trying to bind the 'raw materials' for the catalytic action. Once the raw material is bound then it will be moved to the catalytic site. This catalytic site is the location the 'molecular engineering' happens whereby the raw material is converted in to a product. Usually, the enzyme surface will also possess a part that acts as the 'sensor' for determining the cellular demand for the product. If there is too much product already then the situation is sensed as a glut and the production site if shut down. The enzyme does not make any more products. This is called feedback inhibition. In the same way when there is a shortage of product available the enzyme responds to some positive signals and accelerates the manufacturing site! Just as the catalytic property all other functional or structural differentiation of the enzyme protein are emergent properties, not accountable by any single constituent amino acid!

Molecules like DNA are so huge and complex with an infinite variety of control centres that regulate the transcription and translation of genetic information. It has billions of nucleotides joined in a sequence that is inherited. The nucleotides are only of 4 types but they get repeated in various sequences just like we write words and sentences using a series of pre-defined alphabets. I am sure we all know that no single alphabet conveys any meaning but when they are all joined together in words and sentences you suddenly find the emergence of meaning. That is emergence for you. In the case of human DNA this is what happens. The meaningless nucleotides generate unique meaning when they are in combination with many others. The type of information generated is the genetic information, the very basis of life. It behaves as a complex system also in other respects. It has about 30,000 genes-worth of information. An infinite array of information exists for coding of molecules that control the flow of information in response to environmental signals. The DNA responds to our environment and has numerous ways of sensing environmental changes and initiating appropriate biological programs in a very tightly controlled manner. No single gene is allowed to act in an uncontrolled manner. When they do there is disorder. These disorders are called diseases. The types of disease can range from cancers, metabolic diseases, mental disorders etc.

Regulation is a characteristic of DNA as a complex system. Incredibly, DNA, like any complex system, has inbuilt emergent abilities to protect itself! It can protect itself against damage induced by UV rays, chemicals and even errors that occur during DNA replication. There are enzymes, coded by DNA itself, that do the repair task to keep the DNA information intact. This is like self-repair or self-regeneration. This is sustained for over 60-80 years of a typical human life span after which the damage control abilities are overwhelmed by errors that may have accumulated over time. Until then, the DNA survives against all odds in the form of 'selfish genes'. The genes actually compete with each other to select the best ones that can win! That is the very basis of natural selection! DNA can therefore create new life, protect, regulate and generate order, drive energy metabolism and also cause destruction and punishment by activation of programmed cell death! DNA is almost God-like.

The point I am trying to make is that there are many levels of complex systems starting from invisible molecules to huge corporations and nations. Ultimately, the types of emergent properties that we see are not explainable by any of the individual units that make up the whole. My question is this: could the world as a whole be a complex system? If that is the case we should see emergent protective properties in our world as well as creative potency. If this is the case, can we dub this emergent property of the world as the God?

My argument is: God phenomenon as an emergent property of the cosmic system as a whole. There is an emergent property of survival at the level of the whole earth/universe that is responsible for the controlling influences regulating humans and other animals and the physical environment. It is perhaps similar to the property of self-preservation of other complex systems such as organisations and companies. What we call as God is not a discrete entity. It has no physical dimension in the sense it cannot be attributed to any constituent in this world. I would like to hypothesise that self-preservative tendencies of the world is God. God is a physical phenomenon that can never be seen but can only be felt. The reason why 'God phenomenon' cannot be seen is because there are no discrete entities that can claim to be attributes of God. But, functional manifestations of the universe as a complex system will influence the component behaviour and therefore can be perceived. Even if you are a non-believer in God you will still be susceptible to the physical, chemical or biological effects of the systemic whole which we colloquially call God. Really this is a physical phenomenon that has an all-pervading influence over the entire universe, affecting animate and inanimate entities.

How do we then explain the protective and life-sustaining mechanisms of the cosmos? The earth has the right elemental composition to generate life forms and has all that is required for their sustenance. The earth has oxygen for organisms to breath and has also the mechanism to mop up the waste product, carbon dioxide. More interestingly, food can be made out of it, which forms the very basis of the food chain on this planet. Even more intriguingly, food is so tasty. Taste of the food is like an incentive for us to seek it. The same, I suppose, applies to the attraction of the pleasure of sex in propagation of man as a species. Plants also have medicinal substances that help heal and cure diseases. The belly of the earth also has adequate energy stored for future use in the form fossil fuels, which are again recycled carbon from dead plants and animals. The Sun powers the entire biosphere with its light. The Sun also synchronises the biological behaviour of virtually all life forms to the day/night rhythm of light and darkness. Stars in the universe had provided the elements with which living and non-living things in the planet can be made of. These elements are continually in use, being utilised by living and non-living things, and are effectively recycled when the organisms are dead. This prevents the precious elements getting locked up in some dead carcass. What was once a part of one organism may well end up in a totally different organism in the next cycle and it is amazing that ancient Hinduism believed that life is born and reborn in an endless cycle which is very close to the modern idea of reutilization of elemental resources after death.

In light of our understanding of the complex systems it is possible to argue that an emergent property of the cosmos enables the existence of living and non-living forms. What was thought over the ages to be God's design could be accounted for by the natural physical property of the cosmos as a complex system of which every tiny living and non-living thing is a part of. Early man worshipped natural forces like sun, water, air etc as if they were Gods. Hindu Vedas are full of hymns in praise of these natural deities. Other pre-historic civilizations also did the same. In a way these early humans were right. They knew that the natural forces were worthy of worship because they provided them with sustenance. Nature was a giver, protector and also punisher. Pre-historic man thought the floods, earthquakes, diseases, lightening etc were God's way of showing his displeasure about man's actions! What they did not realise is that these natural forces were part of a bigger complex system called the earth and had a completely accountable geological, physical basis. Though these forces were physical or geological in nature one cannot still discount the fact that the rain gave the harvest, water quenched their thirst, food alleviated their hunger, air gave them the life, and plants gave them the food as well as the medicines. Such bountiful nature could not have happened by chance. Planetary geophysical forces, coupled with extra-planetary influences like sunlight and gravitation, manifested the above earthly phenomena that seem just what the doctor ordered for not only creating the life forms but also protecting them. So, the argument that emergent physical and geological manifestation of the earth (or the universe) as a complex system has God-like properties is holding water just fine. I should not have any problem if you want to call it God. After all, we need a name for everything.

Perhaps, this is more like our own body as a complex system. There are trillions of cells of various types in our body. They begin to form during embryogenesis and are constantly turned over during our life span. They seem to have their own independent life and do their functions. The cells that constitute our body have their own finite life span depending on the cell type. A red blood cell dies in 120 days only to be replaced by newly created red cell. White blood cells die in about 1 month and they too are replaced constantly. Creation of new life is happening all the time inside your body to keep the cellular population constant just as new humans are created to replace the old and dead and maintain the global population. Our body is able to supply energy to all the constituent cells through the feeding behaviour. Our body protects its 'citizen cells' against invaders like bacteria and viruses. Our body can also punish maverick cells that turn cancerous or those that attack the self. When lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that plays a role in immunity, start attacking our own body the end result is a type of disease called autoimmune diseases. This is conceptually very similar to the terrorist attacks. Our body has monitoring mechanisms to liquidate such cells. Our body also has a tremendous capacity to heal from injuries. It also has a complex, well-orchestrated mechanism to keep the internal body environment constant. Physiologists would call this phenomenon as homeostasis. When the levels of essential nutrients, salt levels or oxygen etc fall in our blood stream our body can set right the imbalance very quickly. Biochemical order is of paramount importance for a life system. I see that our internal microcosm of the body has so much resemblance to the macrocosm that is external to the body. At the macrocosmic level these phenomena are attributed to a divine influence. But, what about the same phenomena happening inside your microcosm and how would you like to call it?

A cell is by itself a complex system. It is a collection of molecules and organelles like mitochondria, lysosomes, golgi bodies, nucleus etc. None of these constituents can account for the self-preservative tendencies of a cell. Aren't they really part of one whole, called the human body? Isn't the life process that governed their existence an emergent property upon which they depended for their own survival? Were they not preserved by this life-sustaining principle, which is not explained by any single cell? Nutrient capture, propagation of cells by multiplication, defence against predators, homeostatic control of the internal environment etc are all happening around these cells run by this emergent property. Whenever there is a need body mechanisms swing into action to rectify the situation. This may be, for example, a fall in blood pressure, a fall in critical electrolytes in body fluids, a fall in nutrients, a threat from a pathogenic microbe etc. This is what I think is comparable to the benevolent actions of the God at the cosmic scale. It is perhaps just an emergent property of a system of which you are a tiny but indispensable part. Both the whole and part is mutually dependant on each other. There is no attempt here to put forward an anthropomorphic view of the earth or cosmos. There is no need at all for this in my model. Any complex system, living or non-living, would show such properties and therefore there is no need to go into the argument whether the cosmos is alive. It need not be.

Look at what happens in times of world crises such as famine, floods, earthquakes, war etc. Nations around the globe volunteer to help with relief aids. Why should they do it? Is it a realisation that they want to show that they have done their bit and so can expect something back? In other words, are they just making sure they are playing the social game alright? Or, is it a realisation that the world is inter-linked and something that happens elsewhere will affect the rest of the countries as well? Whatever the reason is the fact still remains that remedial measures are taken and the affected regions in the world get the benefit. It is almost like god intervened. To me it is 'global homeostasis' speaking in biological jargon. Perhaps in the past this kind of calamity relief work was not happening simply because primitive man, or even the societies that lived before the age of telecommunication, did not know of the catastrophes that happened in far regions of the world. With modern technology you come to know of the minute details of every significant event that happens in the farthest corners of the globe sitting in your armchair. I suppose this has enabled the phenomenon of global aid, which I call as global homeostasis that will aim to restore order. Because we know who is providing help we have not given the credit to god. But, in the past, such help was not readily forthcoming from fellow human beings and there was more and more tendency to seek almighty intervention instead. A period of famine may have been followed by rainfall and this may have construed by the primitive man as an intervention of God. An epidemic of plague may have been seen as curse from God while it was just natural biological phenomenon due to increases in human population and easy spread of the microbes.

In my opinion the phenomenon of God is the same emergent phenomenon that we have been talking about all along that is seen in any complex system. God is the emergent phenomenon of our Earth (or even Universe) as a whole. All the regulatory forces under operation that seem to create, protect and destroy are inevitable effects of the whole Universe which we are used to calling as God. God is nothing but the emergent behaviour of our world that cannot be localised to any single component. Everything in our universe contributes to the whole and therefore the emergent phenomenon. If God is the emergent manifestation of the universe as a complex system all benevolence we normally associate with God, all the emphasis we place on order as opposed to disorder as mandated by fear of God, all creation that we consider divine could be construed to be the result of purely complex system dynamics that could be accounted by physics. There is no reason to believe that this emergent dynamics is restricted to God/Universe complex system only. This is a purely physical phenomenon that should be observed in any other complex system, small or big, animate or inanimate. In other words, 'God-like' properties are there everywhere for you to see if you analyze the inner workings of a complex system of your choice.

# 9: Creation or evolution – why not both?

RECENTLY THERE has been a lot of debate about creationism as opposed to evolution. Darwin shocked the world with his theory of origin of life by natural selection. It must have been hard for him to face the wrath of the religious communities that existed then. How can one question the creation of God? I can fully understand the disbelief in the minds of common man. What made it even worse was that man was claimed to have descended from monkeys. How can man be equal to apes and monkeys?

Times have changed since Darwin. Not only science has accepted his theory but has found this theory of natural selection applicable to a whole variety of phenomena outside evolution. It is so common to see the term 'Darwinian' these days in scientific papers touching upon themes other than evolution. It looks like Darwinian natural selection principle may be more profound than thought before.

Evolution theory has become accepted. Now schools teach their pupils about evolutionary theory. Creationism has been removed from biology text books. Creationism is now restricted to religious studies. Lots of publicity has been given to this debate recently in the last decade because some schools have included creationism in their teaching on origin of life.

What I would like to show here is that even creation could be accounted for, within the frameworks of the emergent God principle, and we can still keep the evolutionary theory. In order to allow this we have to take a solid example from a social/biological system and demonstrate how 'things' can be created, protected, evolved and destroyed. The system could be a commercial/industrial company, a nation, a biological life form, a society, complex molecules, cells etc.

If you consider creation as a unique divine property I have the challenge of proving that other complex systems, other than God/Universe, possess the potency to create. Secondly, I also have to convince the readers that creationistic view alone does not fully account for the origins of entities but we need the evolutionary force to support it.

We are talking about origin of life on earth (human in particular) – who created us? God, or was it purely evolution? Origin of life on the planet is a global scheme. While talking about creation we should not restrict to origin of life only. We can also wonder about the very creation of the universe itself or even God himself. At the other end of the spectrum I also want to view 'creation' of children by reproduction, 'invention' of scientific gadgets, origin of new ideas as other examples of creation. In my opinion all of them will have common working principles, motifs in other words, if what I claimed earlier is true. I claimed that all complex systems are alike. I argue that all these creative acts need a creator as well as substantial amount of pre- and post-creative evolution. What makes my argument even more provocative is that the 'creator' I am referring to is a physical emergent manifestation of a complex system not localized to any individual constituent of the whole. This emergent creative potency did not exist before the origin of the complex system nor will it exist after the complex system ceases to exist.

Fertilization of a sperm and an ovum means a child is born. Does it mean the father and mother are creators? Of course they are. But is it the end of story? They are the 'creators' of their own children but have they got anything to do with creation/origin of life in general?

In order to keep the parents' status as creators and also keep the non-creationist view what we need to show is the place of this apparent individual 'creation' in the context of the bigger picture. At the level of the species/bio-system as a whole such acts of 'creation' are parts of the scheme necessary for global sustenance of the species. We procreate to propagate our genes. Our act of procreation also helps sustain our population levels. If we did not procreate it is not the end of the world. Someone else will. You cannot stop people from procreation. Why? Reproduction is fundamental to propagation of species and unless reproductive activity is sustained at a level enough to replace the dead members of the species then the species will be wiped out. This is a systemic need, especially need of a complex system. All I am trying to tell you is that systems ensure that work is done by using 'carrots' such as pleasure, rewards, incentives, etc. So, the pleasure of sex is the carrot that goads us to engage in reproductive activity. Why should sex be pleasurable? Why cannot it be dull and uninteresting? If you are going to ask questions like this you may as well start asking a number of other questions too: Why do you get a salary? Why is food tasty? Why are fruits sweet? Why is parenthood so fulfilling? Why does it feel good when somebody praises you? Why is beauty attractive? Why are sports and games relaxing? Why is glory intoxicating? Why being popular is enjoyable? That is the way complex systems have evolved.

In many lower life forms the reproduction may not be pleasure-incentivized. Instead, it could be accomplished by programmed, seasonal activation of heat or something like that. The hard-wired brain programming is again an evolutionary selection that has happened over time. Animals enter into the oestrous phase periodically under the programmed induction of hormones. The endocrine system has synchronized the reproductive activity to seasons. Day-light rhythms and chronobiological adaptations are commonplace in animal and plant kingdom. Lots of biological phenomena are tuned to duration of sunlight (meaning day-night rhythms) and even seasonal changes in duration of light are capable of triggering biological phenomena. What I am trying to say is that animals are driven into specific types of behaviours, including reproductive activity, like programmed machines. The programming is the result of their evolutionary adaptations over time and is a species-level change. That means whether they like it or not the members of the same species will enter into these programmed activities, including reproduction, like clockwork. Here 'creation' of new members of species is accomplished by evolution of programmed oestrous activity at the species level.

The act of reproduction by the animal gives it the status of being the creator but if you look closely it was a species-level functionality that enabled this. So, the species as a complex system, should take the cake. The species ensured that the animal complied with the need of the society in a pre-programmed manner. The species had arrived at the right conditions for individual animal to become creators and generators of new life. It is a combination of evolution and creation. The biological infrastructure needed for the reproduction, like programming of desire, mate selection mechanisms, evolution of reproductive organs to suit the species, evolution of gametes as tools of hereditary transmission happened over tens of thousands of years. It is not as if one fine day the animal, including man, created an off-spring from nowhere. They had to rely on a lot of ground work to happen before that. This groundwork happened in our world long time before a couple could be the creators. First of all, the need for 'creation' of new life came about for a purpose. Then only the system evolved a way to fulfil this need. In other words, there is a lot of evolution of a complex system before creation can even occur. Once created the entity undergoes further evolution too.

I do understand that our main aim is to explain the origin of life on the planet, including humans. Explaining acts of reproductive creation at the individual level helps explain my concept and that is why I started describing it. Coming to the origin of life on planet in the bigger scheme of things we find some similarities too. Evolution of organic matter from inorganic stuff happened over millions of years, followed by origin of precursors of important bio-molecules like amino acids, DNA, RNA etc in the 'pre-biotic soup'. Then unicellular life forms appeared once they formed a lipid membrane around the bio-molecules. It took a lot more than perhaps 1500 million years for earth to become 'pregnant' with life forms. Even if 'God' created life he had to wait for 1500 million years for this molecular evolution let alone the time it took for origin and evolution of atomic elements in the interstellar space much before the earth was even formed!

It took hundreds of more millions of years later on before multi-cellular life forms formed that had reproductive systems. Really, it took a good 4500 million years before man as an animal made his origin. That is nearly 3000-3500 million years after first appearance of unicellular, proto-life forms. So, 'God' waited for another 3000 million years after he created unicellular life to create humans! We are not looking at instant creation. There is only instant coffee but no instant creation. I meant this only as a bad joke but after writing it I realize even the instant coffee you 'created' can retrace its long preparatory process to the jungles of Columbia or Brazil from where the coffee beans came from.

Here comes a man and woman after all this biological and geological evolution, which happened over 3500 millions of years, who claim to have 'created' life just because they indulged in sex! It is almost like saying God created life overnight! It is like evolution theory is wrong. Is it really? God may have created 'life' on earth but for the life to be 'created' there was something like 1500 million years of evolution of inorganic matter before that and a further 3000 million years for creation of man. We are not even taking into account the hundreds of millions of years of time it took before that for galactic stars to 'manufacture' atoms from sub-atomic particles by atomic fusion!

To be honest this creative quest within universe as a complex system started billions of years before even earth was formed when this inorganic matter was born inside a star and got spewed out in a cataclysmic supernova. This inorganic matter, roaming in the vast interstellar space as gigantic rocks, aggregated together when the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. They say a lot of interstellar organic matter also formed in the interstellar space and this further enriched the planet earth by way of meteoritic impacts that kept happening during earth's early formative stages. Organic matter formed in the interstellar space, carried by meteorites as if they are 'intergalactic pollen', made the earth fertile. It is a point worth noticing that motile transport of creative potency is a motif not restricted to plant and human reproduction but a truly universal phenomenon. Fred Hoyle, the eminent Astrophysicist, even went to the extent of saying meteorites carried even proto-life forms that had evolved in the vast interstellar space into the earth! Even if not, the organic matter like amino acids, nucleotides that evolved in the interstellar space, seeded the planet earth and the resultant conditions were ripe for origin of life. This is akin to a man and woman becoming 'creators' of their own children after there was a good many millions of years of human biological evolution, at the species level, that prepared their individual reproductive systems as part of the anatomical and physiological evolutionary changes.

Even after spontaneous origin of life on the planet, from the right precursors, there was a great deal of evolution that took place that transformed unicellular life into multi-cellular forms and later man. A lot of evolutionary groundwork was needed Pre- and Post-creation.

I think I need to support this argument with another example. Let us now look at a company. It could be a company that is involved with some sort of commercial, profit-oriented business making products to sell. A company is almost like a species and is a complex system consisting of many interacting constituents. It tries to survive against odds. It tries to defend, compete, and grow in the middle of severe competition. The market is its ecological niche. A company may make one or more products. The products may be considered 'creations' of the company. The creator of the product is the company. But, what is the company? Is it the CEO, finance director, board members, workers, administrative staff? Who is the company? This is similar to the question we raised some time ago – 'Who am I?'

Let us go back to the question, 'Who is the company?' The company is the creator of the product. But, we are not sure who exactly the company is. So, I am going to assume the manual worker who physically assembled the product in the pipeline is the creator. It may be true in the literal sense just like an individual couple becoming creators when they reproduce. But is it really true?

What about the fulfilment of all prior conditions to enable to formation/creation of the product? In the case of the product made by the company it could be the technology needed to make it. It may have taken a lot of time and effort to invent the technology in the first place. Invention of technology almost always involves combined effort of lot of researchers over time. More importantly, the need for that technology predates the origin of the product. Telecommunication tools were inventions (or creations) that originated when the society had grown too big for short-range communications. Primitive man, living in small villages, had no need for it. The need came about only a couple of hundred years ago due to evolution of the human society to this size. This need is the driver that underlies the manifestation of the creative potency – creation of telecommunication tools. Necessity is the mother of invention and this necessity is an outcome of complex system dynamics.

The initial prototype is generally clumsy and it takes a number of step-by-step improvements in the product. The product almost evolves. A number of different companies make improved versions of the product and the success of the product is reflected by how well they sell. The version of the product that had the most desirable characteristics survives. In many cases there may be different versions of the product and all of them nay have their own desirable characteristics and all of them may survive but with different levels of success. In almost all cases there may be some disadvantages and the companies try to improve them all the time. Look at the models of cell phones, TV, printers, cameras and computers we have on the market. Each model is behaving like a species trying to win the market. Whether they succeed or become extinct will be determined by how well it adapts to the needs and demands of the consumer.

Coming to our point if the factory worker is not the 'creator', is the inventor of the product the creator of the product? For example Graham Bell invented the phone to fulfil the telecommunication need. He can be said to be the creator of phones and telecommunication tools. But, there have been so many improvements in the design of phones, thanks to innumerable number of people, since then. Are they now replacing Graham Bell as the creator? Even for existing versions of phones we have different companies, with their own factory workers, who physically 'create' the phone in the pipeline. Are they now the creators? Who is the creator of your 'iPhone' or Galaxy Note? Is it Graham Bell? No. Is it the Apple or Samsung factory worker? Probably yes for the individual pieces of the phones. But, even 'iPhone' has evolved and keeps evolving. I am sure it will evolve more. So, what are we left with?

I am sure the readers understand the point I am trying to make. Act of creation does happen. But, there is a lot that happens before and after. They prepare for the act of creation and for evolution subsequently. That pre- and post preparation will evolve over time. With respect to origin of life, God may be the creator because the earth (or even the universe) behaved as an emergent system and manifested the properties necessary for origin of life. I call this emergent property of earth (and the universe) as God. There is no God other than this emergent property. You will not find him. Just like we struggle to answer the question 'Who am I?' we will struggle to identify God as a discrete, identifiable entity. The phenomenon of God will only appear as a systemic manifestation of the complex system called the universe. So, in that sense, God is the creator of life. But, for this emergent property of God to create life a lot had to happen at the atomic, molecular and cellular level before that. Inorganic elements had to be formed in a faraway star thousands of millions of years ago by fusion of protons and neutrons. The inorganic elements on our earth were formed in the sun thousands of millions of years ago. When the planet earth formed out of these elements there was a slow conversion of organic matter from the inorganic stuff. The organic matter like amino acids, RNA, DNA etc evolved slowly in the primitive oceans of the earth. Then the life systems formed out of them. So, these entities had to evolve before life could be 'created'. So, creation is still a valid argument because the universe as a complex system 'created' the conditions necessary for life forms to be 'created'. What if the universe did not have stars or did not have the nuclear fusion technology whereby atoms are formed? Then the universe would not have had the cosmic inorganic element 'factories'. Then obviously, there would have been no organic matter and no life form. So, the prior conditions needed to be fulfilled before creation of life. The effect is pre-existent in the cause.

Similarly, in our example of a company as a complex system it takes time and technological availability also before modern gadgets were 'created'. Digital revolution has transformed our lives today. We have practically all gadgets digitized these days. One may ask who created the digital gadgets. Then they can ask why digital gadget was not 'created' 100 years ago or before that. It is almost like asking why life forms could not be created before 3500 millions of years ago on earth. Every act of creation needs some ground work to be done by the complex systems in question. This act of preparation is an emergent property and is not traceable to any single constituent. The emergent property of the system will ensure a need for something and will prepare itself to meet that need. This is the way it works. Why should there be a need and why should it be followed by fulfilment of the need by an act of creation? The answer should be sought in the mechanics of the complex systems. Complex systems exhibit properties that create, sustain and destroy. Survival is the goal. This goal is met by repetitive motifs that can be seen in all sorts of complex systems, living and nonliving.

# 10: Brahman: Eastern Philosophical views on Cosmology

ANCIENT INDIANS held two broad theories of cosmos and its beings. The dualist approach ( _Dvaita_ ) considered the cosmic principle as independent and separate from the constituent parts, which make the whole. This is more like the view that there is a soul in our body, separate and independent of the body. The Non-dualist theory ( _Advaita_ ) held the view that _Brahman_ , the absolute, is identical with _Atman_ , the 'self', the innermost core of each individual being, because each individual proceeded from the original cosmic being (The One). The individual living and non-living things in the universe are part of the whole and are inter-independent. This is perhaps as close as one could get to our current modern understanding of complex systems and it is truly amazing. _Advaita_ philosophers were indeed Complexity theorists!

_Advaita_ philosophers had deep insights in the way our cosmos worked. It is really amazing that their thoughts were so close to the Complexity theory of today and it can probably taken to mean that when you are looking for answers to creation, origin and purpose etc reductionist approaches are no good. Just as Complexity theorists of today the ancient _Advaita_ philosophers seemed to have abandoned reductionism in favour of a systemic theory. _Advaita_ Vedanta was formulated in India around 7th AD, largely by Adi Sankara, based on the ancient source texts _Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita_ and _Brahma Sutras_. These source texts were much older and are considered the essence of Indian spiritualism. Therefore, the _Advaita_ Vedanta should be seen as an interpretation of Indian spiritual thinking that had existed much before that, perhaps for centuries, possibly millennia.

The Harappan civilisation that flourished near the river Indus peaked around 2500 BCE. The Indus valley people had their own writing (still not decipherable) and they had images of their gods on their clay seals. The civilisation was also known as Harappa- Mohenjo-Daro civilisation because these two were the major cities that were first excavated in the Indus valley. The civilisation actually is dated at least 7000 - 8000 years ago and had progressed through growth stages to mature around 2500 BCE. Some of the gods they had worshipped resemble the later Indian gods _Shiva_ and _Vishnu._

Hinduism, the earliest known religion, believes that the world is governed by a creator ( _Brahma_ ), protector ( _Vishnu_ ) and the destroyer ( _Shiva_ ) meaning that are three aspects to existence – origin, survival and death. This model amazingly fits well with our current understanding of complex systems. Just as origin is important in the life of a complex system equally important is the ability to survive and also the inevitability of death. Hindu scriptures talk of _Vishnu_ , the protector, making his appearance as an _avatar_ whenever the disorder in the world reaches the critical limit. This is akin to homeostatic regulation that happens within your body (a complex system). When there is a crisis there is help in restoration. On occasions like trauma, infections, starvation our body is in crisis. There are many cellular processes that kick-start during such crises to protect our life. Within limits, most often, these restorative processes succeed. We know that crisis is something that can happen to any complex systems like industrial organisations, nations etc too. They come up with strategies to get over them and there is usually somebody who will be considered a hero! This hero is like an avatar to me. In fact, you would find that in any complex system. But at the cosmic scale we associate this with divine intervention. If you just consider them purely as a physical property then _Avatars_ are everywhere!

According to _Samkhya_ philosophy (Indian Vedantic philososophy founded by Kapila), the origin of life on earth is depicted not as a miracle work of God but as a creative process passing through different phases of change and transformation. This is strikingly similar to the concept of evolution.

The _Samkhya_ system is based on _Sat-karya-vada_ or the theory of causation. According to _Satkaryavada_ , the effect is pre-existent in the cause. There is only an apparent or illusory change in the makeup of the cause and not a material one, when it becomes effect. Since, effects cannot come from nothing, the original cause of everything is seen as _Prakriti_. The evolution obeys causality relationships, with primal Nature itself being the material cause of all physical creation. The cause and effect theory of _Samkhya_ is called _Satkaryavada_ (theory of existent causes), and holds that nothing can really be created from or destroyed into nothingness – all evolution is simply the transformation of primal Nature from one form to another.

Broadly, the _Samkhya_ system classifies all objects as falling into one of the two categories: _Purusha_ and _Prakriti_. _Purusha_ is the transcendental self or pure consciousness. It is absolute, independent, free, imperceptible, unknowable through other agencies, above any experience by mind or senses, and beyond any words or explanations. It remains pure, "non-attributive consciousness'. _Prakriti_ consists of earth, water, fire, water and the living things meaning that essentially it is the fundamental matter of the universe. At the end of every cycle of creation all the living and non-living entities will dissolve in the universal P _rakriti_ only to be brought back again in the new cycle.

_Prakriti_ , said to be the 'primal motive force', according to _Gita,_ is the essential constituent of the universe and is at the basis of all activity of creation. _Prakriti_ is said to be closest in definition to our modern understanding of matter. _Prakriti_ is perishable and therefore said to account only partly for the _Brahman_ which is imperishable and unchangeable.

If I may try to use recent developments in Theoretical physics I am convinced that _Prakriti_ is only the manifested universe. Matter that takes part in creation and recycling of the manifested universe is _Prakriti._ But, _Brahman_ is immutable and imperishable and therefore cannot be _Prakriti_. The expectation, therefore, is that there is a part of the _Brahman_ that does not take part in the creation and change, but can direct it. Hindu _Samkya_ philosophy says it is _Purusha_ but how are we going to understand this from modern physics?

The emphasis of duality between existence ( _sat_ ) and non-existence ( _asa_ t) in the _Nasadiya sukta_ of the Rig Veda is similar to the _vyakta–avyakta_ (manifest–unmanifest) polarity in _Samkhya_ philosophy.

How can we understand these ancient philosophical thoughts in the light of modern science? Or, are we justified in even trying to understand these philosophical conjectures through science?

Ancient people arrived at these philosophies using their understanding of nature, achieved through the power of meditation. Science as a discipline had not yet arisen. Indian philosophers considered knowledge as something that can be gained through 6 primary means. The first one is through perception using the sensory system. What you can see, hear or touch allows us to construct a model of the world. The second form of knowledge is to be obtained through Inference (speculation). The third means for knowledge was considered to be analogies, comparison and contrasting. Fourth mechanism is through meaningful assumptions based on common sense and previous experience, by which we can hypothesize. Knowledge obtained through negation is the fifth form. Finally, the last form of knowledge comes from study of scriptures where theoretical knowledge has been passed down over centuries from seers in the past.

I guess all of us would agree that science also advances based on a similar process of knowledge accumulation. Lot of scientific theories are based on analogies. By doing experiments on in-vitro systems, using isolated cells or molecules, scientists can extrapolate the findings to the whole system. By doing experiments on lower organisms like C. elegans or Drosophila scientists can learn the broad biological principles that are applicable to higher organisms like us too. People try to study the human brain to design better computers. The mechanism of Information processing in DNA is being studied to build information storage devices. Physicists can study liquid helium to unravel some secrets about universe. Turbulence in flow of water can help scientists to study non-linear dynamics and so on. We can keep mentioning many more such examples. Scientists can add to knowledge by experiments that negate previous thoughts. They can also add to knowledge purely by hypotheses like many theoretical scientists do, with just mathematics to help them. Discovery of electrons, positrons, anti-matter, and various others were preceded by theoretical predictions decades earlier before we experimentally proved that they do exist. Pure mathematical hypotheses are proven later to be true. Textbooks are equivalents of scriptures these days. Students learn them as facts. In summary, the process of science and spiritualism are very similar in terms of generation of knowledge. Lack of experimental tools does not limit, or did not limit, growth of spiritual knowledge in human history. Experimental observation is just one way of knowledge capture. But, we do know that even observation of nature and its forces is one form of observation which ancient man was perfectly capable of doing.

Debate was central to growth of spiritual thought in ancient India. Thinkers entered into debates on their ideas and concepts with contemporary philosophers. I suppose this would have worked more or less our own scientific enterprise. People put forth a new idea, or make a modification of an existing idea, and this gets debated. Now we do it by way of scientific publications and conferences. In the ancient past we did not have these luxuries like printing and other communication tools. Thinkers had to pass on their ideas by word of mouth which then spread slowly. Diffusion of new ideas must have taken ages. As one can imagine this is not as easy as it sounds today. Vedic thoughts were orally transmitted down generations for millennia. This is an illustration of the way things worked in the past.

Over successive centuries, newer thinking on old spiritual concepts was added enriching the old doctrines, or even refuting them. We can build a chronology of world philosophical thoughts across the globe, over time, and the credit for these thoughts are usually given to certain names. However, it is true that these philosophers had depended on pre-existing thoughts and ideas to formulate their own. This is the way even modern science works too.

Mind that has been calmed to the state of stillness can allow us to see, and understand, things beyond expectations. Our mind is considered to be like a pond that is constantly muddled by pebbles thrown onto its surface. The ripples caused by these pebbles prevent you from seeing the bottom of the pond. When the surface is still, without any ripples, we see what is underneath. Our thoughts and external stimuli muddle our minds all the time. This is true for all of us. When we want to concentrate on something we prefer to go somewhere quiet. We cannot obviously work in the middle of noise and commotion. Sages in ancient India went to remote hills and shut themselves from the sensory stimulations. By meditating for months or years they honed the mind power to the extent they were able to look inside the deep recesses of their minds. Such minds, they claim, can see into the past, present and the future! When you look at some of the spiritual concepts of the ancient past we are left wondering about the similarities between our current understanding and those ancient thoughts. This is especially true for some truly profound questions that have challenged man. To be honest, for some of the questions about creation of the universe, god, the purpose and the mechanics of the consciousness and soul etc we are still struggling to find the answers and this is where spiritualism is on level-playing grounds with science. My interest is now to focus on those concepts and see what modern science can tell us that either agrees with ancient Eastern philosophical thoughts or negate them. To my surprise there is quite a lot of agreement between both or, at least, we can see parallels in the thinking that can show the way forward.

Physicists tell us that all the billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, each star with tens of planets, account for only an incredible 4% of matter!!!! The remaining (96%) is hidden, inaccessible to human senses, unknowable, as dark energy and dark matter. The gravitational effects of this hidden matter can be seen and that is how physicists postulate their existence though they have no clue about its nature.

Another mystery is the whereabouts of the anti-matter in our universe. The physicists believe that at the time of Big Bang equal amount of matter and anti-matter were formed. But, we do not find the anti-matter anywhere. Where has it gone? Will it only appear at the time of some sort of programmed annihilation at the end of universe when collision of matter and antimatter will probably clean up the manifested matter! Physicists are not shy at all about talking freely about multi-dimensional universes and when I read such things I wonder is it science or science-fiction. But, the physicists have no qualms about it. I suppose I do not blame them because if 96% of universe is not accounted for by your perception then I guess you have no option but to consider existence of other dimensions where dark matter and anti-matter could be in co-existence, in a dimension not accessible to your senses.

In a way this is a lot like our DNA. They say that only less than 20% of our DNA actually code for our genes. The remaining 80% is considered as non-coding and was even thought to be junk, like your dark matter. But, recently, there was an announcement from a human genome sequencing project called ENCODE that suggested that the non-coding junk DNA have a lot of regulatory function to orchestrate the gene functions, in health and disease.

The un-manifested universe, consisting of dark matter (23% of the universe) and dark energy (73% of the universe), could be said to be external and independent of _Prakriti_. The assumption is that all visible matter is _Prakriti_ which is mutable. Anything in the universe that is not _Prakriti_ can be _Purusha_. It looks like there is a hell of a lot of _Purusha_ (un-manifested matter) out there because it is nearly 20-times more than manifested matter.

Could it be that the dark, un-manifested matter, accounting for an unbelievable 96% of the universe, is the immutable _Brahmic_ principle that guides the _prakriti_ in the act of creation and manifestation? _Samkhya_ philosophers had used _Purusha_ for want of a better word, from an anthropological angle, wherein creation occurs when a male is in union with a female.

How about considering this proposal? I would like to say that there was no manifested God at t = 0 and there will be no manifested God at t = end. Manifested God himself gets created by the assembly of the complex system, the manifested universe. Manifestation of God needs the universe as a complex system. Manifested God did not create the universe but gets created by it!!

But, you can't still evade the question – who created the universe so that God can manifest.

The other approach is to consider manifestation as an emergent property of the cosmos, not localised to any discrete constituent of it. This way we can get around the need to explain the nature and source of the un-manifested matter which, in philosophical terms, ancient Indians called _Purusha._ To me this looks more likely.

The other way of looking at this is to invoke _Maya,_ the eternal illusion. We think the world is created and is in existence. This is the _Maya_ , the eternal illusion. According to _Advaita_ Vedanta _Brahman_ is the only reality, and the world, as it appears, is illusory. As _Brahman_ is the sole reality, it cannot be said to possess any attributes whatsoever. An illusory power of Brahman called _Maya_ causes the world to arise. The source of _Maya_ is also the _Brahman_ which also makes _Prakriti._ So, the cosmic whole manifests two attributes – one for creation and/or the other for the illusion of creation. There is nothing there to be created because everything could be an illusion.

From a neuro-physiological point of view the origin of this illusion is your brain/sensory system. Your brain constructs an image of the world for you but you do not know that it is not real. Also I want to add that our sensory system is the interface between self and non self. Our _Atman_ is integrated with _Brahman_ via the sensory system. This is a truly remarkable statement. You interact with the world with your sensory system. If there was no sensory system the divide between _Brahman_ and _Atman_ will vanish!

Our sensory receptors really perceive this external world and code for an image. Each type of sensation, captured by the dedicated, sense-specific receptors, is relayed to the brain through successive conductors. At each stage of conduction there is a decoding and re-coding process involved that will transmit the information forward. It is decoded in your brain processing centres and we all know that this transmission of sensory information from touch, visual, temperature, auditory and pain receptors undergoes successive coding/decoding steps involving electrical and chemical transmitters, all the way from sense organs, nerves, and ganglions to cortical neurons. All dissimilar sensory information gets coded in the same 'electrical language' (electrical impulses), carried by the same nerve conduction system. This is more or less similar to the way all data (sound, images etc) these days get digitally converted in the modern telecommunication world.

What you eventually 'perceive' in your brain is an altered, unreal representation of the so-called world that has been coded/decoded at multiple levels. So, there is a real neuro-physiological reason to assume that what you perceive as the world we live in is only a model that is constructed in your imagination and there is no way, whatsoever, of knowing what is the real nature of the world we live in – even if there is any. This is akin to the quantum mechanical uncertainty physicists talk about.

Sages in ancient India underwent years of penance with a view to suppress their senses. The basis of this penance is that if you do not perceive the world you can merge with the cosmic whole, the unborn, uncreated principle. The boundary between self and non-self dissolves.

Can we shed our veil of illusion? Not until you get rid of your interface we call sensory system. At the time of death that is what happens and you are free to merge with the cosmic principle. But, beware, the manifested matter that was your body will be recycled and will enter another cycle of birth/death. _The sea of life_ is un-crossable if ever you had the idea of crossing it to reach the shore of a changeless state.

The problem we also face is that our brain succumbs to the time perception trap. The emergence of time sense in your brain makes you analyze things always from a 'before-after' order. You cannot do anything yesterday but only today or tomorrow. This is the reason why we naturally expect something to have existed before, or at the time of the Big Bang, to have caused it. What if there is only an ever-present state where you do not need a before/after and cause/effect relationship? I was reading a recent article in the New York Times by Steven Weinberg, the renowned Physicist associated with the Electro-weak theory, where he says scalar fields like Magnetism, for example, display an emergent direction (in one direction only) though the cause of this magnetism (iron particles) do not have them. Any mathematical equation that describes magnetization behaviour of iron has no place for direction but in real world suddenly this direction creeps in from nowhere. The same way I feel direction of time is something like an outcome of the neuronal function when they function in a coherent, synchronized way much like alignment of iron particles when they generate the directional magnetism! Coherence in neurons is known to be important for other brain functions such as thinking too. Even consciousness, for that matter, is said to be due to synchronised, coherent excitation of cortical neurons. I am proposing here that time perception is also a result of synchronised firing of neurons. Perhaps, during sleep (in the dream state) this neuronal coherence is lost. That is why we lose the logical time sense in the dreams. Events happen in the dreams with absolutely no semblance of the order of time. Have you noticed that? Time sense is _Maya_ too.

I suppose the organization of manifested matter ( _Prakriti_ ) has inherent, self-directed, programmability. The programming language is conceptually probably similar to the way we write software programs with a series of commands. After all, just 3 billion nucleotides, arranged in a unique sequence, makes the most complex program called the human body that can go through 70-80 years of self-directed origin, growth and death with little intervention!! I suppose even inorganic elements, for that matter even sub-atomic particles, have inbuilt physical properties that will direct their further evolution towards aggregation and formation of more complex molecules (like proteins, RNA, DNA etc) and ultimately life forms. This is based purely on simple rules of interactions using strong nuclear forces, weak forces, electrostatic force and so on. This is a 'software program' attributable to the physical nature of atomic elements and sub-atomic particles. The effect is there in the cause. Events will unfold, driven by the very nature of these entities. The cause drives the effect.

The recent discovery of the Higgs Boson particle needs to be invoked here without fail. It is said that this Higgs Boson is the GOD particle because this particle can account for transfer of mass to energy. A particle that does not have any mass will acquire mass after interaction with the Higgs field that is said to have appeared shortly after the Big Bang. In other words, we are looking at origin of matter here, the very source of creation. In mythological language we are looking at origin of _Prakriti_ from energy. At the time of the Big Bang the universe was so hot and dense beyond human comprehension and all that existed was pure, unadulterated energy. All that existed had no mass. As the universe cooled down discrete bundles of this energy could be packed in the form of quarks and electrons, the building blocks of matter (manifested matter). This required emergence of this so-called 'Higgs field' due to the Higgs Boson. Further expansion and cooling of the universe made atomic elements possible by trapping electrons around the nuclei consisting of protons and neutrons. Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen were born. The strong nuclear force and weak force was enough. Gravitation as a force only emerged dominant after 1.6 million years after the Big Bang. What I am trying to say is that there is evidence that there was unleashing of almost programmed, self-directed manifestation wherein one step leads to another almost as a natural way forward. This creative process is perhaps seeded by the Cosmic Brahmic principle (cosmic unity) and _Prakriti_ does the rest. _Prakriti_ itself could just be an emergent property and nothing more. Taking the example of origin of gravitation, the most far-reaching and powerful force in the universe, got manifested only after 1.6 million years after Big Bang, meaning that its manifestation (origin/creation) depended on preceding steps.

What I would like to emphasize is that the modern science of complexity has a lot to offer for the marriage of the spiritualistic thoughts with science. In fact, I feel it is impossible otherwise.

I feel that the origin and growth of the universe as we know it has happened in a deterministic manner, driven by the intrinsic physic-chemical properties of the matter. This is what Indian philosophies like _Samkhya_ school of thought meant – the effect is pre-existent in the cause. This process of creation has happened in stages. At every stage, matter entered the next level of complexity that is associated invariably with emergence of newer properties and capabilities not present in the previous level of existence. Existence and non-existence are therefore determined by internal forces and there is no reason to invoke external agents.

Sub-atomic particles assembled according to simple rules of interactions to form atoms. At the next level of complexity (i.e. molecules) further 'interaction' happens resulting in agglomeration of molecular entities to form cells, the units of living organisms. Cells are of many types and each type of cells has its own unique functions. A liver cell, a brain cell, a kidney cell etc are organisationally and functionally distinct and they interact with other cells inside our body. The different types of cells in our body respond to each other by way of molecular signals. There are cell-surface molecular receptors that bind these molecular signals and decode them. The point is this is also a form of 'perception'. None of these percepts reach the brain in the sense we are not conscious of the inter-cellular dialogue. They happen at the unconscious level.

Spinoza, the Danish Philosopher who lived in the 17th century, thought God himself was nothing but orderly nature. This belief has been given the name 'pantheism' and Einstein himself was an admirer of Spinoza's idea. Spinoza thought that God was the indwelling cause of all things, an idea not dissimilar to the concept of _Brahman_ proposed by ancient Indian Advaitic vedantins. Spinoza claimed that God acts solely by the laws of his own nature and is not constrained by anyone. According to him God has infinite attributes that are essential for eternal and infinite existence. Indian Vedanta philosophers had proposed this idea even as early as 6th century AD. Though Adi Sankara, who lived in this era, is credited with the non-dualistic ideas, it is argued that he refined pre-existing thoughts of ancient Indian philosophers which means the concept of non-dualism can be much older than this.

_Katha Upanishad_ , one of the ancient Indian scriptures, says this: 'Beyond the senses are the objects, beyond the objects is the mind, beyond the mind is the _Atman_ , beyond the _Atman_ lies the un-manifest, beyond the un-manifest lies the _Purusha_ , beyond the _Purusha_ lies nothing'. This suggests that there is generation of a successive level of complexity as I said a little while ago. The starting point of this cascade is the senses, which presumably, is responsible for the distinction between manifest and un-manifest matter. This is seriously profound thinking. I claimed before that our sensory system is indeed the interface with which we distinguish between self and non-self (Brahman and Atman). The other way of looking at this is to assume that the senses also are the basis for the manifestation of matter! Can we assume, therefore, that if we got rid of our sensory system we can become un-manifested? This is food for some long thought.

Does it mean that at the point of our death we make the transition from manifested to un-manifested matter? Of course the individual person stops perception and therefore does not know the presence of presence of manifested matter but those who continue to live (after we have died) will continue to perceive the world as ever before, including the matter that was part of you. This means the property of manifestation of matter is relative and not absolute. This does not depend on departure of an individual life.

What if I proposed that matter will become un-manifest when all human beings die? If all humanity is wiped out, perhaps due to an ice age or a nuclear holocaust, what will happen? There will be no human sensory data capture and therefore no perception of matter in the world. What about other organisms, especially primates and other life forms with some sort of nervous system? They do have the capacity to perceive pain and other senses, mates, food, predators etc. That means other life forms will continue to perceive the manifested matter. In fact, even simple unicellular bacteria can chemically perceive their nutrients and also toxins from their competitors like fungi. They can chemotactically move towards the source of this nutrient signal. When they sense a toxin they take defensive action to protect them. What does this mean? The bacteria are able to differentiate between their internal systems from something external. This to me means perception of manifested matter. Can we therefore claim that until all life forms are wiped out the matter will continue to be perceived and remain manifested?

I am going to now move into the inanimate territory. What about molecules and atoms? They are not going to be 'dead' after a nuclear holocaust. Will they 'perceive' manifested matter? If you put a molecule or atom with a positive electrical charge I guess it will be attracted to a molecule or atom with negative charge within its range. The recognition of electrical field by molecules means one thing is recognising another. The outcome of interaction (repulsion or attraction) between the two molecules is decided by the charge-carrying components of the molecule. For example, an amino acid can have a positive charge due to the amino group (a combination of Nitrogen and Hydrogen atoms) and the negative charge due to the carboxyl group (carbon atom in union with oxygen atom). There are many amino acids with abundance of amino groups and therefore with a net positive charge on them. There are amino acids with abundance of carboxyl groups and therefore with a net negative charge. If we take an enzyme molecule (a chain of amino acids arranged in a specific order dictated by the DNA) it will contain positive and negative amino acids in it. The amino acids in an enzyme are like beads in a chain. They are freely floating around in the cellular medium, dangling around like a chain, and charge attractions will drive them to unite with other amino acids in the same chain resulting in folding of the chain into a shape. The 3-D shape of the enzyme molecule is driven by the electrical charges.

It is also true that amino acids have hydrophobic (water-repelling) and hydrophilic (water-loving) side chains. These side chains are also a collection of atoms in individual amino acids. The hydrophobic side chains will shun water and water-loving amino acids and bury themselves inside the enzyme molecule of which they are a part of. The water-loving amino acids will be on the surface of the enzyme molecule of which they are part of. The outcome of the 3-D folding of the enzyme protein is therefore a combination of electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. The 3-D folding of the protein is vital for the final functional ability of the concerned enzyme. An enzyme that does not fold in the correct way will lose its function in the majority of the cases. The cause of this mis-folding is some mutation in the enzyme gene that resulted in loss of a charged amino acid or a hydrophobic amino acid. Consequently, the amino acid loses its 'sticky' ability thereby preventing some amino acids from aggregating together in the expected way. This means the cell cannot do come important biochemical function and therefore leads to some sort of a disease for the affected person.

The reason for this elaborate discussion is to give the readers a sense of other forms of 'perception' going on in the molecular world, outside the scope of our conventional external sensory system. What I described above is still within the internal environment of the life systems. An enzyme molecule does not exist in the intact state outside the life systems and therefore we should really consider the 'perception' as life-related. But, inorganic molecules and atoms can very well exist outside the life systems and continue with chemical perceptions.

What about the primitive, pre-biotic soup that existed on the earth before the origin of life? According to the theory of spontaneous origin of life on the planet (and I suppose in the rest of the universe) atoms aggregated together in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere to form molecules like RNA, nucleotides, amino acids and some other important bio-molecules. In the 1950s, Stanley Miller recreated these conditions that existed on earth before the origin of life and was able to demonstrate spontaneous origin of life-supporting precursor molecules. The point I am trying to make is that molecular interactions based on electrostatic and other inter-molecular forces generate a higher order of arrangement of matter with resultant complexity. Emergence of newer structures and properties at the higher order of arrangement leads in turn to further interactions and a further new order. This works more like a sequential process, the outcome of the preceding step determining the next level of complexity. The underlying driving force is atomic/molecular 'perception' using simple attractive, repulsive forces that work according to simple physic-chemical rules. There is no need for a creator here. There is no need for a sensory system for these atoms to interact with each other.

Even at the atomic level one can see a natural tendency for atoms to align with each other. An atom of Sodium has the nature of uniting with an atom of chlorine and you get salt formation. The salt that is not only adding to the taste of our food but it is also something that is fundamentally important to life processes. Our blood and other extracellular body fluids are absolutely dependent on the salt content. Without the salty nature of these body fluids our life will come to an end. One of the primary reasons why salt is vital is the role of sodium in nerve impulse generation. Excitability of our body cells, particularly nerve cells, is not possible without the inward and outward movement of sodium and chloride across the cell membrane. Information coming in the form of sensory stimulation gets conducted to the brain because of the excitability property of the nerve cells. So, salt is fundamental to our sensory system function and therefore is crucial to the perception process that Indian philosophers called _Maya_ , the interface between self and non-self where an unreal image of the world is created. I was only trying to give an example of an inter-atomic interaction based on electron clouds but ended up with elaborating the role of salt in life systems and unintentionally I was led to the fact that salt is a central player in the genesis of the _Maya_ , the eternal illusion! What a curious world we live in? Salt and _Maya_ , honestly I never thought of this myself until I wrote this!

The interaction between atoms is the basis for formation of molecules. Molecules are created when atoms are interacting as per standard inter-atomic forces. As _Samkhya_ philosophers in India put it the effect is pre-existent in the cause! The effect, in this case the molecule, happened only by a change in the cause (e.g. the way sodium and chlorine will exist in bondage, due to covalent bond formation, which in turn is a general principle atoms interact with). Next level of complexity is born with newer functions and possibilities not previously possible in the cause!

The interaction between sodium and chlorine, just like any other interaction between two atoms, is purely based on covalent bonds, a form of inter-atomic merger. The electron shell around an atomic nucleus is arranged in multiple orbits. The outermost orbit should have all electron positions (eight) filled failing which they exhibit this tendency (which chemists would call as reactivity) to fill the positions by at least sharing the surplus electrons possessed by other atoms in their own outermost shell. The atoms that have only 2 electrons in the outer orbit (short by 6) will find an atom that has 6 electrons in the outer shell (short by 2) as a suitable partner for sharing their electrons which is the explanation for covalent bond formation. This is simple logic. Depending on the nature of the atoms a number of inter-atomic bondages are possible. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen are the commonest atoms in bio-systems. Most of the bio-molecules that are important in life processes are formed out these few types of atoms that enter into simple interactions based on simple principles. The output is extraordinary as we find emergence of newer, complex bio-molecules with startling functions.

Now the time is ripe to move to the sub-atomic dimensions. Electrons, Neutrons and Protons build atoms. The building blocks of more than 105 types of atoms are based on a combinatorial juggling of just three types of sub-atomic 'bricks'. What kind of forces operate here that helps these sub-atomic particles to recognise and interact with each other? The fact that these sub-atomic particles bind and co-exist with each other in the process of formation of the atom means that they are responding to the matter that has manifested. We cannot perceive these sub-atomic particles with our senses. Does it mean they are un-manifested matter? No, they are manifested matter for two reasons. Firstly, they can be 'perceived' by their own kind which is what matters for formation of atoms, the building blocks of molecules which, in turn, are the building blocks of cells. Cells, in turn, build organisms. The hierarchy in organisation of matter is evident. Secondly, the sub-atomic particles can be perceived by us using scientific instruments making them apparently real.

What I am trying to show is that simple rules of 'perception' (subconscious or conscious) account for the manifestation of the matter. If nothing is interacting with matter, at any level, then I guess the question of manifestation/un-manifestation does not arise. The question of existence/nonexistence is a deeply philosophical one. Philosophical thinkers over millennia have thought deeply about it. Hindu philosophers called the cosmic unity as _Brahman_. The unassailable question 'How can something create something out of nothing?' deeply bothered philosophers and, to be honest, this question bothers us to this date. Ancient Indian philosophers attempted to get round this vexing problem by postulating that the cosmic unity, _Brahman_ , consists of two attributes. Manifest universe is the material body of _Brahman_. This is called _Saguna Brahman_. It is awakened non-being. The other attribute, called _Nirguna Brahman_ , is not manifest (perhaps this is the dark matter of the universe). It remains forever inaccessible to knowledge and perception. _Nirguna Brahman_ is changeless, causeless and eternal. _Saguna Brahman_ is the creative spirit (also called _Ishwara_ ) and the first being manifested by the non-being. Mandukya Unpanishad, an ancient Indian scripture, called the manifest world as _Virat_ , the visible reality.

_Vishistadvaita_ , a variant of the _Advaita_ Vedanta philosophy, believes that _Brahman_ is both the Cause and effect. Brahman as the cause does not become the universe as the effect but is it is both. It is believed that Brahman has two ways of being the cause – instrumental cause and material cause. For example, if one considers making of a jewel, you need the material cause (gold) and the instruments (Craftsman and his tools). _Brahman_ is the maker, tool and also the material for the creation of the universe. _Vishistadvaita_ believes that the universe and the sentients always exist. But, there are two states of existence – a subtle state and one of transformation. The subtle state is the causal state and the transformed state is called the effect state. _Brahman,_ in the causal state, is not distinguishable by name and form.

The evolution of effect from the cause, my means of a modification, does not involve new entities coming into existence. This philosophy is called _Parinamavada_ and this belief is common to the _Samkhya_ system and the _Vishistadvaita_ system.

If we were just to speculate, can one consider the duality of existence/non-existence the same as manifest/un-manifest polarity? Possibly yes. The assumption here is that something does not exist if it cannot be perceived. Does inability to perceive mean something does not exist? I guess so. The only important point I want to make here is that the word 'perception' does not refer only to sensory perception. We all know that human sensory perception allows us to construct a mental model of our world and the universe as a whole. The intriguing aspect of this is that we have expanded the sensory perception quite a lot by means of artificial tools like microscopes, telescopes, ultrasound scanners, UV cameras, Infrared cameras etc. Now our sensory percepts are really wide. Now we can even 'perceive' inter-atomic and inter-molecular, unconscious events at the sub-atomic, atomic and molecular scale and therefore know the existence of such matter. We have to conceptualise about existence of matter that were 'perceived' with the help of artificial gadgets. A lot of matter that would be considered un-manifest by ancient philosophers is now known by us as really manifested. Again, I want to remind readers that this still falls within the 4% category only. We have no means, whatsoever, of knowing the nature of the un-manifested 96% of the cosmos. The interesting point is that we know that it exists though it is not manifested. How? Because the un-manifested matter is exerting effects due to their gravitational force. So, technically speaking we indeed 'perceive' the un-manifested matter also. We also know that it exists because we can feel the effect of it. So, can we argue that 'existence' is not really entirely synonymous with 'manifest'? Something can possibly exist without being manifest, like our dark matter and anti-matter. What do you think?

_Maya_ , the eternal illusion, is also considered by Indian philosophers to be an attribute of _Brahman_ just as the creative potency ( _Prakriti_ ) is. If the act of perception creates the illusion of reality we can argue that any conscious or unconscious recognition of matter is _Maya_. So, the human sensory system alone is not the direct source of _Maya_. It is, indeed, the case with the macrocosm. But, a lot of microcosmic perception, done by human gadgets, also creates the illusions. If you think hard really the microcosmic perception done by the machines also needs human cognition for creating a conceptual model. Therefore, in effect, human mind is the ultimate _Maya_ projector that determines if matter is manifested or not.

_Advaita_ Vedanta philosophy of ancient India held three views on creation. First one called _Ajativada_ maintained that creation is not an absolute, real event. The second one called _shrusti-drushtivada_ says that what has been created is perceived, meaning that perception is integral to the creation. The third and last view, called _drushti-shrushtivada_ , claimed that perception is simultaneous with creation. One of the schools of thought in _Advaita_ philosophy accepts the view that _shrushti_ (creation) is prior to _drushti_ (Perception). This can be taken to mean that something has to exist in order for it to be perceived. As I said there are other schools of thought in the same philosophy that believe that creation and perception are simultaneous in the sense that the act of perception creates the objects. The latter view that creation and perception was simultaneous was propounded by Prakasananda Saraswati, in the 16th century AD in medieval India, in his text called _Vedanta- siddhanta muktavaii_. This concept was new to Advaita tradition. What is remarkable is that this thought is identical to the quantum mechanics that came into being much later.

The famous Schrodinger's cat mental experiment highlighted the logical paradox that the act of observation (perception) was necessary to know the existence of something. In a theoretical mind experiment a cat was put inside a box along with some poison. The lid of the box was shut. Now the question is: is the cat dead or alive? This obviously depends on whether the cat consumed the poison or not. How do we know? The simple answer would be to open the box and see. By doing that we are entering into an act of perception, in this case visual perception. So, our conclusion that cat is dead or alive is only possible only after this perceptive act. As long as the box is shut the existence of the cat (live or dead) will remain unreal.

This mental experiment, though it sounds too simplistic, was thought by quantum mechanics thinkers to have a profound significance for our understanding of reality. An act of observation is necessary to know the existence. It is amazing that nearly 3 centuries before the era of quantum mechanics Indian philosophers had contemplated these thoughts. The quantum mechanics also asserts that the true nature (position, location and type) of an object cannot be known with certainty. The uncertainty arises because the act of observation requires the use of a tool that will have to interact with the object for it to be perceived. This act of observation, and the tool that is required for it, would have altered the object in some way meaning that the original nature of the object will never be known. Actually, this uncertainty principle was discussed with regards to quantum objects like electrons (which are so small that even photons used in the act of observation will affect them) what is to be noted is that in the macro-world this situation is not true. Just because we are looking at a macroscopic object it does not change its original nature. However, when we drill down to the core of reality at some stage we are going to be looking at the most fundamental building block of the universe. This obviously is going to be particles even smaller than the electrons, perhaps like quarks. So, the quantum uncertainly principle cannot be escaped. _Drushti-shhrustivada_ view of _Advaita_ Vedanta that creation occurs simultaneously with cognition is consonant with quantum mechanical thinking.

Having said that I can show that quantum uncertainty principle can apply to the macroscopic world also. How is that? The act of observation on the macroscopic world, I said earlier, involves sequential, multiple steps of coding and decoding at the levels of the individual sense receptors, nerves, ganglions and then finally in the cortical neurons. This means that the true nature of the object will never be known except as a neutrally constructed model. This is my view and I am sure readers will see my logic.

Brahmanical schools of thought in Indian Philosophy, such as _Nyaya_ and _Vaiseshika,_ postulated that atoms ( _Anu_ ) as the unit of entities. Transformation, change and creation were explained by combinations of integral numbers of atoms. I suppose this hits the bull's eye in terms of agreement with our modern understanding of organisation of matter. _Atman,_ the individual soul of beings, is also 'atomic' in size and proportion considered that _Brahman_ , the cosmic whole, has been apportioned into multiple units. This is where the non-duality gives rise to apparent duality that objects are different. Guadapada, an Indian philosopher who lived in the 8th century AD, used an example to illustrate this. He considered jars. A jar is an object that has space contained in it, which is separated from the space outside. The self ( _atman_ ) is like space contained within the jar. When the jar is broken the space contained within it merges with the space outside (non-self). The separation of space inside and outside the jar was only apparent. Just like when we die our body will disappear just like the jar allowing us to merge with the cosmic whole.

_Yajurveda_ describes creation as a wheel with God as its hub. The creative principle unleashes gross elements like earth, water, fire, air, ether and also the other stuff like senses and the mind. Our modern science tells us that the origin of matter is a cascade of steps starting first with the building blocks for the sub-atomic particles, followed by atoms and then molecules and cells and finally organisms. Matter again can be organised as inanimate matter and also as animate matter. There are so many organisations like planets, stars, and galaxies etc that are inanimate. The point I want to make is that the individual levels of complexity (sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms) generates emergent properties commensurate with the nature of the organisation. Inanimate complex systems have their own properties too. For example, the stars and the planets as a whole behave like complex systems just as the whole universe does.

I mentioned that manifestation of matter requires that there is something to interact with it. In the case of sub-atomic particles the strong nuclear force is required to bind the neutrons and protons and confine them inside the atomic nucleus. At the atomic level I gave the example of covalent bonds as a force that can recognise and bind atoms. At the molecular level we have electrostatic and hydrophobic and hydrophilic forces, Van der waals forces etc that allow matter to interact with each other. Cells sense each other via communicational molecules like hormones and neurotransmitters. Organisms are superior in that they go one step above and recognise each other with dedicated tools such as sensory systems. Of course some lower organisms have very primitive recognition systems that work more like chemical perception. With increasing levels of complexity higher organisms have advanced sensory systems. Man has not only a sensory system but can use the sensory data to conceptualise. He can also exhibit other properties like ego and reasoning.

Taittriya Upanishad describes the various stages of Brahman starting with matter and life, life and mind, mind and buddhi (discriminating, egoistic, reasoning and causative Intellect), buddhi and bliss and finally Brahman. The blissful state is beyond ordinary human experience and is transcendental. This state is beyond sensory and mental fields. It is said to be the realisation that we are one with the Brahman.

_Chandokya Upanishad_ says ' _All this is Brahman'_. The _Ishvara_ principle imparts existential property to the cosmic whole. Sentient beings are that principle of the _Brahman_ called _'Jivas' (Chit-Brahman_ ) and these possess consciousness. Non-conscious matter is the principle of the _Brahman_ called ' _Jagat' (Achit-Brahman_ ).

Spiritualistic thinkers preach that man has to advance beyond the ego to reach the stage of wisdom whereby he comes to terms with the realisation that he is part of the whole. The spiritual realisation that he is part of the whole with the _Brahman_ is said to be _Moksha (Heaven)_ , a blissful state where the apparent boundaries of separation between entities are dissolved. Ancient Indian sages underwent years of penance with the aim of achieving this liberated state. One way of achieving this was by learning to control the senses. Senses were considered to the source of the unreal world and also for all sensory pleasures and desires. This desire led to suffering and hardships in life and should be despised. Buddhism is focussed even more strongly on the need for getting rid of the sense-driven desire. There is a pronounced importance given in Indian religious philosophies of all kinds for the objective of liberation. Christians call this perhaps as Heaven but the difference is that the heaven is posthumous. The concept of Heaven and hell is also seen in other forms of religion also. Indian spiritual philosophies differ from others in that the ultimate goal is the realisation, even in this life, that you are not the body but one with the cosmic whole. I wonder why Indian philosophers thought so highly of this need. Of what purpose is this to man? Why is so much emphasis placed on the bliss of liberation?

The sequence of progression in terms of awareness of the reality is relatively clear. At the lowest level there is no awareness whatsoever of the external world and multiplicity. All perhaps that exists is some sort or physic-chemical interaction between entities such as inanimate matter and lowly organisms. Though this is unconscious yet it requires for something to be manifested for this to happen. The question here is not whether something exists or not but whether you are aware of it or not. At the next level certain entities, such as lower animals, can perceive the world but cannot understand the significance of it. They are concerned with their sustenance and limit their perception to what matters for their life. The next level of awareness comes when entities start relating oneself with others in the world. This perhaps applies to ordinary human beings. This is what happens when you have a brain that do abstract thinking and reasoning. This became possible for man when his brain size grew beyond proportionate dimensions seen in other animals. The processing power of the brain allowed him to achieve this. Modern man has added to this capacity by way of computers and also artificial gadgets. Spiritualists say that the level above this is something to be aspired for. At the next level the preceptor starts realising that he is not only existing but also the cause and effect of existence itself meaning that he is the same as Brahman. I suppose this is what spiritualism claims and we can get corroborative evidence from modern science too. Especially, the theory of complexity clearly tells us that systems, including the universe as a whole, behave like one inter-connected, inter-dependent unit with emergent properties. We all know that even at the global level a lot of natural phenomena occur that have the effect of affecting far and near. We are now a global village. We have realised that actions in a far corner of the earth, man-made or natural, will affect the whole planet. This understanding is ample testimony to our acknowledgement of the existence of the whole though apparently it exists in parts. To be honest, science has taken us to this level already and I am not sure if there is any need for spiritualism to help us in this regard.

The final stage above this is not only awareness of the oneness with the cosmic unity but actually becoming one with it. Please note that what I am referring to here is not about perception and awareness of your relation with the _Brahman_ but actually becoming one with it. When would this happen? I guess this is also the state spiritualists in India aspired for. They called it _Moksha_. I feel this is not meant for an individual at all. I repeat that this is not meant for the individual humans. I am sure I am at loggerheads with Hindu spiritualistic teaching of ages by making this statement.

I cannot fathom how an individual being will reach this state of merging with Brahman all by himself. I feel this refers to the universal whole. The reference is to the point when all multiplicity dissolves. When and how would that happen? This would happen not when you die because your matter will get recycled and re-enter the process of perception and awareness, clouding your realisation, and allowing you to persist with the illusion of multiplicity.

An old star dies only to be born again as a new star. We all die and so do all other organisms. The matter that we held onto, in the form of our body, decays after our death. The decay refers only the cellular organisation and many of the macromolecules like DNA and proteins. But, the atomic components of your body cannot decay. They stay on. They, of course, get to become part of other life systems that consumed these atoms and molecules. The atomic and molecular constituents that were once your body gets recycled. The lowly fungi and bacteria and scavenging animals re-use the atoms and molecules that were you once upon a time. The matter is never static. It continues its journey endlessly.

The point is that you had a consciousness when your matter was organised in the form of your body. But, this consciousness does not exist when your body is dismantled after your death. The other consequence of your death is that you lose your sensory system. You no longer perceive anything. For all practical purposes the universe has ceased to exist for you. This statement is based on the previous discussion that existence is tied to cognition. But, the point is that other people, who still continue to live, after you have died, still perceive and believe in existence. So, is the universe in existence or non-existence once you die? Is your death going to change anything? Has it changed anything with regards to manifestation or un-manifestation of matter? No.

Indian thinkers' belief that their goal of liberation ( _Moksha_ ) can be achieved based on curtailing the senses, and also getting rid of the cycle of birth/rebirth, is probably not realistic. This is my personal view. I know this is likely to cause much antipathy towards me. What I mean is the concept of liberation and the objective of dissolving multiplicity is real. But, I do not think the path towards liberation ( _Moksha_ ) is for the individual human being. If one were to aim for merging with the _Brahman_ , or retrace the way back to the cosmic energy form, I suppose the only way is not only to shed the senses but also the physical mass! You have to, I suppose, become the primeval energy. This is the only way you can escape rebirth as atom, or a molecule, or an organism or be part of some inanimate complex system and get rid of the sensory trap. So, I doubt very much if Hindu spiritualistic pursuits towards realisation and liberation _(Moksha_ ) will really happen for the individual. You can know that you are part of the cosmic unity but to actually become part of the whole you have to become the primeval energy again. So, this state of undifferentiated, birth-less, un-manifested, mass-less state is not for you and me. This is for matter as a whole. When I mean matter, I mean the manifested matter. Matter has to lose its mass and become energy again. That is when manifestation of matter will end.

I guess the probable state of 'existence' where matter will not be entering into any interaction is when it is in energy form. Physicists tell us that matter is actually 'pockets of energy'. This was based on Einstein's ground-breaking thoughts. Energy and mass are related. They are inter-convertible given the right conditions. All that existed at the time of Big Bang was pure energy. The conditions were infinitely hot to the extent nothing could 'exist' as matter. The energy that existed at the time of Big Bang, and presumably prior to that, was formless, and undifferentiated, homogenous (perhaps something like _Brahman_ as the Eastern philosophers put it _)_. Creation had not happened then. There are Indian spiritual thinkers who still maintain that no creation ever occurred. Assuming that creation was a real or, at least, an apparent event we can say that it had not yet happened at t = 0.

When is it likely to happen? It will probably happen when the cosmos involutes crushing all manifested matter into a formless, homogenous, incomprehensible form, presumably pure energy. I can't help thinking something like a black hole where the force of gravitation is so strong that it crushes all matter into a tiny space and even does not let go the light. I am not sure if science can tell us all about what happens inside a black hole. Could there be an equivalent of a black hole that applies to the whole cosmos, known and unknown? If that were the case we are looking at the possibility that all that is out there in the universe will get sucked in and transformed into primeval energy. Even if this cosmic involution occurs I still think that the potency for manifestation will remain as a latent form. _Brahman_ (primeval energy) will re-manifest unleashing his _prakritic_ powers for creation in a presumably cataclysmic Big bang once again! This latency is perhaps _Prakriti_.

Also, the other point I want to make here is that once matter is formed it enters an endless cascade where one form (e.g. sub-atomic particles) leads to another (e.g. atom, molecule). This happens as per simple rules of interaction but the effects are many. It is really transformation of the pre-existing cause (i.e. sub-atomic particle or atom) and combinatorial use of them to create multiple forms. Each multiple form again has its own emergent properties that start emerging once the complexity is achieved of a certain degree. For example, after the big bang, for a period of time all interactions and events were probably based on nuclear forces and weak forces. There was no gravitation. Gravitation had not yet come into being. It was still uncreated. The gravitation as a property appeared as an emergent property of a critical mass of matter. This is like appearance of consciousness only after a critical number of nerve cells could come together in the form of a brain.

So, one can assume that whatever matter that was created and got manifested in the very beginning had the intrinsic potential to drive the process of creation and manifestation to successive levels. We pretty much know all about it from scientific point of view. There is nothing conjectural anymore. This is not the unknown, spiritual domain. But, what is still not known, both from science and spiritualism, is what will happen in the end. Also, what was there in the beginning of all things? Spiritualism suggests possibilities and so do theoretical physicists. Philosophers call it _Brahman_ and physicists may call it energy.

The energy required for the creative process and manifestation at the time of primal origin may have come from the phase transition from energy to matter. For example, fusion of sub-atomic particles to form atoms is a change of phase. There is release of abundant quantity of energy during this atomic fusion. The opposite is also true – atomic fission. Physicists tell us that any entity that undergoes phase transformation will release energy. Transformation of primal energy ( _Brahman_ ) to matter ( _Prakriti_ ) involves one such phase transformation and we can expect to see liberation of limitless amounts of energy that is still powering the universe.

One closing sentence before I leave you pondering - what if there was nothing created and all that you thought real and manifested were due to your cognition?

I want to add to the debate by arguing that the creation that happened (real or apparent) was the emergent property of the universe functioning as a complex system. In the chapter on accommodating creation and evolution I mentioned that many complex systems, animate and inanimate, have similar properties. These emergent properties include creative potency, order generation, incentivised behaviour and protection. I had cited many examples of complex systems where one can see evidence for creation. I have used the word 'creation' in a broad sense applying it to anything that is new. It could be life, inventions, ideas, or anything that did not exist before. If I invented something we do not call it 'creation' in the conventional sense. But, when life originates it is creation. This is more due to semantics but in reality I feel 'creation' is anything that arises new.

Spiritualists in India called the creative potency of _Brahman_ as _Prakriti, Ishwara_ etc. They were said to be attributes of _Brahman._ I guess the only other logical explanation for this will be to consider the _Prakriti_ and _Ishwara_ to be emergent properties of the cosmic whole when it is in the right level of complexity. This argument gets around the need for expecting _Prakriti_ or any creative potency to be independently existing entities. We will never find it. But, its effect is real. The effect again is a manifestation of the emergent property of the cosmic whole. For the sake of nomenclature we can call them _Brahman_ and _Prakriti._

What about the _Purusha_ , the un-manifested _Brahman_? How do we explain this? I had suggested that _Purusha_ could be the un-manifested matter. How do we fit it within the frameworks of the complexity theory? _Prakriti_ is accounted for as an emergent creative potency, dependent on the cosmic whole, but what about _Purusha_? I do not think _Purusha_ is cosmic unity ( _Brahman)_ minus _Prakriti_. Because _Prakriti_ is only an emergent property that cannot be localised to any fixed constituent of the cosmic whole. So, _Prakriti_ will remain within the whole and be absolutely dependent on it in fact. Without the whole _(Brahman_ ) there is no _Prakriti_. We can try assuming that _Purusha_ is that part of the universe as a complex system that is not involved in the change that is part of the creative effect. Is it therefore a material entity or it is also an emergent property? If it is material then it has to be manifested. If it is manifested then we should be able to perceive it and comprehend it. But, the a priori position is that this part of the cosmic unity ( _Purusha)_ is not only non-manifest but also changeless. So, where does this take us? May be this part is in a physical organisation that we have no way of perceiving. How about its existence in a multi-dimensional form as in a multi-verse or something? This is more likely. This may also the reason why it is un-manifested.

Before I close I also want to point out that the order generation within a complex system is also an emergent property. I mentioned about _Dharma,_ the universal force that maintains order. In the case of a human society it is easy to grasp the concept of order. In our society this order is reliant on the expectation of the common good over and above the selfish interests. This means that citizens will refrain from doing anything that is harmful to others or to the society at large. This ' _Dharmic'_ principle is central to religions and has helped humanity to maintain semblance of order over the millennia. How about other organisations and systems? Companies and institutions have their own set of rules and regulations to maintain internal order. It is almost taken for granted these days any organisation worth the salt will have their own code of practice with do's and don'ts. People have come to accept to expect rules everywhere. Whether it is on the roads, in their workplace, in the society or anywhere they simply comply. The compliance is ensured by moral enforcement based on religious convictions or through law.

The emergence of order generating mechanisms is not limited to human enterprises. We see order everywhere in nature. In physico-chemical systems order sets in as a natural course of event. Why? Obviously, we have nothing like law enforcement inside biological systems or in inanimate matter. How come they come to maintain order?

The answer lies in the way complex systems operate. All complex systems of sufficient complexity will invariably end up with the need for order generation and they will manifest mechanisms suited for this order generation. For want of a name I call it ' _dharma_ '. _Dharma_ is a key term in Hindu spiritualism, probably the most central theme. People behaviour is expected to follow _dharmic_ rules. What I am saying is that this all-important need for order that is seen in non-human systems can also be brought under the umbrella of _dharma_ if we can accept that anything that is oriented towards order, in biological or non-biological systems, is a universal phenomenon. This universal driver of order, called _dharma_ , can be considered to be the force behind all order that we see in the entire universe. This is the principle that actively works against disorder. I said in the first chapter that disorder is the preferred state in natural systems from a thermodynamic point of view and that we have to earn the order at a cost. _Dharma_ could be that force, presumably the emergent property of the complex system in question, that drives the cost-intensive order.

From a mythological point of view all forms of religions hold the good/evil dichotomy central to their stories. Good always prevails and God is supposed to intervene to ensure that evil got beaten. We can safely view good as order and evil as disorder from a physical point of view. I do not think anyone can criticize us for this. Dharma keeps the balance between order and disorder. Ancient Indians believed that God will appear as avatars whenever the balance swings towards disorder. I mentioned this phenomenon of setting right the balance between order and disorder is everywhere. Inside our own body we call it homeostatic regulation. Complex mechanisms operate to set right the disorder in our body such as what happens during infections, trauma, starvation etc.

Physical disorder and biochemical disorder are conceptually the same as social disorder. The universe is said to be more orderly than previously thought. The arrangement of galaxies in clusters and sheets smacks of order. Even the movement of planets and stars around their orbits is predictably ordered. Gravitation is said to account for the organisation of much the manifested universe and perhaps even the un-manifested ones. The fact that biological systems can evolve from inanimate atoms means that the universe has the conditions geared towards order. This is perhaps the same as _Dharma_ but operating on an entirely different level of complexity.

To sum up, _Prakriti_ (creation) and _dharma_ (order) and _Maya_ (Time and illusion) are emergent outcomes of complex system called the universe. You will never localise them to discrete entities. They are unseen and abstract properties that do not have the existential rights on their own.

_Universe as the cosmic unity is called Brahman in Hindu religion and simply God in other religious forms._

# AUTHOR PROFILE

Dr. Rajkumar is a medically qualified doctor who pursued higher medical education in the United Kingdom. He has specialised in Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Medicine and is currently working as the Head of Laboratory Services in a hospital. He is a British national though by birth he hails from India.

Dr. Rajkumar is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of the Faculty of the Pharmaceutical Medicine, The Royal College of Physicians, UK. Dr. Rajkumar is also an accredited specialist in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine registered with the European Federation of Clinical Chemists.

Dr. Rajkumar has more than 25 years of professional experience in hospital practice, teaching, and research gained in India, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

He has a deep-rooted interest in scientific philosophy and revels in thinking, writing and talking about profound worldly phenomena and their scientific basis.

# UPCOMING PROJECTS 1

## 'THE REDUNDANT BRAIN – THE MYTH OF INTELLIGENCE'

Lots of different complex systems of varied nature, living and non-living, with or without a brain, end up in a strikingly similar state of functional and structural organisation! Why? How? This is the basis of this book written by a medical doctor, who is also a biochemist.

About 350 to 400 million years ago life forms that had evolved in the sea began to move into the land, just as a human infant comes out of the 'amniotic sea' after 10 months! The water that is inside and outside of your body cells is salty just like it used to be in the ocean where primordial life evolved. Salt in the body fluids allow cells to work exactly like batteries!

Atomic elements that led to origin of life were 'seeded' here on earth from a distant star almost like a 'galactic pollination' mechanism!

Morphogenesis during embryonic organ development, neuronal remodelling in brain development, continental drift (Platectonics) and geological change, social movement in the life of a human being, herd movement, cancer metastasis and growth of cancer etc. represent the recurring theme of movement and re-modelling in the early development of diverse systems.

I have discussed the need for association of discrete entities into groups and organisations as a fundamental property of nature. A primitive human settlement would have been unsophisticated just as unicellular & oligocellular life forms. Every cell in your body is a specialist! Evolution prefers bigger systems, whether it is social evolution or biological evolution, though there may be a limit on what is sustainable. Population control is an example. Surprisingly, 'Population planning' occurs at the cellular & molecular level too. Cancer is an uncontrolled cellular population explosion with no regard to resource availability. That is why cancer kills. As life systems evolved, 'cellular population expansions' must have been a critical issue in determining size of the life form. That is why we don't see too many organisms like the whales, elephants & dinosaurs. Dinosaur was a big evolutionary mistake, presumably. The same thing can be said of huge companies. They are 'economic dinosaurs'.

Need for communication is not restricted to our social life. There is an amazing degree of highly complex information exchange, using coded molecular messages and electrical signals, going on 24/7 between the trillions of cells that constitute your body. The human body contains roughly about 10,000 billion cells. In terms of absolute numbers, our body has roughly 1500 times more cells than there are humans on this planet. What is incredible is the fact that diverse information-capture tools like sense receptors, TV antennae, Radio aerial, insect antennae etc are all fundamentally similar in the way they are designed.

Neural networks in the brain are a 'biological internet' that preceded ours by millions of years. Life forms are carbon-based 'computers'. Silicon, used in real computers, is closest to Carbon on the periodic table and both are so similar in their properties. This is uncanny in that nature and nurture have homed in on nearly identical atomic choice to design their processors!!

I have also shown that Biological information hacking is as much a reality as your cyber-terrorists!! The antibiotic resistance that is haunting the medical sciences today is a result of some sophisticated 'star wars' kind of warfare between fungi and bacteria targeted at information flow. Even poisons are information hacking tools!

Did you know that the oil that we get out of the "Earth's belly" is chemically of the same nature as the fat we store in our body cells? Both are Hydrocarbons!

Our sun has been producing energy by the principle of nuclear fusion, exactly similar to our own nuclear power plants for the past 5 billion years.

The leaf of a plant is a photochemical machine designed to capture this unlimited sunlight like a solar panel.

Our body cells generate electrical power inside our mitochondria. They do it by a process called the Oxidative phosphorylation out of your burgers and steaks and fries and what not. A meal at the Ritz meets the same fate as fish and chips in a corner shop. Metabolism is a great equaliser.

I have tried to show the concept of death is applicable to a whole lot of things other than life forms such as organisations, civilisations, institutions etc. Death here is a change of form and structure. It is not an end.

I have drawn on exciting recent developments in our understanding of complex adaptive systems, Critical State Universality principle of Per Bak and the physical theory of Fractal self-similarity (Benoit Mandelbrot), the phenomenon of 'Emergence' seen in complex systems to support this provocative claim.

Dr. Rajkumar MD FRCPath

rajkumarchetty25@gmail.com

# UPCOMING PROJECT 2

## 'INFORMATION TRAFFIC – INSIDE AND OUTISDE YOU'

How communication strategies in biological systems beat our information technology

There is a buzz of mind-boggling information traffic 24/7 inside our body. The primary aim of the author, who is a medical doctor and also a biochemist, is to explore the information needs of biological systems and see how they have evolved incredible information transfer strategies that match or exceed our own technology.

This book argues that information determines the sophistication, size and order of any complex biological, physical or social system. Professional specialisation of people in our society is similar to cellular differentiation in the body and both are viewed as information management strategies to collectively tap into unmanageable amounts of information which is not feasible for single entities on their own.

A highly information-dependent system, such as a large organism like the human species, is vulnerable to microbial attacks on our cellular information networks, which are not unlike information hacking and cyber-wars we see in our own society. Information hacking is legitimate in the biological world.

A multi-cellular organism like man is viewed as a 'society' of more than 10,000 billion cells and with an absolute need to exchange information between the diverse cell types to orchestrate the life processes. Cells 'talk' to each other using a number of 'molecular messages' as well as coded electrical signals. A number of information-rich molecules like hormones, growth factors, neurotransmitters, and cytokines are 'packed' with information of vital importance to cells. The target cells 'decode' these messages through cell-surface receptors which act like 'molecular antennae'. Bio systems are one up on us in that they can sometimes send a single message to be deciphered in multiple ways by different target cells!

About 30, 000 genes provide the 'molecular software' for running our information-intensive metabolic programs inside us. They are etched like biochips with molecular transistors and logic gates! Reversible addition and removal of phosphate alters the activity status of a number of enzymes between two states – active/inactive. This allows re-routing of flow of metabolic information like transistors and logic gates in chips that fluctuate between open/shut states.

Claude Shannon's Information theory, originally intended for electrical information transfer, is shown to be equally applicable to biological information as well.

Sensory receptors are the 'information windows' for the brain to capture information. They are the equivalent of sleuths who do the intelligence operations. They can also be viewed as the interface between you and the environment. Information-capture tools of diverse systems like sensory receptors in our body, TV antennae, and radio aerial and insect antennae are all designed similarly adding further intrigue.

Nerves are uncannily similar to two-way conduction cables and the nervous system fulfils the telecommunication role for biosystems. The author has traced the evolution of nervous system of Coelenterata to flatworms, annelids, and finally chordates, with a view to show how individual excitable nerve cells progressively joined to form increasingly large nerve networks, which ultimately led to the brain. It reads so much like the origin of Internet and Local Area Networks. Neural networks in the brain are a 'biological internet' that preceded ours by millions of years.

Biological systems also apply the same information encoding motifs as we see in our technological society. Use of 'alphabets' to imprint biological information has been around 3500 millions of years on the planet in the form of DNA which uses only four alphabets only, namely, adenine (A), guanine (a), thymine (T) and cytosine (C) which the author calls the 'Quaternary language'. Conceptually, this is identical to the binary language which has transformed our society! Even writing, one of the hallmarks of human civilization uses alphabets to encode information. One could even argue that proteins are information-rich languages using about 20 amino acid alphabets! Codons, that code for amino acids are 3 bases long and work like 3-bit processors! They have the same meaning irrespective of whether it is a horse or a man or a lion. It is a universal language code like the ASCII code we use in our computers for texts.

Another similarity between DNA and a language, apart from the use of alphabets, is their tendency to evolve in time.

DNA is a perfect Operating system (much like Windows, Macintosh and Linux are for our computers) that provides a consistent Application program interface to carry out cellular applications, processes and control the anatomical devices.

Dr. Rajkumar MD FRCPath

rajkumarchetty25@gmail.com

# SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK

## THE UNIVERSE AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM – WHAT CAN MODERN SCIENCE AND EASTERN PHILOSOPHY TELL US ABOUT CREATION, ORDER, GOD AND RELIGION?

The author of this book, who is a medical doctor and also a biochemist, draws heavily on the modern Complexity theory to show that reductionist approaches will not help to understand our worldly phenomena like creation, order, God and religion. Systems, especially complex systems, manifest emergent properties that exceed the sum total of the individual constituents that make up the whole. The author hypothesises that the God phenomenon is real and is an inevitable, emergent property of the universe that cannot be pinned down to any individual constituent and this is the reason why God will never be seen. He argues that God-like properties can be observed in a number of physical, social and biological complex systems and makes a bold assertion that these properties have been given a name – GOD – at the universal level. This is a ground-breaking view of God radically different from any other.

Profoundly important thoughts on Existence-Nonexistence polarity, Manifested/ un-manifested states of matter are discussed both from astrophysical and eastern philosophical points of view.

The author sees the religion as a social order-generating tool that evolved in the last few thousand years. A strong scientific defence has been put forward for the theory that religion has more to do with sociology than theology. He has also shown how the quest for social order generation has led to speciation of religions into numerous sub-sects, as well as the appearance of non-religious law enforcement bodies, in the ecological niche of morals and order.

The author succeeds remarkably in his attempt to find answers to the fascinating questions about the timing, purpose and location of origin of the very first organised religion, something not attempted by any other author on the topic of religion and God. Why did the first organised religion appear only about 5000 years ago in the Indus Valley though proto-humans have been evolving for over 7 million years since they split from Chimpanzees in the evolutionary tree in Africa? Why was the Near East the 'Cradle of Religions'? The author has explored the time of onset of organized religions and has provided a convincing geographical, chronological and biological reason for it. The author argues that religion was a social adaptation to the needs of the expanding human society much like agriculture, political structures, and perhaps the wheel and writing.

The author also has unearthed some fascinating evidence unravelling the molecular and anatomical basis for the religiosity of man and argues forcefully and scientifically that religions were unavoidable in the evolution of human society and that there is no way man could have survived this tremendous social growth but for religions as a massive group identifier. The book lists a number of genetic and neuro-anatomic changes in the evolving human brain that underpinned spiritual growth and religiosity of man.

More excitement is found in a chapter that delves into a possible molecular and electrical basis for spiritual experiences and the possibility of spiritualistic experience being hard-wired in the brain is discussed.

The debate on creationism and evolution is given a novel twist by the author who argues neither of these models is adequate to explain the origin of life. The author puts forward irrefutable arguments for a model that accommodates both creationistic and evolutionistic theories on origin of life making the recent controversies on this topic irrelevant!

Eastern philosophical thoughts are viewed from our modern scientific vantage point and an amazing degree of consonance between _Advaita_ vedanta philosophy and the recent Complexity theory is shown by the author. The _Samkya_ philosophy of India, which says the effect is pre-existent in the cause, is explored for its striking resemblance to the evolutionary theory and also for its applicability to modern cosmological ideas on creation, order and the cosmic unity.

By Dr. Rajkumar MD FRCPath

rajkumarchetty25@gmail.com

