• Independence is the ability to be and do, without barriers / obstruction / constraint from others
• Freedom is the ability to be and do, without barriers / obstruction / constraint from oneself

The distinctions are so similar that it is easy to confuse freedom with independence and vice-versa. Just because we have freedom, doesn’t mean we have independence. And just because we have independence doesn’t mean we have freedom. One can experience (or create) freedom even when one is not independent.

I have confused freedom and independence a lot. Whenever, I have experienced a lack of freedom – I have made it mean “lack of independence”. And the tools I use for dealing with lack of independence are drastically insufficient (or even inappropriate) to deal with the lack of freedom.

• To deal with lack of independence, we use struggle. Struggle gets manifested as proving something, fighting (verbally or physically) for something, making someone wrong, passing judgement or making sarcastic remarks, experiencing being a victim and resisting (or fighting) that and so on.
• To deal with lack of freedom, we use choice. Choice is one of the most profound exercise of all human faculties available to us. It is the ability to say here I stand, with no strings attached. Werner Erhard once said something to this effect: “Power is the ability to make full use of all human faculties. Power is simply the expression of one’s freedom.” One can almost say that being free is akin to being powerful.

When we use the means for dealing with independence for dealing with freedom – we get nowhere. Infact we get to experience more and even more a victim.

For example: I want to go share with somebody, an idea that I have. I believe that my idea is good and impactful. However, when I take my first step forward to actually go and share the idea; I hold myself back because of conversations in my head like – “will he like it?”, “what if she steals my and makes it her own?”, “what if he thinks of me as stupid?”, “what if my idea is actually stupid/immature?” and so on. This is a classic example of my own constraints (in this case conversations) holding me back from what I want to do. Ergo lack of freedom.

But I make it all about lack of independence. And to deal with that, I go about saying – “people are not receptive to new ideas”, “no one understands me”, “there is no safe forum for people to express their ideas”, “venture capital investors don’t understand the genius of my idea”, “no one gives me a chance”, “the society is rather bad at the moment” and so on. And life becomes a struggle about fixing and changing the society or the world out there.

But there have been moments – when I caused myself to deal with lack of freedom as lack of freedom. And I exercised a genuine quality of being human: CHOICE. In making that choice – I experienced freedom to be and to act. I have experienced (though only in glimpses here and there) the freedom to be responsible, the freedom to be held to account, the freedom to confront and have uncomfortable conversations, the freedom to stretch myself and work harder, the freedom to hold another to account and so on.

But such exercise of Choice and experience of Freedom is rare. Why?

When I inquired into this for a while – I realized that for some reason I can’t stand freedom. I would much rather complain about independence and struggle for it than be an expression of total freedom. (Sometimes I feel that the people who fought our political and economic independence struggle, experienced more freedom while being ruled by the Brits than we are right now. But that’s another rant and/or story.)

I distinguished for myself that the reason I can’t handle freedom (or power) is because it comes with responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

“With great power comes great responsibility” – Spiderman’s Uncle Ben!

The degree to which I take responsibility for the choices I make is the degree to which I am free.

Enough said!

Werner started his conversation by distinguishing that all of us organize our world into “here” and “there”. Here is wherever I am and there is where “what I am dealing with” is. Put in other words – here is where everything about me is; there is where everything “not about me” is.

• Here = I
• There = Not I

The conversation really allowed me to confront that – I have always organized my world into here and there.

The conversation then got a bit more intense when Werner led us to inquire into “where the seeing of X happening for me?” X could be anything. X could be an object. X could be another person. Diving into that inquiry led me to answers like – “the seeing of X happens in my eyes” AND “the seeing of X happens in my head”. After sticking to the inquiry for a sufficient length of time I realized that I was inquiring into “how the seeing of X happening for me” and NOT “where the seeing of X happening for me”. In other words I was coming up with an explanation for the way in which seeing happens, not where the seeing ultimately happens after all the explanations have been given. Although I can understand that I am seeing X through my eyes and that my brain interprets nerve signals from my eyes and therefore allows me to “see” X, that is simply an explanation of how the seeing of X is happening.

The question was – “where is the seeing of X happening for me?”. After my eyes does its job, after my brains does all its computing and nerve processing – I do experience seeing X. Beyond the how, I ultimately experience seeing of X somewhere. The question was where did the seeing of X happen for me?

As I continued to dive into this inquiry – I got very clear that

• My eyes dont see – I see through I my eyes
• My brains dont see – I see through my brains

There it was – “who I am goes beyond my eyes and brain”. The answer to who I am has to be beyond my organism (or body).

Coming back to “where the seeing of X was happening for me”. As I inquired into it more and more; ultimately the obvious answer came about. My experience of seeing X happens where X is.

How come? How can my experience of seeing X happen over there (where X is) when I am here. I was all along very clear that I was here and that X was there. By that definition my experience of seeing X should happen here where I was and not there where X was. But what I experienced was that my experience of seeing X was happening there (where X was).

That experience got me to wonder – maybe I am not here. Maybe I am here and maybe I am there also. Maybe, although I see through the faculties of my eyes and my brain, I was not “in” my eyes or my brain. (As Werner beautifully puts it – life doesnt happen in one’s head) Maybe who I am is here and there and there and there. Maybe who I am is all over the place. Maybe I am everywhere.

Maybe “who I am is the one that gathers experience of this world through my organism (the body)”.

It is through this organism that I experience this world with all its objects and organisms. It is through this organism that I experience the so called “me” or “identity”. Or as Werner puts it – who I am is the space in which it all shows up. It is in this space that the world show up. It is in this space that all of the people in my world show up. It is in this space that all the phenomenon in this world show up. It is in this space that the thing I refer to as “I” also shows up.

The conversation inside of which this inquiry was made opened up for me a whole new experience of myself. It is amazing. It simplifies everything.

I continued inquiring into the experience of “who I am is the one that gathers experience of this world through my organism (the body)“. As in inquired deeper and deeper – it became clear to me that

• If who I am is the one that gathers the experience of this world through this organism (my body)
• Who the other-person is is also someone that gathers the experience of this world through his/her organism (his/her body)

Could it be that “who I am” and “who the other-person is” be one and the same? Could it be that “who I am is the one that gathers experience of this world through this organism (my body) and the other organism (other’s body)?”

As I continued to inquire into this I started to realize that my habit (or belief) of organizing the world into here and there hindered me from experiencing that which I had just started to wonder. Everytime I got into the presence of another person’s happiness or joy or pain – I experienced that happiness, joy and pain. When team India won the world cup – I experienced winning the world cup. When my wife experiences the joy of being with our son; I experience her joy. It all became very clear. I was all along experiencing what other people in my life were experiencing. I was always gathering the experience of this world through my organism and through other organisms.

Who I am is not simply this thing (organism / body / identity) here. Who I am is all of it. The whole creation. The whole universe. Who I am gathers the experience of this world through all organisms. Beveling that I am distinct from you is perhaps as stupid as saying that “my left leg” and “my right leg” and distinct from each other and not connected at all. We are all legs of the same “ONE”.

As I began to gather – that who I am is the one that experiences this world through this organism and that organism and that organism and that one; I began to realize that I am another YOU!.

If I am another You – then, phenomenon such as jealousy, hatred, competition are all pointless. It would be really stupid if my left leg was competing with my right leg. Attempting to be better than someone or compete with someone means indulging in the belief that I could get better than what I already am. I already am all of it. What I am I going to get better into? There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do. (Although – it doesnt mean “go nowhere” or “do nothing”. There is a fine line.)

It became very clear that my experience of this world will be cleaner, clearer and enriching if your experience of this world is clearer, cleaner and enriching. It became very clear as to why Werner was always saying – my transformation becomes more powerful if you are transformed.

The whole experience is very Zen like. It cannot be explained or argued for/against. It cannot be figured out. It has to be let free for showing up in our experience. When it does show up in one’s experience – it is amazing. One gets to experience being in the presence of love. It is a shame that I have been believing my way out of this experience all along.

I got curious about “existentialism” and explored further – until I came across a book called “Being and Nothingness” from Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre is considered to be a major influence in existential thought and this particular book is thought of as a bible of existentialism. So with lot of enthusiasm I bought the book and began reading it. And for the past 2 years I have been reading it. I have still not managed to completely read it cover to cover. The language is a bit difficult to understand and I take a rather long time to understand stuff – I am not all that intellectual.

I really wanted to get a gist of what Sartre was saying. I then tumbled on this book called “How to be an Existentialist” by Gary Cox. I bought the book on Kobo books and read it “cover to cover”. The book was infact written for dummies like me and it presented existential thoughts and concepts in a simple manner. I got more interested in existentialism after reading this book. I went back and tried reading Sartre again, I read books from Viktor Frankyl another book from Gary Cox, parts of Being and Time from Martin Heidegger. I even watched movies based on existentialism like The Matrix (for the 83rd time), the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, Swashank Redemption, Patch Adams, The Truman Show, Guide, Anand etc. I also had an opportunity to interact with a few people from Germany and France who have explored existentialism at depth and got to hear from them as well.

In this blog post – I want to share a gist of existential thoughts / concepts / terms / distinctions that I have managed to understand by reading books, Internet articles and from people who have studied and internalized existentialism.

Terms and Terminology

A learned man once said -

Mastery about any aspect comes about from mastering the conversational or linguistic domain of that aspect. Conversational or linguistic domain is composed by a set of special and carefully chosen terms networked together to talk about a specific aspect. For example the conversational domain for a physician consists of a bunch of specialized terms about the human body and how they are interconnected. A master physician interacts with his world (of patients, ailments, cures etc) using those set of specialized terms. Without those terms a physican would have little or no access to powerfully relating to his world. For example the balloon like structure (in my chest) that helps in breathing in and out is labelled as Lungs. Who cares about what ‘God’ or the ‘Creator’ intended to call it – but labeling it using a specialized term called ‘Lung’ enables us to powerfully understand it and also understand the disorders that can happen for the Lung.

To really make sense of Existentialism – we will first need to get clear about certain terms. Note: meanings of the terms listed below are expressed from the point of view of how I have understood them. I may or may not be an authority in this matter. If this blog post makes you curious to explore existentialism by your own; I think that it has served the purpose

Listed below are key terms in existentialism

• Being
• Differentiated and Undifferentiated being
• Being-in-itself, Being-for-itself and Being-for-others
• Existence precedes essence
• Facticity and Transcendence
• Bad Faith
• Authenticity
• Nothingness

I will try my best to explain the terms listed above.

Being – this term refers to something that exists or to something that is thought to exist. Primarily existentialism is a study of reality, of existence. So it is only natural to start with a word that encompasses “real”. That word for existentialists is “being”. The word makes more and more intrinsic sense as one studies existentialism and starts thinking like an existentialist.

Differentiated Being vs Undifferentiated Being – Any being out there in the world exists as it is, until a conscious being (like a human being) takes notice of it and carves it up into (or differentiates it from other) phenomenon. For example – assume that trees have no consciousness (I say “assume” because I dont know whether they are conscious or not and I dont want to get into an argument there). Also assume that they can somehow “see” the world. To a tree, nothing is different from anything else. Everything shows up as one single being. But to a conscious being, like human being – nature / world shows up as a collection of objects. Each object “different” from the other. Individual anything shows up only within the limits of human consciousness.

In existentialism an undifferentiated being is a being that exists simply, without any interpretation. Differentiated being on the other hand is a being that exists “for” a consciousness (or conscious being).

Existentialists argue that consciousness uses negation to differentiate being. To consciousness, beings show up only within the negation of it. Consciousness, they argue, posit being by introducing negations into it. Most common negations are “no longer”, “not yet” and “not this”. For example the notion of time shows up for consciousness as real only because the present is no longer what it was and not yet what it should or could be. On the other hand for a tree, which has no consciousness, – there is no time! Another example – for consciousness, a bottle shows up as a being that is not x, y, z etc..

Try this with yourself. Suppose that you wanted to express to your friend the taste of honey. Also suppose that your friend has really no clue as to what honey is. He has never tasted it and has never even heard or it. How would you express the taste of honey to him. After a couple of trials – you will eventually land up describing to him the taste of honey as “it does not taste like milk or water or oil or juice or lemon or…” So you see, the reality of what is becomes clear through a firm understanding of what it isnt. To put it in a more formal sentence – the existence of being is only in terms of what it is not. Being exists only in relation to its non-being or its negation.

I recommend that you pause for a while and really ponder over this – non-being gives reality to being and it is only within the limits of human expectations does non-being show up. When you put all of this together, you can really get – that the way we get this world is through its non-being. We make sense of the world by understanding what the world isnt. Every single phenomenon (which includes objects, ideas, concepts etc) in the world is understood in terms of “no longer”, “not yet” and “not this”. Interesting paradox right? Wait – it gets better.

Being-in-itself, being-for-itself and being-for-others – These three terms help understand the way in which beings exist for us. First lets try to look at their bare-basic definition. Being-in-itself is a full and self-contained being. Being-for-itself is the meaning conjured up by the being about itself. Being-for-others is the way in which a being exists for the Other. These three terms are better understood with examples and explanations.

For example – the being-in-itself of a rock is nothing but that of a rock. The rock isnt trying to be a musician, chair or anything. It is just a rock. Nothing else but a rock. Being-in-itself has maximum density in its being. As in it is fully being it and nothing else. That is why the being of rock is understood as being-in-itself of a rock. The rock is completely at one with its being because it never ever tries by-itself to be anything but a rock. As a matter of fact it isnt even trying to be a rock because it is already fully a rock and doesn’t need to do anything to be it. Being-in-itself doesnt really need anything else to be. It doesnt need to do anything else than just be. It can just be. Being-in-itself just is.

The being of a Human being cannot be fully understood in-terms of being-in-itself only. Because a human being is never at one with his being-in-itself. A human being is never at one with being a physical body with drives, memory etc. If that were the case – human beings would have simply been by eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, drinking when thirsty, mating when horny and so on. Human beings always project something about themselves – in terms of their role in society, their profession, their aspirations, their expectations, their world-view, their morals, their nationality, their religion, their caste, their financial status etc. In other words – human beings add meaning to their existence. So it can be said that the being of a human being is being-in-itself plus being-for-itself. The being-for-itself conjures up the meaning of the human being.

Now lets be clear that the meaning or the reality of being-for-itself is void or null. While being-in-itself exists in physicality and nature; being-for-itself doesn’t. The for-itself doesnt exist in physicality. [One might argue that the for-itself is a brain function - but I dont want to offer explanations against that notion in this blog post] Which is why they say that being-for-itself is a nothingness, a non-being or a negation of being-in-itself. It is because the for-itself doesnt have a being of its own; it digs into being-in-itself in an effort to become a being-in-itself. Existentialists love to call this “being-for-itself-in-itself” and confuse the already confused reader even more!

The being of a human being, according to existentialists, is characterized by a continuous effort by the for-itself to become one with the in-itself; which is of-course never possible – because the very nature of the for-itself is to negate the in-itself. [If you are unable to make sense of it, don't fret too much. Just read preceding few paragraphs a couple of times more and you will get it. If you are an existentialist yourself and have studied it at length, but still find the above paragraph confusing and inaccurate - then please do educate me]

Being-for-other – The in-itself and for-itself would have been sufficient to describe the being of a human being – had there been exactly one human being in the world. In actuality there are billions of them (7 billion+ of them). The existence of the Other really kills it for a human being. Sartre says – hell is the Other. A human being when he is alone has the full freedom to project a meaning about himself and to interpret (or differentiate) the world around him in the way he sees fit. But the moment he becomes aware of another – he realizes that he is infact a part of the world for the Other just as much as the Other is a part of his world. He is therefore clear that his own existence is being differentiated (or interpreted) by the Other just as much as the Other’s being is differentiated by him.

The being-for-other is a being that exists for the Other as an object among a world of objects for the Other. A human being may or may not have complete control over how his being-for-other is shaped by the Other. He therefore feels reduced to an object at the instant of gaze by the Other. A man is reduced to his profession, nationality, education level (or degree), financial status by the Other. He becomes an object in-front of the Other, open for interpretation, judgement and evaluation.

Lets be clear that the phenomenon of for-other exists even for non-conscious objects. For example – the being of a rock is the being-in-itself of the rock. But to a conscious being the rock could be a shivalinga or any other idol / symbol. However – we are not interested in the for-others of the rock, because the rock is not interested in its own for-others. A human being on the other hand is. A lot of human phenomenon is heavily for-others (or Other) based. Phenomenon like guilt, pride, disgust, celebration, appreciation, hate, shame etc show up – only because of the for-other. Think about this – would a person watching porn feel shame unless he is caught in the act?

At the core of existentialism is the maxim “existence precedes essence.” This basically means that people exist first, without any purpose, reason or goals; they then figure out their essence (as in what to do with their life). This is drastically different from many other philosophical teachings that proclaim that each and every one of us is born with a intrinsic purpose and that our job is to somehow figure out that purpose. A lot of us get frustrated and stressed as we go through our life, uncovering that purpose.

The idea that human beings exist simply, without any purpose of reason what-so-ever and that they must come up with reason, purpose, essence for themselves is very empowering (although it may not seem so at first). What it basically brings forth for us is – WE ARE ALL ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MEANING WE GIVE TO OUR LIVES AND THAT AS SUCH THERE IS NO MEANING TO EXISTENCE AND/OR TO LIFE. If life has no intrinsic meaning, then the meaning it has is the meaning we ascribe to it. Many students / thinkers / endorsers of existentialism experience a profound shift in consciousness when they get the above maxim for the very first time.

So powerful is the idea of “existence precedes essence”; that one’s understanding of freedom and responsibility permanently gets altered. Understanding of “Responsibility” shifts from “burden / blame” to “freedom in creating meaning for what’s so in our lives”. Being responsible becomes simply a matter of being someone who recognizes their response ability, their intrinsic ability to generate an empowering response to the situations they confront in life.

Facticity and Transcendence – Facticity is a term used to refer to the sum-total of facts of a being. Note: we are saying facts and not truths. While all truths are facts, all facts may not necessarily be truths. The facticity of a rock, for example, is that it has a particular shape, size, color, density, solidity etc. Another example – facticity of a human being is that he has a body, a past, an already established meaning of himself for himself and for others.

Transcendence is a term used to refer to the indefinite project of a being to go beyond its facticity. Lets be clear that transcendence is a phenomenon that is observable only in conscious beings (beings with for-itself and for-others). For example a college graduate transcends his facticity (of having been a student with no earnings, professional status, job-title etc) by selling his skills and becoming a professional who earns money, status has a job and so on.

As a conscious being, human beings are always transcending their facticity. So much so that the being of a human being is “officially” defined as a being that is continuously transcending its facticity. A human being is never only his facticity. He is also never only his transcendence. He is a transcendence of his facticity.

Whenever a human being considers that he is only his facticity or that he is only his transcendence – he is considered to be in bad-faith.

For example – people who consider themselves to be just their caste, religious association, social status, educational qualification, nationality, job, membership-in-elite-groups are in bad-faith. Because they seem to operate out of a belief that they are their facticity. A teacher is not a teacher just as much as a rock is being a rock. So if the teacher operates out of a belief that he is this teacher thing, then he is in bad-faith.

The same is with people who consider that their past is something they will never be responsible for. For example – murderers, thieves who believe that their past actions will some how never come back and haunt them and that they will never have to transcend their past once they have done so are in bad-faith.

We are forever transcending our facticity. We can never be a pure transcendence. If I have committed a murder in the past – I can never think of myself as a pure transcendence and some how disconnect myself from my past. I will forever have to own up the responsibility of having been a murderer and transcend it every moment by choosing to not murder again and to pay for the act (by doing time in prison and/or cleaning up the mess caused because of the murder). If I have not studied hard enough to get into IIT or Harvard, I cannot brand myself as an incompetent or a not-so-hardworking/not-so-intelligent person. I will however have to own-it up and choose to work hard now and transcend it. If I have lost an arm and a leg in an accident – I cannot think of myself as a crippled-and-handicapped-human-thing and resign to depression. Nor can I ignore the fact that I have a missing arm and leg and go about life in dillusion. I will however have to own up (and be responsible) for the fact that I dont have one arm and one leg and choose to engage in activities that will transcend these facts. Facts about me are NOT me. They are however still facts ABOUT ME, they are therefore facts that I will always have to transcend.

Every act of transcendence requires me to fully own up (or be responsible for) my facticity and make a choice about how I conduct myself in the face of that facticity. And each choice is made in complete freedom. Even not doing anything is a choice to not do anything. I am therefore, forever, free. Put more specifically I am forever freely transcending my facticity.

But the catch is this. Every moment I make a choice and do something – that becomes a part of my past; and therefore my facticity. And since I am going to be transcending again the very next moment – the choice I make now will have to be fully owned up the very next moment, in order to transcend again. As a human being I am forever running the project of being responsible for my facticity and freely transcending it every single moment.

Sounds harsh? Well - that’s the way it is. The goods news is that we have already been being that way for a long time now. Infact since birth. We are, so to speak, experts in transcending our facticity. However if we can generate an awareness that we have been transcending our facticity all the while – we can then make a more responsible choice in terms of how we transcend our facticity. Existentialists say that – we are doomed to be free. But the question is – DO WE KNOW IT?

The more we live out of an awareness that we are not our facticity (that we are not a thing among a world of things out there); and that we are forever to take responsibility for our facticity and to choose our way of transcending it – we get closer to being an authentic being. Being authentic is a life long project. Something a true existentialist aspires to be, but can never be it. Because to be an authentic being means branding oneself as a authentic-being-thing; which is again an act of bad-faith.

The good news is that since existence precedes essence and that since there is no meaning to life and that the being-for-itself (which infact runs the project of transcendence of facticity) is a nothingness or non-being; it is quite simple to take full responsibility of our facticity and choose to transcend it with complete freedom. It is simple, but not necessarily easy. Our sense of burden comes from a misguided belief that the world is the way it is and that we cannot do anything about it. The world is infact a differentiated being – a being that shows up only because we are conscious. The world is a being that shows up only because we are positing negations into it. We can therefore paint the world, the way we want. That doesnt mean we can jump from the top of a cliff and expect to not die. It means taking responsibility for the fact that jumping from top of the cliff will kill us and choosing (out of full freedom) to not jump. It also doesn’t mean that just because our facticity doesn’t define us – we should expect IIT or Harvard to award us an admission into their campus even though we don’t have good grades in college. It means taking responsibility for the lack of good grades in college and choosing (out of full freedom) to work harder to get there. It also means being aware that jumping off the cliff, or not jumping off the cliff, or joining Harvard or IIT doesnt mean anything – it only means what we make it mean.

We would want to have a really simple class that does all the serializing and parsing, so we declare a class like the one below.

struct JSONData;
class JSON
{
public:
    static JSON& instance();
    ~JSON();

    QVariantMap parse(const QString& string) const;
    QString serialize(const QVariant& value) const;

protected:
    JSON();

private:
    JSONData* d;
};

We begin implementing the class as follows. The static instance() method is implemented as

JSON& JSON::instance()
{
    static JSON theInstance;
    return theInstance;
}

That was easy! We now implement the constructor. One of the tricks we will be using in the implementation is this – we make use of the JavaScript JSON object to perform the serializeing and parsing for us. Towards that, we implement the constructor as follows

struct JSONData
{
    QScriptEngine engine;
    QScriptValue parseFn;
    QScriptValue serializeFn;
};

JSON::JSON()
{
    d = new JSONData;

    const QString script = "function parse_json(string) { return JSON.parse(string); }\n"
                           "function serialize_json(object) { return JSON.stringify(object); }";
    QScriptValue result = d->engine.evaluate(script);

    d->parseFn = d->engine.globalObject().property("parse_json");
    d->serializeFn = d->engine.globalObject().property("serialize_json");
}

Notice how we are creating JavaScript functions to parse and serialize objects. In the constructor we basically QScriptValues of the parse and serialize functions. Next, lets see how the parse() function is implemented.

QVariantMap JSON::parse(const QString& string) const
{
    QScriptValue result = d->parseFn.call(QScriptValue(), QScriptValueList() << QScriptValue(string));
    QVariantMap resultMap = result.toVariant().toMap();
    return resultMap;
}

Really really simple isnt it!

The serialize() function is equally simple – but for a CreateValue function dependency.

QString JSON::serialize(const QVariant& value) const
{
    QScriptValue arg = ::CreateValue(value, d->engine);
    QScriptValue result = d->serializeFn.call(QScriptValue(), QScriptValueList() << arg);
    QString resultString = result.toString();
    return resultString;
}

The CreateValue function basically converts any QVariant to a QScriptValue. QtScript module doesnt make it easy for us (no QScriptEngine::newVariant() is not useful here for all cases). We implement the CreateValue function as follows

QScriptValue CreateValue(const QVariant& value, QScriptEngine& engine)
{
    if(value.type() == QVariant::Map)
    {
        QScriptValue obj = engine.newObject();

        QVariantMap map = value.toMap();
        QVariantMap::const_iterator it = map.begin();
        QVariantMap::const_iterator end = map.end();
        while(it != end)
        {
            obj.setProperty( it.key(), ::CreateValue(it.value(), engine) );
            ++it;
        }

        return obj;
    }

    if(value.type() == QVariant::List)
    {
        QVariantList list = value.toList();
        QScriptValue array = engine.newArray(list.length());
        for(int i=0; i<list.count(); i++)
            array.setProperty(i, ::CreateValue(list.at(i),engine));

        return array;
    }

    switch(value.type())
    {
    case QVariant::String:
        return QScriptValue(value.toString());
    case QVariant::Int:
        return QScriptValue(value.toInt());
    case QVariant::UInt:
        return QScriptValue(value.toUInt());
    case QVariant::Bool:
        return QScriptValue(value.toBool());
    case QVariant::ByteArray:
        return QScriptValue(QLatin1String(value.toByteArray()));
    case QVariant::Double:
        return QScriptValue((qsreal)value.toDouble());
    default:
        break;
    }

    if(value.isNull())
        return QScriptValue(QScriptValue::NullValue);

    return engine.newVariant(value);
}

Thats it! You can now simply make use of JSON class to parse and serialize JSON objects.

// Parsing json strings
QString jsonString = ....
QVariantMap jsonObject = JSON::instance().parse(jsonString);

// Serializing json objects
QVariantMap jsonObject = ...
QString jsonString = JSON::instance().serialize(jsonObject)

Once we start our careers, earn some money and gather some property (home / stuff-for-home / car / other fancy things) – we inevitably land up asking these questions. Because all through our childhood we kept imagining that getting to a place of felling “settled down” is a long way off and that’s about the only thing important in life. But as we start reaching that destination – these questions stare at us. All through our life we grow up thinking that there is somehow an ultimate purpose and that our life is meant to be used up to that end. Somehow, growing up we imagined that the ultimate purpose was to get married, have kids, get a job, have comfortable stuff for leading a socially respectable life and so on. These days most of us get to this end rather quickly – and soon a we get to the question – “Is that all there is in life?”. And lo and behold – we stare at an absolute void. That void scares us. In a desperate attempt to get rid of that void – we fill it up with even more fancy goals, ambitions, habits. However the questions and the void behind them continue to haunt us. (1) What is life (or more specifically my life) all about? and (2) How should I live? And as we being our attempt at answering these questions – we notice that the “pat” answers don’t work. Rather the “pat” answers don’t seem to address the entirety of our life experiences.

We then think – “Hey, maybe someone else also faced these questions! How about hearing the answers other people came up with for these questions?”. So we ask around. And it soon becomes pretty obvious that almost everyone around us has faced these questions. And whats more – almost everyone seems to know the answer. Over and above that, almost everyone wants to “sell” their answer and claim that their answer is it! In all fairness – for the most part everybody’s answer does seem to address some aspects of the questions; but not all of it. So – we continue inquiring into the questions.

That’s when we encounter philosophy. (Atleast that’s when I encountered it). Religious texts (Gita, Puranas..), philosophical texts (Upanishads), spiritual texts (A New Earth, Power of Now etc..), theological texts and inspiring talks from people (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Bannanjay Govindacharya for example), inspiring / though-provoking movies (the Matrix, Peaceful Warrior) – all seem to offer answers or at least an opening to look at / inquire into the questions. [Jiddu Krishnamurti is an exception here. He doesn't offer answers and in fact goes as far as saying that we should not take anyone's answer, rather we should make an honest effort and inquiring into the questions ourselves and discover our own answers to it.]

No matter which philosophy we begin with – we will find that the first one that impacts us a lot seems like the only one that can impact almost everybody. When “The Matrix” was released in the year 1999 – I was very powerfully impacted by the philosophy behind it. I was able to let go of a lot (and I mean a real lot) of baggage. I was, so to speak, “enlightened” – when I heard Neo say “there is no spoon” and got the philosophical meaning behind it. And so excited I got about it – that I really wanted everybody to watch the movie and really really get the movie and experience the phenomenal positive impact that it can offer. I was almost, like many other people I am sure, an “official evangelist” for the movie. My first conversation with any new person was – “have you watched this movie called – The Matrix?”. Pretty soon my undying fanatic excitement about the movie became obnoxious, but then that’s another story. The point I want to make is this: for everybody their current philosophy is exciting and they want everybody around them to “get” it and to that end they either evangelize it or become teachers of it. This is very normal and there is nothing great / special / unique or even worthwhile about it.

But then, as with any philosophy, the power and impact can fizzle out when we are unable to make use of it in the face of new problems / life-situations and bring about a drastic change in the quality of our lives. That’s when we either invest some intellectual effort to make the already known philosophy relevant to our new problems / situations in life or look for another philosophy and get excited about yet another idea and the cycle continues.

Sometimes exploring a new idea / philosophy can be very refreshing. I recommend that you try it out. Trying out something new doesn’t necessarily make anything you already know or believe invalid. A believer of Bhagvad Gita and its philosophy need not avoid experiencing the value of Jiddu Krishamurti teachings, and vice versa. A follower of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings need not block out Landmark Education and its teachings, and vice versa. There is value in all ideas. The key thing to remember is that an idea that works for you; may not work for someone else. It is also important to remember that what worked for someone, may work for us as well. We wont know – until we try it out. However, I think we should perhaps stop trying too hard in “selling” our ideas to someone new. It is a generous enough gesture to share with someone the impact an idea / philosophy has had on our life and just leave it at that. The other person will chose to experience it for himself out of his own interest / freedom.

It is very normal for all of us to get trapped into thinking that our current philosophy of life is the only thing that works for everybody. As long as we are in that trap, we are not making ourselves available to the value of other philosophies. While our philosophy may answer a lot of questions – it is important to know that there might be other ideas that might impact us just as much. The best thing to do would be to keep an open mind and listen to everything and make up our own philosophy of life. It is really important for us to get that for something to be “useful” the rest need not be “useless”.

For the Landmark Education fanboys – “For Landmark to be valid, spirituality need not be invalid”. For the spirituality fanboys – “For spirituality to be valid, Landmark need not be invalid”. My recommendation is – listen. See whats available in all ideas and STOP selling one idea / philosophy / individual as the only idea / philosophy / individual that will make life work. I don’t think one size will fit all. Your ideas / philosophy / guru is just as valid as mine.

Living a transformed life is just like that. One has to distinguish his/her being present, slipping into bad-faith (or running a racket), choosing “what-is”, getting present to his/her strong-suits and act, being in integrity and so on – every moment and all the time in order to be transformed. It doesn’t matter if one has been distinguishing all of that for the last 10 years – if one isn’t doing it right now, he is not transformed.

1. both the cycle and the car passed by you and
2. the car moved faster than the cycle.

If you dwell on this for some time you can quickly figure out the following.

1. that the cycle and car moved past you was observed only because you were standing still.
2. that the car moved faster than the cycle was also observed because you were standing still.
3. that the speed of motion of the car as observed by you and the speed of motion of the car as observed by the one riding the cycle are two separate things.

This idea of speed/space relativity is not new to any of us. We have all studied about this in our physics class at school.

Read the full interview here- http://timesofindia.indiatimes​.com/entertainment/bollywood/n​ews-interviews/We-couldnt-affo​rd-rent-Hrithik-Roshan/article​show/9492955.cms