The spinning dancer, fast and slow thinking and the reflective mind

A few months back I came across this spinning dancer. This visual illusion was created in 2003 by the web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara by combining 34 frames. At any point of time, you will see the dancer revolving either to her right (clockwise) or to her left (anti-clockwise). Sometimes, as you are watching, the dancer switches the direction. It looks as though you don’t have any control either on the direction of movement or on when it will reverse. Can I do the switch in the direction voluntarily? That is what I tried to explore past few weeks. The other question that came to mind was: To get convinced that it is an illusion, do I have to see the reversal?

Here are my observations when I watch it on the spinning dancer Wikipedia page on my laptop. My dominant direction is clockwise. However, when I watch the picture by almost closing my eyes when the picture becomes blurry and I see the movement of legs as almost two dimensional, I am able to switch the direction. It is almost voluntary though not guaranteed. When I copy the image on PowerPoint slide or on phone, the speed of rotation is slower compared to the laptop. And there I find it harder to do the voluntary reversal by blurring my vision. When I scroll the image up so that only her feet below knee are visible, then sometimes I perceive the dancer dancing like a pendulum – little to the left and then little to the right but not going full circle. But as soon as I scroll the picture down, the dancer starts rotating full circle. Again, all these changes are involuntary. You can see how other people perceive this by reading the comments on this New York Times article “The truth about the spinning dancer”. Can we explain this using Daniel Kahneman’s fast and slow thinking modes?

One of the hallmarks of fast thinking is that it is involuntary – automatic. When I look at the dancer, I see the rotation either in clockwise or in anti-clockwise direction. I don’t have a choice here. This is a case where fast thinking mode is at play. Moreover, there is no direction inherent in the images that pass by. The three dimensional perception of the two dimensional images is created in the brain automatically. Certain set of neural circuitry is firing automatically, resolving the ambiguity of direction one way or the other and showing the rotation. This type of illusion is called a bi-stable visual illusion where there are 2 stable states – clockwise dance and anti-clockwise dance.

The fast mode of thinking is doing two key substitutions here. One, the direction of dance where none exists and two, the 3-D depth of the vision from 2-D images. Doing such substitutions to suppress ambiguity is a key characteristic of fast mode of thinking. They are happening all the time and we are not even aware of it. That’s how we are enjoying the movies on TV. Now, imagine a political party whose leader sees this lady dancing only clockwise. Never sees it anticlockwise. And then he declares those people who see it as clockwise as pure-blood and those who see it as anti-clockwise as mud-blood (to borrow Harry Potter terminology). And soon a fight follows which results in the flow of blood which has only one colour – red.

You might say that’s stupid! How can people fight over an illusion like this? Question is, how can you know it is an illusion if you don’t see it any other way (only clockwise)? Enter the second mode of thinking – slow thinking. As the fast mode of thinking is creating impressions and judgments like a mental shotgun, the slow mode of thinking can create a doubt and unbelieving. It can ask: could this impression be wrong? Then it can mobilize attention to gather more evidence (e.g. ask other people) and then make a more informed decision. The part of slow thinking which raises this doubt, is sometimes called the reflective mind.

Keith Stanovich a major advocate of the reflective mind theory, explains “Why do smart people do stupid things?” He says sometimes a person with high IQ (e.g. SAT score, education from top university, top rank in an organization) may still have a weak reflective mind. In that person’s mind, the question: Could this impression be wrong, never gets raised. In fact, Stanovich’s research on confirmation bias (or Myside bias) shows no correlation between SAT score and the bias tendency.

In short, fast mode of thinking is doing a fantastic job of automatically supressing ambiguity. But in the process it can also be creating illusions which are sustained (like the direction of the dancer). Reflective mind is an element of slow thinking whose job is to doubt the impressions and ask, “Could this be wrong?” We don’t need this as we go about our daily routine of brushing, driving etc. But perhaps when we are labelling somebody wrong, it is worth stretching the reflective muscle.

Source:

Spinning dancer image is from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer

Sustaining participation in innovation initiatives

I got an opportunity to write an article on “Sustaining participation in innovation initiatives” which appeared in NHRD Journal, Oct 2015 issue. This was a special issue on “HR in innovative organizations” edited by my friend Rishikesha Krishnan. In this article, I would like to summarize the paper in brief. You can read the full paper here.

Key hindrances: One of the key challenges that organizations face in running innovation programs is sustaining participation. People participate enthusiastically in the beginning. However, the energy is slowly dissipated and is replaced by apathy or cynicism. What are the key hindrances in sustaining participation? The paper presents 3: (1) Big bets only approach – i.e. organizations insisting that innovation is only about big bets. This limits the scope of innovation to a few people and most others feel “It’s not for me”.  (2) Lack of help for idea authors: Idea authors especially novices need help while taking their idea from a crude form to an attractive business proposal. The help could be being a sounding board, suggestions regarding prototyping, finding a collaborator, in preparing a business plan etc. If no such helps is available then idea authors may feel frustrated. (3) Absence of dashboard: A simple dashboard can communicate a lot about the progress of innovation activity. On the other hand, a lack of dashboard leaves people clueless. This includes those people who are running the innovation initiative in the first place.

What to do? Core elements: The paper suggests that any innovation initiative should have two core elements: (1) A program management function and (2) A focus on spotting and scaling “bright spots”. Program manager (full time or part-time) would maintain a roadmap and run various interventions which may include running a challenge campaign, training workshops, hackathon event, blogging contest, publishing a newsletter, calendarize reviews etc. “Bright spots” are evidences where things may be working in pockets. Program managers should be constantly on the lookout for such bright spots and see if they can be scaled.

More elements for “Continuous improvement”: If the primary focus is building creative confidence, then it helps to define what an acceptable idea is. Keeping the bar very high will be demotivating and keeping the bar too low will not generate an interest. Moreover, the review of small ideas needs to happen as low in the hierarchy as possible. Otherwise it can become a bottleneck leading to long turnaround cycles.

More elements for “Incubation process”: If the primary focus is on the incubation process, then it helps to run campaigns focused on specific business challenges.  Also management needs to give attention in the form of regular reviews and maintaining a rigor for the reviews.

Hope you find it useful and I would love to hear your comments / suggestions.

3 flavours of mindfulness

In the past few weeks, I ended up answering the question, “What is mindfulness?” a few times. I realized that my answers have 3 different flavours. So I thought, I might as well pen them down and invite inputs. Here they are:

Present-moment-awareness: This is perhaps the most commonly used definition of Mindfulness. To quote the widely cited paper “Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition” by Bioshp et. al. from the journal “Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 2004”¹ – Mindfulness involves two things (1) observing and attending to the changing field of thoughts, feelings and sensations from moment to moment and; (2) with an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness  and acceptance. For example, as I type this, I hear honking of cars, chirping of birds, clicking of the keyboard, I feel the movement of the breath, movement of the abdomen; I observe thoughts about mindfulness etc. It is a Sunday morning, no hurry and that makes the environment conducive for being mindful. What about a Monday morning while stuck in traffic? That is what one should try and see. The key resource here is attention and it can be completely hijacked by thoughts and emotions to the extent that no attention is left to observe.

A variant of this flavour is “Mindfulness is attention to the movement of thought” or “Mindfulness is attention to the train of thought as it moves from one station to another.” Just like we are aware of the movement of body parts like hands and legs as they move, we can be aware of the movement of thought which involves subtle material movement of chemicals, electrical signals through the neural network. This definition is advocated by Jiddu Krishnamurti² and his collaborator David Bohm. Bohm called it proprioception³ of thought.

Seeing false as false: Mindfulness is being aware of the possibility of a cognitive illusion while thinking. Kahneman’s “Thinking, fast and slow” shows us that a large part of our thinking is automatic. It is also subjected to cognitive biases especially when we navigate the uncertainty around us. The fast and automatic thinking mode creates what is called cognitive illusions⁴. For example, when we read the Google story, we feel that we know what caused the success of Google. Kahneman calls this “illusion of understanding”. We are subjected to many such illusions – like “illusion of skill”, “illusion of control”, “illusion of time” etc. We are mindful when we are aware of the possibility of these illusions while we are thinking. It is similar to the awareness of being fooled while watching a magic show⁵. For example, as I write this blog, I might be under the impression that the three flavours of mindfulness will be useful to the reader. But I may be currently subjected to the “overconfidence bias”. Who knows?

I first encountered the term “seeing false as false” in the book “I am that” by Nisargadatta Maharaj. In answering the question, “When do I know I have discovered the truth?” Maharaj said, “Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth, when the mind is blind to the false.”⁶

Notice wasteful thoughts: Mindfulness is noticing that the current thoughts (or train of thought) are wasteful or not serving any useful purpose. “Will readers like this blog?” Dwelling on this thought may lead to some changes that may improve the blog. However, an excessive and repetitious thinking like this is not going to serve any useful purpose. I might as well do my best in writing the blog and leave the rest to the readers. Moreover, if I get a specific comment about some sentence or a paragraph not being clear or even incorrect, it will be good to be open to modifying it. To quote Nobel Laureate John Nash who recovered from schizophrenia, “It is a matter of policing one’s thoughts trying to recognize paranoid ideas and rejecting them, just the way somebody who wants to lose weight has to decide consciously to avoid fats or sweets.”⁷ For Nash, the recognition started with ideas related to politics as wasteful.

Eckhart Tolle often uses the term “thoughts that serve no useful purpose”. For example, here is what he said during a conversation with Oprah Winfrey, “[Worry] It serves no purpose, because it doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s similar to the complaining. It has no useful purpose. It doesn’t bring about change in any situation.”⁸ 

In short, we looked at the three flavours of mindfulness: present-moment-awareness, seeing false as false and noticing wasteful thoughts. They are overlapping. And none of them involves a specific posture, closing of eyes, a quiet room etc. It is a state you can be in anytime, anywhere. Hope you find some of these flavours useful.

Source:

1.      “Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition” by Bishop et. al., Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice,  September 2004, Volume 11, Issue 3, pages 230-241.

2.      For Jiddu Krishnamurti’s comment, see the blog “Listening, looking and learning: 3 ways of ‘knocking at the open door’”. His instruction to the author Mark Lee is, “Now, watch your thoughts, how they move but don’t finish”. It is from Mark Lee’s book, “Knocking at the open door – my years with J. Krishnamurti”

3.      David Bohm explains proprioception of thought in the book “Thought as a system”. Check out a summary in my blog and also in dbohm.com site.

4.      I have written about 3 cognitive illusions from Kahneman’s “Thinking, fast and slow” in this blog: 3 powerful illusions created by thought.

5.      Check out my blog: Learning mindfulness through “Penn and Teller: Fool us” magic show. The concept of illusion is prominently present in Hindu scriptures as Maya and in Buddhist Mahayana literature as Vipallasa.

6.      “I am that” by Nisargadatta, chapter 66 (All search for happiness is misery), page  314.

7.      For Johan Nash quote, see my blog: A beautiful mind and 3 acts of creativity, madness and awakening.

8.      Eckhart Tolle’s quote is from his interview by Oprah Winfrey on the third chapter of A New Earth. Check it out on youtube here.

Organizational Innovation Ecosystem: A re-look after five years

It has been over five years since I first wrote about various elements of an organizational innovation ecosystem (see the picture above). In this half a decade I got opportunities to meet people from several dozen organizations – from various types such as for-profit, not-for-profit, Government, NGO etc. What did I find? Which elements seem to be in place? Which elements are hard to find? Which elements would I replace today? And which new ones might I add? Let’s explore in this article.

Let’s start with those elements which organizations serious about innovation seem to be putting in place:

·      

• Idea management process: Many organizations are making serious efforts in improving their idea management process. Some are also trying to bring various disjoint processes under one broad umbrella – e.g. kaizen, Quality circle, Idea portal, R&D, Internal VC process etc.
• Rewards & Innovation day: HR department has been playing a role in putting rewards & recognition process in place. I got an opportunity to visit the stalls put up on the innovation day in organizations like Titan.
• Training programs: L&D department has been playing a key role in rolling out training programs that raise awareness on innovation.
• Laboratory & corporate venture fund: In terms of structures, I see investments in labs and even in putting a corporate venture fund together.

Now, let’s turn to areas where there are challenges:

• Challenge process: Taking ownership of top business challenges and keeping them alive in a challenge book is something that I don’t see much. Managers who take up this role of owning one or more key business challenges are called champions in our book “8 steps to innovation”. A live and prioritized challenge book can bring focus to innovation efforts. It might also contribute to the strategy.
• Success stories: Like Master Shifu follows a bright spot to train Kung Fu Panda, there is an opportunity in digging deeper the success stories and finding scalable approaches. Unfortunately, managers are so busy with problems, that they don’t have time for studying the bright spots – be it the people who give ideas regularly, prototyping etc.
• Partnership network: This is perhaps the toughest asset to build and manage. It takes years and very few people have the patience to look that far. However, it is an extremely potent asset for building innovation capacity.

Any new element I would add today? Perhaps an element titled “innovation sandbox” – structures where experimentation capacity is massively increased in a specific area. Also I would replace the element “Immersive Research” with a more commonly used term “Design Thinking”. And replace “Success stories” with “Bright spot focus”. (See the updated picture below).

Overall, I still feel that the ecosystem view can provide a useful perspective while building innovation capacity systematically.

Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” turns 80

This month Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” turns 80. It was first released on Feb 5, 1936. That makes it roughly as old as my parents. It is one of my favourite movies. Here are a few snapshots from the movie and what they trigger in me.

Monotonous work: This is perhaps one of the classic moments which depicts the life of a typical worker – monotonous and boring. I began showing this picture in my workshops after my friend Akki introduced it in one of the innovathon workshops at ADP. Why does one innovate? At least one reason why people innovate is because they are bored of the routine.

Today we have more knowledge workers who sit in front of a computer screen instead of work on the assembly line. However, when I talk to my friends working in the Hitech companies in Bangalore, they also seem to be bored as they approach and cross their 40s.

Lack of empathy: “Don’t stop for lunch, be ahead of your competitors”. That’s the slogan of the feeding machine being presented. I use this part to show what “lack of empathy” looks like in Design Thinking workshops. After all, a lunch break is also a much needed break from work. How can it possibly be a welcome sign? After the laughter is subsided while watching the 200 rpm corn feeding process, someone points out “Perhaps it could be useful to bedridden / disabled people.” That’s exactly what products like E-Z Eat self feeding machine try to do targeting people with Parkinson’s.

Prisoner of the mind: “Can’t I stay a little longer? I’m so happy here.” That’s what the Tramp says to the jail superintendent who tells him “You are a free man!” There is unemployment outside while life is so peaceful inside the prison. At least the food and shelter is taken care. Is Charlie Chaplin metaphorically hinting that we are the prisoners of our own mind and we could be at peace anywhere, even in the jail?

Creative confidence: The Tramp is going through all the struggles – a job here, a job there. Here he gets an opportunity to do song and dance. And he forgets his lyrics. At that moment, his girlfriend tells him “Just sing, forget the words”. And out comes a spontaneous creative performance. A person who would have never imagined himself to be creative while fixing the bolts on the assembly line, suddenly develops an ounce of creative confidence. 

Don’t we all need such moments? Just watch out, perhaps such moments are passing by and you are ignoring them.

“Listening, looking and learning” – 3 ways of “knocking at the open door”

One side effect of having a dad who is a student of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teaching is that I get to see new JK arrivals whenever I visit my parents in Mumbai. The book I picked up in my last visit was “Knocking at the open door – My years with J. Krishnamurti” by R. E. Mark Lee. Mark Lee was a teacher at Rishi Valley School in India in 60s and the founding director of Oak Grove School in Ojai, California from 1974 till 84. The book is biographical and also contains dialogues between JK and Mark Lee, students, teachers and others that Lee witnessed. The title of the book comes from a remark JK made to Mark Lee after a series of dialogues in Ojai in the spring 1979. Referring to a lady who was sitting on the floor in front during the talk, JK said, “Sir, every year she asks me the same questions. Every year sir. Doesn’t she see that the door is open? Why doesn’t she just come in?” Perhaps we are dealing with a paradoxical situation here and the questions may not go away unless there is a realization that “I am knocking at the open door”. How does that realization happen? Of course, we are dealing with a “pathless land” here and there is no sure-shot way. Nevertheless, JK emphasized 3 things which come out very well in this book – listening, looking and learning. Let’s see how these might help in knocking at the open door.

Listening: In 1966, during a talk to the older students at Rishi Valley, JK asked if they knew how to listen. Then he suggested following experiment, “Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the sounds far away, at the mouth of valley. Now, listen closer and closer. Do you hear the villagers talking on the road? Now, coming closer, listen [to] your own heartbeat. You have to be very still to listen to your heartbeat. Try it, just for the fun of it.”

Note that this experiment can be done anywhere, anytime and may not take more than a couple of minutes. You can do it right now by taking a pause from reading this article. Try it.

Looking: In 1967, while speaking to the whole student body, he suggested another experiment related to looking. He said, “When you walk into a room look straight ahead. Don’t turn your head to the right or to the left – look straight ahead without moving your eyeballs. As you walk into the room don’t look at anything, but see everything. See the colours; see the furniture or shapes of things, and the people in the room. But don’t look at them! See with the back of your eyes. Your seeing is awareness.”

Looking outward is just one aspect of looking. Perhaps even more important is looking inward. When Mark Lee once requested JK to teach him how to meditate, here is what JK said, “Sit comfortably, sit still. Don’t let your hands touch. Breathe without effort. Close your eyes. Don’t move your eyeballs. Now, watch your thoughts, how they move but don’t finish. Don’t think about your thoughts, just let them come and go.”  After doing this for some time, Mark Lee opened his eyes and asked, “Is that all, sir?” Reaching out and shaking his arm JK said, “No, you silly boy, that is just the beginning. But not just sitting, meditate as you walk, as you work, as you talk.”

Looking in this case is more like watching your thoughts come and go. This may work fine most of the time. But sometimes thoughts create disturbance – small disturbance like irritation or big disturbance like feeling deeply hurt. That is what JK advocated as the golden opportunity to learn. He called such opportunities “precious jewels” to be studied carefully. What are you learning here?

Learning: One Sunday morning in March 1983, Mark Lee met JK for breakfast at Pine Cottage in Ojai. As the discussion began, Mark Lee heard the noise of chain saw. Neighbours had begun their work of cutting two huge trees and the noise was intense. Mark Lee got up to close the window. “Why are you doing that?” JK asked. “To cut out the irritating chain-saw noise from the next door,” Mark Lee replied. “You are reacting. Don’t react; just let the noise pass through you. You have a habit of [getting irritated],” JK said.

“How do you overcome a habit?” asked Mark Lee. Then JK gave a three-day formula (more like three-step formula). “Habit is just conditioning. It takes three days. The first day you become aware of it, and you watch it. You listen to it. You get a sense of your habit, whatever it is. The second day you observe it in the others and observe it in yourself as it works. And the third day you watch as it begins to lose its strength and it disappear.”

In May 1985, a few days before JK’s ninetieth birthday, Mark Lee met JK for breakfast. By then Mark Lee had resigned as the director of Oak Grove School. Perhaps the separation wasn’t amicable. During the conversation at breakfast JK asked Mark Lee, “You are watching yourself. You have had a shock recently and are watching yourself. Right?” And then he asked, “Are you hurt by what happened?” Mark Lee said that there was no hurt but deep disappointment that he had not been able to deal with the situation effectively. JK then said, “Pardon me sir, but that is hurt.” That is when Mark Lee remembered what JK said to the director of Rishi Valley Dr. Balasundaram a decade earlier, “Old boy, if you are hurt, remember, there is something wrong with you.”

Investigating this “irritation” or “hurt” while it is happening is what learning is about. The investigation may lead us to find a “button” i.e. a thought or an image (typically an assumption of necessity) which when pressed, the negative reaction springs up like a reflex. Through this we learn more about the functioning of thought as a system of conditioned reflexes.

In short, I found the book helpful in understanding Krishnanmurti’s teaching in specific contexts.

Related articles:

Check out Mark Lee’s note on listening.
Image source: amazon.in

The problem and the paradox of “becoming”

In a few months, our son Kabir will be appearing for one of the most fiercely competed exams in his life – the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) that will decide his fate to enter IITs, India’s premier engineering institutes. Approximately 1.2 million students took it last year and less than 0.1% got an opportunity to choose a discipline of their choice. For many, it may be the turning point in their life, landing lucrative jobs after their graduation, some of them overseas. I have been through this myself close to thirty years ago though the fierceness of the competition was somewhat milder then. Hence, I can understand the anxiety the students go through along with their parents.

After I entered IIT, new goals appeared on the horizon – the most prominent being getting admission in a US graduate school along with a scholarship. Then it was getting a PhD and then getting a job. Somewhere in between was the marriage and that created more goals – things that will help our son become somebody etc. The goals kept shifting and they kept the process of becoming alive. Or perhaps it was the other way round. The process of becoming, like a computer program, kept generating the next goal. And then achieving that goal becomes the next problem to be solved. Sometime along the way, I began to wonder if there is a trap here. That started a different type of investigation journey. Did I ever find out if becoming is a trap? That is what I want to discuss in this article. It was inspired by an essay by David Bohm titled “The problem and the paradox”.

To understand the nature of the problem of becoming, we need to understand the difference between a problem and a paradox. A problem is called a paradox when it contains contradictory assumptions. In school, I remember reading about the perpetual motion machines - a machine that can go on forever without ever stopping and without needing any external source of energy. The picture above is that of one of the earliest documented illustration of a proposed perpetual motion machine known as Bhaskara wheel. In 19^th century, scientists discovered the laws of thermodynamics which showed that it is impossible to build a perpetual machine because it assumes zero transfer of energy to the environment which violates the second law of thermodynamics. Thus the problem of building a perpetual machine is a paradox.

Note that a paradox can’t be solved the way we solve other problems such as fixing a car or treating a disease. The only way to resolve a paradox is to recognize it as a paradox. Until one sees the contradictory assumptions embedded in the problem statement, one can go on solving the problem without getting anywhere. That is exactly what many people have done spending years in building perpetual machines. You can see a brief history of perpetual machines here.

Now, let’s turn to the problem of “becoming”. Could the problem of becoming be a paradox? For example, I may define my problem as – “I want to become a leaner person” or “I want to become a wealthier person”. What is paradoxical about it? In fact, all of us would have experienced setting goals of these kinds and achieving at least some of them. In fact, one could question the reverse. How could I achieve anything meaningful unless I set out goals like these?

Let’s take the example of “becoming leaner” which is a difficult problem for many. People try new diets, new fitness programs year after year and yet they fail to sustain them. What’s happening here? To appreciate what’s happening, it helps to imagine thought as a network of reflexes which fire automatically when another related reflex is activated. Knee jerks when the bone gets tapped or foot presses the brake automatically when the car in front slows down. These are reflexes. Similarly, the impulse to overeat may come as a result of a set of reflexes getting fired perhaps when we are under stress (like the Panda in the movie Kung Fu Panda). Now, to reduce the intensity of this impulse or to eliminate this impulse would require a neuro-physiological change perhaps a neuro-surgery that would alter these reflexes. Unfortunately, nobody has figured out how to isolate such reflexes because the information about what belief a reflex stands for (e.g. if under stress, eat more) is embedded deeply in the neural network.

Now, you might say, “Well, we have friends who have become leaner, wealthier and so on. What about them?” The question is, “Has their becoming stopped after they became leaner?” Perhaps they have a new goal now – to run a marathon or to run a marathon within 4 hours. What if there is a program (or a set of reflexes) deeply embedded in the brain whose only job is to say, “You are still incomplete. Look at this guy, he is leaner. Look at her, she is more beautiful. Look at him, he is wealthier”? Then no matter what you become, this program is making sure that you feel a sense of incompleteness and a new goal is created in order to become more complete. So when you set out to solve the problem of becoming leaner, you still don’t address the core set of reflexes (the program) that is generating “you are incomplete” sense.  Thus there are two contradictory assumptions in action here: One, eat less to become leaner and the other one, perhaps a subconscious reflex, “eat more when you feel incomplete”. Thus the problem of “becoming” is a paradox. If “becoming” is really a paradox, what can be done?

Here is the bad news. The knowledge that “becoming” is a paradox does nothing to you. Unless you see it as a paradox in action yourself in your day-to-day living i.e. to see it contains contradictory assumptions as you try to become, you will be on a path similar to the perpetual machine builders. You need to see how as soon as the urge to become one thing subsides, something else pops up automatically. As Bohm says, it needs sustained attention on this process of becoming while it is in action.

The process of becoming is so deeply embedded in our culture that it is difficult to sustain the attention in the investigation. However, in case you are interested in investigating this further, the first step is skepticism. You need to ask the question, “Could this ‘becoming’ be a paradox?” You need to allow this question to take root in the mind like a virus.

What happens if you see the process of becoming as a paradox? Does it mean you stop taking exams like the JEE or stop enrolling in a new fitness program or stop making money? Not really. What changes is the “in order to” attitude. You stop doing things such as writing JEE exam “in order to” become somebody. You write an exam because that makes sense at that moment. Activity ceases to be a means to an end.

Sources:

Image of Bhaskara wheel is from www.lhup.edu.

If you are interested reading more about this topic, I would recommend David Bohm’s article – The problem and the paradox.

My first recollection of reading about the process of becoming is from the book “The ending of time” which is a dialog between Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm.

Knowing about the existence of the cognitive illusions does nothing to you is articulated by Daniel Kahneman in his lecture titled “The science of decision” delivered at Pentagon (quote at 25:56)

“Thought as a reflex” is articulated in the book “Thought as a system” by David Bohm.