Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

"Where do you want to go, uncle?", asked my three year old nephew. "M G Road", I said.  His tricycle was the make believe auto-rickshaw.  He took me around in Bangalore and even to Mysore. He had created an environment and I agreed to stay in that environment.  To us, the blue tricycle was the black auto-rickshaw and the car park was all of Bangalore. [Small digression: When I narrated this to my son, he corrected me.  It is not the environment we shared, but the experience or a dream.  So, is the title.] On a larger, real life scale, we have agreed on everything, I mean everything.  Without that agreement, one won't make sense to the other. Fire is fire for all of us, the experiences are visions of light, sensation of heat etc.  Before  man tamed fire, the agreed interpretation of fire could be that of a dreadful monster that burns. There are millions of things that we have unconsciously agreed upon to live as a society. ...

My recent interaction with colleagues and relations of my age pointed at a popular view of their worlds.  My personal experience and a recent interview by writer Jayamohan pointed to another less popular view of the world.  This article is a summary of my observations.  It may not be humanly possible to switch from one view to another.  The view is probably hard-wired in everyone's brain.  I hope that just being aware of the other view might help in relationships. Three of my recent long conversations were with people in corporate world.  They viewed their role as a fighter in a war.  They strategised, analyzed their own strengths and weaknesses, analyzed their opponents strength and weaknesses.  A victory is well defined for them - "If I have my way, I win; otherwise I lose.". This view is applied in every relationship - between vendor and customer, employer-employee, boss-subordinate, interviewer-interviewee etc.  I don't know e...