Stanford online courses

I received this mail from my University, Sign up now for your interested courses which will begin on this January. 

"Standford is offering amazing online courses starting this Jan. Those who successfully complete the course will receive a statement of accomplishment. The courses are CS 101, Machine Learning, Software as a service, human-computer interaction, natural language processing, Game theory, Probablistic Graphical Models, Cryptography, Design and Analysis of Algorithm.

To sign up, all you have to do is enter your name and email address and Stanford will send you the links to webinar and course materials when the course starts. We hope you make good use of your holidays during Jan – Feb and sign up for atleast 4 courses that you are interested in!

We have given a summary and video from the instructor in this post. Have a look at the following online courses. They would really be useful. Click Read more to find out the course details.

CS 101:

CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience. Computers can appear very complicated, but in reality, computers work within just a few, simple patterns. CS101 demystifies and brings those patterns to life, which is useful for anyone using computers today.

In CS101, students play and experiment with short bits of “computer code” to bring to life to the power and limitations of computers. Everything works within the browser, so there is no extra software to download or install. CS101 also provides a general background on computers today: what is a computer, what is hardware, what is software, what is the internet. No previous experience is required other than the ability to use a web browser.

Sign Up: http://www.cs101-class.org/

Machine Learning:

Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. Machine learning is so pervasive today that you probably use it dozens of times a day without knowing it. Many researchers also think it is the best way to make progress towards human-level AI.

In this class, you will learn about the most effective machine learning techniques, and gain practice implementing them and getting them to work for yourself. More importantly, you’ll learn about not only the theoretical underpinnings of learning, but also gain the practical know-how needed to quickly and powerfully apply these techniques to new problems. Finally, you’ll learn about some of Silicon Valley’s best practices in innovation as it pertains to machine learning and AI.

Sign Up: http://jan2012.ml-class.org/

Software Engineering for Software as a Service:

This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived software using the highly-productive Agile development method for Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails. Agile developers continuously refine and refactor a working but incomplete prototype until the customer is happy with result, with the customer offering continuous feedback.

Agile emphasizes user stories to validate customer requirements; test-driven development to reduce mistakes; biweekly iterations of new software releases; and velocity to measure progress. We will introduce all these elements of the Agile development cycle, and go through one iteration by adding features to a simple app and deploying it on the cloud using tools like Github, Cucumber, RSpec, RCov, Pivotal Tracker, and Heroku.

Sign Up: http://www.saas-class.org

Human-Computer Interfaces:

In this course, you will learn how to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration.You’ll learn several technique for rapidly prototyping and evaluating multiple interface alternatives — and why rapid prototyping and comparative evaluation are essential to excellent interaction design. You’ll learn how to conduct fieldwork with people to help you get design ideas. How to make paper prototypes and low-fidelity mock-ups that are interactive — and how to use these designs to get feedback from other stakeholders like your teammates, clients, and users. You’ll learn principles of visual design so that you can effectively organize and present information with your interfaces. You’ll learn principles of perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design. And you’ll learn how to perform and analyze controlled experiments online.

In many cases, we’ll use Web design as the anchoring domain. A lot of the examples will come from the Web, and we’ll talk just a bit about Web technologies in particular. When we do so, it will be to support the main goal of this course, which is helping you build human-centered design skills, so that you have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology.

Sign up: http://www.hci-class.org/

Natural Language Processing:

We are offering this course on Natural Language Processing free and online to students worldwide, January – March 2012,continuing Stanford’s exciting forays into large scale online instruction. Students have access to screencast lecture videos, are given quiz questions, assignments and exams, receive regular feedback on progress, and can participate in a discussion forum.

Those who successfully complete the course will receive a statement of accomplishment. Taught by Professors Jurafsky and Manning, the curriculum draws from Stanford’s courses in Natural Language Processing. You will need a decent internet connection for accessing course materials, but should be able to watch the videos on your smartphone.

Sign Up: http://www.nlp-class.org

Game Theory:

Popularized by movies such as “A Beautiful Mind“, game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call ‘games’ in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc., it includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. How could you begin to model eBay, Google keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them?

The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We’ll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications.

Sign Up: http://www.game-theory-class.org

Probabilistic Graphical Models:

Uncertainty is unavoidable in real-world applications: we can almost never predict with certainty what will happen in the future, and even in the present and the past, many important aspects of the world are not observed with certainty. Probability theory gives us the basic foundation to model our beliefs about the different possible states of the world, and to update these beliefs as new evidence is obtained. These beliefs can be combined with individual preferences to help guide our actions, and even in selecting which observations to make. While probability theory has existed since the 17th century, our ability to use it effectively on large problems involving many inter-related variables is fairly recent, and is due largely to the development of a framework known as Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs).

This framework, which spans methods such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields, uses ideas from discrete data structures in computer science to efficiently encode and manipulate probability distributions over high-dimensional spaces, often involving hundreds or even many thousands of variables. These methods have been used in an enormous range of application domains, which include: web search, medical and fault diagnosis, image understanding, reconstruction of biological networks, speech recognition, natural language processing, decoding of messages sent over a noisy communication channel, robot navigation, and many more. The PGM framework provides an essential tool for anyone who wants to learn how to reason coherently from limited and noisy observations.

Sign Up: http://www.pgm-class.org

Design and Analysis of Algorithms 

In this course you will learn several fundamental principles of algorithm design. You’ll learn the divide-and-conquer design paradigm, with applications to fast sorting, searching, and multiplication. You’ll learn several blazingly fast primitives for computing on graphs, such as how to compute connectivity information and shortest paths. Finally, we’ll study how allowing the computer to “flip coins” can lead to elegant and practical algorithms and data structures. Learn the answers to questions such as: How do data structures like heaps, hash tables, bloom filters, and balanced search trees actually work, anyway? How come QuickSort runs so fast? What can graph algorithms tell us about the structure of the Web and social networks? Did my 3rd-grade teacher explain only a suboptimal algorithm for multiplying two numbers?

Sign Up: http://www.algo-class.org/ "

Innocence

     
                 I think this is one of the best song of Avril from her album "The Best Damn Thing". I would be surprised if it doesn't find a place in your favorites list. 

The Glory Of Gayathri (Maha Bramhana)

Devudu Prathistana

                                                                                                

The Glory of Gayatri is a divine novel by the Kannada scholar Devudu Narasimha Shastry.

Along with this book(Maha Bramhana), the other two books namely Maha Darshana and Maha Kshatriya forms the trilogy(Maha Bramhana, Maha Darshana, Maha Khastriya) which bought great Honor to the scholar.  

  

Among the three, the novel Maha Darshana stands aside as the best novel according to me, though many would disagree with that since Maha Bramhana is a great work too.

  

Maha Darshana is the story of Yajnavalkya Maharshi and how god gave the famous Ishavasya Upanishad to the world through his means. God himself said to him saying "You'll write two books one consisting of a description about me and the other one will be your autobiography and I will always reveal myself to those who make a complete righteous attempt in studying these two Upanishads".

The novel Maha Darshana is almost like an Upanishad and hence the reason for me to stress individually on this. It includes a narration of Yajnavalkya's life as well as the truth hidden in his Upanishad.

Another reason why I loved this book is that it consists of many hidden secrets which not only help you to just read the scripture as it is but also a way to reveal the Upanishads or a way to explore or experience the truth for yourself provided if you can get the necessary guidance from someone who has mastered in it and its a knowledge based novel which provides great wisdom and insight into the vedic culture that was prevailing during ancient times. It is a must read book if you really want to know the basic philosophy behind the Vedic culture. Similar thoughts can be found in the Stoic school of Greek philosophers but this is very unique.

It feels like that your mind has gone into a new realm and it is not surprising if it takes some time for you to come to normal terms after reading this book.

I would love to bring this amazing work out to the public but unfortunately this book is not available in the English version yet and therefore I'm forced to introduce you to an another work of the same author which was the first novel that he wrote among the three books.

I hope the English version gives the same efficacy and touch as the Kannada version did. The Translator has made immense effort to keep the theme of the novel to its appreciable standards as intended by the author of the book.

                The Glory of Gayathri(Maha Bramhana) is a story of the origin of Gayatri Mantra. The author who saw the power of this mantra in his times thought of making aware of its origin to the public and in this way his desire to write this novel spurned. This form of Sun worship should be compulsorily carried out three times a day, but first you should be deserved to get the rights to perform this worship. This is not the only form of Sun worship which is available there are other ways of doing it too and I look forward to post them in the future. You'll comprehend what I mean by Sun worship once you have read this book. All the answers to your queries and the necessary introduction is provided in the reconstructed book itself.

I hope the readers find it interesting as I did and I also hope that it at least adds something to your World-view if it doesn't change it completely. I pray to God so that he stimulate your mind to comprehend the truth of it. Who knows what god has in store for you.

              

 I have uploaded the Introduction and Appendix chapters to Google docs. I hope the link works, all the best!!

Introduction

Appendix

A New World View

                                                                           

The Architects of Modern Physics, Fifth International Congress at Solvay Institute in Brussels (1927).



              1. A.Piccard                     11. L.Brillouin             21. L.Langmuir
         2. E.Henriot                     12. P.Debye                 22. M.Planck
      3. P.Ehrenfest                  13. M.Knudsen          23. M.Curie
               4. E.Herzen                      14. W.L.Bragg             24. H.A.Lorentz 
           5. Th.de Donder             15. H.A.Kramers         25. A.Einstein
            6. E.Schroedinger           16. P.A.M Dirac          26. P.Langevin
        7. E.Verschaffet               17. A.H.Compton       27. C.E.Guye
                8. W.Pauli                        18. L.V.de Broglie       28. C.T.R Wilson
                       9. W.Heisenberg            19. M.Born                  29. O.W. Richardson 
10. R.H. Fowler                  20. N.Bohr                                                    
                                                                             

                          (*/The names are numbered starting from the top left most corner of the third row/*)

  

          Science is a branch of philosophy that deals with developing models of the physical world that can be testified. The pioneers of science like Galileo Galilee, Newton and others were realists and they developed science in the hope of understanding the working of this universe through reason and empirical evidences.

 The current Modern Science has deviated from this central dogma of science and most scientists are satisfied to just predict the possible outcomes of the system rather than to understand its exact nature and the philosophical implications that are underpinned. A more perfect analogy describing the current state of affairs is that physicists are just looking at a clock with hands from outside which ticks for every seconds but they have no idea of how this clock is working at the most fundamental level and the exact nature of its components. Most positivists are quite satisfied to predict the possible outcomes of the system and then to apply the results to develop technological applications and to account for the phenomena which is observed. The technological applications like Scanning Tunneling Microscope, Charged Coupled Devices, Magnetic Resonance imaging, Medicine through high energy particle physics .. etc and models which accurately account for the phenomena like Superconductivity, Super fluidity and Bose-Einstein condensates at absolute zero temperatures demonstrate the great success that Modern Science has had over the years.

                 

The physicists of the 20th century are the one who contributed to this vast amount of knowledge and to exploit the strange properties and behaviour of these high energy particles to develop advanced technological applications. In the beginning of the 20th century great focus and attention was given to atomic phenomena and it was during this time that the two pillars of Modern Science namely Special theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics was developed. These theories not only changed our common intuitions and notions of our universe but also left a lot of paradoxes and problems along with the huge success they had.

In the Newtonian world both space and time were considered to be absolute and they were independent and Newton's laws were sufficient enough to account for a wide variety of  classical phenomena and Law of Gravitation described how large mass of bodies orbited around one another due to a force of attraction called gravity. The light was assumed to be propagating with speed C in a medium called the ether and the speed of light was not known to be a constant. Light which was travelling downwind along the ether wind had a speed of c+v and the light propagating upwind had a speed of c-v where 'v' is the speed of the ether relative to earth. There was no upper-limit for the speed of particles in Newtonian Mechanics.

All these notions of space,time and light which could be transformed using Galilean transformations for other inertial frames failed to account for the phenomena and the observations at speeds near C. The speed of light remained the same for an observer who measured its speed at rest and for an observer who was travelling at 0.5c, the speed was c and not c+0.5c. The speed of light was same in all inertial frames for all observers and also electrons which were accelerated using millions of potential voltage in particle accelerators failed to cross the light barrier of C.

These contradictions in the old theory paved way for the young Albert Einstein to postulate through his thought experiments one of the significant scientific breakthrough of the 20th century i.e. Special theory of Relativity and he postulated that the speed of light remained constant in all inertial frames for all observers and it propagated in empty space with out requiring a medium for its propagation and the laws and mathematical forms were same in all inertial frames relative to each other for all observers and the observers in different inertial frames should record observations that were consistent with the physical laws. The failure of Michelson-Morley experiment to detect ether relative to earth and Lorentz transformation gave support to his theory. Counter intuitive to our common beliefs it was space and time which changed or transformed to account for the constant speed of light. Time dilation events in which moving clocks run slower and length contraction are well testified events and space-time were considered to be relative and entangled to each other and the only quantity which was absolute was the space-time interval derived from Minkowski's space-time diagrams.

Albert Einstein didn't end here he went on to postulate that the laws of physics was same even for accelerating frames relative to each other and developed the theory of General Relativity and it completely over threw our notion of gravitational attraction. Today physicists don't see gravity has a force instead they comprehend that a freely falling object takes a particular path due to the geometry of the space-time curvature rather than a force of attraction between those bodies. There is no force of attraction an object falls to the ground due to the geometry or the curvature of space-time created by the large mass of Earth and in more heavy bodies like Black Hole the curvature is so sharp that no light or no matter can escape from this strong gravitational field.

General relativity changed the way we saw how our solar system works. All the planets don't orbit the sun using circular orbits instead the orbits are elliptical. The Sun at the center creates a large depression in the fabric of space and time and all planets are caught up in its curvature. The planet Earth would travel in a straight line and escape from the solar system if there was no enough gravitational pull from the sun to provide the necessary centripetal force to revolve around it and the most strange thing is that all planets are spiraling down towards the Sun due to the space-time curvature but the loss of orbital energy is negligible compared to the distances separated between the planet and the sun and it would take billions of years to reach the Sun and as they spiral down their orbital velocity will increase and their orbital period will shorten and all these predictions of the theory are testified with great precision up to decimal places.

Edwin Hubble showed that distant galaxies are accelerating away from us with great speeds using the Doppler effect of light of redshifts which is an another prediction of General Relativity that gravity would bend light and alters its frequency. It is also predicted that time runs slower in the presence of a strong gravitational field. All these testified predictions shows the strength of the theory and the simple, elegant and consistent postulates of Einstein which made him a universal celebrity for his ground breaking thought experiments.    

           

Along the same lines there was an another field of science which was growing and physicists were working on it with great interest, it was statistical mechanics of ensembles applied to Thermodynamics. The physicists were working on black body radiation and its effects when subjected to higher temperatures. They found sharp deviations between the experimental observations and theoretical predictions. Classical physics couldn't account for the phenomena of 'Ultraviolet catastrophe' this paved the way for the Plank's packets of energy called quanta whose energy states where quantized and where allowed to make a quantum jump with only a limited allowed values for the system. Later Einstein used this concept of quanta and called them as photons in the interaction of electrons for the phenomena of photoelectric effect.

Louis de Broglie confirmed beyond doubt that even matter exhibit wave like properties and this started the wave-particle duality in modern physics and Heisenberg with his matrix approach to QM developed the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which states that it is impossible to simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle with an uncertainty smaller than h/2. So if we know the position of a particle with great position then we have to lose all the information about its momentum. It is not possible to simultaneously know through which slit the electron has passed through and also to observe an interference pattern i.e. if we know more about the particle property of the particle then we lose any information we have about its wave nature. So both wave nature and particle nature are complementary to each other.

Neil Bohr one of the pioneer of QM who developed the atomic model was aware of the strange state of affairs that was developing during his time so he developed an interpretation of QM called the Copenhagen interpretation of QM and most physicists stick to this orthodox interpretation of QM. Bohr postulated that the equations of QM can only be applied to determine the probable outcomes of the system but it doesn't give any element of physical reality to the nature of quantum system itself i.e. when we can't see the superposition states of particles for example an electron passing through both the slit simultaneously and a 45* photon which is in a superposition of H or V state the Copenhagen interpretation asserts that no greater reality should be attributed to these superposition states since it can not be observed. What we know or what we can observe is the specific state the photon or the electron takes after a measurement is made by the observer. The properties like position, momentum, polarisation etc.. do not pre-exist having a definite state before the measurement. The possible outcomes crystallizes into a single result when a measurement is made. The act of measurement causes the interference pattern to be destroyed.

This state of affairs disturbed Einstein as he believed in a deterministic and an objective world where particles had definite states of position and momentum irrespective of anyone observing them. But the story which was told by QM was something different as it is very much true that the photons passed through a HV polarizer appear out randomly as horizontally or vertically polarized. The path that individual photons take and the outcome of its polarization can not be determined and it is inherently random and not due to any lack of knowledge about the photons from our part and So Einstein was proved wrong when he said that "God does not play dice". Quantum Randomness rules which was later transformed by Stephen Hawking as "God not only plays dice but he throws them where we can not see".

John Bell with his inequality theorem proved that the particles do not always have definite properties of position and momentum and they exist in a superposition of states. As we have understood from the Copenhagen interpretation it means that we shouldn't assume that particles will have an attribute like position or momentum when it is not being observed. We will know that the particle has a specific position only after we have made a measurement not before that. The quantum mechanical view of the world doesn't allow us to make a model of the physical world more over if we have to accept the positivists approach then there is no absolute reality for these particles which is independent of an observer. Does it bring an end to the objective account of the physical world of the realists? Do we have to abandon our hope of finding an objective model for the origin and working of the universe which exists irrespective of the observer observing it or not? Do humans don't have the epistemological ability to fully comprehend the universe? All these problems will be addressed later.

A new look at measurement problem of QM

             The philosophical implications of Quantum Physics has baffled physicists over the years. The theory of Quantum Physics is the highest intellectual achievement made by mankind to describe reality.

             The reality that is described by QM is weird and it doesn't fit into our common notions of classical world. The equations of QM accurately predict the possible outcomes of a system by the act of measurement and develop a probability distribution for the entities of the system in hand at a particular point in space and time. In quantum world randomness rules and this randomness is not the kind of randomness that we normally see in the classical world say of tossing a coin where if the forces acting on the coin can be accurately measured through out its journey then we can say whether it will fall as head or tail. But there is no way of telling whether a photon passing through a HV -polarizer will appear as horizontally or vertically polarised. Bohr and others previously thought that the interference pattern is destroyed due to the increase in the uncertainty in the momentum of the electron when a detector is placed behind the slits to know through which slit the electron has passed but recent findings have shown that the interference pattern is destroyed irrespective of whether the detector induces a momentum to the electron or not. One can find more information Here in which the uncertainty principle couldn't account for the results produced.

               The interference pattern is destroyed by the very act of observation this implies that the observer, the measuring device and the quantum system are entangled in some way and this entanglement which can be non-local is disturbed resulting in a specific state for the quantum system during the process of measurement. This is the reason why many physicists like Roger Penrose argue that an unified theory of everything must include consciousness at its most fundamental level. Roger penrose's non-computability may be one of the ways the physical world might operate. John Wheeler uses the word participator for the observer in a quantum regime as the observer can not be isolated and thought as a different system. We must also describe the states of the observer along with the quantum system to fully understand the evolution of the wave and its further collapse. Both the choice of the observer as well as the observed system are responsible for the results that are observed. The measurement problem is at the heart of quantum physics and it is one of the cornerstone of QM even though it has with stood the test of times, accurately predicting the possible outcomes of the system but science is more than just finding probabilities physicists like John Bell, Einstein, Penrose will not be satisfied by the positivist approach and one has to make deep in routes into its philosophical implications and look for an alternative world view and move forward.

              

               
                  

MOSES - Revealer Of True Light


                                                      Golden Calf - Grolier Multimedia


                           Moses was the great figure who received the word of God  and led Israelites out from the bondage in Egypt and what better time we would have to perceive his story than during these holy lent days of the spring.  Moses was a Hebrew and he grew up in Pharaoh's court. At an early age he was thought good wisdom, leadership and priestly qualities as they saw some greatness in him above all other men. 

Moses ended up in the Pharaoh's court when his mother hid him in the round ark bushes and sent him downstream along the river Nile and he was under the protection of god as the pharaoh had ordered that all the new born infants of the Hebrews should be killed but for the glory of the lord this ark bushes was witnessed by the Pharaoh's daughter and when she opened the ark she saw a young baby of the Hebrew origin and she decided to adopt him and named him as Moses, since she drove him out of water and ordered a Hebrew servant to nurse him. Skeptics believe that the mother had intentionally sent him at that place by having a close look at the activities of the Queen. She was the same lady who served him as a nurse in place of the Pharaoh's daughter.

Moses was bought up with the view that he would be the next Pharaoh as they didn't had a heir to the throne. He was thought about Egyptian astrology and they infiltrated leadership qualities in him with a good voice to converse  and he was a practising priest and he knew all the religious frameworks of the Egyptians but God had different plans for Moses.

He was at the age of forty when he went to see his brethren who were brutally tortured by the Pharaoh's taskmasters. They had no hope and no faith in anything and they were praying for only one thing that is deliverance from this bondage. When he saw a taskmaster who was smiting one of his fellow Jews he couldn't tolerate it and seeing that there was no one he killed the taskmaster and buried him in the mud so that no one will be aware of the truth. Later having feared that the replaced Pharaoh might try a plot against him he fled to Midian for safety.

                    

He stayed in Midian for forty years and married a shepherd girl and looked after his father-in-laws flock along with his assistant Joshua who will be an important figure in the later stages of the biblical story and a founder of the promised land. It was during this period that Moses was seeking for god.

                   

One day as he was looking after his herd of flock he climbed the Mount of Sinai and there he saw a tree of bush fire sparkling out and it was no ordinary fire which burns our flesh but it was the lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob and the lord whispered "I am the one" and "I am one" and the lord spoke with him that he has chosen him as the deliverer to rescue his people from the bondage which had put them into slavery for hundreds of years and Moses was never the same man again he was truly enlightened and his prayers were answered and all the prayers of the Hebrews were answered and he came back alone from the mountain which was forbidden for men and his wife was in fear that his husband didn't returned and Joshua whispered "He must be a great man, look his face his blooming with light" and his wife with disbelief said "He has seen god" and Moses came and said "I have heard the word of God and I am the messenger who will go back to Egypt to deliver our brethren from bondage and I know that the light which is shining inside me is the same light which is in everyone". He had found his true God after so much pursuit and everyone lost him including his wife because he was a completely different Moses.

                         

God chose Aoran, Mozes's elder brother to be his spokes person and Moses returned to Egypt with his magical rod in his hand at the age of eighty and in the Pharaoh's court he said "I have come from the most high and I have bought you the word of God" asked the Pharaoh "let my people go". When the Pharaoh replied sarcastically that he knew no God other than himself Moses began to perform magic with his rod and praised the Lord for his glory and since the Pharaoh refused to accept his demand he made a series of miracles starting from turning the river Nile into blood, killing all the frogs from the lake and annoying the Pharaoh and finally the God pulled his wrath in the form of a series of 10 plagues of rodents, mosquitoes, flies, flu etc and God spoke onto Moses and said that at the 10th plague all the first born of Egyptian blood will be dead and as it was the word of god the plague struck all the first Born's of the Egyptian blood including Pharaoh's first born and passed over the doors of the Israelites without harming them. This day is celebrated as the Day of Passover by Jews by eating unleavened bread and bitter herbs and by re-narrating the story of the Exodus.

                            

The Hebrews were let free by the Pharaoh and with loud trumpets they rejoiced their victory and collected water, wheat, gold and wine to cross the heated desert but no one knew where they were going and Moses stood on a tall obelisk and said "We shall go to the footsteps of Mount Sinai and let our Lord impinge the laws into our minds and our heart with his own fingers" and thousands and thousands marched to the foot hills of the mountain and when they were resting on the banks of the Red sea Pharaoh's chariots came on rushing wheels to attack these Hebrews and in panic they cursed Moses for this trouble and wanted to hit him with stone since he put them no where else other than into the jaws of death and Moses said "Ten times you have seen the glory of the lord and yet you refuse to believe in your lord, Stand still, Do not move my fellow brethren" and he hold his rod high up in the air pointing into the skies and the fire of God struck the Pharaoh's chariots and kept them at bay from attacking the Hebrews and they marched across the sea bed astonished by the power of their lord and when they saw that the Pharaoh's army including himself drowned in the Red sea, they played songs and shouted Hallelujah!! and praised the lord with joy.

                            

Moses went up the hill which was forbidden to men to bring the laws on to his people from the holy god and God appeared and sculpted the Ten Commandments with his own fingers in two tablets but by the time Moses came back with the two tablets showing the Ten Commandments of the Lord his people had corrupted themselves and committed the mother of all sins of worshipping an idol god, a golden calf and their minds went wild with no proper conduct and they indulged in vile affections and when Joshua saw Moses with two carved tablets of the word of God in hand he kneel ed down to him and Moses said onto him "Don't kneel to me Joshua".  He saw his people corrupting themselves in disbelief and when Joshua played the trumpet there was a utter silence in the crowd and Moses spoke on to them and said "You don't deserve this laws the word of God for you are not worthy of it as you have gone against his word" and said "those who are on his side will receive these laws and those who don't will repent" and he threw the tablets on to the penitent sinners out of anger and they were killed and sent to hell by fierce some lightning and loud thunders and the tablets were destroyed and later Moses build the ark of the covenant.

                            

Israelites crossed the river Jordan and settled their and grew as a nation for 10 years and ruled the world and Moses was an important figure to them as the shower of the promised land and also as the law giver to them.  Moses was 120 years old when he died as indicated by the bible and his legs were still so strong that he could walk a another thousand miles. God loves this nation and has great plans for them.

                           

Mozes's story is a true example of how God sets out his plans and reveals himself to his people to know more about him and we have seen it throughout the history of mankind. He is the know er of the present, past and the future, he is the ultimate, he utters statements before it really happens. He spoked to Abraham and said "you're people will suffer from slavery and bondage for four hundred years" and the rest his history. He is omniscient. We all have to be prepared to have the wisdom to make the right choice to be in his kingdom as even we might have to make a choice or else face a judgement similar to the one faced by the Hebrews at Mount Sinai.

                          

The light which is in me and stimulating me to do noble deeds is the same pure light which is in everyone. This one single piece of truth brings peace, joy and calmness to ones mind. He is the one who has sacrificed his body for his glorious works and only he has true faith in God. This brings an end to idolatry.

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There is considerable controversy surrounding who the Pharaoh was during the period of Exodus, the childhood of Moses, who was the first-born who died in the 10th plague, Moses step-mother and the exact time-line and chronology of these events and it is not resolved till date as no arguments or views based on the dating of the bible or from the archaeological findings have correctly interpreted the story of the Exodus and it is not with its loopholes, weak points and critics today, the assumptions and arguments are weird, obscure and counter-intuitive and I am not compelled to make any conclusions since neither Bible or any other related sources disclose information about the identity of the Pharaoh.

There are many views and one can find some related links for information in this area of research below.

Thutmoses IV was the Pharaoh of Exodus.

Amenhotep II was the Pharaoh of Exodus.

Thutmoses III was the Pharaoh of Exodus.

Ramesses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

                       All this stuff are exciting and it will reshape on how we view the history and it will rewrite our historic books. Either Amenhotep II or Thutmoses III are believed to be the Pharaoh's of the Exodus since the biblical timescales and the biblical statements are in accordance with the 18th dynasty of this Egyptian period which is considered to be the period of the Exodus.

Yagnavalkya Maharshi

Mahadarshana, Devudu Narasimha shastry

                     I want to introduce a great saint, a philosopher and a revolutionary who had such great insight and experiences with gods revealing to himself in his mind. The vedic philosophers viewed mind and brain as two different things. They were dualist's and their world view is completely different from the world view held by the current scientific community. It is very illogical to merge science with metaphysical things. Science is about building testable models of the physical world where as spiritual experiences deals with unpredictable identical experiences following a set of procedure by individual persons.
                     Spiritual experiences doesn't fall in the boundary of metaphysical entities. Metaphysics is something which can not be falsifiable where as spiritual experiences are unpredictable but they can be falsified through repeating the procedures of the experienced persons.

                   They view the mind as a tightly held rope with the five senses attached to one end and the intelligence or buddhi attached at the other end. They don't see intelligence as something associated with the brain instead they see it as physical entities existing in their own realm like platonic values. This model is based upon the individual experiences of persons who have observed the mind.

           If one has to have spiritual experiences then they have to detach the connection between the mind and  the sense organs. Now the mind appears as a fallen rope and only then we can experience the noumenal world otherwise we'll be seeing the phenomenal world as we see through our eyes. This is the reason why such people abstain themselves from worldly pleasures. It is normally believed that the more pleasure you give to your sense organs more is the strength of the connection between the mind and the sense organs so in order to gain knowledge about the noumenal world through experiences one has to refrain himself from desiring worldly pleasures.
           Their world view is different they will worship the fire and the sun. They don't see the sun as something which is just shining in the sky. They see it as a god wearing lots of ornaments, pearls and stones throughout the body and the light will be emanating from the blue and red pearls with such intensity that it is not possible for one to see the exact form of it. One can describe the sun god with such precision from their experiences and it is not something which can be reproducible or comprehended through the world of sense organs.
           The main belief is that the Sun god is the one who is residing in each and everyone behind the mind stimulating our intellect to do noble work. The belief that god is in each and everyone. The foundation of vedic knowledge.
                            Yagnavalkya maharishi is one of the holiest, purest and highly respected person for his great insight and the height of knowledge that he possessed and who had truly witnessed the sun god. He meditated on his name for one year and lived just by having a glass of milk. When the Sun god revealed to him and asked what he truly wants he said "My lord give what this world truly wants". He didn't asked anything for himself that was the greatness of that man. He wrote two Upanishads one describing the sun god and the other describing the story of himself. He also wrote Yagnavalkya Smrithi which is now the basis for all Hindu traditions and practices from marriage, naming ceremony to cremation.
                    The thing which I most admire about him and his life is that he was very humble and led a simple life and achieved such heights in having deep insight and knowledge and no one had such pure experiences like he did in his time and no one can reach such heights like he has. Hearing about the greatness of this man the king Janaka said "this man knows everything, a true sarvagnya and he acts so humble and we people if we just know a little we jump and act like we know everything , can we place a price for this man's knowledge" .
                     Sarvagnya means a person who knows everything. The interesting thing is that these people has the ability to see the future but they are not interested in knowing what will happen. The future has already happened there is no point in saying that we have to build our future.
                     One more great person Vashista maharishi took the sorrow upon himself to save the world from disaster during his time. We are believed to be in exactly the same time i.e the final first stage of  this yuga. The coming years will be very exciting.
                     The king Janaka wanted to have knowledge of the infinite so he held an event to test and figure out the person with the true correct knowledge of the infinite. The event was organized in which individual persons share their experiences by asking questions to the one claiming to know the infinite. He said who ever wins the event will get thousand cows with gold rings placed on the horns of each cow.
                     The event begins and the king says who ever wants the price can claim it by answering all the questions asked by the fellow persons, no one says anything the hall enters a period of total silence. The king repeats it again and seeing that no one has uttered a word Yagnavalkya politely stands up and says to his student "take the cows with gold rings to our ashram". The other fellow persons and the whole hall was shocked to hear this and they asked "Yagnavalkya, do you understand what you have said, you have rejected all of us and claimed yourself as the true know er of infinite". Yagnavalkya answers politely to all their questions and the king crowns him. Such was the confidence and greatness of this man.
                   Yagnavalkya finally went and resided in the forest giving all his wealth to his wife. He has marked his presence in the history of mankind and he will be remembered forever and for the centuries to come.