The Journey

'What A Long Strange Trip It's Been.' 

Where did it all begin. What were the circumstances that led to LIFT: The Book Project. 

In 2007 I moved out of the monastery. I was inspired by a dream I had while living in the Hare Krishna Temple in Brooklyn, NY. to study Finance and eventually initiate a financial institution that would have the capacity to move a trillion dollars every day. I finished my first degree in 2012, completed a short internship with a small computer company in New York and then applied for (the second time) the Institutional Economics Masters Degree Program in Marburg, Germany. In October 2013, with about $ 1000 and a job teaching English online to students in Taiwan, I flew to Germany and began my odyssey of education. I had a great time, met wonderful people, made good friends, studied hard and partied just as much or more. 

From the beginning of my studies in Marburg I wanted to pursue research as a career. I had gotten a taste for it while studying abroad in Haifa, Israel. But I was wholly unfamiliar with the academic ecosystem. Education was not prioritized in my family; what to speak of higher education. Neither of my parents had finished a university degree. My mother had a certificate in Phlebotomy and my father had not been able to complete his degree in Accounting. But I did know that a Ph.D. followed a M.Sc. degree. So, as I was finishing my M.Sc. Thesis in 2016, I started asking some of the Econ professors that I had a repoire with if they would consider accepting me as a Ph.D. student. It didn't go well. My age, for one, did not favor me. Nor, for that matter, did my transcript, which was just a little bit above average. But, there was one professor willing to take me on. coincidentally, it was the same professor that had overseen my thesis. 

For the first six months of my PhD studies I did not really do much research. My professor and I both agreed that it would behoove me to find a part-time job that suited my skill set and allowed me to complete my studies.  I worked as a janitor in the mean-time. I did finally get a contract as a research assistant at a university in Germany where I could continue my Ph.D. studies. But it meant switching professors/ universities and moving to Western Germany. Again, it was my Native English speaking skills that favored me. 

 The Economics of Religious Philosophy

I moved to Western Germany and began my studies. My professor was involved with educational economics, public economics, and immigration economics. So there was a lot of room for me to explore in. However, about three weeks in I began to realize that there were many artifacts and principles of religious philosophy that had economic consequences and could thus be explained in the language of economics. I brought up the idea to my advisor/ boss of pursuing a research project that combined religious philosophy with economics. It did not go well and I was recommended to pursue something a little more mainstream. 

My First Project

I had a few ideas in the beginning, but nothing that really stuck. It was after a talk with a colleague that I had the idea to analyse the effect of German preschool fees on fertility decisions and female labor force participation. So I started reading a lot about the topic and simultaneously collecting data on preschool fees. I worked typical PhD hours sending out several thousand emails to German municipalities requesting preschool fee data and then filing the data that came back. It was a lot of work, but I like to be productive and I love doing research, learning, and sharing the results. Independent as I was, I did not share any of my progress with my colleagues--not that anyone really asked. I did present my research idea before our group but there was not a lot of support for or interest in the idea. 

Stepping Out

By happenstance I met a esearcher from a university about 2 hours away. We spoke about my research. Over lunch he gave me some ideas for my work and recommended some other senior researchers that might be interested in working with me on it. It was the best news I'd had in a while. And I felt I could really trust the researcher whereas with other researchers there was always a good degree of competitive behavior that bordered on aggressive. I'm not the kind of guy that leads with aggression, nor was I very much experienced in handling it. 

Work Place Harassment

There was a turning point. I was no longer happy to go to work. I was becoming depressed, and I did not know why. I was so depressed at times it became difficult to get out of bed. At first, I didn't put it together as to why. But then it became clear. A colleague on the team was especially aggressive towards me. On multiple occasions. I did not know how to handle that except to practice tolerance, what I had learned as a monk. The depression was getting pretty bad such that in December 2018 I asked my professor if I could use my vacation time to take the first two-and-a-half weeks of December off. The last of December going into January was Christmas holiday. This would give me some time to recover and hopefully learn some kind of coping technique. My advisor was not agreeable. I told some other researchers I knew from other universities in Germany about the workplace harassment. They all recommended that I report the harassment; of course I was reluctant to do that, thinking that my professor would feel threatened from the potential reputation effects. And wanting to protect her from that.

Break-Down

In the first or second week of February, on a Wednesday, my advisor called me in to speak about the data I had been collecting. It was only then that I informed my advisor I was planing to work with senior researchers from other universities on a project using the data. My advisor was visibly disturbed that I was not working with a colleague on the research team and had instead elected to go outside of the team to collaborate with others. My advisor expressed as much; and I felt it an opportune moment to tell my advisor about the issue I was having with my colleague. My advisor agreed to look into it. The next day I broke-down. Completely.  I started to have paranoid delusions, found myself in anxiety to leave my office for fear of running into the perpetrator in the hall; summarily, my mind was falling apart. It was in the afternoon. I went and found the university psychiatrist. I told her some of the details from my experiences with the colleague and told her I was falling apart. She gave me leave to go home. The next day I met with a general practitioner who was able to give me a referral to see a psychiatrist. But it just got worst from there. 

Psychosis

Before the weekend my professor was in touch with me and asked if I didn't think I was being unfair to the perpetrator. I asked why. The witness to some of the incidents of harassment also called me. The witness told me that it was not harassment. They were gas-lighting me. This was a difficult time. I felt I was losing my mind. I was. I began heavy cannabis usage. I had used previously, moderately. Now, however, it got serious. My mind was like the loud incoherent static of a broken radio signal. I could not make it quiet. I then became addicted to pornography and masturbation. It was out of control. My apartment was a wreck. I was not eating but maybe once a day. Just spacing out mostly and feeding my addictions. I was never officially diagnosed, but my doctor did give me some medication for depression. I took it a few times. I saw my psychiatrist twice before I stopped going. 

The Road To Recovery

This part of the story is like the gradual changing of color in the night sky as the sun slowly marches towards the horizon. It was only two weeks that I was away from work sorting myself out. When it was over, it seemed to have gone by quickly; but when it was ongoing it seemed like an enclave of eternal delusion. Somewhere during the storm, I remembered what I had learned as a monk. I gradually realized that I had all of the knowledge I needed to break away from the corrosive habits I had developed and to recover my mind. It was like a small whisper, the audible voice of sanity. The philosophy of religion teaches that by association the consciousness of an individual is adjusting, sometimes increasing and expanding and at other times shrinking in on itself and sinking. Association takes place via the body's senses, e.g., with the sense of sight we are able to read and thus associate with the author in the context of the subject matter. So, I started to pray and read scripture regularly. And predictably I began to recover, slowly. When I did go back to work, I was only having paranoid delusions. I was really in no condition to be dealing with my colleagues. But I did not know the institutional setting, my legal rights, etc. In short, I did not know how to get legal help. But I was recovering from the corrosive habits I had been entertaining. Pornography was the first to go. As consciousness rises, the most nefarious and foreign habits are the first to go. Cannabis use has been difficult for me to shake over the years. I was afforded a pretty early start in life. 

The Economics of Religious Philosophy

I was once reflected on my decision to tolerate. It was indirect. I knew someone experiencing a situation related with 2 to 3 degrees of freedom. And they asked me for help. So I verbally recounted my decision to tolerate adding that I would not tolerate were it to happen again. As I recounted my decision, and the consequences that followed, it slowly became clear that my decision to tolerate is what led to the break-down. The break-down forced me to rediscover and apply the religious philosophy I had so long ago studied, practiced, and held close to my heart. It was the silver lining. But that was not all. On the retreating tide of my psychosis, I felt the calling to present the philosophy of religion in a manner that would be accessible to the non-theistic class of individuals. To present the principles that stood independent of Divinity and to present the causal relationship between these principles and individual behavior and social consequences. And just like that, without telling anyone at work, I changed my research topic. I started writing a book that later turned into a paper: "The Economics of Religious Philosophy". 

Faith and the Way Forward

So began a long journey. There is so much that has happened since then. Most notable is the consequence of immersing myself in the philosophy of religion, its practical application, and explaining its principles in a language that non-theists could access. Every step of the way has been a demonstration of faith.