A Conversation with Darsh Jain: From Childhood Curiosity to An Observer’s Guide to Reality
Q1. The book begins with the universe and ends with the observer. Why did you choose such a wide journey?
Darsh Jain: I wanted the reader to experience existence as one continuous story rather than as separate school subjects. We often study physics, chemistry, biology, history, anthropology, and psychology in different rooms, as if they have nothing to do with one another. But the atoms in our bodies came from the same physical universe we study in cosmology. Those atoms formed molecules, molecules became part of living systems, life evolved, primates emerged, Homo sapiens developed language and culture, and eventually a brain became capable of asking what reality is. For me, that chain is the real story. Beginning with the cosmos and ending with the observer allows the reader to see that consciousness did not appear outside nature. It is part of the same unfolding. The final question is therefore not only “What is the universe?” but “How did the universe produce a being capable of asking that question?”
Q2. You write in the book that you are not from a science background. Did that affect the way you wrote?
Darsh Jain: Yes, very deeply. Because I did not come to these subjects through specialist training, I remember what it feels like to stand outside the technical language and still be intensely curious. In school, science often felt like definitions, equations, and examinations. The wonder was missing. Later, when I began exploring these ideas for myself, I realised that the concepts become far more beautiful when they are connected to ordinary experience. That is why I try to explain difficult ideas in a conversational way. I do not want the reader to feel that they need permission from a degree or institution to ask a question. Of course, serious science has mathematics and technical detail, but a general reader can still understand the direction of the evidence, the main concepts, and why they matter. My role in the book is closer to that of a fellow curious person walking beside the reader.
Q3. What first made you curious about the universe?
Darsh Jain: My curiosity goes back to childhood. Space fascinated me. I would think about stars, galaxies, and the scale of the universe even though I was not seriously studying the science behind them at the time. I was also quiet and observant. I often listened more than I spoke and spent a lot of time thinking about small details. That habit of observation stayed with me. The questions were simple at first: What are stars? Where did everything come from? Why are we here? Over time, each answer created a new question. Astronomy led to matter, matter led to atoms, atoms led to chemistry, chemistry led to life, and life led to evolution. Eventually the question came back to the mind itself. Curiosity became a path rather than a subject.
Q4. Your civil-services preparation appears as an important turning point in the final chapter. What did that experience teach you?
Darsh Jain: Preparing for the civil services examination exposed me to an enormous range of knowledge: geography, history, economics, polity, governance, science, current affairs, and much more. I worked hard and started to associate knowing more with becoming better or more capable. When I did not clear the examination, the failure forced me to question that assumption. I asked myself what knowledge is worth if it does not change the way we understand people, suffering, prejudice, or our own mind. I began to see a difference between knowing and understanding. Knowledge can be accumulated. Understanding changes perspective. That experience did not make me reject learning; it changed the way I wanted to learn. Instead of collecting facts for an examination, I began following questions because I genuinely wanted to know why human beings behave as we do and how reality works.
Q5. How did your reading move from history into science and philosophy?
Darsh Jain: History made me notice repeated patterns, especially conflict, power, and the division between “us” and “them.” I wanted to know whether those patterns began only with kingdoms and states or whether they had deeper roots. That question led me to anthropology and human evolution. Then I wanted to know what made our brains and behaviour different, which led me toward biology, genetics, and evolution. Going deeper into biology brings you to cells, molecules, and atoms, so I found myself studying chemistry and quantum ideas as well. At the same time, the question of why any of this matters led me toward philosophy—absurdism, existentialism, nihilism, and questions about purpose. The book reflects that same movement. It is essentially the map of questions that kept leading me from one field to another.
Q6. The book is dedicated to Yuval Noah Harari, Robert Sapolsky, and Jiddu Krishnamurti. What do those influences represent for you?
Darsh Jain: They represent three important directions in the book. Harari’s work opened powerful questions about human history, collective stories, and the imagined orders that allow large groups to cooperate. Sapolsky’s work on biology and behaviour helped illuminate how much of what we call choice, personality, or morality is shaped by causes inside and outside the body. Krishnamurti’s emphasis on observation and freedom from conditioned thought helped me think about what it means to look at the mind directly. I do not treat any thinker as an authority who must be followed without question. The point of the book is the opposite. But their ideas helped me see connections between history, biology, society, and self-observation. The dedication is an expression of gratitude for the questions they helped sharpen.
Q7. Why did you give so much attention to Homo sapiens, cooperation, language, and culture?
Darsh Jain: Because those subjects explain the bridge between biological evolution and the human world we recognise today. A human being alone is physically vulnerable. Our strength comes from cooperation, shared learning, and the ability to pass knowledge across generations. Language makes this even more powerful because it allows us to communicate things that are not immediately present. We can talk about tomorrow, ancestors, laws, gods, money, nations, promises, and imagined futures. Culture means that every generation does not have to begin from zero. We inherit tools, customs, knowledge, and stories. That inheritance explains why Homo sapiens could transform environments and build civilizations. It also explains why we can become trapped inside stories we inherited before we were old enough to question them.
Q8. “Imagined orders” is one of the most discussed ideas in the book. What do you want readers to understand by it?
Darsh Jain: I want readers to see that there are different kinds of reality. A mountain exists whether human beings agree about it or not. Money works because people agree to treat it as value. A nation exists because millions of people share an identity, accept borders, and support institutions. A law has power because society recognises and enforces it. These things are not meaningless or useless simply because they are imagined. In fact, shared imagination is one of the greatest human abilities. It makes large-scale cooperation possible. The danger begins when we forget that we created these systems and start treating them as unquestionable features of nature. Once we see their origin, we can ask whether they still serve human well-being, whether they need reform, and why we become emotionally attached to symbols.
Q9. Your book challenges religious and spiritual explanations. Are you trying to remove wonder from life?
Darsh Jain: No. I am trying to separate wonder from certainty. A scientific explanation does not make a rainbow less beautiful. Understanding that stars are physical objects does not make the night sky less astonishing. In my own life, learning more about matter, evolution, and the brain returned wonder to me because the real processes are extraordinary. The book questions claims of divine intention, cosmic purpose, the soul, and supernatural control because I believe evidence should guide our understanding of physical reality. But questioning those claims does not require emotional emptiness. We can still feel love, awe, gratitude, grief, and beauty. The universe does not have to be designed for us in order for our experience inside it to matter to us.
Q10. What do you hope readers do differently after finishing the book?
Darsh Jain: I hope they observe more carefully. I hope they become comfortable saying, “I do not know,” and then asking better questions. I hope they notice the difference between an event and the story the mind tells about the event. I hope they examine where their beliefs came from, especially beliefs linked to identity, fear, tradition, or authority. I also hope the scientific material gives them a stronger sense of connection to life. We are not separate from nature. We are made of the same matter, shaped by the same evolutionary processes, and dependent on other people. If that understanding produces a little more humility and compassion, then the book has done something useful.
Q11. Is there one sentence that captures the spirit of the book for you?
Darsh Jain: The spirit is that the journey does not end with certainty; it ends with understanding. We can understand more clearly what evidence shows, what our biology contributes, how culture shapes us, and how the mind constructs meaning. The point is not to replace one rigid belief with another, but to keep the observer awake. The more honestly we observe, the less need we have to defend borrowed certainty.
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