Exams

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

One should consciously engage in activities that will nourish your soul. Just as we nourish the body, we need to nurture the soul to connect to the creative power of the universe and to manifest joy in our lives. Often, we forget to address the soul, lost as we are in a jungle of material and sensual pleasures. But the more you embrace what feeds your soul, the happier you become. So if you want to enjoy the abundance of life, engage in what enriches your soul. Nurturing the soul is all about finding calm amidst chaos. There are a number of practices that empower people towards this end including silent contemplation, various forms of meditation, yoga and tai chi However, the rigor and discipline involved in the pursuit of such practices often seems to discourage people. Add to this, the temptations of the material world that leave little time and motivation for anyone to pursue the spiritual path. Poet Walt Whitman declared: “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth”. The good news is that simple, everyday activities can also nutrify the soul — like spending time in the midst of nature, dancing in the rain or just putting thoughts on paper. Do whatever is calming and pleases you. Creative pursuits are particularly appealing as inside each one of us, there is an artist craving for release and awaiting an opportunity for expression. One of the ways to indulge the artist within is to get started with the practice of any one or more of the creative art forms such as music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction or essay writing.

When you engage in such soul nourishing activities, all thought and energy gets focused toward goal accomplishment. At this point, you will find that even unknown forces of the universe are conniving to assist you in your amateurish but sincere attempts. As you progress, you are motivated to do better. You touch and access a faculty, a part of you that you never knew existed. Your inner artist is unleashed, baring the beauty of your soul that has found a fond medium of expression. For instance, a sculptor’s soul is seen in his artwork; a musician’s in his compositions; an actor’s in his acting, a painter’s in his paintings and so on. It is immaterial whether your effort is an immaculate artwork or just a clumsy attempt by a layperson. The idea is to try, be inspired and to create giving free rein to the mind. As Michelangelo remarked: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”!

What can you infer from Michelangelo’s statement - "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free"?

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

Just as space permeates everything in the universe, love permeates every part, every aspect of creation. If there is one answer to the question, “How and why does this world exist?” the answer, in one word, is ‘Love’. Rather, the answer is ‘Pure Love’, since the word ‘love’ has lost its meaning.

Your very existence is an expression of pure unconditional love of the Source (you may call it Consciousness, Creator, God, Divine Self). This is the truth of your being. True love transcends both love and hatred. It is unconditional, unquestioning, boundless, unchanging love. It is overflowing love of the Source for the Source through all of creation.

True love is way beyond the personalized love that two or more individuals assert on one another. Personalized love, though apparently selfless, is rooted in desires and conditional satisfaction.

We have been brought up in a society that judges love based on conditions. We have been made to believe that we can receive love only when we fit into people’s expectations. If we are not good enough, we will be deprived of love.

These beliefs have influenced the collective psyche of families, groups, communities, and societies since generations to such an extent that love has been reduced to fear of denial.

We need to shift from the paradigm of false conditional love to the essence of pure unconditional love .

The experience of true love comes with surrender of the false ‘I’, in letting go of the feeling of separateness. Without this sacrifice, it is not possible to attain divine love. When this separate ‘I’ is discarded, you embrace everything in oneness and catch a glimpse of pure love.

True love can be experienced only through giving, not by demanding. People who exist in your life are not here to love you. They are here to remind you that you are the Source of Love.

By knowing that you are the Source of love, you can love yourself, instead of waiting to receive love from the world. Ask yourself, “Why do I need an agent to love myself?” Waiting for the world to love you, is like hiring an agent to love yourself!

It is time for you to honor yourself as the Source of love. You have undertaken this human journey to realize and express the boundless love that you truly are.

What does ‘source’ refers to in the last line of the second para of the passage?

Which one of the following physical quantities has the same dimensions as that of Planck’s constant h?

During the tenure of which of the following prime ministers The Lok Sabha never meet?

Slope of the side DA of the rectangle ABCD is 5/3. What is the slope of the side AB?

All this does not bode _______________ for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism. A city by definition is a space, as ________________ historians and sociologists have already told us, which ideally privileges and _________________ the unexpected encounter, and calls on its citizens to be able to respond humanely even to those _______________ are not linked to us in familial, ethnic, nationalist or caste ___________________.

ethnic, nationalist or caste ___________________.

Ethane gas has a slightly ______ taste.

A search engine is a program to search