LEAD A MEANINGFUL LIFE

Yama teaches Nachiketas:

What is Brahmamuhurta?  Why is it eulogized by the Rishis?

4 a.m. in the morning is termed as Brahmamuhurta.
  
Because it is favourable for meditation on God or Brahman, it is called Brahmamuhurta.  At this particular hour, the mind is very calm and serene. It is free from worldly thoughts, worries and anxieties. The mind is like a blank sheet of paper and comparatively free from worldly Samskaras.  It can be very easily moulded at this time before worldly distractions enter the mind.  Further, the atmosphere also is charged with more Sattva at this particular time.  There is no bustle and noise outside.

Give me a very simple, but very impressive proof for the existence of the soul.

You say in daily life, “My body”, “My Prana”, “My mind”, “My Indriya”.  This clearly denotes that the Self or Atman is entirely different from the body, the mind, the Prana and the Indriyas.  The mind and the body are your servants or instruments.  They are as much outside of you as these towels, chairs, cups are.  You are holding the body just as you are holding a long walking stick in your hand.  You are the possessor or proprietor of this body.  The body is your property or possession.  The body, the senses, the mind, etc., are not the soul, but belong to it. -Swami Sivananda

In Kathopanishad, Lord Yama advises Nachiketas:

   Atmanam rathinam viddhi  Shareeram rathameva tu
   Buddhim tu sarathim viddhi Manah pragrahamevacha

A model for the working of the principle through the intellect, mind and body is described here. Know the spirit within as the sole passenger sitting in a chariot. The chariot is the body associated with that spirit. The intellect sits in the driving seat and controls the horses harnessed to the chariot. Mind is the reins by which the charioteer gets hold of the horses, to make them perform in accordance with its will.

 
Indriyani hayanyahur Vishayansteshu gocharan 
Atmendriya manoyuktam Bhoktetyahur maneeshinah 

The sense organs are the horses. The objects in this universe keep pulling the sense organs towards them. The intelligent persons understand that the inner spirit is the true consummator of all objects. The spirit acts through the mind to reach the objects through the sense organs. 

  
   Yastuavijnanavan bhavatyuktena manasa sada
   Tasyendriyanyavashyani dushtashva iva saratheh

When one ignores this model it disturbs the union of mind and inner spirit. Then the sense organs work without respecting any control. They run in all directions dissipating energy like a group of foul horses in the hands of an incompetent charioteer. The charioteer has no control over the horses and eventually they topple the chariot. No meaningful progress is possible in such a scenario. 

  
Yastu vijnanavan bhavati yuktena manasaa sadaa
Tasyendriyani vashyani sadashva iva sarathe

For one who acknowledges this model the mind is united with the inner spirit. His sense organs remain perfectly under control like good horses in the hands of a competent charioteer. 

  
Yastuavijnanavan bhavatyanyamanaskah sadaa-shuchih
Na sa tatpadamapnoti samsaram chadhigachchati

By ignoring this model the mind gets scattered and turbulent. It becomes incapable of conceiving higher realities. He is trapped in the ocean of worldly transactions. He can not attain that state where one is free from the cycles of birth and death.

  
Yastu vijnanavan bhavati samanaska sada shuchih
Sa tu tatpadamapnoti yasmat bhooyo na jayate

When this model is acknowledged his mind remains organized and clear. He acquires the power to reach that state where one is free from the cycle of birth and death.

  
Vijnana sarathir yastu manahpragrahavannarah
So/dhvanahparamapnoti tadvishnoh paramam padam

One who keeps wisdom as the charioteer and uses the mind to rein the sense-organs, attains the strength to traverse the course of a meaningful life. He reaches the state of Vishnu, which transcends all states, fills the universe with his perennial presence.

THOUGHT-LESS MIND

A Quote from Rajaneesh (OSHO):

The thought-less mind becomes hollow like the bamboo flute. Songs will flow through it but not its own songs, rather those of the divine. Thoughts will emerge out of it but not its own, rather those of the whole.
Such a mind will be surrendered to the whole. It will only speak what the whole makes it speak. It will only do what the whole makes it do. The inner core of the “I” will disintegrate – and with its disintegration, there will be no anxiety, no anguish."

This seems to be the best explanation of the scriptural prayer slokam:
असतो मा सत्गमय asato maa sat gamaya and of the luck of the Gopis in Brindavan remaining immersed always in the music of Krishna’s flute -- a Bhakti sentiment referred to in the Tamil song kuzhaloodi manamellam kollai-konda-pinnum kurai-yedum enakkethadi which aptly describes their state of mind –“I do not have any wants after Krishna has robbed me of my mind with his music from the flute”.

Lyrics: http://www.karnatik.com/c1219.shtml  

Audio: http://karnatic-mp3.blogspot.in/2011/12/kuzhaloodi-manamellam-sudha-ragunathan.html

Shri Krishna, from infinite space-time, is patiently waiting for us within our own heart (हृद्देश hrd-desha) to follow the example of the Gopis and offer the hollow reed of our mind to him. But amidst the noise of the activity in the external world, we have failed to hear the message even after the many, many life-times that he has granted to us. As Adi Sankara has stated in his Bhaja Govindam, we have to pray to Muraari (Krishna) to save us from this worldly-trap:

पुनरपि जननं पुनरपि मरणं

पुनरपि जननी जठरे शयनम्।  

इह संसारे बहुदुस्तारे

कृपयापारे पाहि मुरारे ||

This will be our never-changing state unless we seek his grace for sharanaagati through a Guru and live a life dedicated to this goal.

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Reality Beyond the Boundary We Assume Exists.

A Parallel Reality from Nayadel D.T. on Vimeo. 

http://vimeo.com/8689293 

At some point, we all ask ourselves who we are, where we come from and where we’re going. But many of us stop wondering about the meaning of life because solving the day-to-day dilemmas of everyday existence is challenge enough in it self.
This is the story of 5 people who kept wondering over the course of their lives because they needed to find the answers. Five adventurers. Five explorers who have opened the door to a reality that goes beyond the boundary we assume exists.
What we would like is that after watching this documentary, you felt the need to search, to look within yourselves. We’d like you to say: yes, there is something more! Reality goes beyond the limits of what I can see with my eyes or touch with my hands! I can go beyond! And going beyond means connecting with our true strength. With the divine spark in all of us. Enjoy your journey!
This documentary came into being thanks to Dolors Martorell, Daniel Hernández and Pablo Uson. We are enormously grateful, for your great generosity in allowing this documentary and the extras with it, to be viewed and downloaded free of charge.
Quote from a sub-title: 
" All God's creatures have an entire God within them.
If we are aware that Reality is a constant creation and that we are God, well, you get it. We are perfectly capable of creating Reality." 
***********************************************  
The Upanishads state:  that we are Brahman and our mission in life is to merge with Brahman. Adi Sankara describes in a Bhaja Govindam sloka the state of one who has attained to this state of Brahman Consciousness thus:
The yogi who has reached the state of Brahman consciousness, revels in eternal Blissfl consciousness. We who are in ordinary, relative/subjective consciousness may perceive him as a yogi or bhogi, with or without company but being in a different stae of God-consciousness, he is not affected by such percections, continuing in eternal bliss. 

योग रतो वा भोग रतो वा सङ्ग रतो वा सङ्ग विहीनः
यस्य ब्रह्मणि रमते चित्तं नन्दति नन्दति नन्दत्येव
yoga rato vaa bhoga rato vaa sanga rato vaa sanga viheenaḥ
yasya brahmaNi ramate cittam nandati nandati nandatyeva 

The statement: "We are perfectly capable of creating Reality" reminds one of the Puranic story of Sage Visvamitra creating a mid-heaven for his disciple Trisanku. It is intended to warn us of misuse of the siddhis - powers that accrue during advanced stages yogic practice. The Yogi is advised to ignore them as obstacles to realisation of absolute reality and persist.
The statement, hence, needs an amendment since the realised individual is bereft of any desire to create. Perhaps, the words "touched by God" might be more suitable as the end result of the effort by the 'explorers'.
MKK 
Tamiclose reflects on this subject in the following videos: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GablnriTfNs&list=UUHWqATbb_xq6_4l4-zSOjtA&index=10
  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWFtDJyv6KI&list=UUHWqATbb_xq6_4l4-zSOjt A 

    WholenessSpeaks:

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The Last Day of Gandhiji's Life

The Apostle of Peace is shot dead
http://www.gandhibapu.com/oarticle.jsp?essayno=5 

The events, which happened on the last day of Gandhiji's life (Friday, 30th January, 1948) from sunrise onwards:

Barrister, servant of society, relentless toiler for the freedom of his people, non-violent crusader for amity and peace, and pillar of the Indian National Congress, Gandhiji had been working on a draft revised Constitution for the party almost ceaselessly. The work left the frail man of 107 pounds (with indomitable will and energy of a Titan) severely exhausted. On the January 29, 1948 he had told his associates, “I am very tired. Yet I must finish this task.”

He dictated, wrote carefully and precisely, and corrected meticulously his ideas on what the Congress should do. The major points he made for the party’s programme in the post-Independence phase were as follows: The Congress as a propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine has outlived its use. India has to attain social, economic, and moral independence in terms of its seven hundred thousand villages. The Congress must keep out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies. The AICC therefore resolves to disband the existing Congress organisation and to make it flower into a Lok Sevak Sangh with rules, and power to alter them as occasion may demand.

Bapu advocated the formation of village panchayats of five adult members in each village. Two contiguous panchayats were to form a working party with a leader elected from among them. One hundred panchayats were to elect fifty first-grade leaders from among themselves. Such groups of panchayats would be formed to cover the whole of India. Every worker for the development of the nation was to wear khadi made from self-spun yarn or from yarn certified by the All India Spinners Association, and should be a teetotaler.

If a Hindu, he or she would have abjured untouchability, and be a believer in inter-communal unity and equal respect and regard for all religions, with equality of opportunity and status for everyone, irrespective of race, or creed, or sex. Constructive workers of the Lok Sevak Sangh had to keep in constant touch with villagers, and train more and more workers from out of their numbers.

The workers would organise the villages to become self- sufficient and self-supporting through agriculture and handicrafts. They would instruct villagers in protecting their health through good sanitation practices. The education of villagers would be carried out on the principles of Nai Talim. Villagers would be encouraged invariably to register themselves as voters. The Lok Sevak Sangh would incorporate within itself the Spinners’ Association, the Village Industries Association, the Hindustani Talimi Sangh, the Harijan Sevak Sangh, and the Go-seva Sangh. For its finances, the Sangh would raise donations with special stress laid on collection of the poor man's pice (the equivalent of paisa in those days).

At a quarter past nine that Thursday, just before he retired to bed, Bapu told Manu Gandhi, his fiercely loyal grand-daughter and almost constant attendant, that he was not entirely at peace. However, the cavalcade of life with its manifold scenes of actions still fascinated the man of 79. The Mahatma recited to Manu a couplet in Urdu which said: Spring in the garden of the world lasts but for a few days, Gaze upon the beautiful show for a short while.

Friday, January the 30th, began on the calendar from the midnight hour. Gandhiji''s working schedule had him out of bed a just over three hours later. He completed his ablutions, composed his troubled mind, and said his morning prayer. There were the many letters to be dictated as usual. Manu took dictation. To Anand Hingorani and Gangibehn, Secretary Bisen wrote on the Mahatma's behalf, ``Bapu is going to Sewagram but only for ten days. So Bapu says there is no need for Gangibehn to come. Yes, when he goes there for a long stay, she may come. After his dictation duties, Bapu took a brief nap.

Then he had his naturopathy massage. As he completed it, he asked Pyarelal if the corrections he had made in the draft of the new Constitution for the Congress had been completed. He directed the Secretary to prepare a note on the food crisis that was threatening Madras Province. Corrected by Bapu, this said inter alia The Food Ministry is feeling nervous. But I maintain that a Province like Madras that is blessed by Nature with coconut and palm, groundnut and banana in such plenty, not to mention roots and tubers of various kinds, need not starve, if only the people know how to husband their resources in food. (These remarks were to be published in the Harijan issue of February 15 posthumously.)

Gandhiji discussed with Pyarelal, who had come from Noakhali, the situation there. The latter believed that the solution was for the minorities to come out of East Pakistan in an orderly evacuation. Bapu demurred. He felt that the Hindus and others had to stay put, adopting the principle of Do or Die, which he himself had been following to restore Delhi and the north of India to sanity. Bapu said, May be in the end only a few will be left. But there is no other way of evolving strength out of weakness. Are not ranks of people decimated in wars with weapons too? How then can it be otherwise under conditions of non- violence? What you (the Indian peace workers in Noakhali) are doing is the right way. You have shed the fear of death, and established yourself in the hearts and affections of the people.

Gandhiji had his bath soon after the sun had risen enough to be visible over the lower rooftops. It was a cold day. The bath seemed to restore some of his vigour after his sustained exertions on the new draft Congress constitution. The clock struck half-past nine. Bapu did his daily stint of writing and reading words in the Bengali language. Then it was time for him to take his frugal morning meal, raw and cooked vegetables, oranges, some goat's milk and a drink made of ginger and lemon juice. Pyarelal now brought to him the draft, and again Bapu made some corrections. Later he handed over the corrected sheets to Acharya Jugal Kishore. 

The sun was dropping from the meridian by the time the morning's work was attended to. Bapu treated himself to a short nap, something which he had not been able to take for many days on end.

Up again shortly afterwards, he gave time to visitors. Gandhiji received and reassured a group of anxious Muslims that they would be safe when he went briefly on tour from Delhi, and that he would be back soon from Sewagram anyway. To a deputation of Sindhi refugees he confessed the wrenching sorrow he felt over their plight and referred to a refugee's advice to him to retire to the Himalayas. Recalling that angry remark, Bapu broke into a chuckle, and said that he was not after ease in a Himalayan fastness away from the people. To a friend, he remarked, Let me rather try to set things right as far as possible, while I am still alive.

Four o'clock in the evening. The sun had grown pale, and the skies were already gathering that destined evening's pall of premature gloom. Sardar Patel came with his daughter Manibehn to call on the Mahatma. Gandhiji listened to his views, and then gave his own considered advice. The Mahatma felt that the disagreements between Nehru and Patel would cost India dear. He said that, though earlier he had thought of the solution of one or the other of them withdrawing from the Cabinet, he had subsequently revised his opinion.

“The presence of both of you at the helm is indispensable,” he told the Sardar, and promised that he would touch on this important topic in this post-prayer speech later in the evening. If necessary, he added that he would even postpone his visit to Sewagram till the disunity between the two leaders in the Cabinet was satisfactorily scotched. Gandhiji''s talks with Sardar Patel had delayed him for the evening prayer meeting, which was scheduled to begin at 5 o'clock sharp. A gathering of over a thousand persons waited there, among them one who would enter the pages of history with a dark and blood deed within minutes. Gandhiji told the Sardar, Now I must tear myself away!

Leaning on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, Bapu walked towards the dais from where he would listen the devotionals and then deliver his speech. To make for quicker access to the platform, he cut across a stretch of the meticulously manicured lawns of Birla House. The crowd parted to make way for him and his attendants. Abha remarked lightly to Gandhiji that his watch dangling from the waist was bound to feel neglected as he would not look at it. Bantering in his turn, the Mahatma said, “Why should I, since you two are my time-keepers?” As he ascended the rise to approach the dais, he told the two girls, “It is your fault that I am ten minutes late. It is the duty of nurses to carry on their work even if God Himself should be present there. If it is time to give medicine to a patient, and a nurse feels hesitant to do so, the poor patient will die. So it is with the medicine of prayer. It irks me if I am late for prayers by even a minute”.

The last conversational remarks had been made. The very last steps Bapu would take were now being taken. Past the steps he was now coming towards the dais. Gandhiji took his arms from the shoulders of Abha and Manu to fold his hands and acknowledge with his benign smile, eyes shining from behind his wire-framed glasses, the namaskars many offered to him.

Just then a man elbowed his way out of the congregation into the lane. He looked as if he wished to prostrate himself in the customary obeisance of the devout. But since they were late, Manu tried to stop him and caught hold of his hand. He pushed her away so that she fell and, planting himself about two feet in front of Gandhi, fired three shots from a small automatic pistol. As the first bullet struck, Gandhi's foot, which was in motion, descended to the ground, but he remained standing. The second bullet struck; blood began to stain Gandhi's white clothes. His face turned ashen pale. His hands, which had been in the touch-palm position, descended slowly, and one arm remained momentarily on Abha's neck.

Gandhi murmured. "Hey, Ram (Oh, God)". A third shot rang out. The limp body settled to the ground. His spectacles dropped to the earth. The leather sandals slipped from his feet.

Abha and Manu lifted Gandhi's head, and tender hands raised him from the ground and carried him into his room in Birla House. The eyes were half closed and he seemed to show signs of life. Sardar Patel, who had just left the Mahatma, was back at Gandhi's side; he felt the pulse and thought he detected a faint beat. Someone searched frantically in a medicine chest for adrenaline but found none.

An alert spectator fetched Dr. D. P. Bhargava. He arrives ten minutes after the shooting. "Nothing on earth could have saved him," Dr. Bhargava reports. "He had been dead for ten minutes."

An epoch had ended. That was the last day of a great life.

By a remarkable coincidence the final namaskar and the deed of deliverance from earth offered to the Mahatma came from the hands of a 'Ram' - Nathuram Godse was his name.

GOD & NATURAL DISASTERS

God does not sit in judgment on Creatures of his own creation - Einstein

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2012/11/divine-wrath-and-hurricane-sand

TRAGEDY can bring together the most argumentative of people. In the wake of Sandy, the cyclone that savaged America’s North Atlantic coast, rival religious figures found unwonted if unconscious agreement. The storm, chimed Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists in unison, was nothing less than God’s punishment for American sins.

Needless to say, full agreement was lacking about which particular sin was most to blame. John McTernan, a born-again American blogger, pointed the finger at gay marriage, noting that the storm struck just six days after the New York State court of appeals dismissed a challenge to the state’s legalisation of gay marriage. Rabbi Noson Leiter, who runs a group called Torah Jews for Decency, agreed, explaining on the radio that God had targeted the southern end of Manhattan because it was “one of the national centres of homosexuality.” He also claimed that the biblical flood in the time of Noah was similarly caused by same-sex marriages.

Far away, among Muslim radicals in the Middle East, divine wrath was perceived a bit differently. A Saudi blogger reports that the Friday sermon at his local mosque took a more general approach, describing the heavenly anger as simply intended to smite “the capital of the infidels.” Other sermons in the kingdom suggested that the Americans’ failure to convert en masse to Islam was a probable cause. But Wagdi Ghoneim, a perpetually angry Egyptian tele-Salafist, tweeted to his followers a more specific reason. The storm, he declared, was intended as payback for the recent release on YouTube of a scandalous film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

A Reader’scomment:

The more 'ignorant' the population … that is, lacking in secular education … the more they 'buy' into the 'prophesies' of the religious obscurantists!

In Simon Winchester's book … Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 188 he writes:

"In the case of Krakatoa, the Muslim prelates of Java first made this connection. The eruption that had killed so many and had ruined so much was clearly, they said, the work of Allah - a divine who was, so the mullahs told their Javanese congregations of the day, supremely irritated that so many of their number were passively allowing themselves to be ruled by white infidel outsiders, the Dutch. To appease the sorely tried Allah, the mullahs said, the Dutch had to be killed and their influence expunged. Rise up, they advised.

And so they did - in a piecemeal fashion at first, in an organised rebellion five years later, and in a measured and defiant way in the decades that followed. The Dutch were eventually forced to leave; Indonesia, born out of the Hollanders' imperial fiefdom, remains today the world's most populous Islamic nation. Krakatoa was not the cause of the birth of Indonesia, far from it; but it was a sign, a trigger, and it remains a significant moment in Indonesian political history for that very reason."

My comment:

Interesting to read Albert Einstein’s views on the subject: http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/index.htm

 "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God.”

Extract from: From "Subtle is the Lord-- " : the science and the life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 1982.

'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.'
So Einstein once wrote to explain his personal creed:
"A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the  significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation."

His was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faith--a faith not capable of rational foundation--that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was to discover them. His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark:

'Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not' ('Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.'.').
When asked by a colleague what he meant by that, he replied:
'Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse'
('Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch List.').

======

It's a miraculous experience, when we watch the baby grow from infancy to child - struggling to crawl, move on all fours, sit, stand, walk and speak to the mother. The instructions wired in the brain are first decoded and practiced repetitively by the infant before it learns the tricks to balance itself, stand, walk and speak. The nurturing mother watches, encouraging her child; but every step of the learning process has to be taken by the child itself.

A similar process is in operation when we learn to walk on the spiritual path. An urge to seek the mysterious spirit arises in our mind; we then have to unlearn the earlier urges and directives of the ego, and learn new ways to perceive, hear and experience the spirit. The Universal Mother, with great love and affection, watches patiently - confident that her child would overcome the initial hurdles as it did the physical ones as an infant and triumphantly come to her ultimately. For, she has already provided the needed equipment and knowledge for this new experience.

We have to have faith in this belief. Reincarnating over many births, benefiting from past experiences, like the child tripping, falling and finally learning to stand and walk and take great strides upon this earth, we too will be ultimately successful in attaining to the goal of Sat-Chit-Ananda that is pure Bliss.

Einstein who said he experienced the mystifying forces in Nature, stated also that he did not believe in a personal God - the anthropomorphic God created by man, in the image of man, for the worldly benefit of man, a God that ruled like a disciplinarian, granting favours to those who conformed and punishing the rebels, the fictional God of the religions preached by the Priests supported by the earth's Rulers.

The Upanishads however, speak only of a Brahman, (in the neuter as तत् tat - IT), omnipresent, in every atom of the Universe and beyond, living in each moment of time, past-present-& future. Conceptualizing this huge, timeless & dimensionless presence in a Rama or a Krishna helps the mind of the seeker in the same manner as a stroller helps the child to walk steadily and learn. Identifying totally with a personal God of one's choice in this manner, one advances spiritually by leaps and bounds. The personal God then becomes the Universal Presence, which is experienced in the silence of the mind and the Bliss in the heart. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa experienced this Blissful presence of the Universal Mother in the idol of Kali that he worshipped.

Hinduism is a strange amalgam of a core theory and accompanying puranas, practices, rituals and superstitions. Understanding its core truth is akin to reaching the kernel of a coconut - remove and throw away the tight, adhering coverings of fibre, break the hard shell, pour away the water and reach for the pure white delicious kernel. Is it any wonder that those who do not practice it with faith, sincerity, steadfastness, devotion and detachment see the outer coverings and are turned away?

Einstein did not believe in a personal God since he felt that organized religion and its rituals were not effective in ensuring the practice of the core that they preached about morality and ethics. He summed up this ineffectiveness, and his disappointment, in forceful terms thus:

"When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilized humanity from the standpoint of even the most elementary religious commands, one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees. For, while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection." 

The Vedantic concept of Hinduism lays emphasis on a personal, moral, ethical code of conduct. It however, goes further to analyse the root cause of humanity’s suffering and concludes that the powerful, over-riding ego nurtured in societal materialistic values is to blame. This analysis, which is contained in the Upanishads, leads to many recommendations for getting complete control of the mind and developing contact with Universal Consciousness. Perhaps, had Einstein been more familiar with the Upanishads, he might have conceded the validity of Upanishadic statements - which do not refer to a Personal God but only the Brahman (in the neuter) as the source that exists every where - timeless, in all things and beings, perhaps like his concept of energy. 

This Upanishadic concept of the Universe is not religious but philosophical. Realizing the practical needs of the 99% of humanity, Hinduism’s ancestors created Gods, mythologies, rules, regulations and rituals -- all of which served an intermediate purpose like a ladder. An advanced practitioner like an ascetic (sanyasi) has to step out of it and proceed further on his/her own in order to realize the Truth.

Hinduism thus provides a 2-tier system: an elementary stage in which you believe in a personal Deity of your choice and follow rules for personal ethics and morality, and an advanced stage when one is ready to leave behind ego-dictated pursuits for material goals and is ready for the higher goal of realizing Sat-Chit-Ananda, with the assistance of a Guru.  The Guru of Hinduism is merely a guide and an adviser, not a priest with authority to control and guide his flock in accordance with a set of rules prescribed in a book. He is a realized saintly person who has himself understood and practiced the Upanishadic statements relating to the nature of Reality and therefore is able to give his disciple (sishya) guidance in the travel along the spiritual path which has been described in the Upanishad as being like the razor’s edge, difficult to tread and beset with obstacles, as described in Kathopanishad:

UtthishTatha, jAgrata, prApya varAn nibodhata Kshurasya dhArA nishitA duratyatA, durgam pathastat kavayo vadanti.

Arise, awake, receive guidance from the best preceptors For the path is like a razor’s edge - dark, beset with obstacles, difficult to tread – thus the learned and the experienced say.

CANCER AND CONFRONTING DEATH

EXTRACT:

For many of those working years, I looked back on the time, when my children were very young—when I stayed at home with them; when I mothered, gardened and meditated intensively and joyfully—with a great sense of pain at the simplicity lost. I had tried to do it all—the supermum, the earnest advocate for social change, the writer, the conscientious spokesperson on difficult issues, and, latterly, the Ph.D. student. And day by day, the special sacred space inside me shrinking for lack of love.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was almost like a public confirmation that, yes, it was too much; and that, no, you do not have to do it anymore. You are allowed to stop. In fact, you must stop. Permission, at last, to get off this new treadmill that has been made for women.This odd relief was, however, countered by another emotion, probably much stronger—cold, hard fear. [..........] Your fear belies your basic mistrust of God, and to live in fearlessness means to live without any barriers between you and God. The potential loss of my life has been one of the most effective ways of confronting my fear that I can imagine. I do not pretend to have conquered this at all. I can only say that I experience layers of acceptance and fearlessness, but daily new challenges press me to climb higher and higher, letting go of more and more.

http://www.ru.org/personal-development/into-the-fire.html
Into the Fire

A woman confronts herself when diagnosed with breast cancer

by Jennifer Fitzgerald

Ninety per cent of breast lumps are benign.’ I had no idea how true this statement was, but from the moment I found that small lump in my left breast, I clung to it like a life line. I don’t even know where I pulled it from—some fading part of my subconscious mind I suspect. Perhaps it was in a pamphlet in a doctor’s waiting room, or it was a chance remark from a friend. Perhaps I read it in the newspaper.

Wherever it came from, I held it close, repeating it over and over in my mind, like a mantra, to keep down the fear that was threatening to emerge from within me. That statement stayed with me over the next day as I went to visit my local doctor and the following day as I went to the breast clinic for tests. But, as the morning in the breast clinic turned to afternoon, and then as the afternoon wore on into more mammograms, physical examinations, ultrasounds and finally a fine needle biopsy, that statement—ninety per cent of breast lumps are benign—seemed less comforting. I looked around at the other women waiting. There were about ten of us there; on my figures, that meant that probably one of us would be diagnosed with breast cancer that day. I was the one.

Not wanting to acknowledge the possibility of my actually having breast cancer, I had gone alone to the clinic. So, on leaving the clinic, I kept myself together (just) until I got to the car, then just crumpled. The world fell on top of me. I have never felt so desolate, helpless and alone.

Driving home in the car, I just screamed at God, “Why me? Why me?” Yet, oddly, like a faint echo coming back from some distant place, came the reply, “Why not?” I screamed again at God, “I don’t want to go through this.” Yet, I realised that even as I screamed those words, the precipice that I so feared falling from had slipped from beneath my feet forty minutes before. Try as I did to hold onto the veneers of control and certainty that had been the backdrop to my life only three days before, even only forty minutes before, I felt that the plug had already been pulled and I was undergoing a massive bleeding of the ego, as all sense of control and certainty poured out of me. 

When I arrived home, everything felt different. Things that had seemed permanent and secure—the furniture, the house, the books, even my cat—suddenly felt temporary. With just one stroke of the Cosmic brush, I had been shockingly confronted by my own transience. And as I realised how transient I was, I realised too how transient were all the things that I had so carefully chosen and gathered around me. I felt myself moving, with a rapid intensity, into a new world—a world of vulnerability.

“I can’t answer that”

In that vulnerable world, the language of the medical profession seemed totally alien. They spoke to me of probabilities, of percentages, of objectivities. But it was little comfort. I had already defied the first statistic—ninety per cent of breast lumps are benign. Mine was not; so I could find no comfort anymore in the fifty per cent five-year survival rates they offered me. None of these facts or figures spoke to my subjective reality—to my fear and to my desperate need for hope. 

What surprised me the most through all of this was the total unwillingness of the doctors to offer me any hope. Perhaps they were silenced by a fear of law suit, perhaps they just couldn’t muster any genuine feeling of hope. Perhaps they too were conditioned by the same presumptions that I have spent the last two years fighting—the presumption that cancer means death. When I asked the doctor who diagnosed me, “What are my chances of recovery?” she was silent for a moment and then answered very seriously, “I really can’t answer that.” Then she added, as if by way of explanation, “We like to be very honest with people here.”

With that diagnosis, I have walked into a different world. It is a world punctuated by feelings of extreme vulnerability and extreme strength. It is like being on a see-saw—on one end is my humanness, with all its deep attachments for my children, my family, my home (the reachable, the touchable)—and on the other end, my transcendent spirit that, by force of circumstance, demands that I move above and beyond my humanness to fully and totally embrace my divinity. I feel that some truth has been laid bare before me that makes it no longer possible to ‘believe’ the myth of invulnerability that has become the philosophical framework in the Western world: the uncontested belief in the power of the individual to conquer the material world.

Sometimes I find it hard, when I am confronted by others who still live within the space of invulnerability, who inhabit that space as if it is theirs forever. I envy them their certainty and their confidence and though I know it to be merely an illusion of control they live within, there are times when I envy that remembered confidence, that bubble in which I also once lived. I live each day in vulnerability now. Yet, with the strange familiarity that comes from an enforced sharing of space, I rather oddly wish to remain connected with my vulnerability; I cherish the openness of spirit that comes from being made permanently vulnerable. It is in that state, and the enforced humility that comes with being made painfully aware of my mortality, that I live closest to my spirit in a kind of raw spirituality that defies all sham and veneer and constantly and painfully pares my life down to its essence.

I often wonder, though, why it is that when our life’s circumstances call upon us to walk the line between two worlds—between the world of matter and the world of mystery—those of us whose very existence challenges the material paradigm feel so alone. In the support group I attend with other women who, by force of their life challenging illnesses, face daily the contemplation of the world of mystery, feelings of aloneness are so prominent. It strikes me as odd that as we confront and face our mortality we should feel so alone, when in fact, this is one of the few truly universal human experiences we all share: irrespective of culture, race, gender, or economic circumstances we are all mortal. 

Being raised in an affluent Western country, where death, pain and suffering are so carefully hidden, and when they emerge, they do so in such a sanitised and cosmeticized manner that they are barely recognisable for what they are, I recognised early on that there was little in my conscious life’s experience to see me through this challenge. I had been confronted with issues of death and dying through my work in the area of bio-ethics—writing and speaking about the ethics of life and death decision-making in medical practice—but the personal confrontation of death takes that process of reflection into a decidedly different, more intense realm. I knew that I would need to call upon whatever intuitive knowing that has been quietly building in me over the last twenty years through my daily meditations

Off the treadmill

It is difficult to describe my feelings those first few weeks after I was diagnosed with cancer. It was like swimming in a turbulent sea of emotions. But two emotions, seemingly at odds with each other, emerged very strongly.

The one which caught me by total surprise was this odd sense of relief. I could not understand it; it was the last thing I would imagine feeling after this diagnosis. But it was unmistakable; I felt, at one level, a deep sense of relief. For the previous six years (since my youngest son was two), I had performed that torturous juggling act which too many working mothers know too well. Trying to be everything for everyone—and feeling that I had failed all round; never quite meeting the standard I set for myself. The mother who is late to pick up her child from school because she gets caught in a meeting; the working woman who has to excuse herself from a meeting early to pick up her child from school.

For many of those working years, I looked back on the time, when my children were very young—when I stayed at home with them; when I mothered, gardened and meditated intensively and joyfully—with a great sense of pain at the simplicity lost. I had tried to do it all—the supermum, the earnest advocate for social change, the writer, the conscientious spokesperson on difficult issues, and, latterly, the Ph.D. student. And day by day, the special sacred space inside me shrinking for lack of love.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was almost like a public confirmation that, yes, it was too much; and that, no, you do not have to do it anymore. You are allowed to stop. In fact, you must stop. Permission, at last, to get off this new treadmill that has been made for women.

This odd relief was, however, countered by another emotion, probably much stronger—cold, hard fear. The kind of fear that sticks in the back of your throat; that sits in the pit of your stomach and makes you unable to eat. (I could barely eat a thing for the first week after my diagnosis). The kind of panic that scrambles your head totally. That first month, I could hardly hold one thought in my mind. From being a person who used to carry a multitude of thoughts and lists in her mind—from the children’s need to take swimmers to school tomorrow to the ideas for the paper I was to be presenting at a conference—I would now walk into a shop and be unable to recall, even with all my mental exertion, why I had gone in there. And I would walk out empty handed.

At times I felt, and still feel, this fear to be completely debilitating. It remains one of my deepest challenges—for it sneaks up on me, sometimes when I least expect it, sometimes when I’m least prepared to deal with it (like when I wake in the middle of the night and there is nothing to distract me from my thoughts and my fears).

Yet, for a tantrika (a practitioner of Tantric meditation), for one who wants to know God intimately, fear (in any of its forms) must be confronted and challenged. Essentially, fear is what stands between you and God. Your fear belies your basic mistrust of God, and to live in fearlessness means to live without any barriers between you and God. The potential loss of my life has been one of the most effective ways of confronting my fear that I can imagine. I do not pretend to have conquered this at all. I can only say that I experience layers of acceptance and fearlessness, but daily new challenges press me to climb higher and higher, letting go of more and more. 

The letting go is not a serene, quiet and demure process of detachment; it is a screaming battle with a Cosmic opponent. I feel God pulling things out of my hands, and feel myself desperately trying to snatch them back. Only when it’s clear they’re right out of my reach do I say ‘I surrender’ and graciously retreat. I would wish that it were otherwise, but the ego is a stubborn opponent and fear a compelling agent. I do not claim any great victories of the spirit in this process. Any gains that have been made are God’s gains—the final surrendering of my ego against a greater opponent.

Jenny Fitzgerald was a lawyer, bio-ethicist and futurist with interests in neo-humanist ethics and critical futures. She worked for the New South Wales law reform committee, Quensland Advocacy (for people with disability) and Catholic Social Reform. She published widely on disability, euthanasia and the human genome project and released the book Transcending Boundaries, co-edited with Sohail Inayatullah.  She passed away 7 September, 2000.  

NAVARATRI - DANCE

Garbha, Dance Of The Pot

Devdutt Pattanaik, Oct 15, 2010; article in the SPEAKING TREE

The pot is a great invention. Without the pot, we would still be going to water bodies like rivers and ponds to hydrate ourselves as and when we feel thirsty. Thanks to the pot, we can get the water into our homes and store it for future use no crocodiles lurking beneath the water, no fear of a wild animal getting provoked into attack. The pot is a symbol of human civilisation.

Ancient Indians revered the pot. It was the symbol of the womb, the garbha, for it sustained human life. The pot was equated with the mother; it was a symbol of divinity. A pot or kalash filled with water and sprouts and crowned with green leaves and fruits became the symbol of abundance and good fortune. It was worshipped over 3,000 years ago. It is still being worshipped today.

The gods, the ancients believed, had a pot that overflowed with grain and gold. It was called the akshaya patra. They also had a pot brimming with amrit, the nectar of immortality. Humans had neither. But humans included women who created and nurtured life, ensuring the continuation of the species. Women were therefore a combination of akshya patra and amrit, holding in their bodies the promise of abundance and immortality for the family. Without a woman, a family perished. The family tree withered.

In ancient times women were clearly regarded as being more valuable than men. The survival of a tribe depended not on the number of men it had but on the strength of its women. So in the early days, women were given the choice to choose husbands. The foremost form of wedding was considered to be one where the father gave his daughter to another family. It was a gift of akshaya patra and amrit.

While the forest was equated with the wild goddess, the field was equated with the domesticated goddess. Forest was woman, field was wife. Forest was water in the  pond, field was water in a pot. Field was the womb that sustained a village. It was worshipped as humanity's akshaya patra and amrit, bringing forth prosperity year after year. The domestication of the earth, the transformation of the woman into homemaker, the moulding of clay into a pot, is the result of human intervention, an imposition on nature's freedom, a sacrifice to ensure the birth of civilisation, to ensure perpetuation and survival.

In autumn, as the rains recede and crops are harvested, three things come together on nine nights: the pot, the woman and the field. In the centre of the field, the pot is placed filled with water and sprouts, and around it women dance in circular formation. They bend down and clap as they thank the earth and cosmos and energise it with their happiness. This is garbo, the dance of the earth-womb. The circular formation of the dance is a reminder of the horizon, the rim of the divine pot, the world we live in. We live in a cosmic womb, just as deities in temples are enshrined in the garba griha or sanctum sanctorum, a detail endorsed by the metal pots placed on top of the temple dome.

Navaratri or nine auspicious nights is the season to remember and celebrate the female principle in various aspects as goddess as well as the pot, the homemaker and giver of prosperity. 

Source: Garbha, Dance Of The Pot - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Garbha-Dance-Of-The-Pot/articleshow/6749274.cms#ixzz12OhEjuSd