Posts

Sustainable Celebration of Life

Image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_playing_outdoors.jpg  Few disagree that Life must by full of happiness Life must be joy Life must be a celebration But then we have these thinkers and spiritualists who seem to come and throw a spanner in the works (that includes this blog) with a whole lot of other prescriptions such as, do the right thing; inculcate discipline, order and beauty; spend some time in service of others - humans, animals or nature, organize your time wisely, enhance love, truth and simplicity, trust in God and be grateful for what he provides and so on and on. Life is a school, a 24 X 7 boarding school. There are children at school who divide their time wisely between work and play. They take study hours seriously and even seem to enjoy those. Then there are others who would rather shirk that work and have fun. They get miserable when they fail in tests and when school years are over they have a miserable time later too. That
Post a Comment
Read more

Force of Karma

Image
Many wonderful things and some sad happened through my life as indeed it does for all humans. Observation and reflection revealed that these things happened with very little of my own doing. There were times I tried very hard for certain goals and did not succeed while there were other things that happened automatically, even great ones, with minimal effort that was easy and pleasant. My conclusion is that it all unfolded because of the force of Karma. We arrive in this life with a storehouse of karma from previous lives even as we add to it in this one. This governs our lives from where we are born to events that unfold in our journey. It is true that effort too brings results but such results are set against what is destined. If the event is a significant one, force of karma attached to it is such that our own effort may be unable to change it much. It is only in little thing, like what to have for dinner today, that our own effort is more fruitful. There is a common
Post a Comment
Read more

Five kinds of love

Image
Love is the basis for life, hate the basis for its annihilation There are five kinds of love, First is the love between a parent and child. It includes love of a child for parents and of parents for a child including grandchildren. The second kind of love is for another human or humans. It includes romantic love in which lust is not the motivation for as Saint Kabir has said, where there is lust there is no love and where there is love there is no lust. A mind engaged in sensory pleasures gets distanced from the greater and more durable pleasures inherent in the soul The third kind of love is love for all life that includes not just humans but all animals and insects too. The fourth kind of love is for nature, all life that includes plant life and the inanimate side of nature too. Many a times, this kind of love is  a stepping stone to the last and final kind of love. The fifth kind of love is for the Universe, the Lord Almighty who created this
Post a Comment
Read more

Your True Possession

Image
Dear friend, we all take pride in our possessions. If we have other achievements such as educational degrees, name, fame, power, privilege etc. we are deeply pleased with that too. In reality, none of these things belong to us. Everything including our bodies belongs to the universe and has been granted to us temporarily, for limited periods, by the grace of the Universe. Everything we have is a temporary gift from the universe to assist us in our own unique journeys from life to life. What truly belongs to us is our soul that is everlasting. The wise yogi realizing this evolves to superior states. Patanjali in his text on yoga has described this as an essential step for evolution of the soul, terming it in Sanskrit as - Aparigrah We tend to grow deeply attached to our possessions and if they are taken away we fret and get miserable. The wise person however moves on peacefully when the time for a gift to be withdrawn comes. The human body grows from a child to youth
Post a Comment
Read more

The Rich and the Destitute

Image
Children do not need much money to be happy. They need loving care, freedom from hunger and fear to be happy. With the grace of the Lord who took me across the length and breadth of the Earth for visits and work as a scientist and a professor in some of the finest universities of our world, and to remote locations in the Himalayas as a mystic wanderer at times, it was a pleasure to meet many people of all kinds. Some were rich and powerful, most were ordinary persons with little wealth but they had a comfortable bed, home and adequate food to pass their days among us earthlings, and, some destitute homeless persons too, who struggled for their daily bread or a bed that was warm enough for the night. It was from among ordinary persons with little wealth that there were most with simplicity, little stress and much laughter and when the end of some of them came it was quick with little opportunity for pain or suffering. They passed away swiftly to other peaceful realms. Of
2 comments
Read more

Happy New Year, 2019

Image
While modern science has made much progress in understanding workings of different organs and cells of a human body there is much more to a human and indeed any life form that is barely understood. How our thoughts, desires and emotions arise is not fully understood and we carry within us a huge storehouse of past impressions. Around us stretching endlessly is a Universe that has countless worlds and life forms, each with his or her own impressions and experiences. To fully understand workings of this marvelous and mysterious universe is beyond the capacity of any science or human. We have to accept much based on faith and the conviction in our hearts in order to secure our place in the Universe. Some believe that there is no supreme intelligence that can control the Universe whereas many believe that a Supreme Intelligence called God controls everything, creates all and gives limited freedom to life to journey through His marvelous creation. Some imagine God in hu
2 comments
Read more

Our Karma and our Journey

Image
Picture of a window from the author's home Dear friends, you would have noted that each human has his or her own unique journey through life. Some face great difficulties in this journey whereas others have a lovely and comfortable time. There are even some that have a combination of huge good fortunes and terrible misfortunes through life.   All of this is the unfolding of our own unique karma designed by the Universe for education of our souls. The soul does not perish when life perishes. Our good deeds through life bring good times whereas bad times are a result of our misdeeds or evil. Those who face mixtures of great good fortune and huge misfortunes through life do so because they have a past full of great worthy deeds as well as some terrible ones. At the end of the day, whatever we lose or accumulate in life that has to be left behind is of little relevance compared to what the soul shall carry forth when this life comes to an end. Whatever we do or acq
Post a Comment
Read more

Essence of Mystic Knowledge

Image
While much has been described and written about spiritual and mystic knowledge, its essence is brief and simple. As known to the author, it is described in these four brief passages,  1 It is held that life consists of a physical body and a soul within. While the physical body can be destroyed and has a limited life, the soul cannot be destroyed. It is eternal and any one life is just one of its many lives. A soul can pass through many different existences, human life being just one. Because the soul is a permanent asset its state is a far more important thing than the state of the physical body it may occupy for a limited time. While for most humans the physical body is an important asset, for the mystic that is like giving more importance to clothing than the body that wears it and therefore not wise. The source of the individual soul is the Infinite Soul known by many names including God. Thus belief in the Infinite Soul and one’s own individual soul is an essential
Post a Comment
Read more