My Pune #4 – A Hidden Corner

The Lakaki Lake is a little-known treasure of Pune city. And a good thing too, since in this day and age in India good things dont last, or are crowded like hell or dirty like the rest of India. Off the densely packed Fergusson College Road, the Lakaki Lake (its official name might be something else) is open only for a couple of hours in the morning and evening. That preserves its unique nature and ecosystem. And its nothing fancy though. Such parks might be a dime a dozen in the west but when it comes to India, we learn to treasure what little comes our way in the nature of clean and wholesome Nature.

And you do need to have some politicking even in this foundation stone. Politics, the bane of India and politicians the termites boring through the core of India's will to live and survive; they too need their publicity.

From ‘The Hidden Master’ – From ‘I’ to ‘Itness on Vimalaji’s Teaching’ by Christine Townend

……….she said, ‘There are three stages. First you watch yourself, and then this watching will melt into the state of observation. The thoughts will melt away, and you will enter the Silence. In the state of Silence, many Energies are activated. The Energy of Life will be perceived………..It happens gradually and the difference between the stages is not pronounced’




Those who studied the powers of the mind and the consciousness over thousands of years……….had always talked of a second physical body…….sometimes called an etheric body, an electrical force-field………..When blocks and misdirections of the flow of energy through the etheric body occurred, sickness then manifested in the gross material body.



According the the Tibetan Master’s teachings, and the Theosophical literature, the invisible, etheric body consisted of a web or network of interwoven threads of energy in the region at the top of the head………………..During the process of psychic development, as a human being learnt to live in the state of meditation, the downflow of energy from the spirit and the upflow of the energy, (the prana, or shakti as it is often called in India) which had rested dormant in the etheric body, resulted in a rupturing or tearing of the web, sometimes rapid, and sometimes taking years or life-times. When this web was finally dissolved, the human being had achieved a continuity of consciousness, for he or she was consciously connected to the ‘buddhic plane’. This buddhic plane was said to be the etheric body of the planetary logos, the Christian ‘God’…………….if the individual could adjust to the tremendous velocity of this………buddhic plane…………..then there could never be separation again, then the sense of being a separate entity…..would be forever lost, would fade away.




‘... Whatever time you can spare, please do sit…if you are thus seated, then whatever comes up – the content of memory – gets exposed to your perception. Let them get exposed, you are not there to change them, but you are just perceiving – not as an act of will, but there is a perceptive sensitivity. Life is an energy that has perceptive sensitivity.



So there is exposure, which is a movement of the past. You have not voluntarily brought it about, you are not related to it. It comes up on its own………..So when you sit down quietly, close your eyes and you allow the exposure of the unconscious, subconscious to take place, then without your conscious effort, the seeing also takes place.




Vimalaji had once said to me that the vibrations of the ultimate Reality were felt by the sensitivity that only Silence could produce.




‘Yes,’ she said, ‘At first one can maintain the enormous velocity of the other dimension for only short periods of time, partly because the outside vibrations disrupt the inner state, and partly because the Energy which enters is such a powerful force that the bodies have to learn to adjust to its high vibrations. The bodies have to be super-sensitive and super-refined to be able to absorb that force. At first the body, the mind, the emotions, they can hardly stand the power of the Thatness, and they could not remain in that state continuously, but slowly the periods of time that one lives in the other dimension will lengthen, until it will become natural and continuous.’




She said that she never made a judgement about anything. If she made any judgement, even about the clothes that the people were wearing in the room, then the Silence would be interrupted.




One needs to have at least twelve hours per day alone – this means if you sleep eight hours per night you would have four hours alone……………….one needs to wash the psyche in Silence every day to keep it pure. This practice is especially necessary when one is leading a busy life of social action.




The orbit of Silence, the dimension of Silence, is a very romantic dimension. The conditioned energy goes into non-action, the unconditioned comes into play and a person sees many changes taking place. A new glow to the person’s life, a new magnetism is expressed and if the person identifies with the magnetism, with that extraordinariness, then the inquiry comes to an end. Such persons render great service to the universe, yet the dimension of silence, where energies are still moving, is not the state of meditation.



If there is austerity of inquiry and humility not to identify, as one has not identified with thought and the movement of the ‘I’, if one does not identify with the movement of this non-I and unconditioned energy, then this movement of unconditioned energy also subsides. Please remember that meditation is a state of being where there is no movement at all, neither of the conditioned mind nor of the unconditioned mind. It is only ISNESS that remains, free of the cosmic intelligence or universal intelligence, free of the movement of even unconditioned energy.



Resources -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimala_thakar

Movie Review: The Burning Train (Hindi film) (1980)

One of Hindi cinema’s few disaster movies which is not exactly a disaster itself. But neither does it distinguish itself particularly. About the only saving graces to this movie are its wonderful set of key actors all at the peak of their prowesses and looks + technically it is of a certain standard.

So here is some eye candy

And if all those pretty faces make you immune to the nondescript nature of the movie, you are not the only one in denial

And finally, a cryptic credit

Credits


B.R. Films presents

Starring

Dharmendra
Hema Malini
Vinod Khanna
Parveen Babi
Neetu Singh
Danny
Vinod Mehra
Navin Nischol
Simi
Asrani
Ranjeet
And above all, Jeetendra
Iftekhar
Rajindernath
Mukhri
Keshto Mukherji

Screenplay and Dialogues: Kamleshwar
Playback: Asha, Kishore, Rafi, Usha, Sushma Shresta, Padmini Kolhapure
Costumes Designer: Bhanu Athaiya (who won the Oscar for the film ‘Gandhi’)
Choreography: Suresh Bhatt
DoP: Dharam Chopra
Lyrics: Sahir
Music: RD Burman
Produced by B.R.Chopra
Story and Direction: Ravi Chopra

Movie Review: Jhumroo (1961) (Hindi Film) (1961)

One can safely venture to say that the presence or absence of Jhumroo is of little consequence in the history of Hindi cinema.

It’s a silly tale of no consequence at all. It didn’t tax the writer much to write it and it doesn’t tax our brains much to wade through it.

It rather serves as a vehicle for Kishore Kumar to indulge in his yodeling fetish and for all other aspiring contributors to film-making.

Suffice to say this much that the tale involves tribals, sons and daughters lost when young and found in their youth, bad karma catching up with an evil father and needless to say, songs for every occasion.

Some of the songs though are the saving graces:


* Main Hoon Jhum Jhum Jhum Jhum Jhumroo (in which he yodels to his hearts content)




* Thandi Hawa Yeh Chandni Suhani (in which he yodels to his hearts content)




* Babu Aana (only KK could have done the madcap musical score for this)




* Koi Hamdam na raha




* Geli jara timbuktoo: hilarious and KK lets loose



Some snaps of KK’s madcap act:-

here he is in a dress presumably from the Andes

and as a Chinese witch doctor

and a few glimpses of whom many believe to be one of the most beautiful faces seen in Hindi cinema………sorry Madhuri.

Credits


KS Films presents

Starring
Madhubala
Kishore Kumar
Chanchal (the one with a wonderfully unattractive voice and the manic acting)
the wonderfully quirky Anoop Kumar
Lalita Pawar

Story: Kishore Kumar
Dialogue: Vrajendra Gaur
Screenplay: Madhusudan Kalelkar
Choreography: Satyanarayan and Herman Benjamin
Editing: BS Glaad (sounds rather like a Swiss railway station)
DoP: KH Kapadia
Playback: Asha, Usha, Kishore
Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri
Music: Kishore Kumar
Produced by Anoop Sharma
Directed by Shankar Mukerji