From ‘Dimensions Beyond the Known’ by Osho

Half-truths can always be consistent, but a total truth is always inconsistent because in a total truth the opposite is also included.

The moment you know your past lives, there will be a spiritual revolution and evolution. Then you will start from where you had left off in your last life; otherwise you will get lost in endless lives and reach nowhere.

It is possible to make you remember your previous births only if you have achieved the capacity to remain undisturbed in the midst of the very difficult memories of this life.

In the interval between two births, there are two types of souls. One type is of evil souls. For them it is difficult to find a womb for another birth. I call such souls pretas, evil spirits. The other type consists of good souls. Them I call devas – gods. For such souls also it is difficult to find suitable wombs for taking another birth.

Between these two are the majority of souls in which there is no fundamental difference, but only a difference of character, personality and mental make-up.

………after awaking from sleep your dream is remembered for about one hour. Similarly, after taking a new birth, for almost six months, up to the age of six months, almost everything is remembered. Afterwards it slowly becomes lost. Those who are very imaginative or very sensitive may remember a little longer, but those who have made efforts and who have experimented with being aware during the previous life can remember for a long time.

……all religions of the world have decreed one hour before sleeping at night and one hour after waking in the morning as the best time for prayers. It is known as sandhyakal – the twilight time and the time of dawn……. Similarly, the six-month period after birth and the six-month period before death are equally valuable. …..a person who utilizes properly the one hour before sleep and the one hour after waking will positively know when that six-month period before death begins.

………some body may behave in such a way that it will cause a soul to enter into it. …….. There are two type of bodies which are in a state of deep receptivity. One is of those that are in great fear. Those who are in great fear cause their souls to contract within their bodies – so much so that they vacate some parts of the body completely. Some nearby souls drift into these empty parts …….

Secondly, a soul can enter a body when it is in a deep prayerful moment. In such prayerful moments also, the soul contracts. But during fearful moments, only such souls drift in which are in great misery and agony, that see only nightmares. Those are the ones we call evil spirits. Because a frightened person happens to be in a ugly and dirty state, no higher soul can enter him.

……..A prayerful person becomes filled with so much inner fragrance …..that only the highest souls take interest in him…..Thus, there is a complete science for invoking devatas – gods. These devatas do not descend from some heaven, nor do those whom we call evil spirits come from hell or some devil’s world. They are all present right here, coexisting with us.

Mohammedans will burn lobhan and benzoin. This is a method of inviting good spirits by creating a specific fragrant atmosphere. Hindus also burn incense, and they light a flame made from ghee. These things appear to be ritualistic formalities today, but at one time they had a deeper meaning.

Hindus will chant a specific mantra which becomes an invocation. It is not necessary that there should be a meaning to the mantra….. With a meaningless mantra nothing extraneous can enter with the passage of time. That is why all mantras of depth are meaningless. …….They are only sounds. There are methods for the chanting of these sounds. If there is a specified beat, intensity and rhythm, the soul that is invoked will enter instantly

…….take the example of Mohammed. He always said that he was only a paigamber, a messenger, because Mohammed never felt that whatever he was experiencing was his own. The voice which came to him from above was very clear. ……With Moses too, the same thing happened. The voice descended upon him. In order for this voice to descend, some great divine spirit must use someone as a medium. But everybody cannot be used as a medium. This capacity and purity to become a vehicle, a medium, is not a minor thing. Communication can only be possible if a capable vehicle is available.

In the interval between births, all development is blocked. That is why no devatas can reach salvation while in heaven – because there is no action there; one cannot do anything there. …..For doing something, one has to take a human birth on earth.

…….the three gunas, the three basic forces of life, of tamas, the cause of inactivity, intertia and indolence, rajas, the cause of activity or passion, and sattwa, the cause of serenity, calmness and knowledge……

…..Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammed and Jesus used only one of the three gunas as a medium of their expression. Rajas was the predominant medium of expression for Jesus and Mohammed. Tamas was the predominant quality of Lao Tzu and Ramana Maharshi. But Krishna made use of the three qualities simultaneously as his medium of expression…….. Because of this it became very difficult to understand Krishna ……No person can love Krishna as a whole. One will have to be selective

From ‘M. R. Pai. The Story of an uncommon common man’ by S V Raju

This world lives

Because

Some men

do not eat alone

not even when they get

the sweet ambrosia of the gods;

they’ve no anger in them,

they fear evils other men fear

but never sleep over them;

give their lives for honour,

will not touch gift of whole worlds

if tainted;

there’s no faintness in their hearts

and they do not strive

for themselves.

Because such men are,

This world is.

IlamPeruvaluti

Sangam Tamil Poet

“A bell is no bell till you ring it; a song is no song till you sing it. And love is no love till you express it, or give it.”

Thoughts … … …

I saw
the mountains of the sages
where the wind mangles eagles
(A girl and an old woman, skin and bones
Carry bundles bigger than those peaks)

- Octavio Paz, ‘Himachal Pradesh’





He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything

- Arabic saying



A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten
The universe, and glow into remotest centuries

- Bishop Berkeley



My Son, he who would employ himself without exhaustion must regard his greatest fullness of expression as emptiness

- From ‘My life in Tibet’ by Guru Ding le Mei. His guru says to le Mei



There is a principle which is proof against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance; that principle is contempt, prior to investigation

- Herbert Spencer



Take our own bodies. I believe they are composed of myriads and myriads of infinitesimally small individuals, each in itself a unit of life, and that these units work in squads- or swarms, as I prefer to call them-and that these infinitesimally small units live forever. When we ‘die’ these swarms of units, like a swarm of bees, so to speak, betake themselves elsewhere and go on functioning in some other form or environment

- Thomas Edison



A stone I died and rose again a plant
A plant I died and rose again an animal;
I died an animal and was born a man
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

- Maulana Jalal-ud-din Rumi

From ‘The Luck Factor’ by Richard Wiseman

People are not born lucky. Instead, lucky people are, without realizing it, using four basic principles to create good fortune in their lives



Principle: Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their life.



Sub-principle 1: Lucky people build and maintain a strong ‘network of luck’ ………. Meeting a large number of people, being a ‘social magnet’, and keeping in contact with people ……… The more people they meet, the greater opportunity they have of running into someone who has a positive effect on their lives. ……the lucky people smiled twice as much as unlucky people and engaged in far more eye contact. …….. Lucky people’s body language and facial expressions attract other people to them ……..

…….. Lucky people are effective at building secure, and long lasting attachments with the people that they meet. They are easy to get to know and most people like them. They tend to be trusting and form close friendships with others. As a result, they often keep in touch with a much larger number of friends and colleagues than unlucky people, and time and time again, this network of friends helps promote opportunity in their lives.



Sub-principle 2: Lucky people have a relaxed attitude towards life

Sub-principle 3: Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives ……They tend not to be bound by convention and they like the notion of unpredictability.



Principle: Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings



Sub-principle 2: Lucky people take steps to boost their intuition



Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity – Oprah Winfrey



No one is luckier than him who believes in his luck – German proverb

From ‘Barefoot in the Heart. Remembering Neem Karoli Baba’ Edited by Keshav Das

…..Drukchen Rimpoche of Ladakh once said, “Knowledge can make you old. Compassion is a river of youth that will never run dry.”



“PURIFY AND WAIT for grace”



Someone recently asked me what it was like to be around him. As a child, all I remember was that it was great fun. As I replay these meetings in my mind, I feel differently today – here was a man who did not look any other sadhu that I had seen or met; he did not sound like any saint that I had met – his language was often colorful; he did not have the same hang ups as most other sadhus that I have come across – most have severe restrictions about where they will eat, who will cook it etc. His devotees did not fit into any pattern either – they were rich, they were poor; they were Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, and even the atheists who did not realize that they had been drawn. There were the VIPs and the dacoits, all in the same room. He preached nothing and yet his devotees were constantly learning. He met no pattern, he fit no description, and yet from where he sat, he was telling the kitchen what he wanted cooked; he was telling an eight year old what he would be when he grew up; he was scolding someone else about a recent lapse of judgment, addressing someone else about a concern that he/she was yet to express and probably dealing with creation elsewhere in the Universe, all at the same time. The answer to every question was still “How do I know?” He defies description and he does so on purpose.



“YOU CAN PLAN FOR A HUNDRED YEARS. BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT will happen the next moment.”



“EAT ALONE, SILENTLY, simply or with a few people.”



Maharajji spoke fondly of Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna ……..



“NITYANANDA WAS a good sadhu.”



“MUKTANANDA IS GENTLE and learned.”

From ‘Have Pen, Will Travel. Observations of a Globetrotter’ by M J Akbar

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible in their hands and we had the lands … We closed our eyes to pray and when we opened them, we had the Bible in our hands and they had the lands …


- Jomo Kenyatta, first President of independent Kenya



…. Portugese language ….The word for mother is mae and comes from the Indian mai. We have given jungle to English as well, in Portugal it has become janela. Cha for tea is not very surprising, but they use fita for laces, sono for sleep (our sona), nav for boat, almira for, well, almirah which derives from almari and mesa for table – from our very own mez. Pao is pao; no explanations required, surely, for that. Even a verb like dena has become da / dou, while the human feet are perna, a variation of payr ……… reina from rani for queen, padre from padre and chama from shama or flame ………the most poignant word that has travelled so many thousands of miles is duvida, the Portugese word for our Hindi duvidha.



Florence …… Any city that can claim Giotto the architect, Donatello the sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini the jeweler, Dante (‘I am the father of the Italian language’) and Petrarch the poets, Boccaccio the storyteller, Amerigo Vespucci …… the discoverer, Galileo the scientist, and Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo the artists as its children, must have superlative genes.



Anyone who has read Dante on the Prophet of Islam and on Islamic icons like Hazrat Ali will know that Salman Rushdie has been banned for much less. Dante is vicious.



What is common between Italy and India? ……… Both Italian and Indian men are in love with, and in awe of, their mothers. And both drive cars in the heart of the city with the imperious impatience of maniacs.



…….. Arabs ruled Sicily till the eleventh century.



Scotland is a picture postcard dampened by rain.



America smells of food and stinks of indigestion ……. One half of the great American economy sells food and the other half sells medicines for the after-effects



America …. Ethnic analysis of professional malpractice …….. Each year a list of doctors who have been held guilty of deceit towards their patients is published. The highest incidence of substance abuse (prescribing coke instead of aspirin) is found among white American doctors. The highest incidence of sexual abuse is found among Egyptian doctors. And the highest incidence of medical insurance fraud is found among Indian doctors. If anyone has a better story about stereotypes, do please write in.



An American researcher Allen Konopaki, of Incomm Research, has produced these statistics for America: children smile 300 times a day, adults 21 times and teenagers 30 times. In Hawaii the order is reversed.



…….the belly dancer has more eroticism in her hint than a nude disco dancer might have in her sweaty obvious.



There is no pain in life so cruel as to be blind in Granada, says an inscription on the walls of Alhambra.



Ek hi saf mein khare ho gaye Mahmud-o-Ayaz

Na koi banda raha, na koi banda Nawaz

- Iqbal



More interesting is the conscious effort by Spain to reintegrate without making a song and dance about it, the Arab linguistic heritage. This is most obvious on the signboards that line the highway along the coast …….. many of the names are written in both Spanish and Arabic, the latter using the original phonetics. And this in a country which, not too long ago, either destroyed or converted every mosque into a church. It is a mature nation that can retrieve civilization from a difficult past, restore some threads on the tapestry of history. This new creativity has emerged from the spirit of integration in Europe, which has made it a more beautiful continent.



The mind of the superior man dwells on righteousness, the mind of a little man dwells on profit

- Confucius



There is nothing artificial about the welcome in the Balinese smile, which begins in the eyes and spreads gently across the face.



…….Indian sects like the Krishna Bhakts and the Brahma Kumaris who come here and advocate a more Spartan form of Hinduism. It would be a tragedy if the Balinese began to conform. The world comes to Bali precisely because Bali refuses to go to the world.

From ‘Nani A. Palkhivala. A Life’ by M V Kamath

Nani said that the religion of Zarathushtra, in its pristine purity, was a religion that transcended all ‘religions’. …. Preached the brotherhood of man or the ideal of human unity…….. Wrote Nani:

In Zarathushtra’s teachings, which are best reflected in the Gathas, there is hardly any mention of ritualism of worship. Noble conduct and high moral motives – Vohu Mano, Asha and Armaity – represent the golden thread running through the Gathas. Today, this great religion based on the highest moral and spiritual ideals has been so distorted that it has almost become indistinguishable from empty ritualism. Every religion gets encrusted over the centuries and then the crust is mistaken for the kernel.



Sometime before his passing, Nani had said that the following composition by Robert N. Test embodied his own wishes:

To Remember Me

Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby’s face, or love in the eyes of a woman.

Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.

Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.

Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.

Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.

Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary and let them grow so that someday, a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat, and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window.

Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.

If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all prejudice against my fellow man.

Give my sins to the devil.

Give my soul to God.

If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you.

If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.