From ‘Gurudev Dr. Ranade's Life of Light’ by M S Deshpande

“According to the law of Spiritual Gravitation, the experience of a worthy Spiritual Teacher automatically descend to his disciples. As water at a higher level must descend to a lower level, so the experience of a Spiritual Teacher must descend automatically to those who are walking on the path he has trodden.”

Continuous soulful meditation fills the brain of the sadhaka with spiritual energy which enlivens all the centres of perception in it and makes them active. As a result of this they get direct experience of the spiritual energy in the form of light, sound, flavor, odour and touch…… They arise in the brain and issue from it…..

…The spiritual experiences, thus, need no aid of the sense organs. They can be had even when the sense organs are inactive or out of order……in this sphere “intercommunication can take place between different sense-functions, through this unity of apperception.” …. Sri Purandardas could describe his unique experience like this: ‘I could hear with the eyes, see with the ears and see as well as hear with the nose.’

From ‘One Soul's Journey’ by Leni Matlin

God is positive. Man is negative. If contact is made, the Divine current flows from positive to negative. For this reason the Indian tradition of touching a Divine person. But without some form of discipline and limitation, people would be touching face and body. Hence, the custom of touching the lotus feet.

In India, the most auspicious times to meditate are when the moon is in its dark phase, or waning, and is therefore least disruptive. Let Baba explain it:

Shivaratri is observed every month on the fourteenth night of the dark half; for the Moon, which is the presiding Deity of the human mind, has only just one night more to be a nonentity with no influence on the agitations of the mind. In the month of Magha, the fourteenth night is named Maha (great) Shivaratri for it is sacred for another reason too. It is the day on which Shiva takes the Linga form, for the benefit of seekers.

From ‘Guruji. A portrait of Sri K Pattabhi Jois. Through the Eyes of his students’ by Guy Donahaye and Eddie Stern

Yoga is showing where to look for the soul – that is all. Man is taking a human body – this is a very rare opportunity. Don’t waste it. We are given a hundred years to live; one day you have the possibility to see god. If you think in this way, it is giving you good body, good nature, and health

-          Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 2001

Patanjali gives us three crucial ingredients for success in our yoga practice. The first thing he mentions is tapas, literally meaning to burn, to burn away impurities. Through tapas, one purifies the indriyas, the organs of perception, which lends itself to a greater capacity for discrimination and self-reflection.

The second aspect is svadhyaya [self-inquiry], and he says, through self-inquiry we come to recognize what he calls the ishta devata – our personal deity, our own individual connection to some aspect of the divine that we can come to know through self-inquiry. The predecessor to that is the process of purification. So it’s a process of physical purification and then mental purification through self-inquiry which ultimately leads to the realization that you have help from unseen forces. There is an energy or entity referred to as Ishvara, that universal internal teacher …..

The last part of that equation is ishvarapranidhana – literally, bowing to God or recognizing in awe and humility that there is a timeless eternal teacher working on our behalf, and that a way of connecting to that teacher is through the lineage of yoga teachers

The benefit of regular practice is the strength that comes from it ……Even Pattabhi Jois has said, minimum daily practice surya namskara A, surya namskara B, and the final three positions of the closing sequence

Ricky Heiman…..

Can you think of a favorite story about Guruji?

Well, I don’t know if I can use this language, and I don’t know if I’ll even quote it properly, but when he was here this last trip, visitors would come to the house ….just chatting ….i remember one young lady …started talking about what was wrong with the world ….Guruji very casually said to her, “You let God take care of world, you take care your anus.” That was brilliant to me….. you take care of your mula bandha.”

Deba Kingsberg

Repetition of the same practice daily brings some insight into behavioral patterns, our personalities, and the workings of the mind.

….Repetition is the key. We go back to the same place over and over without expectation or judgement again and again in both the practice and in the cleansing until eventually catharsis, either subtle or dramatic, occurs as some stubborn or trapped part of us breaks free. A grief, a fear, a trauma, a secret, a sadness. Once it settles, there is clarity or lightness, a freedom of movement or a breakthrough in the practice that was not there before. The illumination and transformation inspires faith in the wisdom of the method. Days, weeks, months, years pass and slowly the mind settles and the window of perception clears.

Rolf Naujokat

People in India devote themselves to a certain deity and worship that deity – for example, Krishna. They see it in the form [a physical representation] and in a certain moment that form melts away and it is just a devotion to the unmanifested aspect of divinity.

From ‘Off the Record. Untold stories from a reporter's diary’ by Ajith Pillai

When liberalization was ushered in during the early 90s, it left its impact on journalism as well. Reporting from rural India was suddenly discouraged, unless there was a communal incident or a crime that drew national attention. Issues like the concerns of farmers and health came to be labelled as subjects with limited readership ….Development journalism and rural reporting took a back seat and became an aberration in most publications

…..at Indian Post …… Vijaypat [Singhania] sent a note to Vinod [Mehta] which listed eight people he should not write against unless there was irrefutable evidence. The list included then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Satish Sharma, Murli Deora, Amitabh Bachchan and Sharad Pawar. Confronted by this ‘prohibitory order’, Vinod decided to quit…..

In the old days, corrupt journalists sometimes managed to sneak in a planted report or review for a consideration. Today, managements have got into the act and are cashing in on those who are willing to pay for coverage.

Paid news is now an organized corporate activity ……

The Riots …. Bombay …….

The mob rule that had taken over the city with the Shiv Sena blatantly targeting Muslims was deeply disturbing and depressing …In the days to come, it came to light that the Mumbai police were not only playing down casualty figures, but also looking the other way and allowing the rioters a free hand. The state government, it seemed, was also offering tacit support to the Sena-sponsored violence.

…..Tensions had begun to build among the two communities and journalists would learn later that there were several statements made which provoked Muslims no end. Among them was one by a Hindu Mahasabha leader who said that if he was UP’s chief minister, he would have razed the Masjid with a bomb and that the building of the temple was only the beginning – every Muslim would be driven out of the country in due course. Such provocations were hardly reported in the mainstream media but word went around among Muslims in the city.

…..killings of Hindus in the Radhabai chawls ……A Saamana editorial set the tone: ‘Hindus have been burnt alive in Jogeshwari and that is why they have taken to the streets …The people and police have been fired at from mosques using Pakistani weapons. Why are we protecting them? Muslims in India are behaving like Pakistanis. It is as if there are two countries within one. The police are waiting to shoot these people. Even they feel the anguish of innocent citizens … Hindus, open your eyes and see what is going on…..’

….had a common thread of violence perpetrated by armed mobs that came to their homes chanting ‘Jai Bhawani, Jai Shivaji’. They had witnessed horrific scenes of arson and bloodletting. Many said the violence would erupt after the maha-aartis organized by the Shiv Sena in response to the Muslim practice of offering namaaz on the streets. The aartis were said to be prayer meetings but were used as platforms to deliver hate speeches. ….The maha-aartis were finally banned ….

…The then-Congress government in Maharashtra failed to act throughout the violence, There were allegations that it was allowing the Shiv Sena a free hand. Whenever we would go to Chief Minister Sudhakarrao Naik’s residence for press briefings, he was the picture of calm…..

….a friend from Peddar Road called to report that Shiv Sainiks…. Were approaching businessmen and residents of the area for protection money …He even had a copy of one of the receipts issued by the Sainiks…

From ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous. Profiles’ by Khushwant Singh with Humra Quraishi

….Ali Sardar [Jafri] summed up his life story. ‘Mera Safar’, thus in a few memorable lines:

I am a fleeting moment

In the magic house of days and nights;

I am a restless drop travelling eternally

From the flask of the past to the goblet of the

future.

I sleep and wake, awake to sleep again;

I am the ancient play on the stage of time -

I die only to become immortal

….Dom’s [Dom Moraes] verse …..One could ….detect a few themes that recurred consistently in his poems: he was obsessed with death …his mother’s insanity haunted him all his life; and he sought escape in hard liquor and making love. He summed it up in ‘A Letter’,

My father hugging me so hard it hurt,

My mother mad, and time we went awy.

We travelled, and I looked for love too young,

More travel, and I looked for lust instead.

I was not ruled by wanting; I was young,

And poems grew like maggots in my head.

When Dom was stricken with cancer, he refused to undergo chemotherapy. It was as if he almost wallowed in the prospect of an early end, with the ghost of his insane mother hovering over him.

From a heavenly asylum, shriveled Mummy,

glare down like a gargoyle at your only son.

…That I’m terminally ill hasn’t been much

help.

There is no reason left for anything to exist.

Goodbye now. Don’t try to meddle with this.

Zakhmi huey jo hont toh mehsoos yeh hua

Chooma tha maine phool ko deevangi ke sath

It was the bruises on my lips that made me

comprehend

With what thoughtlessness I had kissed the rose

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, ….fully answered the poet Allama Iqbal’s requirements of a Meer-e-Kaarvaan – leader of the caravan:

Nigah buland, sukhan dilnawaz, jaan par soz

Yahi hain rakht-e-safar Meer-e-Kaarvaan ke liye

Lofty vision, winning speech and a warm

personality

This is all the baggage the leader of the caravan

needs on his journey.

….Sangh parivar …..They were men of polite manners, obvious sophistication and intelligence who cloaked their fascist ideas in sweet reasonableness, with impeccable etiquette ….Madhavrao Sadasivrao Golwalkar …. There were passages in his 1939 tract, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, that seemed to suggest that Golwalkar shared Hitler’s ideas about racial purity and approved of his methods to purge Germany of Jews. …..small room. In it sat a dozen men in spotless white kurtas and dhotis – all looking newly washed as only Maharashtrian Brahmins can manage.

I have been a regular drinker all my adult life. I celebrate sex and cannot say that I have never lied. I have not hurt anyone physically, but I think I have caused hurt with my words and actions. And sometimes there is no forgiveness in me. But I consider myself a Gandhian. Whenever I feel unsure of anything, I try to imagine what Gandhi would have done, and that is what I do.