Thoughts … … …

….as Martina Navratilova once remarked, ‘What matters,’ she said, ‘isn’t how well you play when you’re playing well. What matters is how well you play when you’re playing badly.’

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change

-          - Charles Darwin

We should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh

-          - Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

Forget the past and lose an eye; dwell on the past and lose both eyes

-         -  Russian proverb

There is nothing other than thought inside of you. And when that comes to an end, all this search will be over.

-          - U G Krishnamurti

Nothing becomes God as much as stillness

-         - Meister Eckhardt

If the sun and moon should doubt, they’d immediately go out

-         - Blake

Wont you let me know

that life is eternal

and love immortal

and death is only a horizon…

And a horizon is nothing

save the limit of our sight.

-          ROSSITER WORTHINGTON RAYMOND

The path to wisdom is not in seeing new vistas, but in having new eyes

-          - Proust

Earth has no sorrow

That heaven cannot heal

-          THOMAS MOORE

From ‘Pilgrim of Love. The Life and Teachings of Swami Kripalu’ Edited by Atma Jo Ann Levitt

…..I have not paid close attention to astrology, although I have great respect for its workings.

In the yoga tradition there are certain guidelines to help you. If you want to keep up your health, fast on water at least one day a week. If you cant do that, then take only juice. If that’s not possible, then drink milk. And if that’s difficult, take one fruit with the milk. If you cant do that, then eat one moderate meal during the day………

…I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to eat only one meal a day.

….head of the Dvarka Temple …..said: “Once I wondered why the twelve shrines were called jyotirlingas and what was so unusual about them. On investigating, I found that only those lingas made from meteors are called jyotirlingas”

….the word upvas, or fasting, means ‘to sit near or dwell close to the Lord.’

The meaning of the word sat is God. The word sanga means “having an attachment to, or a liking for.”

After many years of sadhana, energy patterns change in the yogi, and there’s no longer great disturbance through sexual urges. Those who reach that state of consciousness are considered to be great masters and are called urdvaretas. Dadaji, my Guru, was urdvaretas and reached the highest.

When one becomes urdvaretas, the semen or body fluids are transformed. That’s the beginning of a complex process of attaining whats called the divine body. Just as in the child’s body, the production of sexual energy mixes directly with the blood, in that state the yogi becomes childlike and his semen so superfine that it immediately mixes with his blood. So the downward passage of sexual energies is closed off, and the sex center itself becomes transformed. When that happens there is so much power in a person’s eyes that his eyes alone can remove the lust of others.

This process works in the same way for women as it does for men.

Also fast one day a week on fruit juice, whey, or green mung bean broth.

If a person practices true moderation in diet, there is no need for fasting.

The texts mention that a sadhak should continuously practice sahit kumbhaka until he’s able to master keval kumbhaka….. sahit kumbhaka means “interrupted holding” such as in anuloma vilom. One practices sahit kumbhaka until keval or kevalam kumbhaka is achieved. Kevalam means “only retention,” in which there’s as much as three hours between one inhalation and the next exhalation.

In every branch of sanatana dharma, kundalini shaktipat initiation can be given to the disciple by sight, by word, by touch, or by the guru’s will. ….. If someone considers a great yogi to be his guru and cannot reach him physically, with his faith, he can still receive initiation and his kundalini will be awakened.

If a sadhak cannot recognize and understand the meaning of awakened kundalini experiences, they may frighten him. Shocked by the unruly nature of kundalini, most people give up. However, those fortunate to have the guru’s guidance will be able to persevere. They will understand that whats happening to them is part of a deep purification and initiatory process and will have enough faith and steadfastness to move through the difficulties. ….Kundalini works in the most unusual ways. It can be violent or unpredictable as it carries out its work of purification.

My guru once said. “Your boat should be in the water, but without water in your boat.” In other words, be in the world, but drop worldly impressions.

From ‘The Happening of a Guru. A biography of Ramesh S. Balsekar’ by Yogi Impressions

Swadeshe Pujyatey Rajan

Vidwaan Sarvatra Pujyatey

-          Arthashastra, Ch. VI

(“The King is worshipped

in his own land,

but the man of wisdom

is worshipped everywhere.”)

    1. I sometimes look out on the road and see something happening – a car being parked, and there is a realization that a spontaneous reaction happens: A job well done or badly done. There is a very clear realization that the reaction is a purely spontaneous one in the body-mind organism according to the programming and not ‘my’ reaction.

    3. While I go through the motions of daily routine in life, there is a very distinct feeling deeper down of an eternal Presence against the background of which life flows in the daily routine, including the natural, biological, spontaneous reactions in the body-mind organism

….4. I have found myself gradually avoiding unnecessary journeys and even unnecessary action – both physical and mental – and preferring to stay put. Also, gradually, small talk and social gossip ceased to interest me: I read less and less of fiction, and finally ceased reading it altogether. Winning an argument no longer seems relevant or important. And, most interestingly, day dreaming and conceptualizing about odd matters just never seems to happen. If daily living offers something to witness, witnessing happens; otherwise I seem to sit or lie down or walk about in a state of what I would call non-witnessing, when the mind is all but totally silent, and there is nothing to witness.

….9. The total, unqualified acceptance of non-doership has resulted in the total cessation of all conceptualizing about terms like attachment and detachment, renunciation and acceptance.

….10. The occasional, sudden realization that the absence of conceptualizing and objectivizing is itself the natural state of the eternal Presence, brings about an emotion of utter humility and deepest gratitude in that moment.

….14. With the experience of life being lived by itself, it seems amazing how easily each problem seems to resolve itself, allowing each dilemma to arrive spontaneously at its natural solution. ‘Me’ and ‘other’ actually turn out to be just different perceptions.

….16. With the total acceptance of non-doership – everything is a happening, and not the doing by anybody – it has actually been my experience that I no longer look at the other person as a potential danger and, if I am hurt, it can only be because it was my destiny – according to the Cosmic Law – to be hurt, and that the ‘other’ (whoever it is) was merely the instrument through which it had to happen.

….21. Quite some time ago, a sudden thought hit me with great impact: it is downright stupid for anyone to try to appear wiser than he is, or more handsome than he is, or better in any sense than he really is. No one is perfect in this world; acceptance is so much easier than hypocrisy, being natural so much easier than pretension.

….Chuang-Tzu: “Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? I’d like to have a word with him.”

…..what one finally wants is harmonious stillness.

…the constant feeling in me is that I am Consciousness functioning through the object as a separate entity. Therefore, I cannot commit a sin, I cannot commit a mistake. Everything is precisely what is supposed to be, the way it is.

From ‘Mother of All’ by Richard Schiffman

Since I had come all the way from a distant country, he allowed, perhaps an exception could be made in my case. It was the same gratuitous hospitality to foreigners which I had come across so many times before in India

The words of the Hindu Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, came to mind: “Beyond hope, beyond fear … the steadfast sage.” Just sitting and watching, something of Amma’s settled pace worked on the mind like a balm. It was easy to understand why the Hindu scriptures say that at the feet of the sage the devotee finds a true haven. Here I felt sheltered, secure.

….Ramana Maharshi, has explained: “Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a rapidly rotating top. Its speed is too quick to be followed by the eye and so it appears to be still.”

Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi ….said, “I give you what you want, so that you might come to want what I have come to give.”

…Sri Aurobindo once put it succinctly, “Great saints performed miracles; greater saints have railed at them; the greatest saints have both railed at them and performed them.”

Mother’s sayings about herself

No thought has ever troubled me. I have never tried to avoid thoughts. They come, but they never disturb me.

…..I experience pain and pleasure, attachment and bereavement just as you do. The only difference is that I don’t try to shun pain and sorrow. I abandon myself to them without the least inhibition.

It has never occurred to me that human life is higher and other forms of life are lower. Neither do I feel that all things have been created for man’s sake. Every form of life has the intelligence which is appropriate to it, not only humans. And no thing in creation is greater than any other thing. That is the glory of creation.

Divinity manifests itself in us so long as we perceive the divinity in others.

The mind that is free from all weighing and judging is itself God.

Nobody utters as many lies as I do. I speak differently to different people. I never reveal the whole truth to anybody, though I seem to. I have not given myself over to anyone. My life is unlimited; my history is limited.

Scriptures don’t create experience in us; spiritual experience, however, creates scripture. There is no necessity that I should teach only what is in scripture. There is no need for me to verify whether what I say accords with scripture. For me, experience is primary. Experience is the only true authority.

I do not teach. Morality is not acquired through hearing lectures. We cannot do as we are told. Time alone discloses what must be done. We must do whatever He causes to be done.

Anything that you do in your daily routine with attention and care is a spiritual discipline.

Brahmacharya (being a monk) is not escape from marriage. It means transcending the distinctions of sex, form and touch.

Brahmacharya means “living in Brahman.” A real Brahmachari is one who lives in Brahman and finds bliss in Brahman, which is the Self. Why should such a one look outside for external sources of happiness? Celibacy is certainly one aid among so many other aids on the spiritual path.

…….by “no mind” is meant that the feeling, “I am doing,” or “I am perceiving,” has vanished.

Who knows whether earth and stones have the capacity to think? You don’t even know my thoughts, though I am sitting next to you – so how can we speak of rocks? … In my view, nothing is lifeless.

It is not by dwelling on the ego that you can get rid of the ego. But put your mind on God, and the ego will take care of itself (that is, it will dissolve)

When your faith is not contingent upon the state of the one in whom you have faith, then the strength of your faith is what grants you protection and happiness.

All of the myriad rites, observances, sacrifices, practices, and forms of worship are but training exercises so that we may ultimately come to see god everywhere.

From ‘Being a Goan Christian. The Politics of Identity, Rift and Synthesis’ by Victor Ferrao

Raimundo Panikkar speaks of four levels of tolerance: the pragmatic, the intellectual, the ethical and the mystical. The pragmatic level could be portrayed by the statement: ‘I don’t kill you and you don’t kill me’. The intellectual level ….by the statement: ‘I don’t know something and you also do not know something so we need each other.’ The ethical level …..by the statement: ‘I am responsible for you and you are responsible for me.’ The mystical level …..by the statement: ‘you are my fulfillment and I am your fulfillment’

From ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway

But I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.

The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. Then he smiled.

‘Age is my alarm clock,’ the old man said. ‘Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?’

From ‘The Hare Krishna Explosion’ by Hayagriva Das. The Birth of Krishna Consciousness in America (1966-1969)

“That is sense gratification music,” Swamiji answers.

“Oh?” I’m taken aback. “But its Ravi Shankar,” I protest……

“Ravi Shankar is a businessman,” Swamiji says, smiling.

Sex is like an itch; when we scratch, it gets worse. So we must tolerate it, and ask Krishna to help us. We must understand that sex life is the highest material pleasure, and therefore the strongest bond to material life, to rebirth in the material world.

NASA’s space programs: “They are trying to reach the moon and other higher planets by material means. Impossible. They will not be permitted entry. You must qualify spiritually to go there….According to the Vedas, the moon is a higher planet where demigods live in advanced civilizations.”

“Then why don’t they come here?” I ask.

“Why should they?” he [Prabhupada] responds, surprised. “This is a middle planet. The demigods are enjoying themselves in the heavenly planets. Why should they come to an inferior place?”

“The eternal living entity is the enjoyed, Prakriti, and Krishna is the enjoyer, Purusha. It is the nature of the female to be enjoyed, the male to enjoy. But in reciprocation, both experience enjoyment. Prakriti in being dominated, in serving, in being enjoyed….

Swamiji gives a brief talk…… “Marriage is for life. It is the wife’s duty to serve the husband, to keep the house clean, cook nicely, and make her husband comfortable when he comes back from work…… It is her duty to bear Krishna conscious children and aid her husband in a life of progressive Krishna consciousness. And it is the husband’s duty to protect the wife and provide for her. The wife should not have to go out and work. That is a very bad proposal. The wife is never to be independent but is to be protected and remain at home. In this way, the marriage will go smoothly.”

“Women are soft-hearted,” Swamiji says, “but unfortunately they are fickle, too. They are quick to accept and reject. They come to Krishna consciousness quickly, out of sentiment, and then some boy comes along, and they reject everything. Men are not so quick to accept, but once they have accepted, they are more reluctant to reject. So the male is considered a higher birth because a man is more likely to…..remain steady. In Vedic culture, the woman is considered weak. Soft-hearted. She should be protected, not given freedom to roam about, like in this country [USA]. Therefore we are marrying our girls to nice Krishna conscious boys.”

Prabhupada discards all propaganda about the planned moon landing.

“They will never get there by these artificial, mechanical means,” he insists. “But even if they manage somehow, the demigods would kick them out.”

Prabhupada then tells the story of the boy who went to the great sage Gautama and begged him for initiation.

“What is your father’s name?” Gautama Rishi asked

“I don’t know,” the boy replied

“Go ask your mother.”

The boy went to his mother, who said, “Before you were born, I was foolish and loved many men. I don’t know whose son you are.”

The boy returned to Gautama Rishi.

“What did your mother say?”

“Since she was a prostitute, she doesn’t know,” the boy replied.

“Oh!” exclaimed the sage. “You are truthful. You are a Brahmin, I will initiate you”