Is the end near?

On 21 December, 2012 the world is going to end. Or not. A somewhat large chunk of the online community worldwide has latched on to the ‘end of the world’ based on the Mayan calendar stopping on this date.
If the Mayans, sez them people, could extrapolate their calendar out to CE 2012 three thousand years ago, they must have known something. And that something is the end of the world, of that they are adamant.
Who are the Mayans? More importantly, why should any one place any importance on their calendar collated circa 3000 BC?
The Mayans are an ancient race in South America noted for their pyramids and ancient city ruins. Some say they may be the remnants of an even older race, the Olmecs, who may, or may not, have been the architects of several cities with pyramids in South America. The ruins of these cities offers glimpses of high technology and science that existed in a time before present memory – whether during the Olmecs or the Mayan dynasties is still in questions.
What do the people think will happen on, around, or after 21 December?
1. The planet will slip its skin. This includes pole shift (or reversal) ; rise of new continents/islands; submerging of existing landmass - either all or some. Could lead to gigantic tsunamis or super volcanoes happening all over the planet.
2. Cosmic collision – while NASA has ruled out any heavenly body heading towards Earth, it has not stopped some of coming up with bizarre theories. These include Planet X or Niburu offloading its inhabitants or offloading all of itself on Earth. Or the earth veering from its designated path around the Sun, leading to great climate calamities – a new mini ice age, or a barren, hot planet.
3. Cosmic bombardment – the Earth will lose its magnetic shield. This could happen if the planet’s rotation either speeds up or slows down (or the planet stops rotating altogether), cutting into its ability to generate the magnetic shield that keeps at bay the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Some people are actually looking forward to getting this huge dose of radiation so that mankind can ‘evolve’ on to its next stage.
4. Natural disasters galore. In a bid to correct the imbalances imposed by the human population, the Earth will seek out to balance itself and in doing so, will ‘adjust’ its climate accordingly.
On the more thoughtful side, there are people who think some great cosmic change will befall earthlings – a greater understand of their situation and their purpose in the cosmic web of life. Too many doubt that will happen as we no longer believe in the spirit, and thus, logically, this would be impossible.
If we are inclined to believe the Mayan calendar stating 21 December 2012 as the time of end of the world, let’s just keep one thing in mind: the Mayan civilisation ended hundreds of years ago and they had little or no inkling of their demise. If they had, they would have stated it somewhere in stone. They put everything else of importance in stone – which is how we know of their calendar.
So, why are we pinning our understanding on a calendar made by people long dead, who may be just a surviving off shoot of a still more ancient civilisation, and who were left scattered into primitive tribes after the collapse of their civilisation (aided by invaders)? One thought is that history repeats itself and repeated history, though boring, is a teaching device for the intelligent. And we must learn this history to find out what happened to these people so we can be prepared for whatever killed their civilisation.
What caused the end of this extraordinary civilisation – mentioned even in the epics of ancient India? Uloopi of the Arjuna saga was of the serpent nation, similar to the feathered serpent legend of the Mayans and Toltecs. In most cases, the South American nations were at loggerheads with ancient Indian civilisation and sometimes went all out to destroy each other.
Most believe climate change was one cause of their demise. Just as the great Saraswati civilisation on the Indian peninsula disappeared almost into nothing after the course of  the river was diverted/disappeared, so something calamitous happened with the South American civilisation. Planetry upheavals left seaside cities 3000 metres up in the mountain, sunk some of them without a trace, and left others without resources to sustain itself. It was the end of that civilisation as they knew it.
The geology of the Earth is full of evidence of great terrestrial upheavals since from before the time of the dinosaurs. The Earth remakes itself as and when it feels the need. And its inhabitants are either wiped out, or learn to adapt, or go on to flourish in the new climate. Scientists say one such great upheaval is long-overdue.
As to their calendar, could it just be that the astrologers who were compiling that calendar one day decided they had bean-counted enough into the future and left the rest to be completed by someone else? And then disaster struck and no-one could or wanted to carry on – they would just be trying to survive. Let’s not put so much importance to the Mayan calendar and the sudden end of days it seemingly states. Rather, seek to find out what the history of that civilisation has to teach us. And start taking climate change seriously.
Meanwhile, Christmas is around the corner and probably no-one cares about the end of the world – not with so much happening. People have been saying “The end is nigh” since the beginning of the Christian era. The Book of Revelations has been quoted, misquoted and quoted again, and the second coming has been happening for 2000 years. And we have been going from strength to strength in our ‘achievement’ as the crowing glory of life on Earth. We are good.
What is there to worry about? So, Merry Christmas - if we do reach that date.

Why does God incarnate?

We love the avatars of God, but, really, how much do we understand why they happen?

An avatar is a particular coalescing of the all pervasive spirit/soul called Brahman (for the non-dualist), or Vishnu or Shiva or Shakti (Devi) (for the dualist as per whether they believe whether Vishnu or Shiva or Devi to be the supreme expression of a personal godhead)

An avatar is said to be called into Being by the heartfelt cries of agony of the sadhus, the pious among us. The sadhus plead for an incarnation or manifestation to take place because of the grave danger mankind has placed itself into.

And then the avatar happens: a set of parents are selected, the form of the avatar enters the womb of the mother, the birthing of the avatar happens. The rest is what we read about in the scriptures – about Rama, Krishna and other major avatars, as well as the minor avatars. (Please note: an avatar is the descent of spirit into matter, while an enlightened godman is the raising of a human into the realm of the spirit.)

For the avatar, this descent into matter cannot be a good thing. Pure spirit confines itself into flesh, becoming subject to its limitations and its inherent problems. Granted, the avatar comes with a particularly divine set of his tools of trade – omniscience, great doses of power and prowess and an understanding of things beyond the ken of man. But, he is ‘born’, and he ‘dies’ and is assailed by all those things we mere humans are assailed by, except he appears to handle them with aplomb and dignity, while we weep and wail our fate.

We who benefit from the avatar’s descent cannot imagine the pain of this descent, although some of more enlightened among us have tried to put them in words for our benefit.

These beautiful lines from Sri Aurobindo’s poem A God’s Labour gives a hint to the predicament of an avatar:

He who would bring the heavens here

Must descend himself into clay

And the burden of earthly nature bear

And tread the dolorous way.

We generally give praise for an avatar taking ‘birth’ among us and feel ever so grateful that we have breathed the same air as Him. But we give little, if any, thought to what the avatar would be going through – and we are not talking about any apparent distress caused by physical ailment.

Day in, day out the Avatar has to endure a body of flesh, fluid and frailties – eating, excreting, keeping it clean, stop it from dropping dead. He, the pure spirit, has to encompass that spirit in a limited form called as body and suffer the indignities of that same body.

There is another beautiful telling of a devotee of Krishna who wanted to kill Draupadi, Arjun and several others who were close to Krishna. After reading the Mahabharata, he sat sharpening a wicked looking knife and when asked why he was doing it so intently, he answered he wanted to seek out Arjuna, Draupadi and others and kill them.

He said he wanted to kill them because they had caused so much pain to his Lord: Arjuna for making a charioteer out of Krishna and forcing him into the battlefield in that lowly role and Draupadi for calling on Krishna and forcing him to provide great lengths of cloth to cover her when she was being stripped naked in the court.

He goes on to tell of the other ‘indignities’ other people had heaped on Krishna and how he would hunt them down and kill them.

At first reading this appears to be the ravings of sentimental fool, especially since he was from an era in which Krishna, Arjuna and others were long-gone. But the sentiments behind the raving is something to think about. Here was a man who felt deeply for the Avatar, who felt that we should have treated Him as something very precious, to be treasured and loved, and not taken advantage of, which is what he believed Arjuna and Draupadi had done. And he felt these sentiments as if Krishna, Arjuna and Draupadi existed for him at that time – not as if they were just tales in a book.

We take it for granted that the avatar is happy to be with us and we take for granted that He will ‘be there for us’. We hardly think of the great sacrifice undertaken in the ‘birthing’ of an avatar – the taking of a form on Mrityu Loka – the world of death; the limiting of the spirit into a vessel of matter and the bombardment of negativity that he has to suffer during his sojourn on Earth.

Yes, the avatar’s physical form is put together to take on this negativity. Ramakrishna Paramhansa is said to have taken on the negative forces (illness, mental and physical) of those who came to him, so much so that he was a physical wreck by the time he passed away. Shirdi Sai Baba was took on boils, burns, wounds and sickness from those he chose to save, as did Satya Sai Baba.

Again these lines from A God’s Labour (the full poem can be found here http://intyoga.online.fr/labour.htm):

Coercing my godhead I have come down

Here on the sordid earth,

Ignorant, labouring, human grown

Twixt the gates of death and birth.

I have been digging deep and long

Mid a horror of filth and mire

A bed for the golden river’s song,

A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night

To bring the fire to man;

But the hate of hell and human spite

Are my meed since the world began.

Given that we have the law of karma governing the universe, is there a need for God to incarnate on Earth? The above gives us a hint of why an incarnation takes place.

An avatar is a catalyst of change – each time one comes, the world changes significantly. We, who only read about their exploits, take in only a fraction of the full scope of their doings. We are privy only to their recorded exploits.

• Rama took up a war of attrition that devastated a whole civilisation. And Ravan is now a household name equated with wickedness, pride and arrogance, and the futility of great learning without understanding and compassion.
• Krishna brought about a fratricidal war that decimated entire clans, including his own. His exploits range from killing his own uncle to turning his cousins against each other that sees the end of the Dwapar Yuga, and the beginning of the least benevolent of all yugas for mankind (yet, a yuga which is said to be the best placed for as higher understanding of godhead).
• Parashurama cut down the ranks of the kshatriyas 21 times to cool his vengeance. Sometimes he is seen as an example of the wrath of the Brahmin caste – of what they are capable of if they are not treated with respect and awe. It is a tale of the curbing of unbridled arrogance and malpractices associated with the ruling classes.
• The other avatars undertook epic battles against opponents of great courage and strength, sometimes in battles that ranged over time and space, other times using wit to outwit (to stop Bali’s expansion plans into other realms), others battled for the human soul because of their compassion for humans.

Every one of the exploits of our avatars are told from the point of view of a human being – from the point of view of people who reacted with the avatars. There is no standalone narration by the avatars themselves, including the Gita, which is retelling by a third party of a direct conversation between Krishna and Arjuna.

Simply put, our scriptures, especially the bhagavads, the Puranas, are largely someone’s take on a series of incidents that they saw, heard about or were directly involved in with regards to a particular avatar. It is as Sri Aurobindo says of our understanding: “A fragment of Truth is his widest scope”.

And I pose the question once again: Do we really know why God incarnates among us?

If what Rama, Krishna and Parashurama did was the mission of those avatars – then huge chunks of mankind died as a result. And to what end, just to save (or avenge) a few human beings beloved of the avatar?

Let’s look at the last stanza from set of lines from Sri Aurobindo’s poem listed above:

I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night

To bring the fire to man;

But the hate of hell and human spite

Are my meed since the world began.

Let’s replace ‘hell’ with Patala – the underworld of our mythology. While we think of patala as the infernal regions, Narada is said to have said that it rivalled and beat Indralok in beauty, and it abound with every kind of luxury and sensual gratification.

So, Patala, far from being a place of darkness and drear, was a place of light and beauty, a place of sense gratification, love for luxury, hedonism, self-indulgence, intemperance, and decadence.

Since the world began, God has been incarnating because he hates hell – all the things associated with the above-listed negative elements that make our character. And human spite – when we hurt others for the sake of seeing them squirm or suffer – is not something God likes.

So, instead of saying: “Whenever evil rears its head, and wickedness prevails, God incarnates to punish evil doers,” would it be more appropriate to say “Whenever hedonism increases, and decadence prevails, God incarnates to pull the rug from under our feet?”

God incarnating is a saving mission, but executed in a painful way. Its purpose is to

take us back to godhead, to divinity - kicking and scratching, if need be.

For man’s mind is the dupe of his animal self;

Hoping its lusts to win,

He harbours within him a grisly Elf

Enamoured of sorrow and sin.

The grey Elf shudders from heaven’s flame

And from all things glad and pure;

Only by pleasure and passion and pain

His drama can endure.

God incarnates to remind us of our origins, our divinity – ‘To bring the fire to man’. We, in our human folly, believe he incarnates to give us happiness and wealth as we pursue our pleasurable lives on Earth. And we worship avatars to that end – begging and pleading for a long life to enjoy our fruits, families and fumblings. So far from the truth.

The Truth of truths men fear and deny,

The Light of lights they refuse;

To ignorant gods they lift their cry

Or a demon altar choose.

Maybe it is time to put aside our kindergarten approach to our avatars. Let’s not raise a ‘demon altar’ and hope a few minutes of obeisance is enough to sway God into our way of thinking; let’s not ‘lift our cries to ignorant gods” and then complain you

have not been heard; let’s not refuse, and fear and deny, what our scriptures have proclaimed for eons – God is Truth, and in Truth lies the real victory.

Instead, seek the ‘Truth of truths’, the Light of lights. Dive deep into your beliefs, and sometime, challenge them, so as to be privy to the truth they hide among their superfluity. The teachings of our ancients may appear superfluous at first attempt but that is only because they have been dumbed down by those who would use them to their own ends.

Do not let tradition, or traditionalists, hold you from finding the Truth. Do not let culture bind you to the mire. Expand your mind and see the beauty of the philosophy that has endured millennia, that has endured every kind of influx and still remains true to this day.

Notes

Avatars of Shiva

One lists has the following as the 11 avatars of Shiva

1 KAPAALI

2 PINGAL

3 BHEEM

4 VEERUPAAKSH

5 VILOHIT

6 SHAASTA

7 AJPAAD

8 AHIBURDHANYA

9 SHAMBHU

10 CHAND

11 BHAV

Others put 28 avatars for Shiva

Although Puranic scriptures contain occasional references to avatars of Shiva, the idea is not universally accepted in Saivism. As an avatar requires residence in a womb, Shiva as ayonija (not of a womb) cannot manifest himself as an avatar.

The Linga Purana speaks of twenty-eight forms of Shiva which are sometimes seen as avatars. In the Shiva Purana there is a distinctly Saivite version of a traditional avatar myth: Shiva brings forth Virabhadra, one of his terrifying forms, in order to calm Narasimha, an avatar of Vishnu. When that fails, Shiva manifests as the human-lion-bird Sharabha. The story concludes with Narasimha becoming a devotee of Shiva after being bound by Sharabha.[47] However, Vaishnava followers including Dvaita scholars, such as Vijayindra Tirtha (1539–95) refute this Shaivite view of Narasimha based on their reading of Sattvika Puranas and Sruti texts.[48] The monkey-god Hanuman who helped Rama – the Vishnu avatar is considered by some to be the eleventh avatar of Rudra (Shiva). Some regional deities like Khandoba are also believed by some to be avatars of Shiva. Other stated avatars of Shiva, according to some sources, are 8th century non-dualist Vedanta philosopher (Advaita Vedanta) Adi Shankara. He was named "Shankara" after Lord Shiva and is considered by some to have

been an incarnation of the god and Virabhadra who was born when Shiva grabbed a lock of his matted hair and dashed it to the ground. Virabhadra then destroyed Daksha's yajna (fire sacrifice) and severed his head as per Shiva's instructions.

In Dasam Granth, Guru Gobind Singh have mentioned two avtars of Rudra: Dattatreya Avtar and Parasnath Avtar.

Avatars of Devi

Avatars are also observed in Shaktism, the sect dedicated to the worship of the Goddess (Devi), but they do not have universal acceptance in the sect. The Devi Bhagavata Purana describes the descent of Devi avatars to punish the wicked and defend the righteous—much as the Bhagavata Purana does with the avatars of Vishnu. Like Vishnu, his consort Lakshmi incarnates as Sita and Radha – the consorts of Rama and Krishna avatars. Nilakantha, an 18th century commentator on the Devi Bhagavata Purana – which includes the Devi Gita – says that various avatars of the Goddess includes Shakambhari and even the masculine Krishna and Rama – generally thought to be Vishnu's avatars. Lakshmi and Saraswati are also goddesses worshipped as Devi avatars.

PATALA. [Source: Dowson's Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology] The infernal regions, inhabited by Nagas (serpents), Daityas, Danavas, Yakshas, and others. They are seven in number, and their names, according to the Vishna Purana, are Atala, Vitala, Nitala, Gabhastimat, Mahatala, Sutala, and Patala, but these name vary in different authorities. The Padma Purana gives the names of the seven regions and their respective rulers as follow: -- (1.) Atala, subject to Mahamaya; (2.) Vitala, ruled by a form of Siva called Hatakeswara; (3.) Sutala, ruled by Bali ; (4.) Talatala, ruled by Maya; (5.) Mahatala, where reside the great serpents; (6.) Rasatala, where the Daityas and Danavas dwell; (7.) Patala, the lowermost, in which Vasuki reigns over the chief Nagas or snake-gods. In the Siva Purana there are eight: Patala, Tala, Atala, Vitala, Tala, Vidhipatala, Sarkarabhumi, and Vijaya. The sage Narada paid a visit to these regions, and on his return to the skies gave a glowing account of them, declaring them to be far more delightful than Indra's heaven, and abounding with every kind of luxury and sensual gratification.

The Das of financial fracas

Published in The IndianWeekender.co.nz - http://www.indianweekender.co.nz/Pages/ArticleDetails/7/3242/New-Zealand/The-Das-of-financial-fracas
Apologies beforehand to the experts who will probably pick two dollar-sized holes in this article – the finance of commonsense has little research material to back it up. My advice to you would be not to peruse this article with any kind of seriousness.
IT takes a bloody Indian to state the obvious and no-one listens to him, anyway. Satyajit Das (his name could be translated as the servant of victory in truth) has that problem. He has things to say about how we do business, and no one seems to be listening closely.
Now, I have always been leery of the mechanisms that drive the stock market, especially the trading in points of a currency. I mean, the cent is the final basic unit of the dollar but when the stock market start trading in fractions of the cent, there is something wrong.
Most businesses see the benefit – for example, sell fuel at $2.12:97 and the .097 adds up per litre pretty quickly. We humans, on the other hand, can’t even buy anything for the 10 cents we get in change on the $9.90 purchase. Or the one cent or five cent we give away every time we buy something at $9.99 or $9.95. Our loose change, and fractions of loose change, could be making millions of dollars for others. Or maybe
not.
But seriously, it is no longer a case of save a penny towards a pound - for the penny has been sliced into slivers, where these slivers make millions of dollars for any one trading in hundreds of millions of dollars.
And trading on futures and derivatives is a twist on the adage “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush” – where the two birds in the bush are as tangible an asset as the one in your hand, as long as both parties accept it to be so. I mean, WTF: you haven’t planted the crop or mined the gold but you can have the cash up front because someone is willing to take the risk of paying you now in a bid to lock up the commodities market.
And this is not the loan you need to get a venture started, but the actual payment of a crop or mineral that will be produced some time in the future. It is like someone planted a cabbage patch and is paid for the crop in the ground, and the two crops he is still thinking of planting.
Mind you, my understanding of the finance world is limited, and it probably shows here, but commonsense says: plant the crop, mine the gold and then get the cash in hand. “Investing in the future” makes money only for the monied, so they made it legal to do so. And that is why credit is so easily available – your future is locked up just as commodities are.
The finance market thrived on these convoluted mechanism, still does and no one is going to stop them, even after the economic disasters of 2008. But Satyajit Das appears to be to banging his head against this brick and mortared wall hard enough to make a few cracks.
Das’ understanding of derivatives is overwhelmingly high – the likes of me will need to spend a decade trying to fully understand the ins and outs of what he knows.

But man, can he express what he knows effectively. He says things that the economist, the financier and probably the accountant think is blasphemy.
Das was recently in New Zealand to speak to the New Zealand Initiative, an independent public policy think tank supported by chief executives of major New Zealand businesses. He has some things to say:
On growth - that erudite mechanism that pushes us each quarter to do better than before - he says in his latest paper: “Today, growth has come to the end. The global economy has stalled.”
That is the last thing a CEO would want to hear. The whole economy is judged by its growth and any stalling in growth is seen as death looming. No body in their right mind is going to listen to that, not when the very future of your economy is based around having growth.
In a NZ Listener interview, Das pointed out how he is welcomed by many who seldom re-invite him to anything again once he has said his piece. In other word, he is a border-line pariah but there is no going past the fact of the matter that Das speaks on.
He puts the housing market on par with a belief in God: it is a blind faith exercised by people who have put a value to a basic need, dependent on the vagaries of zoning change and interest rates, and the skewered perception of a market artificially bolstered by “experts”. He used the word “rigged” to describe the housing market.
The retirement nest egg is a fallacy – you get to sell your house, live off the benefits in meaner dwellings and wait to die, after having lived so well in your prime.
And he sees no harm in NOT having a growth in the economy. That is pure sacrilege for the economists, who follow whatever school of economics which is presently in favour with them. Das laments the past 30 years, where growth has come from speculation, borrowed money and the unsustainable use of non-renewable resources.
To quote him in the NZ Listener interview: “I went to a place the other day that had five large plasma TVs – one in every room, including the bathroom, which was quite disconcerting.” Three people lived there. New Zealand, Das repeatedly stressed while he was here, was in a better position than many countries because it was a food producer. The problem of feeding the world, along with the problems of clean energy,
water conservation and even logistics – the fact that a lot of stuff is wasted before it can get to market – means there is scope for future growth to come from innovation and productivity gains, rather than being simply debt-fuelled growth. But he worries we have created an artificial demand for growth at any cost, without clear evidence that it makes us happier.”
Not only an artificial demand, but a twisted supply situation too. Big food producers keep demanding higher food production from their vassals but are not beyond destroying excess produce, for example, thousands of litres of milk on a regular basis, just to keep food prices where they want it. It is a skewered sort of free market when you have to destroy produce to curtail supply – not a true supply-demand mechanism at all.
And adding to the financial fiasco is the reliance on debt-driven consumption to generate economic growth. All of the situations above, according to Das, are fallacies of the highest order.
Given the resource constraints, unbridled consumerism and the keening after growth in all sectors, Das sees mayhem in our near future. Mayhem far greater than we have experienced in this generation. Imagine the Great Depression and multiply by a factor of four – four because of the present population is quadruple that of 1923; for resources that will probably last four months if all production were to halt immediately and for four months/defaults until debts are called in, leading to the collapse of the credit sector. And for four years in which the world could revert to post-WWII conditions once economies collapse when/if we have “great” depression.
All of which is on the radar of modern economists but only as worst-case scenarios which can be averted ‘easily’ by any amount of Plan Bs to combat any disparities their calculation can throw up.
In other words, all is good, all is been taken care of and people like Das are “doomsters” which, Das readily admits, is what he is. All is good because there is a calculation out that will befuddle enough people and allow the financiers to carry on what they were doing – robbing Paul to pay Peter who will pay Simon who pays them so they can buy a future which doesn’t exist presently.
So, here is a former banker, who hobnobs in with top-notch financiers and cabinet ministers, who has a message of doom and gloom for world governments, with so much weight behind his message but who is tolerated only because he has an alternative spin: “It is good to hear the other side, only because it shows how we are doing great with what is already in place.”
Even the NZ Listener article - which was well-written - dwelt more on Das the character and what makes him tick, than on his actual message, proving again that even financial articles in magazines need that spin to sell copy. And that spin is easily provided by eccentric characters like Das (and if you play enough on the eccentricities, you can make good copy).
Das is presently somewhat of a lone voice in the wilderness, with messages which makes good copy for financial magazines looking for the alternative angle, who has garnered a small but solid band of adherents (count me in) but has little effect on arrogant financiers and/or the finance industry.
In the NZ Listener interview, Das pulled no punches in describing financiers: “Finance has become more important than it ever has in the last 30 years. I often see finance as a supporting function to the real economy. Unfortunately, that has been flipped.”… “They (financiers) think they are actually better than they are and, more importantly, they think they are outside the rules because they are the only
people who can make the world work; they understand this stuff and nobody else does.”
Then, we must be grateful that there is someone out there willing to swim against the current, who is willing to take up the cudgel against the monetary mammoths, the fiscal fossils and the artful artifices that is the finance industry.
Only thing: he is a bloody Indian and no one’s going to really listen to him, are they?
* Satyajit Das blogs here: http://www.economonitor.com/blog/author/sdas3/

The God Particle: Higgs Boson is God?

The Higgs Boson walks into a bar wearing a t-shirt saying “God Particle”.

“Wass that?” asks the barman.

The Higgs Boson almost blinks off. “Where have you been? I am the God Particle. The world is agog with my discovery.”

“Eh?”

“You moron. I am the basis of the universe. I am the goddam base that gives substance to everything else.”

“Substance to what; base what?” The barman is genuinely puzzled. For all he sees is the t-shirt hanging on a black framework of subdued ethereal glow that threatens to go out and leave the t-shirt hanging in mid air.

The Higgs Boson sputters, pouts a pout that cannot be seen and orders a round of drinks for all the elements of the period table. The poor barmen is bamboozled and threats to resign from life.

The jokes edition of the ‘discovery’ of the Higgs Boson is making its rounds on the internet and the laughs are a plenty. Yet, for all the merriment – starting with the discovery announcement being heralded in Comic Sans font – the seriousness of this discovery cannot be understated. (The Higgs Bososn: Jokes edition can be found here - http://storify.com/notscientific/higgs-boson-the-jokes-edition)

Here is a particle, predicted over 40 years ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, that particle physics says is the basis of the universe. Its entrapment in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN gives us a glimpse on how the universe works. It is called the God Particle, although scientists themselves would prefer to call it the ‘goddamned particle’ – for the obvious reason that it is the most elusive of any sub-atomic particle that they have any specific knowledge of.

The elemental Stephen Hawking actually bet $100 that the Higgs Boson would never be trapped, so sure he was of its non-existence. This month he conceded defeat and paid up to Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan.

All and good in the rarefied fields of science but what does it mean for the man on the street? Zilch.

The world, or in this case, the universe goes on as before. What scientists have done is tap in another set of information about the way things work – putting firmly in place a structure of better understanding the processes of the universe. They have come just a little bit closer to understanding why almost all of the universe is beyond the observations of the likes of you and me.

What this means is:
1. The Universe is a gridwork of mass – 90 percent of which we cannot observe. The little we observe actually forms a minute part of the great mass.
2. Something is forming the base for this huge mass of planets, galaxies, stars and other heavenly bodies and the Higgs Boson could be it.
3. The universe is made of particles which by rights should be free-agents zipping all over the place. Yet something gives them mass and the culprit is seen as the Higgs Boson.
4. The Higgs Boson has a short life – we are not talking mayflies here. It lasts for one millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. Apparently this is the reason it is so goddamned hard to trap. Evidence of its existence is seen by what it leaves behind in the collider rather than its actual capture.
5. The Higgs field theory explains why some elementary particles have mass – suggesting that a unseen field permeates all of space and the Higgs Boson is the smallest possible activity in that field.

It is easier to understand that an unseen field permeates space – or is it? I just hark back to what the ancients say of this and it makes perfect sense to me.

In explaining the universe, Hindus first talk of its vastness. The root ‘Brh’ means to swell, expand or enlarge. Brahman, accepted by Hindus as the actuality of godhead, the ultimate reality, the absolute, is the basis of the universe. It is the force/power/energy that permeates the universe, giving it its form and energy.

Originally – when science had just discovered the atom – Brahman was denoted as the vastest of the vast and smallest of the small, in this case the atom.

With the discovery of sub atomic elements and particles, the smallest of the small becomes the sub atomic particles. Now with the discovery of the

Right – so I am riding the crest of scientific discovery and adopting it as part of my religion. So, sue me. Big deal.

The fact remains that the ancients knew of the existence of this unseen field upon which the rest of the universe carries out its works.

This from the Upanishads.

1. Brahman is the one Absolute Reality behind the changing appearances of the universe.
2. Brahamis the universal substrate from which material things originate and to which they return after dissolution.
3. Sarvam khalv idam brahma - Brahman is everything, and all we see are His different energies — material or spiritual
4. Brahman contains within it the potentiality and archetypes behind all possible manifest phenomenal forms.
5. Brahman is the reality behind everything in this universe, the cause which sustains the effect.
6. Brahman is the ultimate essence of material phenomena

So, what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Again, zilch.

Brahman cannot be worshipped, only understood. Its workings are beyond the ken of man – just like the Higgs Boson. As science strives to understand the Higgs Boson, the followers of Brahman try to do the same. The only difference is that one is material striving, the other spiritual.

Science now appears to know of this particle that imbues others with some potential and is seeking to understand it more. I can’t wait for more. It just validates what I have learnt as a follower of the religions.

But most religions are getting defensive over the discovery – finger pointing about science setting out to destroy religion is happening all over the world.

The only thing I can say to that is: “Why would God – the omnipresent, the omniscient and the omnipotent – require to be defended? Especially by the likes of puny humans.”

Leave be – get on with your faith, and leave the faith of science alone. They have done great in making the lives of human better – why not allow them a little fun in making a discovery any Hindu (with a little thinking) already knows?

Or maybe it is just an over-reaction to the nickname. Some see the Higgs Boson’s nickname as the God Particle as a direct attack on faith in God.

If the particle had been nicknamed Nick, it may not have aroused so much antipathy amongst the religious.

So, Nick walks into the bar and says “I am Higgs Boson.”. The Barman would probably say: “What are you having, Mr Boson?”

An analogy:

For decades, experts have been trying to come up with analogies to illustrate how the Higgs mechanism works. One of the best-known was proposed in 1993 by David Miller, a physicist at University College London. Imagine looking down from a balcony in a ballroom, watching a cocktail party below. When just plain folks try to go from one end of the room to the other, they can walk through easily, with no resistance from the party crowd. But when a celebrity like Justin Bieber shows up, other partygoers press around him so tightly that he can hardly move ... and once he moves, the crowd moves with him in such a way that the whole group is harder to stop.

The partygoers are like Higgs bosons, the just plain folks are like massless particles, and Bieber is like a massive Z boson

Why we need to suffer

Or how to be objective about ourselves

We may wish evil on others, but never do we wish evil on ourselves, (or for those we care about). Yet, we suffer evil, wickedness and setbacks in our lives on a very regular basis. And compared to the upsides, the downside of life appears to dominate our whole life.

Most times we pass over whatever negative things that happen to us by either blaming others for our misfortune, or - when we can’t find someone to blame - blaming providence/God/karma for this unpleasant situation that we are going through.

A novel approach to this constant good/bad state of affairs that we call life would be to actually start welcoming the idea that ‘bad’ things should happen to us. What a stupid idea, you say? But if we believe in karma, and believe that we are on Earth to work out our karma from previous lives, why should we not want to get over it quickly?

Given the choice, what would anyone like to do? Would you spread your bad karma over several more lives or spend one life cleaning up all your bad karma and then setting yourself up to expand on your good karma in another life?

Karma, of course, is not anything like a 25-year home mortgage, a painless payment that almost goes unnoticed as we go about living our lives. Each time karma extracts its ‘repayment’ it does so with an acute emotional strike, somewhat like a hatchet job on our mental state. This seesaws between deep anguish and euphoria – both of which are extremely unstable mental states.

If we choose the first where a little karma is paid off bit by bit, let’s be prepared for a mediocre life of a mixture of good and bad, ups and downs (possibly a one step forward, two steps back type of life) until several lifetimes later, we are finally ready for the ‘good’ life, a life of doing good and saving up good karma until you are done on Earth.

If we choose to telescope our karma in a much shorter timeframe (and yes, we can make that choice) be prepared for some heavy duty karmic action that will sledgehammer us into a tattered life. This is free will but not as we understand it. Here we have a choice in how we choose to live our next life, a choice made by us before we take rebirth, and a choice just as easily forgotten when we actually take birth.

We are the makers our own destiny - our holy scriptures are very clear on this. And this choice of making our own destiny allows us to choose our life events before our birth. The garland of karma one wears through birth and death and rebirth is malleable. It can switched around to set up a life of events for each birth. We could choose to ‘live it up’ with your good karma in one lifetime, shunting off bad karma to another life time, or vice versa.

For example, say we were a cruel landlord in a previous life, prone to narcissism, arrogance and being ‘right’ all the time. In this birth (because of some good we did previously) we are ‘given’ a home with an average household. We go through a series of setbacks all through our life and it appears to be unending. Everything we touch crumbles, every project we undertake fizzles out, every move we make ends up harming us.

Did we, in the presence of our rebirth, choose to look at our karma in total honesty and string together a series of events to make us ‘realise’ the folly of our past deeds in the preceding lifetime? Did we, in total honesty, deem ourselves ready for a lesson in humility, understanding and compassion – something we lacked very much in the life we just had?

Probably yes – our forefathers were clear on this, giving us many adages and folklore to tell us of how karma determines our birth and lifestyle, how it can mould us into what we are and how it can be used to free ourselves from our karmic debt.

They also said we are unaware of this debt as the essence of the karma is all that we bring with us in our new life, not its memory. The memory of this collective karma sometimes penetrates the veil that enshrouds it but that is only occasionally. In general we start our new birth unaware of these consequences and what we have planned with them. There is a good reason for this – if we were aware of what was to happen to us while working out our karma, our egos most probably won’t be able to take it.

In working out our karma, we have options – curse our life/our birth, curse the people involved (it is because of them!) or accept our karma for what it is and look at our life objectively. (Please remember that karma is not fate. Fate - as non-Hindus understand it - is a notion of predestination that says everything is mapped out for you and you have no say in the matter).

Our ancient scripts lays out the way to observe ourself in an objective manner. Before looking at this, let’s familiarise ourselves with two words.

Thithiksha (fortitude) vs Sahana (patience)

Sahana is the ability to tolerate things, to be able to put up with disagreeable things. This is largely because we don’t have a choice in the matter. It is beyond our control – that is why we have no choice but to practice sahana. For example, we are in a situation in which, through no fault of ours, we lose out – be it a job, a partner, a project, a deal, whatever. Why does this happen when we did everything right? Why should someone ‘less deserving’ get it and we can’t? This is something we appear not to have any control over. Either we grin and bear it (showing patience in an intractable situation) or we lash out, making more ‘new’ karma in the bargain.

We can put all such events down to plain bad luck, nepotism, unfairness, a short shrift from providence. Or we can see it for what it actually is – a past event in a previous life that needed to be worked out in this life.

The better way to tackle the downside of karmic potshots is to have fortitude (Thithiksha). Fortitude is having the capacity to overcome an ongoing karmic situation, but yet, disregarding it. Allow the situation to happen, be aware of what is happening but do not react. It is in reacting that we exacerbate a situation, gleaning more karma in the process.

Fortitude involves looking at our lives in an objective manner. The scriptures offer several ways to attain to this mental state.

1. Feeling the presence of something beyond yourself.

Call it God or nature or any super normal being – The idea is to feel something beyond yourself, either through silence or in a conducive environment. Keeping silent for long periods of time allows the mind to un-tether itself from the senses, thus giving it an opportunity sees things for what they are. Establishing yourself in a quiet environment helps do the same thing – your senses are not working overtime and this allows the mind to slow down and gather its wits for searching objectively through the tirade of thoughts it normally endures. That is why the scriptures call for meditation and keeping ourselves away from the ‘marketplace’ as essential to knowing our Self.

2. Meditating to understand the thought process.

This is done by isolating thoughts from each other. Generally we believe thoughts run on as a continuous thread. We think of this as a process – we believe the ongoing thoughts in our minds is who we are. When we aggressively withdraw ourselves from the process, we start seeing thoughts as individual snippets, and by doing so, we become a witness to both their creation and to their individual progression. This process of becoming a witness to the thinking process allows us to divorce ourselves from the process and see us for who we really are – the witness.

3. Direct self analysis. Seeing ourselves for what we really are.

The bundle of thoughts, habits and traits that make up our personality/ego is not what we really are. To know this one must undertake the cruellest task of all – the honest appraisal of one self. The ego resides under layers and layers of contrived thinking that are like the stones of a fortress. Through a honest approach these bricks or traits can be destroyed, revealing the ego for what it is – a bundle of personality traits.

There are many other ways – losing ourselves in devotion to a chosen deity; losing ourselves in good works/social works; caring for our parents; seeing everything as a spark of the divine. The list is endless but all have one common ground - losing yourself in the doing of it and not asking for any reward or fruit thereof of the action. For as soon as you ask for the payment of the deed, it is not a spiritual deed but a trade-off and it doesn’t work.

Fortitude comes about when we have understood why we act as we do, and this leads to tackling anything that life (or our karma) springs on us. As we witness the emergence of thoughts, so shall we witness the emergence of our karmic deeds, and see them for what they really are.

And what are karmic deeds?

They are our teachers, offering lessons to be learnt and opportunities to realign our lives. They are our makers and can be our ‘destroyers’ if we don’t handle them with fortitude. These are the laws of action and its consequences, and need to be understood from a logical point of view. If we can think through the consequence of each of actions rather than just reacting to them, we can both understand and control our action and the karma it generates.

And so it comes to what I said before – why not ask to have suffering so we get over it quickly? And go on to better things.

If suffering/karma is an important part of our purpose, that teaches us how to overcome adversity and making us stronger, smarter, why not say :”Bring it on and let’s be done with it.” After all, there isn’t much time until we die, and we do want something different in our next life, don’t we?

Notes

Destiny and the Divine Power of Love

Although the word "karma” is Sanskrit and is associated with Eastern religions, it simply refers to the law of cause and effect. Karma is not blind destiny or divine judgment, but is the principle the describes the natural reverberation that emerges from every action, whether that action is physical, emotion, mental, or spiritual.

Suffering and pain are not punishment from a tyrant God, nor are they "normal” or mere "coincidence.” When we truly understand the law of action and consequence, we can see that our lives are a result of our own moment to moment ignorance of the effects of our actions. We create our own suffering, therefore, we can create our own happiness instead, if we know how. No matter what religion or background we come from, through conscious action from moment to moment, we can originate a new set of causes, which in turn will generate a new set of results. This is how we can revolutionize our life. The power to change is in our hands.

Karma is Negotiable by Nikias Annas

Some karma quotes

Give up your selfishness, and you shall find peace; like water mingling with water, you shall merge in absorption.

Sri Guru Granth Sahib

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

Unknown

Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe's binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations-and all things we experience are our creations.

Sol Luckman

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Work done with selfish motives is inferior by far to the selfless service or Karma-yoga. Therefore be a Karma-yogi, O Arjuna. Those who seek [to enjoy] the fruits of their work are verily unhappy [because one has no control over the results].

Bhagavad Gita

A man who sees action in inaction and inaction in action has understanding among men and discipline in all action he performs.

Bhagavad Gita

The person whose mind is always free from attachment, who has subdued the mind and senses, and who is free from desires, attains the supreme perfection of freedom from Karma through renunciation.

Bhagavad Gita

As the blazing fire reduces wood to ashes, similarly, the fire of Self-knowledge reduces all Karma to ashes.

Bhagavad Gita

When you lose, do not lose the lesson.

Dalai Lama

Sometimes not getting what you want is an amazing stroke of luck.

Dalai Lama



How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Wayne Dyer



If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Wayne Dyer



http://www.lexiyoga.com/karma-quotes

God quotes

Any fool can count the seeds in an apple. Only God can count all the apples in one seed. ~Robert H. Schuller

Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway. ~Mary C. Crowley

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. ~St. Augustine

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God. ~James Weldon Johnson

God understands our prayers even when we can't find the words to say them. ~Author Unknown

What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. ~Eleanor Powell

A man with God is always in the majority. ~John Knox

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. ~Victor Hugo

You can tell the size of your God by looking at the size of your worry list. The longer your list, the smaller your God. ~Author Unknown

Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman. ~Author Unknown

If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't. ~Jules Renard

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. ~C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things done. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too. ~Teresa of Avila

God's last name is not "Dammit." ~Author Unknown

Once one has seen God, what is the remedy? ~Sylvia Plath, "Mystic"

As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. ~Woody Allen

Clearly, God is a Democrat. ~Patrick Caddell

God: The most popular scapegoat for our sins. ~Mark Twain

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. ~Vincent van Gogh, Dear Theo: An Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh, 1937

No matter how much I prove and prod,

I cannot quite believe in God;

But oh, I hope to God that He

Unswervingly believes in me.

~E.Y. Harburg, attributed

People see God every day, they just don't recognize him. ~Pearl Bailey

How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

God's will is not an itinerary, but an attitude. ~Andrew Dhuse

Let God's promises shine on your problems. ~Corrie Ten Boom

I just hope God does not get bored of dreaming me. ~Author Unknown

By night, an atheist half believes in God. ~Edward Young, Night Thoughts

Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them. ~George Santayana

When I saw others straining toward God, I did not understand it, for though I may have had him less than they did, there was no one blocking the way between him and me, and I could reach his heart easily. It is up to him, after all, to have us, our part consists of almost solely in letting him grasp us. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke and Benvenuta: An Intimate Correspondence

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much. ~Mother Teresa

Fanaticism is not becoming of a Hindu

Allow me to define a Hindu.
First, there are many sects in "Hinduism" that take ownership of this religion. They are and remain just that, a sect. For the simple reason that they have defined their interpretation of God, labelled everything and are able to present a form of God that some can subscribe to. This, of course, leads to fanaticism when ‘promoting’ their god over others. The trend is also noted in all other religions.
Hinduism is a relatively new term, starting off during the Mughal reign and gaining coinage during the British Raj. This belief system has existed before this term was coined, and will continue to exist until the end of times.
Many accept the term Sanatan Dharam (Sanatana Dharma – the eternal dharma/pathway) as the right understanding for the ambiguous word Hinduism. There are five precepts of this ‘religion’ – Truth, Right Conduct, Peace, Love and Non-violence.
A follower of Sanatan Dharam sees ALL religions as paths (and all religions have that high philosophy that seeks to attain to godhood) leading to the truth – different ways to attain to the same. In fact, a follower of Sanatan Dharam sees every one as a Hindu – in this case a person who practices non-violence (Hin – violence, Du – away from).
How can, then, a follower of this Hinduism be a fanatic?
Just because we have fanatics promoting their ‘revealed’ scriptures, their idea of what god is, does not mean they are promoting Hinduism. They are promoting just an aspect of it, their understanding of it.
The other beautiful part of Sanatan Dharam is the belief that we live in an illusion, a phantasm of a universe, or, as Michael Talbot puts it so brilliantly, a holographic universe. The concept of Maya, the illusion of reality, is the basis of Sanatan Dharam.
If everything is indeed an illusion created by our minds or our collective consciousness, we are but spots of mental activity in the ongoing flow of consciousness that is the basis of the universe.
An article on the mind, and Maya here: http://www.indianweekender.co.nz/Pages/ArticleDetails/25/1774/In-focus/Manas-the-Hindu-perspective-of-the-mind
The basis of Sanatan Dharam is the belief in the oneness of all – there is only one and no other. Everything is God, that flow of consciousness from which we emanate, like wavelets on a body of water. The wave has a form, separating it from the body of water but in reality is still the water. Some ideas here: http://www.indianweekender.co.nz/Pages/ArticleDetails/25/1376/In-focus/What-I-like-about-Hinduism

http://www.indianweekender.co.nz/Pages/ArticleDetails/25/1334/In-focus/The-importance-of-Karma-and-Vivek

For my son Parik – who celebrated his 25th on 11 April

When I sometimes meander in my thoughts,
And touch on things I hold dear
Topping this, right next to God, are you, my son.

I’d like to think I had something to do with
Moulding you into this great young man,
But I know it is not so:
You were born with a streak of goodness,
A sliver of heaven in you,
And I can’t take any credit for that.

As you start your next quarter century,
As you seek out what you are,
I will be watching with pleasure,
In anticipation of the goodness that
You will add to this world.

I know this because I know you: Love you

The Nautanki in the Naatak within the Drama

The drama of life: Life is like the projections of a cinema camera onto the cinema screen. The play of light, colour and flicker causes images to be portrayed onto the screen. There is no basis for the images, except for these elements coming together. Take away the screen and the projection is washed out into nothingness. Thus is the drama of life – the screen is the basis on which life takes place with all its interplay of emotions, living and dying. Take away the screen and nothing computes. God is like the screen on which everything else interplays, where everything is interwoven to make some sense. God is what life is projected on, the basis of life itself.

( I ) The Cosmic Drama
But because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. - Alan Watts

We moderns are too smart to be taken in by the concept of The Leela, where the Lord, in a spirit of joy (Ananda), creates the universe for his enjoyment and in which we are but puppets shunted around by the whims of the master string puller, the Cosmic Puppeteer.

It is hard to believe that we are just imaginations of a supreme being; of someone outside of ourselves who dreamt us up and is now controlling us – just as a video gamer can create an avatar and take part in an online game, interacting with several others in a similar situation.

It is hard to accept that we are someone’s or something’s figment of imagination; that what we se as a solid reality is nothing but a perception of the mind; a veiling of ‘that/tat’ to give rise to multifarious projections of reality.

No, we are too smart for believing anything like that. Why? Because we have been hammered with alternative beliefs – beliefs that actually work within this ‘real’ life, which can be proved again and again.

When science and logic tells us that we are beings of reason, a ‘super’ animal quite capable of looking after ourselves without a problem, and we have proven it by achieving such dramatic adventures as landing on the moon, probing Mars and plumbing the depths of our oceans, we see no reason to believe in a God who does not redress wrongs, allows suffering to carry on, and brings about death and destruction on both the innocent and wicked. This logical mind tells us that a God - should He/She/It exist - is unfair, an oxymoron (in some case a moron), and a projection or a mental aberration that is used by megalomaniacs to control people through awe and fear.

In our ‘logical/reasoning’ minds, God should not compute. Our minds work on seeing and experiencing, and what can be observed can believed in. Then, what is beyond the senses and beyond the comprehension of the mind, is beyond our knowledge and thus, beyond what we have to believe.

But the majority of the population of Earth just refuse to give up on the concept of a supernatural power that determines the cause and flow of our lives. While die-hard atheist (not all scientists are included here) would want us to believe that this a brainwashing of some kind, these ‘brain-washed people continue merrily with their lives, adoring a god of their choice to which they pay homage with the expectation for it to look after them in times of need and woe.

And they die proclaiming the existence of God (and with fingers crossed) hoping to be heading to a better place. They skilfully use logic and reasoning in all aspects of their lives but will not use it for their belief system, their belief in God.

And they have a good reason for it. Logic and reason appear to fail miserably in the ‘understanding’ of God, in fact, call it the paradox of God.

But that in itself is part the Leela. For one cannot comprehend things beyond its conditioned life. How can a plant understand the concept of travelling for pleasure, and while an animal can feel a whole gamut of emotions, the finer understandings with which we humans carry out our daily lives is beyond the ken of animals.

“Also the difference of condition in the world of beings is an obstacle to comprehension. For example: this mineral belongs to the mineral kingdom; however far it may rise, it can never comprehend the power of growth. The plants, the trees, whatever progress they may make, cannot conceive of the power of sight or the powers of the other senses; and the animal cannot imagine the condition of man, that is to say, his spiritual powers.” - Baha’i Faith

Humans are conditioned beings, even from before being born (keeping in mind the karmic burden we bring into each life of ours). From birth we are conditioned into certain behavioural patterns in addition to the karmic burden - from our parents and relatives, from our teachers and from all people we interact with. This forms our gunas, or attributes, our characteristics.

Such a well-conditioned mind is incapable of seeing beyond this conditioning, and thus it is religion (well, most of them, anyway) that sets out to recondition man in the image of God. That is what is meant by seeking Samadhi/seeking God, either through devotion, inquiry or doing good works.

According to monism, there is only One and no other. Everything in the universe is the One emanating into many; when the One chooses to become the many so to experience the many – at the same time, in real time. This is the leela.

When God, the One without attributes, the Nirakaar, the Absolute, chooses to start this leela, He (I use this as a convenient pronoun for God is without attributes) has to become the material cause of the world that he brings forth.

God has to surround itself, envelop itself with the ‘material’ of this universe (or universes). The material is the dream stuff of His dream, His leela. The natives of Australia are spot on in their interpretation of Creation as Dreamtime. They believe that every person essentially exists eternally in the Dreaming.

Hindu philosophy goes further by saying that only He exists and everything is a figment of His imagination. That the personality we display as individuals is the merriment (ananda) of God’s mind taking shape in multitudes of egos, engaging itself in multifarious activities, seeking every possible kind of outcomes for each and every kind of interaction and engagement life can have, and does have.

Only a mathematician could possibly appreciate the awe-inspiring ratio of possibilities these multitude of forms, each one of the trillions of forms itself faced with multitude of possibilities, and each of those possibilities having at least two choices in itself.

That is why one of Vishnu’s name attribute is Amitesh – he who permeates the universe as its material cause.

( II ) The Naatak – the drama we are involved in
The knowledge of the dreaming, the existence of God was placed into the minds of man. Ever wondered why man is the only ‘animal’ capable of seeking satisfaction outside of itself, in abstract reasons and understandings like peace, justice, love and kindness? Why we are ‘set above’ animals, not in our superiority in subjugating them, but in our understanding of seeking a purpose in life.
So, if everything is just a dream, an illusion, why does everything feel so real? Religions have their own interpretations of why this ephemeral world, ranging from the archaic where a god chooses to create the heavens, planets (Earth) seas, mountains, animals, other worlds and mankind in a number of days to the Vedantic postulation of Maya enveloping God so as to delude us from its reality.
Any number of reasons are given as why we live in this illusion, ranging from the falling from grace with God (the original sin) to the effects of karma to the vibrations of the anu (the atom)
Quantum physics states that everything in the most minute level is actually pure energy that is conscious, intelligent and living.

All things exist as energy from the lowest rate of vibration, the densest physical condensate of matter all the way to the highest rate of vibration in the universe, The Source, God. The Entire Universe is a Single Super Spectrum of Universal Energy.
The play of this energy is interpreted by our sense and the brain into a semblance of the reality, a very holographic interpretation that feel so real.
“Know that there are two kinds of knowledge: the knowledge of the essence of a thing, and the knowledge of its qualities. The essence of a thing is known through its qualities, otherwise it is unknown and hidden.” – Baha’i faith
Psychology also comes in to help us understand this better – the mind is a most powerful instrument. It is quite capable of building a world for itself, both in the dream state as well as in the waking stage. Only in the waking stage, such world-building activities are called neuroses, and are very likely to help you end up in a mental institute. Nevertheless, the capability of spawning a reality is inherent in each and everyone of us, and we do it on a very regular basis when we start day-dreaming.
Science tells us that subatomic particles are simply energy packets. You are a cluster of energy, so is everything else. A cluster of energy is always in motion, moving and changing to form new configuration at every moment. The table that is in your dining room is not as solid as it appears to be. On a highly magnified level, you would realize that it is in constant flux, “losing” and “gaining” billions of energy packets, but intelligently maintaining the overall “look” of a table There is a consciousness that keeps the energy in that particular form for our perception (or is that something we do).
What ‘helps’ us in stopping us from building our own individual realities is the collective consciousness we share. God, after all, is One, thus only one consciousness pervades the universe/s.
It is this universal consciousness – the Chith – that is responsible for holding the overall form of the universe/s, the planets, stars and other cosmic bodies, the forms of life and materials within each cosmic body, and the form of cells or the energy packets we have isolated in our verification of the ‘truth’.
And we are part of this conscious - sharing its forms, observing them through whatever little our senses are able to gather as information which is then analysed by our brains and offered to us as objects that we can understand.
Scientist says that all the electrons and subatomic particles of an atom are held together in their precise position and orbit by an invisible force, by which without it, everything would fall apart and reality as we know it, would cease to exist in an instant.

( III ) The Nautanki – the delusion of life through Attachment and Maya

He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
[God’s Labour: Sri Aurobindo]

Now the part where we, as personalised egos, take over is the nautanki of the universe/s. This is where we ‘clash’ as individuals, seeking out our satisfaction/place in the world by means of skills, cunningness or aggressiveness.

It is ongoing, this staged play in the great drama of life – birth, living, death, getting, forgetting, remembering, memorising. We are born, we are conditioned towards certain goals, we try to achieve them, we are either thwarted, or are successful and then we die. In dying we leave behind either weeping friends and relatives, or legacies or a sigh of relief from others.

We pin traditions to what we do and call it culture. We pin habits to our lives and call it character. We try to do good, we try to get away with it, constantly pushing the envelop – both physical and mental. We set up systems, we rage against other systems. We build our civilisations, we destroy others. We say we are lords of some domains and wage wars to protect, or we see other domains and lust after them.
We raise children so that we can leave behind something of ourselves when we are gone. We mould children in our images, using them to fulfil our unfulfilled dreams. We marry; for convenience, for lust, for love, to show off. We step out to do something extraordinary, no matter how trivial, or in bad taste it is. For we are built to do something, not just vegetate in our lives.

We are social animals, we are individuals with unalienable rights, we are pockets of similar-thinking people, or we are groups - a nation, a political boundary, a religion, a creed, or common cause.

Our minds are the formalised aspects of the Great Thought that is God.

What is the form of God?

Nalinesh Arun


Our ancients have variously tried to tell us what God looks like through our scriptures; some with success, others with interpretations that make little sense.

For purpose of clarity, let’s keep the two aspects of godhead – God and avatar – separate or else we will be very confused. God is beyond what we can apprehend with our minds; avatars, on the other hand, are sparks of divinity that choose to walk among us with a mortal body.

For example, Vishnu is godhead – Rama, Krishna, Buddha and others are aspects of Vishnu that took “birth” on Earth.

The same applies to Shiva – Dattatreya is an avatar of Shiva (or as some want it, a combined avatar of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva) and Dakshinamurti is Shiva in His aspect as a guru.

The cosmic form of God that most people are familiar with is the being with thousands of arms, thousands of heads all doing something. In a population of 7 billion, a thousands arms and heads is, well, peanuts. This ancient description of God as many-limbed and many-headed is of little relevance in a very populated world.

Then we have the individual godhead descriptions: Vishnu reclining on Sesha Naag on the Kshir Sagara; Brahma cross-legged on a lotus and Shiva meditating on Kailasha (or in a cemetery in some portrayals). The images we have of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva are artists impressions made from description of Godhead in our scriptures. By the way, none of these artists actually saw God but take their cues from someone else’s interpretation of God.

So, are these depictions nothing but fairy tales? Yes, and no.

Yes, because God cannot be visualised, not with our limited minds at least. It is an exercise in futility to paint God, or the Trimurti, or anything we call God. There is no way we can say God looks like this. Take a look at a collection of renditions of either Vishnu or Shiva. The face, the body types, etc are different in each rendition – what remains constant is the attire and the masculinity (or the femininity in case of our goddesses) of the figure. Each artist brought his or her own standard of beauty to the painting – some prefer oval faces, some elongated, but in each case region, religion and race played a part in the depiction of God in art.

Those cultures which like man with a moustache render Shiva with moustache; some others draw Krishna with almost feminine grace, others with a cherubic face even in a teen depiction. Our goddesses are all in the perfect dimension for a female – following the standards of beauty prevalent 50 to 100 years ago. Thankfully they will probably never be drawn as the waif-like, stick figures of womanhood as depicted in our modern ads.

These renditions of gods, and avatars, play a major part in our religious feelings for they are used as points of concentration for both our faith and for identifying ourselves to the world. With the coming of cinema, these paintings then became the launch pad for the various portrayals of God on the silver screen. The cumulative effect of this mistake has been that we generally end up divided on what our gods are really like. But that has already been written about http://www.indianweekender.co.nz/Pages/ArticleDetails/40/1244/Tongue-in-cheek/Bollywooding-of-Hinduism

On the other hand, we have to say ‘no, they are not really fairy tales’ because the depictions are based on imagery of Gods that our ancients used in order to tell us what God is. In telling us of God, the ancients first SPOKE of it through narrations and verses, then WROTE down that God was omnipresent, that He/She/It was everybody, and everything. And that God dwelt in everybody, and was able to experience everything that all others experienced, that God was the in-dweller in our hearts, our very soul – list goes on.

Writing down the experience of God task must have been formidable – for it is generally said that no word can describe the truth, the glory, the auspiciousness and the beauty of God. There is no language refined enough (although people think Sanskrit can do the job), to fully express the attributes (or lack thereof) of God. Even the sound of Aum (Om, Omkara), whilst closest in expressing the word of God, is not the actual word of God (we are saying Om is a thousand different ways).

Yet we tried, time and again, to express God in language, using everything from metaphors, imagery, symbolism, even idioms – every figure of speech has been used and we are no closer to express that which cannot be expressed, that can only be experienced.

We used words like glory, auspiciousness, purity and beauty and then had to resort to our own understanding of these words. It is the interpretation of these words that has led us into the mire that is religion today. And yet, it is this endeavour to express the inexpressible that actually led to the development of our languages.

Otherwise we would have been stuck with rudimentary language to explain the mundane things that happened to us everyday. The abstractions in language is only thanks to our efforts to understand that which cannot be understood.

Colour, of course, plays an important part in ‘understanding’ of God. For example, what personifies purity (Sattwa guna) better than white? So Vishnu reposes in a milk-white sea/sea of milk; Shiva is amidst the snow-capped Kailasha Parvat; Brahma is snowy-bearded, sometimes shown on a white swan, sometimes on a white lotus.

And Shiva the destroyer is dark, a herald of death and destruction (tamasic). In his Rudra aspect he is raging darkness itself (this was toned down a lot later in our history).

Both Rama and Krishna are also dark – but painted/portrayed in blue to show they are not really dark but the colour of rain-laden clouds (so such names as Megha Shyama come about). Some say the colour is of infinity itself, others says it a ‘whitewashing’ of the effect that our avatars were actually dark. Take your pick.

For Lakhsmi the colour of choice is red – rajasic – denoting activity, a go—getting attitude and, most importantly, commerce or success in commerce. We approach her to increase our fortunes.

She is, especially at Diwali, worshipped together with Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. Not a weird combination at all if the shifting of priorities is your only concern when it comes to worshipping. Ganesha needs to be there to remove any obstacles before Lakshmi can bestow bounty on you (can you see how we continually shift things about to suit us?).

The holy apparel (pitambara) is colour coordinated – the yellow throw-on over the shoulder is a favourite for Krishna; white dhotis largely for Vishnu and Rama. Durga is in blood-red sari to denote her avenging spirit. Kali, in tamasic mode, is in darker, even muddier, colours.

Parvati is seldom seen in lighter colours, in keeping with her position as the dark one’s (Shiva) consort. Saraswati is almost always in white – denoting the purity of the arts and learning.

It was always going to be a challenge to depict our gods – though some thought did go in the artistic impressions of them based on our scriptures. It did not start out as deliberate conning of the people because there was integrity in the making of it, but reliability took a back seat in the actual execution of it over millennia.

There is small story of how traditions begin, concerning a cat, a basket and a bowl of milk. In times past a priest offered a bowl of milk as an offering before a goddess at a festival time.

Because he owned a cat that got to the milk, he would ask his children to catch the cat, and hold it captive under an upturned basket. This became a regular ‘event’ during the festival prayers.

All and good for the first few generation when the kids and their kids understood why the cat had to be caught and held captive under a basket. But several generations down the line, whenever the prayers were held, a cat was caught (whether the family had a cat in residence or not) and then held captive under a basket. Because somewhere down the line, someone had forgotten the reason behind the catching of the cat and all had started thinking it was part of the rituals to have a cat under a basket present during the prayers.

A simplistic explanation but nevertheless one that sheds light on our many, many rituals that we really cannot understand.

And so it happened with our gods – someone rendered an image of god based on his understanding of what he/she had read in the scriptures (or following direction from someone who had a good understanding of what needed to go in the image).

Initially the rendition was copied faithfully and even improved on but given the timeline we have for Hinduism, the reasoning behind the renditions were all but forgotten.

Why does Vishnu hold a lotus and a disk in his hands? Why the gadha (mace)? Why does Shiva have a trishool, why is his hair matted, snakes around his neck and body covered with ash (sometimes)?

Why do some of our goddess hold a noose (depicting punishment?). And all of these are offset by the abhaya hasta – the mudra of protection, the palm raised in blessing.

These questions are asked not to look at why these ‘needhis’ or treasures are used for (Vishnu’s disk is used for chopping off heads) but to under stand the background – why was this particular weapon chosen?; why would they need a weapon at all?; why do our gods always have this war-like aspect to them?.

And why do gods have particular personal carriers when they have the power to move anywhere at will – Garuda, king of eagles for Vishnu; a bull for Shiva; Ganesha on a tiny mouse; Kartikeya on a peacock; Durga on a lion? Why is Surya’s charioteer legless? Just symbolism that has either lost its true meaning or has been rehashed over time to mean something different?

It is little wonder, then, that stories get woven about the Gods – how Shiva married (for the second time); how Ganesha got an elephant head (or how he was created out of the dirt of his mother’s body); how Vishnu took the form of a beauteous woman to con the rakhsas from getting their hand on the nectar of the gods; and how as Mohini, she/he had a son with Shiva called Ayyapan.

And it all spirals out of control as various ‘pundits’ move into explain the why and wherefores of our celestial families, adding explanation after explanation to things that cannot be explained off easily. Technically, of course, these explanations are impossibility as Godhead is a force/energy/spirit rather than actual beings. So, why did our ancients start off these ‘rumours’ of God in human form, and of their ‘families’?

Given the dumbing down of the concepts of God for followers of any particular religion, God had to be personified and thus we have God/gods in the image of humans (with some physical animal features thrown in) and reverse concepts such as man was created in the image of God. These concepts were acceptable when we thought the sun revolved around the earth and that we were the centre of the universe. But they are no longer valid as they are only people’s way of understanding God at the level that their minds allow.

Now consider a rishi or sage trying his or her best to make others understand the power of the universal or God, given an atmosphere where the others have no idea of this ‘type’ of God. The tools available to the rishi is only the language concepts that the others can understand – humanness, the emotions, aspects of nature, families, work, play, etc.

Straight off the limitations are apparent – where the mind cannot conceive a tangible aspect, the human psyche balks. So the concepts of omnipresence, omnipotent and omniscience are dumbed down so people could understand them.

What tools would a rishi have on hand to show the concept of God to people? Descriptions, essences, all words that were handy and understandable. The appellations for Vishnu, including names like Amitesh, mean that which permeates everything.

The question raised is: Was God already named Vishnu or was the name chosen by us to show one of his ‘abilities or essences’? Shiva means the auspicious one – note the use of ‘one’. Does this mean someone told someone that God was auspicious and in some language Shiva meant auspicious and they collectively named God “The Auspicious One” and thereby ending up with the name Shiva?

And by a name to God, God then just had to take on a personality. He/She/It became humanlike and gathered all the attributes of humans and humanity – but in large/better doses that made him/her/it divine. And God did not have faults like humans did, although God could get angry and be retributive but these were never considered faults as they were the divine rights of God.

And God had to be born, faced human-like conflicts with mighty being, sometime accepting temporary defeat as the stories spun out of control over the generations. All these stories, while humanising the supreme, left it a fallible entity, capable of weaknesses, judging wrongly and favouritism. Thus, we get “God’s own people”, “The Chosen Ones”, “Beloved of the Lord”, etc.

This, of course, is contrary to the basic make of Hinduism – where God is attributeless (nirguna), deathless, is never born, is eternal and does not have a form (nirakaar), always is forever (nitya). God is the basis, the very substance of the universe. As ‘Creator’ God could only create anything out of himself (the term is generally used). Out of the nabhi (navel) of Vishnu comes the Brahma, the creator. And his term of office is a thousand days and nights before everything is sucked in again at pralaya.

In the beginning we talked of Vishnu permeating the universe/s. Instead of seeing Vishnu reclining and a lotus coming out of him, let’s imagine a coalescing of matter to form a universe within Vishnu, with the starting point being Brahma and then an outward expansion of the said universe within the entity called God. Here we are contained in every aspect in the huge entity called God/Brahman. Brahman comes from the root ‘brh’ (to grow) and connotes immenseness that continues to grow or expand – sounds like a good definition of the growing universe.

In depictions of creation we see a large figure of Vishnu (in some cases Krishna) reclining at the top of the picture, with a lotus stalk growing out of his navel the end of which has a much smaller figure of Brahma sitting on it and then various aspects of creation emanating out of it. Given the limitations the painter had, it is a pretty good depiction because there is no way of showing the Brh (expansion and immensity) aspect of God otherwise. How can one show the immensity of God on a scrap of paper? But we tried.

So, our pictures of God are not fairy tales but neither are they really the whole truth. It is the best we have come so far in expressing God in art form and should be seen as such. There are great initially for the mind to comprehend some aspect of some understanding of God but each of us must strive to go beyond these just as a child moves beyond the kindergarten, into primary school, then secondary and finally to the tertiary level.

The truth of God is beyond the mind of man and so it is said that one has to go beyond the mind to ‘apprehend’ the truth. Most meditations then seek to still the vrittis (mental tendencies, or psycho-physical propensities) of the mind – the individual ideas or elements of thought are first isolated then ‘discarded’ to attain to the anandamaya kosa (the final of the paanch koshas that make the physical entity we call man) and then beyond it.

It is said that the universe is the apparel of the Lord – the Pitambara. And every planet, every star, every country, everything, is a part of the body of God. What this means is we are limited or contained within God, are essentially a part of God and are nothing beyond God. That is a good definition but again it is just words. To know it to be true (or otherwise) one has to actually experience it and that means getting down to embracing spirituality to know the truth.

For it is said that God cannot be known by worship, by rituals, by japa but only by experiencing God – through bhakti (becoming God through emotions/feelings) and jnana (comprehending God through the intellect). This does not mean worship, rituals, japa are wrong – they are an essential part of ‘purifying oneself on the road to knowledge. They are the first steps to godhead, a path to godhead, a means but not the end.

*And bhakti is jnana and jnan is bhakti. The fool separates the two, the wise see them as an essential one.

NOTES

In Sanskrit, "brihh" or "bruhh" means to grow, "brihad" or bruhad" means great and so on.

Some confuse Brahman with Brahmin, the name of a caste in India. Brahman is different from it and also from Brahma. Brahma is a Deity, in fact he is the very first created by the Lord to create the world. Whereas Brahman is an absolute reality, the original source, the one and the only God from which creation emerges; It is formless, omnipresent and omniscient, all powerful and absolute.

The term Brahman is not to be confused with:-
1) Brahma, the Creator God;
2) Brahmana, Vedic texts, nor with
3) brahmana, Hindu priest caste (English spelling: brahmin).

God created this Universe on His own initiative and ordained various codes for its upkeep and smooth running. There were rules of correct conduct for every individual and groups of people. These form the tenets of Dharma (Righteous Conduct). The word Dharma is derived from the root, Dhr, meaning 'wear'. Dharma means that which is worn or practiced. It is the holy apparel (Pithambara) of the Lord. Dharma guards both honour and dignity; protects and gives beauty and joy, lending charm to life. As clothes maintain the dignity of the person who wears them, Dharma protects the dignity of every country and its people. Every single country in the world, has its own special Dharma or unique duty. Every country (desha) is a part of the body (deha) of the Lord, and is protected by the Dharma that is practised.

Take the five elements, the components of this Prapancha (Universe). Of these, water has movement and coldness as its Dharma; combustion and light are the Dharma of fire. Each of the five elements have their unique Dharma. Humanity for man and animality for animals - these guard them from decline. How can fire be fire, if it has no power of combustion and light? It must manifest the Dharma to be itself. When it loses that, it becomes as lifeless as a piece of charcoal. Similarly man too has some natural characteristics that are his very life-breath; one can be identified as 'human' only when these abilities are present. To preserve and foster such qualities and abilities, certain modes of behaviour and lines of thought are laid down. This is called Dharma. These qualities are not imported from somewhere o utside, nor can it be removed. It is your own genuine nature, your uniqueness.