#nalin: sai baba

Showing posts with label sai baba. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

End of an era, beginning of another

Sai Baba’s passing mark the end of one era, the beginning of another

It is the passing of an era. Sathya Sai Baba, the focus of millions of devotees around the world, has left His body. Sai Baba died at 7.40am local time on Sunday at the Super Speciality Hospital which he had built for the poor. He had been on life support for a few weeks.

It is the passing of an era and the making way for a new one. For devotees, history has marked its path. We devotees need to look forward to the coming of the next sad guru, Prema Sai within eight years of this time in history.

The passing away of Sai Baba falls short of the time frame we devotees have been told of – He was supposed to leave his body in 2020 at the age of 96. But recently Sai Baba has been talking of leaving earlier as he felt his mission was nearing completion. This he has been saying for the past few year so it does not come as a surprise that he has left his mortal coil now.

The message of Sai Baba far superseded the many social works he was involved in. The unity that he proclaimed inspired millions around the world to work towards free education (with character); free medical and health services (with compassion); and commerce with conscience.

Working off the blueprint of free schools, free hospitals and free water supply that Sai Baba has in India, ardent devotees around the world put together similar programmes in the country of their origin. Even a small nation like Fiji has a free Sai school in Lautoka, passing many benefits to a nearby Fijian village.

Class, creed. colour did not matter to Sai Baba. I have celebrated Christmas with over 20,000 Christian followers at Puttaparthi, and enjoyed Eid, celebrated the Chinese New Year and Buddhist festivals there also. Sai Baba’s message of universal brotherhood/sisterhood remains true and has remained true for the past 60 plus years.

In many ways Prashanti Nilayam, in the village of Puttaparthi, was a United Nation of sorts. It is a place of which mixes humanity, almost like a cauldron in which gold is purified. Prashanti Nilayam teems with such a cross-section of people, of so many languages and so much culture it is hard to think of another similar place elsewhere.

While many will remember him for his miracles, Sai Baba himself paid little heed to that. His greatest achievement, he said, was the transformation of the human psyche, the real mission he said he was here for.

His lessons are well documented, in almost all languages. The scope of these lessons is what makes Sai Baba truly awesome – he had a true grasp of all the scriptures and made these easily available to all, including women.

Women, it is apparent, have a place of importance in Sai Baba’s teachings. His first school was for girls as he felt women needed that education to be able to make the right decisions. Women, he said time and again, were ready to lead the world. But he also demanded a lot of the women who followed his teachings – fortitude, compassion and understanding.

Sai Baba placed his faith in children for a better world. His organisation has a special wing where child development was taught. This wing is integral to the mission of service, devotion and education that he proclaimed around the world. The students from his various schools are making an impact worldwide, in various organisations, both commercial and social.

In the end his messages of Help Ever, Hurt Never; Love All, Serve All will be legacy he leaves behind.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Archive of Indian Weekender articles by yours truly

Friday, March 18, 2011

He is Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram

He is Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram

He is Everyman
And thing and thought.

Every action is His,
History is HIS STORY,
His is the making, the breaking and the mending,
His is the thinking, the thought and the imagining.

He is Everyman
And will and wont.

Every decisions is His,
Resolution is HIS SOLUTION
His is the assessing, the selecting and the judging
His is the custom, the tendency and the disposition.

He is Everyman
And passion and poise.

Every enjoyment is His,
Transport is HIS SPORT
His is the joy, the bliss and the rapture
His is the pride, the nobility and the aplomb

He is Everyman
And valour and veracity.

Every authority is His,
Rectitude is HIS ATTITUDE
His is the courage, the determination and the morality
His is the reality, the truth and the certainty

He is Everyman
And mercy and might.

Every outcome is His,
Efficacy is HIS ECSTASY
His is the compassion, the magnanimity and the deliverance
His is the power, the potency and the fulfilment

He is Everyman
And perfect and pure.

Every virtue is His,
Decency is HIS POTENCY
His is the ideal, the excellence and the magnificence
His is the innocence, the simplicity and the incorruptible

He is Everyman
And one and all

He is everything
Diverse is HIS UNIVERSE
His is the singularity, the particular, and the specific
His is the entirety, the inclusive and the whole

CIA – Constant Integrated Awareness

I move within, tethered to everything,
everything responding to me.

The flow is constant, un-abating.
Shockingly understandable, manageable.

Everything I know, is known to me,
The beginning and the end are only
words, drenched in meaning if we only
allow it to be.

Constant is the knowledge of IS, being and becoming, constantly.
Unvarying is the tempo, the movement of the knowledge,
Neither fast nor slow, just a flow
And I flow with it.

The message is integrated, related, included,
Nothing amiss, nothing missing
Melding into a oneness of knowing.

Who speaks, who hears, who says, who listens?
I do and I do and I do and I do.
What is said anew, a fresh – nothing.
Yet, I listen to it afresh, and then I listen again.
Each time in bliss, revelling in its novelty.

All in one and one in all, who to tell the message to?
Yet, the message is relayed, integrated into everything
Flowing, not flowing, there, and everywhere.

From every point, every dimension the message reverberates,
I AM, being, becoming, beckoning,
calling to all and calling to itself only.
What call is it?

The call to be LOVE,
to be all in LOVE,
to become LOVE,
to become all in LOVE.

The Universe

I expand, evolving into
the Universe,
Changing into IT, the divine.

My mind teeters, tottering in
the vastness, into the miniscule,
unable to comprehend,
constitute itself.

There is no anchor: freewheeling,
flying, the mind tries to grab
the debris of its existence.
A last dab at its being, its frothy
life of vicissitudes and vanity
just flimsy elements of film
that it cannot hold on to.

Brightness incomprehensible, beyond
anything the senses can grasp
has the mind reeling in a vortex.

Yet, something holds its all together.

What is it that gives me the firma
on which to see all these?

To see it in its oneness, in its
completeness, in its entirety.

What am I? to be able to experience
the interaction, the woven play,
the mesh of life and energy that is.

The I is not me, yet me, and all of me.
The I is everything, everyone, every and all.

What is is, what was is no longer
And what will be doesn’t exist.
Everything is now, the point, the dot,
the bindu sanyuktam, the origin.

Are we made anew every moment?
What is a moment in the place of no time,
in the space of a blink of an eye?

Expanding, the universe marks its own time,
its own rhythm. How miniscule our frames
of time and space, of past and future.
The mind, beset with its own parameters
cannot bring to bear the vastness into any confine.

Nor can it adjust to the minuteness of everything in it,
every tiny detail perfect in its place, deliberated to finest particularity
every facet sought out to its own brilliance.
Each fitting flawlessly into a lattice of life.

Beyond alpha and omega, beyond the finest calculation,
the universe expands in dimensions unknown,
writing its story, relaying its message, listening to it itself

Thursday, March 17, 2011

God's Name and Natural Disasters

God’s name and Natural Disasters

The 22 February earthquake in Christchurch once again brought to me how great is God’s name. We lost many lives this time around, the damage to the city is horrendous and it will be long time before anyone can be ‘normal’, if ever.

I was at work when the quake struck. At first I though it was just another of the hundreds of aftershocks we had experienced since last September. But no, this was going to be different as people started screaming and things started falling down off the desks and from the ceiling as the building swayed back and forth and the ceiling-height unbreakable glass window shattered.

When anything out of the ordinary happens I mentally say my name mantra “Sairam”. This is something that is ingrained me, something that I have been doing for the past 20 years. I found that the violence of the quake was so much that my mind was going blank. It took an effort to say “Sairam”. But when I finally did say it, a sense of calm descended on me. All this took place in less than five seconds – which is a lot of time in an earthquake.

The calm allowed me to carry out my duties as a fire warden for the floor I work in. It allowed me to herd out those people who were not out for lunch. As I waited on the fourth floor stair landing to allow people from the fifth and sixth floors to file past (we have well over a thousand people in one single building), I worried about my daughter who was in the central city and my son who was at home. That one single ‘Sairam” was all I had said but I knew, deep in my heart, it was enough to keep them safe.

But the mind plays its own games and as we wardens came out of the building last, my thoughts turned to my kids again. Had they said “Sairam”, were they alright? Was my son lying under the rubble of our house? How would I ever find my daughter in the city? People were trapped under rubble of buildings that just down the street from us, the Christ Church Cathedral, two blocks down, had crumbled. All communications were down.

To remember God in your direst need is enough, I found out. My son was okay, the house was still standing but almost everything inside had been damaged. My daughter had been in Cathedral Square with a friend, right in the thick of things (she took a picture as the Cathedral spire crumbled). Yes, she had said “Sairam” and yes, it did make her calm. And no, she had very little fear although people around her screaming. My son had also resorted to “Sairam”, and then started calling his sister on his mobile, to no avail. Being alone when a natural disaster strikes is not a situation anyone would want to be in. But then you are really never alone, are you?

The name of God is a very powerful weapon against adversity. Religion is as simple as this. To remember God’s name when you are in trouble, and when you are not. But as I had found out, it is very hard to remember God’s name when a force like a bomb blast is going off under the ground below. The mind starts going blank as the sensory receptors try to make sense of the overload of information coming in: the floor bucking, the lights and fittings swaying out to incredible angles, the sound of glass shattering, computer monitors flying off desks, people screaming, and the grinding, awful sound of the earthquake itself.

For me the five second lapse before I could force my mind to say “Sairam” was worrying. Thankfully God does protect people “as the eyelid protects the eyes” – instinctively and without thought. To go about your daily business knowing God is looking after you is a beautiful thing; to know God will look after you come what may is a thing of wonder.

I have found religion to be simple – it is a one-to-one with God. Identify one Isht Devata and stick to Him/Her. Posit everything on that one name, be it father, mother, guru, friend or kin. Make that relationship a living one, putting as much into it as you would with a relationship with your mother, your father, or your friend. Get rid of anything that hinders this relationship.

For me, God is Sathya Sai Baba, in his aspect of Sai Shiva. As a Hindu, you can choose from the hundreds of names and forms that we have given the One God over the past few millennia - just make it yours, as truly as you would give a name to a child when it is born and make it yours. Imagine all the time, effort and love you pour into a child and do the same for God.

Remembering God’s name comes from practice, so that it forms an unbreakable habit. There are two ways to do this: constantly reciting the name or the mantra mentally and, as some people find it easier to do, substituting everyday things with the name or mantra. What we as a family do is an example (it may right, it may be wrong but it works for us): we say “Sairam” to virtually everything when we are together. We have replaced our good mornings, hello, exclamations, etc with “Sairam”. Uttering “Sairam” with different nuances gives it different meanings – it can replace ‘Oh my God’, ‘excuse me’, ‘please’ just in the way it is said. It took years of practice but it is now a family habit.

Another thing we do as a family is the reverence we offer to Mother Earth. I have talked much about Mother Earth in the article “The Earth Owns Us” in this site. Bhu Devi/Bhoomi Devi is our mother. We say this a lot at our religious gatherings but we must mean it, not just pay lip-service to this hoary adage. It should not just be a thing understood at an intellectual level but be an integral part of our lives.

When I say pay reverence I don’t mean doing pooja. Mother Earth does not need special rites and rituals to be respected. There are everyday things we can – give thanks for the food we eat, respect trees by not cutting them down unless we have to and loving the animals around. In an urban environment, it could the birds that we complain about making a mess of our compounds. It is better to keep your environment clean, and thereby pest free, than whipping out the canister of poison for the flies, mosquitoes, rodents and cockroaches.

Sometimes we just have to kill them. In that case, do as the so-called primitive people do when hunting: they thanked the animal they killed for giving up their lives to feed the hunters. When you kill pests, take a moment to apologise. They are pests because of their nature, their Karma, if you will have it. They are not out to get you.

Keeping with older traditions, I will not shorten the life of a flower by plucking it; I will pass a tree and touch it if I can, seeking its blessing. It could a simple thing like brushing my head against the leaves and saying a mental ‘hello’, caressing the trunk, or actually hugging it when no one is around.

One of the most important thing is actually asking the tree/plant its permission when picking its fruit. You can pooh pah it as an old wives tale but science has established plants have a consciousness of their own and will react to response, positive and negative.

Modern life has divorced us from Mother Earth. We no longer really appreciate the bounty Mother Earth has in store for us, nor the life She has created for us. Instead we see our food coming from supermarket shelves. To hear a child say milk comes from the supermarket shelf and not knowing it comes from a cow is disheartening in that we are so separated from the natural things around us.

Too many young people in urban centres don’t know or don’t care of the primary industries that is the fuel of our lives. They see products coming from factories into stores and that is a fact for them. By unhinging ourselves from the lifeline of the earth, we have divorced ourselves from nature. For too many, nature has now become walking tracks, the beaches, the ‘wildlife’ in zoos, the camping in hi-tech vehicles, something we see on TV - a subset of life apart from the “reality of everyday life”.

And then when nature strikes we can’t believe what is happening. It is unacceptable. Yet, it is but a fact of life that natural disasters will happen. There appears to be no ‘cure’ or prevention for natural disasters. But hopefully this article is clear in saying there is a way of ensuring safety.

These ‘random’ acts of violence will happen, again and again. I have lost count of the number of cyclones I have been through in Fiji, and then these two earthquakes in Christchurch have had a major impact on my life. All through this, the name of God and the reverence for Mother Earth have been the only stability to rely on in making it through unscathed. It is a humbling aspect as well as wondrous phenomenon – that a power exists that can look after you because you have established a relationship with it.

It is a loving relationship, with all its concomitants: including the tiffs, the exasperation, the uncertainty, the withdrawals. Even with the anger and frustration, I have noticed that God will come through to protect you, anywhere, anytime. This protection is a verified aspect of God in all our scriptures, in Hinduism, in Christianity, in Buddhism, in any faith that posits a loving and caring God.

All these scriptures clearly show the way of establishing this one-to-one relationship with God. It behoves us as human beings to look for these ways of establishing the relationship for it may be the only way to be stable in an increasing unstable environment.

It is time for the Hindu to become a better Hindu, the Muslim a better Muslim, the Christian a better Christian. Don’t believe that your faith is the only right one – if it was there would not be any other faith at all. See any particular faith as a path denoted by the forefathers to show a people the best way designed for their temperament. Religions are designed as paths to godhead through processes that worked before and continue to work today. Only much of the real message is lost among the multitude of processes and God has become hidden in mechanical routine. Seek and ye shall find. Call His/Her name and you will be answered.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Why?

The One Lord has come down to Earth
What are we to do?
The One Lord walks amongst us,
Striding tall for such a short being
What are we to do?
He smiles the smile of love
Awaking us to possibilities
Hastening us to Oneness
What are we to do?
Time rolls on,
We waste and want in vain
Never really knowing what to want
But wanting nevertheless
Happiness? Longevity? Riches?
Who wants wisdom?
Street smarts is in, wisdom out of vogue
What are we to do?
He assails us with love, we want miracles
He besets our mind with wisdom
We want trinkets
What are we to do?
Somewhere down the line we will want what He wants
Where is the line and when is somewhere?
If we could only do what he wants
Life would be great, life would be life
But what does he want?
And what we to do?
Trouble in the world, death, disaster, dreariness
Trouble in our minds, care, corruption and callousness
Trouble inside, trouble outside
What are we to do?
A loving hand, arm of faith, He offers everyone
We set conditions that he won’t meet
Trifles we seek and riches He offers
Yet we know not what he gives, what He offers
Times are changing, ways falling by the wayside
Time ticks on, hastening our demise
He walks alone, none to accompany Him
Berated, loved, accused, wanted,
He walks alone, alone on a path he chose.
Who will walk with Him, in His footsteps,
Matching His stride, becoming God?
Who will master His example, go where he dwells,
Take what He offers, make Him his own?
Who will become the iron that reaches for His magnet?
The gold purified in His crucible?
Love is such a wonderful word, never really understood
Lust is what we all feel, love more a forlorn feeling
Yearn we must, but for whom?
What are we to do?
Yearn for God, what is God, where is God?
I look inside and see blackness, with points of light.
Which is God, the light or the darkness?
What is me inside, not the me outside?
I seek, I soar, I plummet and fall
Never knowing where I am
What is there to do – it should be easy
This way to God – why is it difficult, going home?
Why is going home so hard to do?
Why shouldn’t it be the easiest thing to do?
God is out father, our mother, our kin
Yet why all the need for austerities, the sadhnas?
Don’t tell me it is just the way it should be done.
Who is to say why it should be done thus and not another way?
I want to be able to slip into my home without giving notice,
Without begging to be let in, without having to ask to be let in
It should be my right, as man who is God
Mulling in meditation, my mind wanders.
I am told harness the mind to better things –
What better things?
I am told yearn for God
Define God
I am God, why can’t I just go home
Where is home?
Inside me, in that pitch blackness of nothing,
Or in the points of lights that threaten to go out if you concentrate too much
Mind wanders, all is infatuation, great!
Is my love for God an infatuation also?
Then what is this thing called love?
Mere affection shifted from the world to God?
Define God
And what is the outcome of this shift,
Affection for God, positing all the feelings of the world
Onto a chimera that we are unable to define?
Is Sai a chimera, as is the world?
Then what be His purpose? His raison d'etre?
His modus operandi can be understood but His reason behind doing it?
Why has He come? Are we in deep trouble?
Trouble of whose making? Where is the Golden Age?
Why the strife before the goodness? Is it an integral part of this life?
Why can’t we all be just good to start off with?
I was a rock, what sins/mistakes did I commit to have this life?
What did fate weave for me that I am who I am now?
What harm did I do as a vegetable, did I sin as an animal?
I was just following my dharma then, what made me into a human?
Being a human is a bad thing, I had to meander around for many lives
Before the thought of God was generated into me?
And now I meander, hopelessly, yearning for God
Who stands apart, aloof, waiting for me to make all the moves.
One step from me, then He will take 10 from His side?
Why won’t He cuddle me, He who says He is my mother, my father?
Why is he waiting for Me to make a move?
Have I not been moving all this while?
Where was He when I was committing those sins
That shoved me further away, drew up this barrier between me and Him?
Busy? With what? Making the world go round?
Manning the lights for the cosmic highway? Directing the traffic?
Grow up God, You want us, come get us
Why put us through this misery we call life to purify us.
All is God, what is there to purify, what is there to work towards?
Open up the gate, we stand waiting to enter, whatever it is that needs to be entered
Or become, whatever it is we will become.
There are so many obstacles to You, Sai. Why?
Who put this obstacles in my path, Me?
I don’t think so. I don’t believe so. I will not believe so.
Why would I, moving towards God, choose to plant pitfalls
Rather then a highway to Godhead?
Maya should be the great helper in our move (I won’t call it a quest) to You
Not the harridan she is made out to be
I stopped reading Kabir when he called Maya a harlot
Is she? Why would she be so? I see no reason whatsoever.
The defect, if any, resides in you, My Lord.
You have kept us at arms length, teasing us, playing with us.
In Your Olympian stance, you have not yearned for us
And yet you want us to yearn for you.
You say you want devotees yet we can never get close
You won’t let us: we are not pure enough, we are not good enough
And now we are not God enough
What other obstacle course will you have for us
When we somehow trip over and come clambering after You this time?
My road is mapped and I believe this life is going to waste
I can’t be noble, I can’t be selfless, I can’t be honourable
Although I want it with all my heart
I want riches, for myself, and for others. This can’t be selfish
Why would the world wallow in money and I wallow in misery
What goodness can come from misery? From tragedy?
Is it the fear that makes us good – not the need to be good?
What kind of goodness is this, that is based on fear?
Fear of punishment by karma, fear of God getting angry?
Is earth nothing but a penal colony, wrought to work out the sins of man?
Where is the love You promised? That You forever hold out to us?
Hold out on us?
What are we to do?
What steps to take? The ones prescribed by You promises something
If only we do so many things, follow the rigid rules
Why can’t we love, in the way it is promised?
My sadhna is pitiful, why won’t You come rushing to help me along?
Too soon? When will it be the right time?
When the life has gone out of me, my eyes are dimmed, my mind numb,
my brain fouled with life? Why do You even let this happen? This so called foulness that creeps in over lifetimes, why allow it to happen at all?
Was I better off as a rock, maybe a vegetable, an animal?
They do not sin, their dharma is set,
What man was I to even start incurring sin, what did I do wrong
That I now have to pay for it? Why am I paying for something that you did?
You set it in motion, you prodded and pondered, you set the outcomes
Why must I pay for it?
I want out, I want to go back to where I came from.
This individuality must go, if not
This misery must go.
I want to be happy, content, doing what is natural
What is natural? Everything seems alien, I can’t do anything that gives me happiness
Why can’t I be happy, especially since God walks the Earth?

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Know thyself - some questions to ask yourself

Sages go out into lonely, isolated and quiet place, away from the world to know themselves. They control their senses, allowing themselves to then control their thoughts. The generation of thoughts is what makes us us – the personality, the ego is nothing but a collection of thoughts that have ‘solidified’ into habits and which gives us our character.

This so called ‘basis’ of our character then chooses to make decisions for us: what we like, what we dislike, what reactions to have to these likes and dislikes.

The best ideas have sprung from people who gave themselves time to be alone with themselves, to think out things, to not allow the world to own you.

See this as NOT an incarceration, but an opportunity to spend time with yourself. Your real self.

Fight those moments of loneliness, self-pity and morbidity.

An exercise to know yourself

Go through the following: note down your responses or thoughts.

Some are questions that you need to answer honestly without resorting to clichés or other people’s opinions. Others are thought provokers which can be turned into questions or bring to mind what needs to be known. Others still will set you on the path to ask for more information (hopefully).

Who you are
What you are
What you want to do
What can you do
What can’t you do

Why you should change
What is stopping you from changing
What action you need to take
Why should you take it

What options are open to you
Can someone help
Should you ask for help
Why can’t you ask for help
What is stopping you from asking
The outside world and what it does
The world inside you
Your thoughts
Your emotions
Your needs
Your wants

Control
Control what
What is control
Tools of control
Why they work
What needs to be done
Falling back into ….depression, morbidity, anger, pain, humiliation

Anger

The greatest enemy
How it brews
What sparks it
What can be done

Desire

The need to take stock
The advertising phenomenon
Seeing is wanting
Controlling the want
Self discipline
The need to answer to yourself
No outside authority
Nothing can stop you, except yourself
Nothing can motivate you, except yourself
Taking control of yourself

Your self

Who is yourself
What is mine
Who is this owner that says ‘mine’
Being the owner
Identifying with the self

Who are you

Your name is a tag
Your body is a vehicle
Your thoughts are sense-related
Your emotions are desire-related
Your feelings are frothy
Who are you

Where do you come from
Your childhood
Blaming them
Remain unshaken
What shakes you
Everything is based on anger

Where does anger come from
Where can you keep it
Looking after anger
Making it do what you want
The good side of anger

Your temper
Losing it
Finding it
Making it your friend

Why is the world so cruel
What is wrong with the world
What is wrong with your world
What is wrong with his world
What is wrong with their world

Going to hell in a basket
The one-way ticket to hell
The arrival
What happens in hell
Sight-seeing hell
Taking yourself away from the pain
Going back

Fighting back
Revenge – the cold dish warmed up time and again
Getting back at ‘them’
Who is to blame

The loneliness
Why need constant communications
Why do we need to know
Getting to know yourself
Getting to like yourself
You are your best friend
What is a friend
The role of a friend
Coming home to yourself
Once you are home, where else do you need to be
Taking your home with you

Beauty
The world is beautiful
Getting to know this beautiful world
Taking it with you
Spreading the beauty around

Who do you need
Are you enough for yourself
Do you need others
Enjoying with others
Who are these others
Why you need them
Why they don’t need you
Why do they need you

He is Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram

He is Everyman.
And thing and thought.

Every action is His,
History is HIS STORY,
His is the making, the breaking and the mending,
His is the thinking, the thought and the imagining.

He is Everyman
And will and wont.

Every decisions is His,
Resolution is HIS SOLUTION
His is the assessing, the selecting and the judging
His is the custom, the tendency and the disposition.

He is Everyman
And passion and poise.

Every enjoyment is His,
Transport is HIS SPORT
His is the joy, the bliss and the rapture
His is the pride, the nobility and the aplomb

He is Everyman
And valour and veracity.

Every authority is His,
Rectitude is HIS ATTITUDE
His is the courage, the determination and the morality
His is the reality, the truth and the certainty

He is Everyman
And mercy and might.

Every outcome is His,
Efficacy is HIS ECSTASY
His is the compassion, the magnanimity and the deliverance
His is the power, the potency and the fulfilment

He is Everyman
And perfect and pure.

Every virtue is His,
Decency is HIS POTENCY
His is the ideal, the excellence and the magnificence
His is the innocence, the simplicity and the incorruptible

He is Everyman
And one and all

He is everything
Diverse is HIS UNIVERSE
His is the singularity, the particular, and the specific
His is the entirety, the inclusive and the whole

Delusion … how we cheat ourselves

Just had a talk with a Sri Lankan friend of mine: he mentioned his uncle, a Theosophist and one whom he considered to be delusional. My reply was that each one of us, in some manner or other, is delusional.

It brought to the forefront the idea that we all really are delusional, each living in his or hers own made-up world of reality, each probing the world with a set of standards that give rise to judgements like “he is delusional”. The delusion of the person judged is as real to him as our ‘reality’ is to us.

My delusion is that there is a God. That a power greater than our mind or abilities is guiding the universe through its pace. For want of a better word, God is what all of us call him/her, it. and then we choose to put onto this great power a tag of our own making based on what we know of him/her/it. It could Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, Krishna, Buddha…the list is endless.

My Lord and Lady, Sai Baba says there is only one God and the wise know Him by many names. To add to that I would like to say the foolish know Him by just the one name and believe it is the only right one.

Now the various religions give their own ‘delusional’ interpretation of what God is.

What is God?
My take on this delusion

I settle for the “Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent” with the additional rider “The Great Director of Life”.

Just being omniscient (all knowing) means God knows all
Just being Omnipresent mean God is everywhere
Just being Omnipotent means God is all powerful

This would make God the basis of everything. The operating system of the universe if you will have it.

Yet there is definite design to what is happening around us. It was Albert Einstein who said that God does not play dice with the universe, and He doesn’t (pardon me for using the He epithet – it is easier than typing out all of them). He lovingly decides the path for each of us, and for all of us. For clans, for tribes, for nations, for civilisations. Not a leaf moves in the wind without His knowledge or permission.

When we take the sometimes conflicting and contradictory aspects of God in the various religions and try to make sense of them all, it is little wonder that a large chuck of humanity would prefer not to know Him.

God is the function inside of us that determines our actions through the conscience. He is the doer. We believe it to be ourselves doing the action but that is not so. Think of three separate entities: the body, the mind and soul.

The body is the equipment, the mind the information gathering/analytical function and the soul (that untarnished pervading thing that makes up the stuff of the universe) the actual thing that decides what we do, say, think, etc.

Thus He is Omnipresent, in all living beings and even in the inanimate, expressing Himself at different levels of consciousness. Each form that we see is impelled by the will of God, to the extent whatever we have compiled as our experiences is just a diary of events of God’s action.

At the lowest understanding we are drones that God uses to enjoy His own creation. By giving leeway to the mind, we develop a personality and an ego. That is our collective delusion.

Now we can group ourselves in what I would call delusional cluster or belief/creed factions. Then we decide our factional delusions is the right one and the rest of them are wrong. This is called religion but are nothing more than sects ort cults.

There is only one true religion, the religion of the heart. When one sees another, and all others, as an aspect of himself, and as an aspect of God, he can’t help being good to all. For being anything else would mean you are treating yourself as you have treated the ‘other’. There is no other.

God is the Primal Cause and the Primal Substance of the Universe. The cause we can understand but it is a little harder to understand the substance.

When God created, what did he create the universe out of. Himself/herself/itself. All of the Universe is but God. Than everything we see, hear, touch, etc is but God. How can it be otherwise?

At a higher understanding, we are God impersonating as humans. My Lord and Lady Sai Baba says he is God and so is every one else. The only difference is that He knows he is God and we don’t.

That’s it. We don’t know we are God. All we have to do is to know we are God.

To know is to accept as the truth, the reality. Once we ‘know’ in it fullest sense, we will be God.

More later

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

With such beginnings......

I started this blog as part of my social media workshop. I hope to continue this and also hope there will be people out there who may follow it.

In the grand scope of things this is a miniscule projection of information into the media called the Internet.

There are many thing we could think about but the end of times is as good a start as anything.

The last few years has seen an increase in the awareness of what we are doing to the planet. Gaia, our mother, is in a sore disposition over our reckless use of her. Can't blame her.

For Gaia we are but one of the millions species that she propagates and sustains. Granted that as a specie, we are rather advanced and that we do know or are aware at a more advanced level than other species. Nevertheless we are but one.

Let’s see it from her point of view. You do know that Gaia is a living entity with a high level of awareness, maybe more than the combined awareness of all humans, don’t you?
Over 6 billion of one of the most destructive of species is running rampant on the planet. Other species are endangered, some have become extinct and this trend is escalating. The waterways are poisoned, the land is poisoned, the air is posoned, the level of ‘use’ of other resources has risen to an unprecedented level.

Over a billion of that particular species are at the tail-end of the resource chain, eking a living out of ruined land or from scavenging. A child dies of hunger every five minutes.

If you were a mother to the entire human population (as well as the other living entities), what would you do?

You would scream for help.

That is what Mother Gaia is presently doing – just screaming. God forbid that she starts to hit out in a temper if we continue our rampaging pillage of the earth.

More next time