They were wrong. Never give up. Click the link to watch the video

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The mischievious childhood. Speaking the truth. Osho.

I was continually asked to be truthful. And I said to my father, "Whenever you say to me to be truthful, you have to remember one thing, that truth has to be rewarded; otherwise you are forcing me not to be truthful. I am willing."

Very easily I figured out that truth does not pay: you are punished. Lies pay; you are rewarded. Now it was a question of very decisive, very great importance. So I made it clear to my parents that it had to be understood clearly: "If you want me to be truthful then truth has to be rewarded, and not in a future life but here and now, because I am being truthful here and now. And if truth is not rewarded, if I am punished for it, then you are forcing me to lie. So let this be clearly understood; then there is no problem for me, I will always be truthful."

I don't think that every child tries to figure it out and makes a clear-cut contract with the parents. But this became a contract with my father. Howsoever the truth was against him, his morality, his family, his society, his respect, that did not matter; what mattered was that I was true. And for that I needed immediate reward, "Otherwise next time you know I will say what you want to hear -- but remember, it will be a lie."

The day that for the first time I said this to my father, he said, "Let me think it over, because you seem to be tricky. You are putting me into a subtle net. You do some mischief and are truthful, and I will have to reward you for your mischief"

I said, "It is your business to decide whether you want me to be truthful or not. Anyway I am going to do what I want to do. The mischief would have happened anyway. It has happened, only afterwards the question arises to be true or to be untrue. So why bring mischief into it? It has already happened. Now nothing can be done about it. You cannot undo it.

What can be done is: you can force me to lie, and I can lie. And I can lie with such a face that you will think I am absolutely truthful. I will learn. If that is the way, then let that be the way, but remember, you have been responsible for distracting me from truth because you were rewarding lies and punishing the truth. You can think it over. I am not in a hurry. You are asking me."

What had happened was that, living two or three blocks away from my family was a brahmin family, very orthodox brahmins. Brahmins cut all their hair and just leave a small part on the seventh chakra on the head uncut so that part goes on growing. They go on tying it and keeping it inside their cap or inside their turban. And what I had done was, I had cut the father's hair. In summertime in India, people sleep outside the house, on the street. They bring their beds, cots, on the streets. The whole town sleeps on the streets in the night, it is so hot inside.

So this brahmin was sleeping -- and it was not my fault... he had such a long choti; it is called choti, that bunch of hair. I had never seen it because it was always hidden inside his turban. While he was sleeping, it was hanging down and touching the street. From his cot it was so long that I was tempted, I could not resist; I rushed home, brought the scissors, cut it off completely and took it and kept it in my room.

In the morning he must have found that it was gone. he could not believe it because his whole purity was in it, his whole religion was in it -- his whole spirituality was destroyed. But everybody in the neighborhood knew that if anything goes wrong... first they would rush to me. And he came immediately. I was sitting outside knowing well that he would come in the morning. He looked at me. I also looked at him. He said to me, "What are you looking at?"

I said, "What are you looking at? Same thing."

He said, "Same thing?"

I said, "Yes. The same thing. You name it.

He asked, "Where is your father? I don't want to talk to you at all."

He went in. He brought my father out and my father said, "Have you done anything to this man?"

I said, "I have not done anything to this man, but I have cut a choti which certainly cannot belong to this man, because when I was cutting it, what was he doing? He could have prevented it."

The man said, "I was asleep."

I said, "If I had cut your finger while you were asleep, would you have remained asleep?"

He said, "How could I remain asleep if somebody was cutting my finger?"

I said, "That certainly shows that hairs are dead. You can cut them but a person is not hurt, no blood comes out. So what is the fuss about? A dead thing was hanging there... and I thought that you are unnecessarily carrying this dead thing inside your turban for your whole life -- why not relieve you? It is in my room. And with my father I have the contract to be true."

So I brought out his choti and said, "If you are so interested in it, you can take it back. If it is your spirituality, your brahminism, you can keep it tied and put it inside your turban. It is dead anyway; it was dead when it was attached to you, it was dead when I detached it. You can keep it inside your turban."

And I asked my father, "My reward?" -- in front of that man.

That man said, "What reward is he asking for?"

My father said, "This is the trouble. Yesterday he proposed a contract that if he speaks the truth... and sincerely; he is not only speaking the truth, he is even giving the proof He has told the whole story -- and even has logic behind it -- that it was a dead thing so why be bothered with a dead thing? And he is not hiding anything."

He rewarded me with five rupees. In those days, in that small village, five rupees was a great reward. The man was mad at my father. He said, "You will spoil this child. You should beat him rather than giving him five rupees. Now he will cut other people's chotis. If he gets five rupees per choti, all the brahmins of the town are finished, because they are all sleeping outside in the night; and when you are sleeping you cannot go on holding your choti in your hand. And what are you doing? -- this will become a precedent."

- OSHO




Book - From Ignorance To Innocence
Chapter # 14
Chapter Name - Society Crowds You Out, Religion Outs Your Crowd

How to Join AAM AADMI Party (AAP)

But we see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical reality. It is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and remain unmoved by his pain?” Bhagavan Ramana answers

Another visitor, who said that he was from Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram, asked Bhagavan: “But we see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical reality. It is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and remain unmoved by his pain?”

Bhagavan: From the point of view of jnana or the reality, the pain you speak of is certainly a dream, as is the world of which the pain is an infinitesimal part. In the dream also you yourself feel hunger. You see others suffering hunger. You feed yourself and, moved by pity, feed the others that you find suffering from hunger. So long as the dream lasted, all those pains were quite as real as you now think the pain you see in the world to be. It was only when you woke up that you discovered that the pain in the dream was unreal. You might have eaten to the full and gone to sleep. You dream that you work hard and long in the hot sun all day, are tired and hungry and want to eat a lot. Then you get up and find

your stomach is full and you have not stirred out of your bed. But all this is not to say that while you are in the dream you can act as if the pain you feel there is not real. The hunger in the dream has to be assuaged by the food in the dream. The fellow beings you found in the dream so hungry had to be provided with food in that dream. You can never mix up the two states, the dream and the waking state. Till you reach the state of jnana and thus wake out of this maya, you must do social service by relieving suffering whenever you see it. But even then you must do it, as we are told, without ahamkara, i.e., without the sense “I am the doer,” but feeling, “I am the Lord’s tool.” Similarly one must not be conceited, “I am helping a man below me. He needs help. I am in a position to help. I am superior and he inferior.” But you must help the man as a means of worshipping God in that man. All such service too is for the Self, not for anybody else.You are not helping anybody else, but only yourself.

Mr. T.P. Ramachandra Aiyar said in this connection, “There is the classic example of Abraham Lincoln, who helped a pig to get out of a ditch and in the process had himself and his clothes dirtied. When questioned why he took so much trouble, he replied, ‘I did it to put an end not so much to the pig’s trouble, as to my own pain in seeing the poor thing struggle to get out of the ditch’.”

Pyar Aur Mamta - Osho

WHY ARE ONLY YOU ENLIGHTENED AND FOR EXAMPLE NOT ME, OR THE POPE, OR THE WHOLE WORLD? Osho

Ques:WHY ARE ONLY YOU ENLIGHTENED AND FOR EXAMPLE NOT ME, OR THE POPE, OR THE WHOLE WORLD?

OSHO:Why are only you the journalist? why not me? why not the pope?

why not Ronald Reagan? Do you think these are questions worth answering? That's why I have to see them. Idiots are all around.

One thing I must say: there was another man who was enlightened who died just a few days ago, J.Krishnamurti.

The question of "Why?" you should ask yourself. Why are you miserable? Why are you sleeping when you have the capacity to be awake? Perhaps you are having a beautiful dream: perhaps you are making love to your neighbor's wife, and you don't want to be awakened.

I simply decided that if sleep is going to be my existence, it is not for me, because it is almost close to death. Either I have to be awakened or dead, but I will not be in the limbo of a sleepy existence.

When you move like a robot, work like a robot, live like a robot and one day die like a robot, you have not decided it. The burden is on you to prove why you have not decided to be enlightened.

And you have some guts. You are asking me... It is only a question of decision, decision to be free, decision to be awake, decision to be blissful whatever the cost. You are not ready to pay the cost; that's why you are not enlightened.

The cost means I had to lose my family, I had to lose my nation, I had to lose my religion, I had to lose everything. But I was ready: whatever the cost I am going to be enlightened. It happens only in your absolute aloneness, and for that aloneness you have to drop many things which you think are very valuable. You have to drop respectability, you have to drop ambition, you have to drop false knowledge, you have to drop your ego.

If you are ready to do it, you can become enlightened this very moment. Not even a single moment does it have to be postponed.

Enlightenment is your nature.

You already have it; you are just not aware of it.

~OshO.♥

A must read for every Kriya Yogi - An article from Paramhansa Yogananda

The Science of Kriya Yoga

The science of Kriya Yoga, mentioned so often in these pages, became widely known in modern India through the instrumentality of Lahiri Mahasaya, my guru’s guru. The Sanskrit root of Kriya is kri, to do, to act and react; the same root is found in the word karma, the natural principle of cause and effect. Kriya Yoga is thus “union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite.” A yogi who faithfully follows its technique is gradually freed from karma or the universal chain of causation.

Because of certain ancient yogic injunctions, I cannot give a full explanation of Kriya Yoga in the pages of a book intended for the general public. The actual technique must be learned from a Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi; here a broad reference must suffice.

Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers.1 By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to dematerialize at will.

Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages.

“The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples.”

Kriya Yoga is referred to by Krishna, India’s greatest prophet, in a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita: “Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control.” 2 The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests decay in the body by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth in the body by apan (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control.”

Krishna also relates 3 that it was he, in a former incarnation, who communicated the indestructible yoga to an ancient illuminato, Vivasvat, who gave it to Manu, the great legislator.4 He, in turn, instructed Ikshwaku, the father of India’s solar warrior dynasty. Passing thus from one to another, the royal yoga was guarded by the rishis until the coming of the materialistic ages.5 Then, due to priestly secrecy and man’s indifference, the sacred knowledge gradually became inaccessible.

Kriya Yoga is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost exponent of yoga, who wrote: “Kriya Yoga consists of body discipline, mental control, and meditating on Aum.” 6 Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum heard in meditation.7 Aum is the Creative Word,8 the sound of the Vibratory Motor. Even the yoga-beginner soon inwardly hears the wondrous sound of Aum. Receiving this blissful spiritual encouragement, the devotee becomes assured that he is in actual touch with divine realms.
Patanjali refers a second time to the life-control or Kriya technique thus: “Liberation can be accomplished by that pranayama which is attained by disjoining the course of inspiration and expiration.” 9

St. Paul knew Kriya Yoga, or a technique very similar to it, by which he could switch life currents to and from the senses. He was therefore able to say: “Verily, I protest by our rejoicing which I have in Christ, I die daily.” 10 By daily withdrawing his bodily life force, he united it by yoga union with the rejoicing (eternal bliss) of the Christ consciousness. In that felicitous state, he was consciously aware of being dead to the delusive sensory world of maya.

In the initial states of God-contact (sabikalpa samadhi) the devotee’s consciousness merges with the Cosmic Spirit; his life force is withdrawn from the body, which appears “dead,” or motionless and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states (nirbikalpa samadhi), however, he communes with God without bodily fixation, and in his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the midst of exacting worldly duties.11

“Kriya Yoga is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened,” Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. “The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India’s unique and deathless contribution to the world’s treasury of knowledge. The life force, which is ordinarily absorbed in maintaining the heart-pump, must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.”

The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.

The astral system of a human being, with six (twelve by polarity) inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient spiritual eye, is interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve zodiacal signs. All men are thus affected by an inner and an outer universe. The ancient rishis discovered that man’s earthly and heavenly environment, in twelve-year cycles, push him forward on his natural path. The scriptures aver that man requires a million years of normal, diseaseless evolution to perfect his human brain sufficiently to express cosmic consciousness.

One thousand Kriya practiced in eight hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of one thousand years of natural evolution: 365,000 years of evolution in one year. In three years, a Kriya Yogi can thus accomplish by intelligent self-effort the same result which nature brings to pass in a million years. The Kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice.

The Kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only fourteen to twenty-eight times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation in six or twelve or twenty-four or forty-eight years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of his past Kriya effort; in his new life he is harmoniously propelled toward his Infinite Goal.

The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and “foolproof” methods of Kriya, man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy—the first materially active expression of Spirit.

Kriya Yoga has nothing in common with the unscientific breathing exercises taught by a number of misguided zealots. Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural but decidedly unpleasant. Kriya, on the other hand, is accompanied from the very beginning by an accession of peace, and by soothing sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.

The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind. By spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath as an act of mind—a dream-breath.

Many illustrations could be given of the mathematical relationship between man’s respiratory rate and the variations in his states of consciousness. A person whose attention is wholly engrossed, as in following some closely knit intellectual argument, or in attempting some delicate or difficult physical feat, automatically breathes very slowly. Fixity of attention depends on slow breathing; quick or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful emotional states: fear, lust, anger. The restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man’s average of 18 times. The elephant, tortoise, snake and other animals noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate which is less than man’s. The tortoise, for instance, who may attain the age of 300 years,12 breathes only 4 times per minute.

The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man’s temporary unawareness of body and breathing. The sleeping man becomes a yogi; each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.

The voluntary yogi performs a simple, natural process consciously, not unconsciously like the slow-paced sleeper. The Kriya Yogi uses his technique to saturate and feed all his physical cells with undecaying light and keep them in a magnetized state. He scientifically makes breath unnecessary, without producing the states of subconscious sleep or unconsciousness.

By Kriya, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies. By such reinforcement of life, the yogi’s body and brain cells are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus he removes himself from studied observance of natural laws, which can only take him—by circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious thoughts—to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of cosmic consciousness.

Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity. The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air, to nature’s elemental compulsions.

Introspection, or “sitting in the silence,” is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents. Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain “bullock cart” theological path to God, Kriya may justly be called the “airplane” route.
The yogic science is based on an empirical consideration of all forms of concentration and meditation exercises. Yoga enables the devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter. No longer is he unwillingly brought back by the life force to the mundane sphere of rowdy sensations and restless thoughts. Master of his body and mind, the Kriya Yogi ultimately achieves victory over the “last enemy,” death.

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men:
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.13

The life of an advanced Kriya Yogi is influenced, not by effects of past actions, but solely by directions from the soul. The devotee thus avoids the slow, evolutionary monitors of egoistic actions, good and bad, of common life, cumbrous and snail-like to the eagle hearts.

The superior method of soul living frees the yogi who, shorn of his ego-prison, tastes the deep air of omnipresence. The thralldom of natural living is, in contrast, set in a pace humiliating. Conforming his life to the evolutionary order, a man can command no concessionary haste from nature but, living without error against the laws of his physical and mental endowment, still requires about a million years of incarnating masquerades to know final emancipation.

The telescopic methods of yogis, disengaging themselves from physical and mental identifications in favor of soul-individuality, thus commend themselves to those who eye with revolt a thousand thousand years. This numerical periphery is enlarged for the ordinary man, who lives in harmony not even with nature, let alone his soul, but pursues instead unnatural complexities, thus offending in his body and thoughts the sweet sanities of nature. For him, two times a million years can scarce suffice for liberation.

Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells—endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions—and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man’s consciousness in an average life of sixty years. Any apparent insurrection of bodily or cerebral cells toward Emperor Soul, manifesting as disease or depression, is due to no disloyalty among the humble citizens, but to past or present misuse by man of his individuality or free will, given to him simultaneous with a soul, and revocable never.

Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man’s intellectual reactions, feelings, moods, and habits are circumscribed by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty above such influences, however, is his regal soul. Spurning the transitory truths and freedoms, the Kriya Yogi passes beyond all disillusionment into his unfettered Being. All scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul; by Kriya he is given a method to prove the scriptural truth.

“Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory,” wrote Shankara in his famous Century of Verses. “Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. ‘Who am I? How was this universe born? Who is its maker? What is its material cause?’ This is the kind of inquiry referred to.” The intellect has no answer for these questions; hence the rishis evolved yoga as the technique of spiritual inquiry.

Kriya Yoga is the real “fire rite” often extolled in the Bhagavad Gita. The purifying fires of yoga bring eternal illumination, and thus differ much from outward and little-effective religious fire ceremonies, where perception of truth is oft burnt, to solemn chanted accompaniment, along with the incense!

The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past nor by new witlessnesses of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi receives fulfillment of his Supreme Desire, safe in the final haven of inexhaustibly blissful Spirit.

The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine. The Ultimate Flame receives the sacrifice of all human madness, and man is pure of dross. His bones stripped of all desirous flesh, his karmic skeleton bleached in the antiseptic suns of wisdom, he is clean at last, inoffensive before man and Maker.

Referring to yoga’s sure and methodical efficacy, Lord Krishna praises the technological yogi in the following words: “The yogi is greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom (Jnana Yoga), or of the path of action (Karma Yoga); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi!” 14

There is this energy which is completely incorruptible. - J.Krishnamurthi

If you understand all this which I have been talking about, and face these facts, then out of that comes an energy which is incorruptible - because that energy is passion. Not the passion of sex, or identifying yourself with the country, with an idea - which passion is destructive; that gives you also a peculiar kind of energy. Have you not noticed that people who have identified themselves with their nation, with their country, with their job, have a peculiar energy? So also most politicians, most so-called missionaries, or those who have identified themselves with an idea, with a belief, with a dogma, as the Communists do - they have a peculiar energy which is most destructive. But the energy which is the most creative energy has no identification; it comes with freedom and that energy is creation.

Man throughout the ages has sought God, either denied it or accepted it. He has denied it as those do, who are brought up as atheists or Communists; or he has accepted, as you Hindus do because you have been brought up in the belief. But you are no more religious than the man who is being brought up in non-belief. You are all about the same. It suits you to believe in God, and it does not suit him to believe in God. It is a matter of your education, of your environmental, cultural influence. But man has sought this thing throughout the centuries. There is something immense, not measurable by man, not understandable by a mind that is caught in resistance, ambition, envy, greed. Such a mind can never understand this creative energy.

There is this energy which is completely incorruptible. It can live in this world and function. Every day it can function in your offices, in your family, because that energy is love - not the love of your wife and children which is not love at all. That creation, that energy is destructive. Look what you have done to find out that energy! You have destroyed everything around you psychologically; inwardly you have completely broken down everything that society, religion, the politicians have built.

So, that energy is death. Death is completely destructive. That energy is love, and therefore love is destructive - not the tame thing which the family is made up of, not the tame thing which religions have nurtured. So, that energy is creation - not the poem that you write, nor the thing put in marble; that is merely a capacity or a gift to express something which you feel. But the thing we are talking about is beyond feeling, beyond all thought. A mind that has not completely freed itself from society psychologically - society being ambition, envy, greed, acquisitiveness, power - such a mind, do what it will, will never find that. And we must find that, because that is the only salvation for man, because in that only is there real action; and that itself, when it acts, is action.K

Naan Oru Veliyattu - Kanamma - From Yaksha Festival in Isha Yoga Ashram

Suttum Vizhi - Kanamma (playlist)

Kanamma (playlist)

"Aasai Mugam" Cover by Anil Srinivasan & Sikkil Gurucharan

When the rivers run dry - Everybody chases short-term wealth even at the cost of destroying their long-term collective future.

When The Rivers Run Dry is about water, especially fresh water – where it comes from, how it flows and what happens to it. The news is not good, but it needs to be listened to, especially in Asia – and nowhere more so than in the Indian subcontinent, which may be heading towards a catastrophic scarcity of water even faster than other parts of the planet.

Fred Pearce is an English journalist, currently the environment consultant of New Science magazine. He is a writer who knows how to craft a compelling narrative out of mind-numbing facts.

‘Get your head around a few of these numbers if you can. They are mind boggling. It takes between 250 and 650 galloons of water to grow a pound of rice. That is more water than many households use in a week. For just a bag of rice… And when you start feeding grain to livestock for animal products such as meat and milk, the numbers become yet more startling. It takes 3000 gallons to grow the feed for enough cow to make a quarter-pound hamburger, and between 500 and 1000 gallons for that cow to fill its udders with a quart of milk…. And if you have a sweet tooth, so much the worse: every teaspoonful of sugar in your coffee requires 50 cups of water to grow… (G)rowing the crops to feed and clothe me for a year must take between 1500 and 2000 tons – more than half the contents of an Olympic-size swimming pool.’

This introduces us to the concept of ‘virtual water’: ‘In this terminology, every ton of wheat arriving at a dockside carries with it in virtual form the thousand tons of water needed to grow it. The global virtual-water trade is estimated to be around 800 million acre-feet a year, or twenty Nile rivers… This trade “moves water in volumes and over distances beyond the wildest imaginings of water engineers”.’

Much of this trade is unnecessary and illogical. Pearce points out that US is draining its aquifers only to export enormous quantities of virtual water as wheat; Pakistan is pouring a third of the flow of the Indus into cotton, and thus exporting it as virtual water: ‘the global trade in virtual water… lies at the heart of some of the most intractable hydrological crises on the planet.’

Much of Pearce’s reporting comes from the Indian subcontinent. His travels take him to Pakistan, which is as dependent on the Indus as Egypt is on the Nile. But ‘it is abundantly clear that the Indus is in deep trouble. In the first years of the twenty-first century, the river was largely dry for its final few hundred miles to the sea.’ He attributes the rapid growth of Karachi’s population to Pakistan’s hydrological crisis.

In India  the crisis takes a somewhat different form: the green revolution has led to an indiscriminate plundering of underground water reserves. In Pearce’s account the electrical water pump is largely to blame because it allows farmers to pump water at will, with highly subsidized electricity. In Tamil Nadu he meets farmers who have stopped farming and spend their days doing nothing but pumping up water, which they then sell to tankers. They know the water will soon be exhausted; the table is sinking so fast that they have to deepen their boreholes every week. But no one person will voluntarily end this suicidal practice – because that would only leave more for his neighbours, most of whom are also pumping up water as fast as they can. As Pearce notes, this ‘is a classic case of what environmentalists call “the tragedy of the commons”.

Everybody chases short-term wealth even at the cost of destroying their long-term collective future.’
The celebrated ‘white revolution’, which has led to a huge output of milk in semi-arid parts of Gujarat, is also creating the conditions for a water disaster. Pearce goes to meet a farmer who keeps a herd of cows, which he feeds with alfalfa grown on his five acre plot. ‘I did the math. He uses 4.8 million gallons of water a year to grow the fodder to produce just over 2400 gallons of milk. That’s 200 gallons of water for every gallon of milk… (C)alculated over the year, it means he pumps from under his fields twice as much water as falls on the land in rain. No wonder the water table in the village is 500 feet down and falling by about 20 feet a year. What looks at first sight like an extremely efficient local economy, making milk in the desert for a dairy that trades across India, is in fact hydrological suicide.’

The notion of ‘hydrological suicide’ is hard to comprehend – this is perhaps the reason why people tend to shrug it off. It is their indifference that allows policy-makers to ignore it too. But ‘hydrological suicide’ is a real predicament; it happens. Perhaps the most dramatic chapter in the book is Pearce’s account of one instance of it: the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which has been described as the ‘greatest environmental disaster of the 20^th century.’

The Aral Sea was not a small water-body: it was once the world’s fourth largest lake – the size of Belgium and Holland combined – and was fed by a river the size of the Nile – the storied Amu Darya. Its waters were filled with fish and it was famous for its beach resorts; the lands that surrounded it had extensive orchards and vineyards. Now it is largely a desert, surrounding a few ‘hyper-saline’ stretches of water. It was essentially killed by cotton: in order to cultivate the crop on a large scale, the Soviet Union diverted the waters of the rivers that fed it into irrigation schemes, reducing the flow of water to a trickle by the time it reached the sea.

credit: treehugger.com

The sea was gone in a few decades.
 
The population that once lived off the sea’s bounty have now been reduced to penury; the rate of throat cancer in the area is 9 times the world average. They too were probably unable to envision the prospect of hydrological suicide, even as the water that sustained them was vanishing before their very eyes.
Pearce is at pains to explain that the problem lies not in an absolute lack of water, but in the patterns of water use. ‘Today,’ says Pearce, ‘the countries around the Aral Sea – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan – occupy five of the top seven places in the world league table of per capita water users. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the two countries that take their water from the Amu Darya, use more water per head of population than any others on earth. The Aral Sea basin is very far from being short of water. The problem is the simply staggering level of water use.’

In every country where cotton is grown in dry regions people should know that cotton is a slayer of rivers. The warning should be heeded in Egypt (where I lived amongst the cotton fields of Beheira a long time ago) and in Pakistan where, as Pearce writes, the British, by building the Sukkur barrage, ‘established what amounted to one giant cotton farm’ to feed the mills of Leicester.

But Pearce also has some encouraging stories, including some from India. There is for example the interesting case of Pepsee, a kind of plastic tubing for ice candies. ‘Sometime around 1998, somewhere in the Maikal hills of central India, someone – perhaps a farmer with a sideline of selling ices – started using Pepsee rolls for another purpose: to irrigate the fields.’ This became a kind of indigenous drip irrigation technique that minimised the loss of water through evaporation. The idea caught on and Pepsee is now in wide use among farmers.

Pearce’s best stories are those of rainwater harvesting. ‘In China,’ writes Pearce, ‘it was Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution that began the revival of the ancient tradition of rainwater harvesting. In India, it has been a mixture of swamis and scientists, schoolteachers and even policemen.’

Pearce writes about many such figures: Haradevsinh Hadeja, a retired police officer who has transformed the village of Rajsamadhiya in Gujarat; Rajendra Singh, a government scientist in Rajasthan who gave up his job to dedicate himself to water-harvesting; G.N.S.Reddy, a Gandhian; Pandurang Shastri Athavale, a Vedic scholar who is known as Dada to his followers. These are the real visionaries and innovators of our day: if the world were a saner place they, and their movement, would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
For a long time now the world has been in the grip of ideologies that celebrate ‘growth’ for its own sake.

One particularly powerful version of this is the neo-liberal iteration of a philosophy that has historically regarded air and water as ‘free goods’. Ironically this ideology has found some of its most enthusiastic proselytes in countries where water is in short supply – India, Pakistan and Egypt are good examples. Egypt and Pakistan are both dependent on single  river systems. But Pakistan, as Pearce writes ‘abstracts five times more water per person than Ireland does, Egypt five times more than Britain.’

How long can this go on? It is time to recognize that the idea of ‘unlimited growth forever’ is a fraud, a hoax. This book shows us why – the planet will not allow it.

When The Rivers Run Dry is an exceptionally readable and well-written account of the world’s water crisis. It should be on every bookshelf.

___________________________________

When The Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis Of The Twenty-First Century, by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press, Boston 2006; there is also a Kindle edition).

Sri Rudra Ashtakam - from Ram Charit Manas (Ramcharitmanas) by Goswami T...

The compassion of the master is unlimited.

Ramana Maharishi

It was a summer evening, and we were all sitting outside in the open space by the well. Suddenly one of the visitors started weeping bitterly.

'I am a horrible sinner. For a long time I have been coming to you, but there is no change in me. Can I become pure at last? How long am I to wait? When I am here near you, I am good for a time. But when I leave this place, I become a beast again. You cann

ot imagine how bad I can be -- hardly a human being. Am I to remain a sinner forever?'

'Why do you come to me? What have I to do with you?' demanded Bhagavan. 'What is there between us that you should come here and weep and cry in front of me?'

The man started moaning and crying even more, as if his heart were breaking.

'All my hopes of salvation are gone. You were my last refuge and you say you have nothing to do with me! To whom shall I turn now? What am I to do? To whom am I to go?'

Bhagavan watched him for some time and said, 'Am I your Guru that I should be responsible for your salvation? Have I ever said that I am your Master?'

'If you are not my Master, then who is? And who are you, if not my Master? You are my Guru. You are my guardian angel. You must take pity me and release me from my sins!'

He started sobbing and crying again.

We all sat silent, overcome with pity. Only Bhagavan looked alert and matter-of-fact.

'If I am your Guru, what are my fees? Surely you should pay me for my services.'

'But you won't take anything,' cried the visitor. 'What can I give you?'

'Did I ever say that I don't take anything? And did you ever ask me what you can give me?'

'If you would take, then ask me. There is nothing I would not give you.'

'All right. Now I am asking. Give me. What will you give me?'

'Take anything. Everything I have is yours.'

'Then give me all the good you have done in this world.'

'What good could I have done? I have not a single virtue to my credit.'

'You have promised to give. Now give. Don't talk of your credit. Just give away all the good you have done in your past.'

'Yes, I shall give. But how does one give? Tell me how the giving is done and I shall give.'

'Say like this: "All the good I have done in the past I am giving away entirely to my Guru. Henceforth I have no merit from it nor have I any concern with it." Say it with your whole heart.'

'All right, Swami. "I am giving away to you all the good I have done so far, if I have done any, and all its good effects. I am giving it to you gladly, for you are my Master and you are asking me to give it all away to you.'

'But this is not enough,' said Bhagavan sternly.

'I gave you all I have and all you asked me to give. I have nothing more to give.'

'No, you have. Give me all your sins.'

The man looked wildly at Bhagavan, terror stricken.

'You do not know, Swami, what you are asking for. If you knew, you would not ask me. If you take over my sins, your body will rot and burn. You do not know me, you do not know my sins. Please do not ask me for my sins.'

He wept bitterly.

'I shall look after myself. Don't you worry about me,' said Bhagavan. 'All I want from you is your sins.'

For a long time the bargain would not go through. The man refused to part with his sins. But Bhagavan was adamant.

'Either give me your sins along with your merits, or keep both and don't think of me as your Master."

In the end the visitor's scruples broke down and he declared, 'Whatever sins I have done, they are no longer mine. All of them and their results, too, belong to Ramana.'

Bhagavan seemed to be satisfied. 'From now on there is no good nor bad in you. You are just pure. Go and do nothing, either good or bad. Remain yourself. Remain what you are.'

A great peace fell over the man and over us all. No one knows what happened to the fortunate visitor, for he was never seen in the ashram again. He might have had no further need to come.

Do we feel the thankfulness, for all we receive, everyday?

In 1934 Paramhansa Yogananda wrote this rousing letter to his students on Thanksgiving. He did not mince words!

----------

Every day should be a day of Thanksgiving for all the gifts of Life--for sunshine, water, and the luscious fruits and greens which we receive as indirect gifts from the Great Giver. He makes us work so that we may consciously and thankfully deserve to receive His Gifts. The All-Sufficient One does not need the benefit of our thankful hearts, but when we are grateful to the Fountain of all gifts, our attention is concentrated, for our own highest benefit, upon the only Great Source of all supply, which alone can unfailingly, undeceivingly bestow upon us the lasting gifts of wisdom, abundance, and Spiritual treasures without the confinement of any mundane measure.

There are millions of people today who are drunk with egotism, who think that they keep themselves alive because they feed themselves with their self-earned magic gold of delusion. They never stop to think that man can neither make a grain of wheat, nor a leaf of green, nor the illusory, glittering, yellow gold, nor the paper and ink of which greenbacks are made; neither can he create first life independently of God--the life that gives power to the precious green papers. For these people, Thanksgiving Day, although soiled with the blood of unthankful turkeys, is a great day of awakening and of thinking of the most important and the most forgotten Molder of our Destiny.

People, drunk with delusions, eat meat almost every day, and at the same time forget the Savior who saves them from all sorrows. It doesn't matter how many turkeys are sacrificed in order to offer thanks to the Giver of all Life, if only meat eaters may have their meat and think of the Most Adorable One at the same time. However, it is better to eat meat and think of God, rather than add to meat-eating the highest sin: God-oblivion. But many of you could thank God in meditation more consciously and better while munching on the meat of peace, than while dipping your lips in the gravy and the flavor-camouflaged flesh of a turkey, where once sensitiveness guarded the throne of Life.

Millions of people who eat turkey forget to thank God at all, and think more of the turkey than of God. A few people thank Him for the taste of savory turkey. If you eat turkey, be sure to stuff it with the best Bliss-spiced dressing of thankful remembrance of God for all His highest gifts of wisdom, peace, power to accomplish, and also for His other inconsequent gifts of turkey dinner, and so forth. Be sure to thank God for forgiving you for compelling the quickening of the turkey's evolution against its own will. And also thank God that you are not the turkey, to be used for the festivity of Thanksgiving.

I am glad for you if you can find Heaven just by not forgetting God while partaking of your august turkey dinner, and I shall have to be happy for the turkeys, that they have found Heaven, and freedom from the misery of daily gobbling and the fear of waiting their doom through all of you, even though they were unwilling that it should happen.

Anyway, don't mind my sympathy for the turkey, for I am more sympathetic toward you, who are superior to the turkey, lest you bring greater trials upon yourselves by forgetting God. He is waiting to hear your unceasing knock of devotion and to open the Gates of Omnipresence to receive you. Whether you eat turkey or not does not matter if you will only knock hard with devotion on the doors of your heart. He will open the Gates of Omnipresence to receive you.

Make every day a day of Thanksgiving without regular feasts, and continuous contentment will sparkle in your body, mind, and Soul. If you eat turkey, be sure to search for the all-freeing God from then on until you find Him on the brink of unceasing seeking.

Sitting Silently, Relaxing in our being.

I WANT TO BE A MASTER. THE IDEA OF JUST SITTING THERE AND DOING NOTHING APPEALS TO ME VERY MUCH. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT IT?

GREAT IDEA! SOME IDEA! But it is ver

y difficult to just sit. You are so restless. If you can just sit, you ARE a master! But think of just sitting, doing nothing -- can you allow that much rest to yourself even for a single moment?
That's what I go on telling you: Sit silently, passively, doing nothing, just being. And you look at me with bewildered eyes: "Just sitting, doing nothing?" People ask me, "Can't we chant a mantra? Please give us a mantra, so we can at least chant a mantra when we are sitting." That mantra is for nothing but your restlessness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation has appeal in America because America is so restless. People can't sit silently; they have to do something or other. If there is nothing to do then they have to repeat Rama-Rama-Rama or Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola -- but something. Coca Cola is a great mantra: repeat it and you will have all the benefits of transcendental meditation.
What happens when you repeat a mantra? It just gives your restlessness something to do. It becomes concentrated, then you can sit. But this is not real sitting; you have escaped again. Now you have escaped into the mantra. A mantra is a mind trip. Just sitting means no mantra, no thought, no movement. Just sitting exactly means just sitting.
Yes, then you can become a master; you HAVE become a master. People will start coming to you of their own accord -- because whenever somebody just sits, such grace arises in that non-moving energy because he is utterly in the present. He can't move anywhere -- he can't move to the past, he can't move to the future. He is just utterly here, he is totally one with this moment. In that, he is bridged with reality, he is one with God.
And a man who is one with God is a master. In that moment, such great gravitation arises in him that people will be attracted, people will start moving towards him. He may be sitting deep in a cave in the Himalayas and people will start reaching there, people will start finding the way to where he is. There is some unconscious pull.
In Buddha's days there was no way, because the world was really very disconnected. Nations existed secluded; there was nothing like newspapers, radio, television -- no way to spread the message. But people started moving. From almost every nook and corner of the known world, people came to Buddha. Somehow it functions, it spreads; it has its own momentum.
You will be a master if you can sit silently. But the very idea of being a master will not allow you to sit silently. You will open your eyes to see whether disciples have started to come or not: "And what am I doing here? It is time, and nobody has come -- I don't see any photographers and any newspaper people and media people coming..." You will not be able to sit silently. You will start waiting for disciples: that's the meaning of the desire to be a master.
A master is one who has no desires. Now, even the desire to be a master is enough; it won't allow you to be a master. A master is not trying to be a master -- he is. He is not managing it, it is spontaneous. He is not searching and seeking for disciples; they come. It happens on its own. The very silent energy of a master -- that luminous energy of being alert, peaceful, at ease, at rest, at home -- starts many people moving towards that source. It is not really in the mind that it happens, this pull. It happens deeper than the mind: it happens in your unconscious.

You say: I WANT TO BE A MASTER.

That will be a barrier. And the reason is the idea of just sitting there and doing nothing. You must be a mighty lazy person. Just sitting there and doing nothing is not a state of laziness, mind you. It is of utter energy, ultimate energy. It is not a kind of sleep, a kind of coma; it is not lethargy. It is a reservoir of energy. The energy is not moving anywhere, the energy is accumulating. And the more it accumulates, the more powerful it becomes.
You must be just a lazy person. The idea appeals to you, because to be a disciple seems to be difficult, arduous -- you have to do this and you have to do that, and you have to meditate, and you have to pass through so many things, and here is Yoga and Zen and Tantra and Sufism and you have to find and search and roam and wander and inquire, and it seems to you to be a long journey. You would like to simply be a master.
I have heard:

A poor half-wit was befriended by a millionaire lover of music who happened to have a private orchestra. One day the half-wit came to his benefactor and asked for a position in his orchestra. Astonished, the rich man said, "I had no idea you could play an instrument."
"I can't," was the answer. "But I see you have a man there who does nothing but wave a stick around while the others play. His job I can handle."

That job is not easy, that is the hardest of all -- from the outside it appears to be very easy.
Just sitting is the hardest thing in the world, the most arduous thing in the world. You can do everything -- you can go to Everest and you can go to the moon -- but just sitting? that is impossible. You can move into any kind of activity -- that fits, that fits with the ego, that enhances the ego: you become a great doer.
But when you are sitting and doing nothing, what happens? What is the difficulty? The greatest difficulty is, when you are not doing anything you start disappearing -- because man exists through his acts.
Jean Paul Sartre is right when he says that man defines himself through his activity. You are what you do.
You are a doctor because you do a certain kind of work. You are a painter because you paint, you are a singer because you sing. Your identity is given by your action. YOU are this, you are that -- your definition comes from your activities. When you are not doing anything who will you be? A doctor, a painter, an engineer, a singer -- who? You will be nobody. You will be simply nobody! Your identity will start disappearing, your definition will slip out of your being. You will be utterly nude and naked and not knowing who you are.
And that is the arduousness of it -- it is very arduous. You will be getting into a great chaos, and great fear will arise in you: what is happening? You will immediately rush into some act, you will start doing something. And once you start doing something you are again at ease, because again you know who you are.
Have you not watched it? Just sitting silently in your room, have you not observed it again and again that you start doing something meaningless? People start moving their furniture, arranging the paintings again or cleaning the books or the cupboard -- they have to do something. Because when they are doing, they are perfectly settled in their knowledge of who they are.
You are a housewife: doing something, you know. You are a mother: when the child is with you, you know who you are. You are a husband: with the wife you know who you are. When the wife dies, something in the husband dies immediately, because he becomes very much frightened -- now who is he? He had become accustomed to living with the idea that he is a husband.

Mulla Nasruddin's wife died and he was crying like anything. One of his closest friends could not believe his eyes -- such big tears were coming from Mulla's eyes, and he had never seen the man cry. And he had always thought that this man is a brave man -- just crying like a child?
To console him the friend said, "Don't be worried, Nasruddin, time heals everything. Within three to six months you will have forgotten this woman. And I say to you, you are still young enough -- you will fall in love again, you will be married again. So don't become so desperate."
Mulla looked with anger at the friend and he said, "What are you talking about? Six months? And what am I going to do tonight?"

If you have become accustomed to a wife, she has become part of your definition. In the night, alone, you will be afraid -- afraid of the fact that again your definition has disappeared.
When a very rich man goes bankrupt what happens? Why do people commit suicide when they go bankrupt? Is money so valuable, more valuable than life? The problem is, that was their definition. Now there is no money in the bank, their soul has disappeared, they don't know who they are. And it seems so arduous to define themselves again, to start from ABC, to start begging again. And it will take thirty or forty years to be able to make that much money again and have that definition again. That seems to be too long and too much; it is better to disappear, it is better to drop the whole effort.
Your activity keeps you defined; it gives you a certainty, a security. Whenever you are not doing anything you become uncertain. An abyss starts yawning in your being and you feel you are falling into the abyss, and immediately you jump to do something.
I have seen people reading the same newspaper again! I used to travel for fifteen years continuously -- almost three weeks a month I was travelling and watching people. Sometimes it would happen that only one more passenger was with me in the compartment, and I would watch him. He would read the same newspaper again and again -- and would feel a little ashamed also, because I was there. He would open the window and close the window, open the suitcase and arrange it and close it again -- and he would become very much ashamed also, because somebody was just sitting there and doing nothing. And he could not sit. And he would try to sleep, and he could not sleep, and he would jump up and go to the bathroom and come back. And he was not an insane person, just a normal person, for twenty-four hours caged in a compartment, not knowing what to do.
Have you not seen people? -- their holidays are the most difficult days; they don't know what to do. The whole week they think that Sunday is coming and they are going to rest, and they never rest on Sunday! They start a thousand and one things: they start mowing the lawn or they start fixing things around the house. They get more tired on Sunday than they ever get in their office -- because in the office who works? One simply postpones. Files move from one table to another table -- they go on moving and moving and moving, and nothing ever happens. People become so skillful at avoiding in the office, that is their work there. To avoid, to say no, not to do anything: that is their activity there.
Psychologists are perfectly aware that once a person becomes retired he dies earlier than he would have died if he had remained in his work. Ten years' difference happens. If a man was naturally going to live eighty years, and when he is sixty he becomes retired... And he had been hoping for that retirement his whole life -- he was thinking, "Just a few years more and I will get retired and then I will rest and do all those things that I always wanted to do. I will read great poetry, listen to great music, play the guitar or make a beautiful garden, or go to the mountains and rest in the sun, in the wind..."
And when he becomes retired all that happens is he simply becomes afraid of death -- nothing else happens. Once he is retired he starts losing his identity. He was a collector or a commissioner or something, a prime minister, a president...
When politicians are in office they are very healthy. Once they lose their office they become ill; they die soon. Harnessed, they can live long. Unharnessed, they don't see what the point of living is. People start neglecting you, people start ignoring you, you become a nonentity. And not only for people do you become a nonentity, you become a nonentity for yourself -- because you don't know now who you are. You had been a prime minister, now you are not a prime minister -- then who are you? And no answer arises.
No, sitting silently is very difficult, just next to impossible -- unless you are ready to die in silence, unless you are ready to lose all identity, all ego. Yes, if you are ready to lose all identity, the master will arise in you. But you cannot become a master.
When you have disappeared, the master comes. It is always God who is the master. That's why in the East we call the master divine. The West cannot understand it, because the phenomenon has been very rarely happening there. The West knows bishops, priests, rabbis; it does not really know the phenomenon of a master, it is very rarely happening there. It knows prophets, visionaries, it knows preachers, priests -- but very rarely, only once in a while, has the West come across a master.
And whenever the West has come across a master it has behaved very badly with the master. with Jesus it behaved in a very uncivilized way, because the phenomenon was very much unknown. If Jesus had been just a rabbi, everything would have been perfect. But he was a master. He had disappeared, God had appeared in him. Now God was speaking, now Jesus was not speaking.
And when God speaks, God speaks with great authority. When God speaks, God speaks in absolute terms. When God speaks, God speaks like a God. Jesus says, "I am the truth." This is God speaking. Not Jesus, not Joseph's son Jesus. Christ, not Jesus. It is God speaking: "I am the truth." NOW, no rabbi has ever said that -- how can the Jews forgive this man? He seems to be very arrogant and egoistic.
Now, see the ridiculousness of it. Always, whenever ego disappears, God appears. And God speaks in such ways that it looks as if the man has become very egoistic: "I am the truth! I am the way! And nobody reaches God unless he comes through me." Just see these words: "I have come to liberate you. I and my Father in heaven are one." Now, these statements cannot be tolerated. This man seems to be neurotic, mad, a megalomaniac, has lost all senses, is insane.
Still psychoanalysts go on calling Jesus insane. And it looks insane, because who in his senses can say, "I am the way, I am truth, and nobody ever reaches God unless he passes through me"? Who in his senses can say such things?
Yes, he was not in his senses. He was not at all -- how could he be in his senses? God was speaking, he was just a mouthpiece.
A man becomes a master only when the man disappears. So if you have the desire to be a master, that very desire will prevent you.
Right now, become a disciple. Slowly slowly, the disciple disappears and the master arrives. The first step towards masterhood is disciplehood.
TAKE IT EASY VOL 2
BY SPY

Temples, Not a Place of Prayer - Sadhguru

I call it relating. You can relate, but there is no need to create any bondage - Osho

Try to understand the nature of longing, the nature of desire. When you understand the nature of desire, in that very understanding the desiring disappears. The

n you start enjoying your aloneness, you become utterly joyous with yourself. There is no need for the other, there is no dependence on the other.

I am not saving that you will not be able to love then. In fact you will be able to love then and only then because then love will have a totally different quality, the quality of sharing. You will not be a beggar, you will be an emperor. You will love because you have something to give, not to get something. You will love because you are overflowing with joy and you would like to share it with people. But then it will not be a relationship at all.

I call it relating. You can relate, but there is no need to create any bondage, there is no need to create any marriage. You can relate with somebody, you can relate to the same person your whole life, but tomorrow remains open, it is not closed. Tomorrow is not settled today, you cannot take it for granted; tomorrow you may feel like sharing with the same person, the same person may like sharing or may not like sharing.

Even if one of the two decides not to share, then you say good-bye to each other with great gratitude because all that joy and all that has happened before and all that has transpired before one is grateful for. With no grudge, with no complaint, with no quarrel, you simply depart. You know, "Our ways are parting now, we may not meet again," so you depart with a song in the heart, with a smile on the lips; with a hug, with a kiss you depart. You depart in deep friendliness. It is not a divorce because there has not been any marriage at all in the first place. You were not bound to each other so you are not getting free from each other. You had always been free, you had always remained individuals.

Two individuals relating remain individuals; two individuals getting into a relationship lose their individuality.

OSHO

Laughing Buddha(s) 2

"THE OCEANS" Green Ragas Part6 - Thanks Chinmaya Dunster , for making us more aware.

Kalari - 99.99% of humanity goes without ever exploring even their body. Sadhguru.

Kalaripayattu is so old, its origins are traditionally attributed to the gods. But as with many other aspects of Indian culture, this incredible marital art form comes from none other than Agastya Muni.

Sadhguru:

Kalari is probably the oldest martial art form on the planet. These martial art forms were essentially taught by Agastya Muni to start with because martial arts are not just about kicking and punching or stabbing. It’s about learning to use the body in every possible way. So it not only involves exercise and other aspects of agility, it also involves understanding the energy system. There is Kalari chikitsa and Kalari marma which involves knowing the secrets of the body and healing the body quickly to keep the body in a regenerative mode. Maybe in today’s world there are very few Kalari practitioners who dedicate enough time, energy and focus, but if you go deep enough you will naturally move towards yoga because anything that came from Agastya cannot be any other way than being spiritual. It’s just another dimension, another dimension, another dimension – every possible way of exploration.

People know eating, sleeping and simple pleasures, and nothing more about their body. There are unexplored dimensions of the body. You know, some karate masters can kill you just with a little touch. Killing somebody with a touch is not the big deal. With a touch you can make them come awake, that’s a big thing. With a touch you can make them come alive, that’s a big thing. With a simple touch, not even somebody else, yourself simply touching the body in a certain way, the whole system can come awake.

For me, if we were only striving for the spiritual advancement of people, it’s very easy. I don’t even see it as a great challenge. But we want to open up the mystical dimension into human life. This needs work, a different level of commitment, focus, and dedication. To penetrate through the limitations which naturally exist for our species, to know life beyond the limitations set by nature, it needs a certain kind of people. The time is coming when we’ll do more focused work. I want to increase the percentage of what I can leave behind before I go, because there are many, many, aspects about this fantastic machine. 99.99% of humanity goes without ever exploring even their body. If they have a little pleasure it’s over. It’s not like that. If you explore this, this is a cosmos by itself. It can do tremendous things just sitting here. This is the way of yoga. Kalari is just a more active form of that.

Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/history-of-yoga/kalaripayattu-the-oldest-martial-art/

Pandit Jasraj, L. Subramaniam and Kavita Krishnamurti 1/2

Do you want to spend your life just making a living, or do you want to make a life out of it? Sadhguru

Questioner: How can I find out what is my duty to society? I went to business school, I had a job offer from a multinational and I said, “No, this is not it, there is more to what I want to do and I came here to find out.”

Sadhguru: When I visited one of the top business schools, it was shocking for me that they are teaching people, “What you cannot count does not count.” No, only what you cannot count, counts. What you can count is of minimal importance in your life. What you can count is essentially what you can get. With what you can get, you can make a living. You cannot make a life out of it. Do you want to spend your life just making a living, or do you want to make a life out of it? This is the choice that every human being has.
Unfortunately today, most human beings spend their whole lifetime just making a living because their living is so unnatural and expensive. They buy a house, thirty years they are mortgaged to the house – not the house is mortgaged, you are mortgaged to the house. They buy a car, they are mortgaged ten years. Even their education loan is taking fifteen years to clear. Just today, there is some news in the paper; they are saying in the future, from now onwards, every third human being born on this planet may live up to 100 years. And he will generally finish his education by the time he is 32. He will clear his education loan by the time he is 50. He will get married when he is 45 and he will retire at 70 or 72. After that, for the next 30 years, of course, he has health insurance. So, he will go from doctor to doctor.

… the only and only way you can experience life is to become more and more conscious.

If you want to make a life out of this, do not think in terms of what you can do for the society. If you do something really wonderful to yourself, then naturally you will want to share it with everybody, it is inevitable. If something really wonderful comes your way, don’t you want to share it? Only those things that you can count, you do not want to share. Those aspects of life which you understand that you cannot count, that means it will never deplete. Those things you can count and accumulate, always, the fear is it will go away. If you collect a million rupees and keep it, the fear is only one million is there, it will go away if you bring it out. If you had joy in you, ecstasy in you, knowing in you, enlightenment in you, you know it cannot go away, so there is no need to lock it and keep it. That is when you can really reach out and do whatever is needed to be done.

What you should do with the world is not what you like. What you should do with the world is what the world needs, isn’t it? What is needed should be done, not what you like. Always, this has been propagated, particularly in the western societies. “Doing what you like is freedom.” You must understand your like and dislike is a certain level of compulsion. If you cannot do what you like, you will suffer. If you have to do what you do not like, you will suffer. It is a serious compulsion – it is a trap. If you invest your life in what you like, you are getting into a deep trap. You will see what you do not like will torment you all the time.

Do not bother about what you like. First of all, don’t set it up like that. Just do what is needed. If you are doing what is needed, everything is fine all the time. There is no question of compulsiveness. Naturally, you become conscious. If you are always looking at what is needed, you will become very conscious. And the only way, and the only and only way you can experience life is to become more and more conscious. If you become less and less conscious, you cannot experience life. Only if you become more and more conscious you can experience life. If you are really conscious, everything becomes fantastic. If you become really unconscious, you are dead.

So the choice is not between what kind of life; the choice is between life and death because consciousness is the only way life can happen. Unconscious means you are moving towards death in installments. And if you invest too much in what you can count, you will become more and more unconscious. There was a sage in Karnataka, his name was Allama Maha Prabhu, a wonderful sage, he wrote thousands of poems. In one poem he laments, he says if a man is drowning, you can still talk to him. If a man is bitten by a snake, you can still talk to him. But a man who is bitten by wealth and money, you cannot talk to because he has become so unconscious.

If you can have a few bucks around, it makes things a little simple and easy. Beyond that it has no consequence. It is what you cannot count which makes the difference. So invest your life in what you cannot count. Whatever you do, you will be a great contribution to the world.

Love & Grace,

Sadhguru.

 

Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/what-you-cannot-count-counts/

Learning to Die Gracefully. Sadhguru

What kind of legacy, What kind of world, are we going to leave for our children? Sadhguru

Suryakund Consecration - Dec 21 to Dec 22 2012. Its once in a life time process. It will never happen again. Don't miss it.

The Purity and Innocence of Cows - Osho

There was a great Master, Ramana Maharshi -- a Perfect Master, In his DARSHANS -- because he was a silent man, would speak rarely and very few words -- each morning when he would sit for the darshan for one hour and people would come to sit with him, a cow would also come. The cow was so regular that no other disciple was so regular -- the cow was just like Teertha! Regular.... It might rain, it m

ight be summer, it might be winter -- whatsoever! -- the cow might be ill, or healthy, whatsoever, but the cow was bound to come at the exact time.

She would come and stand in the verandah and look inside through the window, her head inside the window, and remain there for one hour, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes. And sometimes tears flowing... it has become a miracle!

One day the cow was very ill and could not come -- so Ramana had to go! He had never gone to visit any other disciple, but for that poor cow he had to go. And all the disciples said, "What are you doing, Bhagwan?" And he said, "But I have to go. She was so regular. And I know she wants to come -- the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

And when he went, she was just sitting in the direction of his room looking at the window from far away. She could not get up, she was dying. And when Ramana reached, she closed her eyes and tears started flowing. She died. That cow was the first animal in the whole history of humanity or of consciousness that was given a farewell as is given to an enlightened person. Ramana was present there.

Somebody asked Ramana, "Is this cow going to be born as a man?"

Ramana said, "No. She will not need to be born as a man -- she has passed beyond that. She is not going to be born at all. She has attained enlightenment."

Yes, it is possible. What to say about man? Even animals, if they are receptive... and cows ARE very receptive. That's why in the East they have become sacred. It is not for no reason at all -- they ARE very receptive, open. They can grow in consciousness. NO other animal can take this jump that the cow can take.

It was for no other reason than this that they became an essential part of all the ashrams in the East in the old days. They created a certain atmosphere -- of purity, innocence.

OSHO

Top 7 Myths about Yoga - BUSTED

There is a lot of “yoga” happening in the world today that has very little to do with what yoga really is. Several myths about this ancient practice have long been masquerading as facts. It’s time we demystify yoga, in Sadhguru’s very own words.

Myth 1: Yoga comes from Hinduism

Sadhguru: Yoga is Hindu just the way gravity is Christian. Just because the law of gravity was propounded by Isaac Newton, who lived in a Christian culture, does it make gravity Christian? Yoga is a technology. Anybody who is willing to make use of it can make use of it.

Why the yogic sciences have gotten labeled as Hindu by a few ignorant people is because this science and technology grew and prospered in this culture, so naturally it has gotten associated with the Hindu way of life. The word “Hindu” has come from the word “Sindhu”, which is a river. Because this culture grew from the banks of the river Sindhu or Indus, this culture got labeled as Hindu. Hindu is not an “ism” – it is not a religion. It is a geographical and cultural identity.

Myth 2: Why be a human when you can be a pretzel? Yoga is all about impossible postures.

Sadhguru: When we utter the word “yoga”, most people on the planet only think of asanas . Of all the different things that the science of yoga explores – just about every aspect of life – today’s world has chosen to represent yoga with only the physical aspect. In the yogic system, there is very little significance given to asanas. For a little over two hundred Yoga Sutras, only one sutra is dedicated to asanas. But somehow, in modern times, this one sutra has gained significance over everything else.

In many ways, it is a clear manifestation of where the world is going. The whole journey of the modern world is just this, from deeper dimensions – from the spirit – to body. That is exactly what we want to reverse. We want human beings to start their journey with the body but move towards their inner nature.

I am incapable of being depressed, otherwise I would be depressed looking at the way hata yoga is being practiced around the world and people thinking that is what it is. The practice as you see it – the mechanics of it, is simply of the body. You have to breathe life into it, otherwise it will not become alive. This is why traditionally, there has been so much stress on a live Guru – to make it alive. The yogic system is a subtle manipulation of your system to allow it to rise to a different level. Yoga means that which allows you to attain to your higher nature. Every asana, every mudra, every way of breathing – everything – is focused towards this.

Myth 3: Want six-pack abs? Yoga is a great exercise regime.

Sadhguru: If fitness is what you are seeking, if you want six-pack abs or whatever number, I would say go and play tennis or hike in the mountains. Yoga is not anexercise, it has other dimensions attached to it. A different dimension of fitness – yes – you get health out of it, but not six-pack abs. If you are doing yoga to burn calories or tone up your muscle, obviously you are doing improper yoga, there is no question about that. For abs, you can go to the gym. Yoga needs to be practiced in a very subtle, gentle way, not in a forceful muscle-building way, because this is not about exercise.

The physical body has a whole memory structure. If you are willing to read this physical body, everything – how this cosmos evolved from nothingness to this point – is written into this body. When you do asanas, you are opening up that memory and trying to restructure this life towards an ultimate possibility. If hata yoga is taught in a proper atmosphere, it is a fantastic process of shaping your system into a fantastic vessel, a fabulous device to receive the Divine.

Myth 4: It is only in the last century that yoga has gone global

Sadhguru: Today, though it is being practiced in all kinds of manifestations and distortions, at least the word “yoga” is getting a global presence. There has never been one organized body to propagate this, but still, it has survived and lived on because it has worked like nothing else for human wellbeing for the longest period of time.

Millions of people are practicing it, but where did this come from? Who originated yoga? The story is very long; its antiquity is lost in the hoary of time. In the yogic culture, Shiva is not known as a God, but as the Adiyogi or the first yogi – the originator of yoga. He was the one who first put this seed into the human mind.

The first part of Shiva’s teaching was to Parvathi, his wife. The second set of yoga teachings were expounded to the first seven disciples. This happened at the banks of Kanti Sarovar at Kedarnath. This is where the world’s first yoga program happened.

After many years, when the transmission of the yogic science was complete, it produced seven fully enlightened beings – the seven celebrated sages who are today known as the Sapta Rishis, and are worshipped and admired in Indian culture. Shiva put different aspects of yoga into each of these seven people, and these aspects became the seven basic forms of yoga. Even today, yoga has maintained these seven distinct forms.

The Sapta Rishis were sent in seven different directions to different parts of the world to carry this dimension with which a human being can evolve beyond his present limitations and compulsions.

One went to Central Asia, one to the Middle East and North Africa, one to South America, one stayed right there with Adiyogi, one to the lower regions of Himalayas, one to Eastern Asia and one travelled south into the Indian subcontinent. Time has ravaged many things, but when the cultures of those lands are carefully looked at, small strands of these people’s work can be seen, still alive. It has taken on various colors and forms, and has changed its complexion in a million different ways, but these strands can still be seen.

Myth 5: Find your groove. Yoga goes well with music.

Sadhguru: There should never be a mirror or music when you practice asanas. Hata yoga demands a certain involvement of your body, mind, energy and the innermost core. If you want to get the involvement of that which is the source of creation within you, your body, your mind, your energy must be absolutely involved. You should approach it with a certain reverence and certain focus. Not just going, playing music and doing something. One of the biggest problems in yoga studios is, the teacher is doing asanas and speaking. This is a sure way to cause damage to yourself.

No talking in the asana is not just a norm, it is a rule. You never ever speak in postures. The breath, the mental focus and the stability of energy is most important when you are doing the asana. If you speak, you will destroy all that. At least eight to ten people have come to us with serious imbalances with which we have helped them. I think about four of them have given up their profession now because they knew what nonsense they were doing.

A few years ago when I was in America, I was invited to speak in a yoga studio by someone. So I went to her yoga studio and music was playing –chang, chang, chang – to keep everybody enthusiastic. She was inardhamatsyendrasana and was talking to a group of people. When she saw me, she just jumped up from the table, came and hugged me.

I took her aside and told her, “See, you will bring serious imbalances into your system. How long have you been doing this?” She said some fifteen, sixteen years. I said, “If you’ve done this for sixteen years, you must be suffering from this, this and this.” She looked at me terrified and the next day she comes to me and says, “Sadhguru, what you said has been happening to me. I’m going through all sorts of treatment from the doctors.” I said, “You don’t need a doctor, you are causing it. You stop this, this will go away.” After about one-and-a-half years, she gave up teaching yoga.

A lot of people who have done improper yoga have lost their mental balance. This is not because yoga is dangerous. Stupidity has always been a dangerous thing on the planet. You do something stupid, it will cause damage to you. Stupidity is one thing which has always been a dangerous thing on this planet, right from ancient times.

Myth 6: Need a yoga study guide? You can learn yoga from a book.

Sadhguru: Today, if you enter any major bookstore, you will find a minimum of 15 to 20 different publications on yoga. How to learn yoga in 7 days, how to become a yogi in 21 days… Many people have caused immense damage to themselves by learning yoga through books. It seems to be very simple, but when you do it, you will see it is a very subtle aspect. This has to be done with perfect understanding and proper guidance. Without this, one can get into deep trouble. A book can inspire you, but it is not meant to teach a practice.

Myth 7: Yoga is something you practice every morning and evening

Sadhguru: Yoga is not something that you do morning-evening. It is a certain way of being. One must become yoga. If it’s morning-evening yoga, the rest of the time entanglement – this is not yoga, this is only yoga practice.

There is no aspect of life which is excluded from the yogic process. If your life becomes yoga, then you can do everything. You can run your family, you can go to the office, you can run your business, you can do whatever you want without any problem if your way of being becomes yoga. Every aspect of life, either you can use it to entangle yourself or to liberate yourself. If you are using it to entangle yourself, we call it as karma. If you are using it to liberate yourself, we call it yoga.

Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/top-7-myths-about-yoga-busted/