A musing of రామ ShastriX

Toothpaste to the Max

2012-02-10T15:04:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTpMax

Having a transparent body, it makes it easy to ensure that you max the usage of the toothpaste within.

We don't have to do those cunning stunts as in Mr. Boo (that i had the great pleasure of seeing with Gopa at Vizag) where the young Jackie Chan squeezes it using a door or something on those lines.

Ramana Sadguru didn't like waste. He would collect all the mustard grains that had fallen around and put them back in the store. He would remark that, if He were married, He would have been a very difficult husband! (seen in page 32 of Arunachala Shiva).

From There's Plenty of Room in the Itsy Bitsy:

Nature has a way of doing things in the most efficient way. In this case, a sort of WinZip on demand. Since Incarnations are a reflection of the Formless behind Mother Nature, one would expect them to show similar traits and one is not disappointed. Gurus like Ramana Maharshi and Sri Ramakrishna did things just so and abhorred waste.

Neat comments on the post on G+

Lucky Number Slevin

2012-02-10T14:56:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSlevin

I could get to courtside slightly earlier this Tuesday morning. But i was the fifth person there. Just when i was thinking "Oh, shoot!", Naren graciously sat out, mentioning a stiff neck.

So Kaushal & Deepa against Ram & i. My right shoulder has been acting up of late. The frozen shoulder had traveled from the left hand to the right, making backhand returns quite painful. The first game was a wash-out and we lost badly.

Naren was content to sit out, and so we played the second one, this time better, making it 1-1.

We were leading 20-19 in the third, but they made it deuce and we lost.

Naren had gone home during our third, so we played a best of five. But we didn't click and lost that as well. 1-3.

With no else around, we started another best-of-three! Kaushal had started doing a lot of, as Ram later said, "dinky little drops" and they were catching the net cord and coming our side, to add to our agony. The fifth game, and the first of the best-of-three, went their way, yet again.

Man, three losses in a row and we came out all guns blazing. Somehow, we got our act together right this time and won that game.

In a sense, it was down to the wire, a must-win for us. From a 20-18 lead favoring us, they somehow made it deuce yet again. At 23-22 on our serve, we had a longish rally, with Ram doing a cross-court drop. He was exulting, scaring the four French ladies playing on the next court, even as Kaushal was lunging for it. Even though he reached it, his cross-court lift sailed wide.

Winning three out of seven was great, esp. with the folks playing as they were!

On G+

Advaita & Samadhi

2012-02-09T15:46:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxAdSam

Love the manner in which the Sadguru cuts through the faff and the fluff, right to the bone.

Read this in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi last Sunday evening:

Talk 35. An educated visitor asked Bhagavan about dvaita and advaita.
M.: Identification with the body is dvaita. Non-identification is advaita.

Ashté!

Monday morning, i was reading in the Gospel: (page 775, bottom)

The Master was gradually regaining consciousness of the outer world. Looking at the devotees he said: "Years ago I used to be amazed to see people keeping kai fish alive in a pot of water. I would say: 'How cruel these people are! They will finally kill the fish.' But later, as changes came over my mind, I realized that bodies are like pillow-cases. It doesn't matter whether they remain or drop off."

Using a similar metaphor, the Master explains samadhi just a page later: (pp. 776-777)

"Each ego may be likened to a pot. Suppose there are ten pots filled with water, and the sun is reflected in them. How many suns do you see?"
A DEVOTEE: "Ten reflections. Besides, there certainly exists the real Sun."
MASTER: "Suppose you break one pot. How many suns do you see now?"
DEVOTEE: "Nine reflected suns. But there certainly exists the real sun."
MASTER: "All right. Suppose you break nine pots. How many suns do you see now?"
DEVOTEE: "One reflected sun. But there certainly exists the real sun."
MASTER (to Girish): "What remains when the last pot is broken?"
GIRISH: "That real sun, sir."
MASTER: "No. What remains cannot be described. What is remains. How will you know there is a real sun unless there is a reflected sun? 'I-consciousness' is destroyed in samadhi. A man climbing down from samadhi to the lower plane cannot describe what he has seen there."

It's interesting that every time we hit the deep end of the ocean (in deep sleep or sushupti), we are actually experiencing a samadhi-like state. Except that we can't remember what It was like There. But we do feel its aftereffect, the bliss of deep sleep. More on this in Fearless in Siesta.

That's why Ramana Sadguru said that samadhi = sushupti in jagrat:

No, it [sushupti] is the pure State. There is full awareness in it and total ignorance in the waking state. It is said to be ajnana (ignorance) only in relation to the false jnana (knowledge) prevalent in jagrat [waking state]. Really speaking jagrat is ajnana and sushupti prajnana (wisdom). If sushupti is not the real state where does the intense peace come from to the sleeper? It is everybody's experience that nothing in jagrat can compare with the bliss and well-being derived from deep sleep, where the mind and the senses are absent. What does it all mean? It means that bliss comes only from inside ourselves and that it is most intense when we are free from thoughts and perceptions, which create the world and the body, that is, when we are in our pure Be-ing, which is Brahman, the Self. In other words, the Be-ing alone is bliss and the mental superimpositions are ignorance and, therefore, the cause of misery.

Upgrading to Gingerbread 2.3.3 on my Samsung Galaxy Tab

2012-02-08T18:22:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGb233

After one year of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the original one with Froyo, i had G+ed last month:

Extremely portable, with minimal maintenance. Gives up every once in a while, but pretty good uptime. Battery lasts for quite a while.
My rating: 8.5 / 10

However, it had started acting up quite a bit of late. After the joy of upgrading to Gingerbread 2.3.7 on my SGS (thanks again, Venkat), i felt it was time i did the same for my SGTab.

When i cast (about) the Net last evening, i got a nice video, with a link to this detailed post on the XDA Developers Forum, and the following ZIP files to be downloaded:

Odin3 v1.7.zip
Firmware P1000XXJQ1_P1000XXJQ1_P1000XXJPZ.zip (226.59 MB, so better to plan a bit for this download)
gt-p1000_mr_PIT.ZIP
dbdata.zip.

Extracted the files from the ZIP files and diligently followed the procedure indicated in the following video:

It worked like a charm!

To be on the safe side, i downloaded a local copy (MP4) of the video, using KeepVid. It came in mighty handy as the BSNL broadband was quite flaky this afternoon (blame it on the 8th!).

The only hiccup i found in the entire process was, post upgrade, since i had enabled 2SV, i had some issues connecting to my Google Account. As soon as the BSNL broadband came back, i sorted that out from my desktop.

In the case of the SGS upgrade, thanks to the Android App Grid, i pushed all the apps that i normally use to my SGS in less than 10 minutes (this was, of course, one of the compelling reasons for creating it in the first place). However, Google refused to show my upgraded SGTab on the settings page of my Android Market account. So i installed the super-duper apps (rating of 9) and then some from the Android App Grid as a first cut.

The SGTab started showing up after a couple of hours in my Android Market account and i slam-dunked all the other apps from the Android App Grid. What a breeze!

IMHO, i just bought myself some more time with this SGTab, till such time the current Tabs ship with Ice Cream Sandwich.

Zapping the Zantippi

2012-02-06T15:20:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxZapZan

Earlier this week, there was a news item:

Liam Neeson thinking of becoming a Muslim
…
Significantly, the Irish actor said that "The call to prayer happens five times a day and for the first week it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit and it’s the most beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim."

Had a similar feeling when we visited Egypt at the end of 2010.

The Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali was a treat:

Shirdi Sai Baba San used to say that the loud chants at namaaz drive away evil spirits. This funda kept me cool at the 0515 call to prayer.

In Chapter 3 of the Shri Sai Satcharita, we read:

The story of the Rohilla illustrates Sai Baba’s all embracing love. One Rohilla, tall and well-built, strong as a bull, came to Shirdi, wearing a long Kafni (robe) and was enamoured of Sai who stayed there. Day and night he used to recite in a loud and harsh tone Kalma (verses from Holy Koran) and shout "ALLAH HO AKBAR" (God is Great). Most people of Shirdi, were working in their fields by day and when they returned to their homes at night, they were welcomed with the Rohilla’s harsh cries and shouts. They could get no sleep and felt much trouble and inconvenience. They suffered in silence this nuisance for some days, and when they could stand it no longer, they approached Baba, and requested Him to check the Rohilla and stop the nuisance. Baba did not attend to their complaint. On the contrary, Baba took the villagers to task, and asked them to mind their own business, and not the Rohilla. He said to them that the Rohilla had got a very bad wife, a Zantippi, who tried to come in and trouble the Rohilla and Himself; but hearing the Rohilla’s prayers, she dare not enter and they were at peace and happy. In fact, the Rohilla had no wife and by his wife Baba meant DURBUDDHI, i.e. bad thoughts. As Baba liked prayers and cries to God better than anything else, He took the side of the Rohilla, and asked the villagers to wait and suffer the nuisance, which would abate in due course.

Shri Sai Satcharita Grid updated

Confermantra

2012-02-05T20:07:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxConfermantra

Have been chanting the mantra that i got in March 2010 a bit of late.

Sri Brahmachaitanya says there's no constraint in chanting it:

Nama Alone Annihilates Passions and Desires
…
Complete surrender to God means complete dedication of ourselves and all we have, to His service. This, in other words, means renouncing all upadhi [limitation]. For this we must adopt a sadhana which is absolutely free of all upadhi. Nama-smarana is the only such sadhana. Time and space, good circumstance and bad, wealth and poverty, scholarship and ignorance, sickness and health, status, sex, age-none of these can be an impediment to the chanting of nama. Nor does nama require any appliance, whatever. The only essential thing is the will to chant it. It can be carried about in the heart, always and anywhere. Without penance or hardship, it will absolve the mind from desire and passion.

I find it ideal.

The other day, i was wondering whether it was the one for me. Doubt dies hard, n'est-ce pas, especially when if you haven't been initiated into the mantra.

Strangely, very soon, the morning of Groundhog Day, i had a vivid dream. I was with some of the baddy guys and waiting to meet some sort of guru. Of course, no questions asked of non sequiturs in dreams :-)

I go into this nice marbled room. It has a sweeping staircase and the guru comes bounding down the stairs. He looks like an amalgam of my Uncle URKM and God Gaaru. But the name that comes to me (in the dream) is Jiddu.

I am on my knees and ask him whether the mantra, uttering it, is the one for me. He bends closer and asks me to repeat it. I say the words distinctly. It's uncanny how, every once in a while, dreams are so like real life.

He says that's the One for me.

JustPictures! Just Fabulous

2012-01-31T18:31:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxJPix

The other day, tired of accessing Flickr on my mobile browser, i was searching for Flickr for the Android. Its rating wasn't that high. But in the similar app recommendations, i saw JustPictures!, which sounded quite promising as you can seamlessly access the pics of your friends, wherever they might be:

Flickr
Picasa
Smugmug
Photobucket
Deviant Art, etc.

After pottering around it for a couple of days, i feel it's a must-have app. Don't miss it!

Here's a screenshot of my contact set:

and some of the sets:

JustPictures! Butterflies and Moths

and:

JustPictures! Top 100 Most Interesting

A very neat feature is the Browse by Tags set, right at the top of contact sets. Prepare to be surprised! The thumbnail that shows up for this set is not in your control :-)

Why are they giving away such a great app for free? Not too sure, but it's on code.google.com.

On G+

An Evening Out

2012-01-30T15:23:00.003+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxEvenOut

Last Friday, Marty had to attend the valedictory of his seniors at school (here's the 2010 one). Since our driver was on leave, i offered to drop him.

It's a lovely ride, full of greenery, and it's one drive i still don't mind doing in chaotic Bangalore.

Once i dropped him off, i was wondering what to do. The day was still young, as they say :-)

Earlier that morning, i had a dream of visiting a Mariamman temple, in which i distinctly saw myself offering a rupee.

There's a temple at the (Dommasandra) junction where the road from Varthur via Gunjur meets Sarjapur Road (see). I was thinking that the temple had either a Mariamman or the Old Mother and so i turned left after exiting Greenwood.

Parked at Narayani restau (now with a new name and management) a little further on Sarjapur Road and walked over to the junction. Of late, i always fold the INR 500 notes inside the INR 100 ones and carry them Chinese fashion, rolled up in a … ;-) band.

There was no Mariamman / Old Mother there, and it turned out to be a samadhi mandir of an avadhuta Sri Govardana Swami:

Avadhuta (Sanskrit: अवधूत avadhūta) is a Sanskrit term used in Indian religions to refer to an antinomian mystic or saint who is beyond ego-consciousness, duality and common worldly concerns and acts without consideration for standard social etiquette. Such personalities "roam free like a child upon the face of the Earth". An avadhūta does not identify with his mind or body or 'names and forms' (Sanskrit: namarupa). Such a person is held to be pure consciousness (Sanskrit: caitanya) in human form.

In fact, it didn't look as if anyone was there, and i had to call out a bit. One sweet-looking person, called Nagaraj, came out from the dim room to the left of the samadhi and gave me the arati.

Sri Nagaraj, who has been staying out here since 2003, gave me a brief history of himself:

He's from Bhadravathi. He was working in L&T, Yelahanka for a while and left the job around 1998. He disconnected from his family as well. For a while, he was moving from ashram to ashram, when, sometime in 2003, he had a dream in which the avadhuta asked him to come to His samadhi.

So he settled down there. After some time, Sri Nagaraj had a startling experience when the avadhuta came out of His samadhi, hugged him, and whispered the beeja mantra in his right ear. Sri Nagaraj clarified that the experience didn't happen in a dream, but in regular life. Since then, he's been staying here. On the few occasions that he goes to holy places such as Kashi, a person called Krishna Murthy (a devotee of Lord Hanuman, who stays at the place and hardly ever talks) looks after the samadhi mandir.

He told me a wee bit about the avadhuta as well: Sri Govardhana Swami is from North India and was, of course, a realized soul. He would eat pieces of glass and even razor blades. He'd hesitate to pee on Mother Earth and would cup the urine in his hands and drink it! On the few occasions that he'd eat a banana at a shop, the shopkeeper would find that he'd sell all his produce in a jiffy and make a handsome profit. That was one of the signals to regular folks that they were in the midst of an avadhuta, i believe.

To the right of the samadhi mandir, there was another (samadhi) of a lady devotee, called Sri Krishnanamma (hope i got that right). She was a devotee of the Avadhuta, who took up sannyas after two years of marriage (no kids). Every year, around mid January, a major celebration is held here.

It was nice, listening to all that from a chap who's renounced. It didn't look as if he was missing much.

On the way back, i stopped off at the Sacred Grove, between TISB (on the right) and Inventure Academy (on the left).

I love trees and, IMHO, this is a very serene spot. Makeshift temples adorn the area.

It was very nice to sit below this monster!

One could see mynah, squirrels (and squirelettes), and green parrots in the foliage. After some time, the many bee-hives came into view. There were as many as those further in the tree down the road (near the Dommasandra junction). A cow waddled along, pestered by some geese (or heron).

It was all so magical. Was once more reminded of that uplifting experience of Swami Ashokananda:

When he (Swami Ashokananda) was near trees, his mind would sometimes grow very quiet, and his ordinary consciousness, human consciousness, would be obliterated, as it were, and tree consciousness would take its place, a consciousness entirely unlike our own—a different time sense, a different way of knowing and feeling, indescribable in terms of human consciousness. He felt at one with trees, just as we feel at one with human beings. He knew trees to be very happy, peaceful beings. He could almost hear their laughter. It was, he said, like the laughter of young girls around sixteen or seventeen years old, and yet restrained.

It was getting dark, so i headed back.

The magic for the evening wasn't done.

When i got back, Novak Djokovic won a marathon match against Andy "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" Murray and a moth hovered over him as he lay prone after a debilitating semi-final.

Suzanne White commented:

People really don't understand the bond between a moth and its master. That moth is Djokovic's pet moth. His name, for anyone who's interested, is Rappaport. He's a special type of moth, bred for company. They can't talk. That's why men like to keep them as pets. They don't remind them of their wives.

On G+

Spiritual Classics on the Kindle

2012-01-27T13:08:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxKinClass

Was feeling a bit tired to do the puja this morning. So i read a few snippets from these spiritual classics on my Kindle.

Shri Sai Satcharita (PDF and Kindle)
Sai Baba The Master (PDF and Kindle)
The Power of Arunachala (Kindle)
Swami Ranganathananda (PDF and Kindle)
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (PDF and Kindle)
The Gospel of the Holy Mother (PDF and Kindle)
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi (PDF and Kindle).

You can download all these from Google Docs by clicking the above links and using the Download button at the top-right of the screen. All downloads are 1 MB or lesser.

Apart from the above links on Google Docs, you can also download the Kindle versions of all these and then some from my Kindle download page.

There was a nice point of similarity during the readings. From Visit to Vidyasagar in the Gospel:

"Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. ( All laugh.) It wanted to tell others how deep the water was. But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it melted. Now who was there to report the ocean's depth?"

while from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi:

Talk 5. Mr. M. Frydman, an engineer, remarked on the subject of Grace, "A salt doll diving into the sea will not be protected by a waterproof coat". It was a very happy simile and was applauded as such. Maharshi added, "The body is the waterproof coat."

On G+

Playing Second Fiddle

2012-01-24T15:04:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSecondFiddle

Q: Which is the musical instrument that is most difficult to play?

With devotees thronging the Sadguru, i am always intrigued by the sideshows along the way. How does one devotee react when another is shown, say, more grace?

Ramana Sadguru was quite nonchalant about it. He would say that He couldn't do anything if one devotee brought a small cup to the ocean and another a large one.

There are a couple of instances in the Shri Sai Satcharita where devotees raise such issues with Baba, who then clarifies (but that's besides the point). From Chapter 11:

Dadabhat worshipped Baba. Nobody until then dared to apply sandal paste to Baba's forehead. Only Mhalsapati used to apply it to His throat. But this simple-hearted devout, Dr. Pandit, took Dabadhat's dish containing Puja-materials and taking sandal-paste out of it, drew a Tripundra, i.e. there horizontal lines on Baba's forehead. To the surprise of all, Baba kept silent without uttering a single word. Then Dababhat that evening asked Baba, "How is it, that though You object to the sandal-paste being applied by others to Your forehead, but You allowed Dr. Pandit to do so now?"

and, from Chapter 27:

Mrs. Khaparde was faithful and devout, and loved Baba deeply. Every noon she brought naivedya herself to the Masjid, and after it was accepted by Baba, she used to return and take her meals. Seeing her steady and firm devotion, Baba wanted to exhibit it to others. One noon she brought a dish containing Sanza (wheat-pudding), purees, rice, soup, and kheer (sweet rice) and other sundry articles to the Masjid. Baba, who usually waited for hours, got up at once, went up to His dining seat and removing the outer covering from the dish began to partake of the things zealously. Shama then asked Him - "Why this partiality? You throw away dishes of others and do not care to look at them, but this You draw to You earnestly and do justice to it. Why is the dish of this woman so sweet? This is a problem to us."

~~~*-*~@~

The incident that moves me the most on these lines is this from the Gospel: (page 705, bottom)

Sri Ramakrishna took some refreshments and handed some to Narendra.
JATIN DEVA (to the Master): "You always say: 'Narendra, eat this! Eat that!' Are the rest of us fools? Are we like straw washed ashore by the flood-tide?"

The Master is at a loss for words and sidesteps:

The Master said laughingly to Narendra, "He is talking about you."
Sri Ramakrishna laughed and showed his affection to Jatin by touching his chin.

The Arabs say:

Better the ganji in the house than the feast in the neighbor's.

Feynman, the Comic

2012-01-20T21:36:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxFeynmanOM

Late the night of 17th January, saw this on an Oprah mailer:

This 248-page graphic bio will keep you entranced from start to finish, mostly because Ottaviani (writer) and Myrick (illustrator) tell the very human story behind Feynman, who, it turns out, did everything from help create the atomic bomb to unearth the causes of the Challenger space shuttle disaster all with a sense of humor so goofy and endearing that you can't help falling in love with him.

Very unusual, a comic book on the life of Feynman, one of my idols! Always fooling around, he should have been called Feignman.

Immediately, checked it on amazon.com and, closer home, on flipkart.com. The USD 18.93 vs. INR 1351 difference wasn't too much and it's, well, instant gratification with Flipkart ;-) Got it within two days, last evening.

Guess you'd appreciate the book much more if you have read the earlier books:

Some of the stuff that's more or less fully covered as described in the above books are:

Safecracker meets Safecracker
His inability to write to Arlene, his dead wife, as he doesn't know her new address (very touching).

His Stream of Consciousness experiment with sleep is one of my favorites: (snipped from Fearless in Siesta)

This "stream of consciousness" reminded me of a problem my father had given to me many years before. He said, "Suppose some Martians were to come down to earth, and Martians never slept, but instead were perpetually active. Suppose they didn't have this crazy phenomenon that we have, called sleep. So they ask you the question: 'How does it feel to go to sleep? What happens when you go to sleep? Do your thoughts suddenly stop, or do they move less aanndd lleeessss rraaaaapppppiidddddllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy yyy? How does the mind actually turn off?"
I got interested. Now I had to answer this question: How does the stream of consciousness end, when you go to sleep?
I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that they're not logically connected until you ask yourself, "What made me think of that?" and you try to work your way back, and often you can't remember what the hell did make you think of that!
So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.

On G+

Swami Ranganathananda

2012-01-18T15:38:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSwamiR

Earlier this week, i revisited a lovely little bio of Swami Ranganathananda (aka Mini Vivekananda), whose guiding philosophy in life was:

Godward passion transmuted into manward love

It's very inspirational and i felt that some of the snippets should be shared:

This love of adventure and dislike for an easy life, or as the German philosopher Nietzsche expressed in his dictum, "live dangerously" had been his trait from boyhood.
…
When Shankar [Swami R.] was 12 or 13 years old, once in his mother’s presence, he used some foul words against a person. His mother immediately reprimanded him, lovingly saying: "My boy, your tongue is the abode of Vâni or Saraswati, the Goddess of knowledge and wisdom. Don't soil it by using foul language against others." The advice, he said, went straight to his head and heart. Little wonder then that the Goddess manifested so tangibly through his blessed tongue for over eight decades.
…
One particular sentence in this book left a lasting impression on Shankar: "Young people seek praise; but it is better to seek to be praise-worthy."
…
Sometime later, volleyball too captured his imagination. Even when he was a trustee of the Sangha, he would play volleyball with the brahmacharis of the Training Centre at Belur Math. A senior monk recalled that once, when Maharaj saw a volleyball match in progress, he immediately adjusted his dhoti and joined the players!
…
Here perhaps were put together the chemicals for evolving Vedantic Thought Bombs (his words) which, in the not-too-distant future, he was to throw at unsuspecting audiences the world over, regardless of religion or caste, gender or nationality, civilian or military, young or old!
…
In 1942, during the Second World War, when Japan bombed Burma (Myanmar today) and the centre had to be wound up, Maharaj came back to Dhaka preferring the adventurous land route trekking along with thousands of other refugees, although more comfortable alternatives were available.
…
Madhavanandaji did attend Maharaj's lectures subsequently and commented to another sadhu, Thakur Shankarke kole niye khela khelcchen [Taking Shankar on his lap, Thakur (Sri Ramakrishna) is playing].
…
Sri Ramakrishna used to say: "A man may live in a mountain cave, smear his body with ashes, observe fasts, and practice austere discipline, but if his mind dwells on worldly objects, on lust and gold, I would say 'Fie on him!' But I would say that a man is indeed blessed if he eats, drinks and roams about but keeps his mind free from lust and gold." The truth of this statement was seen in Shankar Maharaj. He never cared for austerities or external observances. But he built a strong character based on absolute purity. This gave him not only great inner strength but also inner freedom. Because he was inwardly free he was always happy, could mix with all freely and do all his work with innocent cheerfulness. He maintained this innocent cheerfulness throughout his life.
…
"I have always maintained that I am a Swami of the Ramakrishna Order. Nothing more can be added to that. It is the biggest title."
…
Study was indeed a passion with him. He would often remark that if the Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, was invoked alone she might run away after some time. But if the Goddess of Learning, Saraswati (Vâni, as she is also known, was a word which Maharaj liked very much) was first invoked, Lakshmi also would come, and the two sisters would stay with us always.
…
Swami R's feedback to a pujari who berates some noisy devotees in a Hyderabad temple, quoting the start of Speak Gently by David Bates:

Speak gently; it is better far
To rule by love than fear;
Speak gently; let no harsh words mar
The good we might do here!

Once again, here's the bio (just 44 pages) and the Kindle version.

On G+

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2012-01-18T15:11:00.003+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTCCoBB

Even though it's been quite a while since it was released, i had the exquisite pleasure of watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last Saturday (14.JAN) evening.

Started the DVD as a lark, but was hooked throughout. Even popped a beer in between.

Brad Pitt was, as usual, eminently watchable, but i loved his voice even more. The scene where Cate Blanchett dances for Brad Pitt strongly reminded me of that GBSism:

Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.

The pace is all relaxed, and great thoughts / quotes shimmered right through the movie:

Benjamin Button: It's funny how sometimes the people we remember the least make the greatest impression on us.
…
Mrs. Maple: [at piano] "It's not about how well you play, it's how you feel about what you play."

That last one brought back fond memories of Mallikarjun "Anna" Mansur: (snipped from Musically Yours)

Someone asked Anna, "Anna, isn’t the pursuit of music full of hardship?" Anna replied, "Hardship? How can music have hardship? It is my good fortune that I became a singer. In our world, there are no hardships, only pleasure."

On G+

Innativity

2012-01-16T15:57:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxInnativity

Some of the elements of this post came from the deep early this morning

Over the weekend, kiddo was wondering about RAR files and how they are used. There was some discussion going on among his friends, and he wanted to get to the bottom of how they worked.

In my Engineering days at AU, there was this Civil Engg. professor who used to be interested in English as well. So i would bother him about words like naïve/té and how they were pronounced. Indian languages are WYSIWYS (What you say is what you see) but the Roman languages have many idiosyn-crazies. I used to think that was a big deal when i didn't know any better, but now i feel it's just plain silly, esp. the intellectual snobbery / superciliousness that people generally exhibit when you say foreign words the wrong way: "Oh, you don’t know how to say that whatchamacallit, you are a hillbilly." Sivaji Ganesan was wonderful in that sense: "I can speak my mother tongue correctly, but it's too much to expect me to speak other languages the same way" (see Blindspotting as well).

So i told him there was nothing to it. All it required was a Google Search and some amount of working with .RAR files.

Of course, there are things that one can never understand due to the intellectual bandwidth: once i saw a one-line piece of code with a self-referential expression to check whether a file was properly named; it scared me. And even if i grow to be old as Methuselah, i don't think i will get to first base with the Google Search algorithm.

But RAR files are OK.

~~~*-*~@~

Anyway the very first chapter (after the massive Introduction) of the Gospel shows the path:

After a few minutes Sri Ramakrishna looked at him [M., the author of the Gospel] kindly and said affectionately: "You see, you have certain good signs. I know them by looking at a person's forehead, his eyes, and so on. Tell me, now, what kind of person is your wife? Has she spiritual attributes, or is she under the power of avidya?" M: "She is all right. But I am afraid she is ignorant."
MASTER(with evident displeasure): "And you are a man of knowledge!"
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance.

Swami Ranganathananda (here's a lovely little bio of this Mini Vivekananda) explained this in a most elegant manner: (from "I am Thee; I am Free")

Einstein said: "Science can denature plutonium, but it cannot denature evil in the heart of man." So, there must be another dimension to science and truth-seeking; something experiential. Vedanta says that in the inner world, all knowing tends to being; when you try to know your own true nature, you realise that you are That. In the external world, it is never so. I study a star, I do not become a star; if I study a table, I do not become a table. But when you study yourself in depth, you become That. A wonderful change comes over you.

So whether you are interested in how to pronounce naïveté or the innativity of the Christ Consciousness that pervades everything is something to make up your mind about.

On G+

No Pussyfooting

2012-01-12T15:20:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNoPf

Celibacy is not hereditary.

—637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Today's AHAM has Ramana Sadguru saying it as it is!

Q: At Sri Aurobindo's Ashram there is a strict rule that married couples can live there on condition that they abstain from sexual intercourse.
M: What use is that? If it exists in the mind, what use is there in forcing people to abstain?

Ramana used to say that Brahmacharya meant moving around in Brahman, and not celibacy as commonly understood.

The birthday guru, Swami Vivekananda, makes a wonderful point. In Life of Swami Brahmananda, we read:

Rakhal: "Many people mistakenly imagine that it is enough if one avoids the company of women, but Naren expressed the truth beautifully last night. He said: 'Woman exists for man as long as he has lust. When you are free from lust you do not see any difference between the sexes.'"

In the Shri Sai Satcharita, Shirdi Sai Baba advises Nanasaheb Chandorkar, agitated on seeing the rare beauty of a Muslim lady who had come for Baba's darshan: (snipped from Horse Sense)

"Nana, why are you getting agitated in vain? Let the senses do their allotted work, or duty, we should not meddle with their work. God has created this beautiful world and it is our duty to appreciate its beauty. The mind will get steady and calm slowly and gradually. When the front door was open, why go by the back one? When the heart is pure, there is no difficulty, whatsoever. Why should one be afraid of any one if there be no evil thought in us? The eyes may do their work, why should you feel shy and tottering?"

Related: Love Gurus

Books: Thinking, Fast and Slow

2012-01-11T21:49:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTFaS

Thanks to this DelanceyPlace post we are blind to our blindness, i have been introduced to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

An intriguing book that sort takes off from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (on Amazon.com).

It introduces us to the fast and intuitive System 1 as well as the slow and deliberate System 2. System 1 can't be turned off, while System 2 is all about ensuring self-control. Check out what happens when System 2 takes a back-seat. Some great dancing perhaps ;-)

Downloaded the free Kindle sample (USD 9.99), but the hardcopy on Flipkart was going for cheaper (INR 349). Also, there was a review on the Kindle page that the eBook wasn't that properly formatted.

Though the book keeps saying that it's easier to see the biases [everyone's bi-assed ;-)] of others, i am trying to understand System 1 and System 2 from a spiritual viewpoint.

For instance, System 1 can be thought of being about reactions while System 2, being deliberate, is more about responses.

Can one reduce the System 1 reactions that one is hardwired with and adopt the more responsive actions of System 2?

Or does one need a solid jolt to the system? As the Master says in the Gospel: "Once lightning hit the Kali temple. The points of the nails and screws were flattened."

Anyway, the book is looking very interesting. Let's see.

On G+

Terms of Endreament

2012-01-11T21:40:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxEndreament

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to receive

Wonder whether this has ever happened to you, but every once in a while, a disconcerting thing keeps occurring: my dream memory gets mixed up with my regular life memory.

Since cues are used to fire memories and they are normally very short in duration (time-slice), IMHO that's what creates the confusion. It's not clear to the system where that cue occurred and the memory thread that it retrieves could be from either the dream database or the real-life database.

As it is, i don't really believe that real life is any different from a dream. It's just that it's phenomenally long (~14 billion years at last count) and detailed. More in Is the Universe a Dream of God?

Wonder whether such beliefs have any effect on what's retrieved. But the head becomes a confusing miasma in a very short time.

To extricate oneself from implosion, have to do some pinching of the self: such as blog/g+ing :-)

On G+

Arunachala Magica

2012-01-06T23:18:00.003+05:30

అరుణాచలా మజాకా?!

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxAcMagic

Sometime back, PrasanthJ sent me some radical stuff:

Deepak Chopra Says there there is no way to prove existence of an outside world
Any neurologist will assure you that the brain offers no proof that the outside world really exists and many hints that it doesn’t.…
The cortex doesn’t inform us about this never-ending data processing, which is all that is happening inside gray matter. Instead, the cortex tells us about the world—it allows us to perceive sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures—the whole array of creation. The brain has pulled an enormous trick on us, a remarkable sleight of hand, because there is no direct connection between the body’s raw data and our subjective sense of an outside world.

This dovetailed very neatly with that Superparadigm article by Peter Russell, which convinced me of the Formless:

All that I see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel has been created from the data received by my sensory organs. All I ever know of the world around are the mental images constructed from that data. However real and external they may seem, they are all phenomena within my mind.

What happens when some of the sensory organs go kaput? PSM sent me a very interesting XP on that recently:

Expansion and Dr. Jill Taylor's Talk
Are Brains Wired for Enlightenment?
A stroke shut down half of a brain scientist's brain. Cornered in the other half, she plunged into a samadhi-like state of love, bliss and insight

~~~*-*~@~

Albert Einstein observed that the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe was that it was comprehensible.

But, if it's all happening within, there's really no big deal about understanding it. This was why Ramana Sadguru said: "It's not the Universe that's vast but the human mind".

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj took it one step further with His searing observation in I Am That:

"I am not a part of the world; the world is a part of me".

~~~*-*~@~

So how does one see things? Ramana says: (Who Sees?)

You alone exist, O Heart, the radiance of awareness! In You a mysterious power dwells, a power which without You is nothing. From it [this power of manifestation] there proceeds, along with a perceiver, a series of subtle shadowy thoughts that, lit by the reflected light of the mind amid the whirl of prarabdha, appear within us as a shadowy spectacle of the world and appear without as the world perceived by the five senses as a film is projected through a lens. Whether perceived or unperceived, these [thoughts] are nothing apart from You, O Hill of Grace.

If you feel all this is a load of baloney, here's a simple test. The next time you fall into deep sleep and wake up fully refreshed, try to ascertain where you were during that period. You can't, because your mind was totally subsumed into the Great Infinite Spirit in your (spiritual) Heart.

No mind, only the I, and its accompanying Bliss.

In fact, reading the above by Ramana makes me wonder why Arunachala is regarded as the Sahasrara Chakra:

Kenneth Grant on Arunachala… In his work The Magical Revival Kenneth Grant writes of Arunachala as one of the global chakras.
"The supreme seat of energy - the Sahasrara Chakra - is not located within the physical body at all, but above the cranial suture, where, figuratively speaking, the Lotus of Infinite Light blooms and bathes with its perfume the subtle anatomy of man. The Sahasrara is the seat of the Atman, the True Self in Man which is known as the Brahman in the Cosmos. It is the Abode of Siva and is represented on earth by the Sacred Hill of Arunachala in South India. This is the cult-centre of the most profoundly spiritual Path now open to humanity, i.e. the Advaita-marg or Path of Non-duality.

On G+

A నామ for రామ

2012-01-03T22:06:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNama4Rama

With the change of year, it's back to the start of Discourses and some profound stuff on nama:

Nama Imparted by a Sadguru
The question is often raised if one may begin to repeat a nama of one's own choice, or must one be first initiated by a sadguru and assigned a specific nama which he should then repeat? Nama is self-existent and complete in itself, and needs nothing else to make it perfect. And yet, nama imparted by a sadguru certainly is something very special, distinctive, in that it is reinforced by his spiritual strength and support, and consequently there is no scope for pride of doership to rise in the sadhaka's mind. When a sadhaka repeats nama imparted by a sadguru, he gradually develops a relish, a zest for it, and in due course, derives a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. It is therefore highly desirable that nama should be obtained by initiation by a spiritual master, a sadguru. However, till we meet a sadguru we must keep on repeating the nama of our choice; for, this itself will expedite our meeting the sadguru.

Ever since i got this wonderful book in DEC.2008 from Raavel via Sri BC Prasad Gaaru, i experimented with various nama, each one leading to the other.

On the Master's birthday (18.FEB) in 2010, i got How to Live with God:

Exactly one month later, on March 18, the birthday of Edgar Cayce, i was feeling, as Larry Darrell put it, "spiritually waterlogged". It was a Thursday and i decided to skip the daily puja and read some stuff from HtLwG in the backyard.

And soon i found what i was looking for at the bottom of one of the pages:

M.* said: "Late in the evening the Master would chant this mantra, …. One can attain perfection or see God by repeating this mantra. The Master said: 'This is a mysterious mantra.'"

When i toted it up, it came to 41, that even more mysterious number. What more can one ask for? A magical mantra from the Master Himself.

f2012

2012-01-01T16:31:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxf2012

f for FAQ, figurative, function,…

Finally, THE year is here. Instead of getting ribbed by all and sundry about the end of the world, here's a FAQ about what i feel about the year 2012:

Q. Will the world come to an end this year?
A. AFAIK, the world as we know it will come to an end. But IMHO it's impossible to predict when that will happen. In 1936, Edgar Cayce suggested 1998 as the year California will get inundated, but that date has come and gone. I am more in sync with Peter Russell's idea that the 2012 date is figurative. He says that it's any date:

2012 ± 18 years.

Q. Why should the world come to an end?
A. John Ross observed:

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back.

Very soon, if not already, it will be Oceans of Nothing:

After studying, among other things, global catch data over more than 50 years, he and a team of 13 researchers in four countries have come to a stunning conclusion. By the middle of this century, fishermen will have almost nothing left to catch. "None of us regular working folk are going to be able to afford seafood," says Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine biologist and co-author of the study published in Science. "It's going to be too rare and too expensive."

How long will any any intelligent being such as Mother Earth allow this sort of "snuff" to continue? If the parasite is threatening to overrun the host, the host will shake it off like so many fleas of its back. Check out George Carlin's riff (at 4:24) in the video below:

Q. Will the end be sudden?
A. Yes, i feel so. From 2012: The Tipping Point:

As a system undergoes changes, it keeps trying its best to jiggle back to an equilibrium state. But after a point, it sort of can't do that. Even when you think the system has sort of stabilized (as i was thinking at the end), it might just be preparing for an explosion (as it eventually did).

Q. Are there any triggers/indicators?
A. In Reading 270-35, given on January 21, 1936, Cayce had said: (from Vesuvi-US)

If there are the greater activities in the Vesuvius, or Pelee, then the southern coast of California--and the areas between Salt Lake and the southern portions of Nevada--may expect, within the three months following same, an inundation by the earthquakes.
…
There will be upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctic that will cause the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and pole shift.

Q. How will the world look?
A. This is, of course, very hard to say. But here's one suggested map of the US post "2012":

Q. What are the danger areas?
A. Apart from those indicated in the US map above with the usual suspects (LA, SF, NY), Scandinavia will have to watch out. Cayce said that "Northern Europe" will change in the twinkling of an eye. My own reason for that will be a megatsunami, which has been known to circle the globe many times!

Q. What can one do?
A. Guess there's hardly anything that one can do except prepare oneself mentally. Reduce materialism. Pray more. Serve your fellow man/woman. Get in sync with the Formless that's always there in the background, as a witness to phenomena. Try to implement that great observation by Ramana Sadguru in Who am I?:

The mind should not be allowed to wander towards worldly objects and what concerns other people. However bad other people may be, one should bear no hatred for them. Both desire and hatred should be eschewed. All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood who will not give to others? When one's self arises all arises; when one's self becomes quiescent all becomes quiescent. To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent there will result good. If the mind is rendered quiescent, one may live anywhere.

Here's a quote from Swami, from Dreams of 2012:

The dawn of the Golden Age is at hand. But not everyone will experience it. The age of preparation precedes the Golden Age and it is during this time that the sorting-out process takes place. So seize the opportunity that all of you have been given to rise above the material level and manifest once again in the divine state. Only then can you enter the Golden Age and experience the omnipresence of the Lord.

Peace be unto You!

Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana

2011-12-27T23:08:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxBGAb

Photoset on Flickr

Last week of November, our baddy Kumar was mentioning that some action was on this weekend at Vagdevi Vilas School, Munne Kalolu and that Swami Sukhabodhananda was coming over. It turned out to be the Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana.

There was no way i was going to miss that talk by Swami Sukhabodhananda! I first saw Swami Sukhabodhananda in action in 1990 at Chennai and i have always enjoyed his fun way of giving spiritual messages.

He didn't disappoint me today as well. It all made beautiful sense. He said that the message of the Gita could be condensed into three stithi (state):

Paristithi (the current situation)
Manostithi (the state of the mind)
Atmastithi (the state of the atma).

The best way to interact with the world was to act from the Atmastithi. You are inherently blissful. You don't have to become happy, you already are. If you act from that state, whatever you do will turn out beneficial to the world.

You can listen to his wonderful words in English, with Samskrit slokas, Kannada, Telugu, and Hindi liberally thrown in as only a Bangalorean can do: (in four parts; you can download the *.3GP files and use QuickTime to listen to them):

Here's the folder on Google Docs.

The Swananda Swami (Swami Gangadharendra Saraswati) made a perceptive addition to this later. He said that between the stithi 1 and 2, you have the Deha stithi (the state of the body), as any diabetic would know ;-)

~~~*-*~@~

When i got back home, there was an immediate test on the stithi front. The kakabali offering of rice wasn't made (to the crows and the squirrels). Since we don't eat till this is done, i had to make the offering, keeping my temper in check and my hunger on hold. By the time i finished, i was close to tottering.

Hadn't Srirangam Srinivasa (శ్రీశ్రీ) Rao Gaaru already observed:

ఆకలేసి కేకలేసాడు (He was hungry, so he shouted)

The Master describes this amusingly in His Last Visit to Keshab: (The Gospel, page 322, bottom)

"You may think that everything is going to be over. But God will not release you as long as the slightest trace of your illness is left. You simply cannot leave the hospital if your name is registered there. As long as the illness is not perfectly cured, the doctor won't give you a permit to go. Why did you register your name in the hospital at all?" (All laugh.) Keshab laughed again and again at the Master's allusion to the hospital.

On G+: Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana

Timshel and the Bhagavad Gita

2011-12-26T22:42:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTimshelBG

There was a very interesting point from Swami in the Sai Inspires of 17.DEC.2011:

Many commentators of the Geeta have interpreted that the giving up of the fruits of one’s actions is advised because one has no right or authority to desire the fruits. This is a great blunder. When one has the right to engage in action, one also has the right over the fruits of that action; no one can deny or refuse this. But the doer can, out of one’s own free will and determination, refuse to be affected by the result, whether favourable or unfavourable. The Lord has said in the Geeta, 'refuse the fruit' (maa phaleshu), which means, the deed does yield results, but the doer should not do it with the results in view. If Krishna's intention was to say that the doer has no right over the fruits of action, He would have said, 'It is fruitless' or 'na phaleshu,' (na, meaning no). To engage oneself in karma, knowing well that the result will follow, and yet being unattached to it or being unconcerned with it, is the sign of purity.—Geeta Vahini, Ch 5

That very nice distinction between maa phaleshu (refuse the fruit) and na phaleshu (no fruit) reminds me of a similar one that Steinbeck uses in East of Eden, which boils down to one word, Timshel.

From Timshel Times:

The American Standard translation [of the Bible] orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in Thou shalt, meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—Thou mayest— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if Thou mayest—it is also true that Thou mayest not.

Intriguingly, i saw the same word (mayest) that very evening during the puja while reading The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi in a translation of the first verse of the inspirational Ishopanishad: (page 133, bottom)

R. E. Hume renders the verse thusly:
By the Lord (Isa) enveloped must this all be,
Whatever moving thing there is in the moving world.
With this renounced, thou mayest enjoy.
Covet not the wealth of anyone at all.

And goes on to explain renunciation in the most wonderful way: (page 134, top)

… is not the negation of something positive; it is quite the opposite, that is, the abandonment of what, being ultimately unreal, is not worthy of our attention.

Saqqara

2011-12-26T09:38:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSaqqara

When folks in the US started pushing West towards California, they would draw a line in the ground at the end of the day. Anything to the left of it was the West.

It's almost a year since that trip to Egypt at the end of 2010. We got in and out just before the Revolution hit!

One memory keeps coming back. Visiting the step pyramid at Saqqara and standing on the edge of the Sahara.

Later i checked Google Maps: (Saqqara is starred on the eastern edge below)

It was just a sea of sand :-) all the way to the Atlantic!

The iHole in the Wall

2011-12-26T00:37:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxiHole

"You do away, destroy the Teli's wall (sense of difference) between us, so that we can see and meet each other face to face."

—Shirdi Sai Baba, Chapter 35, Shri Sai Satcharita

The numbers (up to 25) in my head are stored in the same manner as the layout of Sea Sands. So, while repeating Ramana Sadguru, i think of the quarters to keep count, imagining myself as a bairagi in front of each house praying for the welfare of its occupants during my time there.

Though most of the houses face east or west, there were a few that faced South and thus looked into the choppy Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world. The breakers during cyclones were something.

Two such houses were 14A and 14B, which were built after the others and which explains their suffixes. On the few occasions i used to visit these houses, i would marvel at the view: deep, blue sea right in your back door!

Since the Bay of Bengal always gave me the feeling of living on the Edge of Infinity, nowadays that view reminds me of this saying of the Master in The Gospel, towards the end of The Master's Reminiscences: (page 760, middle)

"The Incarnations of God belong to the class of the Isvarakotis. They roam about in the open spaces. They are never imprisoned in the world, never entangled by it. Their ego is not the 'thick ego' of worldly people. The ego, the 'I-consciousness', of worldly people is like four walls and a roof: the man inside them cannot see anything outside. The ego of the Incarnations and other Isvarakotis is a 'thin ego': through it they have an uninterrupted vision of God. Take the case of a man who stands by a wall on both sides of which there are meadows stretching to infinity. If there is a hole in the wall, through it he can see everything on the other side. If the hole is a big one, he can even pass through it. The ego of the Incarnations and other Isvarakotis is like the wall with a hole. Though they remain on this side of the wall, still they can see the endless meadow on the other side. That is to say, though they have a human body, they are always united with God. Again, if they will, they can pass through the big hole to the other side and remain in samādhi. And if the hole is big enough, they can go through it and come back again. That is to say, though established in samādhi, they can again descend to the worldly plane."

Thorn EMI

2011-12-25T09:51:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxThornEMI

Had a painful dream this morning.

No doubt a throwback to our Wayanad trip in November, Chery and i were going in a car when we were stopped on the highway by some toll-seeking thugs. There was supposedly some money that we had to repay and the guys dredged up that account.

But they wouldn't let us pay the full amount at one shot; otherwise how were they going to make money (on the interest)?!

Was subjected to more harassment when the leader of the goon-pack wouldn't let go of me and kept giving fundas, over lunch, from my plate.

It was a great relief to wake up.

Some have compared self-realization to the same: waking up from life, but that's another story:

Is the Universe a Dream of God?