Tantra Psychology, Quantum Mind

Synthetic Synchrony of Dark Side of the Moon with Wizard of Oz

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 23:59:00 +0000

Synch

You know the fascinating classic film taking you for a ride into the wonderland of the Wizard of Oz. And perhaps you've taken flight in the psychedelic sounds of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which has the longest tenure of top rated albums. Yet do you know that when these two are played concurrently that sounds and scenes synergize in synch with such accuracy as if intentionally?

If you have the video of Wizard of Oz and the album Dark Side of the Moon, then give it a try yourself, starting the album upon the third roar of the lion.

Most of us are very curious about this, and some of us may not have either item, while one of us has put them together in synch for the benefit of all in the video below. Witness for yourself the astonishing conjugation of accurate synchrony.

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Tantra and Indo-Aryan Civilization

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 20:58:00 +0000

Tantra and Indo-Aryan Civilization

Discourse by Mahasambhuti

May 1959, RU, Muzaffarpur

The Aryans were not the original inhabitants of the present India. When the Aryans entered India through the Northwest Frontier Province, they contemptuously called the indigenous population whom they defeated in battle, “Anáryas” [“Non-Aryans”]. The appellation “Anáryas” did not apply to any group in particular, but rather to all the then inhabitants of India in general: the Mongolians, the Austrics and the Dravidians (a mixture of Austric and Negro). My discourse today will give a brief overview of the transformation that occurred in the civilizations of these peoples after the arrival of the Aryans, and of the effect that the Aryan migration had on the Aryans themselves. I will try to concentrate particularly upon the influence of Tantra on the Aryans.

The original home of the Aryans was in the northern part of Central Asia. By descent they were a fair, tall and healthy race. They were people of nomadic nature whose main means of subsistence was hunting. When, however, it became impossible for them to procure enough food by hunting, they started rearing cattle. But the merciless nature of Central Asia made their lives unbearable: snowstorms diminished the numbers both of their people and of their animals, and there was a chronic shortage of animal fodder. Just to survive, they had to spend almost all their time collecting food. Not only did this acute food shortage force them to make unending efforts as a group to collect food and rear cattle, it also led to perpetual inter-group skirmishes and even slaughter.

The constant fighting during this period, this kśatriya-dominated era, led to the eventual emergence of a class of intellectuals who greatly assisted the kśatriya-dominated society. They provided the kśatriya leaders with new inventions and discoveries, and satisfied their mental hunger by sharing their knowledge and wisdom. In the language of the day, these intellectuals were called rśis. The group leaders bowed their heads in reverence before these mighty intellectuals and followed the precepts framed by them. The society used to call their ideology Árśa Dharma [Religion of the Sages].

There can be no doubt that these rśis were wiser and more intelligent than the people of the time. But as script had not yet been invented, there was no means to keep a record of the wise discourses given by the rśis. The rśis’ disciples had no choice but to learn the rśis’ discourses by heart as they were being spoken. Since the discourses were memorized upon being heard, they were called shruti [literally, “ear”].

The level of intelligence of the Aryan mass at that time was so low that it hardly merits any mention. Actually, they were unable to understand these profound discourses, and as a consequence called them veda, meaning “knowledge”. They believed that the innovative rśis and intellectual munis were not men of ordinary stuff, but superior beings who heard the words of wisdom directly from the mouths of the gods. They also called them draśt́a [seers], as they “saw” with their own eyes the supernatural phenomena that they talked about, and uttered with their own mouths the benign incantations and mantras which produced those phenomena. Thus, every composer of the Vedic mantras was called a seer, and not a writer or composer. Generally, people believed that the composers of the Vedas were not men but veritable gods.

Even though the Vedas were considered as the creations of God and as such infallible, theism or spirituality was not fully awakened among the Aryans of that time. They only sang hymns and eulogies to appease the different natural forces.

In that age of undeveloped science they thought that smoke and the clouds in the sky were the same thing. That was why they burned ghee in sacrificial fires: they wanted to make smoke out of it to propitiate the different gods. They believed that the smoke would soar into the sky and turn into clouds; that rain would pour down from the clouds and nourish the earth causing an abundance of trees, plants and grass to sprout forth; and that their domestic animals, strengthened by the fresh grass, would multiply. That was why yajiṋas [sacrifices] were very common among the different groups and tribes. Those simple people believed that some gods would be propitiated by ghee, some by wine, and some by animal blood.

Human nature is such that one thinks that what is dear to oneself must be dear to everybody. So the ghee-, meat- and wine-loving Aryans thought that such food items would be liked by the gods also. Thus, after each inter-clan war, the chief of the conquering clan would offer that clan’s favourite food to the gods, either in Ashvamedha Yajiṋa [Horse Sacrifice] or in Gomedha Yajiṋa [Cow Sacrifice] or in Rájasúya Yajiṋa [sacrifice performed by a sovereign ruler], etc.

Each of the gods and goddesses of the polytheistic Aryans had his or her individual nature, characteristics and váhana [mount]. Although they were polytheists and nature-worshippers, they did not worship idols, not because they understood the philosophical defects of idol-worship, but because they lacked the refined artistic sense necessary to make the idols.

All their gods and goddesses were laokik figures [creations of the people]. They arose out of the peoples’ worldly needs. Hence the storm, the thunder, the lightning, the rain, the sun, and the moon were all their gods. In that era of undeveloped science what they feared most was the darkness of night, so they not only regarded the night and the evening as their gods, they actually revered them as well. In their fear, they would try to escape from the darkness by making fire with flint. They would never dare to displease the night and the evening, so whenever they made a fire they would first make obeisance to the evening with the fire before doing anything else. At night’s end, when the eastern horizon glowed red, the Aryans would sing the song of the dawn in unison. Aruńa, the mythological charioteer of the sun’s seven-horsed chariot (the seven horses corresponding to the seven distinct colours of the sun’s rays), was also their god, as, indeed, was the sun itself.

Some of the rśis understood, however, in a vague way if not in a clear way, the truth that there was a Supreme Entity above these gods, a Supreme Controller – the fundamental power of all their powers. This God of gods was the rśis’ Brahma. The common people were not familiar with the word Brahma.

The kings or chieftains staged sacrifices with great pomp and ostentation to appease the gods. The common people used these occasions for boisterous revelry. Since they lived in cold countries, of course, wine and meat were not particularly harmful to them. They would often entertain their guests with meat-cakes and wine. The children were given honey instead of wine. In the Aryan language of that time, wine was often called “honey”.

The oldest portion of the Vedas, that is, the Rgveda, was composed outside India. The remaining portions, that is, the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda, were partly Indian and partly non-Indian. Sámaveda is not a separate Veda by itself but is the compilation of the lyrical and musical portions of the different Vedas. So only the Rgveda can be regarded as an ancient relic of the non-Indian Aryan civilization. The Yajurveda was composed in Iran, Afghanistan, northwest India and certain parts of what is modern Russia, so it cannot be called entirely non-Indian, particularly since the then Afghanistan (Gándhár) and certain parts of Russia were regarded as part of India at that time.

The original Rgvedic civilization belonged, in spirit and language, to the non-Indian Aryans. But the Yajurveda was composed by a particular branch of the Vedic Aryans who, when the Aryans later began to spread out in search of food (especially wheat), migrated to India via Iran (Áryańya Vraja) and Afghanistan. When we say “Indo-Aryan civilization”, we basically mean the civilization of these people.

These nomadic Aryans, on coming in contact with the different groups of people of Iran, Afghanistan and northwest India, took up farming and developed the techniques of strategic warfare. The impact of this new thought bred in them, to some extent, a refined intelligence.

In the beginning, during the Rgvedic era, the cattle-rearing Aryans were only acquainted with barley and a few other crops. After they came to the present Iran they learned to cultivate wheat and, to some extent, rice. The more they progressed on their march, the more they came to realize the importance of growing different crops. Still, their staple was generally barley.

They learned wheat cultivation from the Asuras, the primitive natives of Iran. Though they became acquainted with paddy, or briihi (briihi → riihi → rihi → risi → “rice”, as in modern English), they did not cultivate it extensively. They learned the use of boiled rice in India.

The Yajurvedic era saw the all-round development of these people, and the resultant development of the Brahmaváda of the Yajurveda – the doctrine of monotheism. During this era not only was there a noticeable intellectual development among the general mass of the Aryans; among the munis [intellectuals or seers] and the rśis, philosophy and spirituality also attained a brilliant height of expression. The Brahmaváda of the Yajurveda was a lot deeper and clearer than that of the Rgveda.

The Atharvaveda was initially composed in India. During the composition of this Veda the Aryans came in close contact with the non-Aryans, resulting in an exchange of thought between the two. The Tantra of the non-Aryans had a marked influence on the Atharvaveda.

Being non-Aryan, the Atharvaveda cannot be regarded as a representation of Aryan civilization. In the subtle philosophy of the Atharvaveda, particularly of the Nrsiḿha Tápańiiya Shruti, there is a far greater influence of the non-Aryan Tantra than of the Aryan Veda.

The migrating Aryans first settled in the hilly valleys of northern India. Although there was not much intermixture of blood between the Aryans and the inhabitants of this area, the Aryans were greatly influenced by non-Aryan culture. The Aryans settled down in this area, which was known as Kash (or Khash) after defeating its ancient non-Aryan inhabitants. Using the original name, Kash, they renamed the area “Kashmeru” or “Kashmiira” [Kashmir]. Although the Aryans of Kashmiira did not give up their Vedic study, in the spiritual field they did cultivate the indigenous Indian Tantra.

As the southern part of Kashmiira was littered with pebbles resembling the jambu fruit [Eugenia jambolana Lam], the Aryans named it “Jambu Dviipa” (modern Jammu). Subsequently, Jambu Dviipa came to mean the whole of India. Possibly in the sandy beds of the many rivers that transect Jambu Dviipa they discovered gold for the first time, and so gold came to be known as jámbunada. When still later they settled throughout the entire land of India, they realized that it was ideal not only for habitation, but also for self-development. Thus they named it “Bháratavarśa”. Bhara means “that which feeds”; ta means “that which gives”, or “that which helps in the process of expansion”; and varśa means “a vast stretch of land”. Thus, bháratavarśa means “a vast expanse of land which helps in the all-round development of its inhabitants”.

Aryans did not have their own script and thus were first introduced to the [written] alphabet after coming in contact with the Dravidians. The Dravidians of the Harappa and Mahenjodaro civilizations of India were already using a script, the Saendhavii script; after the Aryan migration into India, that script became transformed into the Bráhmii and Kharośt́hi scripts.

The inconvenience that the non-Indian Aryans had faced for want of script no doubt disappeared after the Indianized Aryans learned it, but owing to their old superstitions, most of the Aryans were reluctant to put the Vedas in black and white. They refused to believe that the reason that the Vedas were not written at the time of their composition was simply the lack of script. They adhered to their illogical reasoning even after the scripts came into being: they thought that the rśis had not written out the Vedas, one, because it was improper, and two, because the Vedas were named shruti. However, much later, in Kashmiira,(1) the Vedas were written down in the Sáradá script in use there at the time. There was really no alternative to writing them down, because there was almost nobody left who knew all the Vedas by heart, and the number of people who knew even parts of them was very small. When the Kashmiira scholars finally did write down the Vedas, it was discovered that many parts of them were missing for good.

It was not difficult for the healthy, martial, almost invincible Aryans to conquer northern India. The victorious Aryans treated the vanquished non-Aryans as slaves, trampling them underfoot to the bottom of their trivarńa [three-caste] society – their society of Bráhmańas, Kśatriyas and Vaeshyas. There the non-Aryans became the fourth class, or Shúdra Varńa, while society became a cáturvarńa [four-caste] society. In the beginning the Aryans tried their utmost to avoid blood relationships with the Shúdras – overwhelming proof of this is found in the Vedas and later books – but eventually it became impossible for them to avoid intermixture.

Although in northern India the Aryans enjoyed predominance in the political sphere, the non-Aryans’ influence in the social sphere gradually increased, and persists even today. It was not possible for the Aryans to extend their political power into southern India. There they did exert some social influence, but even less than in the north.

The courage, strength and physical beauty of the Aryans was conspicuous in the north, south and east of India, so in these areas, the non-Aryans were very eager to establish social relations with the Aryans, and often proudly called themselves Árya-Vipras [Vipra = Bráhmańa, or Brahman], Árya-Kśatriyas or Árya-Vaeshyas. Although the Aryans’ predominance was mainly political, and the non-Aryans maintained social and cultural predominance, the Aryan influence over the language spread everywhere. Moreover, the influential leaders of society everywhere began to introduce themselves as Aryans. The anti-Aryan sentiment gradually weakened, causing a widespread inferiority complex to take root among the non-Aryan population. This inferiority complex proved extremely detrimental to the interests of the non-Aryans.

The Aryan leader Agastya was the first to go to southern India to popularize the ideas and ideals of the Aryans. He explained the greatness of the Aryans to the people there allegorically. According to this mythological tale, Vindhya Hill on the northern frontier of the Deccan bent its head out of reverence for Agastya, enabling him to cross into southern India, and has kept its head bent in reverence ever since. The great epic Rámáyańa depicts the Aryan invasion of southern India. Needless to say, the monkeys of Kiśkindhyá and the rákśasas [demons] of Lanka, as described in the Rámáyańa, were in fact neither monkeys nor demons, but the people of different sub-castes of the Dravidian society itself. The proof that the non-Aryans, particularly the Dravidians, were a highly developed community in regard to knowledge, learning, intellect, city and town building, cultivation of science, and social order and discipline, is traceable in every line of the Rámáyańa. It was extremely difficult for the Aryans to hold their own in an intellectual duel with the Dravidians. At every step they found themselves outwitted, and said, “Queer are the ways of demons.”

As a result of co-existing with the non-Aryans for a long time, the Aryans learned many things from them. In fact there is hardly anything of Aryanism left in them today. Of course, the non-Aryans also took on certain Aryan traits, among them their fair complexion, their proficiency in various activities, and their ostentatious lifestyle. From the non-Aryans the Aryans acquired a well-knit social system, a subtle insight, spiritual philosophy and Tantra sádhaná. In the beginning the Aryans tried hard to preserve the purity of their blood – Shúdras used to be kept scrupulously at arm’s length – but such endeavours and precautions eventually proved a failure. More or less everywhere in India there was intermixing between the Aryans and the non-Aryans – the Dravidians, the Austrics, and the Mongolians - which resulted in a new mixed race. This is why dark Vipras and fair Shúdras are not at all rare in India today. Their very colours pay testimony to the intermixture of Aryan and non-Aryan blood running in their veins.

The victorious Aryans, coming from cold countries, were a skilled and competent race. Their competence, their sense of superiority over the non-Aryans, and their unity born out of hatred for the non-Aryans, helped them in their victory over India. Though the non-Aryans were defeated by the Aryans in northern India, though the non-Aryans of southern and eastern India were under the spell of an inferiority complex, none of them surrendered to the Aryans without a fight. As they were constantly engaged in warfare with the Aryans, they became much more proficient in battle. Thus Aryan victory in southern and eastern India eventually became impossible. In the accounts of major battles fought between the Aryans and the non-Aryans, as depicted in the Sanskrit books written in the subsequent period,(2) the non-Aryans display no less competence than the Aryans.

Aryan life was full of noisy revelry and pomp, whereas the non-Aryan life was simple and unostentatious, although it was the non-Aryans who had access to more materials of enjoyment. But when the non-Aryans came in contact with the Aryans, they became tempted to enjoy pomp and splendour. Such a lifestyle proved more harmful to the comparatively inactive non-Aryans, inhabitants of a tropical country, than to the active and hardy Aryans.

The Aryans outside India had no well-structured social system nor any clearly-defined marital discipline. “Might is right” was the order of society. Nevertheless there was a predisposition in them to mould a society. The non-Aryans had happy families. They were characterized by a well-knit social structure and strong conjugal relationships. Even those nature-worshipping ethnic groups forming part of the Austric population of non-Aryan society, though comparatively backward, had very strong family relationships. So when the Aryans came in contact with these non-Aryans, they found new light for the formation of a society.

With the exception of a few munis and rśis, the militant (kśatriya-predominant) Aryans used to view the world with an extoversial outlook. After major battles they would kill the men of the conquered community, employ their children as servants, and either marry the women or employ them as maid-servants. For that reason there was a large number of male and female slaves in their society.

War-loving races are generally careful to honour the rules and laws of war, and frame new laws to suit the convenience of warring armies. Thus, the Aryans displayed a commendable sense of discipline during war. Being a war-loving race, it was but natural for them to do so. The non-Aryans, however, were backward in this regard. During their battles with the Aryans they did not respect the rules and laws of war (such as not to strike at the defenceless, not to employ more than one fighter against another, not to kill a retreating or surrendering soldier or a soldier begging for mercy). Not only was this highly irritating to the Aryans; the lack of a disciplined military mentality was actually one of the main reasons for the non-Aryans’ defeat.

Usually the non-Aryans were content with little. What was developed in them was their introspective nature, which not only made them devotees of God, but infused in them a surging love for spiritual philosophy. The religious practices of the Aryans, however, entailed performing certain sacrifices in order to attain certain materialistic gains. That is, their religious observances were mainly ritualistic. On the whole, the non-Aryans were followers of Tantra, or subjective sádhaná. Of course the non-Aryans, depending on their different degrees of intellectual development, ranged all the way from animists to Brahma sádhakas [intuitional practitioners whose goal is the Absolute]; but in general, individual sádhaná ranked very high. The religion of the Vedic Aryans was, as a rule, one of prayer. It did not include even the subtlest hint of any intuitional meditation. And here lies the difference between the Brahmaváda of the Vedas and the Upanishads on the one hand, and that of Tantra on the other.

As previously mentioned, by “non-Aryans” no particular ethnic group was meant. When the Aryans first migrated to India, the non-Aryans were, on the whole, divided into three populations. Of these, the Negro-Austric Dravidians were the most developed intellectually and spiritually. Their Tantra sádhaná bore a predominance of jiṋána and bhakti. The next groups deserving mention are those of the Mongolian population. In their Tantra sádhaná, karma and bhakti were predominant. The groups which constituted the Austric population were almost equal to the Aryans intellectually, but in the practical and spiritual spheres they gradually lagged behind due to the comparative lack of dynamism of their society. This Austric society was content to practise the extroversial aspects of Tantra (witchcraft, invultuation, magic, magical incantation for evil purposes, hypnotism, etc.)

Tantra flourished in Bengal due to the pervasive intermixture of Dravidian and Mongolian blood.

Vauṋge prakáshitá vidyá Maethilye prabaliikrtá

Kvácit kvácit Maháráśt́re Gurjjare pralayaḿgatá.

[Tantra was practised in Bengal, but was more widely practised in Mithila. It was not very popular in Maharashtra, and was totally non-existent in Gujarat.]

Bengal was the home of both the Mongolian and the Dravidian populations, the Dravidians being more widespread in the southwestern areas and the Mongolians in the northeastern areas. Some groups of Austrics lived in the western parts. In the southeastern parts of Bengal, the Mongolians held an overwhelming majority over the Dravidians. The Chakmas, Tripuris, Bodos, Kochas, Kiratas, and Chuaras of the Mongolian population; the Kaevarttas, Bagdis, Dules, Shavaras, Kurmis, Mahatas, and Kherias of the Dravidian population; and the Santhaliis, Baoriis, Mála Páháriis [[(Mála or Málo)]], etc., of the predominantly Austric population, were the original Bengalees.

The present Bengali society and civilization are the outcome of the mutual exchange of thought among these peoples. The greatest contribution of this civilization has been the well-structured and well-disciplined Tantra sádhaná. Tantra wields the greatest influence over the customs and usages of modern Bengal and eastern India. As a matter of fact, Tantra has had a more pervasive influence throughout all of India than have the Vedas, yet nowhere has this Tantric or non-Aryan influence been greater than in the eastern part of India. The iron bangles of the women, the vermilion mark in the parting of their hair, the various marriage customs and rites, etc., are all different social practices borrowed from the non-Aryans. The custom of addressing all women as “mother” (masiimá, pisiimá, kákiimá [aunts], didimá [grandmother], etc.) bears the mark of Tantric influence, because in Tantra the social dominance of women was widely accepted. Even the little non-Tantric or patrilineal influence that exists in the upper castes of Bengali society is not borrowed from the Aryans of northern India, but is a result of the close and intimate trans-oceanic relations that Bengal had in those days with regions outside India.

In the life of Bengal, Tantra has surrendered to Veda only with respect to language. In fact there was no alternative but to acknowledge this defeat: The Bengalees of those days were followers of Tantra who spoke many different languages. When they decided to formulate a new language of their own, they were bound to accept the language of the foreign Aryans due to its highly expressive power. The Dravidian and Mongolian languages [although also a form of Sanskrit] were not so expressive as the Sanskrit language of the Vedas.

Although the Aryan conquerors were unable to influence the social life of Bengal to any appreciable degree, due to their influence the Tantric matrilineal social system of Bengal (the Tantric matrilineal order prevails even today in the Dravid-Keralite and Mongolo-Khashian societies) partially accepted the patrilineal order as well. As a result Bengal, though not governed by the Mitákśará, or patrilineal, system of northern India, built up a new social order according due respect to both father and mother. Subsequently, in recognition of this new social system, Bengal officially rescinded the Mitákśará system [insofar as it officially existed], and in its place established the Dáyabhága(3) system.

The second result of the Aryan influence was the Bengali language. The language that the Bengalees of the Vedic era used to speak had no connection with the Vedic language. Neither could the Vedic Aryans understand it. The Aryans used to say, “That is a country of birds. We don’t understand what those birds chirp and twitter.” Be that as it may, due the Vedic influence, particularly due to the influence of the eastern Vedic dialect, Mágadhii Prákrta, there emerged a Sanskrit-based Aryan language in Bengal. Later on the Tantrics of this area composed Tantric literature using Sanskrit(4) and the new Sanskrit-based Bengali.

In spite of their accepting the Aryan language, the Tantrics never gave up their own style of pronunciation. Even today the Mágadhii group of languages, particularly the Eastern Demi-Mágadhii group (Bengali, Oriya, Assamese and Maethilii), has a style of pronunciation that is completely its own. In spite of later distortions in the mode of pronunciation in northern India, due to the non-cultivation of the Sanskrit language and the heavy use of Arabic- and Persian-influenced Urdu, eastern and southern India did not give up their ancient modes of pronunciation. In ancient times the people speaking Shaorasenii and Málavii dialects used to make fun of the people speaking the Mágadhii dialect, which was heavily influenced by Tantra. Thus the people of the western part of the Mágadhii-speaking area, that is, the Magahii- and Bhojpuri-speaking people, tried to pronounce in the Shaorasenii style. Though there is, as a result, some influence of Shaorasenii and Hindi on the pronunciation of the Magahii and Bhojpuri dialects, the intonation of the saḿvrta(5) a has remained unchanged. The Tantric pronunciations of jiṋa, ńa, śa, hya, and kśa are also still prevalent in eastern India today.

The Aryans had a developed language but no script. It was indeed the Tantrics, and not the Vedics, who invented script and acoustic science. So far as correctness of pronunciation is concerned, the Tantric mode is to be accepted, not the Vedic. Remember that each of the fifty letters of the Sanskrit akśaramálá [alphabet] constitutes one acoustic root of Tantra. It was for the purpose of spiritual practice that the Tantrics had discovered these roots. Here the Aryans deserve no credit at all.

The Tantric influence exists in all the Indian languages;(6) it is also prominent in observances and ceremonies. The non-Aryan and Tantric influence is prominent not only in social functions, but in religious ceremonies as well, due to the influence of the Tantric gods and goddesses. In eastern India, particularly in Bengal, popular gods and goddesses such as Shiitalá (the goddess of smallpox), Manasá (the goddess of snakes), Niila T́hákura and Bat́uka Bhaerava [a Buddhist Tantric deity] are all Tantric gods and goddesses but are nevertheless worshipped in Hindu temples as Hindu gods and goddesses. (Bat́uka → Baŕua → Baŕuyá → Baŕo – in the rural areas of Bengal, Boŕo Shiva or Buŕo Shiva.(7) )

Even the Satyanáráyańa of eastern India is a non-Aryan deity. Of course in this worship we also find some influence by the Muslims who came from the Arab world. Betels, plantains, areca nuts and coconuts [as used to worship Satyanáráyańa] are the main paraphernalia of non-Aryan worship, because they are Dravidian in origin. Perhaps the Vedic Aryans had never heard of these things, and perhaps there were no words for them in the Vedic language or in old Sanskrit. Words like nágavallarii [a kind of creeping plant], kadalii [plaintain] and nárikela [coconut] are modern Sanskrit, but these things are widely used in the worship of Satyanáráyańa and in other popular worship. Only the shirńii [food offered to a god] of the Muslims in the worship of Satyanáráyańa is imported.

Sugar cane, coconut, limes, grapefruit, powdered rice, etc., used in the Chat́ Pújá [Sun Worship] are important food items in Dravidian festivities. Another noteworthy fact is that in the Chat́ and a number of other popular pújás, the Vedics or Brahmans have no place at all, or if they do participate, have a secondary role. The women play a most significant role in these pújás. The speciality of non-Aryan ceremonies is that the women’s role is predominant. Yet another remarkable factor is that although the Vedic sun-god is a male god, the non-Aryan sun-god is female, a goddess. Thus in eastern India worshippers address the sun-god as “Chat́ Máyii” instead of “Chat́ Pitá”. The non-Aryan worship of Dalapati or Gańapati (group leader or people’s leader) prevalent in the non-Aryan Austric society, is also prevalent in the Aryan society in the name of Gańapati Pújá or Gańesha Pújá [actually this worship meant the worship of the group or society of the Austric people]. The head of an elephant, a big and mighty animal, placed on the shoulders of the deity’s body, was only symbolic of the superiority of the group leader of the society concerned. It is noteworthy that such worship was also prevalent in the non-Aryan Mayan civilization of America.

As said before, the Aryans became acquainted with paddy at a much later period. Previously they had had no idea how to get rice out of paddy, and only learned when they came in contact with the non-Aryans. It was the non-Aryans who taught them to eat boiled rice. It is noteworthy that powdered rice or its paste was widely used in the popular worship of the gods and goddesses of south and east India. It would appear that rice seemed to be rather a queer thing to the Aryans, because in the Vedas it is called tańd́ula. Evidently the Aryans saw grains of rice jumping from the mortar while the paddy was being threshed and husked in the traditional hand-driven or foot-driven husking devices, and thus named it tańd́ula. Tańd́ula means “one whose characteristic is to jump”. The word cál or cául [husked but uncooked rice] is derived from the Bengali root cálá – which means “sifting” in order to separate the rice from the chaff.

Spiritual practice was common in the Tantric society. There is no spiritual vigour whatsoever in the lives of those who support pompous, so-called religious, ceremonies, as there is in the lives of introspective spiritual practitioners. After the Aryans came into India, two types of practice used to take place side by side: on the one side the sacrificial fires of the rśis, characterized by the smell of burning ghee and the sonorous refrains of those paying homage to the manes while offering oblations into the fire; and on the other side, the non-Aryans’ Tantra sádhaná, the practice of self-control and attainment of divine power. Spiritual depth and power of sádhaná brought fearlessness into the spiritual lives of the non-Aryans, as befitting staunch Tantrics.

The non-Aryans regarded the Aryans’ sacrificial ceremonies as a time-killing childish pastime and would sabotage them whenever convenient. The Aryan munis and rśis asked the Aryan kings for protection against these saboteurs – or, in the language of the Aryans, these rákśasas, pashus and pishácas. Innumerable stories to this effect can be found in different Sanskrit books, even today. Although the words rákśasa [demon], pashu [beast] and pisháca [ghoul] were used in a general way to describe the non-Aryans, actually the Dravidians were normally called rákśasas (the short-statured among them “monkeys”), the Mongolians, asuras [monsters], and those Tantrics who did shava sádhaná [sádhańa upon dead bodies] in cemeteries and cremation grounds, pishácas. The Aryans also declared that these gangs of rákśasas and pishácas were cannibals. They drew horrible sketches of the dark-complexioned Dravidians and high-cheekboned and flat-nosed Mongolians, with grotesque forms and features, to prove them contemptible and vile. Actually they were a lot more civilized and educated than the Aryans.

Apart from this there were many Aryans who married the daughters of these rákśasas and asuras, entranced by their beauty and qualities (those who had a mixture of Mongolian and Dravidian blood had particularly beautiful features). Bhiima married Hid́imbá, a non-Aryan girl; Arjuna married Citráuṋgadá, also a non-Aryan girl. Rávańa, the leader of the rákśasas, had a father from an Aryan Brahman family – Maharśi Vishvashravá, the descendent of Pulasta Rśi – and a non-Aryan mother – Nikaśá, or Kaekasii. In other words, though the Aryans had been proud of their colour and features, that pride faded away within a short time. At that time and also later, even though a few Aryan-proud individuals attempted to defame these rákśasas and asuras, the general mass did not pay much attention to them.

On the one hand the Aryan-proud pandits of Bengal engaged in scurrilous and abusive attacks on the Mongolians and the original Bengalees –

Sarve máḿsaratáh múŕháh

Mleccháh gobrahma ghátakáh,

Kuvacakáh pare múŕhá ete kút́ayonayoh,

Teśaḿ paeshácikii bháśá lokácáro na vidyate.

–Padma Puráńa

[They are all excessive meat eaters. They are fools. Killers of cows and Brahmans, they speak foul and meaningless words. These are foolish people born out of bad women. Their language is gibberish. They don’t follow decent customs.]

– but on the other hand we observe the emergence of a new civilization in Bengal, out of the Austrico-Mongolo-Dravidian combination, at about 1000 BC.

This civilization, though similar to other civilizations in India, had its own customs and rites, language and mode of pronunciation, manners and behaviour, religious and social systems, rights of inheritance and disinheritance under the Dáyabhága code of law, and dress and food habits. Proud of its own speciality and uniqueness, it never agreed to be a part of the Áryávartta [northern India dominated by the Aryan culture]. In order to keep itself free from Aryan subjugation, Bengal rebelled again and again. The northern Indian orthodox Aryans, full of Aryan chauvinism (actually they too were Tantrics, but outwardly displayed an enamel coating of Aryanism), were reluctant to accept the highly Tantric areas such as Auṋga [Monghyr and its adjacent areas], Vauṋga [Bengal]),(8) Kaliuṋga [Orissa], Mithila and Magadha [Bihar] as parts of their Áryavartta. For them Káshii [Benares] served as the eastern border of the Áryavartta.

These orthodox, but internally Tantric, people could not avoid being influenced by the Tantric civilization of eastern India even in their external life. The predominance of the Bengali script of east India (Shrii Harśa Lipi) extended up to Prayága in the far west. Most Sanskrit books on Hindu and Buddhist Tantra were written in this Bengali script. After the Muslim invasion, the influence of east India upon north India began to wane gradually. At about that time some Nagar Brahmans from Vedic Gujarat went to northern India to propagate the Vedas and the Sanskrit language. They used Nágrii script for writing Sanskrit, and under the Brahmans’ influence the Nágrii script too gradually became popular in northern India. The use of Bengali script became confined to eastern India only. It is worth noting that many of the Nágar Brahmans of Gujarat were followers of Tantra, particularly Vaeśńava Tantra.

The greatest difference between the Aryans and the non-Aryans was in their outlook. The Aryans wanted to establish their dominance on the basis of their racial superiority, whereas the non-Aryans, following the precepts of Tantra, did not recognize any distinction among people. The identity of everyone was the same: all belonged to the same family, the family of Shiva. In the first stage of sádhaná, everyone is an animal. To merge in Brahmatva [Cosmic Consciousness], after first elevating themselves to devatva [god-hood], was their sádhaná. But in the first stage, while still rising above crude animality, their adorable Shiva was known as “Pashupati”, “Lord of Animality”.

Here it is necessary to remember that Tantra is not a religion, but a way of life, a system of sádhaná. The fundamental goal of this sádhaná is to awaken the dormant jiivashakti [unit force], known as kulakuńd́alinii, and, after elevating it stage by stage, to merge it in Brahmabháva [Cosmic Consciousness]. Tantra is a science of spiritual meditation or sádhaná which is equally applicable to anyone no matter what their religious affiliation might be. Tantra is certainly older than the Vedas. Just as the shlokas or mantras of the Vedas were handed down from guru to disciple in a genealogical tradition, the Tantra sádhaná of the Mongolo-Dravidian society was handed down from guru to disciple hereditarily. The Vedas are theoretical – full of ritualistic ceremonies and formalisms. It would be incorrect to regard Tantra as a more recent version of those Vedic rituals: Tantra’s esoteric practices had long been known in the society of sádhakas. Its theoretical portion was not as elaborate as that of the Vedas, which took years and years to memorize.

When the Aryans came to India, roughly during the period of the Atharvaveda, they learned Tantra sádhaná to some extent after coming in contact with the Indian Tantrics. This resulted in the Atharvaveda being pervasively influenced by Tantra. Even if the orthodox Vedics try to reject the many Tantra-influenced portions of the Vedas as later interpolations, they will not be too convincing, for Tantra has now infiltrated into the marrow of the so-called Aryans. Although during the post-Vedic Buddhist era as well as the post-Buddhist Brahmanical era changes in the religious outlook of the people were apparent, the process of sádhaná remained Tantric as it does even today, for without Tantra spiritual sádhaná is impossible. Yoga, which is the paramount factor in spiritual practices, is itself based on Tantra. The great Tantric Vashiśt́ha, when he returned from China after learning the Chinese techniques of sádhaná, brought about a great improvement in Tantra sádhaná. He was widely acclaimed as a great yogi. His book Yogaváshiśt́ha is a philosophical exposition of the subtle spirituality of Tantra sádhaná.

There are many who try to make a distinction between Hindu Tantra and Buddhist Tantra. This is absolutely wrong, for as I have said earlier, Tantra is one and only one. It is based on one sentiment, on one idea. The Buddhist and Hindu Tantras express the same thing in different words. For example, Hindu Tantras use the word kulakuńd́alinii for the dormant unit force and id́a, piuṋgalá and suśumná for the three psycho-spiritual channels. They state that the kulakuńd́alinii pierces through the six cakras – (1) múládhára [situated above the perineum], (2) svádhiśt́hána [in the region of the genital organ], (3) mańipura [in the region of the navel], (4) anáhata [in the region of the heart], (5) vishuddha [in the region of the vocal cord] and (6) ájiṋá [between the eyebrows], and finally unites with Paramashiva at the seventh cakra, the sahasrára cakra [at the crown of the head], giving the sádhakas, or intuitional practitioners, the bliss of Cosmic Consciousness. The Buddhist Tantras say the same thing in different words. They have named the mańipura cakra, nirmáńa cakra, the anáhata, dharma cakra, the vishuddha, sambhoga cakra, and the sahasrára, uśniiśa kamala or mahásukha cakra.

Some have named the múládhára, mańipadma. In both the Buddhist and Hindu Tantras, hummm is the acoustic root of the unit force, the kulakuńd́alinii, lying dormant in mańipadma. The so-called Buddhist Tantrics also say, Oṋḿ mańipadme hummm. To them id́á, piuṋgalá and suśumná are lalaná, rasaná and avadhútikárespectively. So where, in reality, is the ideological difference between the Hindu Tantras such as Mahánirváńa Tantra, Kulárńava Tantra, Ajiṋána-bodhinii Tantra, Jiṋána-saḿkalinii Tantra, Rudrayámala Tantra, Bhaerava-yámala Tantra, Niila Tantra, etc., and the Buddhist Tantras such as Hevajra Tantra, Vajra-váráhii Kalpamahá Tantra, Ekallaviira Cańd́arośańa Tantra, D́ákárnava Tantra, Advaya Siddhi Tantra, etc.? Kauṋkalamálinii Tantra cannot be called either a Hindu Tantra or a Buddhist Tantra with any clear certainty.

Even the popular assumption that the Hindus borrowed idolatry from the Buddhists is totally wrong. Although there was a conception of gods and goddesses among the Aryan Vedics, there was no custom of modelling images for worship. But in the lowest stratum of Tantra sádhaná (that is, the lowest of the low grade) idolatry was prescribed:

Uttamo Brahmasadbhávo

Madhyamá dhyána dháŕańá;

Japastúti syádhadhamá

Múrtipújá dhamádhamá.

–Kulárńava Tantra

[Ideation on Brahma is the best, dhyána and dhárańá are second best, repetitious incantation and eulogistic prayer are the worst, and idol worship is the worst of the worst.]

The word uttama in the first line of the shloka is interchangeable with sahajávasthá. Sahajáavasthá, the “tranquil state” of the Buddhists, is no different from the ideation on Brahma of the Hindus.

According to their respective intellectual strata, the primitive non-Aryan Tantrics utilized all the practices, from the lowest-of-the-low image worship to the highest-of-the-high Brahma sádhaná. Thus idolatry is as much a part of Hindu Tantra as it is of Buddhist Tantra. Neither has borrowed it from the other.

I have just referred to the ideological unity of the Hindu and the Buddhist Tantras. So far as the goal is concerned, the ultimate object of both is to merge the unit force in the introversial force and the introversial force in Parama Puruśa. In various places in the Hindu Tantras, Parama Puruśa has been called Paramashiva, Puruśottama and Krśńa, and Paramá Prakrti has been called Kálii, Rádhá, etc. In the Buddhist Tantras Parama Puruśa or Bhagaván Sarveshvara has been called Shriiman Mahásukha, Vajrasatva, Vajradhara, Vajreshvara, Heruka or Hevajra – or in places Cańd́arośańa – and the Maháshakti of Mahákaola has sometimes been called Bhagavatii Sarveshvarii, sometimes Vajraváráhii, sometimes Vajradhátviishvarii, sometimes Prajiṋá Páramitá, and sometimes, in sandhyá bháśá,(9) D́ombii, Cańd́álii, etc.

In both the Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, men and women are permitted to do sádhaná together. In the Hindu Tantras, males are advised to ideate that they are Bhaerava, and sádhikás [female spiritual aspirants] to ideate that they are Bhaeravii. Buddhist Tantras prescribe the same thing. There the sádhaka is Vajradhara and the sádhiká is Vajrayośita.

Naráh Vajradharákáráh śośitah Vajrayośitah.

–Ekallaviira Cańd́arośańa Tantra

[The male aspirants are called Vajradhara, and the female aspirants Vajrayośita.]

Actually Tantra is one. Therefore it is as much a mistake to distinguish between the Hindu and the Buddhist Tantras as it is to grope in vain for any differences in the inner import or final goals of the Hindu Tantras such as Shaeva Tantra, Shákta Tantra, Saora Tantra, Gáńapatya Tantra, Vaeśńaviiya Tantra (Rádhá Tantra), etc.

The similarity between the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Tantras and those of the Buddhist Tantras is also particularly noteworthy. Each Tantra has either absorbed or discarded the other’s gods and goddesses according to its own convenience. Tárá is one of the famous deities of the Buddhist Tantras. The worships of Bhrámarii Tárá in China, Ugratárá or Vajratárá in Mongolia, and Niila Sarasvatii Tárá or Ekajátá Devii in Tibet, date from very ancient times. Tibet’s Niila Sarasvatii Tárá has been absorbed in Hindu Tantra as the second Mahávidyá of the Ten Mahávidyás, and today those Hindus who worship idols do not regard Tárá as a non-Hindu deity.

Káliká Devii, the first Mahávidyá of the so-called Hindu Tantras, has been accepted by Buddhist Tantra. Clad in betel leaves (parńa means “betel leaves” or “turmeric leaves”), Parńa Shavarii Devii of the Buddhist Tantra is one of the names of the goddess Durgá of Hindu Tantra. Prajiṋá Páramitá, the Buddhist deity, continues to be worshipped in post-Buddhist India as Sarasvatii. The bull-mounted Sarasvatii of the Vedas has not even a hint of similarity with the swan-mounted Sarasvatii, either in appearance or in nature.(10)

There are some goddesses whose sources – Buddhist or Hindu – are impossible to determine. That is to say, they are deities common to both schools of Tantra, such as Váráhii, Kaoveŕii, Bhiimá, Kapálinii, Chinnamastá, etc. Goddesses of the Hindu Tantras such as D́ákinii, Rákinii, Lákinii, Kákinii, Shákinii, Hákinii, etc., have been accepted by the Buddhist Tantras.

The savikalpa samádhi [trance of determinate absorption – or vacuity] of the Hindu Tantras is the prabhásvara shúnyatá [luminous vacuity] of the Buddhists. The Hindus’ nirvikalpa [trance of objectless or indeterminate absorption – or vacuity] is the Buddhists’ vajra shúnyatá [complete vacuity]. And the goddess of vajra shúnyatá, of the unmanifest Prakrti, is Vajraváráhii, D́ombii, Naerátma Devii or Naerámańi in the language of the Buddhists. The different stages of savikalpa samádhi related to the upward movement of the kulakuńd́alinii are called sálokya [within the same loka], sámiipya [closest proximity], sárupya [identity], sarśt́hi [the stage between savikalpa and nirvikalpa], etc., in the Hindu Tantras; and in the Buddhist Tantras, viśáyánanda [objective bliss] in the nirmáńa cakra, paramánanda [supreme bliss] in the dharma cakra, virámánanda [intermittent bliss] in the sambhoga cakra and sahajánanda [absolute bliss] in the mahásukha cakra. In this mahásukha cakra, Naerátma Devii is Bhagavatii Prajiṋá Sarveshvarii, an embodiment of sahajánanda [bliss]. This sahajánanda is the Brahmánanda [absolute bliss] of the Hindu Tantras.

After the Aryan settlement in India a great man was born into the non-Aryan society. Born into a Mongolo-Aryan family, this great man had a high nose and fair complexion. He was a great Tantric - a great yogi. The name of this Mahápuruśa of the non-Aryan society was Shiva. For one man to have so many qualities and endowments at the same time was beyond the comprehension of the people, so He was called Guńátiita or Nirguńa [Transcendental or Non-Attributional] Puruśa. As the result of His Tantra sádhaná He attained extraordinary powers, which He employed for the good of humanity. It was He who systematized the science of Tantra and thus He was the guru or the father of Tantrics and yogis. To this Self-realized Mahápuruśa there was no distinction of high and low. People of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, were dear to Him. Irrespective of class - Aryan, non-Aryan, Dravidian, Austric or Mongolian – all flocked to Him. He showered His grace on them all equally. As the battles raged between the “gods” on the one hand and the “demons” and “monsters” on the other (needless to say, “gods” meant the handsome Aryan leaders, and “demons” meant the non-Aryans in general), the non-Aryan “demons” and “monsters” became more and more powerful through the blessings of this Shiva. All the rákśasas and asuras were Shiva’s obedient devotees and followers. With the help and blessings of Shiva they destroyed the might and power of the “gods”. According to Sanskrit stories, when the gods would seek the help of Brahmá and Viśńu, even those two would not dare to oppose Shiva; rather they would save the gods through a compromise with Him.

Shiva had such a forgiving nature, born out of His spirit of benevolence, that even the most wicked could easily draw on His kindness. That is why to everybody He became “Áshutośa” (“Easy to Please”). Due to Shiva’s pervasive influence over their society, the non-Aryans, that is, the Tantrics, used to worship Him as God, and according to their respective intellectual strata they regarded and accepted Him in His different bearings. Just as the Aryans began to identify Shiva with their own gods and goddesses, the kaola mahátántrikas [great Tantrics in the tradition of kulakuńd́alinii yoga] began to regard their Shiva as identical with Nirguńa Brahma. The foremost cause behind this conception of theirs was the absolute detachment and self-forgetful bearing of Shiva, the lord of supernatural and miraculous power. Shiva’s self-sacrificing nature earned Him the name “Bholánátha” [“one absolutely indifferent to his own status”] among the non-Aryans. All were attracted to Shiva’s supernatural power, His imposing personality, His limitless qualities and the calm, tranquil radiance of His features.

Enthralled by the physical grace and the virtues of Shiva, Princess Gaorii, the daughter of the Aryan king Dakśa, was attracted towards Him. King Dakśa was not at all in favour of his daughter marrying a non-Aryan, but eventually he gave way before her adamant attitude. And so Shiva and Princess Gaorii were married. But envy born out of his knowledge of Shiva’s formidable influence over both the Aryan and the non-Aryan societies had already made King Dakśa mad. Thus one day he publicly insulted Shiva at a large sacrifice specially planned for the purpose. Shiva’s devotees, unable to bear the insult, made a pandemonium of Dakśa’s ceremonial sacrifice. It is written in the books of the Aryans that Shiva’s two servant-spirits, Nandii and Bhrngii, destroyed Dakśa’s yajiṋa. Actually, Nandii and Bhrngii, the alleged spirits, were none other than two ardent non-Aryan Tantric devotees of Shiva.

Many Aryans supported the marriage of Gaorii and Shiva, because, on account of Shiva’s extraordinary influence, they felt it would be more in their interest to establish kinship with Him than to remain hostile to Him. Whatever the reason, after Dakśa’s yajiṋa, in Shiva’s presence, all the Aryan and non-Aryan clashes and disputes came to a permanent end. In other words, the Aryans accepted the predominance of Shiva.

The non-Aryans were very happy to have Gaorii in their midst. Just as they revered Shiva as their god, they regarded Gaorii as their goddess. The non-Aryans were yellow-, black- or brown-complexioned, but Gaorii, being of purely Aryan origin, was white-complexioned. It was for this reason that she was named “Gaorii” [which means “white-complexioned”]. After the marriage, Gaorii lived in the Himalaya Mountains, and was thus often called “Parvata Kanyá” [“Daughter of the Mountains”], or “Párvatii” in common language. I told you a little while ago that the non-Aryans used to do Tantra sádhaná according to their respective intellectual development. They worshipped a pair of gods – Puruśa and Prakrti. Whatever their intellectual and spiritual standards, all of them regarded their primary god as Shiva, or, in subsequent periods, some avatára [incarnation] of Shiva; and their primary goddess as Gaorii, or, later, some partial manifestation of Gaorii.

Among the backward non-Aryan society, phallus worship was prevalent. Although originally there was some social history behind this phallus worship (due to the perpetual warfare between the various clans and tribes, each group felt a constant necessity to increase its numerical strength, and thus they began to worship both the genital organs), in later periods, under the influence of Tantra, it took on a more subtle spiritual form. When, due to the influence of Shiva, everyone began to accept Shiva as their chief god, this liuṋga pújá [worship of genitals] became [the worship of] Shiva-liuṋga and Gaorii-piit́ha, or Gaorii-pat́t́a. Subsequently the Aryans also accepted phallus worship and gave it a philosophical interpretation: Liuṋgate gamyate yasmád talliuṋgam [“The entity from which all things originate [[and towards which all things are moving]] is called liuṋga”].

After Dakśa’s yajiṋa Shiva’s influence over the Aryans increased more and more. The Aryans began to feel that, being so indebted to Shiva, they could no longer afford to disregard Him. It was Shiva who had taught them spiritual sádhaná, ásanas and práńáyáma; the secret of good health; the science of medicine; and the developed art of dance and music. For His excellence in dancing, both the Aryans and non-Aryans used to call Him “Nat́arája”, and for His proficiency in vocal music, “Nádatanu”. No one has counted the number of medicines He invented for every kind of disease. He was the first preceptor of the áyurvedácáryas [teachers of áyurveda, the science of medicine to increase longevity]. The asuras were cured of many serious diseases due to His grace. Both the Aryans and the non-Aryans thought that since Shiva knew so many remedies, He was perhaps immortal, and so they named Him “Mrtyuiṋjaya” [“Conqueror of Death”]. When, even today, people come across some incurable disease, they say, “Even Shiva has no cure for this disease.” Like the non-Aryans, the Aryans eventually accepted Shiva as their god and Gaorii as their goddess.

The tiger is one of the oldest animals of India. In the distant past these tigers came into India from the non-Aryan countries of China, Tibet, etc. Lions came much later from the Aryan countries bordering on the northwest corner of India. It is noteworthy that in the dhyána mantra of Shiva, he has been described as wearing a tiger skin, that is, the skin of an animal of the non-Aryan countries (vyághra-krttiḿ vasánaḿ); and the daughter of the Aryans, Gaorii, has been depicted as siḿha-váhinii [“riding on a lion”].

In all the Aryan books of knowledge the word Shiva was invariably used to describe Parama Puruśa. The racially chauvinistic Aryans could not remain at peace after their acceptance of Shiva as God. Thinking that the non-Aryans would make capital of this and boast about their triumph over the Aryans, they threw themselves into the task of proving that Shiva was an Aryan. The non-Aryan Shiva used to live in cemeteries, cremation grounds, lonesome plains and on the different peaks of the Himalayas. (That is why even today the non-Aryans, pointing to the Himalayan peaks such as Kailash, Gaurishankar, Everest, etc., say, “There live our Hara-Gaorii.”) But the Aryans turned Him into a full-fledged divinity of the scriptures. To prove that he was Aryan they hung a sacred thread on his left shoulder. (Needless to say, the non-Aryan Shiva had no such sacred thread; he wore a snake around his neck.) Strangely enough, the image of the Aryan god Brahmá shows no sign of any such sacred thread. No one doubted that Brahmá was an Aryan by race, but in the case of Shiva, the only way to prove that he was an Aryan was to hang a sacred thread on his shoulder.

We can still observe today that Shiva is the god of all, regardless of caste or colour, high or low, learned or ignorant, Brahman or pariah. No other deity in India enjoys such tremendous universal popularity. Even if one does not know a mantra, one can worship Shiva. Young maidens model earth into images of Shiva and worship Him; the philosophical sádhakas of old used to attain samádhi in Shivatva [Cosmic Consciousness]; and the so-called low castes such as Doḿa and Cańd́ála become sannyásiis of Shiva. No other divinity would even touch the shadows of these so-called pariahs.

The present social system of India (which is fundamentally Tantric) was developed by Shiva. After accepting Shiva as God without any reservation, the Aryans appropriated everything good of the Dravidians and the other non-Aryans. Of course this did not diminish the Aryans’ prestige – rather it enhanced it. After this appropriation there was a propaganda attempt to prove that Tantra was originally propounded by the Aryans themselves. The Aryans used to say:

Ágataḿshivavaktrebhyoh gataiṋca Girijáshrutao;

Mataiṋca Vásudevasya tasmádágama ucyate.

That is to say, “This Tantra, or Ágama Shástra, was actually composed by Vásudeva [Krśńa, who was considered Aryan], and Shiva only revealed it to Párvatii.” Áre Bábá!(11) – if Vásudeva had at all been the propounder of this doctrine, why on earth would He have put it into the mouth of the non-Aryan Shiva instead of saying it Himself? In the beginning the Aryans used to recognize the superiority of Tantra sádhaná but practise it in secret; but after acknowledging Shiva, they openly declared themselves to be Tantrics.

Not only in India, but in quite a large part of the world, in every sphere of life, the laws and injunctions of Shiva alone prevailed for a long time. Even today the civilization of modern India is intrinsically Tantric. On the outside only is there a Vedic stamp. Or if we take the Indian civilization as an enamelled ornament, then its gold is Tantric, and the enamel Vedic. For both the wandering sannyásiis of the cemeteries and cremation grounds, and the householders, this Shiva alone is the ideal man, and Gaorii the ideal woman. Shiva is the universal father and Gaorii the universal mother. Shiva’s household is the three worlds.

Hararme pitá Gaorii mátá svadesho bhuvanatrayam.

[Hara is my father, Gaorii is my mother, and the three worlds of earth, heaven and hell are my native land.]

When the Indians were about to forget the teachings of Shiva due to their fascination with the mundane objectivities of the world, there came another sublime entity like Shiva, who reminded them of those teachings. That great personality was Shrii Krśńa. The question as to which of the two was greater, Krśńa or Shiva, does not arise, because all knowers of Brahma are one: all are Brahma. Shrii Krśńa was the supreme teacher and ideal politician of the world, what to speak of India alone. Shiva was the guru, the father, of the human society of the world – a completely different kind of role. Shiva is the universal father. Just as Cándá Mámá [The Uncle in the Moon] is the uncle of all, Shiva is the father of all.

All three worlds are Shiva’s family. His reputation is not confined to any particular country. Yet if anyone is to be singled out as the father of Indian civilization, or of Indian society, or of the so-called Indian nation – then I can say emphatically that Shiva alone is eligible to be the father, not only of the Indian nation, but of the universal human nation. Ancient Shiva alone, and no one else, can qualify to be the father of this more-than-five-thousand-year-old so-called Indian race.

Footnotes

(1) Author’s note: It is wrong to write “Káshmiira”, for the word káshmiira means “pertaining to Kashmiira”, or “saffron”. The Aryans saw saffron for the first time in Kashmiira.

(2) Author’s note: In these books the non-Aryans were sometimes called rákśasas [demons], sometimes pishácas [ghouls], and sometimes asuras [monsters].

(3) Editors’ note: Mitákśará entails the heirs’ equal rights of inheritance, not subject to the father’s discretion. Dáyabhága entails the heirs’ right of inheritance subject to the father’s discretion (the father enjoys the right to disinherit any of the heirs).

(4) Editors’ note: A mixture of the Vedic Sanskrit and the Bengalis’ original laokik, or dialectal, Sanskrit (the “bird language”).

(5) Editors’ note: One of three styles of pronunciation of Sanskrit – saḿvrta, vivrtta and tiryak.

(6) Author’s note: The people of eastern India make common use of the Tantric mystic syllable phat́. For example, Se phat́ kare bale phelle… “He said all of a sudden…”; or Lokt́ár baŕa phat́phat́áni, “That person is very verbose.”

(7) Editors’ note: “Old Shiva”.

(8) Editors’ note: The va sound was later changed to ba under the influence of Muslim pronunciation, so the letter was changed as well. In modern Bengali there is no difference in pronunciation between ba and va, but the difference in spelling persists.

(9) Editors’ note: A “twilight language” of dual meanings.

(10) Editors’ note: There was a Vedic Sarasvatii in existence before the Buddhist Prajiṋá Páramitá, but the swan-mounted Sarasvatii modelled after Prajiṋá Páramitá is not the same goddess.

(11) Editors’ note: An exclamation, like “Good Lord!”

Tantra and Supernatural Power

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:36:00 +0000

Tantra and Supernatural Power

By Mahasambhuti

The science of spirituality developed out of human beings’ innate desire to unravel the mystery of creation. Humans began to search for the secret causes underlying both the dreadful and the beautiful aspects of Nature. They looked around them at the rivers and streams, the far-flung mountain ranges, the flashes of lightning; they heard the thunder; they listened to the roaring of ferocious animals – and they began to plumb the depths of these mysteries. These endeavours to get at the hidden truth of everything are what is known as Tantra. Since these endeavours were carried on at different times, in different places, and by different groups of individuals, we find some differences in methodology among the various schools of Tantra.

Tantra originated in [South] Asia, and its propounders were the Austrics, the Dravidians, and the Mongolians.⁽¹⁾ Among these peoples, the Dravidians and the Mongolians were more developed, the Austrics less. The practitioners of the more-developed Tantra would look upon things from a broad point of view, renouncing all narrow thinking. They would always strive hard to advance the welfare of the masses. Through such selfless service, they would overcome the fetters of the mind, such as hatred and shame. The practitioners of the less-developed Tantra would behave in just the opposite way. They would indulge in casteism; in expressions of untouchability; and in expressions of hatred and envy in relation to other groups.

The overcoming of material bondages signifies the greatest human progress. The word tantra signifies that one “frees oneself from the bondages of crudity", therefore Tantra is considered the most progressively practical of spiritual practice. Lord Sadáshiva was the first propounder of this Tantra. He developed certain fixed rules, and thereby ensured all-round progress in the different aspects of human life. He brought about a perfect system, reviewing and coordinating all branches of Tantra. He researched and proved the efficacy of both the [external] and the [internal] aspects of Tantra.⁽²⁾ The [external] aspect of Tantra consisted of sádhaná with skulls, in cemeteries. The [internal] aspect of Tantra consisted of the practice of yoga. [It is ultimately] through [internal] Tantra that human beings can reach the heights of spiritual success.

Human beings can never win liberation by flattering Prakrti. An entity which is flattered becomes proud. Human beings must not become the slaves of matter. If sádhakas will worship Puruśa and ignore Prakrti, they will find that Prakrti will automatically begin to flatter them.

There is no such thing as “supernatural” in this world. All sorts of powers lie dormant in human beings. Sometimes we get glimpses of these latent powers. In a more-developed terminology, these glimpses will be called “intellect” or “intuition”. Human beings can develop that which they have glimpsed, eventually attaining extraordinary powers. In the eyes of ordinary people, these powers appear to be supernatural, but actually they are natural. But it is a fact that ordinary persons cannot do these extraordinary things, and that is why they look upon these powers as supernatural.

Tantra is a source of such extraordinary powers. Within a short period, all the páshas and ripus [fetters and enemies] which bind the mind become broken. As long as the mind is in bondage, it tends to move towards crude material objects; that is, the mind remains inextricably associated with matter. But once the bondages become snapped through the practice of Tantra, the mind becomes detached from those crude objects. This implies the elevation of human beings, because [it is through detachment that] physical, psychic, and spiritual progress becomes possible. Humans are predominantly mental beings, and sometimes [certain of them] develop extraordinary intellect; because of their greater concentration of mind, their societies consider them to be a superior type of person.

When we talk about the ripus [enemies] of the mind, we mean only the [internal, or, innate] enemies.⁽³⁾ For a human being to bring the ripus under perfect control signifies an important victory. Those persons who can do so attain greater control over the forces of matter, and can perform feats that in the eyes of the common masses betoken some kind of supernatural power.

In Tantra the endeavour to establish control over matter or over external forces is called avidyá sádhaná. And the practice which leads to self-realization is called vidyá sádhaná. And that branch of Tantra which is neither vidyá sádhaná nor avidyá sádhaná is called upavidyá sádhaná. Only vidyá sádhaná contributes to the welfare of humanity; the other two practices are merely a waste of time. Márańa, uccát́ana, sammohan, váshiikárańa, etc., come within the definition of avidyá sádhaná. The practice of avidyá leads to degradation. Sadáshiva, the original propounder of Tantra, collected and systematized all the branches of Tantra, but He did not encourage the practice of avidyá, because it is an inferior order of sádhaná. When people practise sádhaná in order to attain “supernatural” powers, their mental objects ultimately become crude, for after attaining such powers, they utilize them for self-aggrandizement or for revenge.

Vidyá sádhaná was almost extinct for the last 1200 years. And there are now only a handful of real Avidyá Tantrics left – the rest are charlatans and hypocrites. After death, these people will be reborn as worms and insects.

Human beings practise sádhaná in order to become one with Brahma, not to become ghosts or ghouls. To become one with Brahma, they must practise Vidyá Tantra, not Avidyá Tantra. Of course through either kind of sádhaná, sádhakas gain freedom from the páshas and ripus. But the difference between the two sádhanás is that the practitioners of Vidyá Tantra channelize their spiritual powers towards the attainment of Paramátmá, whereas the practitioners of Avidyá Tantra utilize their acquired powers for mundane benefits. Through Vidyá Tantra one “binds” [wins] Paramátmá, while through Avidyá Tantra one binds [dominates] living beings. Vidyá Tantrics accept Paramátmá as their object of supreme adoration, and in order to become one with Him, they channelize all the powers they have acquired towards Him.

From a medical point of view also, Tantra sádhaná has its usefulness. In ancient times there were Vedic experts in áyurveda.⁽⁴⁾ But as they were not Tantrics, they were handicapped in fully utilizing their medical knowledge to cure patients. Because of their prejudices – their hatred of certain groups, their belief in untouchability, their casteism, etc. – they would hesitate to touch the bodies of their patients; whereas the Tantric doctors, because of their control over [such enemies and fetters as] hatred, fear and shame, could render medical service in a proper way. The practices of dissection and surgery rested mainly in the hands of Tantric doctors.

Footnotes

(1) Since anciently Mongolia was an empire, and symbolized all of East Asia, “Mongolian” here means “Oriental”. –Eds.

(2) The distinction between external and internal is not the same as the distinction between “less-developed” and “more-developed” made previously in this discourse. –Eds.

(3) The ripus, or “enemies”, of the mind – káma [longing for physical objects], krodha [anger], lobha [avarice], mada [vanity], moha [blind attachment], mátsarya [jealousy] – are innate; the páshas, or “fetters”, are externally imposed. –Eds.

(4) School of medicine that brings about longevity, through herbal and other natural treatments. –Eds.

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Yogic Relief for Diabetes

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 21:07:00 +0000

Yogic Treatments

Yogic Relief for Diabetes

Symptoms: Incessant desire for urination, burning sensation in the urinary tract, continuous thirst and sweet taste in the mouth, attraction of flies and ants towards the urine, headache, dizziness, pale and dry skin, becoming old in appearance at a young age, discomfort all over the body, etc., taken together, are the indications of diabetes. It is often found that diabetic persons suffer from cataracts.

Causes: It is not always the case that sugar is present in the urine of diabetes patients. Diabetes with sugar in the urine is called “somaroga” or “madhumeha”. Diabetes without sugar is called “mútrátisára” or “udakameha”.

The debility of the Mańipura Cakra(1) is the main cause of diabetes. Amongst the pancreatic juices, one secretion helps in the digestion of food, and another separates the sugar content from non-vegetarian and starchy types of food. The sugar is then stored in a particular section of the liver and according to body requirements it is dissolved to generate heat and vital power to run the body mechanism. Chronic indigestion, constipation (here also the stool usually turns into pellets), mental exertion without any physical labour, use of intoxicants, and excessive seminal waste – all weaken the vitality of the liver. When such weakening takes place, the sugar contents of the food, failing to find a storage place in the liver, are assimilated into the blood and gradually accumulate. As a result, the blood gets polluted and loses its immune properties to a great extent. The natural reaction of the body in such a situation is to try to purify the blood by separating out its sugar content and expelling it with the urine. To dissolve the sugar, the human body needs plenty of water, and that is why diabetes patients suffer from a continuous thirst. Sugar emitted with the urine in a large quantity gradually reduces the vital energy of diabetes patients.

additional asana options

Yogic Treatment:

Yogasanas

Morning – Utkśepa Mudrá, Karmásana, Agnisára Mudrá, Upaviśt́a Ud́d́ayana Mudrá, Jánushirásana and Ágneyii Mudrá or Ágneyii Práńáyáma.

How to do these HERE: http://bit.ly/YogasanaPostures

Evening – Yogamudrá, Diirgha Prańáma, Bhújauṋgásana, Pashcimottánásana, Bhastrikásana and Agnisára Mudrá.

Diet: As diabetes is basically a disease of liver and pancreas, care has to be taken to keep these organs in a healthy state, and to do so patients must select food that will keep their bowels clear, yet which is nutritious and easily digestible. All types of fruits are good for this disease, especially ripe bananas. Non-vegetarian food must never be eaten. Vegetable proteins are also acidic, hence they are to be eaten as sparingly as possible. It is therefore advisable to reduce the intake of rice and rut́i (made of wheat flour) and instead to use more foods such as vegetable soup, plantain soup, pat́ol, okra, dhundula, paltá, squash (Lagenaria vulgaris Seringe), plantain spathes and flowers, figs, etc., which contain alkaline properties.

Dos and don’ts: Diabetes is the disease of intellectuals. Those who do physical labour seldom suffer from this disease. Undergoing mental exertion, remaining indoors for a long period, physical laziness, constipation, intemperance, etc., are reasons for the contraction of diabetes. As has already been said, diabetes is basically connected with the liver and the pancreas, hence only those foods should be selected which do not over-stimulate those vital organs. Similarly, work and exercise which will help to bring these organs into their normal state of health must be pursued more and more. For those who are adverse to physical labour, a cure from diabetes is next to impossible.

The human body also needs the nutrients offered by starchy and non-vegetarian types of food; therefore foods which are not acidic but rather alkaline, yet contain those nutrients, should be taken in greater quantity to meet those needs. This will include coconut, peanuts, curd (yogurt), bananas, etc. A drink of peanut extract and water without sugar and with little or no honey is ideal as both food and medicine for this disease.

Remember that insulin may increase the vitality of a patient but can never cure the disease.

Generally diabetes patients are a bit greedy, and sometimes they eat too much sweetened food, which brings on the disease. Diabetes patients must keep control over such temptations and should practise fasting.

In the severe state of the disease a continuous fast for two or three days taking nothing but a little juice of lemon or other fruit will definitely reduce the sugar content of the urine.

Sometimes sugar is completely absent in the urine. In this respect one has to remember that sugar may be found temporarily in the urine if the urinary bladder, kidney or some other internal organ is subjected to a blow. If in such cases insulin is given, it will actually harm the patient. Under such circumstances the best thing to do would be to treat the injury of the concerned organ appropriately, and then the urine of the patient will automatically become sugar-free.

Some remedies:

1. Boil myrobalan, muthá, lodhá and banyan fruits in equal quantities and drink 2 tolas of the extract early in the morning for a few days regularly. This will bring a good result.

2. Crush about 1/8 seer of guava leaves in water at night. The next morning strain the leaves out and drink the water. This will bring good results during the severe state of diabetes.

3. (a) 1 tola of yajiṋa d́umura juice with honey; or (b) 1 tola of telákucá leaf extract taken with honey early in the morning by licking it; will relieve diabetes.

4. (a) 1/16 tola of the inside of jám seeds with honey; or (b) Dry shimúla root crushed with powder, to be licked with honey in a quantity of 1/16 tola; will yield excellent results in diabetes.

5. When the disease is worsening, 5 tolas of bánsha leaves in half a seer of water, boiled down to 1/8 seer, and the leaves strained out, should be drunk for immediate results.

6. Boil gent́e durbá (see durbá in glossary), vajiṋa d́umura, emblic myrobalan (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.), myrobalan, coriander seeds and gandha-muthá in equal quantities in half a seer of water. When boiled down to 1/8 seer, drink it. Do this every day for a week at break of dawn. This will bring beautiful results.

Guiding wisdom from the heart of ~Mahasambhuti~

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Harvard Researchers in the Himalayas -- Buddhist Monks Demonstrate Human Potentials in Subtler Realms

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 02:06:00 +0000

Cognitive capabilities can perceive
what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Prepare yours through Tantra Psychology.

Human potential is a broad spectrum of evolutionary excellence, of which are imperceptible to dogmatic minds, petrified by the inanimacy produced by regressive dogmas such as that Newtonian physics as the final determinant of all reality.

Human history is full of grander scales than contemporary beliefs of prevailing cultures presume exist, capabilities extant today and demonstrated among Buddhist monks, Taoist practitioners, shamans around the world, and others alive today. The excellence is not in cultivating such capabilities, the excellence is in transpersonal, psycho-spiritual evolutionary development of which such extraordinary capabilities are symptoms, not goals.

As such symptoms of human evolution result from greater portions of humanity taking up progressive transpersonal and spiritual practices as part of their daily life, many of the burdensome problems plaguing humanity today will also find remediation as subtle realms of mind more readily understand the scope of such dilemmas and fathom the wisdom to solve such disparities in human life, including those deemed unsolvable today.

Such thresholds of excellence in human evolution, reflected in society at large will rent asunder the constipatory petrificities of prevailing dogmas intellectually, morally, and socially retarding humanity today.

Guest article

March, 2016 by Arjun Walia.

It’s fascinating to consider just how many ancient teachings tell us that humans have the capacity to gain extraordinary powers through various techniques. Some of these techniques, known as siddhis in the yoga tradition (from the Sanskrit, meaning “perfection”), include meditation, static dancing, drumming, praying, fasting, psychedelics, and more.

In Buddhism, for example, the existence of advanced powers is readily acknowledged; in fact, Buddha expected his disciples to be able to attain these abilities, but also to not become distracted by them.

A Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, Donald Lopez Jr., describes the many abilities ascribed to Buddha:

With this enlightenment, he was believed to possess all manner of supernormal powers, including full knowledge of each of his own past lives and those of other beings, the ability to know others’ thoughts, the ability to create doubles of himself, the ability to rise into the air and simultaneously shoot fire and water from his body. . . . Although he passed into nirvana at the age of eighty-one, he could have lived “for an aeon or until the end of the aeon” if only he had been asked to do so. (source)

Levitating yogi Yogananda referred to
in his book "AutoBiography of a Yogi"

Again, there are numerous historical anecdotes of people with, as the Institute of Noetic Sciences calls them, ‘extended human capacities.” Since this article is focused on Buddhist monks, here is another example from the lore as written by Swami Rama in Living with the Himalayan Masters:

I had never before seen a man who could sit still without blinking his eyelids for eight to ten hours, but this adept was very unusual. He levitated two and a half feet during his meditations. We measured this with a string, which was later measured by a foot rule. I would like to make it clear, though, as I have already told you, that I don’t consider levitation to be a spiritual practice. It is an advanced practice of pranayama with application of bandeaus (locks). One who knows about the relationship between mass and weight understands that it is possible to levitate, but only after long practice. . .

He (also) had the power to transform matter into different forms, like changing a rock into a sugar cube. One after another the next morning he did many such things. He told me to touch the sand – and the grains of sand turned into almonds and cashews. I had heard of this science before and knew its basic principles, but I had hardly believed such stories. I did not explore this field, but I am fully acquainted with the governing laws of science. (source)

A lot of these stories exist within the literature and lore, but they are just stories, up to the readers to decide if they hold any actually credibility. Of course, one who subscribes to various ancient teachings would be more inclined to believe that these are more than just stories and tales. With science shedding light on the possible truths of ancient mysticism, it’s not implausible to think that, at one time, these abilities were more common knowledge.

Today, there have been a number of studies within the realms of parapsychology that have yielded statistically significant results, especially when examining the findings that’ve come from quantum physics. This is why Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, stated that he “regards consciousness as fundamental” and that he regarded “matter as derivative from consciousness.” He also wrote that “we cannot get behind consciousness” and that “everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness.” And the Dalai Lama has supported this viewpoint:

Broadly speaking, although there are some differences, I think Buddhist philosophy and Quantum Mechanics can shake hands on their view of the world. We can see in these great examples the fruits of human thinking. Regardless of the admiration we feel for these great thinkers, we should not lose sight of the fact that they were human beings just as we are. (source)

R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at John Hopkins University, explains things further:

A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual. (source)

For a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles reporting studies of psychic phenomena, mostly published in the 21st century, you can click HERE.

Harvard And The Himalayan Monks

During a visit to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Harvard Professor of Medicine Herbert Benson and his team of researchers studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo (a yoga technique), raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It is still unknown how the monks are able to generate such heat. (source)

And it doesn’t stop there — the researchers also studied advanced meditators in Sikkim, India, where they were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent.(source)

In 1985, the Harvard research team made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat alone. Monks spending winter nights 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas is also not uncommon.

These are truly remarkable feats, and not the first time science has examined humans who can do extraordinary things. We published an article a couple of months ago showing that factors associated with consciousness can influence our autonomic nervous system. You can read more about that in the article linked below, as it is heavily sourced and provides links to several papers that clearly indicate how factors associated with consciousness can influence our biology.

Study: Factors Associated With Consciousness Can Influence Our Autonomic Nervous System

If you’re further interested in this subject, I recommend reading Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities by Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Another related CE Article that might be of interest: 6 Humans With Real “Superpowers” That Science Can’t Explain

This article was originally published here March 2016.

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http://gplus.to/TantraPsychology Longevity: Is It In Your Future?

Maturation in Science Acknowledging Our Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:25:00 +0000

Guest article

What Science Is Telling Us About The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence

by Arjun Walia

The wonderful and brilliant scientists over at the Institute of HeartMath have done some amazing work in shedding a light on the science of the heart.

The Institute of HeartMath is an internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to helping people reduce stress, self-regulate emotions, and build energy and resilience for healthy, happy lives. HeartMath tools, technology, and training teach people to rely on the intelligence of their hearts in concert with that of their minds at home, school, work, and play.

A large portion of their research has investigated heart and brain interaction. Researchers have examined how the heart and brain communicate with each other and how that affects our consciousness and the way in which we perceive our world. For example, when a person is feeling really positive emotions like gratitude, love, or appreciation, the heart beats out a certain message. Because the heart beats out the largest electromagnetic field produced in the body, researchers are able to gather significant data from it. According to Rolin McCratey, Ph.D, and director of research at the Institute:

Emotional information is actually coded and modulated into these fields. By learning to shift our emotions, we are changing the information coded into the magnetic fields that are radiated by the heart, and that can impact those around us. We are fundamentally and deeply connected with each other and the planet itself.

This is very important work, as again, it shows how the heart plays an important role far beyond what is commonly known. Did you know that your heart emits electromagnetic fields which change according to your emotions? Did you know that the human heart has a magnetic field that can be measured up to several feet away from the human body? Did you know that positive emotions create physiological benefits in your body? Did you know that you can boost your immune system by conjuring up positive emotions? Did you know that negative emotions can create nervous system chaos, and that positive emotions do the complete opposite? Did you know that the heart has a system of neurons which have both short term and long term memory, and that their signals sent to the brain can affect our emotional experiences? Did you know that in fetal development, the heart forms and starts beating before the brain is developed? Did you know that a mother’s brainwaves can synchronize to her baby’s heartbeats? Did you know that the heart sends more information to the brain than vice versa?

All of these facts, published researched papers, and more can be accessed at heartmath.org.

Below is a video from the Institute about the intuitive intelligence of the heart. Definitely worth a look.

This Is Why It’s Important For The Human Race To Change The Way We Feel Inside

The Institute of HeartMath does a wonderful job at emphasizing why it’s critical for many of us to change the way we feel inside. Not much can be accomplished from a place of sadness, angst, or anger. Our current human experience, the everyday life we all seem willing to participate in, does indeed take its toll on many. A lot of people are feeling that living the lifestyles we do, struggling to pay bills and constantly working, is not a natural way of life for the human race. It’s an experience which makes it hard to maintain a “high frequency” or positive state for some. What makes this unfortunate reality even more perplexing is the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way, we are capable of so much more.

At the same time, many people around the world are struggling to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves. The Earth is being destroyed and our time to turn things around seems to be limited. This is a hard truth that we very much need to address, and we have a number of options to choose from which could alleviate these problems. It can be difficult to maintain a positive state of mind when we see so many terrible things happening in the world, but we cannot create the kind of change we’re looking for unless we do so from a positive, peaceful state.

Despite all of the negativity in the world and our individual struggles, many people do manage to find inner peace and moments of joy, and that’s pretty remarkable. It’s all about perspective – it’s seeing the bigger picture and changing the way you look at things.

Happiness is no doubt an inside job, but with a human experience that is not resonating with many it can be hard to maintain. This is evident in a variety of different areas where people are starting to stand up and demand change. More and more people are wanting something different, wanting a life where everybody can thrive and feel good about themselves and their place in the world. If one is suffering, we all suffer – that’s the way we feel here at CE and it’s clear that many are resonating with that message.

The funny thing about our feelings is that, for the most part, they are a result of our own choices. We can choose to change the way we feel just by changing our thoughts. Negative emotions are usually a result of the thoughts we have about the people, things, or events in our lives. At the end of the day, it’s just a human experience, and all experiences are opportunities for learning and growth.

Bottom line, feelings of love, gratitude, and compassion – any positive feelings whatsoever – have a larger impact than we could have ever imagined. These are all characteristics of consciousness, and as quantum physics is showing us, consciousness plays a definite role in the creation of our reality. If this is true, then how we feel about things must too, and with the research coming out from the Institute of HeartMath, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that feeling good might very well be fundamental to creating global change.

“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a ‘mental’ construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.’ ” – (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University)

This article was originally published here November 2014.

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What Can Mindfulness Teach You About Being A Better Manager?

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 23:13:00 +0000

Guest article

What Can Mindfulness Teach You About Being More Present — and a Better Manager?

by Daniel Rodriguez

As anyone working at a high-growth startup can tell you, things get very hectic and stressful very easily. Motivating a ten person team and also having a life of my own presents itself as a single gigantic challenge. Until recently, an acquaintance or social media follower would view my life as successful, but there was one huge problem: I was anxious, stressed out and not all that happy. Thankfully, over the past year I’ve taken a new approach to life that involves being mindfully aware, or “present,” that has made me a better manager and partner in quantifiable ways.

First, I should make a slightly embarrassing admission: much of my anxiety boiled down to FOMO (fear of missing out). I felt anxious on a daily basis about missing out on, well, everything that it seemed others were doing that I wasn’t. Faster revenue growth (because 150% isn’t enough). Boozy brunches. Unicorn valuations. Skyrocketing personal wealth with minimal work experience. Bottle service. Personal training sessions. One Direction hair.

I looked at the world and saw what I didn’t have and felt bummed out and a little bitter. And how did I overcome that feeling? I got intense, took control and lived on the edge of a stress-induced breakdown, which resulted in the occasional snippy comment, the short-term desire for a “quick win” in an argument with my wife, or a passive aggressive comment to a subordinate.

Basically, I was taking my unhappiness out on those around me and being a lot less of the person that I wanted to be.

So I started searching to see if there was anyone else in the world who was wrestling with the guilt of being someone with so much yet fighting bouts of unhappiness that came in waves every few months.

And it turns out that a TON of people have felt this way—not just startup VPs, or Americans, or millennials, but human beings for hundreds of years. The introduction in the book Mindfulness in Plain English crystalizes this common anxiety and convinced me that I could do something about it.

To combat my anxiety and unhappiness, I started meditating. It has worked by making me be more “in the present” (more on that phrase a bit later).

I was an economics major in college, so the way that I measure the success of mindfulness is by the increase in positive feelings (feeling happy more often) and decrease of negative emotions (feeling anxious less often).

Let’s tackle the biggest problem first: the anxiety that makes you feel unhappy. Every single time that I feel anxious I am thinking about something in the future, meaning that I am not in the present. Things like hiring faster (we MUST go FASTER!), what our go-to-market strategy will look like in 6 months and getting industry recognition are all thoughts about the future. By meditating, I’m able to steer myself away from dwelling on those thoughts so that when they enter my mind, I gently push them aside. The result: so much less anxiety about the future!

Another big contributor to unhappiness is feeling annoyed by something difficult to avoid: other people. This is a life lesson and also a practical management one: it’s worth it to try to see things through someone else’s perspective. By practicing empathy you have a much better chance of going through life feeling happy rather than crushed by the boredom of standing in lines or dealing with a coworker’s nagging cough. David Foster Wallace’s This is Water captures the necessity of this mentality perfectly: be present and take a second to see the good in a situation or else you’ll be mired in petty annoyances and the feeling of everyone being in your way (especially during the holiday season!).

Seeing the good in others rather than getting annoyed by them has been the biggest boon to me experiencing more positive moments. Ellen Langer notes this in her podcast interview on the Science of Mindfulness as seeing someone not as gullible but rather as trusting, not as impulsive but as spontaneous. Sitting in an open work environment near others and managing different personalities has its inherent challenges, so why make it more difficult by not finding things to enjoy about those around you? And in case you think that the idea of mindfulness and being present is only a Buddhist philosophy that requires time spent meditating, Langer’s research shows that being mindful is more about actively focusing on the here and now (rather than meditating to get you ready to be present).

The irony of FOMO is that by worrying so much about missing out you actually miss out. You miss the joy in seeing a new hire grow and gain their own recognition, the value in not knowing where your company will be in 2 years but knowing that today, in this place, is a ton of fun. You also miss the beauty that can be found in watching leaves fall from the trees, or the colors in a sunset or the way your kid’s voice sounds when they sing Doc McStuffins songs. This is the first year of my life that hasn’t flown by—it’s been rich with work and life moments because I’ve been here, in the present, much more often.

It’s a happier place and I hope that those that I get to meet enjoy it with me.

This post was originally published here December 2015.

Do the mysteries of and about shamanism, meditation, tantra, yoga, mindfulness, intuition, and consciousness seem, at times, to be more confusing than you can grasp? http://bit.ly/MysticalPresentations3

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Is Your Yoga Practice a Colonialistic Misrendering?

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 02:03:00 +0000

Guest article

Is Your Yoga Practice an Imperialist Appropriation of Indian Culture?

By Michael Sowden

Arguments are simmering in America that when Westerners practice yoga and meditation they are engaged in a neo-colonialist appropriation of an ancient heritage. Proponents of this argument will tell you that the statue of the Buddha or Shiva on your mantelpiece constitutes the imperialist theft of another culture's sacred imagery. Is this what you are doing when you bend in surya namaskar or chant OM before yoga class--exploiting another culture?

I've been practicing and teaching yoga and meditation most of my life and want to respond to this argument.

It's an important question. We Americans are wildly privileged. If you have traveled in India or to other developing countries, you know how rich and privileged we are. It's important to be mindful about situations in which our actions might derive from or be taking advantage of that privilege.

Ugly Colonialist:
"I've got your spiritual trinket right here!
I paid cold hard cash for this item."

The West has a history of colonizing other countries and then romanticizing and appropriating aspects of their heritage. So an American sports team calls itself the "Washington Redskins." Madonna is blasted by cultural critic bell hooks for appropriating hip-hop music. A white rancher, a descendent of those who "won the West," hangs a Native-American dream-catcher from his rear-view mirror.

We've all encountered people who decorate their homes with symbols and artifacts from cultures they know little or nothing about. And how many Western "teachers" have taken ancient Eastern techniques and turned them into money-making gimmicks? I'm thinking of expensive seminars and retreats by self-help gurus and corporate trainers who charge a mint for sharing practices passed down for centuries in India or Tibet free of charge. In Salt Lake City, there was a teacher who ran a "very special retreat" called the "5-5-50." Five days. Five people. Fifty-thousand dollars.

"Hey there, handsome.
I'm making a fortune off these posture classes,
wanna have some fun?"

Complicating the problem is the fact that many yoga teachers begin teaching yoga without really understanding the heart of the yogic path. You can see Hindu symbols displayed backwards in yoga studios or find that what you thought was going to be yoga is really aerobics with stretching. A majority of Americans still may not realize that "yoga" is an ancient physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual way of life, of which asanas, the physical postures, are only one part. In Ashtanga, or Raja Yoga, asanas are one limb of an eight-limb system. The other limbs are directed toward spiritual liberation.

In addition, the very heart of yoga will get lost if we stereotype the American yogi as a svelte, young, upper-middle class white woman doing Warrior II on the cover of Yoga Journal. A fascinating website, "De-Colonizing Yoga," focuses on this latter issue and on making yoga more available to people of color. An Atlantic Monthly essay, "Why Is Your Yoga Class So White," makes the same point.

But here are some of the reasons I think the argument about imperialist appropriation is misplaced and an overreaction.

I was trained as a yoga teacher in the 1970s by sanyassis (monks) sent to the United States by a tantric yoga guru in Bengal. Usually, we think of the colonial power being the one sending missionaries to the colonized country to convert the heathens. But the twentieth century saw a huge number of Hindu and yogic teachers coming to the US. Vivekananda was the first--arriving in 1893 for the Chicago World Parliament of Religions. The great yoga teacher Paramahansa Yogananda was next. He arrived in the US in the 1920s and became a national sensation. His book, Autobiography of a Yogi, transformed many lives, including my own. Later came Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Muktananda, Meher Baba, B. K. S. Iyengar, Yogi Bhajan. And Amma, Amritanandamayi Ma, still visits regularly to share her life-changing darsan, hugging thousands of Americans.

None of them worried about their teachings being "appropriated" by Westerners. They shared them freely. Because the teachings transform lives, lead to liberation, and can change the world.

"Hey! I'm a kitty, not a peacock!"

Hatha yoga, the physical side of yoga practiced in most American yoga studios, is already a multicultural phenomenon. A yogi named Krishnamacharya in Mysore, the teacher of famous B. K. S. Iyengar, developed modern hatha yoga by combining ancient yogic traditions with late 19th-century Western gymnastic and body-building systems. Many of the most popular yoga series like sun salutations are relatively recent inventions, existing nowhere in the ancient yogic texts like Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. The ancient texts are primarily concerned with spiritual liberation. Asanas are just one part of a complete holistic system.

Many, many people in the West are hungry for spiritual transformation. Yoga and meditation are priceless gifts India has given the world, gifts that are transforming global human consciousness. Just this year Indian Prime Minister Modi sponsored the United Nations' adoption of "International Yoga Day."

A true guru will tell you that yoga transcends nations, borders, and boundaries. Brahman, the term in yoga philosophy for Absolute Reality, the Divine Consciousness, encompasses the entire universe. It exists for all. No one owns it. No one can "appropriate" it. Brahman is not in danger of being limited or tarnished by the ignorant West.

When traditions migrate to other cultures, they evolve. When Buddhism went to China, it met Taoism. From this meeting, Zen was born--hardly something to lament. When Indian Tantra went to Tibet, Vajrarana, or Tibetan Buddhism, was born. This new tradition gave the world the Dalai Lama. Yoga will be transformed by coming to the West. It already has been. The important thing is to be part of its flowering, not its degradation.

If your goal is to offer the "5-5-50," become a rich New Age guru, you may be betraying the spirit of yoga. But if you approach this great tradition with humility and reverence and a desire to share what you have discovered, then you'll honor the heart of the path.

A recent post on a Kundalini Yoga Facebook page said that the first requirement of being a yoga teacher is to realize that you are nothing. Why? Because in the openness of that humility and emptiness of self, something priceless can be born.

So let's all of us yogis bow to this ancient spiritual tradition of India, learn and teach all the limbs of yoga, and in our practice and in our hearts hold a deep sense of gratitude for this gift that our spiritual Mother, Mata India, has bestowed upon the world.

Jai Guru!

Michael

This post was originally published on huffingtonpost.com November 2015.

Do the mysteries of and about shamanism, meditation, tantra, yoga, mindfulness, intuition, and consciousness seem, at times, to be more confusing than you can grasp? http://bit.ly/MysticalPresentations3

Sparkling Minds Expanding with the Universe

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Criteria of a Guru

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:57:00 +0000

You've heard the term "guru", and perhaps read or heard of some rendering of what a guru is, what gurus are about. As one trims away the humorous, the ridiculous, the bimbonic, and the bigoted, truth and fact remain for describing the experiential paradigm of true gurus.

Here we describe the essence and fortitude of what a worthy guru is about.

The Criteria of a Guru

Redacted from Dharshan by Mahasambhuti

Perhaps you know that the word guru is a very old Vedic word. It means "one who dispels darkness". This expression "one who dispels darkness" is often used without deeper understanding. This darkness actually belongs not only to the psychic stratum or the spiritual stratum, but to all strata of human existence. That is, darkness prevails in all the three strata – in the crude physical sphere, in the psychic sphere, and in the spiritual sphere. So a guru will necessarily have to be able to remove darkness from all three strata. If a guru teaches the alphabet or some academic matter to students, they would be called a teacher – teacher in the academic sense. That will not do. If, again, the guru removes darkness from the psychic world, they impart intellectual knowledge to their followers, that will not be enough either. And if, finally, they dispel darkness only from the spiritual stratum of their disciples, that will not do either. The fact is that a guru – if one is to be accepted as a real guru – shall have to remove darkness from all the strata of the physical world, all the strata of the psychic world, and also all the strata of the spiritual world.

Now let us look at the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, they alone can be a guru who can lift downtrodden humanity to a high spiritual level, who can illumine humanity with spiritual effulgence. That is, only a Mahákaola has the requisite qualification to be a guru, others cannot be gurus.

In order to be an ideal guru in the spiritual sphere, one must be thoroughly conversant with the minutest details of sádhaná, every aspect of sádhaná, important or unimportant. The guru must not only learn those things, but must also possess the capacity to teach those practices to others. Otherwise he should not be treated as a guru. The Mahákaola alone has this capacity, no one else. Kaolas are those who by dint of sádhaná have successfully elevated their microcosmic stance and established it in the Macrocosmic one; but a Mahákaola is one who is a kaola, certainly, but at the same time possesses the capacity to help others as well to get to that exalted kaola position. In the past Lord Shiva was one such Mahákaola. Lord Krśńa was another. To be a guru one must be a Mahákaola. [note: A kaola can raise their own kundalini to, and perhaps beyond, the seventh cakra, sahasrara; a Mahákaola can raise, not only their own kundalini to such heights, they can also raise the kundalinis of others to such heights as well. Raising one's kundalini is demonstrative of progressively escalating intimacy with the Universe.]

One must possess knowledge regarding sádhaná, not only thorough knowledge of the shástras [scriptures]. And in order to gain thorough scriptural knowledge, one must know as many important languages as are necessary for the purpose. That is to say, it is not enough that a guru acquire the necessary qualifications to be able to teach sádhaná (that is, impart lessons on the practical cult); they must possess adequate knowledge of theory also. That is, in order to know the inner secret of sádhaná, they must possess thorough and authentic scriptural knowledge; then only should they be accepted as a perfect guru in the spiritual sphere. One who has a fairly good knowledge of sádhaná and can also help others in that realm, but is completely devoid of intellect, or knowledge of languages and scriptures, cannot be a perfectly competent guru in the spiritual sphere; for, being a guru, they will have to explain the theoretical side also. If, suppose, I say to someone, "Do this," I should also explain why he or she should do that, and at the same time I should be able to support it in the light of the shástras.

You may raise the question, "What is a shástra?" You might point to a voluminous book and call it a shástra, but that would be misleading. Shástra in the true sense means, Shásanát tárayet yastu sah shástrah parikiirtitah – that is, "Shástra is that which disciplines and liberates humans." So a guru must be well versed in shástra, otherwise they cannot show the right path to humanity. The term guru would be a misleading misnomer – which is never desirable. Shástra does not necessarily mean the Vedas; it means the way to emancipation through inculcation of rigorous discipline; it is something that prevents one from taking license in the name of liberty. It means clear instructions that guide everyone along the path, that lead to attainment of prosperity and welfare -- that degree of rectificatory punishment which will be conducive to one’s well-being."

A spiritual guru must be well-acquainted with all the processes of sádhaná, must have the capacity to convince others, must possess complete knowledge of the scriptures, must know many languages, and must have comprehensive knowledge and intellect, plus some extra qualifications. What are those qualifications? Nigrahánugrahe shakto gururityabhidhiiyate – "the guru must possess the capacity both to punish, and to love, or bless, their disciples." Punishment alone, without love, is not good. Love and punishment should go together, and the degree of punishment should never exceed the degree of love. Then only can one be called a real spiritual guru.

A guru must be an authority on all subjects in all the three strata:

As a spiritual guru, they must be thoroughly versed in spiritual science – both the theory and the practice. They must know how Parama Puruśa associates Itself with jiivas [unit beings]; and they must know how jiivas associate themselves with Parama Puruśa (they associate themselves just as the Ganges merges into the Bay of Bengal). Otherwise, how can they teach this science to others?

And who knows this science? Only Parama Puruśa knows it, because It Itself has created everything. It has created our sense organs, and It has created the tanmátras(1) that our sense organs detect. It can create anything It likes. But remember, It does not do anything. Its "doing" means Its thinking. Things will take shape as It thinks. No one but Parama Puruśa knows how It does it. So how can people know Parama Puruśa if It does not teach to others the science of knowing It? Only Parama Puruśa knows the science and the method to realize It, to know It; because It has created both human beings and the path that they must move along. So people can know the method by Its grace only. Hence it has been said in Ánanda Sútram,(2) Brahmaeva Gururekah náparah – that is, "Brahma alone is the Guru." Through Its physical structure, It teaches the actual science to the spiritual aspirants. People should clearly understand this.

There are many people who are prone to think that in the spiritual realm there is no need to acquire intellectual knowledge for God-realization; and in support of their thesis they mention the names of some great men. Now it is true that for God-realization, academic qualification may not be necessary at all: there is no differentiation between a learned person and a foolish one. But in order to be a guru, one must be a learned person. God-realization is not enough for a guru, they must possess other qualifications as well. So a person who is devoid of learning and scriptural knowledge and the capacity to teach others, and the twin capacities to punish and reward Its disciples, should never be accepted as a spiritual guru. A guru does not mean only a spiritual guru, he must be a guru for the intellectual and physical worlds also.

After the spiritual sphere comes the psychic sphere, which is cruder than the former. That is, the guru must be aware of the nature of the human mind – what it is made of, how it should be elevated step by step from crude to subtle, how all the unit minds can march together in unison towards the goal – in a word, he must know both the theoretical and the applied sides of psychology. He must know a thousand times more than is written in books. He must assimilate everything through Its own refined intellect. And then only can he teach others perfectly. That shows that he must be not only a spiritual guru, but also a guru in the psychic world. There is a sense of want in the human mind. One who can remove the sense of want is a guru. In order to qualify as a guru, one must have the power to remove psychic wants.

As in the spiritual sphere, so also in the psychic sphere, a guru must be learned. He should be well-versed in the humanities; in fact, in all branches of human knowledge. In order to be a spiritual guru, it will be sufficient that he have mastery over scriptural treatises; but to be a guru in the psychic sphere, he must be well-versed in all branches of human knowledge. A limited knowledge of a few scriptures will not do. And simultaneously, he must be conversant with the style in which the human mind functions, as also in the method to control and guide it properly.

Next comes the physical world. The followers, the disciples, of the guru, are men and women of flesh and blood having physical structures. They have their sorrows and miseries, their tears and smiles. This is their life. They have their problem of food and clothing; they have their pleasures and pains, their tears of pain and tears of joy; they become elated in happy circumstances and depressed when things go wrong. It is the duty of a guru to provide Its followers with the wherewithal for their progress. This is what an ideal guru is to do in the physical sphere. As a guru in the physical world, he will have to teach mankind such techniques as will solve their wordly problems – problems of food, clothing, education and medical treatment. A guru must see to it that their mundane problems are solved.

So in order to be a guru, one must come onto this earth with the highest qualifications in the spiritual field, and with the greatest capacity to face the mountainous obstacles in the physical world. To shoulder the responsibility of a guru is not child’s play.

Footnotes

(¹^{) Literally, "minutest fraction of that", i.e., of a given rudimental factor of matter. The various types of tanmátras convey the senses of hearing, touch, form (vision), taste, and smell. –Eds.}

(²^{) Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti, Ánanda Sútram, 1962. –Eds.}

15 March 1981 DMS, Ramrajatala

~~~~~

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What is Dharma, and How Does Dharma Affect Human Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 22:52:00 +0000

Redacted from discourses by Mahasambhuti

Human beings are the highest-evolved beings currently on Earth. They possess clearly-reflected consciousness, and this makes them superior to animals. No other being has such a clear reflection of consciousness. Human beings can distinguish between good and bad with the help of their consciousness, and when in trouble they can find a way out, with its help. No one likes to live in misery and suffering, far less human beings, whose consciousness can find means of relief. Life without sorrow and suffering is a life of happiness and bliss, and that is what people desire. Everyone is in quest of happiness; in fact it is people’s nature to seek happiness. Now let us see what one does to achieve it and whether it is achieved by those means.

In their search for happiness people are first attracted towards physical enjoyments. They amass wealth and try to achieve power and position to satisfy their desires for happiness. One who has a hundred rupees is not satisfied with it, one strives for a thousand rupees, but even possessing thousands of rupees does not satisfy. One wants a million, and so on. Then it is seen that a person having influence in a district wants to extend it over a province, provincial leaders want to become national leaders, and when they have achieved that there creeps in a desire for world leadership. Mere acquisition of wealth, power and position does not satisfy a person. The acquisition of something limited only creates the want for more, and the quest for happiness finds no end. The hunger for possessing is unending. It is limitless and infinite.

However dignified or lofty the achievement, it fails to set at rest people’s unlimited quest for happiness. Those who hanker after wealth will not be satisfied until they can obtain unlimited wealth. Nor will the seeker of power, position and prestige be satisfied until he or she can get these in limitless proportions, as all these are objects of the world. The world itself is finite and cannot provide infinite objects. Naturally, therefore, the greatest worldly acquisition, even if it be the entire globe, would not secure anything of an infinite and permanent character. What then is that infinite, eternal thing which will provide everlasting happiness?

The Cosmic Entity alone is infinite and eternal. It alone is limitless, and the eternal longing of human beings for happiness can only be satiated by realization of the Infinite. The ephemeral nature of worldly possessions, power and position can only lead one to the conclusion that none of the things of the finite and limited world can set at rest the everlasting urge for happiness. Their acquisition merely gives rise to further longing. Only realization of the Infinite can do it. The Infinite can be only one, and that is the Cosmic Entity.

Hence it is only the Cosmic Entity that can provide everlasting happiness – the quest for which is the characteristic of every human being. In reality, behind this human urge is hidden the desire, the longing, for attainment of the Cosmic Entity, unbridled rapport and inevitable merger, union, yoga. It is the very nature of every living being. This alone is the dharma of every person.

The word dharma signifies “property”. The English word for it is “nature”, “characteristic” or “property”. The nature of fire is to burn or produce heat. It is the characteristic or property of fire and is also termed the nature of fire. Similarly, the dharma or nature of a human being is to seek the Cosmic Entity.

The degree of divinity in human beings is indicated by their clearly-reflected consciousness. Every human being, having evolved from animals, has, therefore, two aspects – the animal aspect, and the conscious aspect which distinguishes a person from animals. Animals display predominantly the animality, while human beings, due to a well-reflected consciousness, also possess rationality. The animality in human beings gives them a leaning towards animal life or physical enjoyment. They, under its influence, look to eating, drinking and gratification of other physical desires. They are attracted towards these and run after them under the influence of their animality but these do not provide happiness as their longing for it is infinite.

Animals are satisfied with these limited enjoyments as their urge is not infinite. However large the quantity of things offered to an animal may be, it will take only those which it needs and will not bother for the rest, while humans will certainly act differently in these conditions. This only establishes that animals are satisfied with the limited, while the desire of human beings is limitless, although the desire for enjoyment in both is prompted and governed by the animal aspect of life. The difference in the two is due to the possession by the human being of a clearly-reflected consciousness, something which animals lack.

The infinite nature of the human urge for absolute happiness is due to their consciousness alone. It is this consciousness alone which is not satisfied with the physical pleasure of possession, power and position – things which in spite of their huge proportions, are only transitory in character. It is their consciousness which creates in human beings the longing for the Cosmic Entity.

The objects of the world – the physical enjoyments – do not quench the thirst of the human heart for happiness. Yet we find that people are attracted by them. The animality in people draws them towards gratification of animal desires, but the rationality of their consciousness remains ungratified since all these are transitory and short-lived. They are not enough to set at rest the unending and unlimited hunger of the human consciousness. There is, thus, a constant duel in humans between their animality and rationality. The animal aspect pulls them towards instant earthly joys, while their consciousness, not being satisfied with these, draws them towards the Cosmic Entity – the Infinite.

This results in the struggle between the animal aspect and consciousness. Had the carnal pleasures derived from power and position been infinite and endless, they would have set at rest the eternal quest of consciousness for happiness. But they do not, and that is why the fleeting glory of temporal joys can never secure a lasting peace in the human mind and lead people to ecstasy.

It is only the well-reflected consciousness which differentiates human beings from animals. Is it then not imperative for human beings to make use of their consciousness? If their consciousness lies dormant behind their animality, people are bound to behave like animals. They in fact become worse than animals as, even though endowed with well-reflected consciousness, they do not make use of it. Such people do not deserve the status of human beings. They are animals in human form.

The nature of consciousness is to seek for the Infinite or realize the Cosmic Entity. Only those who make use of their consciousness and follow its dictates deserve to be called human beings. Therefore, every person, by making full use of his or her reflected consciousness, earns the right to be called a human being and finds his or her dharma or nature to be only the search for the Infinite or Cosmic Entity. This longing for the Infinite is the innate quality or dharma which characterizes the human status of people.

Happiness is derived by getting what one desires. If one does not get what one desires, one cannot be happy. One becomes sad and miserable. The clearly-reflected consciousness in people, which alone distinguishes them from animals, seeks the Cosmic Entity or the Infinite. And so people derive real happiness only when they can attain the Cosmic Entity or get into the process of attaining It. Consciousness does not want earthly joys because being finite none of them satisfy it. The conclusion we arrive at is that the dharma of humanity is to realize the Infinite or the Cosmic Entity. It is only by means of this dharma that people can enjoy eternal happiness and bliss.

~~~~~

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How the Brain Changes When You Meditate

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 23:57:00 +0000

Guest article

By Jennifer Wolkin

"By charting new pathways in the brain, mindfulness can change the banter inside our heads from chaotic to calm."

Not too long ago, most of us thought that the brain we’re born with is static—that after a certain age, the neural circuitry cards we’re dealt are the only ones we can play long-term.

Fast-forward a decade or two, and we’re beginning to see the opposite: the brain is designed to adapt constantly. World-renowned neuroscientist Richie Davidson at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with this colleagues, want us to know three things: 1) you can train your brain to change, 2) that the change is measurable, and 3) new ways of thinking can change it for the better.

It’s hard to comprehend how this is possible. Practicing mindfulness is nothing like taking a pill, or another fix that acts quickly, entering our blood stream, crossing the Blood Brain Barrier if needed in order to produce an immediate sensation, or to dull one.

But just as we learn to play the piano through practice, the same goes for cultivating well-being and happiness. Davidson told Mindful last August that the brain keeps changing over its entire lifespan. And he thinks that’s very good news:

We can intentionally shape the direction of plasticity changes in our brain. By focusing on wholesome thoughts, for example, and directing our intentions in those ways, we can potentially influence the plasticity of our brains and shape them in ways that can be beneficial. That leads us to the inevitable conclusion that qualities like warm-heartedness and well-being should best be regarded as skills.

Davidson adds that research on neuroplasticity gives neuroscientists a framework for tracking meditation research. And CIHM is beginning to see that “even short amounts of practice,” like 30 minutes of meditation per day, “can induce measurable changes in the brain” that can be tracked on a brain scanner.

Based on recent research, I’ve chosen to share four ways your brain may change when you practice mindfulness:

Increased Grey Matter/Cortical Thickness in the following key areas:

• Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Increased grey matter changes were noted in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is a structure located behind the brain’s frontal lobe. It has been associated with such functions as self-regulatory processes, including the ability to monitor attention conflicts, and allow for more cognitive flexibility.

• Prefrontal Cortex: Increased grey matter density was also found in areas of the prefrontal lobe, which are primarily responsible for executive functioning such as planning, problem solving, and emotion regulation.

• Hippocampus: Increased cortical thickness in the hippocampus has also been noted. The hippocampus is the part of the limbic system that governs learning and memory, and is extraordinarily susceptible to stress and stress-related disorders like depression or PTSD.

Decreased Amygdala Size:

Studies have shown that the amygdala, known as our brain’s “fight or flight” center and the seat of our fearful and anxious emotions, decreases in brain cell volume after mindfulness practice.

Diminished or enhanced functionality in certain networks/connections:

Not only does the amygdala shrink post mindfulness practice, but the functional connections between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex are weakened. This allows for less reactivity, and also paves the way for connections between areas associated with higher order brain functions to be strengthened (i.e. attention, concentration, etc.).

Reduced activity in the Brain’s “Me” Center:

Mindfulness practice has been implicated in the decreased activation and the stilling of our Default Mode Network (DMN), which is also sometimes referred to as our wandering “Monkey Minds.” The DMN is active when our minds are directionless as it goes from thought to thought, a response that is sometimes likened to rumination and not always adaptive with regards to overall happiness.

The impact that mindfulness exerts on our brain is borne from routine: a slow, steady, and consistent reckoning of our realities, and the ability to take a step back, become more aware, more accepting, less judgmental, and less reactive. Just as playing the piano over and over again over time strengthens and supports brain networks involved with playing music, mindfulness over time can make the brain, and thus, us, more efficient regulators, with a penchant for pausing to respond to our worlds instead of mindlessly reacting.

This post was originally published on mindful.org August 2015.

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Microvita and Spiritual Attainment

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 29 May 2015 03:01:00 +0000

Teachings from Tantra

Khamúrtti. (1 ) Kha + múrtti = khamúrtti. Khamúrtti literally means “image in space”. Since ancient times rśis, sages, yogis, and spiritual aspirants have sometimes seen a kind of luminous body or disembodied soul, by the divine grace of Parama Puruśa. These luminous bodies assist spiritual aspirants in all possible ways.

Only spiritual aspirants are able to see these luminous bodies through the grace of Parama Puruśa. Though they are visible to the naked eye, they cannot be photographed. Spiritual aspirants can speak to these luminous bodies and get answers to their questions. While the words of a spiritual aspirant may be recorded on a tape recorder, the answers given by the luminous bodies cannot be recorded. If a spiritual aspirant asks them for any mundane object, they may or may not grant the request. If they do grant the request, they do so only once, and after that they will never come within that person’s sight again.

If a spiritual aspirant asks for something spiritual, one may get it either directly or through the siddhas. Siddhas are a category of microvita (2 ) which are very helpful to spiritual aspirants. Yogis and spiritual aspirants say that sometimes during their sádhaná they see siddhas and receive direct help from them.

People see khamúrttis due to the grace of Parama Puruśa. But the guru cautions them that they should never ask for any object of enjoyment or any mundane object from a khamúrtti. If people want objects of enjoyment, they will find themselves caught in the insidious snare of enjoyment.

It is worth mentioning here that one should not confuse khamúrtti with cháyá puruśa. Cháyá Puruśa is a mere game of light and shade. If someone gazes intently on a dazzling white object and then looks at a dimly-lit object, one will only see a shadow. This shadow is called cháyá puruśa. If you look towards the sun for a while and then look at another part of the sky, you will see a kind of shadow. Similarly, if you look at the flame of a burning lamp for some time and then look at a source of dim light, you are sure to see a kind of shadow.

In ancient times, people who practised hypnotism (3 ) would see cháyá puruśa at night with the help of the moon, or with the help of a burning lamp (fueled by ghee) on new-moon nights. With their vision fixed on the cháyá puruśa, they would gradually become conversant with the science of hypnotism. Since olden times, the practice of Avidyá Tantra and the science of hypnotism have been well known in India and China. In modern times, the science of hypnotism was used to cure disease by Dr. Mesmer, a [European] physician. Since then, curing diseases by the science of hypnotism has been called “mesmerism”, after him. So now you understand that cháyá puruśa as used in hypnotism or mesmerism is only a game of light and shade.

A khamúrtti, however, is a thoroughly spiritual vision. Cháyá puruśa is a mere image of a shadow, whereas khamúrtti is an image of bright effulgence. If any of you have had a chance to see such a khamúrtti or are still seeing one on any occasion due to the grace of the guru, you should not pray for any mundane object or for any finite object of enjoyment from these khamúrttis.

There is yet another kind of shadowy appearance unrelated to khamúrtti. In Tantra this is known as yakśińii darshana. As a result of practising a special type of Tantra, people attain the yakśińii siddhi. (Such people are known as yakśińii siddhas – sádhakas who have attained a type of occult power.) These yakśińiis (4 ) work under the instructions of the siddhas, and provided that some rules and regulations are not violated, they abide by their instructions. Usually the yakśińiis cannot be induced to perform any evil deed. They have no influence in the supernatural and spiritual spheres – their influence is primarily exerted in the physical sphere and to some extent in the psychic sphere. They follow the yakśińii siddhas like a shadowy image, and very often can be found moving on walls or inside rooms like black shadows. I have never heard of anyone being harmed by a yakśińii, but it may have happened.

I know a certain person who was a professor of physics in a college in Bihar. Let us suppose his name was Swapneshwar Chattopadhyaya. I heard that he had attained yakśińii siddhi. He did not have a son, but a daughter who lived far away from him, in the house of her father-in-law. She had a daughter who used to live with her grandparents (Swapneshwar Chattopadhyaya and his wife). The granddaughter was very young – about two or three years old.

Once Mr. Chattopadhyaya had to go to Calcutta for quite a long time in connection with his academic pursuits. His wife – say her name was Kanika – was a very good but a timid woman. The thought that she would have to live alone for a long time made her feel half-dead. After all, how far could she rely on her tiny granddaughter? Mr. Chattopadhyaya consoled his wife, saying, “Don’t worry. My yakśińii will take care of you. She will help you in all ways.” On the eve of his departure for Calcutta, he showed his wife a black shadowy image reflected on the wall of their meditation room. Though the figure was very small, it looked like a human figure. Mr. Chattopadhyaya said to his wife, “This yakśińii will protect you from all troubles and dangers.”

He set out on his journey and was expected to return after forty-five days. Immediately after his departure, many strange things began to happen. Wherever Kanika went, the image of the yakśińii followed her like a shadow. For the first few days Kanika was a bit nervous, seeing the shadowy image, but later on, as she was obliged to spend time in its company, she overcame her fear. Rather, she grew more courageous than before.

At noon one day, while Kanika was washing the dishes in the kitchen, she suddenly noticed that the image of the yakśińii was shaking abnormally. At first she was puzzled, but then she saw the yakśińii move quickly out of the room. She followed the image and also left the room. The yakśińii came to the door of the living room beside the main gate. Kanika discovered that a thief dressed like a gentleman was about to escape with a suitcase that was kept in the room. The thief caught sight of Kanika and took to his heels, leaving the suitcase behind. The main gate had been left open by mistake.

On another day, Kanika was sitting in the kitchen kneading flour. Suddenly she noticed that the yakśińii was shaking violently again. Kanika looked at the figure in utter amazement. Immediately it went out of the kitchen, and Kanika followed it closely. The yakśińii rushed towards the well across the courtyard of the house. As soon as Kanika looked towards the well she became alarmed… horrified. She noticed that her three-year-old granddaughter was sitting precariously on the edge of the well, looking down into it. If she moved slightly this way or that, or if she moved only a little to look at her own reflection in the water, she would immediately fall into the well. No one could prevent her certain death. Kanika moved stealthily forward from behind, picked the child up, and placed her on her lap.

Barely a month had passed since Swapneshwar had left for Calcutta. One day Kanika was cutting okra (“ladies’ finger”) in the kitchen. Suddenly she looked at the image of the yakśińii on the wall, and she noticed that it was gradually disappearing. She looked all over the wall but could not see the image anywhere. Meanwhile, she heard the sound of someone knocking at the front door. Kanika went to the door and opened it, only to see Swapneshwar standing on the doorstep. Seeing Kanika, Swapneshwar said, “I was supposed to stay in Calcutta for one and a half months, but as the job was finished in one month, I came home without delay.”

I am narrating what little information I have about yakśińiis. Formerly, some people used to perform yakśińii sádhaná according to the prescribed Tantric rituals. I do not know if people still do the same thing today. In the past there were no caste or communal barriers as far as these Tantric practices were concerned, nor are there any today.

The system of performing sádhaná on various deities is not exactly the same as this, but somewhat similar. Deities like shadowy figures also become visible through this practice. Although this sádhaná is different to some extent from the sádhaná of yakśińii siddhi, the psychology in both is the same. All the systems of Kálii siddhi, Durgá siddhi, d́ákinii siddhi, yakśińii siddhi, etc., are different in practice, yet they are similar theoretically. In case one wants to achieve the siddhi of various deities, one should acquire more mental purity than in the case of yakśińii siddhi, dákinii siddhi, yoginii siddhi, etc., because this subject concerns the psychic stratum. It is of elevated nature, but it has no relation whatsoever to the realm of genuine spirituality.

Once when I visited Allahabad, a certain gentleman came in contact with me. He told me that he had attained Kálii siddhi. I said to him, “Well, can you try to tell me something about your experiences? For instance, what do you see, what do you understand, etc.?”
He said, “I perform sádhaná according to such and such system. One day after sádhaná I saw a shadowy image of Kálii on the wall. Since then, whenever my mind gets concentrated, that image of Kálii produces some kind of vibration in my mind which enables me to understand what it wants to convey to me. Last night that image conveyed to me that you were coming to Allahabad today from Bihar and that you would stay here for a few days.”

I asked him, “Can you see the red mark on Kálii’s feet, her ankle bells, her iron bangles, the garland of skulls around her neck, the garland of fingers, etc.?”

He replied, “No, I do not see anything like that. All those things are mixed up in the shadow. The shadow itself is the combination of all those things.”

Then I asked him about yakśińii siddhi, and I also asked if he knew the difference between yakśińii siddhi and Kálii siddhi.

In the case of sádhaná for yakśińii siddhi, there is less devotional intensity due to lack of deep ideation. But during Kálii sádhaná there is a fair degree of devotion, and at the same time the psychic state is somewhat peaceful. Usually, people do not utilize Kálii shakti for destructive purposes, but of course there may be some Avidyá Tantrics who use their acquired power for malevolent deeds.

This type of siddhi of various deities is a kind of psychic achievement of a higher order, yet this has nothing to do with the spiritual world.

Uttamo Brahmasadbhávo madhyamá dhyánadhárańá;
Japastutih syádhadhamá múrtipújádhamádhamá.
[Ideation on Brahma is the best, dhyána and dhárańá are second best, repetitious incantation and eulogistic prayer are the worst, and idol worship is the worst of the worst.]

You may have heard that some people attain bhúta siddhi or preta siddhi (the ability to communicate with ghosts). This ability is greatly inferior to yakśińii siddhi. In olden days, some people would follow the practice of bhúta siddhi, usually to extend their influence or to do harm to others, and would perform many misdeeds. Today no one follows this practice; if some people do, they are very few.

Instances of people being possessed by ghosts, gods and goddesses, d́ákiniis, yoginiis, etc., are somewhat similar to this from the psychological perspective. You may have noticed that sometimes people look for those who are “possessed” by Manasá [snake goddess], Satii-Má [Mother Satii], etc., when they feel an immense desire to find answers to their questions. Others visit special places or localities to attain the exact answers to their problems.

Although these things are similar psychologically, they are somewhat different in practice. To treat various diseases by performing a special type of dhárańá [deep concentration] on various gods and goddesses, is nothing but the play of the conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels of the mind.
If, due to the grace of Parama Puruśa, someone gets the chance to see a khamúrtti and asks that entity for success on the path of self-abnegation, then one may get such inspiration from that siddha devayoni (positive microvitum). One will merge one’s individual existence and spiritual flow into the Macrocosmic stance of Parama Puruśa and attain savisheśa or savikalpa samadhi, the state of partial absorption of mind; or, by merging in the supreme stance of Parama Puruśa, attain nirvisheśa or nirvikalpa samádhi, the state of complete absorption of mind. This is the summit of spiritual attainment. In the final stages of one’s spiritual journey, the entitative existence of the sádhaka is merged into Parama Puruśa.

Translated from a dharshan by Mahasambhuti

Footnotes

(1) The contents of this chapter consists of elaboration on the words khamúrtti and khamúrttimán. The author’s discourse on that day entailed linguistic discussion of a number of Sanskrit terms; the discussion of each term became an entry in the author’s linguistic encyclopedia Shabda Cayaniká (“Collection of Words”). –Eds.

(2) Microvita are entities which come within the realms both of physicality and of psychic expression. They are smaller and subtler than physical atoms and sub-atomic particles, and in the psychic realm they may be subtler than ectoplasm (citta, or mind-stuff). –Eds.

(3) In those days hypnotism or sammohana vidyá was considered a part of Avidyá Tantra. The six “actions” considered part of Avidyá Tantra are márańa, vashiikarańa, uccát́ana, sammohana, shántikarma and stambhana.

(4) A yakśińii is not the same as a yakśa, which is one of the seven devayonis. –Eds.

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Conscious Engagement in Altering Health, Mind, and Brain -- Research Continues to Prove Such Efficacies

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 04:53:00 +0000

Mind, Brain, Neurology, and Yoga

For thousands of years, Tantrics have known of the plasticity of the brain, the subtleties of our glands, and the methodologies for evolutionary husbandry of humanity in a progressive manner through experiential intuitional practices of body, mind, and transpersonal rapport and transcendence. It's splendid to have material measuring devices of today, though discoveries of mind and brain -- typically far more subtle and practical than contemporary allopathic practitioners are willing to acknowledge -- have been part of human knowledge for thousands of years.

Guest article

by Tim Adams, staff writer for the Observer

When you pick up a bestseller that announces “this book will change your life”, or which, say, claims to be full of “mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff”, what are your first instincts? Do you think “wow!” or “whoa”? In a bookshop, faced with a choice of browsing, do you turn most often toward shelves marked definitively “science” or those labelled provocatively “mind, body, spirit”?

Doing away with dogma … Norman Doidge extends his coverage to cures that might seem to border on hocus-pocus. Photograph: Felix Clay

Norman Doidge’s two books, The Brain That Changes Itself (more than a million copies sold) and, just published, The Brain’s Way of Healing (which comes complete with that “mind-bending” quote, from the New York Times), present such dilemmas within their own covers. Doidge, a Canadian, is a distinguished scientist, a medical doctor, a psychiatrist on the faculty of both the University of Toronto and of Columbia University in New York. He started out as an award-winning poet and a student of philosophy. A profile he once wrote of the novelist Saul Bellow won the President’s Medal for the best single article published in Canada in the year 2000.He is persuasive and curious as a writer, and rigorous as a thinker, though what he writes about is at the edge of our current understanding of mind and body.

For all these reasons, while reading The Brain’s Way of Healing I had a clear sense of other readers being divided – some turning its pages with a hardening edge of scepticism, some with a growing feeling of wonder. Chapter by chapter, I jumped constantly between the two.

Doidge is, if not the inventor, then at least the populariser of a brand new science. That science is called neuroplasticity, and it develops from a growing understanding that the human brain – for centuries thought a fairly fixed and unregenerative organ that, if injured or diseased, is subject to only very limited recovery – is in fact capable of much more significant self-repair and healing. Not only that, but much of the healing – for conditions that range from Parkinson’s disease, to autism, to stroke, to traumatic head injury – can be stimulated by conscious habits of thought and action, by teaching the brain to “rewire itself”.

Doidge’s first book, published seven years ago, described how the principle of such healing – of the plastic brain – was becoming established fact in the laboratory through a greater understanding of ways in which circuits of neurons functioned and were created by thought. “Equipped,” Doidge wrote, “for the first time, with the tools to observe the living brain’s microscopic activities, neuroplasticians showed that the brain changes as it works. In 2000, the Nobel prize for medicine was awarded for demonstrating that, as learning occurs, the connections among nerve cells increase. The scientist behind that discovery, Eric Kandel, also showed that learning can ‘switch on’ genes that change neural structure. Hundreds of studies went on to demonstrate that mental activity is not only the product of the brain but the shaper of it.”

Doidge’s new book takes those findings to the next logical stage. He goes in search of cures and recoveries that either derive from or support that shift in thinking. Apparent miracle follows on apparent miracle. His first chapter details how a man in chronic pain from a crippling neck injury, himself a doctor, methodically teaches his brain to block out pain using visualisation techniques, forcing those “brain areas” that felt pain to “process anything but pain, to weaken his chronic brain circuits”. This practice becomes second nature and then curative. The doctor, an American named Michael Moskowitz, now runs – successfully, by Doidge’s account – a revolutionary pain clinic helping those with conditions no amount of analgesics can touch.

His next tale, from South Africa, is that of John Pepper, a man diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease more than 20 years ago who, at 77, has managed to reverse all of its symptoms using “neuroplastic techniques”. Pepper, through trial and error, and an understanding of how Parkinson’s typically acts against sequences of muscle memory, taught his body, first through entirely conscious relearning of the sequences involved in walking, and then in all other actions, how to think differently. Pepper had found, Doidge suggests, “through conscious walking, a way of using a different part of his brain to walk… by ‘unmasking’ existing brain circuits that had fallen into disuse”. Pepper has taught many other Parkinson’s sufferers his methods, “uninhibiting” brain circuits and “strengthening them neuroplastically” over time.

From there, Doidge’s journey, across five continents and back into medical history in search of successful neuroplasticity, gets ever more curious. He meets David Webber, who through deep meditation and tiny hand-eye exercises over a period of years has confounded his doctors and cured himself of blindness caused by an autoimmune disease called uveitis. Again, Webber’s methods, based on relaxation and a “reorientation” of certain cognitive functions, are being used to measurable effect to treat conditions including double vision, lazy eye syndrome and other autoimmune eye disorders.

Doidge doesn’t stop there. He takes the principle of stimulating “unused” circuits of the brain and making them fit for other purposes, into analyses of new therapies for stroke and MS patients, as well as children with learning disorders, attention deficit and even autism. A variety of techniques to stimulate the brain’s innate plasticity is being employed. In many cases this involves an energy source, low-intensity lasers, or light, or heat, which appears to help stimulate neuronal connections. Doidge examines the ways a device applied to the tongue, causing vibration, helped an opera singer with MS to regain his voice. He documents how use of sound, particularly the sound of a mother’s voice, and certain types of chanting, has helped young children with symptoms of autism to overcome those symptoms.

In the seven years since your first book came out, it seems a lot of the stories for this book have come to you. Would it be fair to say you are the “go-to guy” when it comes to neuroplasticity? In all of this he is careful to stress that the science behind neuroplasticity is still in an unformed state, and that just because the methods work for some patients, they will not work for all. Even so, not a man shy of ambition, Doidge sees the potential of a whole new medical practice as the ideas develop, which will require the “active involvement of the whole patient in his or her own care: mind, brain and body”, as well as a health profession that focuses not only on the patient’s deficits “but also searches for healthy brain areas that may be dormant and for existing capacities that may aid recovery.” I phoned him in Toronto last week to find out more…

I can agree with the first part. Many, many stories came to me and I chose ones that were illustrative of particular facets of healing.

The people you focus on in the book seem to share an unusual willpower. Do neuroplastic techniques require a particular cast of mind?

You are correct that they are unusual, and I think there is a reason. When you are going against paradigm, whether you are a clinician or a patient who is willing to try something, you are going to get someone who is quite high on openness psychologically and very conscientious, because to do a lot of these interventions you have to apply yourself diligently. High openness and extreme conscientiousness don’t often go together, but when they do it’s a killer combination.

It almost requires a faith that neuroplasticity exists…

I would put it slightly differently: you don’t have to believe it, but you have to suspend your disbelief and just do it.

What was the moment of your conversion?

I’m still not completely converted. I still have to pinch myself about what is possible. Having been educated in the period in which belief in the doctrine of the unchanging brain was mainstream, still when I hear about some person who has had brain damage or some other problem I find that my heart sinks. But I also realise that mainstream reaction is not adequate. We really do not know what a particular person will be able to do until we attempt some of these interventions.

Did it help that you were a philosophy student and a poet before you did medical training?

I decided to go into medicine because philosophy of mind opened more questions than it closed. It seemed that studying biology would be very helpful in understanding some of the questions that agitated me. However, when I got to studying the description of the body and brain as just a complex machine with fixed parts, that also seemed inadequate. I went and studied these models in depth to try to understand how they could depict something as animate as the brain and the body using a metaphor of something that is inanimate. It was only when I thought I had mastered that metaphor and I realised that it didn’t hold water that I went to study psychiatry at Columbia.

In some ways, it takes a philosophical cast of mind to grasp the shift in understanding you describe...

Most neuroscientists don’t come from a philosophical background. They basically believe that mind is merely what the brain does. But I have a problem with that because none of these people can really define what mind is or what thought is. The statement that “the mind is only what the brain does” is a statement that only makes sense in a pre-neuroplastic era. Now that we know that mind also changes brain, should we not equally say that “the brain is what mind does”?

One of the things that struck me, reading your books, is how entrenched our ideas of the brain’s essential fixed and unregenerative nature are. Why are those ideas so powerful?

The idea that the brain couldn’t heal came from a number of sources, not least the poor prognosis of many brain problems. It wasn’t a meeting of, you know, the Biological Pessimist Society one day, it was more that clinical evidence of people with brain problems showed that they did not seem to cure themselves spontaneously. There were great quarrels in the 19th century as to whether the brain worked locally or globally. The Frenchman Paul Broca showed that speech problems inevitably occur when a person has a stroke in one area of the brain and the matter seemed to be settled. But even then there were some children who had damage to Broca’s area who could still speak. Still, once that idea took hold, people couldn’t imagine that if your speech area is damaged another area could be trained up to do it. To train a person who has lost the ability to speak to use another area of their brain is very incremental, patient work applied over time by someone who really understands what it takes to grow new connections, and so on. Neurologists said that people could only get better in the first six months or a year after a stroke because they were describing what they saw. It became a dogma and it overlooked the exceptions.

Particularly a western dogma. One of the things your book argues is that in other cultures and at other times there is strong evidence that people have and had access to some of these techniques.

Yes, well I didn’t set out to do that. When I finished my first book I had come to the conclusion that many of the claims that eastern medicine was making, which led to a lot of eye-rolling among western doctors, had at least to be re-examined in the light of neuroplasticity. By the time I had finished The Brain That Changes Itself, there were significant studies, which no one disputes, which show major changes in the structure of the brain of Tibetan monks, for example, brought about through the practice of meditation. I suppose it is not really a hard sell once you have grasped that the brain is plastic, that someone who has spent 30,000 hours meditating might actually have changed the structure of their brain. I mean, a London taxi driver can change his brain by studying routes through the city for a year or two.

But from that it seems quite a long way to imagine that visualising certain scenes can allow someone in chronic pain to actually escape that pain, for example. That is still a major stretch for western medicine.

I hope I ended up showing that it is actually quite feasible once you absorb the idea of how plasticity works. And of course the other big thing that eastern medicine talks about but often has trouble defining is the role of “energy” in its relationship to mind. I was very sceptical about this. I would listen and people would be saying “energy this” and “energy that”. We have to know that we are not talking in some kind of magical way.

What changed your mind about those definitions?

All the energies I describe can be easily defined and measured in western terms. The thing is, there are no lights, colours, smells or sounds inside the brain. There are patterns of electrical information and our sense receptors, our retinas, the cochlea in the ear are, in energy terms, transducers. Meaning that what they do is translate one form of energy – sound, light, heat – into another. It is the latter – electrical patterns of energy in the brain – that in one way or another help or cause the brain to sculpt itself, neuroplastically. Somehow or other, thought itself can do that work. It became apparent that this link between mind, brain and energy really is central to who we are and what we do.

You suggest often that neuroplasticity is settled fact. That doesn’t seem to me to be the case in the medical profession and certainly not beyond it…

Within the lab, within science, within neurophysiology, neuroplasticity is established fact – nobody is challenging it.

If it were to become accepted beyond the lab, the implications are obviously enormous, not least in the hope that it might give to people who suffer some of these conditions. What are the limits?

We don’t know the limits, but I could describe a little of how the world will look if people are actually able to integrate this finding. The whole idea of the patient as the passive recipient of medical intervention would be overturned. With learning disorders, for example, a tremendous amount of human suffering could be avoided if schools did some very simple assessments and gave children some of the very simple interventions that I describe in the two books when they are very young.

The forces ranged against that position, not least from the drug companies, are powerful ones. How would they be overcome?

Well, the first thing I should stress is that I am not in any simple-minded way anti-drug. Half of my own patients are on medication. The difference is that everyone also gets some kind of mind-based intervention as well, be it psychotherapy or some of these other therapies. Too many of our interventions are based on looking at symptoms and not nearly enough on what we might call pathogenesis – underlying causes. Some of these neuroplastic interventions actually work well on pathogenesis. There are people in the book who managed to get off medication. Some of the people in the book who had learning difficulties actually managed to get off the medication and ended up completely cured.

Still a sense of “miraculous” attends much of this, such as Mr Webber restoring his sight. Did that trouble you?

When people hear this story they feel that it is miraculous, but at the same time I knew that this could not be a miracle. I knew that there must be something in nature that allowed this to happen. I really think we have come through an age where science is funded by government and granting agencies and you get a grant by doing the bidding of those bodies. I am not contemptuous of that. But truth be told, the real scientist begins not with a particular task but a sense of wonder at how the world works. I became comfortable with wonder, writing both of these books – it triggers curiosity and pulls you towards it, but it triggers anxiety at the same time because you don’t know what is behind it. I have tried to explain over and over again how mind changes brain structure and function but nobody alive has yet properly defined mind and no one has explained properly how so-called ethereal thought can change so-called material structure. The whole subject is filled with wonder.

Have you applied some of these things to yourself?

I came to plasticity from these very western problems. I do physical exercise. I do tai chi to get into that flow state. I do the brain exercises that are most rigorously backed by science. Then there is the question of attitude changes. I don’t know what will happen in the future: I could of course be struck down by any one of these terrible things in this book. But my sense of what is possible for a person cognitively in the second half of life is much expanded.

There is the danger that false hope can be raised by your reports and stories. How heavily does that responsibility weigh?

I think I might be more aware of it than anyone on the planet right now. I’ve been exposed to a lot of stories that cannot be explained by the usual paradigms. In my world, false hope and false pessimism are evil twin brothers, each worthy competitors for doing harm. Because we’ve had this machine metaphor for the brain, and machines can’t fix themselves, there’s a lot of false pessimism in this area. I try to be extremely careful in the book to never give guarantees but to say in this situation this or that is worth a try.

There are four new interventions in the book just for traumatic brain injury alone. There are stories about people improving with the use of low-intensity lasers for traumatic brain injury. There is good evidence for sound-based interventions. There are a number of different things we can try. The patients who end up in the clinics of neuroplasticians at this early point in the history of the science are almost always people who have tried and failed at all the conventional treatments. They are not easy cases.

Are you confident that this is the beginning?

I sincerely believe that. Michael Faraday was doing work on electromagnetism in the mid 19th century and the implications are still being studied and developed today. This is very early. It is about the interface between mind and brain and this is a huge topic. Because mental acts have the ability to trigger specific circuits that subserve those acts there is a possibility of developing specific interventions for certain problems using the mind or the mind coupled with various natural forms of energy to stimulate the process.

The other hopeful element is that such interventions appear fairly inexpensive…

They are, though almost all require a lot of the patient’s time. One reason neuroplasticity hasn’t been translated from lab to clinical practice more quickly is that it is hard to beat the business model of using medication when you see a patient. Nothing is faster than a red-hot prescription pad. On the other hand, think of the children described in the book who would have been on medication for life for ADD but instead maybe have the equivalent of 40-60 hours of these therapies. I have seen they really take responsibility for their health and their cognitive function.

The obverse of that, you suggest, is the way children are staring at screens and giving themselves different “neuroplastic” problems…

I started to write about that in 2007 and Susan Greenfield picked it up at the same time. Techie people didn’t like it. They said: “Show us the data.” Well, the data is overwhelming at how sedentary life is changing everything about our brains.

Students no longer have to go to a library, they can sit at home and have the library come to them. That’s another two hours walking and carrying books and opportunities for exercise and interaction taken out of your life. In America, children are spending 11 hours in front of one screen or another – anyone who thinks that does not have an effect is dreaming.

I liked your idea that, as far as the brain is concerned, the most interesting things happen in peripheral vision and that by literally focusing too much on what’s in front of us, we risk missing the accidental and serendipitous, where new connections are made…

Yes. Novel things happen when you are concentrating on what you think you know and something occurs in left field. That’s how we evolved, how our brains evolve.

This article originally appeared here

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Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Actually Rebuilds Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:07:00 +0000

Mind, Brain, Neurology, and Yoga

Contemporary allopathic practitioners have finally come around to exploring and, finally, acknowledging the efficacies of meditation and related practices, all be it rather grudgingly by myriad "scientists". Approaching human evolution maturely, intelligently, rationally, intuitionally, and with practicality in a progressive manner has always been germane to tantra and tantric practice around the world.

Tantric practice, both old and modern, has been developed through trial and error, and by sharing among mature practitioners in subtlety and rapport. Actually doing tantric practices proves to the practitioner what Western medicine has gotten around to exploring and discovering. Even at the moment of certain meditation techniques, practitioners experience escalations in neuro-activity they can feel in parts of their brain involved with such specific meditation practices.

The Harvard study bellow confirms what meditators have known for thousands of years from actual personal experience.

Guest article

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.” Until now, that is. The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” says Britta Hölzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. You can read more about the remarkable study by visiting Harvard.edu. If this is up your alley then you need to read this: “Listen As Sam Harris Explains How To Tame Your Mind (No Religion Required)”

This article originally appeared here

Do the mysteries of and about shamanism, meditation, tantra, yoga, mindfulness, intuition, and consciousness seem, at times, to be more confusing than you can grasp? http://bit.ly/MysticalPresentations3

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A Place for Doubt

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 04:37:00 +0000

Guest article

By Robert Buswell
Distinguish Professor of Buddhist Studies, UCLA

The 9/11 terrorist attacks were fostered in no small measure by the certitude of a handful of religious zealots that their religious beliefs alone were right and all others wrong. In early Buddhist texts like the Atthakavagga (The Octets), the Buddha bemoaned the pernicious hold that extremist views, and especially religious blind faith, have on people. By presuming that only my beliefs, practices, and perceptions are correct and unassailable implies that all others ipso facto are incorrect and controvertible.

As the tenth anniversary of this heinous act of religious terror approaches, it is perhaps refreshing that an eminent figure in a tradition that places doubt at the very core of religious teaching and practice will be visiting New York City. He is Ven. Jinje Seonsa, the leading Korean Zen (Seon) master of his generation.

In Buddhism, by abandoning the personal point of view that is the self (atman), the Buddhist experiences a state that transcends dichotomies such as enemy and friend, orthodox and heretical, and thus clings to nothing from this conditioned world. Even attachment to "Buddhism" itself, the Buddha says, must ultimately be abandoned to truly understand Buddhism. Attachment to views is considered to be the root source of the disputes that separate one group from another and lead to conflict, a position certainly taken to the extreme by the 9/11 attackers.

But it doesn't take a terrorist to operate from viewpoints of prejudice, hate, or misunderstanding. We are all impeded by thoughts and emotions that affect our understanding and actions. But if we are willing to cut through those value judgments by deploying the tool of doubt, we can experience that fundamental nature that transcends all dichotomies and inequalities.

The Korean Seon tradition places pride of place in doubt rather than faith and the teachings of Seon Master Jinje epitomize the sense of questioning that, he insists, is at the core of authentic religious practice.

Remember those colorful if not blasphemous sayings of the Zen masters?

"'What is the Buddha?' 'A dried sh** stick.'" (Yunmen)
"If you meet the Buddha, kill him!" (Linji).

"'Why did Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, come from the West?' 'A cypress tree is in the courtyard.'" (Zhaozhou)

These kinds of enigmatic statements of the masters of old are specifically intended to help overcome the attachment to views, even the view of what constitutes "Buddhism" or the "Buddha" himself. The Korean Seon tradition uses these kinds of statements as "topics of inquiry" (hwadu) in order to raise that sense of questioning, which the Koreans call technically "the sensation of doubt" (uijeong).

This Korean technique is akin to the Japanese Rinzai Zen training in koans (Zen "cases"), which is better known in the West, but Korean Ganhwa Seon developed prior to, and completely independently from, the Japanese Zen traditions. In Seon Master Jinje's presentation of Ganhwa Seon, this questioning component is paramount and is what distinguishes this Korean style of meditation from other forms of Buddhist meditation such as vipassana (insight meditation).

Such hwadu challenge one's most deeply held beliefs, including those about religion, by engendering questioning. This sensation of doubt eventually becomes so intense that the mind becomes utterly absorbed in the topic of inquiry. The meditator becomes oblivious to everything in one's life except this questioning, which becomes so second-nature that it flows effortlessly and continuously in one's mind, like water running downstream.

Seon Master Jinje commonly teaches neophytes to Ganhwa Seon practice to contemplate the hwadu "What is your original face before your parents gave birth to you?" By asking this fundamental existential question about what "we" were before we were even conceived, this question opens up a whole series of further questions about what constitutes ourselves if "we" are not our physical bodies, thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The intensity of this questioning eventually creates such pressure in the mind that the doubt shatters, removing the limiting point of view that is the self and leaving the mind receptive to the influence of the unconditioned and open to the boundless perspective that is enlightenment.

On the heels of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I think it is fitting that we all open our minds to the value of doubt. By challenging our own fundamental beliefs, challenging our own understanding of self and other, right and wrong, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and enemy and friend, Korean questioning meditation thus opens the possibility of a entirely new way of perceiving the things of this world, a new way of thinking in which clinging to our own views alone does not hold sway.

According to Korean Seon teachings, this is the ultimate paradox of religion: to truly have certitude one must first have doubt.

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Who Was Abraham?

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 03:42:00 +0000

Discovering the origins of Abraham and the religious precedent credited to him has been a keen affinity since childhood, his influence greatly affecting what we know of as the Western world today. What surrounded him that contributed to the religious origins he's credited with today?

Of all my discoveries on the Internet, Gene Matlock's essay remains in my top 10 best finds of all time, contributing to my life-long journey to learn of Abraham's origins. In the essay below, Gene explores evidence and implications from various sources pointing at South Asian origins of Abraham and his cult. His premise includes the presumption that Rama was an actual historical figure, whereas Rama and the Ramayana were stories, katha, to convey lessons, and in this case, stories created by Aryans, originating from the Steppes, to induce inferiority complex among Dravidians and others while conveying them as subhumans, as monkeys, as sham, despite Dravidians and Austrics having a far more evolved society than the Aryans.

That Abraham and Judaism originated from larger Indian influences has been rather common knowledge in the region for millennia while it has been so long since his presence on Earth so much of what occurred then has been obscured with time.

To the contributions from this essay I can add a few bits of information from my guru. Judaism originated in a small village in southern area of what is known as Afghanistan today. While Matlock refers to extensive flooding, perhaps a continuous monsoon, contributive to Judaism's journey westward, the westward migration also had to do with people of that village converting to Shaevite Tantra. Others in the surrounding area retaliated toward them, initiating the first of a string in the story line of Judaism about "persecution". I anticipate that the village was surrounded by Zorastrians, one of the oldest religions in the world, extant today, and among the earliest to postulate or assert monotheism, as does Tantra.

The hexagram, commonly known as Mogen David in Judaism, had long been an important device in Shaevite Tantric practice for thousands of years before Abraham, and was quite common in Egypt and areas north of Egypt before the arrival of Judaism to the area.  Shaevite Tantra is Tantra further systemized by SadaShiva nearly 7,000 years ago, Tantra evolving thousands of years before that, originating from Dravidian, Mongolian, and Austric cultures, applying scientific methods to every realm of life, not just inanimate physics as is often the conceit of modern times.

It has been said that Abraham could directly communicate with God. Dhyana is how he did so, part of core of yogic practice, of Ashtaunga yoga, the Eightfold Path, a birthright to practice for all humans. Dhyana and dharana were taken to China by Bodhi Dharma, a key part of his introduction of Tantra and Buddhism to Taoist practitioners of the time, a meditation method which later became known as "Chan" in China's monosyllabic language, and later known as Zazen in Korea, and as Zen in Japan.

Before its desctruction, the temple in Israel of which the "Wailing Wall" remains had a chamber for initiates within which descriptors of the Universe were engraved, including the acoustic root of the Universe, the phoneme "aum", "om", "omn", "the word", om'kara in Sam'skrit. Reciting the sound, in prescribed manner, greatly facilitates psycho-spiritual development, intuitional gestalts.

Guest article

Who Was ABRAHAM?
A paper by Gene D. Matlock, B.A., M.A.

Gene D. Matlock, B.A, M.A.

In his History of the Jews, the Jewish scholar and theologian Flavius Josephus (37 - 100 A.D.), wrote that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had said: "...These Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calani." (Book I:22.)

Clearchus of Soli wrote, "The Jews descend from the philosophers of India. The philosophers are called in India Calanians and in Syria Jews. The name of their capital is very difficult to pronounce. It is called 'Jerusalem.'"

"Megasthenes, who was sent to India by Seleucus Nicator, about three hundred years before Christ, and whose accounts from new inquiries are every day acquiring additional credit, says that the Jews 'were an Indian tribe or sect called Kalani...'" (Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins, Vol. I; p. 400.)

Martin Haug, Ph.D., wrote in The Sacred Language, Writings, and Religions of the Parsis, "The Magi are said to have called their religion Kesh-î-Ibrahim. They traced their religious books to Abraham, who was believed to have brought them from heaven." (p. 16.)

There are certain striking similarities between the Hindu god Brahma and his consort Saraisvati, and the Jewish Abraham and Sarai, that are more than mere coincidences. Although in all of India there is only one temple dedicated to Brahma, this cult is the third largest Hindu sect.

In his book Moisés y los Extraterrestres, Mexican author Tomás Doreste states,
Voltaire was of the opinion that Abraham descended from some of the numerous Brahman priests who left India to spread their teachings throughout the world; and in support of his thesis he presented the following elements: the similarity of names and the fact that the city of Ur, land of the patriarchs, was near the border of Persia, the road to India, where that Brahman had been born.

The name of Brahma was highly respected in India, and his influence spread throughout Persia as far as the lands bathed by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The Persians adopted Brahma and made him their own. Later they would say that the God arrived from Bactria, a mountainous region situated midway on the road to India. (pp. 46-47.)

Bactria (a region of ancient Afghanistan) was the locality of a prototypical Jewish nation called Juhuda or Jaguda, also called Ur-Jaguda. Ur meant "place or town." Therefore, the bible was correct in stating that Abraham came from "Ur of the Chaldeans." "Chaldean," more correctly Kaul-Deva (Holy Kauls), was not the name of a specific ethnicity but the title of an ancient Hindu Brahmanical priestly caste who lived in what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Indian state of Kashmir.

"The tribe of Ioud or the Brahmin Abraham, was expelled from or left the Maturea of the kingdom of Oude in India and, settling in Goshen, or the house of the Sun or Heliopolis in Egypt, gave it the name of the place which they had left in India, Maturea." (Anacalypsis; Vol. I, p. 405.)

"He was of the religion or sect of Persia, and of Melchizedek."(Vol. I, p. 364.)

"The Persians also claim Ibrahim, i.e. Abraham, for their founder, as well as the Jews. Thus we see that according to all ancient history the Persians, the Jews, and the Arabians are descendants of Abraham.(p.85) ...We are told that Terah, the father of Abraham, originally came from an Eastern country called Ur, of the Chaldees or Culdees, to dwell in a district called Mesopotamia. Some time after he had dwelt there, Abraham, or Abram, or Brahma, and his wife Sara or Sarai, or Sara-iswati, left their father's family and came into Canaan. The identity of Abraham and Sara with Brahma and Saraiswati was first pointed out by the Jesuit missionaries."(Vol. I; p. 387.)

In Hindu mythology, Sarai-Svati is Brahm's sister. The bible gives two stories of Abraham. In this first version, Abraham told Pharaoh that he was lying when he introduced Sarai as his sister. In the second version, he also told the king of Gerar that Sarai was really his sister. However, when the king scolded him for lying, Abraham said that Sarai was in reality both his wife and his sister! "...and yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." (Genesis 20:12.)

But the anomalies don't end here. In India, a tributary of the river Saraisvati is Ghaggar. Another tributary of the same river is Hakra. According to Jewish traditions, Hagar was Sarai's maidservant; the Moslems say she was an Egyptian princess. Notice the similarities of Ghaggar, Hakra and Hagar.

The bible also states that Ishmael, son of Hagar, and his descendants lived in India. "...Ishmael breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his kin... They dwelt from Havilah (India), by Shur, which is close to Egypt, all the way to Asshur." (Genesis 25:17-18.) It is an interesting fact that the names of Isaac and Ishmael are derive from Sanskrit: (Hebrew) Ishaak = (Sanskrit) Ishakhu = "Friend of Shiva." (Hebrew) Ishmael = (Sanskrit) Ish-Mahal = "Great Shiva."

A third mini-version of the Abraham story turns him into another "Noah." We know that a flood drove Abraham out of India. "...Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, Even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan." (Joshua 24:2-3.)

Genesis 25 mentions some descendants of his concubine Ketura (Note: The Moslems claim that Ketura is another name of Hagar.): Jokshan; Sheba; Dedan; Epher. Some descendants of Noah were Joktan, Sheba, Dedan, and Ophir. These varying versions have caused me to suspect that the writers of the bible were trying to unite several different branches of Judaism.

About 1900 BC, the cult of Brahm was carried to the Middle and Near East by several different Indian groups after a severe rainfall and earthquake tore Northern India apart, even changing the courses of the Indus and Saraisvati rivers. The classical geographer Strabo tells us just how nearly complete the abandonment of Northwestern India was. "Aristobolus says that when he was sent upon a certain mission in India, he saw a country of more than a thousand cities, together with villages, that had been deserted because the Indus had abandoned its proper bed." (Strabo's Geography, XV.I.19.)

"The drying up of the Sarasvati around 1900 BCE, which led to a major relocation of the population centered around in the Sindhu and the Sarasvati valleys, could have been the event that caused a migration westward from India. It is soon after this time that the Indic element begins to appear all over West Asia, Egypt, and Greece." (Indic Ideas in the Graeco-Roman World, by Subhash Kak, taken from IndiaStar online literary magazine; p.14)

Indian historian Kuttikhat Purushothama Chon believes that Abraham was driven out of India. He states that the Aryans, unable to defeat the Asuras (The mercantile caste that once ruled in the Indus Valley or Harappans) spent so many years fighting covertly against the Asuras, such as destroying their huge system of irrigation lakes, causing destructive flooding, that Abraham and his kindred just gave up and marched to West Asia. (See Remedy the Frauds in Hinduism.) Therefore, besides being driven out of Northern India by floods, the Aryans also forced Indian merchants, artisans, and educated classes to flee to West Asia.

Edward Pococke writes in India in Greece,
"...in no similar instance have events occurred fraught with consequences of such magnitude, as those flowing from the great religious war which, for a long series of years, raged throughout the length and breadth of India. That contest ended by the expulsion of vast bodies of men; many of them skilled in the arts of early civilization, and still greater numbers, warriors by profession. Driven beyond the Himalayan mountains in the north, and to Ceylon, their last stronghold in the south, swept across the Valley of the Indus on the west, this persecuted people carried with them the germs of the European arts and sciences. The mighty human tide that passed the barrier of the Punjab, rolled on towards its destined channel in Europe and in Asia, to fulfill its beneficent office in the moral fertilization of the world.the distance of the migratory movement was so vast, the disguise of names so complete, and Grecian information so calculated to mislead, that nothing short of a total disregard of theoretic principles, and the resolution of independent research, gave the slightest chance of a successful elucidation."

(p. 28.)

If all these refugee ruling peoples were exclusively of Indian heritage,
why doesn't History mention them?

The exodus of refugees out of ancient India did not occur all at once but over a period of one or more thousand years. If all these refugee ruling peoples were exclusively of Indian heritage, why doesn't History mention them? Indeed they are mentioned as Kassites, Hittites, Syrians, Assyrians, Hurrians, Arameans, Hyksos, Mittanians, Amalekites, Aethiops (Atha-Yop), Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and many others. But we have been wrongly taught to regard them as ethnicities indigenous to Western Asia. Our history books also call them "Indo-Europeans," causing us to wonder where they were really from. "The people of India came to realize their social identity in terms of Varna and Jati (societal functions or caste); not in terms of races and tribes." (Foundations of Indian Culture; p. 8.)

Here's an example of how the ancient Indians identified people: The leaders were called Khassis (Kassites), Kushi (Kushites), Cossacks (Russian military caste) Caesars (Roman ruling caste), Hattiya (Hittites), Cuthites (a dialectical form of Hittite), Hurrite (another dialectical form of Hittite), Cathay (Chinese leaders), Kasheetl/Kashikeh among the Aztecs, Kashikhel/Kisheh by the Mayans, and Keshuah/Kush by the Incas. The Assyrians (in English), Asirios (in Spanish), Asuras or Ashuras (India), Ashuriya, Asuriya (Sumer and Babylonia), Asir (Arabia), Ahura (Persia), SurÃˆ in Central Mexico, etc., were people who worshipped Surya (the Sun).

Naturally, in areas where this religion prevailed, they were known as "Assyrians," no matter what the real names of their respective kingdoms were.

Another problem that western scholars have in identifying the Indo-Europeans as Indians is that India was not then and never was a nation. Furthermore, it is not "India." It is Bharata, and even Bharata is not a nation. Bharata is a collection of nations, just as Europe is a collection of nations, presently held together by the real or perceived threat of Moslem expansionism. Indian scholars have told me that when and if this expansionism ever disappears, the "Bharata Union" will again splinter into many smaller nations.

"The Arabian historians contend that Brahma and Abraham, their ancestor, are the same person. The Persians generally called Abraham Ibrahim Zeradust. Cyrus considered the religion of the Jews the same as his own. The Hindoos must have come from Abraham, or the Israelites from Brahma..." (Anacalypsis; Vol. I, p. 396.)

Was our Abraham Really the Hindu Deity Ram?

Ram and Abraham were possibly the same person or clan. For example, the syllable "Ab" or "Ap" means "father" in Kashmiri. The prototypical Jews could have called Ram "Ab-Ram" or "Father Ram." It's also conceivable that the word "Brahm" evolved from "Ab-Ram" and not vice-versa. The Kashmiri word for "Divine Mercy," Raham, likewise derives from Ram. Ab-Raham = "Father of Divine Mercy." Rakham = "Divine Mercy" in Hebrew; Ram is also the Hebrew term for "highly placed leader or governor." Indian historian A. D. Pusalker, whose essay "Traditional History From the Earliest Times" appeared in The Vedic Age, said that Ram was alive in 1950 BC, which is about the time that Abraham, the Indo-Hebrews, and the Aryans made the greatest India-to-the-Middle East migration since the Great Flood.

"One of the shrines in the Kaaba was also dedicated to the Hindu Creator God, Brahma, which is why the illiterate prophet of Islam claimed it was dedicated to Abraham. The word "Abraham" is none other than a malpronunciation of the word Brahma. This can be clearly proven if one investigates the root meanings of both words. Abraham is said to be one of the oldest Semitic prophets. His name is supposed to be derived from the two Semitic words 'Ab' meaning 'Father' and 'Raam/Raham' meaning 'of the exalted.' In the book of Genesis, Abraham simply means 'Multitude.' The word Abraham is derived from the Sanskrit word Brahma. The root of Brahma is 'Brah' which means - 'to grow or multiply in number.' In addition Lord Brahma, the Creator God of Hinduism is said to be the Father of all Men and Exalted of all the Gods, for it is from him that all beings were generated. Thus again we come to the meaning 'Exalted Father.' This is a clear pointer that Abraham is none other than the heavenly father Brahma."
(Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia; Part VI; p.2.)

Several word-meanings can be extracted from "Abram," each of which points directly to his exalted position. Ab = "Father;" Hir or H'r = "Head; Top; Exalted;" Am = "People." Therefore, Abhiram or Abh'ram can mean "Father of the Exalted." Here's still another: Ab - î - Ram = "Father of the Merciful." Ab, also meaning "Snake," could indicate that Ab-Ram (Exalted Snake) was a Naga king. All the meanings that can be extracted from the compound word "Abraham" reveal the divine destiny of his followers. Hiram of Tyre, Solomon's close friend, was "Exalted People" or Ahi-Ram (Exalted Snake).

In ancient India, the Aryan cult was called "Brahm-Aryan." The Aryans worshiped multiple gods. Abraham turned away from polytheism. By so doing, he could have become "A-Brahm" (No longer a Brahman.) The Aryans called the Asuras "Ah-Brahm." Therefore, we can logically assume that the fathers of the Indus civilization were probably prototypical Jews.

Jerusalem was a Hittite (Indian hereditary leadership caste) city at the time of Abraham's death. In Genesis 23:4, Abraham asked the Jerusalem Hittites to sell him a burial plot. The Hittites answered, "...thou art a prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee." (p. 6). If Abraham was revered as a prince by the Hittites, he, too, was a highly regarded member of India's hereditary ruling and warrior caste. The bible never did say that Abraham wasn't a Hittite. It just said, "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you." (Genesis 23:4.) As the Hittites said, they recognized Abraham as being even above them. Just as the Hittites were not a unique ethnicity, neither were the Amorites or Amarru. Marruta was the Indian caste name of commoners. The word "Amorite" (Marut) was the first caste name of the Indian Vaishyas: craftsmen, farmers, cattlemen, traders, etc.

G. D. Pande writes in Ancient Geography of Ayodhya, "Maruts represented the Visah. The Maruts are described as forming troops or masses. Rudra, the father of the Maruts, is the lord of cattle." (p. 177.) Malita J. Shendge states: "...the Maruts are the people." (The Civilized Demons; p. 314.) We should not be surprised to find the Khatti (Hittites) and Maruts (Amorites) functioning as the fathers (protectors) and mothers (helpmates or assistants) of Jerusalem.

In India, the Hittites were also known as Cedis or Chedis (pronounced Hatti or Khetti). Indian historians classify them as one of the oldest castes of the Yadavas. "The Cedis formed one of the most ancient tribes among the Ksatriyas (the aristocratic class made up of Hittites and Kassites) in early Vedic times. As early as the period of the Rgveda the Cedi kings had acquired great reknown... they are one of the leading powers in northern India in the great epic." (Yadavas Through the Ages, p. 90.) Ram or Rama also belonged to the Yadava clan. If our Abraham, Brahm, and Ram are the one and the same person, Abraham went to Jerusalem to be with his own people!

Ram's congregations segregated themselves in their own communities, called Ayodhya, which in Sanskrit means "The Unconquerable." The Sanskrit word for "fighter" is Yuddha or Yudh. Abraham and his group belonged to the Ayodhya (Yehudiya, Judea) congregation who remained aloof from non-believers and Amalekites (Aryans?).

Melchizadek... the sage of Salem
If what I have said thus far isn't convincing enough, maybe the word "Melchizedek" will be. Melchizedek was a king of Jerusalem who possessed secret mystical and magical powers. He was also Abraham's teacher.

Melik-Sadaksina was a great Indian prince, magician, and spiritual giant - the son of a Kassite king. In Kashmiri and Sanskrit, Sadak = "a person with magical, supernatural powers." A certain Zadok (Sadak?) was also a supernaturally-endowed priest who annointed Solomon. Why does the Kassite (of royal caste) Melik-Sadaksina, a mythical Indian personage, suddenly appear in Jerusalem as the friend and mentor of Abraham? According to Akshoy Kumar Mazumdar in The Hindu History, Brahm was the spiritual leader of the Aryans. As an Aryan (Not of Yah), he naturally believed in idols. The bible says that he even manufactured them. Upon seeing how increasing idol worship and religious guesswork were contributing to the further downfall of his people, Brahm backed away from Aryanism and reembraced the ancient Indian (Yah) philosophy (Cult of the MaterialUniverse) even though it, too, was foundering in manmade evils. He decided that mankind could save himself only by dealing with what was real; not the imagined.

Shocked at the barbarism and blind selfishness of the people, the wise men and educated people among the proto-Hebrews isolated themselves from the masses. Dr. Mazumdar wrote, "The moral fall was rapid. The seers and sages lived apart from the masses. They seldom married and were mostly given to religious contemplation. The masses, without proper light and leader, soon became vicious in the extreme. Rape, adultery, theft, etc., became quite common. Human nature ran wild. Brahma (Abraham) decided to reform and regenerate the people. He made the chief sages and seers to marry and mix with the people. Most refused to marry, but 30 agreed." Brahm married his half sister Saraisvati. These sages became known as prajapatis (progenitors).

"Northern Afghanistan was called Uttara Kuru and was a great center of learning. An Indian woman went there to study and received the title of Vak, i.e. Saraisvati (Lady Sarah). It is believed that Brahm, her teacher (and half brother), was so impressed by her beauty, education, and powerful intellect, that he married her." (The Hindu History; p. 48, in passim.)

From the holy community in Southern Afghanistan, similar communities spread all over the world: the whole of India, Nepal, Thailand, China, Egypt, Syria, Italy, the Philippines, Turkey, Persia, Greece, Laos, Iraq, - even the Americas! The linguistic evidence of Brahm's presence in various parts of the world is more than evident: Persian: Braghman (Holy); Latin: Bragmani (Holy); Russian: Rachmany (Holy); Ukranian Rachmanya (Priest; Holy); Hebrew: Ram (Supreme Leader); Norwegian From (Godly). A sacred word among the Hindus was and is the mystic syllable OM. It is associated eternally with the earth, sky, and heaven, the Triple Universe. It is also a name of Brahm. The Aztecs also worshiped and chanted the syllable OM as the dual principal of all creation: OMeticuhlti (Male Principle) and OMelcihuatl (Female Principle). The Mayan priestly caste was called Balam (pronounced B'lahm). Had an "R" sound existed in Mayan, it would have been Brahm. The Peruvian Incas worshiped the sun as Inti Raymi (Hindu Ram).

Names that undeniably derive from Rama literally pepper Native-American languages, especially the languages of those tribes extending from our American Southwest, to Mexico, and all the way to South America, beyond Peru. The Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua are an ideal example. Their real name is Ra-Ram-Uri. As in Sumeria and Northern India, the Ra-Ram-Uri "Uri" = "People." Because the Spanish "R" is trilled, this "Uri" could also be Udi or Yuddhi, the Sanskrit name for "Warrior; Conqueror." Many Mexican tribes mention that a foreign race of Yuri once invaded their part of the world. The Ra-Ram-Uri sun god is Ono-Rúame. In Kashmiri, Ana = "Favorite Son;" The Ra-Ram-Uri moon goddess, the consort of Ono-RË™ame, is Eve-Ruame. Kashmiri Hava = "Eve, or The Female Principle."

A Ra-Ram-Uri governor is called Si-Riame. In Sanskrit/Kashmiri, Su-Rama = "Great Rama." According to ancient Mexican legends, the Yoris belonged to a tribe called Surem (Su-Ram?) Before the conquest, Central Mexico and the American Southwest, as far as Eastern Colorado, were known as SurÃˆ. SurÃˆ = "Sun" in Kashmiri. The Tarahumara cure doctor or spiritual guide is an Owi-Ruame. In Sanskrit, Oph = "Hope." Their devil is called Repa-Bet-Eame. Kashmiri: Riphas (Appearance) + Buth (Malignant Spirit) + Yama (Angel of Death). Many other astonishing Kashmiri/Sanskrit correspondences appear in the Ra-Ram-Uri language. Their relation to ancient Phoenicia, Sumeria, and Northern India is beyond question.

The Phoenicians... global navigators.

Most people think of the Phoenicians as a tribe of sailor-traders that inhabited what is now Lebanon. However, the Pancika or Pani as the Hindus called them, or Puni, by the Romans (a name also derived from Rama), were, like gypsies, scattered all over the globe.

The Spaniards called the land of the Ra-Ram-Uri Chiahuahua, pronounced as Shivava by the natives themselves. In Sanskrit, Shivava = "Shiva's Temple." According to Hindu religious scholars, Ram and God Shiva were once the same deity. Shiva and Yah's (the same one we read about in the Bible) name are also prominent in Native-American religious practices and can be found inscribed as petroglyphs all over the American Southwest. (Refer to my book India Once Ruled the Americas!)

Ayodhya was also another name for Dar-es-Salam in African Tanzania and Jerusalem (Judea). It is true that the Jerusalemites were known as Yehudiya or Judeans (Warriors of Yah), a fact making the Jews' Indian origins incontrovertible.

There was no part of the ancient world, including China, that wasn't influenced by Ram's religious views. For example, Christians and Jews have been brainwashed to believe that Mohammed copied his teachings from Jewish sources. The truth is that in Mohammed's time, Ram or Abraham's theology was the foundation stone of all religious sects. All Mohammed did was to purge them of idol worship.

"...the Temple of Mecca was founded by a colony of Brahmins from India.it was a sacred place before the time of Mohamed, and.they were permitted to make pilgrimages to it for several centuries after his time. Its great celebrity as a sacred place long before the time of the prophet cannot be doubted." (Anacalypsis, Vol. I, p. 421.)
"...the city of Mecca is said by the Brahmins, on the authority of their old books, to have been built by a colony from India; and its inhabitants from the earliest era have had a tradition that it was built by Ishmael, the son of Agar. This town, in the Indus language, would be called Ishmaelistan." (Ibid, p. 424.)

Before Mohammed's time, The Hinduism of the Arab peoples was called Tsaba. Tsaba or Saba is a Sanskrit word, meaning "Assembly of the Gods ". Tsaba was also called Isha-ayalam (Shiva's Temple). The term Moslem or Moshe-ayalam (Shiva's Temple) is just another name of Sabaism. The word has now shrunk to Islam. Mohammed himself, being a member of the Quaryaish family, was at first a Tsabaist. The Tsabaists did not regard Abraham as an actual god, but as an avatar or divinely ordained teacher called Avather Brahmo (Judge of the Underworld).

At the time of Jesus, the respective languages, religious symbolism, and traditions of the Arabs and Jews were nearly identical. If we could take a time machine to the past, most of us would not see any real differences between the Arabs and Jews. History tells us that the Arabs of Christ's time worshiped idols. So did the lower class and rural Jews. For this reason, the Middle Eastern squabble between the Jews and the Moslems and the hate between the Moslems and Hindus in India are ridiculous. The Moslems are fighting the Jews and Hindus, or vice-versa, over nothing. All three groups sprang from the same source.

The Kashmiri-Sanskrit equivalent of Hebron (Khev'run in Hebrew) screams out the Indian origins of Jerusalem's earliest inhabitants: Khab'ru (grave; tomb). (See Grierson's Dictionary.; p. 382.) Even in Hebrew, Kever = "Tomb."

Indian linguist and orientalist Maliti J. Shendge's The Languages of Harappans welds together, once and for all, West Asia and the Indus Valley civilization. Not only does she prove that Harappa was Akkadian and Sumerian, she also proves that the first "Abraham" was none other than Adam before Eve was created from one of his ribs.

"...it may be said that the region from Tigris-Euphrates to the Indus and its east was inhabited by the Akkadian speaking Semites who later called themselves as Asshuraiu. Their Indian name as known from Rgveda is 'Asura' which is not far removed. That this region should be inhabited by different clans of the same ethos is not very surprising. It would however be wrong to think that it was a racially homogenous group. As our linguistic evidence shows it was a mixed population of the Akkadians and Sumerians. The other ethnic groups also may have been present, whose traces may be looked for in future work. This mixed composition of the population is not inconsistent with the present state of knowledge, as the presence of these ethnic elements in the Indus valley only confirms and extends an identical demographic pattern, which was in existence probably from the earliest times of prehistory and civilization.

"If these Akkadians were the same as the West Asian clan, there should have been an equal preponderance of this primaeval couple in the Vedic mythology. However, beyond one cryptic reference, there is no reference to them. This was baffling. It seemed unlikely that this clan was without the primaeval parents, though their god was Asura. The predominance of Brahman in RV as the primaeval father is there which is also inadequate as he is male principle alone. A close look at Brahman revealed its ancestry to be made of two words Abu + Rahmu which is the primaeval pair in the Semitic mythology. The Akkadian counterpart of Rahmu is Lahmu which later became goddess Laksmi, born in the sea and courted by both gods and demons. Lahmu is a dragon in Akkadian but in Ugaratic Rahmu is the lass of Abu. Brahma (abu + rahmu = abrahma = brahma) all the changes postulated here being covered in the above correspondences, or lass of Abu, the supreme Semitic godhood, has undergone many transformations and has many counterparts in the Indian pantheon, amongst whom is Laksmi one of the important ones being worshipped as the goddess of all material creation. Thus the Asura clan of the Indus valley worshipped Abu-Rahmu as the primaeval couple."

(pp.269 - 270.)

Ms. Shendge's research really strengthens my conviction that the remains of Abraham and Sarai in Hebron may really be those of the real Brahm and Saraisvati. Our Abraham was evidently a priest, perhaps even the founder, of the Abu-Rahmu (Adam and Eve) cultus, who brought his monotheistic religion to West Asia. Though he and Sarai were deified in various forms back in their native India, they remained as humans in Judaism.

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10 Effective Ways to Optimize More Conscious Awareness

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 04:51:00 +0000

Guest article

by Steve Pavlina
stevepavlina

What does it mean to become more conscious? It is the progressive realization of conscious mastery over your mind.

The challenge is that it takes consciousness to grow consciousness. But you needn’t worry about this because you already have the seed. Think of it like fire. You have a flame, and you want to turn that flame into a huge blaze. How do you do it? You add fuel. The following list includes examples of how you can add fuel to your flame of consciousness to become a raging inferno of consciousness. Well, OK, the analogy sort of falls apart there, but you get the idea.

So here are 10 ways to raise your consciousness:

1. Truth

Truth raises your consciousness. Falsehood lowers it.

First, accept the truth. Whatever you’re afraid to know lowers your consciousness. Step on the scale to see how much you weigh. Have a long talk with your spouse about the status of your relationship. Take a deep look at your career. In every case accept the outcome. Don’t just acknowledge the current status and dismiss it. Really accept it as the truth. Think about what it means for this to be true. Also accept your feelings about the truth, whether you like them or not.

Secondly, speak the truth. If honesty is a challenge for you, it’s because you aren’t being honest enough with yourself. Lies you tell others are shadowed by lies you tell yourself. Take note of those areas where you feel incapable of genuine honesty, and dig deep enough to find out why. You’ll find that you uncover a part of yourself you’ve been unwilling to accept. You don’t lie about the parts of yourself that you accept 100%.

The more you’re able to accept and speak the truth, the more conscious you become. Raise your consciousness by uncovering and dumping all traces of falsehood from your life. Allow this to be a gradual process. As your consciousness increases, genuine honesty will come more easily to you.

Yes, there may be consequences when you switch from lies and half-truths to the full truth, but highly conscious people know that crossing that bridge is well worth the effect. A short-term adjustment is nothing compared to the joys of living honestly and openly. It’s so much easier and less stressful to be yourself and allow others to do the same. Not everyone will appreciate the real you, especially if they’ve grown accustomed to a false version, but that won’t matter once you accept and appreciate yourself.

2. Courage

Courage raises your consciousness. Cowardice lowers it.

Courage is the gatekeeper between unconscious growth and conscious growth. As long as you remain on the unconscious side, life will keep throwing problems at you until you step up and take charge. When you face your fear, the fear vanishes, and problems transform into opportunities. But when you run from your problems, your fear only grows.

A powerful guiding principle to adopt is, “Whatever I fear, I must face.” The more fears you face down, the more conscious you become. As you master this lesson, eventually courage becomes less necessary. Once you develop the courage to face any fear life throws at you, you stop attracting so many fear-based experiences into your life. This is why courage is the dividing line between unconscious growth and conscious growth. The mastery of courage gives you the power to decide how you’ll grow instead of being a victim of the whims of fate.

3. Compassion

Compassion raises your consciousness. Cruelty lowers it.

A great way to become more conscious is to search for signs of unconscious cruelty and disconnection in your life. This can be very difficult to do since it also requires courage. We naturally resist facing our own cruelty, but it’s there just waiting to be uncovered.

Compassion is the root of unconditional love, a feeling of connectedness with everything that exists. Do you feel connected to yourself? To others? To animals? To all living things? To everything that exists? The more you develop this connection, the more conscious and aware you become.

4. Desire

Desire raises your consciousness. Apathy lowers it.

When you get clear about what you want, such as by setting a goal, you raise your consciousness. Clarity focuses your mind and gives you the power to think and act intelligently. You can feel this effect whenever you think about something you definitely want.

On the other hand, when your desire is unclear, your consciousness is muddled. Your thoughts lack focus and direction, and you merely spin your wheels.

Strive to become more clear about what you truly desire most, and your consciousness will expand.

5. Attention

Attention raises your consciousness. Distraction lowers it.

Improving your ability to concentrate will make you more conscious. Pick up a rock, give it your full and complete attention, and notice what happens.

But allow your mind to be riddled with distractions, and your consciousness will sink. A distracted mind is a powerless mind.

Meditation is a great way to practice attention and concentration. Sit quietly, breathe deeply, and focus your mind as you do your best to tune out distracting thoughts. This is simple to learn, but it can take a lifetime to master.

6. Knowledge

Knowledge raises your consciousness. Ignorance lowers it.

First and foremost, know thyself. Think deeply about your life, and keep a journal to record your thoughts. Ask questions to which you don’t know the answers, and then search for those answers.

Look around you as well, and soak up knowledge like a sponge. Interact with your environment with a sense of curiosity and wonder. Study it. Learn from it. Experiment with it.

Strive to understand reality, including your role in it, as accurately as possible. The more accurate your beliefs about reality are, the more conscious you become.

7. Reason

Reason raises your consciousness. Irrationality lowers it.

Logic is a powerful tool of consciousness when used correctly. It lends structure and substance to thought.

However, the great challenge of logic is the avoidance of false assumptions. A single false assumption can throw off a lifetime of otherwise logical conclusions. So challenge all of your beliefs, and never have too much certainty about those that rest on clouds.

8. Conscious People

Conscious people raise your consciousness. Unconscious people lower it.

Seek out others you perceive to be at a higher level of consciousness than you are. Talk to them, ask questions, and enjoy their presence. Allow their ideas and awareness to infect you, and you’ll find yourself expanding in all directions. You’ll become more honest, more courageous, more compassionate, and so on.

But spend time with people at a lower level of consciousness, and you’ll gradually sink to their level. Their thoughts will infect you as well, causing you to become more dishonest, more fearful, more apathetic, etc.

Strive to find a balance between spending time with those who raise your consciousness vs. spending time with those you can help. Learn from those who are a little more conscious, and help those who are a little less conscious than you. In this manner you serve the highest good of all, expanding consciousness everywhere.

9. Energy

Energy raises your consciousness. Disease lowers it.

Take care of your physical body, for it is your primary means of interacting with the world. Energy gives you an ongoing flow of vital life experiences. But without energy you starve your consciousness.

Eat with an awareness of what you’re consuming. Exercise with an awareness of how you’re affecting your body and mind. Before putting anything in your body, consider its effect on your energy, not just in the short term but in the long term as well. Always ask yourself, “Will this produce energy or disease?”

10. Intention

The intention to raise your consciousness raises it. The intention to lower your consciousness lowers it.

Consciousness has the capacity to self-expand or self-contract, just as you have the capacity to grow or to commit suicide. In any given moment, you have the freedom of choice.

By genuinely voicing the intention (or by offering the prayer), “I intend to become more conscious and aware,” you will initiate the expansion of your consciousness. Holding the intention to improve in any of the previous nine areas will yield a similar effect.

Alternatively, you are perfectly free to lower your consciousness at any time. While it’s unlikely you would choose to do so directly, you can achieve the same effect indirectly by lowering your performance in any of the previous nine areas. By choosing to lie, to succumb to fear, to commit acts of cruelty, to remain ignorant, and so on, you put out the intention to lower your consciousness. And in so doing, you initiate a process that will attract more falsehood, fear, cruelty, ignorance, etc. into your life.

Every thought you hold serves to either expand or contract your consciousness. There is no neutral. So choose wisely.

Do the mysteries of and about shamanism, meditation, tantra, yoga, mindfulness, intuition, and consciousness seem, at times, to be more confusing than you can grasp?  http://bit.ly/MysticalPresentations3

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Workshop in Subtle Mind Learning Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 05:45:00 +0000

Subtle Mind Learning Skills
A Workshop Infusing Intuitional Science and Body/Mind Integration with Learning Skills to Positively Affect Your Education and Work Careers

Psychologists and other scientists are discovering new elements to the human psyche, neurology and all around human potential, while tantra has 'been there' already for thousands of years, including practices for cultivating subtleties of mind as yet unexplored by prevailing medical paradigms.

We'll explore subtle mindframes and viable techniques facilitating mental/psychic development for optimal learning skills and greater effectiveness in working environments, many of which have improved grade-point averages, as well as business successes.

This workshop is scheduled for third weeks of October and November 2018, opened due to popular demand, in West Los Angeles area.

Light movement exercises will be included, wear loose clothing.

QuantumPsychologyWorkshop@gmail.com

Workshop Instructor has more than 40 years experience in Tantra Psychology, illuminating others in and through intuitional science to positively affect your personal, and our collective growth through shamanic tantra intuitional training for individuals, enterprises, and social professionals.

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Workshops in Quantum Mind Learning Skills, October and November. Register Now! Seating is limited.

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Psychophysics: Are We Biological Billiard Balls?

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 22:37:00 +0000

Guest article

Psychophysics: Are We Biological Billiard Balls?

by JAG BHALLA

OCTOBER 23, 2014

Psychophysics secretly permeates our people-sciences (it assumes we’re motivated by physics-like forces). But as every infant—each a great causality detector—knows, but many scientists ignore, people aren’t biological billiard balls.

1. Locke become “the Newton of the mind,” (emulating his friend) by seeking the mind’s laws of motion (e.g. pleasure’s pull was basically “gravitational”~1689).

2. Bentham’s utility principle declared “pain and pleasure… alone…determine what we… do” (1789). Utility became the keyword that locked away libraries of work on our complex motivations.

3. Fechner (1860) used the term psychophysics to describe quantifiable experimental psychology (he studied variation of intensity of sensations with stimulus).

4. Darwin (1871) contra Bentham wrote: “The common assumption that men must be impelled to every action by experiencing some pleasure or pain may be erroneous.” Many acts are independent of “pleasure or pain felt at the moment.”

5. JS Mill (1877) declared “Laws of mind and laws of matter are so dissimilar…that it would be contrary to all principles of rational arrangement to mix them.”

6. But utility remains attractive: Kahneman’s Nobel work included the “psychophysics” of utility (2002).

7. Clearly, people obey the laws of physics. But nothing in physics chooses. Its rigid causations have no liberty. And physics (like the best Buddhists) feels only the present and it’s forces. But human psychology is different precisely because it evolved to choose between the attractions of different futures.

8. Physics was developed for situations like: Everything of type X always does Y under conditions Z, where X, Y and Z are mathematically related. Imagine how complex Newton’s “billiard ball” law (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) would be if every action had many different possible reactions (depending on each billiard ball’s feelings that day).

9. In psychology, the same physical stimulus doesn’t always cause the same reaction. E.g. consider Darwin’s observation that a “Hindoo…[can be] stirred to the bottom of his soul by [eating]…unclean food.” The same food eaten unknowingly, or by an unbeliever, doesn’t cause that same reaction.

10. One-year-olds use “contingency patterns” to distinguish things (with physics-like regularities) from people (exhibiting agency). They’re on Mill’s side.

11. Unmathematical narrative-like beliefs and contingency patterns influence our reactions and decisions. Their if-then, unrigidly causal, multifactor logic differs from that typical of the number-struck physical sciences.

Free will, real or not, changes practical predictability. More scientists should be as practical as babies.

Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions

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For Creative Intelligence, Connecting Memory with Unrelated is Essential

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 22:27:00 +0000

Guest article

by Maria Popova

“In the course of creative endeavors, artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding.”

Literature is the original internet — an endless rabbit hole of discoveries, with each citation, footnote, and allusion essentially a “hyperlink” to another text, another idea. I was recently reminded of this by a passing mention in Ronald Kellogg’s 1994 book on the psychology of writing, which led me to a fantastic 1985 volume titled Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking (public library). In this masterwork of insight, psycholinguist Vera John-Steiner cracks open the minds of 100 different creative individuals — writers, artists, composers, choreographers — via original interviews and an analysis of their existing notebooks, journals, letters, and scientific records, shedding light on the central elements and essential patterns of creative thought.

While John-Steiner expanded on seminal work like Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner’s model of creativity and Howard Gardner’s influential theory of multiple intelligences, she pioneered a new framework for understanding creativity based on qualitative research and interdisciplinary perspective. An early champion of an idea now ubiquitous in today’s ever-growing catalog of books on creativity, John-Steiner approached her research with visionary clarity of conviction: “That ‘creativity’ is beyond analysis is a romantic illusion we must now outgrow.”

Illustration from 'Neurocomic,' a graphic novel about how the brain works. Click image for more.

One of the most important and enduring of John-Steiner’s insights on the “invisible tools” that propel a life of creative work and set artists apart from the rest is the concept of memory and how it empowers us to connect seemingly unrelated ideas — one of the defining characteristics of the creative mind and the basis of combinatorial creativity. She writes:

Among the invisible tools of creative individuals is their ability to hold on to the specific texture of their past. Their skill is akin to that of a rural family who lives through the winter on food stored in their root cellar… The creative use of one’s past, however, requires a memory that is both powerful and selective.

Mozart, she notes, called this his “bag of memories” — a mental reservoir of experiences and impressions “accumulated during the childhood years of intense wonder, a source to which many creative people return again and again.” Similarly, Ingmar Bergman wrote that “to make films is also to plunge again by its deepest roots down to the world of childhood.” She cites author Judy Blume, for whom this mental library of memories is especially dependent on sensory impressions:

I remember smells, feelings. I will walk in a house and say, this is B. N.’s home. This is the way his house smelled on a winter morning. All the sensations are there to be brought back.

This highly selective nature of creative memory is a supreme testament to the fact that memory is not a recording device and that, as legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks would put it decades later, “memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.” John-Steiner quotes the English poet Stephen Spender, who captured this beautifully:

Memory is not exactly memory. It is more like a prong, upon which a calendar of similar experiences happening throughout the years, collect. A memory once clearly stated ceases to be a memory, it becomes perpetually present, because every time we experience something which recalls it, the clear and lucid original experience imposes its formal beauty on the new experiences. It is thus no longer memory but an experience lived through again and again.

Illustration by Ralph Steadman from 'Alice in Wonderland.' Click image for more.

But certain domains of creativity, like science or the sort of writing that relies on a heavy use of research and historical facts, demand that the creator’s access to memory be a lot less abstract and a lot more methodical. Indeed, this need explains the odd strategies many famous authors employed in organizing their ideas. John-Steiner points to Darwin’ particularly obsessive organization strategy, possibly one of his techniques for alleviating his chronic anxiety — he “carefully indexed all the books he had read and organized the material into portfolios that he consulted at the beginning of each new project.” Reviewing other examples of similar practices, John-Steiner puts it in no uncertain terms:

A powerful and personally developed structuring of information — an active and selective memory — is as necessary for scientists as it is for poets.

But perhaps the most potent use of memory in the creative mind is the cross-pollination of accumulated ideas and the fusing together of seemingly unrelated concepts into novel configurations — something Stephen Jay Gould, arguably the greatest science essayist of all time, captured when he said that his sole talent is “making connections.” John-Steiner quotes a similar sentiment by the Polish-born mathematician Stan Ulam:

It seems to me that good memory — at least for mathematicians and physicists — forms a large part of their talent. And what we call talent or perhaps genius itself depends to a large extent on the ability to use one’s memory properly to find analogies, past, present and future, which [are] essential to the development of new ideas.

Returning to Judy Blume’s approach to writing, which includes writing manuscript pages and taping them into a notebook for later use while the author’s mind “races head to this or to that,” John-Steiner points out how this technique bespeaks the fact that “the human mind is multi-channeled not only in the way in which we record experience … but also in the way in which writers, poets, and composers think while engaged in a new work”:

While Blume composes her narrative in a focused forward movement on her typewriter, she is also aware of the more diffuse associations that accompany her writing.

She cites her interview with the legendary composer Aaron Copland, who remarked that when this associative process works in an optimal state of flow, “all different musical materials run to their proper places.”

Illustration from 'Neurocomic,' a graphic novel about how the brain works. Click image for more.

This utilization of remembered ideas and their combination into new concepts, John-Steiner argues, can occur both consciously and unconsciously — the latter best evidenced in the unconscious incubation stage present in just about every formal model of the creative process. This is powered by our multiple modes of analyzing and retaining information — sensory, perceptual, semantic, and episodic. She explains:

An experience is processed in multiple ways, as each type of memory “storage” has its own special characteristic. The stories of one’s life are recorded in episodic memory, and these are tagged according to the time and place of their occurrence. More abstract knowledge lacks such coding; instead it is recorded in a more formal structure such as biological taxonomies or other facts, which are organized according to hierarchical concepts.

Each domain of creativity prioritizes a different mode of memory as a primary source of raw material. Citing painter Paul Gauguin’s self-admitted “remarkable memory,” John-Steiner notes the importance of “a precise visual imagination that activates the exceptional abilities of this artist-designer”:

Mental images are an important resource for the working artist’s talent.

Illustration from 'Neurocomic,' a graphic novel about how the brain works. Click image for more.

Noting that memory is a crucial resource in “keeping one’s knowledge current by linking the known to new ideas and insights,” she adds:

In the course of creative endeavors, artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding. This process is demanding; it calls upon all the inner resources of the individual — active memory, openness to experience, creative intensity, and emotional courage. It demands self-knowledge in the use of expansion of one’s talents.

In the remainder of Notebooks of the Mind, John-Steiner explores the many “invisible tools” of creative work, including the role of revision, the interplay of anxiety and ambition, the power of finding the right mentors, and the importance of working from a place of love while remaining open to all your feelings. Complement it with Jerome Bruner on the six essential conditions of creativity and the psychology of optimizing your brain by honing emotional memory.

Maria Popova invests her creative intelligence researching and writing about mind, neurology and human potential at BrainPickings.org

Do the mysteries of and about shamanism, meditation, tantra, yoga, mindfulness, intuition, and consciousness seem, at times, to be more confusing than you can grasp? http://bit.ly/MysticalPresentations3

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Cakras and Glandular Influences Regarding Subtler Realms of Mind and Some Samadhis

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 01:00:00 +0000

Mind, Brain, Neurology, and Yoga

What are you most capable of doing? What are you most capable of being? What is the ultimate possibility of human excellence, and can or will you access such potentialities, in this lifetime, and how may such be achieved, and what to do with it when arrived at?

This brief article covers realms of life, progressing from crude toward subtle, our glands, cakras and human potential, including samadhi among such possibilities.

Human Potential

Truthful seekers may ask themselves, "where, how and upon what continuities, thoughts and actions can I achieve, deliver myself to such greater thresholds of excellence, make them real in personal life, grace others with such potentialities?"

Humans, indeed every living being, is in search of greater thresholds of being, predicating why we wake up, why we eat, why we explore, even why we breathe. For humans particularly exploring such possibilities is particularly germane, for by whatever means the achievement of human form and psyche, it is within human potential in longing for infinity to actually deliver one's self into greater thresholds of excellence and positively affect all of posterity through the explorations of matter, psyche and spirit, laying precedent for posterity to meet and exceed such deliverance into subtler realms of being as the new base from which to launch further explorations.

Realms of Being: 'From Crude Toward Subtle'

In the three realms of life, physical, psychic and transpersonal, which arenas give the most satisfaction, make a person glad to be alive, have the most lasting effect?

Physicality, both within one's body and the material world, are integral to, instrumental of a vehicle through which the mind acts, experiences, and evolves in sharing this manifest universe resplendent all around. Can physicality, will inanimate objects be our ultimate goal, or is the mind subtler, while being in need of physicality to express itself? Can, will object accumulation deliver you to the ultimate possibilities that are you? If you owned the world, 'could there be more'? If not, more of 'what'?

Of our mind, our conscious mind, we reach toward greater thresholds of subtelties -- subtler mind, subtler thoughts. What of those thoughts are the most lasting? Is history full of ideas reaching their obsolescence? Which, if any, are most lasting of all? An idea today, relative to circumstances surrounding it, may not be so relevant in the future or in other places or among other people concurrently.

In the trifarious realms of time, place and person, the vicissitudes of life play, fluctuating in each of these variable factors while operating also within the physical and psychic realms.

Transpersonal, spiritual realms are characteristically pervasive throughout the universe and at all times, with all beings in all places. Can such a lasting arena with constancy throughout every time, place and person in the universe deliver ever subtler thresholds far beyond those of our subtle minds?

The three realms of physical, psychic and transpersonal or spiritual are operative all the time, the cruder realms are necessary vehicles for the ever subtler realms and potentialities to find expression, conjugate their potentialities. Conscious attention toward subtler realms does not necessitate neglecting more mundane realms of life, though attending to them from such subtler realms of being optimizes experiencing the more mundane realms of life with extraordinarily greater richness.

How much more resplendent are your mundane tasks during or after having been anointed with the fertile waters of mutual respect and love with another being? A child awakens from deep sleep within a safe environment harbored in the loving embrace of a caring parent whisking them into the bathroom, washing up, scurrying to a delicious nurturing breakfast and hastened into a morning of joyous play and sharing. Each person recognizes, acknowledges the happiness of each other, each's dignity, sharing of resources and fealty in love flowing freely without pretense carrying each and all to greater gestalts in the synergy of their mutuality.

Such is the living evidence of subtler realms than physicality and psyche, an essence in precedence to our individual separateness, a mutuality within which we are conceived into life, and replicate in most every thing we do, including carrying on the perpetuity of life through the exponential growth of bringing forth more life.

In our loving embraces, among the mysteries of our bonding there's a threshold where we lose track of where we end and the other being begins, melded into the singularity of our love, moving in unison without objective thought as to what limb or digit goes where, when or how. We are symphonies in bonding, arriving at greater thresholds of excellence synergized in the mutuality of our love.

The operative functionality of all of our organs, both motor and otherwise, are controlled, centristically, by the strengths and capabilities of our glands. The core of our being psycho-physically is our neurology, our spine, and the subtle centers along its length, common to all vertebrates, "plexii" in many languages, or "cakras" in Sam'skrit. Our glands are next in line, toward the more mundane direction, from the plexii or cakras along the spine, of which there are seven primary cakras, along with hundreds of subordinate cakras. Optimizing our glands and cakras positively affects our physicality, our psyche, and our psycho-spiritual parallelism.

[Aside from describing cakras individually, I will say, reserving greater details for future articles, that much of the descriptions people commonly read about cakras in modern time are misleading, inaccurate, often wrong, and outright dangerous -- information that can be damaging to your wellbeing when utilized.]

Realms of mind have both direct and indirect relationships with the cakras, with each cakra harboring both subtler sentiments and subtler realms of mind, of being, up to and including the top cakra, the crown cakra or sahashrara cakra at the top of the head. As each cakra is optimized, ever progressively and concurrently, along with each realm of mind polished in such a progressive manner, new thresholds of human excellence may ensue, greater splendors in one's wellbeing and greater rapport, greater intimacy with the universe.

Glands are particularly optimized by what we eat, characteristics of our choices of thoughts and actions, and by progressive scientific glandular massage as through asanas, commonly referred to as yoga postures. This is the real reason why yoga postures, asanas, were invented, plus conjugating thought, word and deed as a singular symphony delivering you into subtler realms of being, predicated upon love and universality.

Our psyche is optimized through psychic exercises cultivated in a progressive manner, which also include conjugating the parallelism between body and psyche as well as the parallelism between psyche and transpersonal realms. Progressively designed intuitional science, meditation techniques involve optimizing each realm, and their tangencies with other realms, while merging each threshold, from crude toward subtle, into the next subtler realm of being which is delivered to the ultimate threshold in the constancy of the universal disposition.

Directly and indirectly this includes optimizing the pineal gland as part of the process, about which the following material addresses a specific form of samadhi in relation to the pineal gland's influence.

Types of samadhis, individuated samadhis exceed thirty, some of which are cakra-specific while the two samadhis of greatest relevance to all vertebrates, all but a couple of which only humans can will themselves to experience, are savikalpa samadhi -- merging with, ultimate rapport with the manifest universe -- and nirvikalpa samadhi -- merging with and ultimate intimacy with the universe beyond its manifest essence.

There are many different variations of samadhi, all of which are affected by our glands, both directly and indirectly, while below I've selected one samadhi that is particularly pineal-caused.

Anindya'nanda Rasasama'dhi

[by Mahasambhuti]

To control the various propensities of human mind there are various glands and sub-glands which form certain nerve centers inside the spinal column. They are called cakras in Ta'ntra. Each and every plexus regulates a certain number of propensities. The hormones secreted from these particular glands influence the concerning sub-glands, the other lower glands, and the propensities, vrttis in Sam'skrit, controlled by their respective glands.

The food and drink we take every day is converted into rasa (fluid), rakta, flesh, fat, bone marrow and lymph etc. Ultimately the lymph is converted into hormones of various types. The special hormone secreted from the spiritual aspirant's pineal gland flows into the pituitary plexus. At that time if one's mind remains engaged in pure spiritual thoughts that hormone flows from the pineal gland down the left side to the pituitary gland, and then to other plexii, glands and sub-glands, nerve fibers, nerve cells, veins and arteries, etc. This excessive flow of pineal hormone revitalizes all the lower plexii. On the other hand, if one's mind remains preoccupied with crude thoughts then the pineal hormone gets burnt up at the pituitary plexus. The lower cakras and glands, due to the lack of supply of pineal secretion, do not enjoy any spiritual bliss. But when the pineal hormone flows through the pituitary plexus to the lowest plexii, the undeveloped cakras of the body become healthier and revitalized. As a rule the upper cakras control the lower ones. So the svadhista'na cakra (2nd plexus) controls the mu'la'dha'ra cakra (1st plexus), the manipura cakra (3rd plexus) controls the svadhista'na and mu'ladha'ra cakras, the ana'hata (4th plexus) controls the man'ipura, svadhista'na and muladha'ra cakras, and the a'jina' (6th plexus) controls all the lower cakras.

At the time of pineal secretion if a sa'dhaka goes into sama'dhi -- he or she experiences a kind of divine aura around the ana'hata cakra (heart plexus). The sa'dhaka realizes that he or she is experiencing a divine dip in the holy aura, and feels indescribable bliss in the heart. In that exalted state of realization every object of this universe seems to be extremely sweet, and one derives immense bliss which no worldly object could ever provide. The sun's rays, the moon beams, the land, the water, in fact everything appears to be emanating continuous streams of blissful nectar.

Idam' ma'nusam'sarves'a'm' bhu'ta'na'm'

Madhvasya' ma'nu's'asya sarva'ni bhu'ta'ni madhuh

Aya'ma'tma' sarves'a'm bhu'ta'na'm' madhvasya a'tmanah

Sarvani bhu'ta'ni madhuh.

Even a sworn enemy appears to be very sweet at that time. Everything is sweet. In Vaesnava philosophy this stage of sama'dhi is called madhura bha'va. In Ta'ntra it is called aninda'nanda rasa sama'dhi.

Characteristics of Anindya'nanda Rasa Sama'dhi

The different plexii of the body get revitalized due to abundant hormone secretion and become more active than before. The sa'dhaka enjoys immense bliss. Due to excessive feelings of joy the nerve cells and the nerve fibers become ineffective. A very sweet relation of love between the sincere practitioner and core of the universe is established. Throughout the blissful experience a sweet taste is felt. This state is one of the thirty-two prominent states of bliss experienced by highly developed sa'dhakas. The special characteristics of this sama'dhi is that it is attained by an adept's grace predicated upon one's sincere efforts.

Of course, to attain supreme spiritual salvation it is not necessary for a sa'dhaka to experience any sama'dhi at all. For example, passengers traveling on a train may or will not be able to see the sights of nature or towns if the doors and window-shutters are closed. Although the passengers are unaware of the towns they are passing through, they still reach their destinations. In the spiritual world also, the sa'dhaka, while ideating on the Supreme Consciousness will certainly pass through the different stages of realisation without necessarily being aware of it. When the all-merciful universe gifts an adept incarnate with transpersonal initiation capabilities they help deserving sa'dhakas to attain this type of samadhi. Even when they are physically absent in this world they help deserving persons to attain this sama'dhi through other adepts.

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Yoga May Have Positive Effects On Major Psychiatric Disorders

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 01:11:00 +0000

Mind, Brain, Neurology, and Yoga

Editor's Note: The study and studies referenced in the article below review the meaningful contributions of yoga postures in assuaging human ails, whether physical or psychic, neurological, physiological, and psychological. In North America and other places around the world, the term "yoga" nearly always refers solely to physical postures [asanas], a portion of a more whole arena yogic practice presents.

All too often the narrow attention upon the physical postures of yoga are approached calisthenically, not with the true body/mind/soulful integration properly practicing yoga imbues in practitioners. The comprehensive wholeness yoga and tantra contribute to our pursuit of happiness and infinity in human life will be actualized upon contemporary allopathy's relinquishment of its imperial conceits of culture and intellect.

Even the pineal gland was considered inert matter in humans, until a few operating within allopathy awakened to unrecognized potentialities after large numbers of South Asians and others around the world harbinged its essential involvement in human wellbeing, conveying "We have been using and optimizing the pineal gland for thousands of years, we know it works!", after which money-motivated allopaths researched it further, acknowledging its functionality in the late 1960s, after a couple of pharmaceutical companies derived patents from its research.

The pineal gland is the kingpin of all glands affecting our wellbeing, in every realm of life, well known by yogis for thousands of years.

Psychological, psychic, psycho-transpersonal, and psycho-social reframing are essentialities in yogic practice and integral to the very intent of practicing yoga, tantra, and have been for thousands of years. We welcome allopathy's explorations, and confirmations, of the myriad positive influences of the broad spectrum of yogic practices and the human potentialities these practices affect, while true and ethical discoveries and confirmations germane to human excellence and evolution should be led by ethical practitioners who have already experienced the substantially positive influences of yoga, of tantra, and who will preserve the ethical application of such discoveries and potential inventions for a healthier society for all life on Earth and beyond.

Guest article

Yoga May Have Positive Effects On Major Psychiatric Disorders, Including Depression, Schizophrenia, ADHD And Sleep Complaints

Yoga has positive effects on mild depression and sleep complaints, even in the absence of drug treatments, and improves symptoms associated with schizophrenia and ADHD in patients on medication, according to a systematic review of the exercise on major clinical psychiatric disorders.

Published in the open-access journal,Frontiers in Psychiatry, the review of more than one hundred studies focusing on 16 high-quality controlled studies looked at the effects of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems.

Yoga in popular culture

Yoga is a popular exercise and is practiced by 15.8 million adults in the United States alone, according to a survey by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau, and its holistic goal of promoting psychical and mental health is widely held in popular belief.

"However, yoga has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and patients to differentiate legitimate claims from hype," wrote the authors in their study. "Our goal was to examine whether the evidence matched the promise."

Benefits of the exercise were found for all mental health illnesses included in the review, except for eating disorders and cognition problems as the evidence for these was conflicting or lacking.

Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center, US, and author of the study, explained that the emerging scientific evidence in support of the 5,000 year old Indian practice on psychiatric disorders is "highly promising" and showed that yoga may not only help to improve symptoms, but also may have an ancillary role in the prevention of stress-related mental illnesses.

The review found evidence from biomarker studies showing that yoga influences key elements of the human body thought to play a role in mental health in similar ways to that of antidepressants and psychotherapy. One study found that the exercise affects neurotransmitters, inflammation, oxidative stress, lipids, growth factors and second messengers.

Unmet need among mental health patients

Depression alone affects more than 350 million people globally and is the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). On World Mental Health Day last year, the WHO called for improved access to treatments.

While there has been an increase in the number of medications available for mental health disorders, many of which can be life saving for patients, there remains "a considerable unmet need," according to Dr. Meera Balasubramaniam, lead author of the study, who is also based at Duke University, US.

Poor compliance and relapse as well as treatment resistance are growing problems, and medications are expensive and can leave patients with significant side effects.

The Primary Care study, carried out by WHO, found that 60% of patients were still depressed after a year of being treated with an anti-depressant and a National Institute of Mental Health funded research showed remission in only one-third of patients.

"The search for improved treatments, including non-drug based, to meet the holistic needs of patients is of paramount importance and we call for more research into yoga as a global priority," said Doraiswamy. "If the promise of yoga on mental health was found in a drug, it would be the best selling medication world-wide," he added.

There are many benefits associated with practicing yoga for improving mental health, including, fewer side effects, relatively low cost, generally good access and the improvement of physical fitness, added the authors.

The authors also note that while the results are promising, the findings should be viewed as preliminary because all studies of yoga to date have consisted of small samples, and more rigorous research will be needed before the exercise can be applied to help patients with mental health disorders.

Article Information:
Yoga on our Minds: A Systematic Review of Yoga for Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Authors: Meera Balasubramaniam, Shirley Telles and P. Murali Doraiswamy.
Front. Psychiatry DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2012.00117
URL:http://www.frontiersin.org/Affective_Disorders_and_Psychosomatic_Research/10.3389/fpsyt.2012.00117/abstract
Frontiers

This article originally appeared here

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Out of Body Experiences at Will: University Researchers Explore Woman's Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 23:41:00 +0000

Guest article

Mind, Brain, Neurology, and Yoga

Woman who can project from body at will is studied by University of Ottawa research team, providing evidence of extraordinary brain activity during astral projections.

By Sarah Griffiths

Researchers at the University of Ottawa, Canada, studied the brain activity of a student who can drift outside her own body at will

Scientists believe the left side of several areas of the brain associated with kinaesthetic imagery are responsible for extra-corporeal experiences

They think the experiences could be more common than thought or that people only retain the ability to have them if they practice from childhood

People have long been fascinated by out-of-body experiences - are they just tricks of the mind or do they have some sort of spiritual significance?

Now new research has shed light on what it terms as 'extra-corporeal experiences' by studying the brain activity of a Canadian woman who claims she can drift outside her own body at will.

Scientists believe the left side of several areas of the brain associated with kinaesthetic imagery (the perception of the sensation of moving) are responsible for the sensation of being able to leave your body and float above it – and that more people might have similar experiences than thought.

Scientists believe the left side of several areas of the brain associated with kinaesthetic imagery are responsible for the sensation of being able to leave your body and float above it. Increased activity was seen in the middle and superior orbitofrontal gyri (A,B,D) the supramarginal gyrus (B) and inferior temporal gyrus (D)

Researchers at the University of Ottawa came across a psychology graduate who admitted she could have voluntary out-of-body experiences before she fell asleep.

The 24-year-old revealed she is able to see herself floating and rotating horizontally in the air above her body and can sometimes watch herself from above while remaining aware of her real body.

However, as she said she feels no emotions when she has the experiences, the scientists decided to classify her experiences as extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) as strong emotions such as shock, often accompany out-of-body experiences, Popular Science reported.

Researchers came across a psychology graduate who admitted she could have voluntary out-of-body experiences before she fell asleep. The 24-year-old revealed she is able to see herself floating horizontally in the air above her body, rotating and can sometimes watch herself from above (illustrated)

THE STUDENT’S DESCRIPTION OF HER EXTRA CORPOREAL EXPERIENCE

‘I feel myself moving, or, more accurately, can make myself feel as if I am moving,’ the student told the researchers, who documented her report in their study.

‘I know perfectly well that I am not actually moving. There is no duality of body and mind when this happens, not really.

'In fact, I am hyper-sensitive to my body at that point, because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving.

‘I am the one moving – me – my body. For example, if I “spin” for long enough, I get dizzy.

‘I do not see myself above my body. Rather, my whole body has moved up. I feel it as being above where I know it actually is.

‘I usually also picture myself as moving up in my mind’s eye, but the mind is not substantive. It does not move unless the body does,’ she said.

Andra Smith and Claude Messier used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to examine the student’s brain and believe she is the first person studied to have an ECE on demand without any brain abnormalities.

They discovered that the ECE involved a ‘strong deactivation of the visual cortex’.

But it also ‘activated the left side of several areas associated with kinesthetic imagery’ in the brain, which the scientists think is what cause mental representations of bodily movement.

While the researchers have acknowledged the rarity of finding someone to study who can have ECEs on demand, they believe that outer-body-experiences could be more common than thought.

This idea is based on the fact that the student thought that being able to float outside her body was not unusual.

According to the study: ‘The participant described her experience as one she began performing as a child when bored with “sleep time” at preschool.

She discovered she could elicit the experience of moving above her body and used this as a distraction during the time kids were asked to nap. She continued to perform this experience as she grew up assuming, as mentioned, that “everyone could do it.”’

The scientists discovered that the extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) involved a 'strong deactivation of the visual cortex' (pictured). A shows the right side and B the left)

‘She appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this,’ the researchers wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

The scientists think there is a ‘possibility that this phenomenon may have a significant incidence but [is] unreported because people do not think this is exceptional.’

They also theorised that ‘the ability might be present in infancy but is lost without regular practice.’

The scientists think there is a 'possibility that this phenomenon may have a significant incidence but [is] unreported because people do not think this is exceptional.' They also theorised that 'the ability might be present in infancy (illustrated with a stock image) but is lost without regular practice'

This article originally appeared here

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Mindfulness And Yoga Help At-Risk Kids Cope With Stress

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 21:37:00 +0000

Education, Yoga and Youth Development

Guest article

Mindfulness And Yoga Help Kids Cope With Stress In Low-Income, High-Crime Neighborhoods

Stepping outside the perceived yoga “norms” of thin and stretchy folks sipping green smoothies and spouting quotes from a bottomless well of inspiration, somewhere in the middle of high-crime, poverty-level, gang-ridden neighborhoods, school kids stand strong in mountain pose. Some such kids currently reside in East Palo Alto, CA where they are faced with very real stresses and anxieties that should be beyond their years, but instead take the form of piled on anger, fear and sadness. For the students of Cesar Chavez Academy, though, a new yoga and mindfulness program may help them cope on the inside with the violence and noise going on outside.

PBS NewsHour reports on how a Stanford University backed project is bringing yoga and mindfulness practices to Cesar Chavez Academy where middle schoolers, at such a young age, are already showing signs of PTSD just by living their daily lives.

According to Dr. Victor Carrion, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and head of Early Life Stress Research Program who is overseeing the project at Cesar Chavez Academy, up to 30 percent of children living in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods will show signs of PTSD which can in turn affect and impair their ability to learn. In fact, there is a link between stress and behavior that actually shows up in the chemicals and activity of the brain. But Dr. Carrion is hoping to help the kids at Cesar Chavez by providing the tools of yoga to ease the stress before things go too far.

Says Michael Fu, a Stanford University medical student involved in the project:

“The principals of mindfulness really try to make you focus on the present moment. So whether or not you came in this morning experiencing something stressful at home or something bad happened, for you to be able to come into the classroom and really embrace it and embrace the learning, I think it really allows students to reach their potential.”

While it took a little while to get the kids to be OK with doing poses and breathing in front of everyone else (these are middle schoolers, we’re talking about!), students are showing improvements in their attitude and reactions, which can translate into better learning abilities, and environments, as well as more positive temperments overall.

“When I get home, I want to play, but [my mother] doesn’t let me because it’s too dark now. And I get so mad,” says student Brayan Solorio. ”And then I put my yoga mat that they give me, and I start using it. The difference is that I’m angry, and then as soon as I use it, I’m not angry no more. It calms me down.”

Principal Amika Guillaume echoes young Brayan adding, “If we can get kids to the point that they realize that, oh, I’m getting hotheaded, oh, my adrenaline is flowing, I am not thinking clearly, I need to stop, step back and reassess, then maybe we have a chance.”

Watch the full PBS NewsHour report. It’s an inspiring and sobering look at how yoga can make a real difference for current and future generations even in its simplest of forms.

This article originally appeared here

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Some Icons in Science from Southern Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Tantric Sadhu) — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 02:16:00 +0000

A few of several South Asian iconic contributors to science and history. Corrections, such as place of birth, have been placed in brackets [ ].

Influences do not always, or ever, flow in a straight line, negative consequences of what may be propounded may not always play out ethically in society, whether retaining accuracy of renderings or morphing them into inaccuracies, for whatever reason.

ARYABHATT
(476 CE) MASTER ASTRONOMER AND MATHEMATICIAN

Born in 476 CE in Kusumpur (Bihar), Aryabhatt's intellectual brilliance remapped the boundaries of mathematics and astronomy. In 499 CE, at the age of 23, he wrote a text on astronomy and an unparallel treatise on mathematics called "Aryabhatiyam." He formulated the process of calculating the motion of planets and the time of eclipses. Aryabhatt was the first to proclaim that the earth is round, it rotates on its axis, orbits the sun and is suspended in space - 1000 years before Copernicus published his heliocentric theory. He is also acknowledged for calculating p (Pi) to four decimal places: 3.1416 and the sine table in trigonometry. Centuries later, in 825 CE, the Arab mathematician, Mohammed Ibna Musa credited the value of Pi to the Indians, "This value has been given by the Hindus." And above all, his most spectacular contribution was the concept of zero without which modern computer technology would have been non-existent. Aryabhatt was a colossus in the field of mathematics.

BHASKARACHARYA II
(1114-1183 CE)

GENIUS IN ALGEBRA

Born in the obscure village of Vijjadit (Jalgaon) in Maharastra, Bhaskaracharya's work in Algebra, Arithmetic and Geometry catapulted him to fame and immortality. His renowned mathematical works called "Lilavati" and "Bijaganita" are considered to be unparalled and a memorial to his profound intelligence. Its translation in several languages of the world bear testimony to its eminence. In his treatise "Siddhant Shiromani" he writes on planetary positions, eclipses, cosmography, mathematical techniques and astronomical equipment. In the "Surya Siddhant" he makes a note on the force of gravity: "Objects fall on earth due to a force of attraction by the earth. Therefore, the earth, planets, constellations, moon, and sun are held in orbit due to this attraction." Bhaskaracharya was the first to discover gravity, 500 years before Sir Isaac Newton. He was the champion among mathematicians of ancient and medieval India. His works fired the imagination of Persian and European scholars, who through research on his works earned fame and popularity.

ACHARYA KANAD
(600 BCE)

FOUNDER OF ATOMIC THEORY

As the founder of "Vaisheshik Darshan"- one of six principal philosophies of India - Acharya Kanad was a genius in philosophy. He is believed to have been born in Prabhas Kshetra near Dwarika in Gujarat. He was the pioneer expounder of realism, law of causation and the atomic theory. He has classified all the objects of creation into nine elements, namely: earth, water, light, wind, ether, time, space, mind and soul. He says, "Every object of creation is made of atoms which in turn connect with each other to form molecules." His statement ushered in the Atomic Theory for the first time ever in the world, nearly 2500 years before John Dalton. Kanad has also described the dimension and motion of atoms and their chemical reactions with each other. The eminent historian, T.N. Colebrook, has said, "Compared to the scientists of Europe, Kanad and other Indian scientists were the global masters of this field."

NAGARJUNA (100 CE)

WIZARD OF CHEMICAL SCIENCE

He was an extraordinary wizard of science born in the nondescript village of Baluka in Madhya Pradesh. His dedicated research for twelve years produced maiden discoveries and inventions in the faculties of chemistry and metallurgy. Textual masterpieces like "Ras Ratnakar," "Rashrudaya" and "Rasendramangal" are his renowned contributions to the science of chemistry. Where the medieval alchemists of England failed, Nagarjuna had discovered the alchemy of transmuting base metals into gold. As the author of medical books like "Arogyamanjari" and "Yogasar," he also made significant contributions to the field of curative medicine. Because of his profound scholarliness and versatile knowledge, he was appointed as Chancellor of the famous University of Nalanda. Nagarjuna's milestone discoveries impress and astonish the scientists of today.

ACHARYA CHARAK
(600 BCE)

FATHER OF MEDICINE

Acharya Charak has been crowned as the Father of Medicine. His renowned work, the "Charak Samhita", is considered as an encyclopedia of Ayurveda. His principles, diagoneses, and cures retain their potency and truth even after a couple of millennia. When the science of anatomy was confused with different theories in Europe, Acharya Charak revealed through his innate genius and enquiries the facts on human anatomy, embryology, pharmacology, blood circulation and diseases like diabetes, tuberculosis, heart disease, etc. In the "Charak Samhita" he has described the medicinal qualities and functions of 100,000 herbal plants. He has emphasized the influence of diet and activity on mind and body. He has proved the correlation of spirituality and physical health contributed greatly to diagnostic and curative sciences. He has also prescribed and ethical charter for medical practitioners two centuries prior to the Hippocratic oath. Through his genius and intuition, Acharya Charak made landmark contributions to Ayurvedal. He forever remains etched in the annals of history as one of the greatest and noblest of rishi-scientists.

ACHARYA SUSHRUT (600 BCE)

FATHER OF PLASTIC SURGERY

A genius who has been glowingly recognized in the annals of medical science. Born to sage Vishwamitra, Acharya Sudhrut details the first ever surgery procedures in "Sushrut Samhita," a unique encyclopedia of surgery He is venerated as the father of plastic surgery and the science of anesthesia. When surgery was in its infancy in Europe, Sushrut was performing Rhinoplasty (restoration of a damaged nose) and other challenging operations. In the "Sushrut Samhita," he prescribes treatment for twelve types of fractures and six types of dislocations. His details on human embryology are simply amazing. Sushrut used 125 types of surgical instruments including scalpels, lancets, needles, Cathers and rectal speculums; mostly designed from the jaws of animals and birds. He has also described a number of stitching methods; the use of horse's hair as thread and fibers of bark. In the "Sushrut Samhita," and fibers of bark. In the "Sushrut Samhita," he details 300 types of operations. The ancient Indians were the pioneers in amputation, caesarian and cranial surgeries. Acharya Sushrut was a giant in the arena of medical science.

VARAHAMIHIR (499-587 CE)

EMINENT ASTROLOGER AND ASTRONOMERA

Renowned astrologer and astronomer who was honored with a special decoration and status as one of the nine gems in the court of King Vikramaditya in Avanti (Ujjain). Varahamihir's book "panchsiddhant" holds a prominent place in the realm of astronomy. He notes that the moon and planets are lustrous not because of their own light but due to sunlight. In the "Bruhad Samhita" and "Bruhad Jatak," he has revealed his discoveries in the domains of geography, constellation, science, botany and animal science. In his treatise on botanical science, Varamihir presents cures for various diseases afflicting plants and trees. The rishi-scientist survives through his unique contributions to the science of astrology and astronomy.

ACHARYA PATANJALI (200 BCE)

FATHER OF YOGA

The Science of Yoga is one of several unique contributions of India to the world. It seeks to discover and realize the ultimate Reality through yogic practices. Acharya Patanjali, the founder, hailed from the district of [Patun village of Burdwan, in West Bengal today]. He prescribed the control of prana (life breath) as the means to control the body, mind and soul. This subsequently rewards one with good health and inner happiness. Acharya Patanjali's 84 yogic postures effectively enhance the efficiency of the respiratory, circulatory, nervous, digestive and endocrine systems and many other organs of the body. Yoga has eight limbs where Acharya Patanjali shows the attainment of the ultimate bliss of God in samadhi through the disciplines of: yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar, dhyan and dharna. The Science of Yoga has gained popularity because of its scientific approach and benefits. Yoga also holds the honored place as one of six philosophies in the Indian philosophical system. Acharya Patanjali will forever be remembered and revered as a pioneer in the science of self-discipline, happiness and self-realization.

ACHARYA BHARADWAJ (800 BCE)

PIONEER OF AVIATION TECHNOLOGY

Acharya Bharadwaj had a hermitage in the holy city of Prayag and was an ordent apostle of Ayurveda and mechanical sciences. He authored the "Yantra Sarvasva" which includes astonishing and outstanding discoveries in aviation science, space science and flying machines. He has described three categories of flying machines: 1.) One that flies on earth from one place to another. 2.) One that travels from one planet to another. 3.) And One that travels from one universe to another. His designs and descriptions have impressed and amazed aviation engineers of today. His brilliance in aviation technology is further reflected through techniques described by him:
1.) Profound Secret: The technique to make a flying machine invisible through the application of sunlight and wind force.
2.) Living Secret: The technique to make an invisible space machine visible through the application of electrical force.
3.) Secret of Eavesdropping: The technique to listen to a conversation in another plane.
4.) Visual Secrets: The technique to see what's happening inside another plane.
Through his innovative and brilliant discoveries, Acharya Bharadwaj has been recognized as the pioneer of aviation technology.

ACHARYA KAPIL (3000 BCE)

FATHER OF COSMOLOGY

Celebrated as the founder of Sankhya philosophy, Acharya Kapil is believed to have been born in {Pati Jhalda] around 3000 BCE to the illustrious sage Kardam and Devhuti. He gifted the world with the Sankhya School of Thought. His pioneering work threw light on the nature and principles of the ultimate Soul (Purusha), primal matter (Prakruti) and creation. His concept of transformation of energy and profound commentaries on atma, non-atma and the subtle elements of the cosmos places him in an elite class of master achievers - incomparable to the discoveries of other cosmologists. On his assertion that Prakruti, with the inspiration of Purusha, is the mother of cosmic creation and all energies, he contributed a new chapter in the science of cosmology. Because of his extrasensory observations and revelations on the secrets of creation.

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