August 18, 1969.......flying high, in the Bethel sky......

Hi all, hearing the uproar outside my room door today in the morning put me in mind of my legendary exploits two years ago, come Holi day, outside Sarayu and Sharavati. That of course, put me in a good mood for the day. Reading up on how woodstock happened and how Michael Lang got all the credit and Roberts and Rosenman had to do all the dirty work.....and how Jimi acted like a pompous cheapskate.......well this one was a bit of a no-brainer, what! I hope the Hindu believes its incredibly profound though (boo hoo ... just 800 words again!). Here you go,

The annual Indian Woodstock

Every year, to the eye of the untrained observer, a large portion of the normally staid Indian population goes crazy for a day. To Caucasian eyes, one of the reasons why India stands apart as a distinct culture, as opposed to the colorless stereotypes that engulf other Asian countries, is its under-current of passion and joie de vivre, unparalleled save in the Hispanic nations. The Indian festival of Holi, set in the back-drop of prudish rural North India, is a perfect showcase for our study.

Recently, a law passed in Delhi has made it ‘illegal’ for couples to hold hands while in Connaught Place, the shopping heartland of the Capital. In the nearby satellite towns of Western UP, police raid restaurants, hotels and cybercafés regularly, serving up details to a drooling, salacious local press. In staid university campuses, wearing shorts in public is considered unseemly. Public opinion places drug usage at almost the same level of debauchery as paedophilia.

Contrast this, if we may, with the sights and sounds that are almost synonymous with Holi in the North Indian hinterland. Gangs of semi-naked youths roaming the streets, overwhelmingly physical displays of affection, pitched mock battles, ubiquitous eve-teasing and coquetry, and of course, the openly public confection and consumption of bhang.

Quid?

The sheer scale of Holi makes it difficult to assign it any psycho-social parallels from world history. How does one explain a humongous explosion of spontaneity and liberality that occurs at a fixed date every year? The paradox would be trivial were we to explain it to be merely a question of cult theology and religious beliefs. Only the very naïve, however, would refer to Holi as a ‘Hindu’ festival. The vast multitude that celebrates Holi does so owing to a continuous reflux of cultural conditioning.

By most estimates, more than half a million people gathered in a field at Bethel, New York for three days beginning August 16 1969 – to watch the largest rock concert in the history of mankind. Woodstock – as the event has forever been immortalized as, was the apotheosis of that psychedelic tapestry of youthful angst that was the 60s USA. The mental archetypes of the hippie culture finally passed into the mythology of American culture with this epochal, cathartic pogrom – 3 days of the flower people and their quaint anti-war, pantheistic philosophy.

Gangs of disheveled, semi-clad youths, sexual tension in the air, hallucinogenic drugs sold over the counter and partaken of with impunity, color running riot – ’69 USA or present day India? The similarities are extremely striking. Professor Joshi, I am sure, could unearth an erstwhile unknown Sanskrit text that conclusively proves that it was a venerable Indian ‘rishi’ or deity who invented rock ‘n roll millennia before Elvis walked the earth.

Should such a helpful text not exist, we are forced to look for less simplistic explanations. What do the hippies of the American cultural Golden Age have in common with the Indian common man?

The first step, of course, is to realize that most of the hippie pioneers looked to India and its pantheistic, Ego-effacing culture for spiritual nourishment and took back their own conceptions of it to their subsequent followers. Secondly, hippie culture following music as its religion, the impact of Indian collaborators in the 60s served to reaffirm the exotic Indian stereotype, adding to its mystique.

The remarkable difference lies in the fact that whereas the hippie movement was but a monument to iconoclasm, to be replaced by consumerist fads in American consciousness by the early 80s , our indigenous chaotic festival occupies pride of place in an extremely prudish mainstream consciousness.

It is here that the power of tradition and culture is evinced in its entirety. American culture, itself a subset of the largely Protestant European culture, has been built largely in cycles of growth and destruction. Conspicuous by its absence is a continuity of tradition, each succeeding cult repudiating and rebutting its predecessor. The adjective ‘brittle’ comes to mind, particularly when juxtaposed with the Indian mentality.

Through countless millennia, cockroaches and Indian culture have survived by absorbing the fundamental tenet of beating natural selection – ‘anything goes’. ‘Anything goes’ - ‘chalta hai’ in the vernacular – is the life-blood of Indian society. It is evident in our chronically corrupt public offices, in our chaotic public transport systems, and in our inefficient public infrastructure. It is also evident in the vitality of our festivals, the controlled spontaneity of our celebrations, the universal spirit of bonhomie that engulfs us all, around this time of the year.

‘Amorphous’ is the best possible description. The stubborn continuum that is Indian culture and society; smoothened and ground down by the passing of time has learned to accept, to incorporate, if one may quote Orwell, “to change out of all recognition and yet ever remain the same.”

Greetings on Holi to everyone, appreciate the uniqueness of our heritage.

The Gospel of Krishna Yogi....

Hi all, I think I will introduce you today to this friend of mine who is an extremely intriguing personality. I think of him as the most interesting reclusive iconoclast on campus. He comes from a family with a history of spiritualism, witness his middle name. The first thing that struck me about him, even before I knew him, was his physique - unadulteratedly Aryan. The similarities of our experiences in the spiritual path are a big confidence-booster for me in my experiments with Sufism and Zen. And our conversations about the meaning of God and the relevance of tokens and symbols in spiritualism have afforded me more food for thought than most other people I know on campus. He wrote this at my behest as an insight into the mind of a born spiritualist and a practitioner of Kriya Yoga. I then took the thing up and filled it out and fleshed it up and rewrote it and added chunks to it, the usual bag of tricks. So, this is my second co-authorship post in a row. I present to you, "An introduction to Kriya" and my good friend Krishna Yogi Kolluru.

ROADS TO PERCEPTION

GOD

God is the most beautiful concept in all of philosophy. God is the ultimate paradigm of creativity. Witness the seeming incongruity of universes within universes. And yet the structure of the universe evinces considerable similarities at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. If this universe is created, then how infinitely creative is the mind of the Creator!

There was never a beginning, witness the insurmountability of Planck time: nor, by symmetry, shall there ever be an end. This essay takes for an axiom the active involvement of a ‘Divine Intelligence’ in the creation of chaos and its time-evolution into symmetry and order.

In Indian spiritualism, this is called ‘Leela’, a Sanskrit term. ‘Leela’ is the nature of God, vast beyond the farthest stretches of our imaginations, yet intricate beyond all hope of deterministic inspection. It is He who gave us life, He who plays with us, and He who eventually stows us away – for future use, if re-incarnation were to be admitted as valid. And yet, for all our seeming insignificance, every sentient entity, says Hindu pantheism, is equally important to the show. Going even further, it would not be too much to say that a single electron spinning in the wrong direction might lead to a collapse of the universe, as we know it. Such is ‘Leela’.

It would be a consummation devoutly to be wished for if we would all take our noses off our self-inflicted grindstones and ponder upon the wonder of it all, savor the magnificence of this moment, all the parameters that happen to be just right for it to exist!

SELFLESSNESS

Personal reflections: rising early in the morning, I see the sun, feel the cool breeze, hear the sleepy piping of birds as they arise, like me, to face what we collectively perceive as a new day. But who is it that sees? Who is it that feels? Is it I? Who am I? What am I? Try as I might I cannot answer this. What am I? What am I?

Have you ever felt the same way? Are you too all too familiar with the mental block that results? Forget about meditation, religion and Divinity. What if I do not exist? More accurately, what if whatever I think I am does not exist? Hint: think ‘The Matrix’. Now, the Matrix theory, if we may call it that, makes some kind of sense. It is not a phenomenal stretch of logic to theorize perceived reality to be illusory and the actual ego to be dormant.

Vedanta however, categorically negates the existence of the individual Self. ‘I’ – ness, ‘You’ism is the highest or the beginning of ‘maya’ – illusion. One may view the world as imparting the primary illusion of ‘being’. The illusion of identity is the most deeply-seated of all such. And once established, it leads very easily to the others.

It is when one abrogates the delusion of identity that one is faced with the real nature of Consciousness. That is when one realizes the true significance of pantheistic philosophy, the appropriateness of the fundamental credo of Vedantic thought, ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – ‘ ‘thou art that’.

Whither the distinctions between good and evil, sin and sacrifice, black and white? Nothing exists save the Cosmic Consciousness. All discriminatory power vanishes with the individual identity. You are the ‘One’. (This, however, has nothing to do with Keanu Reeves!)

THE PATH TO PERFECTION

Vivekananda held that to walk the path to perfection was harder than walking on a sword’s edge. However, with swords being in rather short supply these days, used solely for the purpose of political gimmickry as they are, it behooves us to be more pragmatic in discussing methods of attaining perfection.

Basically, eradicating the thought of imperfection from our minds is the road to perfection. We say the earth is not a perfect sphere. But, my friends, the earth IS perfect in having its own shape. Who is to say which shape is better? Likewise, the realization that everything is perfect is concomitant with the realization that ‘This is it’. This is possible only by getting rid of illusion.

It is my contention that, after identity, the besetting illusion that plagues humanity is the concept of relative worth, things being better or worse. Why call anything good or bad when all things are truly manifestations of the One, the Divine – You.

You are the one who created this world, its transient images, its ephemeral sensations. And then you are the one who mesmerized yourself into believing that your creation is disjoint from your own Self. Therefore, you and you alone can transcend the entrapments of ‘maya’, melt all illusions in the fire of spiritual knowledge and realize your true identity. As Vivekananda said, ‘ Not a sheep thou art but a lion. Arise, awake, and roar.’

MEDITATION

Now, the only way, vouchsafed to us by five continuous millennia of spiritual quests, is by awakening the ‘Kundalini’, and causing it to ascend to the ‘thousand – petal lotus’. This can be achieved most effectively by meditation. The guiding precepts are simple. Concentrate your will on perceiving the universe as containing just two elements – you and God. Soon you will transcend this duality and attain the realization of Unity, which is the highest state of meditation, known as ‘Nirvikalpa Samadhi’. Even after setting aside the dubious claims of charlatans, we are still left with examples such as great sages like Ramana Maharishi of Tiruvannamalai, Sai Baba of Shirdi and Ramakrishna Paramhamsa of Dakshineshwar, who had attained those towering spiritual heights, proving thereby, to twentieth century cynics, the truth of the Vedantic doctrine.

SHAADCHAKRAS

The following is a brief exposition of the theory of Kriya Yoga, a powerful shortcut in the arduous spiritual trek. The ‘Shaadchakras’ and the ‘Sahastrakamalam’ together constitute the life-force. Under waking consciousness, they remain dormant. They are activated in increasing order of magnitude by:

• Sleep (Sufficient, one may note, to induce loss of spatio-temporal orientation)
• Deep concentration
• Overwhelming positive emotion
• Sex
• Hallucinogenic drugs, notably heroin
• Volitional activation via meditation/yoga

Osho’s advocacy of free sex as a spiritual practice shocked moral sensibilities around the world . It is true however, that outside of Yogic practice and drug abuse, the most perceptible rise in Kundalini is observed during the sexual act. This, however, is marginal as compared to the extreme rise experienced during meditation. In proportion, the bliss of orgasm is dwarfed by the ecstasy of meditation. Osho described the bliss of ‘Samadhi’ as a state of continuous orgasm. Not even Hugh Hefner can match that!

To continue with the theory of Kriya however, the ‘Kundalini’ present in the ‘Muladhara’ travels through the spine and reaches the ‘Sahastrakamalam’. There it ‘melts’ the ‘lotus’ causing the subject to experience an extreme state of ecstasy, followed in most cases by a blissful realization of the true nature of reality.

This process may happen, as in some historic cases, spontaneously. In most cases however, the subject is required to rigorously follow a particular Yogic practice (Raja yoga, Hatha yoga etc.) until the mind is subdued sufficiently to allow Realization.

The Indian system of Yoga is thus a far more systematized method of spiritual practice than other systems with concurrent aims. In all other cases, be it Gnosticism, Sufism or Zen, though the intellectual theory is the same, the practice is highly individualized, causing Realization to be a hit-or-miss proposition.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I would appeal to you to give yourself a fair chance at understanding the fundamental unity of the universe and the essential purpose of existence. Of course, mindsets ossified in a colonial distaste of all things indigenous would find it unpalatable to accept the relevance of Vedanta and Yoga. My only request is that meditation and Indian spiritualism should not be dismissed as hysteria driven hoaxes. While the ultimate bliss of Realization is almost inaccessible to us common mortals, even the intermediate stages of meditative absorption are far more satisfying and fulfilling than corporeal pleasures. I leave you with one last nugget of information, which explaining the title of the essay allows me to conclude aesthetically satisfactorily: who do you think has written the introduction to ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’?

Aldous Huxley. Huxley who? Ask any druggie worth his brown sugar.

Gee! (wish people) had (more sense)

This one happened in a very familiar manner. Noemaun brought his article on 'The Prophet who fought wars" to me for a proofread, then it turned into an editorial session, following which it metamorphosed into a rewrite, following which...... well, this is what ensued. Certain sentences and passages are his and so I think I may claim but co-authorship of this essay. The subject, as may be seen, is extremely close to my heart (ref. buying a stairway to heaven). Here you are

Militarism in Islam

In today’s new-found neo-Conservative morality, it is so very fashionable to berate Islam and its practices as being primitive, brutal and anachronistic. While it is impossible to irrevocably refute all such allegations in such a short essay, it is endeavored here to take issue with supporters of the Huntingtonian school of thought on one alleged aspect of Islamic culture – militarism and Islam’s concept of Jihad.

Right up to the late 90’s, the Russian stereotype of the “godless Communist aggressor” was so firmly entrenched in American mindsets that successive Conservative administrations and pulp fiction authors like Ludlum and Forsyth managed to keep making money out of flogging the Commie horse.

Interestingly, as a quick perusal of any best-seller list and current affairs paper will show, the interests of both have shifted to a new target, the older one having been rendered obsolete by the internal collapse and democratization of the Soviet Republic in 1991. The Conservative laser-sights sought a new target and found one. Thanks to the hypotheses of academician Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory, circa 1995, their gun-turrets are now trained on Islam.

To this effect, the story of the spread of Islam is embellished with improbable stories of cruelty and debauchery, the current separatist movements in Chechnya, Palestine, Serbia-Montenegro etc. are highlighted as being manifestations of Islamic militarism. Also, socio-political observers of the woolly-headed Right make incredibly presumptuous proclamations of stirrings of malcontent in the Middle East. A state of paranoia, with reference to the past, present and future of the role of Islam in geo-politics, is being consciously and unambiguously generated.

Our case in defense rests on the unanimously held Orthodox Sunni premise that the path of Islam lies in the emulation of the intentions and deeds of the Seal of the Prophets, Mohammed (pbuh), the founder of Islam as we know it. To know Islam one must know of the life of the Prophet – a figure incomparable in the history of the world save to that other Semitic miracle, Jesus.

Irrespective of your political, religious or societal persuasion, any attempt to understand the Islamic ideology with a modernistic perspective will fail. Your quest for knowledge of the modalities of Islamic geo-politics and social stratifications can not even begin without a comprehensive biographical review of the personality of this man. To place the purported militarism of the Islamic creed, let us view the Prophet’s (pbuh) views regarding warfare.

“The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. -- In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims

To any reasonably pragmatic reasoning individual, it is evident that war is a necessary evil, which must be carried through, in order to solve social and political problems which cannot be resolved peacefully. Human communities have plunged into fights not only for the mere accomplishment of material aims but also for achieving social justice. Case in point, one wonders if Luther King could have accomplished so much had he not stood on the broad shoulders of Lincoln and Ulysses Grant.

Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (pbuh), the founder of Islam, led his community to battle on innumerable occasions. And yet, one can unearth no records of his having benefited materially from any of these military conquests. His bearing ever remained the same, for all the prosperity and dominance of the Muslims by the time of his passing. It was thus neither lust for gold nor glory that led the Prophet to take to the sword but a burning sense of responsibility towards his fellow Arabs wallowing in ignorance and misery. It is a fact that does not really require mentioning that it was the unifying power of Islam that allowed the Arabs to establish the strongest, most magnificent empire that the world has ever seen this side of the Dark Ages.

Also, 1300 years before the West thought of the Geneva Convention, and 1360 years before the Imperialist West breaks its regulations with impunity, the Prophet of Islam imbued martial codes in Arabia with a sense of humanity and compassion. The total number of casualties in all the wars that took place during his lifetime, when the whole Arabian Peninsula came under his banner, did not exceed a few hundreds.

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors .

[Quran 2.190]

To the aggressive Arabs, who were used to fighting forty years on the slightest provocation, say of a camel belonging to the guest of one tribe having strayed into the grazing land belonging to other tribe, which ended up with both the sides fighting resulting in the loss of thousands of lives, the Prophet of Islam taught submissiveness and discipline; Discipline so rigorous that congregational prayer during wars was common. Even during the heat and fever of battle, whenever the time for prayer came, and it comes five times every day, the congregation prayer was never postponed.

In an age of barbarism, the battlefield itself was humanized and strict instructions were issued not to cheat, not to break trust, not to mutilate, not to kill a child or woman or an old man, not to hew down date palm nor burn it, not to cut a fruit tree, not to molest any person engaged in worship and those who sought quarter were escorted to a place of safety. One can but wonder at the emotions of the confinees at Guantanamo Bay who are informed through the American popular media that it is THEY who are barbaric!

On the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet (pbuh) stood at the zenith of his power. The city which had refused to listen to his mission, which had tortured him and his followers, which had driven him and his people into exile and which had unrelentingly persecuted him even when he had taken refuge in Medina, more than 200 miles away, now lay at his feet. By the universal law of retribution (“we’re gonna smoke them out!”), he could have ‘justly’ avenged all the cruelties inflicted on him and his people. But what treatment did he accord them? His heart flowed with affection and he declared, "This day, there is no reproof against you and you are all free." "This day" he proclaimed, "I trample under my feet all distinctions between man and man, all hatred between man and man."

¨Jihad¨ is a generic term for concerted effort or struggle against major obstacles, such as injustice, disease, or poverty. It’s meaning is much broader than ¨holy war¨, and can only be understood within the context of Islamic teachings. Jihad is a very powerful pillar of Islamic faith. Unfortunately, it is misused by terrorists to rationalize their actions, much as the Nazis hijacked the teachings of Nietzsche, Fichte and Hegel to propagandize their Aryan supremacist theories. Blaming the Prophet (pbuh), Islam and Muslim culture for terrorist activity around the globe is much the same as blaming the Lutheran Church for the Holocaust, or J D Salinger for John Lennon’s assassination.

In view of the aforegoing, it is to be hoped that the next time you hear the Prophet (pbuh) being referred to in acrimonious terms, you will accord it the same amount of gullible acceptance that we cunning Indians have cultivated for official government pronouncements – nil.