Mira Prabhu's Blog, page 42

THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

‘The Secret’ —a ‘spiritual’ self-help documentary launched in Australia in 2006—hit the Western world with incredible impact, generating millions for its producers. I wrote the following article a year or so later but never published it. Today, although a thousand other scams have rushed in to take its place, the reasons why I reacted so negatively to it are still pertinent. The plethora of gross misinformation spreading across our planet has inspired me to write spiritual fiction, and all three of my novels in the MOKSHA TRILOGY (Whip of the Wild God, Krishna’s Counsel and Copper Moon Over Pataliputra—Whip is out and the other two novels are soon to be published) deal with the great eastern truths that helped me come to grips with reality.) So here goes….

In the summer of 2008, I lived in a delightful suburb located a twenty-minute drive from the White House in Washington D.C. A string of disappointments had driven me into a chasm of despair. Despite the spiritual tools I’d acquired over the decades, my state of consciousness had sunk into such a quicksand of self-doubt that I expected the bathroom mirror to crack every time I peered cautiously into it. At night, as breezes ruffled the branches of the majestic old trees surrounding that beautiful home, I would hear the fat lady screech, and know I was trapped within another dark night of the soul.

I called my friend Meredith who had moved to Taos, New Mexico. “I’ve got the perfect remedy for you, hon!” she cried when I mumbled the shameful details of my depression. “Watch The Secret! It will change everything for you!”

Meredith had been trained in the shamanistic tradition, and while I did not share her general views, I desperately wanted to believe her on this one. That evening I visited my friend Amy, a writer and yoga teacher. I mentioned The Secret to her and thought it was part of the divine plan when she immediately said, “Oh, a friend sent me the DVD…you can watch it right now if you like, honey.”

I sat down in nervous anticipation before her giant TV screen as Amy slid in the DVD. Tan tar aaaa… and it took off with a blast of thriller-like effects, flashes of sound and light that jarred my already shaky nerves. It spoke of The Secret that had been known to highly successful people of past centuries, the law of attraction, which, when applied to mundane life, transforms it into the dream life each of us craves.

‘Famous’ new age prophets got its message across. One smugly said he was now living in the multi-million dollar house he’d visualized for himself several years ago. All he’d done to manifest it was to pin a picture of it on to his bulletin board and focus on it deeply, thereby imprinting it on his relative universe, which had eventually manifested his desire. Others spoke of getting the lovers they desired, the fancy gadgets they craved, all by using this simple yet magical law of attraction.

I waited impatiently: when would someone break in to explain that the spiritual quest is not about the acquisition of material things—which are, by nature, ephemeral and unsatisfying? When would a wise one push these materialistic clowns aside and begin to address the nature of the true quest, which moves one out of the relative realm and into the realm of the Absolute, where we experience our true nature as blissful, immortal beings of light?

But this did not happen. Crushed by the weight of my fallen expectations, I realized that the The Secret was no different than all the other rag-tag band-aid crap foisted on the gullible through the ages. Indeed it is the worst form of lie—for it leads people to believe that if one simply ignores the darkness, superimposing upon it a vision of personal egotistical happiness—mansion, millions, gorgeous lover, ageless body, etcetera—it must lead to lasting happiness.

Anger rose within me like a tidal wave. Some folks were making millions on this great big lie, this distortion of the precious teachings that had kept me alive despite a series of personal failures. I told Amy how I felt. “For some people it’s OK to fall for this stuff, sweetheart,” she shrugged. “We all have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

But my anger did not dissipate no matter her justifications, for, over the years, I had watched many sink into confusion and increasing angst simply because they bought some serious untruths from self-styled ‘gurus’ who did not care about the negative effects of their dissemination of falsities and only wanted more and more money, fame, adulation or in some extreme cases, sexual favors from their disciples.

As for me, I had first started studying eastern philosophy as a teenager in south India—whereupon finally things began to fall into place and my angst gradually began to dissolve. Through the lens of karmic and reincarnation theory, I began to make sense of the suffering of our servants, the inhuman conditions our urban poor endured, the uneasy coexistence of palaces and slums, ubiquitous corruption. Born hypersensitive to my suffering as well as all others, eastern philosophy provided me with tools that allowed me to survive in a mad, disgruntled, suffering world.

As the decades flashed past, I gravitated to great teachers, primarily in the Yogic Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist traditions. I also delved into Gnostic Christianity and Taoism and finally came home to nest in the pristine simplicity of Ramana Maharshi’s teachings on Advaita-Vedanta. Through all the ups and downs of my tumultuous life, it was the distilled essence of these pure gold teachings that have kept me going.

My fifteen years in Manhattan brought about a great transformation in my psyche. There, I experienced all the pleasures of samsara as well as the dreary horrors of divorce. Alone, battered by the consequences of my naive choices, I was forced to grow up. Too proud to stay down for long, I was forced to use spiritual tools to pull myself up again. Bizarrely enough, it was in the Big Apple that I began to seriously meditate—and this led me to a tenuous peace and flickers of a strange happiness.

I left the Big Apple in 1999, whipped forward by the inspired teachings of a charismatic Buddhist monk. I sold my expensive apartment, quit my legal admin job, said farewell to bohemian friends, and landed in the Himalayan foothills of Dharamsala, bang in the middle of an intense snowstorm.

Snowed into a hotel room with no electricity, shivering my sorry ass off despite piling on every item of clothing I had crammed into my huge suitcase, I berated myself for giving up my comfortable life in America. My companion was an American Buddhist woman with chronic fibromyalgia and severe ear-ache whom I had met in Bodhgaya. Natalie had travelled to Dharamsala in order to be ordained as a nun by the Dalai Lama—and if she hadn’t made me laugh hysterically at our situation, I believe I might have moved heaven and earth to return to the West.

As winter gave way to a vibrant Himalayan spring, I found myself a terrific little apartment a ten minute walk from the Dalai Lama’s palace. My noble aim was to study at the feet of masters and to write great novels. The gods giggled as I made my plans, but life did work out in its out erratic and elliptical fashion. I plunged into philosophy and learnt to apply ancient teachings to everyday life, meditated regularly, researched a novel set in the grand ancient times of the Mauryan Empire, and communicated with shining souls. When the weather got too extreme, I traveled to other parts of north India, to one of the highest villages on earth for the Kalachakra initiation by the Dalai Lama, then to Thailand, where I alternated between blasts of hedonism and the rigors of Vipassana.

One essential teaching I received from the Mahayana Buddhists is called The Two Truths and pertains to Absolute and Relative Reality. The Absolute is that realm of consciousness where all is blissful and immortal. (In Advaita-Vedanta, it is characterised by three simultaneously experienced elements: Sat-Chit-Ananda, or Existence-Consciousness and Bliss.) It is the Absolute from which all things originate, and to which all things returns. Here, the little “I”, whose sole purpose is to create an identity and then to preserve it at all costs, has dissolved. Here one experiences one’s true nature, a blissful peace that surpasses all human understanding.

So the Relative emerges from the Absolute, propelled by the force of past karma (one definition of karma is: the movement of the mind and what it produces in terms of speech and action; consequences come later, either in this or another lifetime.) The core of this teaching is that no matter how miserable one’s relative existence may be, the divine is embedded within each of us. This is the hidden meaning of the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum—literally: the Jewel embedded in the Lotus, metaphorically: that the Absolute is embedded within the Relative, the Subtle animates the Gross.

The human form is considered the highest because humans alone experience both suffering and joy, and can learn to distinguish between the two—a process which leads to enlightenment. And what is enlightenment? The permanent melting of the egoic self into the great Self, which is blissful and immortal, loving, wise, fearless, and connected to every other speck of life in the cosmos.

Our job on the physical realm is not to shine by virtue of our material success; indeed, if we choose the material path, our suffering increases exponentially. Why? Because attaching oneself to that which not ‘real’ compounds our suffering and delays the journey to the formless bliss of the spiritual heart. (Advaita-Vedanta defines ‘real’ as that which is permanent and lasting –and as you may note, no person, event or thing meets this standard).



This all leads up to why I was so agitated by the so-called ‘Secret.’ Band-aids don’t heal existential wounds—at best, they mask the bloody mess. Half-truths don’t work; they mislead. One cannot pay homage to both Mammon and God. Making huge amounts of cash by spreading half-truths in the name of the ancients is a crock of….

The producers of The Secret—like so many other spiritual scammers—neglected to focus on this single critical point. The producer, gushes: “I can’t believe all the people who knew this! They were the greatest people in history.” She refers to giants like Hermes Trismegistus, Buddha, Aristotle, W. Clement Stone, Plato, Isaac Newton, Martin Luther King, Carl Jung, Victor Hugo, Henry Ford, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert Collier, Winston Churchill, Andrew Carnegie, Joseph Campbell, Alexander Graham Bell, and Ludwig van Beethoven. True, honey, some of these folks probably did get The Secret—the point is, I found myself thinking, when will you?



One of the creepiest twists in the documentary is the distortion of the Golden Rule by a self-styled ‘philosopher’ and ‘expert’ on mystical traditions. “Here’s the question I want you to consider,” He says. “Do you treat yourself the way that you want other people to treat you?” He preaches what I facetiously call ‘The Sermon of the Ego’—how to massage and pamper the ‘little I’ or ‘mini-me,’ which, according to genuine masters, is the one thing keeping us from realizing ourselves as Divine. Oh, and by the way, as one of the critics I read on the net mentioned, this man was charging only $997 for a ‘harmonic wealth weekend.’

I do not stand alone in my distaste for The Secret. From Newsweek came this critique: “On an ethical level, The Secret appears deplorable. It concerns itself almost entirely with a narrow range of middle-class concerns—houses, cars, and vacations, followed by health and relationships, with the rest of humanity a very distant sixth.”

Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University says: “The Secret promises this heaven on Earth in one fell swoop by simply desiring something, by simply wanting it. It’s amazing how we really are a nation of, at best, great optimists, at worst, real suckers.” And Emily Yoffe, writing for Slate, quoted Einstein: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

The producers of The Secret swear up and down that all it takes to make our fantasies a reality is the application of three simple steps—“ask, believe, receive”, steps stated to be the essence of the Law of Attraction. The premise is simple—like attracts like, thought and feeling act as magnetic signals which attract their parallels from the Universe, thereby manifesting that which we desire. According to these optimistic folk, this works 100% of the time, for 100%of those smart enough to use it. “We create our own reality”, they say, and modern science, they add, confirms this.

Is what they say true? I believe it is, but only if one comprehends the underlying wisdom of this simple philosophy, then applies it to the right goal—which is moksha, permanent freedom from fear and desire—and not the acquisition of the shiny baubles of this shifting and ephemeral world.

The tragedy The Secret reveals is that, despite high standards of living, many inhabitants of our planet are both unhappy and naïve—a dangerous combination which makes it heartbreakingly easy for the wily to con them. A psychiatrist in Washington D.C. mentioned to me that his colleagues all over America were astounded by the vast number of patients who went running to them in the wake of The Secret: these gullible folks had made the awful mistake of taking The Secret at face value, and had entered into financial and relationship situations which had boomeranged.

Humor is another effective weapon. In the March 17, 2007 episode of Saturday Night Live, cast members spoofed The Secret in a sketch with Oprah Winfrey interviewing Rhonda Byrne. Included was a scene of a man in Darfur being scolded for his lousy attitude. Ha ha ha, but not.

According to karmic theory, situations like the Holocaust and the World Wars are the result of past thought, speech and action. Sure. The unspeakable horrors of Darfur, for instance, like all other tragic events, were indeed manifested by accumulated negativity. But blaming victims for past karma now torturing them is pointless and cruel; victims have no recollection of their past and are therefore technically innocent. Before people can understand how they manifest their reality, they must be educated in the subtle wisdom that leads one to this principle. In this most vital task, the makers of The Secret failed miserably.

A few years ago, I lived at an ashram where I served at Reception. An obese woman with a rambunctious, speech-defective, ten-year-old son arrived for the weekend. She spilled her life story to me: abandoned at birth by a teenage mother, seventeen foster homes, high-school drop-out, fifty-six ‘relationships’ with drug and alcohol addicts who beat the hell out of her. She lived in a beat-up trailer outside town and worked as a cashier in a grocery store. Her car was such a piece of junk, she told me, that she’d had to rent a car for the weekend. She had pointed to her son, who was systematically attempting to destroy the phone booth in the reception area and said: “I swear I woulda killed myself off if I didn’t have this little chap to look after.”

Moved to tears by her bleak existence, I offered to help her with tools I’d acquired. “No!” she said fiercely, when I suggested listing a few things she could try. “I don’t want to read The Secret. I can’t lie about how I feel or bottle up my emotions and pretend everything’s hunky dory. I’d go even crazier; maybe shoot my son and myself….”

Funny, but I had not mentioned The Secret. I confided my own loathing for it and tried to convince her that there were deeper ways to melt her pain and find peace. But she wasn’t ready for change; better a known devil, as the saying goes, than an unknown angel. Still, this woman impressed me deeply—with nothing but her instincts to go by, she had intuitively sensed the rotten apple that is The Secret. “They shoulda called it “The Lie,” she said, a crooked grin animating her red mouth.

The ‘law of attraction’ in the eastern context springs from the wisdom of ‘as you sow, so you reap,’ from the inevitability of the laws of karma, the cosmic software. According to these immutable laws, should one reap ginormous profits from a gullible public using so-called ‘spiritual’ wisdom, one stands to be seriously screwed at some later point. Karmic consequences will lighten only if the scam is perpetrated by people who are truly ignorant of their sin. If the perpetrators of money-making spiritual scams really understood the laws of karma, they would know that the fool’s gold pouring over their unholy heads must vanish sooner or later, leaving them impoverished and in great karmic negative debt to the millions they have conned.

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill who vows to destroy all that blocks us from the luminous wisdom that leads us into the core of the blazing Spiritual Heart!

The fact that she was alone with a criminal in unfamiliar territory struck Pia like a hammer!

 Day 27 of a 30-day viewing of   Krishna’s Counsel   on Kindle Scout!  N ominate   Krishna’s Counsel   ,   and if Kindle Scout takes it on, you will not only get a free version but you will also warm the cockles of my heart.  P lease click on this   link below — and   if you like what you see, be kind enough to nominate me: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 27:

The fact that she was alone with a criminal in unfamiliar territory struck Pia like the proverbial hammer—she’d dealt with pushers and suchlike in her somewhat lurid past but selling dollars on the black market in a dark airport was a first. “Dollars?” he queried again, and she got a whiff of attar, essence of roses. Suppressing her instinct to walk on, she unzipped her pouch and counted off three one-hundred dollar bills. “Three hundreds,” she said, proffering the bills even as she wished the can of pepper-spray Turtle had handed her after their farewell dinner was within easy reach. Fortunately the customs chap had been so diverted by her resemblance to the glamorous Rekha he’d missed it in the corner of her case. “Your man offered me a fifty-to-one rate, so I should get fifteen thousand rupees from you, right?”

  Please do me the massive favor of visiting my campaign page to NOMINATE this mystical thriller! You would also make my day if you share or reblog this post. Here again is the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill, who challenges us to fight our own darkness so we can realize our awesome divine potential!

 

The Amazing World of Jellyfishes in Photography

Our planet amazes me…to think a simple jellyfish can be so gorgeous….take a look and make up your own mind – and thank you for another great post, Alk3r!

ALK3R

Diver And The Huge Nomura’s Jellyfish, Japan. Nomura’s Jellyfish, in all its graciousness, can tip the scales at 450 pounds. Photo by: Lucia Terui

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Turtle believed that the gods mock the human proclivity to predict the future.

 Day 26 of a 30-day viewing of   Krishna’s Counsel   on Kindle Scout!  N ominate   Krishna’s Counsel   ,   and if Kindle Scout takes it on, you will not only get a free version but you will also warm the cockles of my heart.  P lease click on this   link below — and   if you like what you see, be kind enough to nominate me: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 26:

Turtle believed that the gods mock the human proclivity to predict the future. He was right, Pia thought sardonically. Minus her very own crystal ball, who could have predicted that, five long years after she’d slunk into The Seed, a lawyer would track her down from thousands of miles away to inform her of her estranged father’s death? While the rest of Manhattan had continued to celebrate Christmas Eve with amazing gusto, Pia had left Turtle chatting with the garrulous owner of the deli, taken the subway back to her studio and fallen into a sleep broken by cloudy memories of her early life in India.

Please do me the massive favor of visiting my campaign page to NOMINATE this mystical thriller! You would also make my day if you share or reblog this post. Here again is the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill, who challenges us to fight our own darkness so we can realize our awesome divine potential!

 

Rare Photos That Captured Incredible Moments from History

Rare photos that capture incredible moments from history….and some will make you cry…that’s what they did to me…the very first one, of Dorothy Counts being ridiculed for her color – what is wrong with us as a species? And we’re still stupid and blind in this regard and many others….next time I want to be born in Utopia!!!

ALK3R

Dorothy Counts – the first Black girl to attend an all White school in the United States – being teased and taunted by her White male peers at Charlotte’s Harry Harding High School, 1957.

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The Kauravas had almost destroyed her but only because she’d invited them to do so in some eerie fashion…

 Day 25 of a 30-day viewing of   Krishna’s Counsel   on Kindle Scout!  N ominate   Krishna’s Counsel   ,   and if Kindle Scout takes it on, you will not only get a free version but you will also warm the cockles of my heart.  P lease click on this   link below — and   if you like what you see, be kind enough to nominate me: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 25:

It was around this time that she picked up a book written by an American whose life had changed during a mystical encounter in Bombay with a master of Aghora, the extreme path of Tantra. The chapter on karmic law reminded her that nothing happens by accident; it didn’t take her long to accept the mystical truth that she had committed egregious sins to have earned the abuse the Messners had shoveled on to her. The Kauravas had almost destroyed her but only because she’d invited them to do so in some eerie fashion. So, even in her darkness, the wisdom Uncle Hari had showered upon her remained the bulwark of her inner life.

Please do me the massive favor of visiting my campaign page to NOMINATE this mystical thriller! You would also make my day if you share or reblog this post. Here again is the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill, who challenges us to fight our own darkness so we can realize our awesome divine potential!

 

BRAHMA’S DREAM & KRISHNA’S COUNSEL

I grew up in a traditional south Indian world whose cruel inequities I struggled to make sense of. Nothing quenched my hunger for truth until I stumbled upon the teachings on karma, reincarnation and suchlike. Gradually I taught myself to see with new eyes and began to experience the glimmerings on inner peace.

I was obsessed with unraveling the answer to one striking paradox: how could India, a country so rich in the philosophy of Oneness, also support a caste system that militated against this knowing? This is a BIG question and it took immense effort to find answers that satisfied me. A major turning point was learning about what eastern sages refer to as the Two Great Truths. (Here’s a post you might enjoy: https://miraprabhu.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/two-great-truths-absolute-and-relative-reality-real-and-unreal/).   

It was the answers to my ten thousand questions combined with intriguing myths and stories that led me to write Krishna’s Counsel, the second novel in my Moksha Trilogy. Pia, my protagonist, is a rebellious and hypersensitive girl who grows up in 60s south India and is just as confused by her environment as I was.

“If India was so great and all, Unc,” she asks her beloved Uncle Hari, “how did things go so wrong?”

“For far too many reasons to discuss in a single morning, sweetheart,” Uncle replied. “But you can start your own analysis with the fact that our subcontinent has been invaded countless times—unspeakable atrocities have happened here over the millennia.” A wicked gleam leaped into his eyes. “And if you want to pick on one man you can safely detest for our current chaos, Pia, I’d suggest Manu.”

Lila looked up from her book with a frown. “Who’s Manu?”

“A so-called rishi who codified Hindu law around two thousand years ago,” Uncle explained. “Manu decreed that only the two highest castes—the Brahmins or priests, and the Kshatriyas, the warrior kings they served, could access formal learning. Vaishyas and Sudras, merchants and servants respectively, were to concentrate on serving the two upper castes, so that society could thrive as visualized by the Gods. As for women, my impression is that Manu probably loathed them. Many Hindus still regard Manu as a great sage, Pia, and yet it pains me here,” he said, placing a hand on his heart, “to consider how callously he ruined the fabric of our society.”

“While many would disagree with me,” Uncle went on, “I trace the decline of Indian civilization to Manu’s Code. That’s the point at which the caste system became rigid, although scholars still quarrel about the date it was created—all the way from 200 BCE to 200 CE. Manu was the furthest thing from being a democrat: Brahmins got off lightly, regardless of the nature of their crimes while the other three castes were punished with increasing severity.”

“What were things like before this code?” Pia asked curiously.

“Oh, I suppose one was rated on behavior and not on birth. Fortunately Manu’s influence wasn’t as pernicious as it might have been, perhaps because our ancestors were intrinsically nonconformist—unlike our modern clowns, or should I say clones?” Uncle shuddered theatrically. “As for what Manu did to women, Pia, you don’t want to hear about it, oh no.”  

“Please, Uncle!” she cried, knowing he was playing with her.

“All right,” he capitulated a little too quickly. “Manu claimed a woman is constitutionally inept, inconsistent, and prone to sensuality—all excellent reasons to deprive her of her fundamental rights!” He chuckled dryly. “All this, of course, ha ha ha, was for her own protection.”

Lila looked up with a frown. “How could some stupid code make a woman so helpless?”

“Well,” he said, “according to Manu, a female is so brainless that her father must assume control over every aspect of her life. Then hubby takes over, followed by her sons. If a woman is widowed early, she cannot remarry. If her husband is a lecherous lout, well, she still has to consider him as equal to God. She can share in the wealth of the family, but if she works, her wages are to be half of a man’s for the same labor. Worst of all, studying the scriptures is forbidden to her.

“Know how far Manu said a wife should go to please her man?” Uncle asked dryly. “Well, if he had his eye on a courtesan, she was to carry him to the woman’s house on her shoulders, wait patiently while he had his fun, then cart the spent bastard back home.”

* * * * * * * * *

Clearly Uncle Hari at least partially blamed this code for accelerating the deterioration of the once respectful equation between man and woman, as well as between different strata of society—and in my non-scholarly view, he was right to do so.

Now I’ve been reading an interesting novel called Brahma’s Dream (Shree Ghatage). At one point in the saga, an old Brahmin widow grows furious with a relative who has hired a Muslim boy to help with the housework. This widow fears she will be polluted by the mere presence of this young servant in her home, and honestly believes her chances of making it to celestial realms will be blighted if she allows this. And so it is with millions of traditional upper caste folks in India who, even today, will refuse to consider eating food cooked by a lower caste, let alone associate intimately with those lower in the caste hierarchy—and this decades after the Indian Constitution has abolished this horrific system that regards millions as inferior based on birth alone! (The original caste system encouraged people to follow their dharma; it was only when the system became based on birth that its multitudinous evils took root.)

What lies at the root of such a demeaning system? My op: Nothing but the human egoic obsession with being “special.” Humans driven by this ugly need will commit any crime to foster and preserve this myth of their own superiority—and if we open our eyes, we will see evidence of this all over our planet.

Impossible to deny that some are way superior in intelligence, skill, talent, looks to others—so where is this equality to be found? For me, it emerges from the ancient teaching that beneath the egoic system of body and mind lies a substratum of existence-consciousness and bliss. This ocean of peace and joy exists in every single being and is our birthright. So yes, the serial killer and the saint are united in this one thing, for their common essence is immortal bliss. It is layers of ignorance that cover this luminous truth—ignorance that drives some of us further into the abyss of evil. (Sages claim that the relative reality that each of us experience is the result of lifetimes of karma (thinking, speaking and acting); this level of reality, while valid, is not ‘real’ by the definition of Advaita. Only the unchanging substratum of our being is considered “real” and it is this that the seeker of freedom in the tradition of jnana (eastern wisdom) is urged to focus upon.)

Ramana Maharshi, the luminous sage of south India, was born into a traditional Brahmin community that honored the caste system. And yet, as a jnani (a free one), he had no use for such egregious distinctions. One of his famous lines is that “there is no other.” Ramana broke a whole slew of caste laws. For instance, as a young swami living on the slopes of Arunachala, he accepted offerings of food from low-caste women—a big no-no for the average law-abiding Brahmin! His mother was horrified, whereupon Ramana mocked her for her narrow-mindedness. Why? In my view, he mocked her not because he did not love her deeply, but because he knew that unless she realized the mystical truth of Oneness, she would never be light enough to enter the portals of enlightenment or moksha.

And yet, like Gautama Buddha, Ramana did not openly exhort others to break free of their traditional moorings, nor did he emphasize the need for relative reform (he lived during British rule in India). Why? Because reform involves the ego and belongs to the realm of relative reality. Indeed, reform as a goal pales in comparison to what Ramana wanted us to shoot for, which is complete freedom from the matrix. He urged us to use our finite energy to dismantle once and for all the relative dream spun by the great enchantress Maya—for when we seek permanent freedom from the claustrophobic matrix, not just the individual but all beings benefit.  

Greetings from Arunachala, considered to be Shiva the Destroyer in the form of a hill, and who vows to destroy every delusion to which we are subject so we can experience the bliss of our radiant and blissful Self!

KRISHNA’S COUNSEL right now needs your nominations on Kindle Scout – it will take you less than a minute to nominate this mystical novel and here’s the link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5.

 

Once she’d mockingly said that a strong wind would blow and he’d be stuck with that hideous mug…

 Day 24 of a 30-day viewing of   Krishna’s Counsel   on Kindle Scout!  N ominate   Krishna’s Counsel   ,   and if Kindle Scout takes it on, you will not only get a free version but you will also warm the cockles of my heart.  P lease click on this   link below — and   if you like what you see, be kind enough to nominate me: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 24:

Buddhists say that one’s past karma is reflected on one’s face until the age of about twenty and that it is only after that period of grace that the face reflects one’s current state of consciousness. This seemed true of Adam: when she’d first met him, he was a handsome and loveable hunk of a man who’d inspired her trust; now she saw something rigid and ugly peering out of his eyes. Once she’d mockingly said that a strong wind would blow and he’d be stuck with that hideous mug. In response, he’d hurled at her the jade statue of the Buddha Howie had given her as a farewell gift, missing her head by a fraction. Other than this one time he’d never been violent, and for this Pia thanked her lucky stars: even in posh corporate settings she’d occasionally see a woman with purple bruises on her face and arms—marks of spousal violence no amount of makeup could completely mask.

  Please do me the massive favor of visiting my campaign page to NOMINATE this mystical thriller! You would also make my day if you share or reblog this post. Here again is the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill, who challenges us to fight our own darkness so we can realize our awesome divine potential!

 

10 Life changing quotes

Muhammad Ali: “I hated every minute of training, but said, ‘don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of life as a champion.” Well, everyone has a different view of what a champion is – for me, it is the victory over our own personal darkness and the journey into light….but no matter what we seek as our highest goal, persistence and commitment is a necessity. Thank you for this great post, Shoaib Rasheed!

Michael Jordan: Best player in the history of Basketball. He is owner of the Charlotte Hornets, a professional Basketball team. He said that

“I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”


. Muhammad Ali: A humanitarian, a professional boxer and an American Olympic. In his 39 year long period of boxing he won 56 games, lost 5 and he also has 37 knockouts. He said that


“I hated every minute of training, but said, ‘don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of life as a champion.”

Steve Jobs: One of the most Inspiring in 21st century. CEO of the Apple, and was the 2nd richest person in the world. He faced many…

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Salome waved shamelessly at their shocked audience and the four stumbled down the stairs and into the blinding sunshine of a Bangalore afternoon…

 Day 23 of a 30-day viewing of   Krishna’s Counsel   on Kindle Scout!  N ominate   Krishna’s Counsel   ,   and if Kindle Scout takes it on, you will not only get a free version but you will also warm the cockles of my heart.  P lease click on this   link below — and   if you like what you see, be kind enough to nominate me: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 23:

After downing three vodka-limes in a row, Salome summoned a waiter and ordered a Baked Alaska. She walloped the creamy dessert and almost immediately afterwards let loose a horrific groan and made dramatic motions indicating she was about to throw up. “Pickled onions, please!” Adam called out urgently to Sher Khan, which Pia fuzzily deduced was a cure for puking. Sher Khan turned on his heel and made for the kitchen. Nose in the air, he returned to disdainfully proffer a salver of pickled pink pearl onions to Salome, just as a fountain of pre-digested mixed grill, vodka and dessert spurted out of her mouth, splattering his red uniformed vest with the gold buttons. Raghav and Pia gawked helplessly while Adam grabbed Salome’s head and pointed it towards the bank of plants beside their corner table, holding her in position until the revolting mess was spent.

Sher Khan swore softly in Hindi at the sight of his ruined splendor, whereupon Adam slapped down several hundred rupee notes on the table—more than enough to cover the bill plus an astronomical tip—and ordered them all out pronto. Hanging on to Raghav’s arm for support, puke streaking her mouth like vampire fangs, Salome waved shamelessly at their shocked audience and the four stumbled down the stairs and into the blinding sunshine of a Bangalore afternoon. Pia looked at the gold ring on her finger through a haze and smiled deliriously—soon she’d be flying westward with a man who adored her; every little thing, she was drunkenly convinced, would be just fine. 

  Please do me the massive favor of visiting my campaign page to NOMINATE this mystical thriller! You would also make my day if you share or reblog this post. Here again is the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/11AA1JA16VAV5 .

Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill, who challenges us to fight our own darkness so we can realize our awesome divine potential!