Sai Baba in Badrinath

June 1961, Sathya Sai Baba and his retinue visited the holy city of Badrinath near where the river Ganges enters India.

Sri Sathya Sai Mobile Hospital

Sathya Sai Baba created a mobile hospital unit as an extension of his free health service to the poor. They travel around Andhra Pradesh to serve villagers who cannot travel to brick and mortar hospitals.



Runs 15 minutes.

Swami Rama the Himalayan Master

Here is a lovely 20 minute video on the life of Swami Rama, who came to the West and demonstrated yogic powers (siddhis) under controlled scientific conditions.

The Not So Secret Swami

There's a "documentary" film produced in 2004 called "The Secret Swami" on Sathya Sai Baba. It is nothing but a hit piece. The woman, Tanya Datta, "investigating" claims of sexual abuse is not conducting an investigation at all, she is a die hard true believer that Sai Baba is guilty and doesn't even listen to any counter arguments. The one man who she speaks with for most of the film, Alaya Rahm, a former devotee who claims to have been molested, is a heroin addict who retracted his lawsuit against Sai Baba. He has sued several people for completely spurious claims to get money to buy more drugs. And this man is the BEST she can do. One case against Sai Baba was thrown out of court when the supposed "victims" took the stand and said they had never met the prosecutor before in their lives and that they never made any claims against Sai Baba.



Here is a wonderful piece written by
Ranbir Singh that excoriates the BBC for making such a blatantly untruthful film.

The Sage of Arunachula

Lovely 72 minute film on the life of Ramana Maharshi.

Abide as the Self

A lovely hour long film on Ramana Maharshi, narrated by Ram Dass. Presented here are rare photos and bits of film to go along with the story of Ramana's life and his essential teachings on self enquiry.

Suspicion Regarding Prahlad Jani

You might remember the famous ascetic who went fifteen days without eating or drinking with no adverse health effects. The octogenarian from Gujarat makes the claim of not taking food or water since the age of eleven, 72 years. Jani appears in the documentary The Boy with Divine Powers about "Buddha Boy" Dharma Sanga (Palden Dorje), in which he is compared to the then explosively popular young Nepalese monk who had fasted for six months under a tree. Here is a clip from that program (runs 9:31):







He also appeared in a film In The Beginning there was Light about breatharianism, the supposed ability to subsist off of nothing but sunlight. One Swiss woman watched the film then starved herself to death in spite of the film's warnings not to give up eating. Here is a clip from that program (runs 8:30):







Well, here is a story from 2010 that I just discovered from ABC News. It comes with an accompanying video (runs 6:17):




ABC US News | ABC Celebrity News



Now, the article does appear to be an assassination piece by skep-cock Sanal Edamaruku, head of the Indian Irrationalist Association. As I mentioned previously, the term "rationalist" means someone who believes true knowledge cannot
be attained through the senses, only through the rational mind. This is
in sharp contrast with people like Edamaruku who believes that the mind
doesn't exist, that everything is dead matter, and that knowledge can
only come from the senses. Fundamaterialist skep-dick debunkers like to
hijack the word "rationalist" and "rational" to mean its opposite, just
like they like to hijack the word "nothing" to mean "the quantum vacuum
that has existed forever into the past".



In the article lies are made about Sai Baba being "debunked" in youtube videos (the videos are of such poor quality that several professional magicians affirm it is impossible to draw any conclusions one way or the other). It also makes the totally bullshit assertion that belief in miracles is holding India back from "progress" (you know, "progressive"*, like a disease). "Progress" into what exactly I'm not sure. Red China under Mao's cultural revolution, the moral asshole of the universe that is Belgium where it is legal to murder ("euthanize") your children and parents when they become too much of a hassle for you, or maybe a Brave New World where everyone is drugged and brainwashed by the all powerful government? Because we all know that there has never been a single godless country that turned evil.



But I dye grass.



From the article: "On a tour of the "cave," as Jani called it -- actually a comfortable studio apartment -- "Nightline's" cameras caught sight of a working refrigerator. When asked about it, one of his minders immediately became defensive and said we could not look inside."



That is very suspicious. It is not proof of fraud, as the refrigerator could be there for any number of reasons (for the benefit of his handlers, who are mere mortals, who still need food or possibly medicine or insulin that requires refrigeration), but it is suspicious that a man who claims to have not eaten in seven decades has a refrigerator in his apartment. It's one piece of evidence against the two medical tests where Jani fasted for several days. Certainly I don't think it's possible to draw any conclusions. But it is interesting.











*You can't spell "progressive" without "SS"

Did Dilbert Jump The Shark?

Have y'all seen the new Dilbert comic strip? Asok is now gay, despite having shown interest in women over the past twenty years, because Scott Adams is protesting the Supreme Court of India's decision to not review the legality of the totally unenforceable law banning gay sex. A law that, by the way, has been around since 1860. 154 years the law has been around, the Dilbert comic has been around for 25 years, and it's just now that Scott Adams is offended. I'm confused.

He's not troubled by the organised rape gangs, the thousands of girls that are abducted every year and sold into sex slavery in Pakistan, ongoing civil war in the North East with Maoist guerrillas that's been raging for decades, 60 years of constant warfare with Pakistan over a totally uninhabitable glacier that has seen millions killed, sex-selective abortion and female infanticide that kill millions every year. Nope. He's all of a sudden offended by a 154 year old law that can't be enforced because there's no way to know who's having sex with whom unless one of the parties involved is a moron and goes to the police station to confess.

Why is he offended now? Why not any time in the previous 25 years? And why is he offended by a law that is impossible to enforce unless people actually have sex in public for all to see when there are millions of people dying in India every year because of the thousands of other problems they have? If you ask me, and this is just me, throwing babies into trash bins because they are girls is much more offensive than a law that says "you can't have sex with certain people, but if I turn and look the other way no one will stop you."

And why choose to create two Dilbert comics in a row that contain no jokes, no levity, just overt insults aimed at a billion people? He didn't even TRY to work the total retcon of one of the main characters into a story, he just came out and did it out in the open.

Don't forget, this is the same Scott Adams who a few years ago made a joke about a gay employee dating an entire soccer team and scamming the company. And now he's getting pissy over a 154 year old law that hasn't stopped anyone from having sex before and won't stop anyone from having sex in the future.

I think he's starting to become senile in his old age. After all, Scott Adams did produce a long, cuss-filled rant about how he basically wants 60+% of the human race to be brutally murdered for not allowing him to kill his father who died naturally minutes after he posted the rant! We're not talking about someone who is acting rationally anymore.

I've noticed a decline in the past few years in the quality of Dilbert, but this is the first time Scott said "fuck it, creativity is too hard, I'm just taking one of my online rants and putting it into a comic." I have little hope this will blow over and I can get back to laughing at obfuscating customer service and incompetent bosses. I think maybe Dilbert has run its course and there is nothing new left to say about this bespectacled engineer.

Eternal Day

A lovely short program (22 minutes) on the Super Specialty Hospitals founded by Sai Baba. This is in celebration of the 22nd anniversay of the hospitals, which opened in 1991. Tragically, Swami cannot be here in person to witness this event, but he is ever present, even if we cannot see his body.


The lovely ideal of selfless service (seva) is exemplified in this pair of free hospitals which have thus far helped 2.3 million patients.







This is the ideal. This is totally different from universal healthcare/ socialised medicine/ single payer. When people give of themselves of their own will selflessly that is the highest virtue. When a government steals money from people and redistributes it as it sees fit that is worse than thievery. A government cannot mandate morality, or else the value is totally removed. One cannot be moral or virtuous if one is compelled to act in such a way. It is only through one's own will that one may be virtuous.

Mother Ganges

A lovely 49 minute BBC documentary looking for the many sources of the Ganges river, exploring the wildlife and human habitation along the way. Some of the most beautiful cinematography I have ever seen. Enjoy!

An Exercise In Debunking Documentaries

A program called "5th Dimension" does an hour show on debunking reincarnation. It includes a case study of Shanti Devi, a girl born in India in 1926 who was tested by Gandhi and Ian Stevenson and became a media sensation in her time. Next is a segment with Stevenson's research, followed by a story from Pueblo, USA, of Bridey Murphy. It ends with a segment about the Dalai Lama.


















Of course people like the head of the Indian (ir-)Rationalist Association Sanal Edamaruku like to say it's all fake (he actually does say that). He says that belief in reincarnation was created to explain the caste system, and, by extension, "takes away the sense of enterprise in people." Does it? Untouchable (Dalit) K. R. Narayana became President of India, and fellow untouchable K. G. Balakrishnan became Chief Justice of India. That's about as far from having their sense of enterprise taken away as you can get. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the highest level Brahmin, strove to destroy the caste system, as did Gandhi, another Brahmin. If the lowest of the low and the highest of the high can work together, both achieving great things, how is it that belief in reincarnation destroys their desire to strive and better their lives? In light of that it is safe to say that Edamaruku's criticism falls apart.



As a side note, the term "rationalist" means someone who believes true knowledge cannot be attained through the senses, only through the rational mind. This is in sharp contrast with people like Edamaruku who believes that the mind doesn't exist, that everything is dead matter, and that knowledge can only come from the senses. Fundamaterialist skep-dick debunkers like to hijack the word "rationalist" and "rational" to mean its opposite, just like they like to hijack the word "nothing" to mean "the quantum vacuum that has existed forever into the past".



There's also Prof. Phillip Sharp (or Shar or something, the narrator has a thick accent and no spelling is given and none of the people interviewed are acknowledged in the credits!), a white guy who uses a version of Bob Couttie's argument against Devi's case (see page 14 in my Forbidden Knowledge). Couttie said that just because a record of a chemical plant's bad safety existed somewhere several hours before the plant exploded (the report was filed on the same day it exploded) coupled with fear of chemical plants that a housewife some distance away having a premonition of the explosion can be explained away by cryptamnesia of her hearing about this report. Even though there's no evidence that the housewife or indeed anyone in the town in which she lived or anyone she knew had any knowledge of this report, and no evidence that even existence of this report got out before the accident, Couttie says that the mere existence of the report justifies the extreme likelihood of a Rube Goldberg nonpsychic explanation for how the housewife had the premonition. Similarly Prof. Sharp says that just because Devi's husband in a former life visited her neighborhood in Delhi to do business means that Devi likely overheard the man and that's how she got the idea of her past life, and correctly identified people she never met, and made a great deal of correct statements of a city she never went to. For skep-dicks as long as a non-psychic explanation is not impossible that means there is at least a 99.999% chance that the non-psychic explanation is the correct one. Actual scientists, on the other hand, like Ian Stevenson, conduct huge amounts of actual research to produce cases suggestive of reincarnation.



Archskep-dick Chris French chimes in, saying children with past life memories are all cultural dependent, which conveniently ignores children with past life memories who come from cultures that are neutral or hostile to belief in reincarnation. If pressed he would come up with some bullshit response.



Overall if a student gave me this to grade I would give it a D+, maybe a C- but only because of the stuff at the end with the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman. This should serve as an example of how NOT to do a documentary.

Timur's Body

Some people are so evil that not even death can stop them.






Fig. 1: Amir Timur statue, Uzbekistan



Timur was the son of some middle class dude in Transoxiana (modern day Uzbekistan, home of what used to be the Aral Sea, the Sogdian Rock, magnificent architecture, and Khiva, one of the last independent kingdoms of the 20th century to be battled over between the British and Russians in the Great Game. You also can't read the Bible, use the Internet, and prisoners are frequently tortured to death). He had ambitions. Unsatisfied with his prospects, Timur became a warrior and decided to conquer the Mongol empire like his hero Chingis Khan. To achieve this goal he invented a fake geneology linking him to the great Khan and married the Khan's granddaughter.



Timur then conquered the Persian Il-Khanate ("little" Khanate), and half of the Chagatai Khanate. He punished the Golden Horde for overstepping their boundaries as tributary state, permanantly destroying their economy. His greatest passtime during this period was abducting scholars and artists and transporting them to Samarkand, which they were to make into the most magnificent city in the world. He also liked to slaughter tens of thousands of people and make towers out of their heads for no other purpose than because it looked cool.



Timur's next venture was to prove that he is "not a man of blood" and that "God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." He looked to the Quran for advice whether to slaughter every single person in India or every single person in China for being infidels and India turned out to be closer. He went there with his army and destroyed the Delhi Sultanate because they were the wrong kind of Muslims. He proceededt o ravage India, slaughtering more than a million people and making towers out of their heads. Every time his men would slaughter 20,000 Indians in a single afternoon he would throw a massive two day long feast so they could revel in their own crapulence.



Satisfied that it would take over a century for the subcontinent to repopulate he went West to slaughter the Ottomans for being the wrong kind of Muslim. In a bloody battle, Timur killed the Ottoman sultan and threw the empire into chaos. He also depopulated nearby Christian kingdoms for being infidels as well as other Muslim kingdoms for being the wrong kind of Muslims.





Fig. 2: Timur's Empire at the time of his death in 1405.



Something was still eating away at Timur. He was getting old and he hadn't slaughtered everyone in China yet, nor had he conquered the entire Mongol empire. He saddled up his army and went to China, but the weather was bad and he died. His body was placed in a lavish tomb in Samarkand with a curse: should anyone remove his body a fate more terrible will befall them than if Timur himself would ravish their country. Like the curse of King Tut, Timur's curse had real power to it. Unlike Tut's curse, which only claimed the lives around 20 people (and a dog and a bird), Timur's curse claimed the lives of millions.



Soviet archaeologists/tomb raiders broke into Timur's tomb in June 1941. Two days later Hitler broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarosa, the largest single military campaign ever. Eastern Europe would be devastated, millions would die both soldiers and civilians, and the Nazis would take control of an additional 13% of the continent, creating the largest empire in European history. One million people would die in Leningrad, another million in Stalingrad, three million Soviet soldiers would die as Nazi prisoners, and millions of Slavs and other unwanted would be sent to die in the death camps.



Realising the gravity of the situation the Soviets reintered Timur's body in November 1942. A few days later they launched Operation Uranus, the decisive counteroffensive that would push the Nazis back from Stalingrad and pave the way for the fall of the Third Reich.



Some might scoff and say that it is merely coincidence that within days of Timur's tomb being disturbed the largest military operation ever was launched and laid waste to the Soviet Union. They will say it is mere coincidence that within days of his body being put back the tide of the war turned and the Soviets were able to gain an iron grip on Eastern Europe for the next half century. I ask, "what is the measure of coincidence?" In the scientific method you make an injunction, follow it through to collect data, and check it against the results of others who have done 1 and 2. Timur's curse is the same. There's an injunction: "remove my body and your country will be devastated." Performing the injunction leads to the data: what he said would happen happened. The experiment was done in reverse with the reverse results: Timur's body was put back and the enemies of the Soviet Union were devastated and the Soviet Union grew in power undreamed of previously. The only thing missing is step three, repeating the experiment, which is a very bad idea in this case as the intended result is millions of people dying.



What we're left with is a mystery. Timur's curse did exactly what it said it would when it said it would, which is strong evidence in its favour. Unfortunately morality prevents us from testing his curse again so we can't be 100% certain. Still, for what it's worth, it's made a believer out of me.

Tearful Farewell to Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Sathya Sai Baba's newphew R.J. Ratnakar Raju performs the last rites of the spiritual guru.

Image from India Today



Sai Baba was buried on 27 April with full state honours at the Sai Kulwant Hall. An estimated five lakh people (500,000) came to pay their respects, including the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (who also visited Baba at his 85th birthday celebration last year). Baba's nephew, and member of the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, R. J. Ratnakar performed the last rights.



From Daily News & Analysis India:



Earlier, a little before 9am, the glass casket in which Sai Baba's body was lying in state from Sunday night was removed and the body was wrapped in national tri colour for a brief while.



Men of the Andhra Pradesh Armed Police sounded the last post and fired 21 shots in the air as a mark of respect.



Then the Tricolour was removed and verses from Hindu, Christian, Islamic, Sikh, Judaism and Buddhist scriptures were read out by leaders from these sects. Later, they joined in sprinkling the sacred ash at the samadhi spot as 'mangal aarti' was performed.



With Sai Baba's body draped in his favourite saffron robe, the last rites were performed by Ratnakar, who wept inconsolably, while priests recited vedic chants.



Sai Kulwant Hall will now become the Mahasamadhi Mandir. Radio Sai offers a streaming radio broadcast of the proceedings (I have not listened to the whole program yet), and an email message announces a video of the proceedings will be put up shortly, so devotees in all time zones can have final darshan of Swami.

(The title of this post is adapted from an IBN Live article.)

The Miracle of Pure Love

I just got finished watching a 45 minute video from Radio Sai called "The Miracle of Pure Love" detailing Sri Sai Baba's charity work over the past several decades. I and many others are very concerned over Swami's health, which is very bad. He is in the hands of the best doctors available, in the hospital he built two decades ago this November.



The two Super Speciality Hospitals provide medical care completely free of charge to millions. According to the video during the last fiscal year the two hospitals provided three billion Rupees of medical care free of charge ($67.7 million or £41 million). My question is, where does all that money come from? That's a crap load of money, and as far as I can tell it all comes from donations, from the government (electricity is provided for free), from computer and medical equipment companies, and devotees all over the world.



Coupled with the university, the water projects, and numerous other endevours, how could anyone NOT like Baba? How could someone like Robert Priddy become a vicious, hate-filled man when he found out his "die-mind" ring was a zircon? How could former devotees come out with phony, unsubstantiated charges against Swami? Where does the hate come from against someone who has done so much good to so many millions of people? It doesn't matter whether you believe in Swami or not, he's done more good than all of his critics combined, and that alone is worthy of admiration. There are times I just don't understand the world, or maybe I don't want to understand it. It's times like this that we need Swami more than ever.



-Dee

Sadhu Haridas

I first learned of Sadhu Haridas just this year while reading Man's Eternal Quest, an anthology of talks given by Paramhansa Yogananda (the first of three such anthologies put out by SRF, each, I assume, about 500 pages long. To be fair, I may have read something about him in passing in some other book and simply forgotten, though I don't think it is pertinent to this subject.). Yogananda mentions Sadhu Haridas performing a feat similar to that of Pilot Baba, namely, he was buried alive for forty days in 1837 with only the limited supply of air inside the coffin, and when he was dug up he sprung out without any ill effects.



An article written at the time by Claude Wade, describes the situation as follows. Sadhu Haridas, refered to as the fakir, was tied into a white linen bag "squatted like a Hindu idol" (lotus posture?), with his ears and nostrils plugged with cotton and wax. He was then sealed with a padlock in a wooden box measuring four feet by three feet and buried in a cell three feet beneath the ground that was just big enough for two men to sit inside next to the box (in another article the box is said to be four feet by eight feet, see Cpt. Osborn link below). This cell was dug inside a small room made of brick. The door was made of heavy wood sealed also with a padlock and mud (so people would know if the room had been opened before it was supposed to). The building belonged to Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of the Punjab, who placed his personal seal on the door to prevent it from being tampered with. He placed four guards at the door who were relieved every two hours, day and night, for the duration of the forty days.



Mr. Wade describes the moment when Sadhu Haridas was removed from the wooden box:



"The servant then began pouring warm water over the figure; but as my object was to see if any fraudulent practices could be detected, I proposed to Runjeet Singh to tear open the bag, and have a perfect view of the body before any means of resuscitation were employed. I accordingly did so; and may here remark, that the bag, when first seen by us, looked mildewed, as if it had been buried some time. The legs and arms of the body were shrivelled and stiff, the face full, the head reclining on the shoulder like that of a corpse. I then called to the medical gentleman who was attending me to come down and inspect the body, which he did, but could discover no pulsation in the heart, the temples, or the arm. There was, however, a heat about the region of the brain, which no other part of the body exhibited."



Servants removed the stoppers from his nostrils and ears, bathed him in warm water, massaged his limbs, and gave him ghee to drink. After about thirty minutes Sadhu Haridas woke up and spoke to the Maharaja "do you believe me now?" to which the Maharaja "replied in the affirmative," and then bestowed upon the Sadhu a royal token reserved for princes and other persons of distinction.



Claude came out of the experience completely convinced that there had been "no fraud or collusion in the exhibition [they] had witnessed."



This event, according to a British Captain Osborn writing in 1880, was an experiment performed by the Maharaja who did not believe Sadhu Haridas could return to life from a deathlike state as he claimed he could. If we are to believe this account (and remember, vintage DOES NOT discount scientific experiments, otherwise every experiment ever conducted would have to be repeated every year because time erases factuality), then this provides a good example of the genuine scientific mindset alive and well in India more than a century ago. Just like the experiments with Prahlad Jani, genuine science can be performed to test yogic powers, NOT just debunking exercises. According to Cpt. Osborn, the Maharaja believed that fraud was involved and took every step necessary to prevent anyone from tampering with the Sadhu's body before the experiment was completed. The Maharaja was determined to leave the Sadhu's body inside the cell for forty days, and then discover either a living man, thus demonstrating his claim, or a corpse, demonstrating a fraud.



According to Cpt. Osborn, Sadhu Haridas lived off of milk for several days before being interred. On the day he was buried he swallowed thirty yards of linen and then brought it up again to clean his stomach. He then had his long beard shaved on the day he was buried in the ground and when he was dug up there was no hair growth on his face, which for the Captain proved he had been in suspended animation the whole time.



On the day he was buried Haridas first entered suspended animation; he "[layed] his tongue far back in his throat, crosses his hands on his breast, and suspends animation by means of holding his breath," and then was enclosed in the linen bag and locked into a wooden chest by the Maharaja himself. The chest was buried in a barley field and the above mentioned brick room was manufactured around where the chest was buried. (In the yogic tradition if one places the tongue up behind the palate they can stimulate a nerve that will allow them to go without food for several weeks or months. I've never met or read about anyone who has done this, so I can't say if it is true or not.)



What this experiment tells us, about yoga, or the siddhis, or human physiology, is, in itself, not much. No single experiment can stand as arbiter over anything. However, it does serve as one example among many that can lead us to certain conclusions, namely: 1. At least some siddhis are real (so far all those we can test have been demonstrated to be real), and 2. Human beings are capable of far greater control over their physiological functions than current medical science is willing to permit. In conclusion, I will borrow the words of Claude Wade on the subject:



"I shared entirely in the apparent incredulity of the fact of a man being buried alive and surviving the trial without food or drink for various periods of duration; but, however incompatible with our knowledge of physiology, in the absence of any visible proof to the contrary, I am bound to declare my belief in the facts which I have represented, however impossible their existence may appear to others."





The other wiki has a very short article on Sadhu Haridas that doesn't say much, if anything, beyond what is mentioned above.






Post Script
Sai Baba's health is continuing to improve slowly after 15 days of hospitalisation. Updates can be found at this site created specifically for devotees to follow the progress of Swami's condition.

The Empire of Spirit

Michael Wood, tactful British historian, presents us with a brief look at the history of India from his 1992 documentary series "Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization." Bear in mind he does use the Aryan invasion theory heavily. He mentions the Soviet Union (I remember that; people thought it would last forever). This is not as good as his 2007 series "The Story of India," but it was made a lot earlier, so that can account for this episode being less refined. Runs approximately one hour in six videos. The sound quality is not that great as well.

Autobiography of a Yogi

February has been a pretty negative month, hasn't it? Trying to improve the situation, more in line with the Ananda villages video, here is a brief introduction to one of the most influential books of the past century (at least as far as my readers should be concerned). Paramhansa Yogananda wrote his Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946 (an updated version was published in 1952, shortly after he took mahasamadhi). According to the other wiki (take that with as much salt as Bloomberg will permit), Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into 25 languages and sold more than one million copies. Yeah, it's a real shame that complete and utter shit like Twilight, lacking in any literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (it's about the author's fantasy of a geriatric psycho killer who stalks and wants to rape a teenage girl), has sold a hundred times more copies, but, as Scary Dave says, I ain't bitter.



The video is narrated by Yogananda's disciple, Kriyananda, and includes photographs of many of the locations mentioned in the book and original music performed by Kriyananda. Runs 27 minutes.

Ananda World Brotherhood Colonies

Swami Paramhansa Yogananda's great wish was to establish world brotherhood colonies, communities devoted to plain living and high thinking, where people could practice Dharma away from the negative atmosphere of the modern world, while still being a part of it. These colonies embodied the ideal preached by Jesus of being in the world but not of it. They also embody Sri Aurobindo's* ideal of Integral Yoga, combining the best advances made east and west.



Yogananda's disciple, Swami Kriyananda, helped to set up eight of these colonies (several in USA, Asisi, Italy, and Pune, India). I looked into the economic model practised by the Ananda villages, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. They are not some hippie, take handouts from the government, socialist orders. Everyone in Ananda is responsible for their own income and they have to pay for their own housing. If anywhere is a good example of responsible living, it seems to be the Ananda villages.



Here is a wonderful video on the history of Yogananda in America, his disciple Kriyananda, and the Ananda villages. Run time 23 minutes.





*Aurobindo also set up an intentional community, Auroville, in Pondicherry in India, which was then governed by the French because, as a political dissident, Aurobindo was a criminal in British India.\

The Master's Effulgence

From The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna



Vedanta



"The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, emotions, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guide would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wondering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the 'Naked One,' because of his total renunciation of all earthly attachments and objects, including even a piece of wearing-cloth.



"Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the Non-dualistic Vedanta, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya – its inscrutable Power – time, space, and causality are projected and the One appears to break into the many. The non-dual Spirit appears as multiple individuals endowed with forms and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. And this is the ultimate goal of Vedanta – to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.



"The path of the Vedantic discipline is the path of negation, 'neti,' in which, by stern determination, all that is unreal is renounced. It is the path of jnana, knowledge, the direct method of realizing the Absolute. After the negation of everything relative, including the discriminating ego itself, the aspirant merges in the One without a second, in the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, where subject and object are alike dissolved. The soul goes beyond the realm of thought. The domain of duality is transcended. Maya is left behind with all its changes and modifications. The Real Man towers above the delusions of creation, preservation, and destruction. An avalanche of indescribable Bliss sweeps away all relative ideas of pain and pleasure, good and evil. There shines in the heart of glory of the Eternal Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Knower, knowledge, and known are dissolved in the Ocean of one eternal Consciousness; love, lover, and beloved merge in the unbounded Sea of supreme Felicity; birth, growth, and death vanish in infinite Existence. All doubts and misgivings are quelled for ever; the oscillations of the mind are stopped; the momentum of past actions is exhausted. Breaking down the ridgepole of the tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages, stilling the body, calming the mind, drowning the ego, the joy of Brahman wells up in the superconscious state. Space disappears into Pure Being, time is swallowed up in eternity, and causation becomes a dream of the past. Only Existence is. Who can describe what the soul then feels in its communion with the Self?



"Even when a man descends from this dizzy hight, he is devoid of ideas of 'I' and 'mine'; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought for the future, and looks with indifference on the present. He surveys everything in the world with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he – that is to say, his body – is worshipped by the good or tormented by the wicked; for he realizes that it is the one Brahman that manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of light. In the Vedantic books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are born with a special mission for humanity can return from this height to the valleys of normal life. They live and move in the world for the welfare of mankind. They are invested with a supreme spiritual power. A divine glory shines through them."

An Islamic History of India

An historical perspective of Islam in India, the massive slaughter of early invaders and the terror attacks of today. Tolerance of Muslims in India and persecution of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Aprox. 20 minutes.