An Eclipse and the MBA

Peter Russell has written eloquently on the Universe as a Hologram, which i referred to in Meta"Force":

So the Universe is a sort of a wheels-within-wheels. What you see at the high level would be sort of duplicated at the lower level. The Powers of 10 is a good example of this sort of behavior while Sitting Bull in the Grand Canyon is a funny version of the same.

For me, the Mind-Body-Atma [a different type of MBA, according to Swami :-)] is a fascinating example of this holographic behavior. At the higher level, the MBA map on to the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. Like so:

Mind : Body : Atma = Moon : Earth : Sun.

As an aside, it's interesting how the theories of the formation of the Moon can be applied to those of the Mind as well.

The recent total solar eclipse triggered off some more thoughts on that. Detailed report from the ToI/BLR/23.JUL.2009 edition here.

What happens when the wandering Moon mind aligns itself with the Sun atma (the Over-soul), which is responsible for its shining. The Earth body sees the effulgence of the Sun that isn't visible before.

Solar Eclipse July 22 2009 Varanasi

But it can't be seen with the naked eye!

In the Bhagavad Gita, we read: (Chapter 11, Verse 8, from the translation by Barbara Stoler Miller)

But you cannot see me
with your own eye;
I will give you a divine eye to see
the majesty of my discipline.

Sri Ramakrishna says much the same thing: (from Love Gurus)

MASTER: "God cannot be seen with these physical eyes. In the course of spiritual discipline one gets a 'love body', endowed with 'love eyes', 'love ears', and so on. One sees God with those 'love eyes'. One hears the voice of God with those 'love ears'. One even gets a sexual organ made of love."

Moonshadow Land

Shirdi Baba and the Shawl

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSBShawl

During the parayana of Chapter 41 this morning, Baba reprimands Deo as follows:

"Go on daily reading the Pothi (Jnaneshwari), go and sit in the Wada, read something regularly every day and while reading, explain the portion read, to all with love and devotion. I am sitting here ready to give you the whole gold-embroidered Shella (valuable cloth), then why go to others to steal rags, and why should you get into the habit of stealing?"

That shella (shawl) reminded me of a dream that i had of Baba sometime back; had the pleasure of meeting Shirdi Sai Baba in a couple of dreams (see Shaken and Stirred), haven't had that privilege of late, though.

Coming back to the dream, Shirdi Baba meets me; He's looking tired; we interact across, surprisingly, a water trough!

In the next instance of seeing Him, He's holding court with others and upholding a shawl on his left hand for everyone to see. He's radiant. His stance is quite similar to the one below: (except, of course, that the left hand is out, with the shawl draped over it)

Bhiksha De De Mai

You can see the original (in black and white) here.

Saturdays are sweet and sacred

Last Saturday morning was a bit hectic as kiddo had not yet recovered from the fever that started on Tuesday.

But the tizzi-ness sort of tapered off towards the afternoon, when i started reading the ToI Edit page. Find the ToI Saturday format much more reader-friendly (are they experimenting?) and The Speaking Tree had: (highlighting mine)

A guru can help us get connected
…
To the guru each Soul is precious. Even if we forsake Him, He does not forsake us. Many people relate to us through our body, mind and intellect, but it is only the guru who is interested in our soul. Whether others value us or not, the guru accepts and cherishes us. For this we have to invoke the guru through our love and devotion. If we already have a guru, we start feeling his grace intensely and instantaneously.

It was so beautiful that the tears just started flowing!

Sri Ramakrishna describes a particular state: (Gospel, M. at Dakshineswar (I), page 350, bottom)

"There is another kind of samādhi, called unmana samādhi. One attains it by suddenly gathering the dispersed mind. You understand what that is, don't you?"

~*~*~

As if on cue, SS Jaideep, one of my Kotak pals, called and we had a long chat. He's now with the French version of Action India and was on stage recently with Aishwarya Rai, representing L'Oréal. That killed me.

~*~*~

In the night, saw this terrific image in a blog post:

Devi Trinity

For me, that's Mother Durga, the Unattainable!

When i slept, used the sleeping pose recommended by Sri Ramakrishna for getting spiritual dreams and had this one:

I was at a temple for the Old Mother and a baby in a (cloth) cradle was coming down on a rope tied to the temple.

Sort of Sly "Gabe" Stallone trying to rescue the girl at the start of Cliffhanger, but much more sedately.

What came to my mind when i remembered the dream later was this: (Psalm 127:1)

Except the lord keepeth the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

This is Spiral Tap

A couple of Mondays back, Jug Suraiya, with his perennial fascination for hind-ware, wrote a whopper of a piece:

Hygiene on tap

What's the greatest invention India's ever come up with? The zero? IPL? The Nehru-Gandhi Family? All legitimate and worthy candidates for being called India's greatest invention. But for my money what wins hands down is the hygiene faucet. You know what i mean, that little hose thing with a nozzle that's fixed to a holder, generally on the right hand side of the potty.

That right-side bit is critical. When we went to Club Mahindra Munnar in Y2K, they had the health faucet on the left. Of what use is that?! Esp. as JugS writes later in the same article:

Hotel loos had TP. Lots of TP. Yards and reams of the stuff. Enough TP for a print run of the Late City edition of TOI. But what use was all the TP in the world or in the Audit Bureau of Circulation, for that matter when the non-negotiable bottom line as far as you were concerned was a good, old-fashioned, traditional, hygienic wash?

Anyway, the article was so goo' i was surprised that it wasn't published on http://bogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ ;-)

When Eight Bells Toll…at Once

One Number to Ring Them All

Earlier this year, got a terrific link from a fellow PMite:

One Number to Ring Them All

If Google search revolutionized the Web, and Gmail revolutionized free e-mail, then one thing’s for sure: Google Voice, unveiled Thursday, will revolutionize telephones.

It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that’s just the warm-up.

Quickly registered for the same and, after four months, got the invite. All things come to those who wait. However, it's available only to GMail users in the US as of now; it should be available to Indian users soon, i hope.

Don't wait for it to be launched in India, register for it! More on Google Voice.

Pogueman followed up his original article with one more this month:

Updates to Google Voice

The new features included free transcriptions of your voicemail (the text of those messages gets sent to you by e-mail and text message); free conference calling; dirt-cheap international calls (2 cents a minute to France or China, for example); and, perhaps most profoundly, Web-based sending and storing of all your text messages. That's a first in cellphone history; for most people, text messages scroll away off the phone after 20 of them or so, with no way to capture them.

Go Man Go

There was a delicious ToI "3rd ed" on the right royal mango that ended:

Mango Manners: Aam Ka Mazaa
…
Talk of moderation and you kill the pure joy of mango eating. So, the connoisseurs prescribe that there should be at least a basketful ready before mango eating takes off and it shouldn't stop until all the fruit has been dealt with. The last of the mango eating rules is rooted in an important canon of mango morality, which says that all mangoes, procured by whatever means, are kosher.

Therefore, when someone offers the fruit, it is sacrilegious to ask from where it has been sourced. Unfortunately, this beautiful planet is teeming with rude people. It's they who forced someone to coin this gentle snub: 'Janaab, aam khaiye. Ped mat giniye' (Eat the mango, Sir. Don't count the trees).

Aha! That last bit reminded me of this allusion from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: (Festival at Adhar's House, page 506, middle)

"The important thing is somehow to cultivate devotion to God and love for Him. What is the use of knowing many things? It is enough to cultivate love of God by following any of the paths. When you have this love, you are sure to attain God. Afterwards, if it is necessary, God will explain everything to you and tell you about the other paths as well. It is enough for you to develop love of God. You have no need of many opinions and discussions. You have come to the orchard to eat mangoes. Enjoy them to your heart's content. You don't need to count the branches and leaves on the trees. It is wise to follow the attitude of Hanuman: 'I do not know the day of the week, the phase of the moon, or the position of the stars; I only contemplate Rama.' "

Speaking for Friends

A couple of weekends back, BirdMan, NTR, and i were shooting the bull and the breeze on the sidewalk within the Palm Meadows club, when BirdMan's wife drove in.

BirdMan started giving some directions where to park, but she went and parked somewhere else, which made BirdMan say ruefully: "Oh, she does her own thing." Evidently, he hasn't been married long enough :-)

In my own case, after many years of side-seat driving, i have promised WiFi that i would make a driving suggestion only if i feel that an accident is going to happen or she asks me specifically (what to do).

~@~*-*~@~

But we live and forget. Last evening, on some other topic of discussion, i was expecting some support from her but she went the other way and i was feeling sort of singed (చురకంటించింది!) at the end of it all.

So i was thinking of where i goofed up. It's very important for me to have a clear peg of understanding so that i do not repeat a goof-up. As Thosar put it so brilliantly at IIM-A:

Computers understand rules; people relate to examples

So i was sort of "mule"ing over it, as Steinbeck writes, when this incident from Madame Rosette came from the deep: (The Stag, Stuffy, and William are at a bar in Cairo, when they invite a couple of Egyptians to their table, to find out why the "Gyppies like fat women")

The Stag knew that their religion forbade them to drink. 'Have a coffee', he said.

The one with the gold tooth grinned broadly, raised his palms upward and hunched his shoulders a little. 'For me,' he said, 'I am accustomed. But for my frient,' and he spread out his hands towards the other, 'for my frient—I cannot speak'.

So the next time i am about to poke my nose into some other's business, hopefully this funda will stop me:

I am accustomed. But for my frient, for my frient—I cannot speak.

Switch Twitch

Got a weird one in the mail:

More Readable Version

More complicated & interesting than that The Great Switcheroo! Still chuckling.

Haas has it in him

Going out on a limb with numbo jumbo
Hopefully not into limbo

The King of Wimbledon has been having a dream run from Paris. Even the numbers have been on his side:

• Round 4 on a D2C1 (29.JUN.2009—MON)
  
• QF on a D1C1 (01.JUL.2009—WED)
• Finals on a D5C5 (05.JUL.2009—SUN).

The only stumbling block (పానకంలో పుడక or कबाब में हड्डि) could be today, a D3C3.

The day's numbers seem to be favoring Tommy Haas, born on 03.APR.1978 (MON), a D3C5 with a name number of 30, to make it an overall D3C5N30.

Here's the detailed pic: (screen-shot from HTML here)

Wimbledon—03.JUL.2009—Roger Federer vs. Tommy Haas

Good enough for me to take a D bet on Haas with WiFi; wanted to ramp it up to 3M :-)

Feel that Haas can't get a better day for his resurgence and revenge for his 2009 French Open loss:

Haas was narrowly defeated by the former world No.1 and eventual Roland Garros champion Roger Federer; 7–6(7–4), 7–5, 4–6, 0–6, 2–6 in the 4th Round Match. At a crucial stage of the 3rd set, Haas was only 5 points away from his biggest win in clay, unable to convert the break point the score leveled to 4–4, Federer overturned the match after this break, winning the last 3 sets.

On Reincarnation

There was an unusual message from ARE Catalog:

Boy recalls past life as WWII fighter pilot in Soul Survivor,

with a link to the following:

Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot

Soul Survivor on Amazon.com

Surprisingly, what i was reminded of was that other-worldly story from the collection of Roald Dahl: They Shall Not Grow Old.

Briefly, Fin gets shot in a WW II air raid and returns to base after two days w/o any recollection of what happened. Later on, during another sortie, he recalls how he almost meets God in that earlier outing, but gets back to everyday life. The story ends with Fin getting shot in yet another raid and choosing not to eject from his plane, saying:

"I'm a lucky bastard. A lucky, lucky bastard."

Gives me goose pimples.

Anyway, i don't really need proof of reincarnation as i have already read Gina Cerminara's searing analysis of the readings of Edgar Cayce in that memorable Many Mansions. She even gives an excellent reason for homosexuality: Too many lives in one gender with a switch to the other one in the current life!

IMHO, the Master has given the most elegant explanation for reinc.: (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Advice to Ishan, page 605, middle)

TUTOR: "Revered sir, one man quickly succeeds in spiritual life, and another doesn't succeed at all. How do you explain that?"

MASTER: "The truth is that a man succeeds to a great extent because of tendencies inherited from his previous births. People think he has attained the goal all of a sudden. A man drank a glass of wine in the morning. It made him completely drunk. He began to behave improperly. People were amazed to see that he could be so drunk after one glass. But another man said, 'Why, he has been drinking all night.'

My own take is that Sachin Tendulkar was Vic Trumper in an earlier life.

(Q) If a soul fails to improve itself, what becomes of it?
(A) That's why the reincarnation, why it reincarnates; that it may have the opportunity. Can the will of man continue to defy its Maker?
—Edgar Cayce Reading 826-8