Chakra Chaitanya

Had a wonderful Maha ShivaRatri celebration at the nearby Chaithanya Bharathi Hall.

This huge banner giving info of the seven chakra intrigued me:

Chakras (Kundalini Yoga)

Sri Ramakrishna talks at length in The Gospel on His "very secret experience": (page 830, middle)

"A man's spiritual consciousness is not awakened unless his kundalini is aroused.

"The kundalini dwells in the Muladhara. Then it is aroused, it passes along the Sushumna nerve, goes through the centres of Svadhisthana, Manipura, and so on, and at last reaches the head. This is called the movement of Mahāvāyu, the Spiritual Current. It culminates in samādhi.

"One's spiritual consciousness is not awakened by the mere reading of books. One should also pray to God. The kundalini is aroused if the aspirant feels restless for God. To talk of knowledge from mere study and hearsay! What will that accomplish?

"Just before my attaning this state of mind, it had been revealed to me how the kundalini is aroused, how the lotuses of the different centres blossom forth, and how all this culminates in samādhi. This is a very secret experience. I saw a boy twenty-two or twenty-three years old, exactly resembling me, enter the Sushumna nerve and commune with the lotuses touching them with his tongue. He began with the centre at the anus and passed through the centres at the sexual organ, naval, and so on. The different lotuses of those centres-four-petalled, six-petalled, ten-petalled, and so forth-had been drooping at his touch they stood erect.

"When he reached the heart-I distinctly remember it-and communed with the lotuses there, touching it with his tongue, the twelve-petalled lotus, which was hanging head down, stood erect and open its petals. Then he came to the sixteen-petalled lotus in the throat and two petalled lotus in the forehead. And last of all, the thousand-petalled lotus in the head blossomed. Since then I have been in this state."

Buzzingly Yours

With Google launching Buzz a couple of days back, i logged off Twitter. Guess the same is going to happen to my presence on Blogger.

Find Buzz more immediate and informal as compared to the rigor of blogging.

Also, Google Buzz (28 + 22) adds up to 50, the same name number of stalwarts such as Sachin Tendulkar and Roger Federer. Guess we are on a good wicket there.

Am on Google Buzz here.

Prime a Donna

This morning i was quite amused by the following from Ramakrishna As We Saw Him: (page 362*, top)

Nistarini Ghosh
…
One day he was coming to our house and a number of devotees had gathered to see him. When he arrived, he came straight upstairs and remained for some time talking with me. At that time I had a picture of Sri Krishna in my shrine and I told him I was anxious to have a vision of Krishna. He went downstairs where all the devotees were singing sankirtan [holy songs]. They put a heavy garland around his neck which reached his feet. At once he went into samadhi and assumed the exact posture of Sri Krishna. All the devotees also went into a higher state of consciousness on seeing him. Later he asked me if i was now satisfied. I said I would like to see Radha by Sri Krishna's side. He smiled and replied: "You will have to wait awhile for that."

~@~*-*~@~

After Len Hutton scored that 364, i believe he was accosted by a lady who said:

"Oh, Mr. Hutton, if you'd scored 365, you'd have one run for each day of the year",

to which Sir Len observed: "You can't really please a woman, can you?"!

* If that page number had been 36…4, it would have been the icing on the cake ;-)

Aeons of Arunachala

"You don't have to be the biggest or the best, if you're the first."
—The Sunday Gentleman

If Sri Ramana was attached to anything, it was to just the Hill.

In Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi, we find Him saying: (page 355, top)

"Someone from abroad wants a stone from the holy part of the hill. He does not know that the whole hill is holy. The hill is Lord Siva Himself. As we identify ourselves with the body, so Siva has chosen to identify Himself with the hill."

Read a snippet as well that might give some factual basis to the mythological story of Arunachala appearing as a column of fire: (page 354, top)

The word 'Annamalai' in Tamil means 'an inaccessible mountain'. 'Annal' is a special name for Lord Siva, who appeared in this place in the form of a column of fire, neither the top nor root of which could be approached, hence inaccessible. The mountain thus came to be known as Annal Malai (malai in Tamil means mountain). Slowly the word got corrupted to Annamalai. Paul Brunton, in his A Message from Arunachala, writes that his geologist friend from America held the view that Arunachala was thrown up by the earth under the stress of some violent volcanic eruptions in the dim ages before even the coal-bearing strata were formed.

That was a very long time ago! From Energy - How And When Was Coal Formed?:

The Carboniferous Period, during which coal was produced, occurred between 286 and 360 million years ago.

Arunachala in Google Earth