Jaswant Singh, has served seven terms in Parliament and held charge of six ministries in BJP-led governments, including finance, external affairs and defence
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#3491 - Friday, April 3, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
The Urban Guru Cafe today enters Phase 2.
Quotes from the featured ‘guest’.
“Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement: awareness is motionless and timeless, here now.”
“The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless, through and through, it dissolves, and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dream-like, misty, irrelevant”.
Music by Vas, Sitar piece by Ravi Shankar, Flute piece by Telvin Singh and Sarod piece by Asad Qizilbash, plus a short piece from the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
Listen to this podcast at
http://urbangurucafe.com/wordpress/2009/04/03/phase-2-across-space-and-time-program-1/
Nadine Kreisberger Posted online:
Mar 29, 2009 at 1153 hrs http://www.indianexpress.com/story_print.php?storyid=439894
Jaswant Singh, has served seven terms in Parliament and held
charge of six ministries in BJP-led governments, including
finance, external affairs and defence
What does spirituality mean to you?
Is it a yearning, a direction, a search? A distillation of who
and what we are, of what and why this is all about, knowing it is
not only about you or me?
It certainly is apart from physicality. And it is very different
from organized rituals or religion.
It refers to the spirit.
There is no shape or form to it. You cannot capture it. It is
like a fragrance, a perfume. If you try to photograph it, you won’t
be able to capture it. The moment you try, it will escape you.
So I cannot answer what is spirituality. If I could define it in
words, I would not have to do all this. All this would be a waste
of time.
So all this is a search?
Of course it is. This question has inspired the search of human
beings ever since they started thinking. I cite Saint Augustine,
who in his “Confessions” remarked: “I do not even
know what I do not know”. And I am still searching.
This search has not led to answers yet?
Search is like the horizon. And there is an Arabic saying, “once
the house is built, the decline starts” --- once the search
is complete, life ends.
Is the search destined or rather about chance, “coincidences”?
What is a coincidence?
Co-incidence. Why should two incidents come together? We attempt
to explain here what is beyond human intellect through the
inadequate mechanism of human intellect. So you have to submit,
you have to accept.
How does one react to beauty for instance? You have to submit to
beauty. You cannot conquer it. And if you have to experience it,
you do not experience it through dictating. There is a very fine
Sanskrit shlok, “in accordance to the inherent laws of
Nature, things happen”. Those who are arrogant work on the
assumption that they control it.
It reminds me of a story
about Ramana Maharshi, maybe the most profound practitioner of
non-duality --- there is no God outside of you, It is you! He was
once asked if everything is in accordance to fate.
“Yes” he said.
And he further added:
“Imagine you were sitting in a train’s carriage.
Another passenger carrying a suitcase on his head enters the
carriage. He sits down but does not put the suitcase down on the
floor. What would you say?”
“That he is a fool! said the questioner. An engine is
pulling the train and its carriages, so why carry the suitcase?”
“So whoever is pulling the carriage of your life...”
You also quoted from the Quran: “in Him I have put my trust and to Him I turn penitently”
Of course I have put my trust in Him. You are part of that “Him”
as I am. Who, what is that Him? There are various names of It.
There is a wonderful Sanskrit quote, “I am the universe, you
are Me”. It is the concept of non-duality: there is no Him
outside of me.
As a child you had belief, and later on came faith, how did that happen?
I was born in very conservative, traditional circumstances. So I
understood early the essence of belief. Then there were too
numerous experiences. And faith gradually came. It is not that I
had some sudden revelation. I have not been illuminated as some
other people have. It is like water in a well --- not an artesian
well that suddenly erupts from the ground, but one in which the
water slowly rises.
Did you ever have moments of doubt?
Yes, but not of Him, of myself. Yet I am not keen on speaking in
the first person, in an autobiographical way. It is a form of
self-aggrandisement. I find it arrogant and distasteful, even
though politicians must live in the world of self-projection, and
everyone tells me I do not do enough of it. But I cannot do which
I am not. I would become so dry as a human being.
How come you are in the world of politics, of all worlds?
I won’t tell you it is “because I want to serve a great
purpose”. Part of it is circumstantial, part of it is a
search of one’s own self, and partly as an avenue of
self-expression. I also write, I sketch a bit, I listen to music,
I ride, I appreciate the fragrance of flowers, beauty and so on.
Nothing is compartmentalized, it is all the flow of human
personality into different channels.
So is there such a thing as a special purpose or mission to one’s life?
Of course there is. I am an instrument, chiselled for many
different things. But none of it happened in a calculated way. I
have not led a calculating life. My instinct has led me much more
than has dry dull reasoning. Because you have to jump in order to
find. Reason is quite often an impediment to instinct.
When I finished school, my father asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wished to go to university. But we had suddenly become very poor and he said he could not send me. So without telling anybody, I sought to be admitted if found fit in the military Academy. I just jumped into it. I did not serve though to be a pensioner. At some point, when in search of another avenue of self-expression, I resigned from the Army and joined politics.
Growing up in the desert, you imbibed such a sense of freedom --- how could it combine with the restricting worlds of the Army and politics?
By building a very strong cocoon of privacy.
What about your unbending spirit?
It is about never giving up. In the Army for instance, I always
did something slightly off the routine. As a cadet for instance,
we were once in a general training camp in the jungle. Early
morning, I tied a red scarf which is against the rules. As a
punishment, the officer asked me to dig the latrine. Then, as we
had to go up a hillside, he made me carry the heaviest weapon. He
told me “you are not complaining”. I said “what is
the good of complaining to you?” And I have found at times
an unnatural resistance to pain.
If there was one question you could ask God, what would it be?
It would not be a question. “I am You”, so whatever I
do is what You are doing. There is nothing I can ask. Give me
light, that is all I would say.
If you were to be reincarnated, what would you choose?
I know there is reincarnation. And whatever my faith ordains
shall be.
What is your idea of happiness?
Is it just an absence of discontent? Is it a fulfilment, as
simple as having a good meal? Happiness is such a weak word.
“Anand” is much more powerful. It is about the
cognition of Beauty.
At times of challenges where do you find the energy, the anchor?
In myself.
You are that anchored?
Because I am anchored in Him.