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#2029 -
http://www.hindu.com/lf/2005/01/12/stories/2005011211490200.htm
`Stoveside' meditations
BEING
A housewife, closeted within the four walls of the kitchen amid
pots, pans and ladles, dishing out culinary delicacies for
family, friends and relatives need not always be drudgery. It can
end up in something as creative as getting together a 162-page
anthology of poems, as Parvathi Vaidyanathan's `Kichenette Soul'
will show.
The `By-the-stove-pondering by a homebound woman on Life,
Meditation and Spirituality' has been published by Grow books.
Ms. Vaidyanathan attributes the inspiration for her book to her
Guru, Swami Akshara, who encouraged her to drop "scribbling
on bits of paper and get them on to e-mails which took shape as a
book." she says.
She says that waking up at around
Santosh, a II Year BBA student, has done the page setting and
cover design.
Priced at Rs. 55, it will soon be available in leading
bookstores. Phone: 2847 3836/9840 438438.
By Swahilya
The message below, a letter from
Robert Redford urging concerned
Americans to protest President Bush's plan to open the Arctic
National
Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development, was sent to you by
Mark Otter
from http://www.nrdcactionfund.org
Dear Friend,
No one voted on Election Day to destroy the Arctic National
Wildlife
Refuge. But President Bush is now claiming a mandate to do
exactly that.
Congressional leaders are pushing for a quick vote that would
turn
field.
Even worse, they are planning to avoid public debate on this
devastating measure by hiding it in a must-pass budget bill.
Please go to the NRDC Action Fund website
(http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/) right now
and send a message telling
your
Arctic Refuge.
And please forward my message to your friends, family, and
colleagues.
We must mobilize millions of Americans in opposition as quickly
as
possible.
Don't believe for a second that the president is targeting the
Arctic
Refuge for the sake of
at the pump.
President Bush knows full well that oil drilled in the Arctic
Refuge
would take ten years to get to market and would never equal more
than a
paltry one or two percent of our nation's daily consumption.
Simply put,
sacrificing the crown jewel of our wildlife heritage would do
nothing
to reduce gas prices or break our addiction to
But if the raid on the Arctic Refuge isn't really about gas
prices or
energy security, then what is it about?
It's the symbolism.
The Arctic Refuge represents everything spectacular and
everything
endangered about
ecological serenity . . . a vast stretch of pristine wilderness .
. .
an irreplaceable birthing ground for polar bears, caribou and
white
wolves.
It is the greatest living reminder that conserving nature in its
wild
state is a core American value. It stands for every remnant of
wilderness that we, as a people, have wisely chosen to protect
from the
relentless march of bulldozers, chain saws and oil rigs.
And that's why the Bush administration is dead set on destroying
it.
By unlocking the Arctic Refuge, they hope to open the door for
oil, gas
and coal giants to invade our last and best wild places: our
western
canyonlands, our ancient forests, our coastal waters, even our
national
monuments.
This is the real agenda behind the raid on the Arctic Refuge and
the
entire Bush-Cheney energy plan: to transfer our public estate
into
corporate hands so it can be liquidated for a quick buck.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) admitted as much when he
said
this battle over the Arctic Refuge is really a fight over whether
energy
exploration will be allowed in similarly sensitive areas in the
future.
"It's about precedent," Rep. DeLay said.
I take him at his word. If we let the president and Congress
plunder
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the sake of oil company
profits,
then no piece of our natural heritage will be safe from wholesale
destruction.
Please go to the NRDC Action Fund website
(http://www.nrdcactionfund.org) and tell
your senators and
representative they have no mandate to destroy the Arctic Refuge.
Then please be
sure to forward this message to as many people as you can.
And thank you for speaking out at this critical time.
Sincerely,
Robert Redford
NRDC Action Fund
from A Course in Consciousness,
by
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/
In the meditation for July 24 in A Net of Jewels (1996),
the sage Ramesh Balsekar says,
"The very existence of the manifestation depends on its
being perceived. Space and time do not otherwise
exist. When the sense of presence as consciousness is not
there, there is no manifestation. The only truth is
BEINGNESS, here and now."
And in the meditation for August 26, he says,
"Whatever is happening is always
happening only in the mind that perceives it."
We shall talk about two different types of mental
processes. Perceiving is the simple appearance of movement
in Consciousness. Movement in Consciousness is perception
itself, and it has no separate parts. On the other hand, conceptualization
is the process of separating and naming. This requires
intellect (a concept), and consists of mentally separating part
of the movement from the rest, and giving it a name. Thus,
all concepts are characterized by name and form, so
conceptualization fragments movement into separate
concepts.
All words are concepts, thus all spoken or written
communication is conceptual. This entire course is
conceptual but it points to what cannot be
conceptualized. As an example, we shall distinguish
between movement in Consciousness, or phenomenon, and
Consciousness-at-rest, or Noumenon (discussed in the next
section). These are not real distinctions because
Consciousness is undivided, and thus are examples of
conceptualization.
As we may say that movement in Consciousness is an appearance
in Consciousness, we may also say that the manifest
(phenomenon) is an appearance in the Unmanifest
(Noumenon). We can conceptualize further by using the
terms, the manifest, the manifestation, phenomenality, and
phenomenon almost interchangeably, with slight differences as
determined by the context.
A concept can be "external", detected by one or more
of the five "external" senses such as hearing or
seeing, or "internal" like a thought, feeling, emotion,
or sensation. In Section
1.1,
we made a distinction between the concepts of "objective
reality" and "subjective reality". We said
that objective reality is external to, and independent of, the
mind and can be observed and agreed upon by myself and at least
one external observer. Subjective reality is internal to the mind
and can be observed only by myself. (We also said that
certain mental phenomena can be considered to be objective if
they can be verified by an external observer.)
The concept of objective reality rests on the assumption,
introduced in Section
1.1,
that there exist observers who are external to me, and who can
confirm my own observations. From childhood, we grew up without
questioning this concept, so it sounds very natural to us. But
now we shall see that this so-called "objective
reality" is no different in principle from "subjective
reality" and is not reality at all, but is nothing but a
concept. This may begin to make sense if we stop to
consider that, not only is objective reality supposed to be
external to, and independent of, my mind, but so also is the
"external" observer whom I depend on to confirm my own
observations of objective reality. However, the external
observer who communicates with me is not in fact independent
of my mind at all, but is part of my subjective reality,
i.e., is an image in my mind.
Reality is what is, without conceptualization. However,
objective reality is only a concept and cannot be proved. Even
though it is useful for communication, for health, and for
survival, it does not represent Reality, and therefore it will
bring suffering if it is taken to be real. Suffering comes
because it defines external observers as being objects that are
external to me, so that logically I am an object that is external
to them. Thus, it defines me as being part of their objective
reality, which means that I am separate from them. As long as I
identify with a separate, objective me, I will be unable to
realize my true nature and I will suffer.
Another problem with defining myself as an object is that all
objects change in time, i.e., they are all temporal, so they all
appear and disappear in time. Am I willing to accept that my true
nature is purely temporal? As we stated above, the concept of
objective reality has physical survival value. But it has only
passing physical survival value, because everything in
"objective reality" comes and goes, and nothing
in it survives.
We have defined "subjective reality" as that which
can be observed only by me, with the intention of including in it
all of my subjective experiences, namely, my thoughts, feelings,
emotions, intuitions, etc. As discussed above, it is clear that
there is no intrinsic difference between this subjective reality
and the objective reality that we have previously defined, since
all "external" observers are only images in my
mind. "Objective reality" becomes nothing but an
appearance or image in my mind just as "subjective
reality" is. All mental images come and go, and this
is as true of the images of "objective" objects as it
is of "subjective" objects.
The
world in my mind is the only world that I can perceive directly.
All bodies and other objects in this world are nothing but images
in my mind. (The concept that there are no other minds than
mine is a statement of solipsism, first proposed by the French
philosopher, René Descartes, 1596 - 1650.) If I accept the
concept that other minds contain their own individual worlds, (a
metaphysical assumption that cannot be proved), there are as many
worlds as there are minds.
On
page 96 of The Wisdom of Nisargadatta (1992) by Robert
Powell, the sage Nisargadatta Maharaj says,
"All exists in the mind; even the body
is an integration in the mind of a vast number of sensory
perceptions, each perception also a mental state ... Both
mind and body are intermittent states. The sum total of
these flashes creates the illusion of existence."
and on p. 201 of I Am That (1984), he says,
"Learn to look without imagination, to listen without
distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the
essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of
perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or
smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and
not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from
fear."
In Section
4.3, we introduced the concept of Einstein locality, now to
be referred to simply as locality. Since space-time is
nothing but a concept within each mind (see Section
14.1), locality is also only a concept within
each mind. Now we ask, if each mind contains its own
world, how can these minds communicate with each other? In
other words, we know that a person in my mind can communicate
with another person in my mind, but how can a person in my mind
communicate with a person in your mind?
In Section
5.2 we introduced the concept of nonlocal mind but
without relating it to nonlocal Consciousness. In Section
6.5 we saw that the consciousness of all local observers is
really nonlocal Consciousness. If it were not nonlocal,
minds would have no means of communicating with each other. Thus,
we see that communication between minds occurs because
Consciousness is nonlocal, even though worlds are separate and
individual.
We
know that individual worlds are highly correlated with each other
because many of the same objects and events appear in different
minds. Thus, both your body and mine may appear in my mind
as well as in yours, but the images in my mind are different from
those in yours, so the bodies are different. The way we
know they are the same bodies is because of nonlocal
communication between us.
Nonlocal
communication between minds is experienced as an interpersonal
connection which transcends verbal communication (see Sections 5.2,
5.6).
This is most clear whenever ego conflicts between minds are not
so strong that they obscure the nonlocal connection, such as in
many parental and filial relationships, sibling relationships,
close personal relationships, support groups, therapy groups, and
meditation groups (see Section
14.2, Chapter
16).
If
minds were not nonlocal (see also Section
9.4), many disagreements between them could never be resolved
because minds that are separate necessarily have different
experiences, perceptions, and beliefs. Hence, wars between
religions, political ideologies, nations, and socioeconomic
classes would be inevitable.