We are our own worst enemies

• AJIT BISHNOI
BY WHOM, consciousness (mind, senses and body) of the self has been conquered by the self, his consciousness is a friend, and for whom, who has not conquered the consciousness, his consciousness remains an enemy of the self”, says Bhagavad Gita. So what should one do? “One should deliver the self by the self; shouldn’t degrade the self, because a person is a friend of the self as well as an enemy of the self”. (Gita, 6.6 &6.5) But what do we generally see? Many persons reach high levels of excellence in different fields and attain wealth, fame, power, etc, but succumb to the temptations of flesh, pride, vengeance and so on. One famous example comes readily to the mind. Ravana was a very accomplished brahmin. It is said that Lord Shiva had personally honoured Ravana besides giving him an important boon. Ravana, however, became very proud, so much so that he decided to kindnap Sitaji. Later on he was advised by nearly all his near and dear ones, but he wouldn’t retract. We know what happened to him ultimately. What is there to learn from this famous example? There are two parts in becoming successful. The first part is to put the necessary hard work, which many are able to do. The second part is the more difficult of the two, that is to stay on course. Any success, including in the spiritual field, gives the feeling of invincibility and a sense of superiority. No wonder Lord Krishna has warned in the Bhagavad Gita, “Out of thousands, hardly anyone strives for perfection. Out of those striving, hardly anyone reaches perfection”. (7.3) Why is it so? Because success, any success has the potency to make one proud, to look down upon others, and in many cases to become revengeful; that is how one makes progress and spoils it. Why ? Because one is deluded into believing that one is highly intelligent. “How else could such success have been achieved?” one thinks. Then one assumes that he or she can get away with such transgressions. Even pseudospiritualists do this. So what should one do? Be like a tree which bears fruits: the more laden with fruits it is, the lower its branches will bend. Become humble and stay humble. And better still, surrender to God. He shall be one’s guide. God promises such help. Lord Krishna has declared in the Bhagavad Gita: “Those people who worship Me with undeviated attention, meditating on Me, of those regular practitioners of yoga, I undertake attainment of what one does not have and security of what one has.”

Raise Your Kundalini, Expand Energy Field

Divyaa Kummar
Energy follows thought. Your energies travel to where you place your attention. Kundalini describes personal energy fields; and ‘raising your Kundalini’ really implies an expansion of this personal energy field. As we extend our individual energy fields from current self to higher aspects of Self, finally merging into pure consciousness and its oneness, we naturally experience its bliss. Mind expansion helps. Gyan yoga encompasses a long-term focused attention on higher aspects of self and life; our attention shifts from the microcosm to the macrocosm. This is followed by energy flow and over a period of time this leads to raised energy fields. This is why we can be operating from the higher awareness and bliss of a raised Kundalini without ever doing any direct work on it; and why gyanis are able to reach enlightened states of being. In reverse, a raised Kundalini implies the wisdom and purity of an expanded beingness and thus energy management, be it through meditation, pranayam, kriya, reiki, or some means of directly working with your energies. Gyan and meditation help expand your personal energy field at a geometric rate. Bhakti or devotion to God helps for it is at deeper levels; it is love in its various expressions — starting with love of self and evolving into unconditional love for humanity and all that is. If your focus is on love, your energies follow and you dwell in an expanded energy field moment-to-moment. Such a state eventually leads to what is known as a rising Kundalini. Guided meditations can be a vital aid, for they are the modern alternative to ancient dhyana techniques, whereby you wilfully place your attention on divine aspects of self. Your energies follow and if you are a regular meditator your energy fields expand and merge with your point of focus in these meditations. Based on the law of attraction, if you are vibrating at a finer frequency, you are receptive to a comparable quality of consciousness elevation. And based on the law that tantra employs — energy resists its opposite and raised energy fields automatically resist denser energy signatures of anger, judgment, sorrow — we find ourselves increasingly in sync with the universal qualities of love and beingness. Allow your Kundalini to unfurl rather than looking for quick-fix routes that might end up having just the opposite effect. A raised Kundalini implies expanded energy fields and your current physical reality is only a reflection of this inner you. Density cannot coexist with raised energies and whatever doesn’t match this expansion will begin to disintegrate. Without the support of gyan and its deep understanding, without the succour of bhakti and its deep acceptance, without the dedication to self growth, you may well be thrown off guard. Become aware that as your energies follow thought, they can indeed be directed through constant focus and continued attention. In this manner, you will find that raising your Kundalini is not as exotic a goal as it seems. It is more about where your thoughts reside on a regular basis. Based on your inclination, gyan, kriya or hatha yoga could work equally well. All inner expansion leads to bhakti which automatically amplifies the process. You would eventually meditate 24x7 within even while carrying on with an enhanced reality on the outside. That is called a raised Kundalini.

Who created the Universe?

• PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA

FROM the earliest days of humanity there has been intense curiosity about how it all came about; how man and woman were created and how the Universe was created. Each religion, each culture developed its own answers, its mythology. Christianity and Islam adopted the Judaic version of creation, as laid out in the Book of Genesis. God made the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh. He created man and from the man’s rib made the woman. Hindu mythology had a different version. So do other cultures and religions. Was God then independent of the Universe? Where was He before the Universe came into being? Where would He go after the Universe is destroyed? Buddha said: Universe was never created. Universe will never die. Universe has been in existence always, and will be in existence always. Sanatana Dharma, the philosophy of Hinduism, supports Buddha. The Brahman always was, is and will be. Brahman is Existence. Existence is the universe. There never was a time it did not exist, and there never will be a time it would not exist. Different parts of the Universe will die and new ones will be created. The Big Bangs and Black Holes will occur at different spaces and different times in the Universe randomly and in a chaotic manner. But the Universe will exist forever and ever. While modern science talks about the Big Bang theory, no scientist has an answer to what was there before to cause the Big Bang, if it is considered to be the seminal act of creation. Science has as of today no answer even to how living matter was created. A-biogenesis, the emergence of living matter from non-living material is still a mystery, though there may be hundreds of unproven theories. How the first particle of the chain of life, the amino acid or its constituents, came into existence is still a question mark. Hindu scriptures say that living matter came out of the energy of the elements of the Universe. Taittreya Upanishad explains how from the energy of cosmos arose all other energies such as space, air, fire, water and earth, finally resulting in plants and humans. Science has a long way to go before it has an alternative explanation. After reading the Upanishad, Einstein remarked: Spirituality starts where science ends. Unlike most other scientists, Einstein understood that there was never a time that the Universe and Life did not exist.

Prophet Mohammed, Last Messenger Of Allah

Zeeshan Ahmed

The life of the Holy Prophet of Islam, Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa, whose birth anniversary falls this month, is a role model. The high accolades paid to his personality by Allah through the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah or Islamic practices reminds us of his exalted personality. Thrice in a day, the adhan or call to prayer reminds Muslims that the Holy Prophet is the Messenger of Allah. In addition, the namaz recited emphasises the unity of Allah and the messengership of the Holy Prophet in the same breath, thereby underscoring the significance of the persona of the Prophet. Islam teaches that Allah chose to introduce Himself through His words revealed to His choicest servants. For the guidance of mankind, Allah sent 124,000 prophets, the first of them being Adam and the last being Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa. It was the Holy Prophet of Islam upon whom Allah chose to end His message and complete the chain of prophethood and messengership: “This day, I have perfected the religion (Islam) for you; completed My proof upon you and am satisfied with Islam as a religion (Maidah, verse 5). Allah emphasises the finality of the prophethood and messengership of Hazrat Mohammed with the words, “Mohammed is not the father of any of the men among you, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the seal of the Prophets” (Ahzab, verse 40). Such is the respect accorded to the Holy Prophet that Allah chose to end his communication and message with the Holy Qur’an revealed to His last prophet and messenger. The Qur’an itself, along with the code of laws, pays rich tribute to the Prophet. At one place, while the Holy Prophet is called “Uswatul Hasanah”, the ideal model to emulate, at another place, he is called the “bearer of good news”, paradise, and a “warner” for divine chastisement and retribution. The compliments paid to the Holy Prophet by Allah are not out of place. The period before the arrival of the Holy Prophet in Arabia was one of darkness and ignorance. Wars were fought over petty matters, superstitions were rife and women were hardly respected. The social fabric of the Arabs veered more towards vice and debauchery than religion. Principles which we take for granted in our lives like justice were thrown to the winds. It was in such trying circumstances that the Holy Prophet announced his message that would change the face and social fabric of the Arabs and others forever. Within a period of 23 years, with extreme patience, with the odds of success stacked against him, the Holy Prophet attracted people towards the message of Allah. Centuries-old customs were disbanded, enmity replaced by brotherhood and superstitions replaced with firm beliefs and reliance upon Allah. Through the love showered upon his only daughter, Fatemah, the Holy Prophet reiterated his commitment to the respect and uplift of women and abolished the shameful practice of burial of female infants. This brings to the fore the primary mode adopted by the Prophet for disseminating his message: his exemplary character and morals. So whether it was dealing with his family members, his friends or his enemies, he set standards of ethics which remain unsurpassed. It is for this reason that despite the advance of 1,400 years since his demise, the Prophet lives amongst us today through his teachings and words.

Fasting Is A Way Of Knowing Your Body

Amar Misra

The two important pillars of health are good nutrition and moderate exercise. The most important factor, however, is your mind. Diet control has a lot to do with mind control. Which is why fasting is prescribed in many religions as a way of self-discipline. If you try to learn the inherent programme loaded in your body, it would direct you to health and happiness. You may not need to curb your cravings to eat what is not good for your body. The method is called witnessing. You can start by taking five minutes from your morning schedule and spend it watching your breath. Sit in a comfortable position and start watching your breath. Keep your focus on your breath when you inhale and exhale. This practice would give you a glimpse of a state where there are no thoughts in your mind. Slowly you would be able to watch the activities of your mind and the journey of thoughts from one subject to another. Soon you would know the system that operates your senses and in turn your mind. You have five sense servants. You can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. None of these sense servants are designed to govern your hunger. Yet you feel hungry when you see the food you like. Any talk about your favourite food or its aroma immediately triggers your hunger. When you find anything tasty, you want to eat more and more of that food. If you allow all your servants except the cashier to handle and operate your cash chest, you cannot remain solvent for long. Your body is programmed to send a specific signal to your brain when it feels hungry. The trick is in the knowledge that most of the time your eating patterns are governed by habit and not by the requirements of the body. Then how to know and feel the real and actual sense of hunger? Fasting is one of the timetested and proven methods that helps you understand your hunger and has been used by almost all religions of the world. The best way to begin is to go on an ‘only water’ diet for as long as you can do it conveniently depending upon your health. It may range between 10 hours and 24 hours unless you have some medical problem. The purpose is to focus on your hunger and understand how it feels to be hungry and how hunger increases its intensity. When the body gives you a signal that it is hungry and needs food, then try to witness the sensation and understand how it feels. Drink water and the signal would fade away. Next time it would give you a stronger signal. You need to understand these signals before you respond to the same. When you feel that you are very hungry then you drink some fresh fruit juice and watch how a signal of satisfaction is generated. Try fresh fruits, milk and cereals later but always keep the focus on your hunger and satiety signals of the body. The objective is to know the dynamics of your body which is unique for everybody. Is it not surprising that among the six billion people living on this planet, no two persons have the same finger prints? We are designed to be unique and incomparable. So respect your body and learn its dynamics. Knowing ourselves would help our body attain perfect health. Always.

Beware, the ego is constantly at work

VITHAL C NADKARNI

WITH 500,000 copies sold over three years, Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth wasn’t scorching the bestseller charts the way his earlier Power of Now had. Then came Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement which created a publishing history of sorts: 3.5 million copies printed and shipped in just four weeks to feed the blistering demand for a book that exhorts readers to give up ‘ego-consciousness’ and live in the present. In his first new book in eight years, Tolle concedes that awakening to your life’s purpose may not be an easy endeavour at the best of times. But it helps when you travel light, when you “chuck de” all that inner baggage and identification with things, along with mental concepts, or addictions, says the German-born mystic. Again, this is easy to say, almost impossible to accomplish without the help of insightful action: for the wily ego is constantly at work, finding new ways to ensnare our mind in new yarns and escapades away from the ever-present now. Tolle’s book also delineates a new, universal demonology for the 21st century: accordingly, ‘hearing voices in the head’ is not only the prerogative of the possessed, and those damned with the label of being psychotic. Listen carefully and you’ll find a voice (or even a cacophony) whispering in the caverns of your mind. What is more distressing “most people are so completely identified with it — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe these people as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are,” Tolle explains. The ego thrives on comparisons, on combat, and on being right, not to forget judging others. But one can go beyond it by getting into the witness mode, what the Indian tradition calls sakshi bhava. One can then take appropriate action as the Zen teacher Kasan did. The monk had to preside over a funeral of a local dignitary. As he stood waiting for the VIPs to arrive, Kasan found he had sweaty palms. He stepped down on the next day, pleading inability to see the sameness of being in every human. He became the pupil of another master and returned eight years later, enlightened. Tolle ends with a paean to the spiritual practice of enthusiasm, which is not dependent on winlose mindsets. Instead, enthusiasm rides the wave of the present moment to “give out its own abundance.”

Nothing to be proved out there

• MUKUL SHARMA
THIS notion that science seeks to empirically understand the nature of physical reality is not only wearing thin but has begun to beg the question in a big way. That’s because the premise of a “physical reality” — one that is considered to be the sum of all matter-energy patterns in existence — is turning out to be such a dynamic and fast-changing concept that hypotheses regarding it have to be modified almost as soon as they are formulated. What this means is that the goal of objectivity in knowledge can no longer be properly sustained. Before the 20th century, for instance, the “out there” was something which was believed to be static and basically provable and, therefore, considered easy to analyse and investigate. But after Einstein and quantum mechanics, this peaceful worldview underwent a historic transformation. Time turned out to be a fourth dimension, gravitation was the result of curved space, subatomic particles could be at two places at once, one aspect of something could never be measured without compromising another, black holes sucked stuff into the limbo of oblivion — in short nothing was as it appeared to be. Still science soldiered on. Next, two foundational pillars of objectivity began crumbling: causality and the ultimate nature of the medium things are immersed in — spacetime. The flow or arrow of time appeared not to necessarily respect a past to future movement. Meaning, the theoretical statements that describe physical processes at the microscopic level remain true even if the direction of time is reversed. So can effects at this level come into existence before their causes are generated or what? Also, theories suggest that at sufficiently small scales spacetime loses its continuous nature because of things like virtual particles popping in and out of existence in a process called “vacuum fluctuation.” Both space and time then become a grainy foam instead. Of course science doesn’t have to be abandoned because of these momentous discoveries. For one thing, the discoveries themselves were made because of the findings of science. It has also given us awesome and almost magical technological prowess and continues to do so. However, what it needs to develop now is a little respect for what it studies and probably a generous helping of subjectivity, too, in order to justly elaborate on the transcendent nature of its subject.

Don’t be angry, be aware

PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA

WATCH someone who gets angry very quickly. The more he gets angry, the more he seems addicted to being angry. Getting angry does not resolve problems. Biologists tell us that repeated behaviour actually rewires the brain. Neural networks get established with repeated behaviour pattern. What this means is that anger breeds anger. The emotions not only rewire your brain, but they also rewire your body. In their efforts to accommodate these repeated and debilitating emotions, the cells lose the capacity to absorb nutrients. They grow less and they rejuvenate less. These changes affect you and more importantly affect your progeny as well, as your entire cellular and DNA structure can be changed by your behaviour. Biology tells us that your emotions are chemicals, and these chemicals are released by the brain. We control these chemicals. However, over time, these chemicals can change you and control you. Watch yourself getting angry the next time. What are you angry at? Are you angry at someone or are you angry about something? If you say that you are angry at some thing, at some behaviour, watch yourself as someone else repeats that behaviour. Do you get equally angry? Do you allow some people to get away with such behaviour, or even humour such behaviour in some people that would make you blow up at another person? Therefore, are you angry with a person because you have made up your mind to be angry with that person? You will find that 90% of the time you are angry at a person and not a behaviour pattern or an issue. If you are angry with an issue you can learn to use that anger as energy and do something with that energy. If it is behaviour, you can learn to laugh at it. However, if it is a person, you have a deeper problem. You have already made a judgement about that person and all that you do is to collect evidence to support your judgment. Nothing that person does can be right for you. With awareness you can drop these judgments. Awareness makes you realise the truth that you and another person and every other person are the same at a deep level. If you are getting angry with someone, you are in fact getting angry with yourself. It is your negativities that make you see others negatively. It is possible to drop these negativities via meditation. Don’t get angry, become aware.

The Golden Mean Is Well Within Reach

Indu Jain

In governance, the core idea is to ensure the positive alignment of the pancha tattvas. For this, action has to first spring from within, from the inner core that all of us have, including those of us who are in the business of governance. India’s growth rate is computed on the basis of material resource development. This involves spending these resources. The focus is on production and consumption. However, resource management ought to give sufficient importance to the regeneration and revitalisation of these material resources as well as the subtle resource that resides within us. As individuals we need to align outer growth with inner growth through inner engineering. We expend our physical,mental and spiritual energies without making a conscious effort to rejuvenate ourselves through the preservation and enhancing of these energies. Our failure to look at resource rejuvenation and not just resource mobilisation and exploitation arises from our weakness for tamasic activity. Conservation, preservation and rejuvenation are intrinsic to sustainable inner and outer development. Pre-industrial India was considered Soney ki Chidiya or the golden bird because people were content. Lifestyles were environment-friendly and there was room for reflection and introspection that enabled people to seek the truth without encroaching on another’s path. There was greater scope for creative pursuits in the fields of art, philosophy, culture and spirituality. And there was greater tolerance and understanding of different perspectives. What was the secret of a system that allowed for both inner and outer growth? How did people find the Golden Mean? Achieving this ought to be easier with technological advances that are meant to make life easier, our chores simpler, and so leave us with enough time for meditation and deep thinking. However, this does not seem to be happening. Technology and other advancements seem to have made our lives more hectic and stress-ridden. Life has become a race against time. Therefore, inner growth is intrinsic to sustainable development. Earlier, conditions fostered the flowering and growth of different schools of thought. Diversity was celebrated, even respected. Today, the trend is towards uniformity of thought, word and deed. There are greater conveniences but less comfort. There are more time-saving devices but we seem to have less time at our disposal to think about what we are doing. The Kumbh Mela, a congregation of people of various persuasions on a given day every year, happened despite the absence of sophisticated communication tools like TV, newspapers or the internet. In Haridwar, for instance, everyday is a celebration of sorts for people from across the country. Those in governance could take the initiative to revive our ancient knowledge systems that are rich in healing techniques besides containing a wealth of wisdom on a variety of subjects. Tradition and culture are as much a part of our heritage as are stone monuments. In ancient India the individual was encouraged to live in harmony with himself, his environment and community, by bringing about a balance between his inner and outer realities. It was recognised that growth on the material plane must be balanced with growth on the subtle plane. As individuals and as members of society we need to strive towards achieving the right balance, inside out.

Let’s Be Enthusiastic About Life & Living

Swami Sukhabodhananda

Study the life story of successful people and you’ll find that they have tremendous enthusiasm or passion to live life. Edmund Hillary who was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay, had failed thrice earlier. Later at a party hosted in his honour in New Zealand, he looked at the portrait of Mount Everest and said: “Mount Everest has a problem. The problem is, it cannot grow more than about 29,000 feet, whereas i have the ability to grow in my ability to climb Everest”. Every one of us has a lower self called jeevatma and a higher self called paramatma. When you operate from the lower self you find your life is not powerful unlike when you function from the higher self. This is the choice before us. Living from the lower self makes life threatening. Living from the higher self makes you enthusiastic and opens up opportunities. Any situation viewed as a threat is an example of something that involves the lower self. The lower self operates as an interfering or obstructing thought whereas the higher self operates as a supporting thought. If your body’s immune system is weak, your system is vulnerable to disease. Similarly, if your psychological immune system is weak... you get upset, hurt, frustrated. Like our genes, our minds are also products of evolution of many years. When our psychological immune system is weak, we are prone to perceive external situations as dangerous or as obstructions. It only calls for strengthening the psychological immune system so as to be powerful individuals. How do you make your mind powerful? We strengthen the physical body with exercise and diet. The psychological immune system can be made powerful by not allowing the lower self in us to operate... instead we should encourage the higher centre to operate in our daily lives. Where do we draw our identity from? Mostly from acquired knowledge because that’s how ego, identity and address are established. Ego is established in the ‘I’. Acquired knowledge is the lower self. The knowledge from which we are born — the cell evolution — is the higher self. Acquired knowledge should support the higher self, not obstruct it. For example, in a game of tennis, when you see a ball coming from an opponent, your thought should not interfere with it and obstruct your spontaneous effort to hit a ball. But if you think, “Oh, i am going to miss it because i missed a stroke last time”, then acquired knowledge is obstructive. As a player, you cannot succeed. The higher self would look at the ball in a different way — “With a focused awareness i allow my being that has evolved to guide me in hitting a ball. In case i miss it, the higher self being a learning and evolving being, makes required corrections the next time i face a ball... whereas the acquired or lower self creates an image that i am not good and i am not lucky. This image makes me look at a ball next time as a threat and acts as an obstruction. The lower self is rigid, while the higher self is flexible in learning and growing. So say to yourself: “I will not allow my static conclusions to decide my action. Instead, i will allow my flow to decide a response”.

Love The Whole, You Will Love The Parts Too

B Dayita Madhav Maharaj

Pure love or prema is the love of the atma for the Supreme Being. He who is for the Whole is for all parts of the Whole. That which attempts to hinder love for the Supreme Lord is known as violence. This violence acts against my interest as well as yours. To love someone means to not harm him or his parts in even the slightest way. One who loves the Supreme Lord has genuine universal love. He loves all living beings. In contrast, what some understand as “universal love” turns out to be just an extended version of lust or kama. Socalled ‘universal lovers’ have, in fact, simply identified their own selfishness with the whole world. This may be understood as being merely an extended form of self-interest. They are ready to harm the rest of the world for the sake of their own selfish idea of the world. The one who loves Bhagavan, however, cannot nurse hatred for anyone under any circumstance. He has equal love for all, but his outward behaviour towards each person will differ, depending on the degree of manifestation of love for Bhagavan in each of these individuals. Violence and non-violence cannot be judged by external behaviour alone. If the father reprimands the son, it is not reasonable to jump to the conclusion that the father hates the son. It is the love of the parent for the child that makes him enforce discipline. The father has love and affection for all of his children, but he acts differently towards each of them according to their particular needs. Hanuman was a great devotee of Rama. His action of setting fire to Sri Lanka, and thus of taking many lives, may seem to be an act of violence. However, Hanuman’s actions were fuelled by love for Rama, and not hatred for the people of Sri Lanka. Ultimately, Hanuman’s actions led to the welfare of all. “One who has no false ego, whose intellect is not clouded by mundane, material works, may destroy the whole world and yet not cause any actual destruction, or be destroyed”, say scriptures. Such a person has gone beyond the roles of the destroyer and the destroyed. What is achieved from the love of the Whole, or Bhagavan, is conducive to the welfare of the self as well as others. Thus, it is only by means of bhagavadprema — love for God — that genuine nonviolence is possible. Since one jivatama is not the cause of another jivatama, the pleasure of one does not lead to the happiness of the other; nourishing one does not lead to the satisfaction of the other. For example, one spark of light cannot sustain the glow of another, but all sparks can be nourished by stoking the flame of their source lamp. Similarly, all living entities, or sparks of consciousness, have emanated from the One Supreme Consciousness. Without satisfying the Cause of all causes, Sri Hari, nobody can be satisfied or nourished. By ignoring the roots and watering only the branches, leaves and flowers, can a tree stay alive? In like manner, “watering” or nourishing individuals or even groups of living beings will be in vain if Bhagavan Sri Krishna is excluded. This is the essential mantra of Vedic teachings: “The essence of dharma is satisfaction of Sri Hari”. The writer is founder-acharya, All India Sree Chaitanya Gaudiya Math.

Beware of the halo, watch out for horn

VITHAL C NADKARNI

FOR all his fame as a philosopher with an inquisitive style, Socrates was physically unattractive. Some psychologists speculate that this could explain why fellow Athenians bumped him off: they forced him to drink hemlock in jail after having been unconsciously repulsed by the philosopher’s crabby troll-like looks! Had he been handsome, the same people might have feted him with wine and cheese at candle-lit public readings! The moral of the story is to watch out for the halo effect, which often tempts us into making extreme, black-andwhite judgements. So if you meet a charismatic fellow, the first impression of his sheer physical appeal might lead you to cast a halo around all his other attributes. According to Harold Kelley’s implicit personality theory, therefore, the first traits that we recognise in other people tend to colour all our later perceptions, if only because of our initial cognitive bias. This explains why celebrities are employed in reel-life to endorse products that they have no reallife expertise in evaluating. Also, why do we need to watch out for the halo effect during recruitment interviews? You could be influenced by one of the attributes and ignore the other weaknesses of the candidate. Conversely, an unfavourable first impression can eclipse even brilliantly positive, but not so immediately apparent attributes. This is the antithesis of the halo effect, the so-called devil effect, or the horns effect, where individuals judged to have a single undesirable trait are subsequently demonised to have many poor traits, allowing a single weak point or negative trait to influence others’ perception of the person in general. That explains why the entry of the physically deformed sage Ashtavakra into King Janaka’s assembly was immediately greeted with derisive laughter from the courtiers. So great was their shock at encountering his eight deformities that it immediately led the courtiers to conclude that the sage was intellectually challenged as well. Ironically, experts say people’s perceptions about their own selves tend to be highly exaggerated — riddled as they are with self-serving biases. The Bible describes it with the parable of a person who was quick to notice a mote in the neighbour’s eye while being blind to the beam in his own! With enlightened persistence, one can be taught to rise above the biases

Knowledge Is A Barrier, It Inhibits Creativity

Satsang: Osho

Why can’t i see any meaning in life? Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create a meaning. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is a poem to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced. Buddha finds meaning because he creates it. I found it because i created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find. And it is good that meaning is not lying somewhere there, otherwise one person would have discovered it — then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it? Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity; now, do you have to discover it again and again? One man has done it; he has given you the map. It may have taken years for him, but for you to understand it will take hours. Buddha also discovered something, Zarathustra also discovered something, but it is not like Einstein’s discovery. It is not there that you have just to follow Zarathustra and his map and you will find it. You will never find it. You will have to become a Zarathustra. Each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one’s womb, feed it by one’s own blood, and only then does one discover. You don’t expect a religious person to be creative. You just expect him to fast, sit in a cave, get up early in the morning, chant mantras. And you are perfectly satisfied! Praise a man because he has created a song, a beautiful sculpture. Praise a man because he plays such a beautiful flute. Let these be religious qualities from now onwards. Praise a man because he is such a lover — love is religion. Because of him the world is becoming more graceful. The inquiry has to be pure, without any conclusion. If you are looking for a certain meaning, you will not find it — because from the very beginning your inquiry is polluted, it is impure. You have already decided. For example, if a man comes into my garden and thinks he can find a diamond there then to him this garden is beautiful. He cannot find the diamond, so he says there is no meaning in the garden... And there are so many beautiful flowers, and so many birds singing, and so many colours, and the wind blowing through the pines, and the moss on the rocks. But he cannot see any meaning because he has a certain idea: he has to find the diamond, only then there will be a meaning. He is missing meaning because of his idea. Let your inquiry be pure. Don’t move with any fixed idea. Go naked. Go open and empty. And you will find not only one meaning — you will find a thousand and one meanings. Then each thing will become meaningful. Just a coloured stone shining in the rays of the sun... or a dewdrop creating a small rainbow around itself... or just a small flower dancing in the wind... What meaning are you searching for? Go without a conclusion! That’s what i mean when i say go without knowledge if you want to find the truth. The knowledgeable person never finds it. His knowledge is a barrier. Drop the knowledge and become more creative. Remember, knowledge is gathered — you need not be creative about it; you have only to be receptive. And that’s what man has become: man is reduced to being a spectator. Extract from The Silence Of The Heart: Talks on Sufi Stories .

THE EMERGING NEW CULTURE with FRITJOF CAPRA, Ph.D.

JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. Today we're going to talk about quantum physics and related philosophical notions, and their impact on our culture. My guest, Dr. Fritjof Capra, is the author of The Tao of Physics, and also The Turning Point, and is a member of the staff of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Welcome to the program, Fritjof.
FRITJOF CAPRA, Ph.D.: Hello.
MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here. You know, it seems as if around the turn of the century many developments happened all at once that really changed our culture -- Freudian psychology, modern art, quantum physics. Do you see these things as being related somehow?
CAPRA: Absolutely. I think, and I've come to believe, that consciousness, the collective consciousness, changes in certain phases, and this was such a phase of dramatic change of consciousness, a shift of the collective consciousness -- in art, in science, and in various other fields.
MISHLOVE: In your book The Turning Point you describe what you talk of as a new culture, a new holistic or integral culture, that's on the rise now, whereas the old Western culture, with its mechanistic linear models, is in a decline.
CAPRA: Right. I follow people like Sorokin, for instance, and I follow Hegel and the I Ching and various traditions and philosophical schools that have seen development of consciousness and of society as a cyclical process -- a process of fluctuations, of cyclical changes. And so cultures and civilizations rise, and then they reach a culmination point, and then they decline, and as they decline a new culture will arise and tackle new problems with new ingenuity and new creativity. This is what happened at the turn of the century -- that the old culture, which was basically the scientific culture of the seventeenth century, of the Enlightenment and Newtonian physics and the Copernican revolution -- that this way of seeing the world, in mechanistic terms, in reductionist terms, has come to a close and is now declining. And what is rising is a more holistic or more ecological way of seeing things.
MISHLOVE: You mentioned Sorokin, Pitirim Sorokin, who founded the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, one of the first and great sociologists of this century. He made the point that cultures are predicated upon ideas or concepts, that a culture revolves around basically a metaphysical principle. The old culture revolved around the metaphysics of materialism. Today it seems as if the bedrock of our materialistic science is quantum physics. Yet it seems as if quantum physics itself is no longer materialistic in the nineteenth-century sense of things.
CAPRA: That's right. What quantum physics has brought was a dissolution of the notion of hard and solid objects, and also a dissolution of the notion that there are fundamental building blocks of matter. When you study the smallest pieces of matter that we know, the subatomic particles, you can do that only when you have large instruments -- particle accelerators and bubble chambers and detectors and all these large apparatus. And when you then study the processes at the level of the very small, you find that you can only talk about probabilities. That's very well known. Since quantum mechanics we know that all these laws and regularities can only be formulated in terms of probabilities. But then you ask, what are these probabilities of? And you find they are probabilities of making a certain measurement, of these large-scale instruments interacting in a certain way. So whatever you say about the smallest pieces comes back to the large pieces -- can be expressed only in probabilities, in terms of the large pieces. It's sort of a circular situation.
MISHLOVE: In other words, everything is interconnected.
CAPRA: Yes, and it's interconnected in such a way that the properties of the smallest pieces depend on the properties of the whole. So in other words, whereas before we believed that the dynamics of the whole can be explained in principle --
MISHLOVE: By breaking it down.
CAPRA: -- by breaking it down, and from the properties of the parts, now we see that the properties of the parts can only be defined in terms of the dynamics of the whole. So it's a complete reversal.
MISHLOVE: And that's become one of the most fundamental scientific insights of our century.
CAPRA: That's right. In fact, if you go even further and ask, "Well what are these parts?" then you will find that there are no parts -- you know, the ultimate -- that whatever we call a part is a pattern in an ongoing process. So it's something that is relatively stable. Like in a Rorschach test, or clouds maybe is a better example, you will look at clouds and you will see, well, there's a chicken up there, or there's an airplane. It's because a cloud formation is relatively stable. But five minutes later it's gone, it changes. Now, with particles the patterns change much faster, but whatever you call an object or a particle or an atom or a molecule, anything like this, are patterns in an ongoing process.
MISHLOVE: So if someone were to ask you, "What is the fundamental building block of the universe?" like we used to have atoms, now we don't have any thing.
CAPRA: Yes, no such thing. There are no things. And you know, people in other traditions, like in the Buddhist traditions, have been saying that for a long time. There's emptiness, emptiness out of which comes all form. But the forms are not things, not isolated objects. The forms are forms of the whole.
MISHLOVE: In your book The Tao of Physics you basically make this point -- that theoretical physics resembles very much the kinds of things that the Eastern mystics have been writing about.
CAPRA: That's right, and which is now coming out in Western science. Physics is a very nice model case, and we know it pretty well because that happened at the beginning of the century, but it's now happening in biology and psychology and economics and various other fields.
MISHLOVE: In fact in your book The Turning Point you suggest that many of the social movements -- the ecology movement, even the women's liberation movement, these things that are changing our culture so much -- are also related to these developments in physics.
CAPRA: That's right, and they're related not causally. I think that's a very important point to make. It's not that physics influenced the feminist movement or the peace movement, but it's again a change of consciousness over maybe fifty years in various fields that is now emerging. So we have this definite movement toward wholeness, toward a dynamic view, toward a participatory universe where you don't separate the observer from the observed, and these various characteristics that happen in science and in society.
MISHLOVE: How do you think that view of things, this change in consciousness, affects people today, our viewers who may be professionals or managers or technocrats, scientists of various types, in their daily lives?
CAPRA: Well, it affects them very strongly. You see, my starting point in writing The Turning Point was the observation that the major problems of today are all interconnected. They are systemic problems; they're all interlinked, and they are in fact reflections of the limitations of an outdated world view. Now, most of our social institutions -- the large corporations, the large academic institutions, the large political institutions -- all subscribe to this outdated world view, and therefore are not able to solve the major problems that we have -- the problems of threat of nuclear war, the devastation of the natural environment, the economic crisis, and so on and so forth. So people who work in these institutions have a very strong sense that things are not going the way they should go, or the way they used to, and we need dramatic change. What I can point out is that this is a global phenomenon, and I can even show the direction in which this change has to occur. And so I find great resonance now in business circles, among managers -- interestingly, and I don't know why, interestingly more in Europe than here. I give seminars at European colleges for managers, in Switzerland for instance, and I talk to managers in Germany and Scandinavia and various countries, and not so much here.
MISHLOVE: And what are these managers saying, the ones who are interested?
CAPRA: Well, in the schools they say that you can't teach management the way they used to teach it, because the problems that arise today cannot be neatly pigeonholed as problems of finance, marketing strategy, research and development. Those are not separate entities -- again, very much the same language. We have to see things holistically. They talk about a holistic approach to management, and they also talk about the fact that a corporation or a company is not a machine but is a living organism. So you have to understand living organisms; you know, you don't take it into pieces. You don't develop a plan for the organization and impose it from above, as they used to -- design it, and then impose it. You develop it, you let it evolve, with all the coworkers, with the whole teamwork, and so on.
MISHLOVE: One would sense in the United States, with the Reagan administration particularly, there's been more of an effort to kind of rejuvenate the old values and squeeze whatever juice might be left out of them.
CAPRA: That's right. I think there's great materialism and opportunism in the United States. Also in the business world, you see in this country we have the legal requirement that you have to have quarterly returns. In Europe they don't have that. So although the corporations are responsible to their stockholders just as here, they are responsible to the stockholders on a yearly basis and not on a quarterly basis. Now part of why we find it so hard here to change things in corporations is they have this short-sighted view -- the bottom line in the next quarter. And so it's very difficult to make changes.
MISHLOVE: In other words, they can't plan the same way.
CAPRA: They don't even have time to think.
MISHLOVE: That's really quite a profound statement.
CAPRA: But nevertheless, changes are occurring in this country, just as everywhere else.
MISHLOVE: Well, one would think so, because what we've been talking about, these global changes of consciousness, quantum physics being a prime example, are so implicit in our system. You can't get away from them.
CAPRA: That's right, and the old system shows us such a spectacular failure that the experts in various fields don't understand their fields of expertise any longer. Researchers, for instance investigating cancer, don't have a clue, in spite of spending millions of dollars, of the origins of cancer. The police are powerless in face of a rising wave of crime. The politicians or economists don't know how to manage the economic problems. The doctors and hospitals don't know how to manage the health problems and health costs. So everywhere it's the very people who are supposed to be the experts in their fields who don't have answers any longer, and they don't have answers because they have a narrow view. They don't see the whole problem.
MISHLOVE: So one would hope, because of the urgency of all of these problems, that this holistic view, this systems view, will emerge, and people will see the patterns.
CAPRA: And I think it will. I think there is a very strong desire in the population at large for something new to happen. I remember when Gary Hart in the last presidential campaign came with this slogan, "New ideas." It was not more than a slogan but it really caught on, because people were really listening and being very enthusiastic and expectant. Now, he was in a dilemma, because if he had really said what new ideas are needed, he wouldn't have been elected, even to run. And if he didn't say, which he chose, the whole thing remained empty. So I don't know what he'll do next time around, but certainly he has a feeling of the fact that new ideas are needed.
MISHLOVE: It would seem as if in order to see things holistically, in order to see all of the interrelated pieces of the puzzle and come up with new ideas, it almost would require a shift in consciousness, just to incorporate all of these various perspectives.
CAPRA: That's right. Not only a shift in consciousness, but also a shift toward consciousness, or toward mind -- a mindful universe, a universe of consciousness, of spirit, a spiritual, conscious universe. What happened was that even in the new physics -- the new physics being physics, and dealing with material phenomena -- mind, spirit, consciousness obviously has no room. The shift that is occurring -- and this is going to be very revolutionary -- is a shift from physics to the life sciences, as the center of our view of reality -- that the universe is a living universe, we are talking about living systems, about mindful systems. The principles of organization of these systems are mental principles. Physics, of course, and physical phenomena are part of that. There is a part of this whole which is non-living, but the whole is living, and so it's only when you understand life that you will understand that wholeness. I think that's a very important shift.
MISHLOVE: In other words, the very viewpoint that physics is the bedrock of science, which I mentioned earlier, that will shift.
CAPRA: Right, right. It's outdated. That's actually a Cartesian viewpoint. Descartes said that knowledge is like a tree. The roots is metaphysics; the trunk is physics; and then the branches are the various sciences. Now we would say, if we want to use that, the trunk is life, and the whole tree is alive. You don't split things apart.
MISHLOVE: But for people, for example, working in management positions, people in their daily life, to make this shift as individuals, they must feel a little bit overwhelmed, having to now integrate all of this knowledge from all of these interrelated problems and interrelated disciplines.
CAPRA: That's true, and it's funny that it's easier for people who are not intellectuals, who are not scientists, who are not specialists. For simple people it's much easier, because they experience life as a wholeness, and they're much more intuitive rather than analytic and rational, and the intuitive mind is a nonlinear mode of functioning, and is a way of experiencing everything at once, and not splitting it up into linear chains of cause and effect. The more intuitive people are, the easier they will find it. So one way of making the shift would be to cultivate one's intuition and to awaken one's intuition. I think that's a very important point.
MISHLOVE: In other words, a portion of our mind that grasps things holistically.
CAPRA: That's right, yes.
MISHLOVE: Let me ask you this. I know you've dealt with this question on and off over the years. Do you feel that the new physics provides support for the kind of research that parapsychologists are doing, ESP? Is this at all related to your world view these days?
CAPRA: I think it is. I must tell you I know that you have done a lot of studies in that, and I'm not so interested in it professionally, just simply because you can't do everything, so this is the part that I've not devoted much energy and interest to. But I think one of the things that emerges now stronger and stronger, from physics and from other fields, is that the world is much more interconnected than we even thought in our holistic picture -- meaning that there are connections that cut across space and time, that are instantaneous connections between distant parts of the universe. That reminds you of things like synchronicity or precognition and things like that, so psychic phenomena would fit in there. So I think the new framework is much more appropriate and is much broader, so you could fit in these things much better. But I myself have not studied that.
MISHLOVE: Well, of course you do maintain that everything is related to everything else, so this might be just as important as anything else.
CAPRA: Well, you see, this is an interesting point. This is where you can say being scientific means you see that everything is related to everything else, but all things are not related in the same way. Some things are more related than others. By that I mean I can in a first approximation say, "These are the most important things." Then comes a second level, and then a third, and then a fourth, and I will go level by level. Of course I may be wrong in the way I choose my levels. But the art of being a scientist and of applying the scientific method is precisely to find the right kind of approximation, because you cannot deal with everything at once, you have to make your choices, and the art of the game is to make the right choices in selecting the right phenomena and right concepts.
MISHLOVE: And that I'm sure applies not just to science but to any profession.
CAPRA: Yes, especially when you deal with a multidimensional, multifaceted reality, you have to make your choices.
MISHLOVE: You've made a bit of a transition in your own career, from spending a lot of time doing research and writing to getting more involved in social action and other developments.
CAPRA: Yes. The Turning Point started out as a book about conceptual change and ended up being as much about social change as about conceptual change. Recently I've gone further in this direction, and I've founded an institute called the Elmwood Institute, which is sort of like an ecological think tank. We call it actually "a greenhouse for new ecological visions." We place ourselves between innovative ideas and social action. We are neither lobbyists or social activists as an institute, nor are we a research institute, but we want to build bridges between the two, and I have been very active in that.
MISHLOVE: What are the kind of areas that you are working in?
CAPRA: Well, the areas are all those that will facilitate the shift to a new paradigm, a new world view, a new consciousness. We're not an issue-oriented organization, so we're not an environmental group, we're not a peace group, we're not a social justice group, but we are all of that, because we see the various problems coming from an underlying outdated world view, and we want to facilitate change of that world view.
MISHLOVE: Let's suppose hypothetically that I were Gary Hart, and I was saying, "Look, we need some new ideas." Would you be prepared to present new ideas in the political arena?
CAPRA: Absolutely, absolutely. That would be a very good case. In particular we want to bring people together -- intellectuals who have ideas, and people who have political power. But political power we understand on both ends of the spectrum -- the Gary Harts who have power from the top, and then the grassroots organizers who have power from the bottom. We work with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and we work with the people at Big Mountain and Native American concerns, and bring people together and exchange ideas.
MISHLOVE: In other words, the leaders of the future, as well as the leaders of the present.
CAPRA: That's right.
MISHLOVE: To inculcate this kind of holistic perspective, one which can kind of unify the various sciences and the world of values.
CAPRA: That's right.
MISHLOVE: Do you see quantum physics playing a role -- well, I guess you've really said there's going to be a shift of emphasis into the life sciences.
CAPRA: That's right. Physics will no longer be the model and the metaphor for reality, but of course it's a very important case. It's now a textbook case of a paradigm shift that still can give us a lot of information about how these changes occur in science.
MISHLOVE: Are we learning something unique about the nature of life itself through quantum physics, or is it through the holistic view that we learn?
CAPRA: No, it is through a systems approach to living organisms that we'll learn something about life. So physics cannot tell us anything about that.
MISHLOVE: You know, there are many people, Fritjof, and myself included, who get so involved in this notion of the new age, the new culture. And yet when you look at our society today, it seems as if the big institutions -- the corporations, the government, the establishment structures -- they've got an awful lot of momentum going, they seem so strong. And I wonder, how do you see this change occurring? I imagine you see it as a kind of evolution.
CAPRA: I see it as an evolution, and I see it as these large institutions getting even larger and more centralized, but at the same time becoming hollow, and in the end they will somehow distintegrate, and either change or decentralize or just disappear. Because I meet so many people inside these organizations who really have a feeling that things have to change, that they're not going to go on.
MISHLOVE: People are unhappy in the world of work. People like to feel more meaning and control of their own lives than they have.
CAPRA: That's right. And many of them would drop out of these organizations, and accept a radical cut in salary, in income, in exchange for a more meaningful life -- for working at home, and for doing things in a more meaningful way. I think you and I are both examples of those people, and almost all of our friends are like that.
MISHLOVE: But if you take the biological model and apply it to a corporation, as if a corporation were an organism, do you think it would structure itself differently? I mean, an organism has a central nervous system. Are decisions made within an organism any differently than they would be made within a corporation?
CAPRA: No, I think it's different, because a social system is not the same as an individual organism. So it is a living system, but it's not an organism. It's maybe more comparable to an ecosystem -- that would be a closer comparison. There are certainly patterns in all living systems, in the individual organism and the social system, that are very similar and can be studied. Also the corporation has three levels. Any kind of living system where humans are involved has three levels. There's the material level, so you have to talk about resources and money and all these things.
MISHLOVE: Which is normally where the discussion ends.
CAPRA: Right. Then there is the biological level, or the level of life and mind, and there you talk about the way people organize themselves -- the way small groups organize themselves. You talk about group dynamics, things like that. But then there's the level of consciousness, where you talk about values and ethics. And to really understand a corporation and develop it successfully, you have to understand the three levels.
MISHLOVE: I suppose organizations for social change would apply the same way.
CAPRA: Right, in any kind of organization, and especially in organizations that work for social change, the level of consciousness, where we talk about meaning and values and ethics, is the one that is really the driving force. If you don't understand that, then you will not understand anything of the organization. For instance, if you don't understand the level of meaning and ethics, you won't understand the peace movement or the ecology movement. And of course people who are conservative and in the old paradigm don't understand these movements, or the women's movement.
MISHLOVE: Yet I gather from your work with the Elmwood Institute, you expect that these grassroots movements will really be the vanguard of this new culture.
CAPRA: Yes, they and -- I've called this in The Turning Point "the rising culture," because they, in these models of Sorokin and Toynbee and others, will rise and eventually take over.
MISHLOVE: And I would assume that they have to base themselves on a solid value system, a value system that incorporates internal psychological reality and integrates that with the material world.
CAPRA: That's right, and you can almost pinpoint it with a single word, and the single word is life. It's the respect for life, the awe of life, the honoring of life, that has to inform our politics, our science, our technology, and our society.
MISHLOVE: Fritjof Capra, it has been a pleasure having you with me. That's a fine note to end on. Thank you very much.
CAPRA: Thank you.

Exclusive to Transition Culture. Fritjof Capra on Relocalisation - an Interview.

Fritjof Capra is one of the foremost green thinkers, especially in the field of ecology and systems thinking. He is the author of many seminal books, such as the Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, The Turning Point and most recently, The Hidden Connections. He is currently teaching at Schumacher College and I was lucky enough to be able to grab him for two interviews, one about relocalisation initiatives (in particular the Transition Town Totnes project due to start this September), and one about peak oil. Unfortunately one of my kids put a chair leg through my mp3 player so I was unable to record the first one, instead taking copious notes, so any mistakes herein are entirely down to my poor note taking. The second (which I’ll post tomorrow) was filmed, so the transcript is taken directly from that.
In your latest book ‘The Hidden Connections’ you write, “creating sustainable communities is the great challenge of our times”. In relation to Totnes and the relocalisation initiative about to start here how might we start to achieve this?

This is a question that would generate different kinds of answers from different kinds of people. Some would say you need a revolution, some that you need community development and so on. I always come back to education because that is my area. It is not necessarily the best way but it is the one I am most familiar with. My answer derives from the fact that the concept of sustainability is alien to most people, and many don’t understand it. Lester Brown who devised the term 25 years ago and if later became widely known as the Brundtland definition, “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
When I first heard it I was confused by it. It set me thinking as to why I found it confusing, and I ended up thinking that it was because it is a moral exhortation to create as many opportunities for future generations as possible, yet it is an exhortation that doesn’t actually tell you how to do it. I tell people that what we need instead is an operational definition. The key to this is that we can use ecosystems as models. They are adaptive and sustainable, they support life, they recycle, they are solar powered.
In terms of creating sustainable human communities, our aim has to be to redesign them so that they don’t interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. Our first step is to understand how Nature sustains life. The second step is then to introduce these principles into design, which we call ‘eco-design, to redesign our technologies, social institutions, commerce and so on. The first step is that we have to help communities become what I call ‘eco-literate’, there is really no way round this. It needs to happen at a very early stage in a relocalisation process.

How can the concept of the Network be applied to relocalisation, beyond just linking the various local groups together?

When you study the principles and basic concepts of ecology you can see them as basic principles of all living systems. At the Centre for Ecological Literacy we have tried to turn these principles into bite sized pieces for teaching, distilling them into 6 principles of ecology. For each one we have created a symbol and photos and we have been teaching it in schools. The 6 principles are;
Networks
Nested Systems
Cycles
Flows
Development
Dynamic Balance
Networks is listed as the first principle because it is it the defining characteristic of life. Wherever there is life there are networks, be they metabolic networks, food webs, human social networks. I tried in recent years to put all of these principles into a nutshell, as they are all different ways of seeing the same thing. Nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities. We all know what a community is, even if we don’t have it. It is something that, if we have it, we recognise it, and if we don’t have it we feel its absence. Be it English football hooligans or US inner city gangs, they are all seeking community. Community is visceral and real, and that is why I think it is central to a definition of sustainability. The experience of a living network is the experience of a living community. The network concept is important, as sustainability is the quality of a community, an individual cannot be sustainable. Creating communities is creating sustainability.

How can we ‘nudge’ communities towards self-organisation (a central element of systems thinking).
If we empower people they will self organise, it is the nature of life. If you are empowered to participate you will self organise. I worked with a business consultant called Patricia Shaw, who works as a ’systemic business consultant’. She worked with a UK company with 12 people who had a very domineering boss. The boss had to leave for 2 hours, one younger woman said something, and Patricia made a point that she had spoken. Later she spoke again Patricia said the same. Within half an hour the young woman was at the flip chart giving a presentation. What Patricia did was to observe the group and to give it gentle ‘nudges’ at different points, a subtle but very powerful skill.

Does Globalisation Have a Future?

No, not economic globalisation. It has peaked, in much the same way oil has. The current global capitalism has created a number of interconnected problems - increased poverty, alienation and pollution, destroyed communities, environmental destruction, in the human political realm we have seen diminished democracy. Within the last year we have seen a turning point in perception. The model no longer works, even within its own perameters, never mind those that you or I might use. Opinion polls in the US show that people don’t believe in it anymore. South America appears to be turning away from it as a continent.

How much faith do you have that technology can save the day?

Technology has a big part to play, but if technology could solve the problems they’d already be solved. If it was only technology that is the problem we would already be there. I drive a Toyota Prius, and if everyone in the US drove one too, the US would be self-sufficient in oil, and not need to import anything from the Middle East. Wind power and biofuels are there and ready when we decide to use them. In the supermarket the organic food costs more than the non-organic, of course it should be the other way round. This is a question of taxes and subsidies. As a scientist I believe in human creativity and human discoveries, but the problem is not a matter of technology, but one of short termist politics, vested interests, and so on. The solutions exist and make sense, sense that is clear to most people. If we feed our children good food they won’t become obese, if they grow the food too they will be healthier and more cooperative, with the added benefit that they will be building soils which will be locking up carbon… there is no downside to this…

Interview with Deepak Chopra

For the past decade, Deepak Chopra, M.D. has been at the forefront of a major trend in holistic healing. Since the early 1980's Chopra has successfully combined his impeccable credentials as a practicing endocrinologist with his exploration of mind/body medicine. By doing so, he has dramatically influenced many in traditional medical circles and helped bring the enormous benefits of holistic medicine to the general public's attention.
Chopra created a paradigm for exploring the healing process - a model he calls Quantum Healing. He recalls, "As doctors we are taught to prescribe tranquilizers for people who are feeling anxious to promote tranquility. We give sleeping pills to people with insomnia. Quantum Healing looks past all the wonder drugs and modern technology to a natural way of healing which speaks to an integration of mind and body."
Rather than turn his back on his conventional training, he extended his practice to bring together the best of ancient wisdom and modern science. In 1984, he helped to introduce Ayurvedic medicine to the United States, and within a year he established an Ayurvedic Health Centre of Stress Management and Behavioral Medicine in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He was also the founding President of the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine.
Since that time, he has emerged as one of the world's leading proponents of this innovative combination of Eastern and Western healing.
Chopra combines ancient mind/body wisdom with current anti-aging research to show that the effects of aging are largely preventable. By changing your perception of aging and by being aware of your body and how it processes intelligence and experience, you will change how you age.
Chopra lectures around the world making presentations to major corporations and organizations such as the World Health Organization in Geneva, the United Nations, and London's Royal Society of Medicine, as well as a number of major U.S. medical institutions.
THE INTERVIEW
Veronica: By changing one's perception of aging, we can change our age. How?
Dr. Chopra: Well, most people think that aging is fatal and scientific data shows that that's not true. People don't die of old age, they die of diseases that accompany old age, and they are preventable.
Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation. Most people believe that aging is normal but nobody defines what normal aging is. What we call normal may be the psychopathology of the average. Most people think that aging is genetic and yet if your parents lived to age 80+ that will add three years to your life.
The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. Most people believe that aging is universal but there are biological organisms that never age. Most people believe that aging is painful and we know that pain is from diseases that are preventable, not from aging.
People have to change their concepts of aging and I am not asking them to do so based on some fanciful notion, but on scientific fact. When they change that, then their perception of aging will change and it will become clear to them to grow old and to become wiser, to become more creative, to become the springboard for creativity and affluence. Once your perception of the whole phenomenom changes, your reality will change, because reality is nothing other than your perception of it.
Veronica: You have stated that if we could effectively trigger the intention not to age, the body would carry it out automatically. Could you explain that?
Dr. Chopra: Yes, because intentions are the triggers for transformation in the body. If you want to wiggle your toes, you do it through intention. There are two components to biological information in the body, one is intention, the other is attention. So to go back to the example I gave you, to wiggle your toes. The first thing that happens is that your attention goes there and the second thing is there is an intention, so this biological information with attention and intention is what biological information is given. Awareness that acts as biological information goes to components, then an informational component, and then there's a localizing component, and that's how the body behaves.
If you can wiggle your toes with the mere flicker of an intention, why can't you reset your biological clock? The reason most people can't do it is because, first, they never thought of it and secondly, they think that certain things are easier to do than other things. For example, it is easier to wiggle the toes than reset the biological clock, but that is just a belief that is rooted in superstition. If we could understand that the human body is a network of information and energy, then we would see that the same principles apply everywhere in the body.
Veronica: That is just what I was about to say, something as profound as stopping the aging process, or actually reversing the aging process, one would think would have to be implanted at a deep level for it to work.
Dr. Chopra: No, it's the same mechanism. It's just that we have been indoctrinated into believing that some things are easier, some things are more difficult. Expectations determine outcome, always!
Veronica: You have also said that our bodies are our experiences transformed into physical expression, in other words, our bodies are the outpouring of our belief system?
Dr. Chopra: And experiences, so if you are having the experience of anxiety, your body is making adrenaline and cortisone, if you are having the experience of tranquility, your body starts making valium, if you are having the experience of exhilaration and joy, your body makes interleukins and interferons which are powerful anti-cancer drugs. So, your body is constantly converting your experiences into molecules.
Veronica: And we can change our interpretation or experience of the world at any time.
Dr. Chopra: That's right. One person's enemy is another person's best friend. My favorite food might give you a rash, etc. Every experience that we have is unique to us because at some deep level we make an interpretation of it.
Veronica: You go even further and suggest that when you see yourself in terms of timeless, deathless being, every cell awakens to a new existence.
Dr. Chopra: Because the body is the end product of intelligence and how that intelligence shapes your reality will shape the reality of the body. The body is a field of ideas and it is a field of interpretations and when you change your experience of your own identity to a spiritual being, the body expresses the physical manifestation of that spiritual reality.
Veronica: You go on to say, true immortality can be experienced here and now in this living body. It comes about when you draw the infusion of being into everything you think and do. This is the the experience of timeless mind and ageless body.
Dr. Chopra: Yes.
Veronica: Is this why it is so important to live with passion, to have a dream, a reason for living, even if that dream is only for our own joy?
Dr. Chopra: I think that is a very important component, to have passion, to have a dream, to have a purpose in life. And there are three components to that purpose, one is to find out who you really are, to discover God, the second is to serve other human beings, because we are here to do that and the third is to express your unique talents, and when you are expressing your unique talents, you lose track of time.
Veronica: Most people think of time as linear and some of us feel that there is only so much of it, and that it is continuously running out. Almost as though our entire life is like an hour glass and the sand is running through, and we don't know how much sand we have left so we'd better enjoy every single moment. This kind of thinking is further reinforced every time we are faced with the death of someone we know. How does this kind of motivation, of enjoying every moment because time is running out, and we don't have forever, compare with living joyfully without any kind of time anxiety at all, as if we really did have forever?
Dr. Chopra: The only way you can do that is when you know that part of yourself that is in fact, forever. There is a part of yourself that is not subject to change, it is the silent witness behind the scenes. That is essentially your spirit, the spirit being an abstract but real force. It is as real as gravity. It is as real as time. It is incomprehensible. It is mysterious but it is powerful and it is eternal. It is without beginning, without ending. It has no dimensionality, it's spaceless, timeless, dimensionless, eternal, forever. When you can get in touch with that part of yourself, then you will in fact see that present moment existence, even an entire lifetime is nothing other than a flicker in eternity, a parenthesis in eternity, a little flash of a firefly in the middle of the night in the context of eternity.
What happens with that knowledge, with that experience, is that you begin to experience mortality as quantified immortality, you begin to see time as quantified eternity and when you see it against the backdrop of who you really are, then the anxiety of daily existence disappears. So, one ceases to be troubled by, as well as influenced by, the trivial things of daily existence, the little hassles that create stress in most people. So, it becomes much more joyful and you realize that the present moment is as it should be, there is no other way. It is the culmination of all other moments and it is the center point of eternity. So, you pay attention to what is in every moment. And when you do that, then you realize that the presence of God is everywhere. You have only to consciously embrace it in your attention. And that's what creates joyfulness. You have to know the reality and the reality is that we are eternal.
Veronica: I suppose then that the first way of looking at life is actually unhealthy.
Dr. Chopra: Right.
Veronica: The new paradigm tells us that we are constantly making and unmaking our bodies at the quantum level which means that we are constantly unfolding hidden potential. Can you talk about this quantum level?
Dr. Chopra: If you look at anything physical, you find out that at the quantum level, it is non-physical. The body is made up of atoms and subatomic particles that are moving at lightning speed around huge empty spaces and the body gives off fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void, so essentially your body is proportionately as void as intergalactic space, made out of nothing, but the nothing is actually the source of information and energy. If you'd approach that level, then you would realize that the body is a print out and by changing the software, by influencing the programming, and by getting in touch with the program, you can create a new body anytime you want.
Veronica: How does living in the present moment contribute to agelessness?
Dr. Chopra: Living in the present moment creates the experience of eternity. It is like every drop of water in an ocean contains the flavor of the whole ocean. So too, every moment in time contains the flavor of eternity, if you could live in that moment, but most people do not live in the moment which is the only time they really have. They either live in the past or the future. If you could live in the moment, you would see the flavor of eternity and when you metabolize the experience of eternity, your body doesn't age.
Veronica: Meditation lowers biological age. How?
Dr. Chopra: By quieting the mind, which then quiets the body, and the less turbulent the body is, the more the self-repair, healing mechanisms get amplified. In fact, scientists have shown that the better your DNA, your genetic machinery is at healing itself, the longer you live. That's how meditation lowers biological age.
Veronica: What about the power of love in healing or agelessness, someone else's love or the love of our own self?
Dr. Chopra: Yes love, but in the true sense, not as a mere sentiment or an emotion but love as the experience of unity consciousness, which means to know that you are connected with everything in the universe. Not only are you connected with everything in the universe, you might be the same being in different disguises with everybody else. So, when you have that experienced knowledge you lose the ability to hurt people and you also lose the ability to be hurt by people. That's love.
Veronica: Your approach to medicine is based on Ayurveda, which comes from India. How do you describe it?
Dr. Chopra: Ayurveda is the science of life and it has a very basic, simple kind of approach, which is that we are part of the universe and the universe is intelligent and the human body is part of the cosmic body, and the human mind is part of the cosmic mind, and the atom and the universe are exactly the same thing, but with different form, and the more we are in touch with this deeper reality, from where everything comes, the more we will be able to heal ourselves and at the same time heal our planet.
Veronica: What will medicine look like in the future?
Dr. Chopra: Medicine in the future will give everyone the ability to become their own best healer.
Veronica: Thank you Dr. Chopra, it has indeed been an enlightening conversation

Work assiduously on your belief system

• VITHAL C NADKARNI

IF RECENT research is to be believed most of the newer anti-depressants do very little for people. In fact, a placebo or dummy pill may work just as well for people with mild or moderate depression, British doctors who analysed a large number of published and unpublished studies said. They added that people taking the drugs say they feel better simply because they’re swallowing tablets which they think are helping them. Other treatments like exercise and talk therapy provided as much benefit as the drugs, the experts said. All this only validates the power of belief. So instead of blaming your brain for its alleged deficits and frantically popping pills to correct the chemical imbalance, you might be better off if you worked more assiduously on your belief system. But that still does not satisfactorily explain what causes depression in the first place. Once you understand that, you can correct its maladaptive cycle incredibly fast; in just 24 hours, claims British psychologist Joe Griffin who has pioneered a revolutionary theory that links REM sleep and evolution of dreams to roots of depression and other neuroses. For 40 years it’s been known that depressed people have excessive REM sleep, he writes in Dreaming Reality, co-authored with Ian Tyrrell. They dream more than healthy people. Griffin and his colleagues at The Human Givens Institute claim that the negative introspection or ruminations that depressed people engage in actually causes the excessive dreaming. When you dream you burn up much more energy, and your brain cells aren’t refreshed because you are not getting enough slowwave sleep. That’s why depressed people wake up feeling tired and drained. But once they understand the link between dreaming and depression they can begin to work on it immediately. For today’s worry is tomorrow’s depression. Nip it in the bud and it will not bloom into tomorrow’s nightmare. That’s exactly why Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra recommends thought control (chitta-vritti nirodha). “Take physical exercise,” Griffin adds (echoing Patanjali). “Keep your mind focused outwards off the negative introspection. Know the importance of bringing in a bit of pleasure and challenge back into your life.” The Gita gives exactly same advice: balance right amount of work, play, and fun with the proper amount of dream and thought (yukta swapnavbodhasya) to banish pain.

The Golden Mean Is Well Within Reach

Indu Jain
In governance, the core idea is to ensure the positive alignment of the pancha tattvas. For this, action has to first spring from within, from the inner core that all of us have, including those of us who are in the business of governance. India’s growth rate is computed on the basis of material resource development. This involves spending these resources. The focus is on production and consumption. However, resource management ought to give sufficient importance to the regeneration and revitalisation of these material resources as well as the subtle resource that resides within us. As individuals we need to align outer growth with inner growth through inner engineering. We expend our physical,mental and spiritual energies without making a conscious effort to rejuvenate ourselves through the preservation and enhancing of these energies. Our failure to look at resource rejuvenation and not just resource mobilisation and exploitation arises from our weakness for tamasic activity. Conservation, preservation and rejuvenation are intrinsic to sustainable inner and outer development. Pre-industrial India was considered Soney ki Chidiya or the golden bird because people were content. Lifestyles were environment-friendly and there was room for reflection and introspection that enabled people to seek the truth without encroaching on another’s path. There was greater scope for creative pursuits in the fields of art, philosophy, culture and spirituality. And there was greater tolerance and understanding of different perspectives. What was the secret of a system that allowed for both inner and outer growth? How did people find the Golden Mean? Achieving this ought to be easier with technological advances that are meant to make life easier, our chores simpler, and so leave us with enough time for meditation and deep thinking. However, this does not seem to be happening. Technology and other advancements seem to have made our lives more hectic and stress-ridden. Life has become a race against time. Therefore, inner growth is intrinsic to sustainable development. Earlier, conditions fostered the flowering and growth of different schools of thought. Diversity was celebrated, even respected. Today, the trend is towards uniformity of thought, word and deed. There are greater conveniences but less comfort. There are more time-saving devices but we seem to have less time at our disposal to think about what we are doing. The Kumbh Mela, a congregation of people of various persuasions on a given day every year, happened despite the absence of sophisticated communication tools like TV, newspapers or the internet. In Haridwar, for instance, everyday is a celebration of sorts for people from across the country. Those in governance could take the initiative to revive our ancient knowledge systems that are rich in healing techniques besides containing a wealth of wisdom on a variety of subjects. Tradition and culture are as much a part of our heritage as are stone monuments. In ancient India the individual was encouraged to live in harmony with himself, his environment and community, by bringing about a balance between his inner and outer realities. It was recognised that growth on the material plane must be balanced with growth on the subtle plane. As individuals and as members of society we need to strive towards achieving the right balance, inside out.

top 22 lessons I've learned from him

Dr. Wayne Dyer
1
You get whatever you think about most. Whatever you think about expands… and therefore, we must be careful to not think about what we do not want.

2
You can never get enough of what you don't want. Why? Because we're thinking about what we don't want and we keep getting more of it. From an abundance and prosperity perspective, it can be costly (meaning you can lose great opportunities) to contemplate the conditions you do not want to produce for your life…for fear of getting more of what you don't want.

3
Think from the end. I'm a big believer in starting with the end outcome and working backwards to reach it. Dyer takes a more mental approach to it as he encourages you to contemplate yourself surrounded by the people, events, and things that represent your version of a "perfect life."

4
An attitude of gratitude will take you a long way. Rumi said, "Trade your knowledge for bewilderment." It is good to be in awe of all that you have attracted into your life and the more you are grateful for that - the more that will flow freely into your life.

5
Paraphrasing Dyer: There are no branches of any trees that think it is wise to fight with each other. In other words, there is no value in fighting with others as we are all from the same metaphorical human tree of life. There is an old zen saying that goes something like this: Whatever you are for, strengthens you and whatever you are against, weakens you.

6
It is only natural to have abundance and prosperity in your life. It is unnatural to resist the gifts you have been given in life to share with others. Therefore act confidently with a "knowing" that you already have all of the resources you need to succeed.

7
You must be independent of the opinion of others. No one can make you into what you are not. You are responsible to no one for your actions and thoughts except yourself. In addition, you are not in control of your reputation. All you can control is yourself and how you act on a day to day basis.

8

You alone choose your emotional state each day. No one can make you feel any different than you choose to feel on any day. Therefore take full responsibility for the emotional states that you choose to embrace each day.

9
You are not your body nor are you the possessions that you believe you have. You are timeless; perfect; …just the way you have forever been and will forever be. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. Live your truth.

10
Meditation can help you solve problems and achieve inner peace. While mental visualization of your intentions or goals are a good thing to do, think of "meditation" as quieting your mind to achieve a place of "no where" -- It's one of the best ways to center yourself.

11
Your EGO is often at odds with universal laws and principles. Best to identify when you are acting from ego vs. acting from your true authentic self. Your ego wants you to feel special and different than others but the reality is that we share more in common than we have differences. Focus on radical humility and respect for yourself and others in order to keep your ego at bay. You can only extend to another that which you are in truth.
12
You can only give others what you have inside of yourself. Therefore to give love away to others, you must cultivate love for yourself FIRST. Dyer uses the metaphor of squeezing an orange - asking you what comes out when you squeeze it. Most people answer, "orange juice" comes out. Why? Because that is what is inside. When humans are squeezed, what comes out of them is what they harbor inside of themselves. Harbor love, acceptance, joy, confidence, peace and harmony towards yourself so that you can radiate it towards others.

13
Your relationship with others does not really exist. You only have your perception of your relationship with others to act on. Therefore you must focus on making sure you perceive your relationship with others on the terms that you hope for the future of the relationship to exist. In other words, you must see harmony within yourself and then with the other person. You must always have within you what you wish to see or give another.

14
Our intentions create our reality. We each create our own personal realities by what we focus on and intend to happen for our experiences. Therefore we have an enormous responsibility to choose our intentions carefully.

15
Be attached to nothing but rather connected with what you want for your life. Attachment can cloud your ability to attract what you want. When you let go and surrender to your perfect self, you will attract what you desire.

16
There is never any scarcity of opportunity, but rather there is only scarcity of resolve to seize the opportunities that knock on our door every day. Scarcity does not exist unless we choose to embrace it…therefore, it is better to never embrace scarcity only embrace the possibility for abundance.

17

When the teacher is ready, the students will appear. When the student is ready, the teachers will appear. We can not learn the lessons we are here to learn if we are not open and receptive to learn. Do not resist the possibility to change, but rather expand and become more open.

18

No one was ever hurt by practicing random acts of kindness. The law of reciprocity always rewards kindness and even more-so when you are kind without any expectation of needing a return. There is no difference in the words "giving" and "receiving."

19

The best way to maximize book sales is to release related products that can be purchased. For example, a book could be followed up with an audio tape, audio CD, DVD, flip calendar, playing card decks and more. Each of these creates additional revenue streams that help to maximize the ROI from each published works. (My marketing brain wanted to insert this lesson in here ;-)

20

Judgment: One of our purposes in life is to find a way to free ourselves of our need to judge others in a negative light. This is the work of our ego and judging others prevents us from seeing the good in them. There is no value in judging others poorly. As we see others, we also see ourselves.

21
Dyer says, "It's Never Crowded Along the Extra Mile." That means that we must always give more than we expect to receive. In doing so, we join the small percentage of achievers that consistently go above and beyond the call of duty to serve others. The rewards are often disproportionate for those who go the extra mile vs. those who only do the minimum they need to get by. We give without expectations.

22

Trust in yourself and in doing so, you trust in the very wisdom that created you. It is impossible to become a no-limit person if you focus on limitations…therefore only focus on what you want to attract for your life. You already are complete, whole and perfect. Trust in the perfection of your life.

BE HERE for Him, NOW

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Wayne Dyer talks about spiritual teacher and friend Ram Dass
One of the truly great men of our time needs our help. I write these words to encourage your generosity and support. Back in the 1960's a Harvard professor named Richard Alpert left behind the hectic world of academia and traveled to India—there he was to meet his spiritual teacher who gave him a new purpose to fulfill along with a new name. He of course is Ram Dass.
His guru told him love everyone, feed people and see God everywhere. Ram Dass became a person who lived out this mandate—he did what so many of us could only dream. He connected to his spirit and devoted his life to serving others.
In 1969 he wrote and published the signature book on spirituality and applied higher awareness, Be Here Now. In keeping with his commitment to love everyone and feed people, he donated all of the royalties and profits to foundations that did just that. With millions of dollars at stake, Ram Dass simply chose to live his life as a man of service to God.
After years spent in India in pursuit of a higher more enlightened consciousness for himself and for our troubled world, he returned to the United States to lecture throughout the country. He spoke to packed venues wherever he went, and as always he donated the proceeds to such causes as would keep him in harmony with his mandate to serve. He co-founded the Seva Foundation and his writing and lecture fees were primary sources for this compassionate and inspired work.
To me Ram Dass was and is the finest speaker I have ever heard, period! He was my role model on stage; always gentle and kind, always speaking without notes from his heart, sharing his inspiring stories and always with great humor. I tell you this from my own heart; I could listen to his lectures for hours and always felt saddened when they would end. He was the voice for Applied Spirituality—his life was the model. When he was threatened by having his own private sexual preference exposed, in a time when a closet was the only place that was even mildly safe, Ram Dass called a press conference and proudly announced his preference to the world. He paved the way for tolerance and love when no one else would dare to do so.
Most of us could only dream of defying the conventional life and living out our inner callings to promote a cause that was bigger than our own lives—to leave the security of a guaranteed career—to leave a country where comfort was ensured; all to live in a foreign land with few conveniences, traveling and meditating for a more peaceful world. It is what St. Francis did in the 13th century and what Ram Dass did in our lifetime.
When Ram Dass' own father, who had largely criticized his son's unconventional lifestyle, was close to death, Ram Dass devoted himself to 100% service in those final years. He fed his father, he bathed his father, he placed him on and off the toilet until the day he died. Why? Because he felt this was his mandate. He wanted to experience true service on a 24/7 basis and know firsthand the joy that comes from giving one's own life away in the service of others. Always, for over 30 years, Ram Dass was in the service of others.
In 1997 Ram Dass was struck by a semi-paralyzing stroke and became wheelchair bound. Still he wrote of his adventure in a powerful book titled, Still Here. He continued to travel, though he could no longer walk and continued to speak to audiences, though he spoke from a slowed down body, but still he did it to serve others.
Now it is our turn...Ram Dass' body can no longer endure the rigors of travel. He has come to Maui, where I live and write. I speak with him frequently and I am often humbled by the tears in his beautiful 73-year-old eyes as he apologizes for not having prepared for his own elderly health care—for what he now perceives as burdensome to others. He still intends to write and teach; however without the travel—we can now come to him. Maui is healing—Maui is where Ram Dass wishes to stay for now!
He is currently living in a home on Maui, which he doesn't own and is currently in jeopardy of losing. I am asking all of you to help purchase this home and to set up a financial foundation to take care of this man who has raised so much money to ensure the futures of so many others. To live out what Ram Dass has practiced with his actions. Please be generous and prompt—no one is more deserving of our love and financial support. In the end these donations will help ensure that Ram Dass and his work will reach another generation or remind a current generation that it is in giving that we receive.
If there has ever been a great spirit who lived in our lifetime, literally devoting his life to the highest principles of spirit, it has been Ram Dass. I love this man; he has been my inspiration and the inspiration for millions of us. It is now time to show him how we feel by doing what he has taught all of us to do—Just , BE HERE for him, NOW.