[Graybeard]

Wow lloyd .... there are undercurrents there. Not knowing US politics that well I won't comment. It sounds like things are more laid back over here.

The rich and powerful today are simply the kings who ruled kindoms yesterday. Thats evolution. it needs both. if we want the social structure we have .... then Capitalism insists that the rich are necessary.

i don't hate them so much ... as envy ... just a porsche, a retirement villa and an allowance for my continuous holidays would be enough.

LOL .... greg

[Infinite Consciousness]

Originally Posted by Lloyd Gillespie Bibra, if anyone in the world could actually scientifically truly define love, I might believe you, but until that day comes, I'll choose other known truths. The prankster, Lloyd

Love is that which overflows within and you forget yourself !

Indeed it is a first principle in mysticism that so long as we are aware of our own identity, of our own individuality, we cannot become one with God as Infinite Love.

We can find Him only when we lose knowledge of ourselves, only when we enter the state of self-oblivion. As we develop this capacity for one pointed absorption and love, we become oblivious of our immediate surroundings, of the world of time and space, and we begin to take long steps into the realm of eternity.

Love is giving up yourself - your material life - for the sake of others it is something that no materialist will ever understand. Learn to die so that you may begin to live ! Love is Unconditional it comes before human life - it is per se the "Crown of Life" that makes a man a Spiritual King - for when human life is surrendered to love - we become immortal - because Infinite Love is the only Truth everything else is illusion !

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by Infinite Consciousness Love is that which overflows within and you forget yourself ! We can find Him only when we lose knowledge of ourselves, only when we enter the state of self-oblivion.

If you have found this state and contentment there ..... who then, is Infinite Consciousness? Or do you come back .... periodically ?

In which case you cannot entirely lose yourself in self-oblivion .... else how to find the way back?

This is the material/empirical evidence that you require. For you, no more, no less!

I live in the land of the bandits, far beyond your redemption. Like Abou-bin-Adam (may his tribe increase) , put me down (at least) as one who loves his fellow man. You share in this overflow.

greg


http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bharathi/poetry/lhab.htm

[r.p.bibra]

More than twenty years are spent to acquire doctorate in one branch of a subject; the knowledge thus acquired is not sufficient to get even remotely acquainted with that subject, as a whole. What about the thousands of specialties, disciplines& other branches of knowledge relating to the ephemeral world! Keeping this inadequacy in mind, where do you stand in the intellectual arena? Just playing in sand houses, at the proverbial seashore of ‘knowledge’!
It takes as many years of practice, renunciation, denial of those things which you are dreaming about---post retirement. For the acquisition of mundane knowledge, no bars are put on our body-senses-mind trilogy, but in the latter, the trilogy is kept under strict discipline of the conscience---if you have heard this name! Why you people are wasting your time in the treads, which do not cater to your sensuality, but are related to finer sensitivities, cultural roots, morality and human values, alien words for you, but very dear to those who speak of love. Brother ic, is speaking from a state which is not in you lot, not that you are incompetent of attaining /realising it, but simply because you are not interested in seeking it. If you have the will and the guts to refute the voracity of this statement, do join the bandwagon, put yourself to the same regimen& prove by your own ‘experience’ the hollowness of the claims of the spiritualists. Love&regards. Ls

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by r.p.bibra More than twenty years are spent to acquire doctorate in one branch of a subject; the knowledge thus acquired is not sufficient to get even remotely acquainted with that subject, as a whole. What about the thousands of specialties, disciplines& other branches of knowledge relating to the ephemeral world! Keeping this inadequacy in mind, where do you stand in the intellectual arena? Just playing in sand houses, at the proverbial seashore of ‘knowledge’!Love&regards. Ls

Dear R.P.Bibra ...... I am sure you are a good and sincere person. Science has spent thousands of years conducting meticulous experiments trying to prove or dis-prove (without discrimination or bias) the proposed laws of physics. The laws that we operate within today are the distillation of knowledge of all those who have gone before. All these laws come with supporting evidence that cost many scientists countless lonely anxious hours in their specialist fields to confirm.

Rajinder, keeping this inadequacy in mind, where do you stand in the intellectual arena. Are you playing sand castles at the proverbial seashore of knowledge?

r.p.bibra. Brother ic, is speaking from a state which is not in you lot, not that you are incompetent of attaining /realising it, but simply because you are not interested in seeking it. If you have the will and the guts to refute the voracity of this statement, do join the bandwagon, put yourself to the same regimen& prove by your own ‘experience’ the hollowness of the claims of the spiritualists. Love&regards. Ls

Its not that 'your' state is not in 'us lot', nor are scientists incompetent of attaining nirvana, Scientists have searched for nirvana, even before you have, and they found it as emotionally fulfilling and experienced true understanding just as you claim. This was their first field of discipline.

And then what, the void was found to contain items that could not be explained, and so the search goes on. The fact that material science with its need for evidential proof provides an answer that is too mundane for your ideas of what the vast mysticism should be about .... is not the fault of Science.

The fault is in your own eye, look closer, and take time out to shelve your own ideas for one moment and you will see that what you take to be mundane has a simplicity and elegance thats far beyond the 'Nirvana' you have currently got hold of.

Don't be blinded by the awesome sights and understanding that mysticism has revealed to you, pass thru that hall, it is not the end of the journey.

Like any hall in any house, it is decorated to impress the guest. The true workings of the house are not in the shadow and light show of the entrance hall, but in the kitchen. There you will begin to understand a different truth.

r.p.bibra ....If you have the will and the guts to refute the voracity of this statement, do join the bandwagon, put yourself to the same regimen& prove by your own ‘experience’ the hollowness of the claims of the spiritualists.Love&regards. Ls

Its not that I wish to refute the voracity of your statement, its just that I wish to help another traveller along the way, who has been temporarily blinded by the awesome sights around him. We are both on the same road ... to understand the truth. We should help each other, and not always disregard what others say. What appears to you now, with absolute conviction, can disappear merely by a change of light. And all your beliefs will be in chaos.

This is why Science insists, without bias, on proof. The shadow and light show is SO intensive, SO impressive, that without proof we simply cannot tell with our limited five senses what is really there.

Kind regards ls ...... greg

[r.p.bibra]

Gb;you have got the whole point wrongly. Ls. knows the meaning/relevance of science in our lives, but is conscious that the very basis of our intelligence, is science. After all science is the evolvement of our intelligence or vice versa. From stone-age to present state of intelligence, is the result of human-intelligence i.e., science.
The origin of science is from our intelligence, which project as material manifestations (techno gadgetry &vast structures etc.), and the place of this intelligence is our mind. Senses collect the data, intellect discriminates& the gist/essence is ‘intelligence’, utilizing which human beings invent technical tools & gadgetry for discovering more layers of nature. All this takes place in our mind. Thus the domain of science is the acquired data, which is systematically stored in our minds. Science adds more of data, expands the horizon of our intelligence and knowledge of the mysteries of nature is correspondingly increasing. Science is all about material aspect of nature & its domain is the mind.
There is another ‘tribe’ which is more concerned with its (mind) subtle aspect. There target of research is not, exclusively, confined to the ‘data’ but the mind as a whole. They are more interested in understanding the subtle aspect Nature, mind and the life itself. Their tool of enquiry too is ‘intelligence’ but it not the intelligence, which is based on the acquired knowledge, but the Supreme-Intelligence (cosmic-consciousness)!
It is not understand as to how this divide, between the science & spirituality, has been created. It is all about the human intelligence one is concerned, not about physical sciences or the so-called spirituality. The quest is of nature & its core-reality (its basis, the fundamental-principle), how this quest got astrayed into dogmas, myths, religions (of destructions!), is not our topic. In the quest, there is no room for a atheist or theist, because intelligence is pure logic.
The source of our intelligence is the ‘Intelligence” in nature, whose totality could be referred to as Supreme-Intelligence (SI). If we accept that the source of our ‘acquired-intelligence’ is Nature, then we accept also that the core-reality (intelligence) of each creation is embodied in itself, the sum-total of reality of each creation, is Supreme-Intelligence.
Thus the ‘home’ of our intelligence is the mind, and the body is the home to mind. In a sense both are inter-related as SP is the source of our AK. If we study the human body, from ‘that tribe’s’ angle, we certainly can avoid misplaced antagonism between these two types of thinking. It has many dimensions, which are beyond the grasp of the best tools of the physical sciences. It (huma-body) is not only ‘home’ to human-intelligence but is directly related to cosmic-intelligence.
Let us probe about its subtle functioning. To the wonder of science, it can survive without food. Though it is biological in nature, still it can survive on subtle ‘food’ derived directly from the elements.

---Sage Patanjali (better known the father of the science of Yoga) made a science of this subject, through whose practice one could gain control over Nature. To illustrate this point, it would be pertinent to quote below the case history of two subjects; one of them is a western woman, recently on tour to India. The following news appeared in ‘The Tribune’ (Chandigarh ) of 13 Feb. 2002:

Ahemdabad: Eating light “will never be the same again. A new age guru from Australia is here to teach people how to survive on no food but light. Jasmuheen (46) formerly Elen Greve, an Australian computer programmer and financial consultant, claims that she has been leading a life sans food for almost a decade. She is at present touring the country teaching Indians the secrets of Yoga and Vedas.” I have used my body as a laboratory to learn this ancient art of living”, she said. UNI

----Off to NASA for his place in the sun
Ramesh Babu
Thiruvananthapuram, June 29 (2003)
HIRA RATAN Manek, aka Hirachand, has not eaten in eight years. He lives on sunlight. But skeptical (and perhaps long-suffering) Indians should read on a bit before going---bah, another scam. This 64 years-old mechanical engineer has been tried and tested by US space agency NASA, in June 2002, NASA verified his claims when he spent 130 days with its scientists drinking only water. They have even named such subsistence---water and solar energy---the ‘HRM (Hira Rattan Manek) phenomenon:
Now NASA wants him to show them how he does it. They hope to use the technique to solve the food storage and preservation problems on space expeditions. So on Friday, Hirachand left for New York. Hirachand belongs to a Gujrati family that moved to Keral 120 years ago and set up textile business. Hirachand who lives in Kozhikode, began to have distate for food in 1992. in 1995, he took a trip to the Himalayas. When he returned, he had stopped eating completely. His wife Vimla Hirachand describes the HRM phenomeno: “Every evening he looks at the sun for one-hour without batting an eye-lid. It is his main food. Occasionally he takes coffee, tea, buttermilk or some other liquid.” Hirachnd himself says that this eating through the eyes is best done in the evening when the sun’s ulra-violet rays are least harmful. Both explained what Hirachand does is completely scientific; it is no miracle. “He has a special taste for sun energy. He believes only 5 percent of human brain cells are used by most people. The other 95 percent can be activated through the solar energy,” says Vimla. When Hirachand returns from the US, he plans to conduct lectures for young scientists. He is also writing a book on the scince of the brain. “Here nobody realized the importance of his findings. He wrote to many organizations. But foreigners realy admired him.” His wife says. Amen.

The above two cases relate to only one aspect of the body, the (hidden) power of the senses! There are hundreds such other cases which could be related which are equally phenomenal and beyond the conception of mind which is trained in the modern system of science. Both the cases are easily verifiable. Can we afford to ignore the other aspect of science, which relates to‘intelligence’ which is of cosmic-dimension and is embodied in human ‘body’?
Ps, you have raised many relevant queries, which could be taken up later. (ls. Is in agreement with you, but with slight reservation to each)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

I should like to warn you Bibra, we Americans don't like the type of fraud you advocate. Read the true article of your above mis-information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

Many have died by these foolish practices of fraudalent beliefs.

[mkirkpatrick]

Thank you for your most interesting post Ls Bibra,I too have been aware of these things.
we in England are more grounded than some others who we know,and have the abilty
to keep an open mind,"not so open as ones brains would fall out"If Imay so add!

There is much to learn,and much to understand,ignorance and lack of grace,hinder many
from seeing beyond the end of their hook noses.


regards michael.

[r.p.bibra]

[quote=Lloyd Gillespie;28192]I should like to warn you Bibra, we Americans don't like the type of fraud you advocate. Read the true article of your above mis-information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

Ls. Can also refer you to http://www.pilotbaba.org/samadhi/samadhi-pilotbaba-n. His NY address is “York NY 10017:E-mail kapiladwait@pilotbaba.org” he is a living saint known as pilot baba,because he was a pilot in Indian air force(squadron leader). He has performed (still does) Samadhi (in meditation trance) underwater, in air tight glass house, under the earth etc. why don’t you contact or visit him?
Your wikipedia has not refuted his (HRM) claims. Your prejudice against Indian doctors is highly pronounced as you don’t believe in their version. Following are names of the panel, under whose supervision these ‘fast’ episodes were undertake:
( Ref. case study of Mr. Hira Ratan Manek : 411 fast : 375 fast completed on 9-1-2001.) Dr. Sudhir V. Shah M.D., D.M. Neurophysician 206-8, Sangini Complex, Nr. Parimal Crossing, Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad-380 006. Ph. : (c) 079-646 70 52 (R) 079-662 17 42. Hon. Neurologist : H.E. The Governor of Gujarat, India. President : Asso. of Physician of A'bad. (97-9 Hon. Asst.Prof. of neurology : Sheth K.M School of PGMR Smt. N.H.L. M.M College Hon. Neurologist : V.S.Hospital, Ahmedabad. Jivraj Mehta Smarak Hospital I acknowledge suggestions & help received for this hypothesis.. From : (1) Dr. Navneet Shah M.D. FICA (U.S.A) Physician Endocrinologist (C) 6425566. (2) Dr. Gargey Sutaria (M.D.) & Dr. Kalpesh Shah (M.D.) Radiologist Usmanpura C.T.Scan Centre. Clinical Assistant : Dr. Nalin Gheewala M.D. Physician. Dr. K.K. Shah M.S. Surgeon. Dr. Viresh Patel M.D. Physician. Dr. P.G.Shah M.B.B.S. Family Physician. Dr. P.D.Doshi M.B.B.S. Family Physician.
You don’t represent America as a whole. Thousands of your country men visit some exclusive ashrams in India.ls. knows one such ashram where they have been coming since 1968. Among them are doctors, scientists, engineers, psychiatrists and what not.
In India, there is one ‘man’ who single-handedly is performing a ‘miracle’ which a rich country like USA could not implement, though it is spending trillions in defense! He has opened one university, two super-specialty hospitals, & proving drinking water to millions thirsty throats and all this free! This type of miracle can happen only in a country like India.
There is one university—comparable to any in the world, where education, from lg to pg is totally free.

“Tertiary Health Care (the super-speciality hospitals)
These hospitals provide excellent patient care facilities to all, free of cost. Even heart surgeries like CABG and valve replacement are done entirely free of cost. Most of the patients are from socially and economically weaker sections of society.
BANGALORE SUPER SPECIALITY HOSPITAL
Cumulative Statistics from 19th Jan 2001 to 21st Aug 2006.
Cardiac Surgeries: 6,675
Cardiac Catheterisation: 14, 144
Neuro Surgeries: 6,108
CT Scans: 19,430
MRI Exams:22,894
PUTTAPARTHI SUPER SPECIALITY HOSPITAL
Cumulative Statistics from 22nd Nov 1991 to 21st Aug 2006.
Cardiac Surgeries: 15, 771
Cath Procedures: 17,109
If one counts all the people benefited by Sai Drinking Water Projects
[including the seven million or so in Chennai], then in the last one decade,
Swami has provided drinking water to about ten million people!
To give you an idea of what this means, please note that the population of
New Zealand is about 3.8 million, the population of Belgium is about 10.3
million, the population of Hungary is about 9.8 million, and the population of
Sweden is about 8.9 million. Just think about it: Has any private charitable
trust anywhere in the world done anything like this? And please note, every
single project done by swami is given away free to the state concerned.
The State may get it free but Swami’s Central Trust has spent hundreds of
Million dollars.”

Would your conscience pronounce it also a fraud?
Not spirituality alone is enough; serving hands too are needed to mitigate the lot of the poor & rich as well (for they need mental-peace). Heads in forest, hands in society. That is the panacea.
Both India & U.S.A are free societies, so what good is your warning? You aren’t anymore in Govt. service, where such bureaucratic idiosyncrasies are tolerated. With love&regards.ls.

[r.p.bibra]

ps;however the ls. agrees with you that this type of sadhna (discipline) should never be undertaken without the personal supervision of an expert yogic teacher.