Sai Baba quotes

All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.
You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it!
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past.

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.
Let love flow so that it cleanses the world. Then man can live in peace, instead of the state of turmoil he has created through his past ways of life, with all those material interests and earthly ambitions.
Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.
(From BrainyQuote)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisement

EARLY MEMORIES:Lacking an ancestral background

When I was about 5 years old, my sister and I were taken to Ceylon by my parents. Apparently we travelled as deck passengers on a Japanese freighter. I have no memories of that journey. Obviously, it was the cheapest way to travel. Since, as children, we were customarily denied the right to ask our parents about matters beyond our own activities, I never enquired about the facilities for sleep, and daily functions such as excretion and washing/bathing.

A female relative of my vintage, however, told me about a decade ago that she, as an adult, had been a deck passenger; and that necessary facilities had been available. What a way to travel!

A sad aspect of the culture into which I was born is that I know nothing about my parents’ formative lives, and how our ancestral family lived. With no feeling about our historical past, the persistent focus on the present, with an eye on a wanted (or hoped for) future, I sought to understand our historical religio-cultural heritage; ie. the Dravidian Hinduism of India.

What I remember of that journey to Jaffna was tripping, and nearly falling into Colombo Harbour in the dark. In our family-home terrain, I remember only a courtyard in my maternal grandfather’s home, and dusty roads; but no people. I must have been a dopey kid.

But I distinctly remember my sister coming onto the verandah adjacent to the courtyard with a piece of thosai in her hand; and her loud indignant complaint when a crow (raven?) swooped down and stole her food.

I also recall a trip to a pool said to have healing powers. Although I was not told, it was my father who sought healing. Back in Malaya, my father was subsequently operated on by a visiting British surgeon. The 3 other patients who had been operated on the same day, died. My father survived (apparently with some difficulty) until age 47.

So, at age 18, I lost the rudder I needed for my future. With no knowledge or feeling about my ancestral heritage, I was ready to be cast, relatively culture-free, onto a totally foreign culture, which was strangely unwelcoming.

Since a yogi had foretold my ‘exile’ (but somewhat obliquely) there had to be a veiled agenda, if not meaning, in this sudden and most painful turn in my life-path on Earth.

Quotes on re-birth

Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices. Annie Besant
Assimilation of the fruits of each past life takes place before the spirit descends to rebirth, and consequently, the character generated is fully formed and readily expressed in the subtle, mobile mind-stuff of the Region of Concrete Thought, where the archetype of the coming dense body is built. Max Heindel
A rebirth out of spiritual adversity causes us to become new creatures. James E. Faust
One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists. Dalai Lama
Everyone focuses on the earthly state, but how cool might death be? I believe in spiritual rebirth, and I can’t wait to experience that. Barry Zito

“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

 

 

 

 

RAJA – YouTube No. 1

Surviving to contribute: age no barrier

Who would not be interested in a 87-year old whose mind is as sharp as a tack, and who writes in an interesting and clear style? Yet, he began to write only after a significant psychic experience after retirement.

“You could contribute to building a bridge from where you came to where you are” suggested the spirit of his uncle just before he de-materialised. Earlier, the clairvoyant involved had told Raja, a bicultural Asian-Australian, that the spirit world had experienced difficulty in getting him to Australia. ‘Why me?’ was his plaintive thought, in the light of his difficult life, over 6 decades, in his country of adoption.

Raja knows a lot about migrant settlement, both from his settlement experiences and his work as a director of policy on ethnic affairs & multiculturalism, citizenship & national identity, as well as refugee & humanitarian entry.

His settlement experiences included a woman shouting at him in a public place. She said, “Why don’t you go back home, you black bastard?” He happens to be light tan in skin colour.

Although qualified as a psychologist, he was denied a job because he was ‘too black.’ When he then qualified as an economist, he was told that the Australian worker in the private sector ‘is not yet ready for a foreign executive.’ This was White Australia, after all.

It was the public sector which promoted him rapidly. Yet, he was somewhat dishonestly denied permanent promotion in the Senior Executive Service. He obtained proof of that 2 years later.

To compensate, he channelled his surplus energy into civil society, where he made a substantial contribution in his spare time. He was chairman of a school board, the national president of an organisation akin to Toastmasters, the founder of a public speaking competition for primary school students, and a recipient of a meritorious service award from his union for his work on merit protection.

He achieved all this while the wheels of his life-chances cart fell off from time to time; and he kept falling into holes which were not there. Obviously, he does not give up!

Between 69 and 84 he published 6 books; 2 memoirs, 2 on migrant settlement, 1 on Australian society, and 1 on fiction. 4 of his non-fiction books were recommended by the US Review of Books. All the books received favourable reviews. Quite an achievement!

He then wrote 44 thought-provoking articles for ezinearticles.com. He has now completed about 1,000 daily posts on his WordPress blog, rajarasablog.wordpress.com, titled ‘An octogenarian’s final thoughts’ : a mind-exploring smorgasbord!

This octogenarian author is Raja Arasa Ratnam. I commend him to you as a most unusual person who, in spite of his travails, claims to be at peace mentally and spiritually. “At my age, I should be”, he says. “My wings await me.”

The benefits and dis-benefits of colonialism

A few years ago, www.ezinearticles.com published the following article of mine – ‘The pros and cons of British colonialism’. It has attracted attention continuously ever since. At about 800 words in length, it is easy to read.

It is, of course, strange to have an anti-colonial, a former British subject, acknowledge any benefits to subject peoples from colonialism. I instanced the English language as a significant benefit. It is now an international language. My relatives, by blood and marriage, are now well-entrenched citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore – as part of the Ceylon Tamil diaspora.

Regrettably, some of us have lost our heritage – except in our minds. Some of us speak only English, have no knowledge of our distant origins as Dravidians, and have little appreciation of the literary wealth of our distant forbears, the Tamils of India. These are the ‘cons’ of modernisation, offsetting the ‘pros’ derived from mastery of the English language.

Looking at the level of education experienced by my Australian children and grandchildren, I came to realise how well educated I was by the colonial British. I received a broader and deeper education than did my descendants! That the British people at home are significantly more tolerant than many (most?) of our colonial rulers in British Malaya was proven by 2 of my sisters who acquired valuable qualifications in Britain after WW2. As a schoolboy, I remember my elders referring to the ‘upstarts’ who ruled us.

Other benefits were British law and Western democracy. Codified law, drawing upon precedents, does offer a clearer path from the past to the present. However, I believe that the adversarial system in courts, and which allows lawyers to obfuscate issues and ‘play games’ (I write from experience)  diminishes prospects for justice. Pros and cons in balance!

Then, there is that so-called democracy. Every adult has a vote. Our political representatives (federal, state, and local government) are, however, not accountable to voters, and certainly never consult us. I write from experience as a resident in Australia over 65 years as an adult. At federal and state levels, political parties rule openly, their main objective being to hold office.

Today, we seem to be governed by Vaticanites. How so? Compassion is suppressed by Papal Bull, for example. Western democracy is indubitably a con!

The pros and cons offered by the hegemonic empire of the USA, based on indirect controls, await judgement.

Socialising in the ‘Afterlife’ (the Recycling Depot)Depot)

Socialising in the ‘Afterlife’ (the Recycling Depot)

The clairvoyant who enabled the spirit of my uncle to offer me advice told me, nearly a quarter of a century ago, not to be in a hurry (I was!) ‘to get to the Other Side’; it would not be different from here, he said. I did not like that.

I was, however, promised that I would continue my learning there. As to those I might meet there, all my close relatives who had died a while back would probably have been reincarnated by now. Would I be fortunate in meeting some of the ‘higher beings’ referred to by my uncle? He had explained that they had sent him to me.

It would also be wonderful to be able to talk to some of the learned men and women of recent times. Throughout my life, I have tended to seek out people who are interesting, especially immigrants and (genuine) refugees in Australia offering their diverse experiences. Great insight into the human condition is thus available.

I would also like to meet in the Afterlife some of those religious leaders who had practised control over their ‘flocks,’ including separating them from being contaminated by ‘foreign’ ideologies. In this context, I am reminded of that priest who convinced all 5 of our new neighbours not to have coffee with my wife. They ignored us after that; we were not of ‘the faith.’ What ignorance; what subservience. How un-Australian!

I would ask such priests what they thought they had done for humanity as a whole. I do not, however, expect bigotry and evil thoughts to survive Earthly death. One’s soul should be above Earthly contaminants.

The Afterlife promises to be interesting in another way. Currently I am saddened by those Christians, all regular church-goers, who have indicated to me that they do not know what will happen to them after death (in spite of what the Bible promises), or who are genuinely afraid to die. They are not convinced by my belief that we will all go to a better place. What have their priests done to them? I know them to be good people, surely not conceived or born in ‘sin.’    

I look forward to be able to say to them (and their priests) ‘Isn’t this a good place to be’? I really cannot see why the Afterlife (the Recycling Depot) cannot also be an R&R (rest and recuperation) Way Station!

There we could again re-connect as fellow-travelers, until we move on to our respective personal-destiny pathways once more. It is the journey, the objective of repeated rebirths, which offers valuable learning in the meaning of existence and non-existence!

The formation of layers of identities

Accepting the reality that each of us has a layer of identities, how would these identities have been formed? The layer would surely commence with a core identity. Surface identities would then cover that core. Would any of us dare to dig beneath our surface identities to perceive our innate self?

The surface or public identities are fairly obvious: gender, relationship within the nuclear family; if relevant, one’s position within the extended family; linkage by blood (kinship); the cultural surrounds of one’s tribal connections; occupation; and (possibly) one’s position in civil society (community organisations), and in society in general, in terms of one’s influence. Unusual circumstances can also delineate certain evolved identities.

As for the more personal components of one’s identity, one could quite readily identify one’s temperament (reaction potential); and whether one is able to perceive and understand correctly the happenings or events encountered; and whether one is capable of applying a logical process to deal with a myriad of situations, including coping with hardship, injustice, and the like.

Below these layers of multiple identities, is there not a deeper, core layer reflecting the passage of one’s soul through time and space? To state the assumptions upholding this question: Assume that each human being has a soul. Re-stating that: Assume that a soul-entity is encased within a human body while on Earth. Assume too (necessarily) that a soul-entity’s time spent on Earth is NOT a one-shot affair. If it were a single isolated event, would that not equate the life of a human to the life of an insect?

If this were so, we could dispense with the super-structure of religion, ethics, and related considerations. We live, we then die – with no meaning in existence!

Contrarily accepting that human life represents a cycle of rebirths (and there is no way of disproving this belief), then there is a strong probability of each soul recording some memory of previous lives. Could not such memories impinge, influence, or infiltrate a core identity in each Earthly life? Could we not be affected by this insidious impact through life, but necessarily without any awareness of that?

That some children are invariably non-competitive, or tend to anger or unhappiness, or are recalcitrant repeatedly, may be explicable by the proposition above. Better still, I happen to know a few children and adults who have displayed these behaviours without any visible trigger.

Add to that situation those who have intimations intuitively about a significant past life or two, or who have been told by reliable clairvoyants about certain past lives impinging relevantly upon current experiences. Of course, the real-life experiences of a few cannot be denied by a majority through only disbelief or, worse still, by allegedly infallible professional sceptics. The Cosmos does seem to offer inter-connecting ephemeral pathways to understanding the ineffable.

In my view, there is a great plausibility about significant past-life memories impinging in some way upon current life motivations, actions, and responses. As one’s soul transits time and space, it can surely resonate in appropriate circumstances.

This is to postulate that, within each of us, as human beings, each representing a finite soul-entity, there is a vibrational potential reflecting significant experiences in past lives; and that this shapes our core personalities. Insidiously, intangibly, we are also what we have been; our extended past exists within us, shaping us.  

 

Were there ‘black’ people all over the globe historically?

When I read that the first emperor of China, Chin (Qin) Shi Huang Di (Di identifying him as emperor) had been black, I began to wonder whether the word black meant coloured; and that coloured might have covered all shades of brown (to black). The theory that modern Man had ‘come out’ of Africa may have led to the erroneous belief that, as African, he had to be black in colour.

In New Zealand, I discovered what seems to be officially accepted – that the Maori people had originated in Taiwan. That sounded improbable until I read more recently that there had been a tribe of ‘black’ people in Taiwan. I can only assume that these people were also brown in colour, judging by the skin colour of the Maori people, and their Polynesian neighbours. These peoples may have been escapees from the drowning Sundaland.

The infusion of European genes into ‘black’ Africa and ‘brown’ India has not altered the colour of the resident populations to any substantive extent. Moving into and out of freezing terrain in northern Europe, caused by the so-called ice ages expanding and retreating, has apparently not altered the skin colour of the affected populations.

I have also read that there have been ‘black’ communities in southern China. They had to be brown, not black as in negroid – unless an ancient negroid population (the Olmec?) had somehow spread itself all over the globe. If so, they would have to have been extraterrestrials, or transported by  extraterrestrials.

Sensibly, one would have to conclude that brown (in a variety of shades) was the original colour of mankind; and that the precursor of white people was a natural genetic mutation which, over thousands of years, led to whitish people (with blue eyes). A significant blast of cosmic radiation, about 40,000 years ago, along the surrounds of the Tropic of Cancer would, more credibly, explain the skin-whitening of the affected people.

Since great artistic ability, displayed in cave paintings and on decorated stones, had apparently arisen about 40,000 years ago, a vast cosmic radiation cannot be ruled out as a skin-colour changer. Beauty can flower from the ashes of death. The original colour of mankind, according to yet another report, was described as honey to milk coffee.

How then did the black people arise? Indeed, couldn’t some extraterrestrials have been jet black, since the sun cannot make brown jet black, any more than a lack of sunlight can turn brown skin to white?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

African proverbs on friendship

• To be without a friend is to be poor indeed. ~ Tanzanian proverb
• Hold a true friend with both hands. ~ African proverb
• The friends of our friends are our friends. ~ Congolese proverb
• A friend is someone you share the path with. ~ African proverb
• Show me your friend and I will show you your character. ~ African proverb
• Return to old watering holes for more than water; friends and dreams are there to meet you. ~ African proverb
• Between true friends even water drunk together is sweet enough. ~ African proverb
• A small house will hold a hundred friends. ~ African proverb
• A close friend can become a close enemy.~ African proverb
• Bad friends will prevent you from having good friends. ~ Gabon proverb
(Taken from website titled ‘Afritorial, with gratitude. Indicates a heritage from ancient civilisations.)

Are there inherited tribal fears?

Baby monkeys have been observed to cry out in fear when sighting a snake for the first time. The explanation? Instinct! No denying that. How did that instinct arise? Through its ancestors’ learning, and which has been transmitted through the generations without affecting the genome; through epigenesis. This is comparable with Lamarck’s theory about the inheritance of acquired (learned) characteristics, generation by generation.

In a somewhat comparable manner, an older relative of mine in Malaysia placed a large handkerchief on his head when very, very slight rain fell. No other relative present at the funeral we were attending did that. Since I had played hockey through cold winter drizzles in Melbourne, and (once) through a light fall of snow in colder Hobart in Tasmania, I too ignored the Malaysian drizzle.

Yet, I remembered that, in my boyhood, I and my cousins were never allowed out even in the lightest of rain. On the other hand, we had watched with envy Indian boys playing happily in the rain. Since my handkerchief-relative had (so I believe) been born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), I have wondered whether there is a tribal memory within the older Ceylon Tamils which associates pestilence (or disease) with rain.

I can understand that (perhaps) some of us will fear an unspecified danger from the sky, while the majority know nothing about this danger – except that one might catch a cold or fall ill by becoming wet. The idea of a collective amnesia is not persuasive; what you do not know cannot be blamed for some allegedly deep collective wish not to remember. This is not comparable to an instinct.

Was there a tribal fear underpinning the claim by some Australians in the 1950s that the Martians will attack us? Or, was that fear triggered by the Roswell Incident – an alleged ET crashing in Mexico? The claimed fear that Indonesia will attack Australia one day; is that any more than the projection of prejudice by many Christians against Islam?

Indeed, is there any substantive evidence of an inherited (not a learned or taught) tribal fear, comparable to the instinctive fear of snakes displayed by baby monkeys?