Y’dig?

Within the first five minutes of meditating with the students at West Side High, I felt relieved of all the pre-existing exhaustion within me. The environment where we were giving realization that morning was what most yogis would consider the least conducive for meditating – students were running and dancing around our stall and music was blasting in the surrounding areas. There would be the periodic random scream or popping balloon. But when I began to meditate with the students, I realized that we were all able to enter that state of silent meditation as easily as if we were at home before our altars. In fact, it even felt a little easier.

The hour or so that we spent meditating with the students at West Side High was so enjoyable. I loved observing and listening to the comments from each of the students, and seeing many of their faces relieved and satisfied after they got their realization. What amazed me was how sensitive many of the students already were to their own vibrations and how quite a few of them expressed a genuine interest in meditation, even though this event was a mandatory health program in their school. A few students were so moved by their experience that they said they would come to the weekly meditation meetings on 34^th street. One memorable student – a spirited young black man, who had a do-rag around his head and sagging pants – was so enthusiastic about his experience, that he immediately brought his friend to our stall. Another young woman who got her realization opened up her eyes and said “Wow. I needed this.” She mentioned how much emotional turmoil she faces in her life and how she will start meditating regularly to overcome that.

The method by which we gave realization to these students was even simpler than I expected it would be. All that we asked the students to do was to bring their attention to a few parts of their body, which were referred to by ‘normal’ terms – the center of your chest, the center of your forehead, etc. There was no waving of hands, no saying affirmations out loud, no confusing words. And no explanation needed to be given before we all meditated. Whenever I felt a catch in anyone, I would simply put my attention on their catch and silently say the respective mantra to remove it. (I found myself often saying the mantra for center heart.) Everything was so simple, yet effective. I was amazed at how strongly I could feel the students centers in my own Sahasrara and hands and how easily the kundalini in others would rise.

As I walked out of the high school, I already started assessing how I could change my approach to giving realization to people, especially at the weekly meetings that are held at my university during the school year. My experience at the HealthCorps event gave me faith in a fact that I often forget – realization can be given anywhere, to anyone, and in any situation. That too, in the most simplest of ways. All pre-existing ideas that I had about how to ‘effectively’ give realization, what meditative environment to create, and the types of people who will take more easily to meditation were dissolved after going to this Health Corps event.

Right after the Health Fair I had to go back to work for five hours. For the first time in weeks, I felt as if nothing in this draining city and in my workplace could bring me down. I was so energized by meditating with those students that during the course of the day, I felt my kundalini magnetically being drawn to my Sahasrara numerous times.

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“There are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that aren’t entirely confined to space and time; you can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners and such things. Only ignorance denies these facts, you know; it’s quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche, in part at least, is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche if not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn’t, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws, and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.” Carl Jung

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Robert Fisk: The innocent became the guilty, the guilty innocent

Something new was happening. These were hard men. There was no way of negotiating with them

Wednesday, 16 June 2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-innocent-became-the-guilty-the-guilty-innocent-2001678.html

We knew the First Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. “Tough” was the word we reporters used if the soldiers were beating up rioters.

Brutal was the word we should have used. But sometime towards the end of 1971, I think we all realised that the Parachute Regiment was being prepared for some pretty nasty confrontations. They were the hard men, the reserve battalion at Palace Barracks, Holywood, a boring seaside town on the south side of Belfast Lough, a unit that spent most of its time waiting for trouble.

Shortly before Bloody Sunday, I’d seen them confronting a crowd of angry Protestants just off the Shankill Road. The “Prods” had blocked the street, set fire to some tyres; they were protesting at the lack of security. So the local British battalion in the Ardoyne called up the reserves and the first thing we saw was an Army “Pig” – a big armored vehicle with a wide-bodied snout over the engine – come roaring round the corner, knocking a youth clean off the road on to the pavement. It drove straight into the burning tyres and the paratroopers jumped out of the back with wooden cudgels and got to work on the street lads.

There were howls of rage and curses from the Brits and eventually the Prods cleared off and the soldiers of 1 Para stood in the street looking bored. Then a door opened and out came a man in his fifties. A Belfast Protestant, hair greying, he sort of hobbled on to the street as if he’d been hurt badly years ago and he walked right up to a group of Paras and plunged his hand into his pocket. He brought out an old Army red beret with a metal badge of parachute wings fixed to it and a tatty old regimental tie.

The soldiers watched him, bemused. Then he began to tear the beret to pieces, right there in front of the soldiers, and ripped up the tie. The man was shouting ‘Bastards, bastards,” over and over again at them and he dropped the ruined beret and tie at his feet and stomped on them. The soldiers laughed. And the man kept shouting “bastards” and he was crying and then he shouted at the soldiers: “I was at Arnhem.”

What had happened to the Parachute Regiment? A week before Bloody Sunday, John Hume, the MP for Foyle, encountered a far more disturbing demonstration of power by the same regiment. There was a nationalist demonstration on the beaches of north Derry and the Paras had turned up and beaten the demonstrators and a Para officer walked up to Hume and – in a very English public school accent – threatened him. “I realised something new was happening,” Hume was to tell me years later. “Some decision had been taken by the military. I was very worried about this. These were very hard men. There was no way of negotiating with them.”

Could we have guessed what this meant? Or the libels that British journalism was to commit against the dead of Bloody Sunday in the coming weeks? As usual – and for Derry, read Fallujah or Gaza or any Afghan village where civilians get in the way – the innocent became the guilty and the guilty became the innocent. “Bordering on the reckless” – Widgery’s whining description of the British Army rabble that fatally shot 14 Catholics in the Bogside – was the only real half-truth to emerge from his disgracefully short and lazy report.

They are old now, those soldiers, the same age in 1972 as those they killed in Derry. I was on The Times – the glorious, pre-Murdoch Times – and I was not in Derry on the day. But for years I went there as I go back, still, to the scene of Middle East massacres. In 1997, home from Beirut, I was again prowling around Derry. Was anything left? In the wall of a ground-floor apartment in Glenfada Flats, I found two bullet holes from Bloody Sunday, two gashes in the cheap stucco and cement to remind the Catholics of the Bogside of the power of a self-loading rifle.

“There’s another hole round the corner in Chamberlain Street,” a young man told me. “Would you like to see it?” Cruelly, I told him I’d seen enough bullet holes in the Middle East and the Balkans these past 22 years. “But do people know about Bloody Sunday in Beirut?” the man asked. No, I said. Not a soul there knew – or cared – what happened here. So all the man said was: “Jesus Christ!” It is a name much invoked on the Derry memorials.

The most dramatic of these is a simple granite cross erected to the memory of the 14 “murdered by British paratroopers on Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972″. Beside it, back in 1979, someone had scribbled a note: “All we need is the truth to help heal the wounds.”

Did we get it yesterday? Was it enough? Certainly it is more than the Palestinians will ever get for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre. Or the people of Qana who were demanding an inquiry in 1996 after Israeli shells slaughtered 101 civilians sheltering in the UN compound. The UN’s official report into the massacre implied that it was deliberate.

Lord Widgery was not so brave. Of 500 eyewitness testimonies given to him, he bothered to read only 15. Was he merely idle? Or was he a weak, morally enfeebled man, more fearful of condemning his country’s armed forces than he was of concealing the truth?

Or did we British journalists have something to answer for in our slavish adherence to the notion of the British Army’s integrity? I don’t think we cared about the Irish – either the Catholic or the Protestant variety. I don’t think we cared about Ireland. I don’t think the British Army cared. At last, I suppose, the Saville report has answered that scribbled note I found outside the Glenfada flats 13 years ago.

But at least the people of Derry care about others who have died unjustly. In 2003, as the Americans occupied Iraq, American paratroopers opened fire on a crowd of protesting Iraqis in the city of Fallujah. They killed 14, claiming they were shot at. Subsequent inquiries suggested this was a lie. A few days later, in Baghdad, I took a call from an old friend in Derry. He wanted to lead a delegation of Bloody Sunday relatives to Fallujah, he said, to show their sorrow for the dead Iraqis. I don’t think the Americans cared about the Iraqis. But the Irish of Bloody Sunday cared.

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June 3, 2010

A special thank you to HealthCorps coordinator, Jessica Anders without whom none of this would have happened.

“Hey, I want to thank you for showing me how to meditate. I also want to thank you for helping (me) forgive someone.” Aurelia R

“…. Hope to see you again and thanks for teaching my classmates and I how to meditate. That was a cool lesson. Cya” Daniel

“Thanks for coming. I was relaxed the whole day you came.” Shanya

“Hey, gracias for coming to this school and teaching us how to meditate, it really helped w/all the stress in my life.” Paul P

“…. I am always stressed but you helped me.” Eric M

“Hey, this is your friend Malik. Thank you for showing us how to meditate.”

“Can’t thank you enough for your dedication to the education of our youth….” Ryan (teacher)

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Today had a sweet sadness to it, Jenny Ninyo, HealthCorps coordinator organized a wonderful lunch for the teachers in the school where she’s worked for two years, bringing health, fitness, well-being and mental resilience programs to students and staff. The buffet lunch involved a plethora of healthy, beautifully prepared food, and one after another, the teachers came up to Jenny and said how much they’d miss her, for this is near the end of her two year stint as a HealthCorps coordinator. Jenny, as is the case with all HealthCorps coordinators is an extraordinary young woman of rich and varied talents – she is an expert at Hatha Yoga, a linguist, she teaches and tutors in Hebrew, she is a great cook and organizer, a great motivator and fun to be with. She’ll be much missed. The good news for us is that she’s staying in New York City.

As part of the lunch, an optional Sahaja Meditation program was available and about 24 teachers and 6 parents tried Sahaja Meditation. All of those I spoke to said this would be a very valuable practice, given what a stressful job teaching now is in Manhattan. Many said they’d love to attend the introductory evening to Sahaja Meditation to be held on July 8, 2010 at 7 pm at:

New York Society for Ethical Culture

2 West 64th Street at Central Park West New York, NY 10023.

And, as if by way of coincidence, who should walk in but Anna Mancini, who was teaching in this school as a substitute teacher. Anna kindly sat with Joan and I as we meditated with Jenny and a very nice math teacher, Laura.

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As a HealthCorps Coordinator in a Bronx high school, I provide innovative health and wellness workshops for my students.  Our curriculum includes a fair amount of nutritional and fitness education but also touches upon mental resiliency topics.  And I truly believe, optimal health and wellness begins not with education but rather the openness of the heart and the mind.

For the past 7 weeks, Alan and sometimes Lioudmila Wherry have graciously practiced Sahaja meditation with my students and allowed them to discover its power. Without question, it’s been the highlight of working with my students within the classroom…the best part of the work day.  Every week, we position desks in a circle and read one passage pertaining to themes such as forgiveness, trust, being present, fear & love, and the true source of joy.  “Joy is not what happens to you; it is what comes through you when you are conscious of the blessing you are.”  Alan and myself share personal anecdotes and pose questions that allow the students to find their own individual answers.

In a neighborhood and school environment with constant noise, distractions, and one too many fights, I’ve been encouraged by the ability of the students to quiet their voices, minds, and focus on themselves.  To incorporate ”personal growth-work” into their traditional school work is important.  To scan a room and see 20 students in utter deep silence for 10-15 minutes is damn near breathtaking.

Leslie Dolland

something not quite right, but we know what it intended!

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When, at Kurt Hahn, in Brooklyn a couple of months ago we tried getting the students to raise their kundalini and put themselves in bandhan, it really didn’t work, they were looking at each other, embarrassed or even hitting each other with their arm actions. So mostly, we are keeping the meditation as simple as possible and it’s working.

However, in Kurt Hahn yesterday, there was a smaller group than usual, 12 or 14 in total, and we tried having them raise their kundalini and put themselves in bandhan, we did a meditation of the left channel, saying affirmations, as we had done the week before and the vibrations were noticeably stronger and the students went noticeably deeper.

We tried the same thing in Fordham Arts, there we had 14 students, two of whom had never meditated before, and again with the left-side meditation with affirmations, the result was the same, a much deeper meditation and the vast majority of students who in this case have only been meditating for a month, went noticeably deeper.

What does this mean? Probably that in a classroom situation, after a week or so we might experiment and see what happens in other situations.

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“Know thyself” is supreme wisdom; but how can we know ourselves? Is it a mere intellectual knowledge that we want? Modern psychology may explain a good many of the workings of the mind and make interesting and helpful guesses; but this is the study of the mind as an object. How can the mind be known as a subject, except by experience? We all know different values in our daily life: the difference of inner life when the routine of daily tribulations, great or small, makes us feel that we’re not really living, or when we hear a symphony of Beethoven, or read Shakespeare, or Dante or the Upanishads,  if we can read or listen; but can we know what allows us to be conscious of our own consciousness? Can we know the essence of our life which allows us to live and to feel and to think? If we did, we would then know ourselves, our Atman (AW. Spirit), we would know God. We could then know, even as we know that we are alive, but with far greater intensity, that there is a centre within us which gives us that oneness which we call consciousness and that can be one with the ONE, the invisible link that gives the unity of our little lives and is the oneness of this vast universe.

That is the great adventure and the great discovery. No one can do it for is. Until we reach the top of the mountain we cannot see in full glory the view that lies beyond; but glimpses of light illumine our path to the mountain. These glimpses of light give us faith, because then we can know, not with the external knowledge of reading books, but that certainty of faith that comes from moments of inner life. But if in intellectual pride or in the dullness we deny the light, thereby denying ourselves, how can we avoid being in darkness?

This is why the greatest prayers of men have always been prayers for light and love. We cannot buy light and love in the marketplace of men; but they are given to us without money and without price.”

From the introduction to the Penguin Classics, The Upanishads, translated by Juan Mascaro.

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The Sanskrit word Upanishad come from the verb sad, to sit, with upa, connected with the Latin s-ub, under; and ni, found in English be-neath and nether. The whole thing means a sitting, an instruction, the sitting at the feet of a master. When we read in the Gospels that Jesus “went up into the mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him” we can imagine them sitting at the feet of their Master and the whole Sermon on the Mount might be considered as an Upanishad.

from the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the Upanishads, translated by the great unsung, unrecognized genius, Juan Mascaro.

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I was a seeker for as long as I can remember. I had arrived at the logical conclusion that I needed a guru to find God, although I had read that some had attained their Self Realization without one. I had also made the conscious choice to find a wife to assist me in my search, again despite the fact that I had read that many had chosen the path of solitude and celibacy.

So it was that I found myself married and in India. Although my wife’s primary reason for traveling in India was not entirely spiritual, by the end of sixteen months there, including two extended treks in the Nepalese Himalayas, it was.

Ironically, despite visiting numerous famous and not so famous ashrams, gurus, fakirs, temples, shrines, pilgrimage points and retreats, much in the style of Paul Brunton when he wrote the book A Search in Secret India in the early 1930s, it was a book or books written by a Cambridge University Professor named Juan Mascaro that not only made the most sense to me, but also gave me such joy that I could not put them down.

They were The Dhammapada, The Bhagavad Gita and The Upanishads — translated by the man who was at that time the western world’s authority in Sanskrit and Pali. I include this background as it relates to what was later to happen.

In May of 1979, we arrived in England to stay with my wife’s parents for an extended time, before either returning immediately to India to continue the search for a guru, with increased determination, or to return to America to work, to make and save money, and then to return to India in search of a guru. For both of us by this time, there was nothing more important.

And so it was that I discovered a guru by means of a book I’d bought and read in India, but oddly, it was written by a man living in England. But the best and even more surprising thing was this, on October 28 of 1979 I would meet the Indian guru I’d sought in England, who would not only change my life forever, but would give me what I had been searching for all of my life.

About a year after getting Self Realization from Shri Mataji in Caxton Hall in London, we happened to be living in Cambridge and attended a lecture given by Juan Mascaro. As soon as he walked into the room and began reciting passages from the Gita and Upanishads in Sanskrit, the whole room lit up around him, a fact confirmed by my wife and other Sahaja Yogis who were also there.

Apart from Shri Mataji Herself and a couple of incidents on the tour in India — a visit to the samadhi site of Janeshwara, for example — I had never felt such strong vibrations and yet I was still not sure what I had experienced at that lecture.

When Shri Mataji came to Cambridge some time later for a program, it was only natural that I would want Mr. Mascaro to meet Her and so I arranged a meeting that should occur the day after the program, at his house.

As it turned out, an interview had been arranged in the morning with a lady from a local BBC station and it went on much longer than we had anticipated and afterwards we got caught up in a traffic jam, all of which resulted in Shri Mataji desiring to have a nap before departing for Norwich, a city of some sixty miles northeast of Cambridge, where we had arranged another public program.

Shri Mataji seemed to sleep quite soundly and we knew that it was inauspicious to wake Her, but it was now getting late and obvious that we would not be able to visit Mr. Mascaro after all.

When She awoke, She said, “I slept so soundly, it must be quite late.”

I replied that yes it was and that we would not have time to go see Mr. Mascaro, to which She replied, “Better go and phone him.”

I could feel his sadness and disappointment on the phone, but we agreed to make it some other time. But when I reported back to Shri Mataji, She said “Well, you know, he is an older man, better phone him again and tell him I will come.”

By this time my emotions had gone through the entire spectrum and when I reported back to Mr. Mascaro, I couldn’t tell whose relief and joy was the greater — his or mine.

When we all arrived at his very humble thatched cottage in a small village about ten miles from Cambridge, he was standing in the doorway with a single beautiful white rose that he had picked from his garden and, to our amazement and delight, began to sing the ancient sloka that we all Sahaja Yogis were very familiar with because in those days we used to sing it to Mother following the aarti, Sabo Ku Dua, at pujas. Loosely translated it says, “You are my mother, You are my father, You are my brother, You are my friend. You are the beginning, You are the middle and You are beyond the end,” and ends with, “You are my guru, You are my God, You are my everything.”

There were no dry eyes that observed that scene, I can assure you. After presenting Shri Mataji with the rose, he invited Her, then us, inside and what was to follow was even more amazing.

As we four sat and watched Shri Mataji and Juan talk, we would occasionally hear a few words, but the words were the least important aspect of what was really taking place.

At this point, any hope of getting to Norwich anywhere near the scheduled meeting time was so far out of the question that at one point I almost thought about phoning the hall to tell the caretaker to put out a sign saying that the meeting was cancelled.

Meanwhile, the vibrations in the room were so strong that I envisioned the walls of the house collapsing from the power of it. Afterwards, we four all agreed it was like seeing the long lost son finally finding his mother. Of course, in reality it was — and no different that Mother had found all of us — and despite the fact that he was at least thirty years older than Shri Mataji.

I can’t recall to this day whether I had ever looked at the time after we left the house to go visit. I do know that I was resigned to the fact that we were going to be very, very late and that, one, that really didn’t matter anyway because we are beyond time — sounds nice, but we don’t often believe it; two, that if anyone did show up, they would have left hours ago; three, that I was going to have to give the introductory talk and that I was going to be very embarrassed and apologetic.

The drive to Norwich is very beautiful — no motorway — but very slow. Normally, it would take an hour and a half to two hours depending upon the traffic, as it is primarily a two lane road. I don’t know how long it took on this occasion either, with Hari Jairam driving Shri Mataji’s crème-coloured Mercedes and my wife and I in the back, but I do know two things — one, that the meeting was scheduled to begin at 7 pm and that, two, as I opened the door to let

Shri Mataji out at the front entrance to the hall, the clock on the church tower across the street began to chime seven times.

“How many times do I have to tell you people,” joked Shri Mataji, “we are not bound by time.”

In the car on the way to the meeting, Shri Mataji made this statement, “It’s very rare, you know, that a great scholar should also be a great realized soul.”

Jim Thomas

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