Cabbage Patch Dolls and Golliwogs in Cyberspace.

Many of us may not even remember those quaint dolls made of cloths or knitted in wool, a cherished childhood tradition. We had relationships with them, but later grew out of it. Remember the weekends when we would grab the picnic basket, sun umbrellas and head out for an intimate weekend on the beach or woods with the family and friends. It was an iconic image of weekends and leisure, the sense of a vanishing world is painfully insistent in our technology driven lives today. With the ubiquitous Blackberry and Smartphone we embrace digital technology to fill the void of intimacy and warmth of relationship thats has vanished forever. Dolls, picnics and weekends at the beach with family and friend are passé and even at parties – physically they are elsewhere as they tap and text on their cell phones. Children have difficulty in differentiating the real and authentic from the inanimate. There is a dark possibility that cherished cultural artifacts and traditions will disappear to a point where, we prefer shallow relationships over actual intimacy. Cultures and places changed beyond recognition by social media. We have a fragile sense of self; we are becoming terrified of intimacy and flee from the old life long gone by … and the old analogue world being dismantled. We can never go back within the flow of time, from which it was removed. We turn to the digital world, mute the sound of our hearts and emotional lives and present a false persona online. We become that person; we get confused, disoriented going into a grayish dark world of monitors hoping to find a digital soul mate sooner or later. -Vinay-

Religion and Evolution.

Religion and Evolution. From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, is a world history of religion in its early phases, directed against a biologically founded critique of religion and against all western and scientific triumphalism. It is based on an understanding of religion as a complex of human experiences, symbols, rituals, and myths and shows how the traditions were created that still nourish us today, for example, in ancient Judaism. If we elaborate on the biological foundation of religion by giving it a larger frame work it can encompass the cosmological and biological. For the study of religion in human evolution, let us start with the Big Bang, the beginning of life. I do feel that religion is concerned with the general order of existence. It is primarily a way of acting in the world, but it also involves a concern for knowing in the world. Remember the first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “all men by nature desire to know.” But in order to understand who we are today in this world, we need to know where we came from all the way back. And we are animals—we are biological creatures—and furthermore, we could not exist for a minute on this earth without a great many other biological creatures. We depend on the entire biosphere and we need a great variety of other creatures. So this is where we have come from, and we are biological creatures, so that influences our understanding of what religion is. The reality that we have something in common with the rest of the biological world has never been forgotten by human beings. A few arrogant intellectuals want to make an iron curtain between the human consciousness and every other kind of animal, but children know. Their games are full of animals. And in a great many houses, we have dogs and cats, and we treat them quite nicely usually. So instinctively we know we’re related to the rest of the animal world. We don’t remember that we’re also related to the single-celled creatures that we call bacteria; we’re very afraid of them because a few of them do us damage, but really we rely on them more than we think. The biggest danger religion is facing is that some natural scientists and their sympathizers are trying to turn the evolution story into another kind of religion. This might imply that our deepest moral insights are not going to come from other spheres.-Robert Bellah-

Cyber sex – Fantasy without Boundaries.

If we are not afraid of death, we should not be afraid of sex. Why can’t we love and indulge in a thing that gives us pleasure? What is this irrational fear – unless we release ourselves from the fetters of this hypocritical mortality imposed by society? We will forever be in human bondage and we will never be able to find our true selves – because we are not crossing the barriers of self liberation. To live life fully is to explore those sensuous, dangerous horizons of desire; living on the razors edge heightens our senses in sheer exalted exuberance. We get in touch with our wild side of our inner spirits, the missing link where sexuality and spirituality meet. Sufis, Tantrics, Dervishes, the Bauls, Dionysus and Bacchus used love and sex as the final means to Mukti, deliverance or bliss. It was Blake who remarked – by flying ourselves with utter abandon into the sexual – we find that the spiritual beckons – the road of excess leads us to the path or place of erudition. In this internet age of cyber love and virtual sex with digitally simulated orgasms, which seems really hotter than sex in the real flesh – because there is no reality to block our inhibitions or fantasies? The mind has an infinite capacity for liberation and is after all man’s main erogenous zone. This is the right approach leading one to true spirituality, the transcendence to the right avenues, evolving from the lustful genital craving to the ultimate cosmic, symbolizing the freedom of our untamed energies. This is basis of transformation; it provides above all a meaningful human connection or linkage. In the end we recognize that it is not just work, but love and sex – the unconditional love of another who accepts us for who we are, that makes life bearable. Sex is the ultimate expression of love and fulfillment.-Vinay-

Run for your Life.

If the race is over by the time your settle in front of the Telly, it’s a sprint; if it is still on after you have finished the popcorn and beer it’s a marathon or long distance run. For some people life is a jog and others it is a lark. You see them early mornings / evenings with fancy running kits, ears plugged into an iPod. Many of them have never broken into a sweat about mundane things like mortgages / EMI, tuition fees, inflation or recession. Years of living in countries like USA, Canada and Europe, a regular diet of proteins and carbs have built up muscles, and the sprinters with a dash of steroids have build bodies that move like greased lighting. For most people in cities life is one big sprint racing through everything in life – school to B schools, career, work, dropping the children, soccer classes, tuition's, music lessons and the occasional barbecue in the back yard. When we race against the clock there is no time to ruminate or chew the cud, when you decide to smell the zeitgeist, it’s time for antacids and angioplasties. On the Olympic track running is not such a glamorous part time, the marathon is tough business.The Marathon is packed with people from underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, and Morocco………. Athletes who have struggled for a meal, no training facilities, no shoes and literally begged to find sponsors to travel and foot the bill. Slight and wiry men, running the race of their lives, but with the will power, patience, strength and endurance required - an aerobic experience, sprint is an anaerobic one. Gaur Marial knows what it means to run for his life – he spent his childhood being chased by savage battles in north Sudan. Running from soldiers, through deserts without food or shelter, he survived 20 years of civil wars which killed 2 million including 8 of his 10 brothers. He was attacked by Arab nomads and kept as a slave by an Army officer. But today he has secured his place alongside the world’s greatest athletes, the sprint glam boys as he participates in the Olympic marathon – a man without a sponsor or a country. - Excerpts and Cocktail conversations

Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

On July 4th science collided with religious beliefs in Switzerland in the conspiring cold when the Hadron Collider announced the discovery of the Higgs Bosun or “God” particle. There was palpable despair amongst “believers” who for 500 years were advocating the theory of a supreme creator of the mass and universe. The camp of science was popping champagne bottles and Higgs became the sexy super star in the science firmament, an icon of the scientific, intellectual and business world. Fifty years of hard work running like a headless chicken had culminated in the discovery that gives mass to particles to exist in space. Most “believers in belief” are not gullible theists, but mainstream people blessed with critical knowledge. But many others are blinded by religious superstitions - who support the misty realms of make believe, ludicrous notions of chosen people, soul exorcisms and heavenly rewards. To uncomprehending men of science, their “truth” is a truth of transformation - rather than the truth of information. For such staunch and fanatical believers, who have not even understood the ancient mysteries of mathematics, Quantum physics is some esoteric hyperbole and does not make sense. They are bound to denounce scientist as hypocrites and curse them to eternal damnation. For science it is the Holy Grail as it deals with only what can be known, direct or indirectly, by some experience and empirical truths. It cannot answer questions like the existence of God, consciousness, the soul, heaven or rebirth. Religion and belief has a life of its own, outside the scientific mind. Their claim is a matter of faith not knowledge. Slowly the religious congregations also splinter into smaller particles where no mass can be held and even the god particle will not be able to prevent to prevent decay. –Science vs Religion-Vinay-

Unholy Dream.

Religion gives you the luxury to dream of redemption, liberation and joy everlasting. When you wake up to the harsh reality of life, you realize that they have cleverly omitted to mention agony, grief and unhappiness on earth in their technical specifications. Over the years, religious wars, jihads and global terrorism have embedded, terror in the psyche of all peace loving people, endowing a weak messianic power to which the past has claim. People have slowly withdrawn themselves, mentally and emotionally from the wider cravings of faith. Empathy rather than sympathy is the new cardinal social virtue, which combines learning with a wise, unpretentious ethical sensibility. This has prompted a return to family values-which is clearly picking up momentum in these economic recessionary days. As the disparity between the elite and masses increase, looking outward makes for better social awareness. Power buys influence, the needs of the powerful institutions comes first, hierarchies comment must be respected, lives of ordinary people have no commercial value. Powers only understand power and the occasional injustice pales in the face of larger injustices meted out by the government. The global detachment of state and religion toward the masses is the unchanging habit of tyranny. Truth, transforms to deceit and hate in the “us-against them”, in the battle for survival, where the perverse power of solidarity erupts in “Arab Spring “and “Occupy Wall Street” revolutions. By plumbing the depths of our inner lives we understand the deep nature of reality. Following a charismatic leader or evangelical preacher to an abstract principle & their unrealistic assumptions is no longer an option. We are dissatisfied because the world is fall of wretchedness and religious vanity and our dreams turn into nightmares. The angels of history, the decay of ethics, and the flash of messianic fervor manifest the world in a futile state of flux. A new world order must arise; spirituality without borders, or confining dogmas, is the ultimate reward for happiness. “And as the truth is re-enthroned, problems of disparity should evaporate to usher in a posthumous portrait of civilized living to the new culture now defined by Internet and face book. Vinay-

Be a Vedic Nomad and Explore Life.

One’s entire life is a continuous slow journey, a pilgrimage like process of inquiry through the world. It is related to discovery and learning, but the beautiful mystery will never end. A certain sense of what is transient and what is permanent in this universe will permeate and grow as knowledge grows within you. Life itself is our teacher and the Universe communicates with us, unlike school or society there is no test and no fixed curricula. You will continuously meet different situations and this experience bitter or bliss will teach you what is to be desired and what is unimportant. You need not go through many births, heavens or hells -this life itself is a collection of moments and experiences. It will provide you with the key moment when if you look without awareness you cannot see, or listen, but cannot hear. Life may be series of attachments, because relationships are the fulcrum of our lives, be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. The order of existence in the Universe is rooted in viewing everything with equanimity and relationships with animate and inanimate beings. We will learn to bear reality ‘s timeless and space less fire, and enjoy the grace of nature and realize – that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for beyond one’s spiritual self. This what is called enlightenment and it is not an end by itself, only death is the end of physical existence.