The base of the lamp is always dark.

Called by thousands of names Prophets, Gurus, Murshid, Teacher, Messiah, all of them unselfish masters have since time immemorial come showed humanity the way and then left. They were a light unto themselves and humanity tried to follow them.

Politically inclined people can spot opportunities much easier than the masses. They have always seen great power and wealth to be made by appointing themselves as the exclusive marketing agents of the Gurus, Messiahs.

So these self appointed agents set up gigantic multinational institutions called organised religion, to market and take full advantage of the goodwill, and light of the now departed masters.

While masters possess the breath of life itself, a religion is lifeless, a mere body without a soul.

When real masters are replaced by paid preachers or teachers, the magic of the message is greatly diluted if not completely lost. What remains are empty words, mere songs, complex rituals and soul-less political establishments.

Religions use complex rituals, nuances, etc. written and spoken in undecipherable language. They expect the masses to follow unnatural behaviour, demand total obedience and following by the faithful to a small group of priests.

Institutions are political in nature, and whenever there is politics, the worst aspects of human nature tends to come to the fore. Power struggles are common, and power seeks only its own absolute monopoly and continuity.

To increase their power, every religion employs an army of priests, assistants and missionaries to spread the 'message', which is nothing more than recruitment drives under various guises and to acquire wealth an power for the religious institution. The 'message' also conveniently grants religious leaders special privileges and the masses to merely serve the religious leaders.

Now preachers try to replicate the energy and light of the Masters to guide people. They resort to holding up holy books /scripture as divine lamps. The mangers of organised religion and the paid priests have granted themselves exclusive rights to hold up the lamp for others to unquestioningly follow.



They ask that people follow the persons carrying the lamp. But have you noticed the base of the lamp is always dark?


The lecturers, preachers and the leaders are themselves in the dark. A darkness possibly created by a mix of greed, lust, vanity, power, wealth, and anger,  and the insatiable desire to possess your mind, body, possessions, wealth and influence.


The ones in darkness hold up the lamp, beckon us to follow them along their path. They want you to surrender all that is yours to them including your soul. If you do not surrender they will legislate it, and enforce it.  History is full of examples of religious leaders fabricating, misleading, manipulating, etc, and if not successful with these measures, confiscate wealth, torture, and kill to take followers to the promised land and heaven.



The priests need the power of rulers and the State to stay in power and the rulers need the priests to legitimise their reign. A convenient symbiosis, where two sets of people in the dark thriving off each other. Look closely and you will find that politicians and religious leaders share the same characteristics.

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Sadly, man lives in fear. Fearful creatures are easily confused and will cling to any thing that offers a way to mitigate their fear. The priests know this and there is a race to recruit followers as soon as they are born and often even before birth. More the number of followers of any religion, the greater the hordes of people to be used and sacrificed and greater wealth at there disposal.

We, each one of us, has great individual potential. In fact that is the only true potential we possess. However to realise that potential we must be one with ourselves not with the crowd or the mobs. Each one of us has our own lamp, that we can use to illuminate the path ahead. The base of this lamp is bright and there is nothing hidden from the glare of this lamp. All we need to do is turn it on.

But we dare not to turn it on. We are fearful that we will discover horrid things about ourselves. So what? As there are nights, there are also days. We humans all have strengths and weaknesses, look within and you will find many wonderful things in life and within you.

We are all originally divine and we can realise our divinity through meditation.

Once discovered our divinity will automatically drop all negativity. Then fear is banished, wonder fills us and childlike we will become, innocent, pure and fearless.

Be your own lamp, for your existence begins and ends with you and your spirit, and not that of the other person holding up their own lamp.

On a clear night

On a clear day, 

        I can see 7 kilometres to the horizon

On a clear night, 

         I can see million of kilometres to the stars.

                                 - Author unknown

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Success is like a bright day.  Shiny, attractive and blinding. 

Failure is like a foggy day. Unclear and confusing.

Without reflection or contemplation little can be understood or experienced.

Contemplation is like a clear night. We can see deep within and without ourselves.  

Who is king of kings?

   "Chah gayi chinta miti, Manva beparwah;

    Jinko kachhu na chahiye, Wohi shah-en-shah"

- The Guru Granth Sahib

 Translated.

When desires are gone, worries end, and person will become carefree;

The one who wants nothing is the king of kings. 

Let her go.

Once an elderly monk and a young monk were trudging through the forest, back towards their monastery They came to a small river, which was in spate. The water was not deep but the current looked dangerously swift. They would simply have to wait it out. 

On the same river bank stood a young attractive woman, looking tired, hungry and  very anxious. With hesitation she approached the monks and said, "I have been here all day. I am desperate to get to my home on the other side. My young children will be waiting for me for they will be very hungry. Sirs please help me to get across, I implore you."

The less people think and feel, the more zealous they become. The young are particularly eager to be accepted and therefore always more earnest in obeying orders.
Being an ascetic the younger monk refused to even make eye contact and simply turned his back on the woman. He dismissively gestured to her to be gone.

The elder monk was a wise and spiritual man, he too had taken many vows, but he felt it no sin to look at and listen to the woman. With spiritual awakening comes compassion. The monk understood the anxiety of a mother longing to reach out to her children. He felt obliged to be of service and to assist the young woman in distress.

He set about putting together a makeshift raft, and when completed he waded into the river with the raft. He gestured to her to sit on it and she hesitatingly climbed on board and held on to the monk and raft for dear life. The angry young monk grudgingly followed the older monk. 

Pushing the raft forward with one hand he began to slowly wade across the river. When they had almost crossed the the river, the raft was hit by debris and overturned, tossing the woman into the muddy water.  As the young monk watched with shock, the elder monk plunged quickly into the water grabbed the woman and carried her safely towards dry land. 

The woman regained her breath and composure, then with folded hands and tears in her eyes, she bowed to the monk and touched his feet. After a few long moments she stood up and ran, on her way to her children. The two monks also resumed their journey but the younger monk now visibly very very angry.  

He continued sulking even after arriving at their destination. After a long while, the elder asked the young monk, "Brother what is it that bothers you?"

The younger retorted, "You know what troubles me. You have broken your vows. You not only looked at but touched the woman, and even carried her across the river."

The elder monk with a smile replied, "Yes, I carried her. I believed it was a greater duty than obedience to my vows to help that poor helpless woman. However, I left her at the river's edge, but it seems to me my brother, that you are still carrying her."  "Let her go"

Dream or Awaken?

Who looks outside, dreams;

Who  looks  inside, awakes.

             - Carl Jung

Power of Yoga, explained.

Who is my best friend?
Should it not be me, myself?
For how can I befriend or love others when I cannot love or befriend myself?
How can I know the eternal, when I don't know myself?

But who am I?
I don't know.
My impressions or understanding of myself is what others have communicated to me.  Even my name is given to me by someone else.
I am this and that and a thousand other things, but I always remain that being, who is defined by others.
Then who am I?

_____________________________                                

Who am I?
To find out, I must ask none other than myself.
But how can I know myself?

Man the animal has his senses trained to handle the external world. The eyes, the nostrils, the ears etc, all are directed outwards.

Man the divine being, lies within us. We should journey inwards into our being, and that journey has to start with the mind.

But my mind is not one. There is always a crowd within my mind and all of them are clamouring for attention. I need to silence them all and still all thoughts, so that I can listen to and observe myself.

This listening and observation is meditation.

This is why it is imperative for me to spend some time alone with myself, to meditate. Concentration does not work, because the more I focus, the more I am strained.

 When I try meditating, I find that sometime my body and most of the time my mind dominate my being.  I tried to fight the thoughts but the more I battle them the stronger they bounced back.


This is why it is imperative for me to spend some time alone with myself, to meditate.

When I try meditating, I find that sometime my body and most of the time my mind dominate my being.  I tried to fight the thoughts but the more I fought them the stronger they bounced back.    

I try not to judge or fight my thoughts, I try just to observe them. Like clouds in the sky, they waft in and fade away, I am often swept away by the clouds or I go a chasing them.

The answer lies in performing yoga.

Yoga is not just contorted body postures, and exercise. It is an ancient and complete science. It has remained a gift from India to humanity for thousands of years.

The more I perform Yoga, the easier it is to meditate.
The more I meditate the more I discover the foolishness of being busy just for the sake of keeping myself uselessly occupied, trying to satisfy and keep entertained that insatiable factor, the human ego.

With each passing day, grows the harmony of my being. The less my mind strays, more healthy and alert I feel. I have traded useful action for useless activity.



Harmony cannot be explained it has to be experienced.


Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word 'Yuj', means to join. I prefer to describe yoga as a confluence, the coming together of the flow of the body, the mind and the spirit.

Yoga offers, possibly the simplest and best path for individuals and humanity to be to be truly holy*.  Holy because the mind, body and spirit of the individual will be in harmony with each other.  Blissful, aware, active and healthy people.

Could we ask for anything more?



*Holy comes from the same word, meaning, 'to be whole'

Who is a Warrior?

"No one has the right to take another life. A warrior for us is different from what you think of as. The warrior is not someone who simply fights and kills. 

The warrior, for us, is the one sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenceless, those who cannot provide for themselves and above all, the children who are  the future of humanity."

 - Sitting Bull

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Sitting Bull  (1831 – 1890) was a holy man and tribal chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota people, who led the Sioux Red Indian Nation against the American government which mainly constituted of Europeans who had settled in  America

While two thirds of who died were due to diseases imported by the settlers a third of the native American Indians were simply exterminated. It is estimated that approximately 18 million Red Indians died for the sake of 'freedom' and 'progress' of the settlers in North America.




It is estimated that the number killed in South America or what we also call Latin America was still higher at over 50 million native Indians killed.

It marks one of Humankind's greatest tragedies and depicts Man at his possible shameful worst.

The American colonisation of the West, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples was carried out under the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Europeans believed that they had a superior culture, and that it was their God-given destiny to occupy the land and to extinguish the culture of its original inhabitants. 

Manifest Destiny - American Progress by John Gast (1872)

In this illustration, we see Progress leading the settlers across the prairie, Bible in hand, stringing telegraph wires with the other, while the “savages” flee ahead