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

_________________________________

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

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers

       - Alfred Tenyson

I visited the Universal Business School (UBS) in Karjat (near Mumbai, India) several times. An impressive and wonderful feature at UBS is called, 'The Wisdom School'. UBS is probably the only managerial and business school in India which seeks to amplify and stimulate human goodness.

In addition to producing some good potential business managers UBS also strives to evolve good human beings and leaders.

Usually students and parents too often are focussed only on facts and figures, tools and techniques seeking to get knowledge. The grades and mark sheets are all that matter to them and to potential employers. Alas if more of them also sought wisdom.

UBS have not yet got there but they believe that in addition to the knowledge they impart, they must help their students to become wise.

Mr. Gurdip Anand the main founder of UBS, sought my opinion on what I felt would help the students be wise. That really stumped me and I needed to think long and hard and search for an answer. 

No doubt many of our education institutions provide knowledge but that is wholly inadequate. Knowledge increases our ability to act. However mere actions without wisdom often causes suffering and degradation of individuals,  society and nature.  

The ability to apply knowledge, understanding experience, insight, and common sense for the benefit of oneself, for others and for creation, is called wisdom.

Good education should teach the person,

• To discover oneself and realise one's potential
• How to be in harmony with oneself?
• To enjoy life by being true to oneself.
• To be friends with the world.
• To continuously learn, un-learn and re-learn?
• Respect for oneself, others and creation in general.
• To be compassionate
• Tolerance
• To be healthy?
• Enjoy art, creativity and to be innovative?
• The true meaning of responsibilities and rights and their judicious application 

_______________________

"The more I see, the more I learn.

The more I learn, the more I know.

The more I know, the more I realise.

The more I realise, I learn how little I know."

______________________________

If you wish to know more about Universal Business school you may contact 

Brigadier GPS Cheema

Chief mentor of UBS Wisdom School 

email:      gpscheema@yahoo.com

Mobile:   +91 787 587 0837

God everywhere and in all things - Chief Seattle

 In 1855 President Franklin Pierce of the United States made a “request” to Chief Seathl of the Suwamish tribe of Indians (who lived in what is now the State of Washington) to “sell” his land to the government. In reply, Chief Seathl sent the following letter to the President:

The great chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. The great chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him, since we know that he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer, for we know that if we do not do so, the white man may come with guns and take our land.

How can you buy or sell the sky—the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore,every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the

same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. 

If I decide to accept, I will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. What is man without beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of the spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man.One thing we know which the white man may one day discover: Our God is the same God. You may think that you own Him as you wish to own our land. But you cannot. He is the God of men. And His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. 

This earth is precious to Him. And to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The whites, too, shall pass—perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffaloes are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the sacred corner of the forest heavy with the scent of men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wives, where is the thicket ? Where is the eagle? And what is it to say goodbye to the shift and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of dying.

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am a savage and do not understand—the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the argument of the frogs around a pond at night? The Red Indian prefers the

soft sound of the wind itself cleansed by the midday rain, or scented with a pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath—the beasts, the trees, the man. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the smell.

We might understand if we know what the white man dreams, what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so that they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man’s dreams are hidden from us.

And because they are hidden, we will go on our own way. If we agree, it will be to secure our reservation you have promised. There perhaps we may live out our brief days as we wish. When the last red man has vanished from the earth, and the memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people, for they love this earth as the newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. If we sell you our land, love it as we loved it, care for it as we have cared for it, hold in your mind the memory of the land, as it is when you take it, and with all your strength, with all your might, and with all your heart, preserve it for your children, and love it as God loves us all. One thing we know—your God is

the same God. The earth is precious to Him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny.

Chief Seattle

(Letter released by the United States Government as part of the Bicentenary celebrations).

____________________________________

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, in 1864 (c. 1780 - June 7, 1866). Chief Seattle (anglicised name) was a Suquamish (or Suquampsh) Chief (possibly also a Duwamish Chief), also known as Si'ahl, Sealth, Seathle, Seathl or See-ahth. Seattle in Washington was named after him.

"We are all one Tribe,  the Human Tribe... "

"Native American isn't blood. It is what is in the heart. The love for the land, the respect for it, those who inhabit it, and the respect and acknowledgement of the spirits and elders. That is what it is to be Indian."

              White Feather, Navajo Medicine Man

Blunder by man or God?

"Is man a blunder created by God? 

or  

Is God is a blunder created by man?"

~ Fried Nietzsche

People to love not use

God gave us people to love and things to use, and not the other way around.